Wabi-Sabi celebrates transience and imperfection and aligns with the repetitive, failure-driven learning of action sports. Mountain bikers accept repeated attempts and setbacks until achieving a desired, imperfect result. Filming on Utah's rugged cliffs and scree slopes captures the trial-and-error process behind nailing a shot, where close calls, crashes, and mistakes make victories meaningful. Brandt emphasizes showing up daily, doing one's best, and allowing life to settle one into place. Wesselman links the project to Wabi-Sabi, describing a difficult shoot where consistent effort through imperfect moments produced a result some might call perfect and a rewarding experience chasing a shared dream.
Wabi-Sabi is the appreciation and acceptance of transience and imperfection - something any mountain biker can appreciate. The nature of any action sport is one of repetition and acceptance of failure, again and again, until you get the result you want. It's not insanity, because in the end, we know that the sum of all the attempts will result in something beautifully imperfect.
"I related what DJ wanted to share with this piece to the Japanese aesthetic philosophy, Wabi-Sabi," explains Wesselman. "We had a really hard time shooting this one. Life didn't go easy on us. But that process of remaining consistent through a litany of imperfect moments of dissatisfaction compounded in a result that I'm sure someone, somewhere would call perfect. When it was all said and done, we just had a super good time chasing the dream."
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