‘On Board’ in solitude

It was an average summer morning near the Huntington Beach pier. Dozens of surfers caught waves, groups of teens tested the waters, and children played in the sand. But at the edge of sight, like beads on a necklace, were nine surfers tied to a line, all lying face-up on their longboards.

It wasn’t some new synchronized sport; it was art, courtesy of the Huntington Beach Art Center and Dutch artist Rob Sweere.

Sweere travels the world getting people to stop, lie down and look up as part of his “Silent Sky” series of art actions, or what he has referred to as “a series of small events.”

Participants called it a meditative experience that made them feel every rise and fall of the waves. Despite the closeness of the group, it was a solitary feeling, said high school junior Ryan Lane, who joined the morning event on his first day of summer vacation.

“You sense you’re not in your own place,” he said. “You don’t hear cars, and all I really saw when I opened my eyes was the horizon. It’s like you’re alone out in the middle of the ocean.”

“Silent Sky,” an ongoing project since 2004, is Sweere’s way of getting people to lie down in their familiar surroundings and have an extraordinary experience. He designed it to require no more than a suitcase worth of gear — video camera for interviews, a laptop, and clothes — so he can take it worldwide with as much or as little planning as he wants.

“This is about special experiences in your daily environment,” he said. “Once you do it, it will stick, and as you go there again and again it will be in your memory.”

Sweere’s work focuses on giving people a chance at a unique experience rather than showing an audience a finished product. He has driven around with a friend strapped to the roof of his car, built a gale-force wind generator to muss hair in a children’s museum, and set up viewing equipment in a park that makes clouds look like the surface of the moon.

Explanations and pictures of what he does don’t quite convey what happens in person, a problem that frustrated him earlier in his career.

“I felt I couldn’t get the message across,” he said. “I could not give you this experience through a picture. I had a big show in a big museum, and everybody was happy about it, but I was not.”

Sweere said he relies on “informal social networks” to choose participants; he picks a natural community -- like shopkeepers at a mall, or students at a college, or surfers at a beach -- and asks a couple of people to pass on the invitation within that group like a chain letter. He doesn’t stick to what he finds familiar, and the trip to Huntington Beach was no exception.

“I’d never actually touched a surfboard before,” he said with glee.

When the surfers came to shore after 30 minutes of reflection and spoke to Sweere’s camera about what they had gone through, the artist called it a success — as well as a surprise.

“It’s stronger than lying on land,” he said. “You have a double experience of the sky and the ocean, and I was hearing a powerful consciousness of the water itself.”

That rang true for Junior Lifeguards instructor Olin Patterson, who was recruited for the project just that morning.

“On the job we’re so quick to be in and out of the ocean,” he said. “With this, you slow down and really reflect.”