Meet the world’s first limited edition high float rescue vest – Indus LE : Perspective. Designed in collaboration with legend Benny Marr and Nature-inspired artist Anna Kai.
The Perspective LE features original multi-medium artwork inspired by the learnings and teachings of our collective freeride, high stoke and high flowt community.
We sat down with Benny and Anna to learn more about their process and inspiration.
ASTRAL
How does art inspire your kayaking + your life?
BENNY MARR
In life, I am inspired by artists. It’s a feeling of awe or stoke by that human’s brain and result(s). I like being excited, and I love when the creative output of another human gets me fired up. It is a treat to be exposed to creativity.
For example, when I see something that leads me to wonder: How did they do that? What was the idea that sparked this outcome? Who are they, and what makes them able to produce art? Could I do that? These are questions that get me fired up. People’s words, pictures, or video projects are what get me most excited.
On the river, through photos and videos from talent across all sports, I’ve found that I could extract what kayakers do in whitewater as art. I feel the most creative when I am surfing a big green fast wave or trying to launch off the downstream side of one ( A Quality of Imagination ). There could be art in the connection of directional changes and hunting for opportunities to gain every centimeter of space possible between my kayak and the water, placing my boat and body as high into the air as I can.
An impermanent line drawn through a wave / or arched off of one.
SHOP THE INDUS LE
ASTRAL
How do you stay curious? In life and in kayaking?
BENNY MARR
In life, my curiosity comes from reading and wondering if the content of the books will bring a trackable shift to my life. I don’t feel like I know what the future could hold, so I go day by day trying to nudge myself in a good-ish direction.
In kayaking, boat design and moving new waves through familiar rapids is more than enough to keep me curious and hungry for more. The boat’s design is what I use to connect with the river. The river provides infinite opportunities to learn and try to connect new dots in the river, build speed and release, coil energy and release, while adapting to the currents around you. THANK YOU, KENNY MUTTON / WAKA KAYAKS
ASTRAL
What does Flow State mean to you?
BENNY MARR
Flow State has been professionally broken down extensively, possibly overcooked online, and is fascinating to me.
I am reading a book now where one character has his physiology carefully monitored by a team of scientists so that when he enters flow state, he is meant to be left alone to write as much as possible, a pretty neat concept.
What it means to me: In my early days of being a G2 licensed driver (can drive alone) in Ontario, Canada I was driving to Ottawa in my moms car to visit my closest paddling pal, Maxi Kniewasser. He had a lot of kayaking movies I had never seen, and we devoured them. He told me that some of the pro kayakers said that when they ran big waterfalls, time would slow down and they could make finely tuned adjustments.
My most intense flow state experience was on the tallest waterfall I have run. The fast-paced environment became so detailed due to intense focus and the recall of the event is highly detailed, and while it all happened rapidly, it felt slow (due to the detail absorption, I guess). Like watching one video shot on 5 browser windows at the same time.
When I am surfing and things are going well, there is a flow in my reactions and future predictions. I am not sure if it is flow state based on how it feels but the word flow sums it up nicely. I feel the same when my mind goes white noise when I am in continuous whitewater, linking move after move with no internal distractions, technique mistakes, or external distractions.
ASTRAL
What did it mean to create the first LE of a PFD you were instrumental in testing?
BENNY MARR
I have been in the Astral GreenJacket for years; I have no idea when I got my first one. I don’t know when it was released. But it has been a staple for a lot of us for a long time. I have had a long relationship with Astral, and in recent years, it has become more involved. I was pretty stoked when PC [Philip Curry, Astral Founder + CEO] asked me to connect with the team and work with them through some prototyping of the Indus, which was well underway already. It was a treat to work with Daniel and get a glimpse into his world of design details. As Cooper’s desk got bigger at Astral I got to really geek out with him on a more emotional level of marketing ideas and decide on the Minus Rapids at high water for final testing / dramatic release video. Thanks to Caleb and Dan for shooting with me under the falls. Years earlier Anna Kai had reached out to me because she wanted to paint a photo of mine, and when we first started on this road, I asked Anna to work with me and then it turned out she was working for Astral.
It means a lot to me to have been trusted and encouraged to work on an LE project. It is awesome that we got to use the Indus’ broad canvas and it was so fun.
Short answer: alot. And alot more than I said here.
SHOP THE INDUS LE
ASTRAL
What’s your favorite wave?
BENNY MARR
Easy question to ask, harder to answer. Each wave has a specific set of memories, moments, and friends attached to them. Surfing big waves that are so dynamic is so fun that it is not always about choosing a favourite, and I cannot simply say that the answer is: “the wave I am on”.
Skookumchuck has become massively important to me, and where I deeply connected with surfing. Surfing surfing, not freestyle tricks, it changed my life in the sense that I spent a lot of time there to specifically figure out how to move around and dance on that wave. Cheese Wave on the Mistassibi River in Quebec could be handed the title of favorite, if I had to. But it is my favorite experience. It took us (stakeout crew) a long time (years) to find efficient access and the water level window. Cheese Wave does not need a huge amount of water, so it kept me in the area longer than a typical Stakeout season, thus extending the stakeout season and helping me explore more and fall more in love with the Mistassibi River. A big reason why I finally bought a small piece of land downstream of Cheese Wave in the classic section of the River.
ASTRAL
This LE references quite a bit of literature. What’s your favorite book(s) and why?
BENNY MARR
Easy question to… just kidding. I like to read fiction, fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and biographies / autobiographies. If the writing can distract me or if I can read it without getting distracted, I am into it. I recently read ‘River of the Gods’, by Candice Millard who also wrote ‘River of Doubt’, both phenomenally fun to read river stories. Right now, I am reading The Gruffalo a lot.
ASTRAL
Describe the LE Design process.
BENNY MARR
Talk with Anna. 1st draft appears on a mock-up Indus. 3 other LE’s come to beautiful fruition over 3 years. The team connects, meets and gets stoked in 2024. Procrastination/life. Deadline. Bike rides and intense desire for creative windfalls. Creative windfalls. Surprising vulnerability and fear. Trust and fruition.
I really like that Anna, Daniel, and I all got to have moments of creativity. Each LE usually has a technical design innovation or something that has not yet been done/included on the previous iterations. From the art, to the colours, to the shooting of the video, to the editing of the video, I have been on the edge of my seat a lot of the time.
ANNA KAI
LONG! The process has been ongoing for years actually, on and off the table, a lot of inspiration twists and life trajectory turns. Though drawn out, the process has truly felt kismet – I mean Benny and I hadn’t talked in probably a year and when we got on a call to catch up we realized we had both become parents within months of each other. The process was always fun, entirely honest, and very creative.
SHOP THE INDUS LE
ASTRAL
What’s your favorite element of this LE?
BENNY MARR
It is so frikkin’ personal, but it’s also so held, handled and crafted by Anna and Daniel – they helped me find creativity with my ideas and made me feel comfortable to suggest them. I had no idea how it was going to turn out, and, I really love it; it was an amazing opportunity. It reflects me and my family.
ANNA KAI
My favorite part of this LE is the nod to Johnathan Livingston Seagull. Benny sent me that book when we first started talking about designing an LE together. Oddly, reading that book gave me so much insight into who Benny is and how he approaches his sport. Give it a read!
ASTRAL
What’re some hidden / not-so-easy to see elements?
BENNY MARR
If you let your eyes wander around the design, you will find them.
ANNA KAI
There are some airborne elements to find!
ASTRAL
What type of mediums do you typically work with?
ANNA KAI
I work with Oil and Acrylic paints on big canvas
ASTRAL
What inspires your creativity?
ANNA KAI
Full immersion, that feeling of being completely connected to your instinct and the natural world. I’ve felt it floating through powder, flying down the dirt, walking a path and planting my garden… Whenever that feeling of immersion is found it tends to come when I’m so focused on the task at hand that everything seems to exist together. I can see every micro root in the soil and the whole hillside at the same time. It’s these moments that spark something deep and mostly unexplainable — this is what I paint, and why I paint. It’s where I hope my paintings can take you back to, as a source of inspiration and a subliminal reminder that we all flow with it, together.
ASTRAL
What’s your favorite way to experience Nature?
ANNA KAI
My favorite way to experience Nature is through repetition – fly casting, pedaling, walking the same route every other day – that’s when I start to notice little things like baby ferns finding the light or unique lines the river is making in that particular moment.
ASTRAL
What makes this LE so unique?
ANNA KAI
From my perspective, the most unique element of this PFD is that the art was created through physical means and not solely digital. The base of the artwork is directly translated from a painting that I created with Benny’s inspiration. For the first time, Astral used sublimation to literally translate an image of this art piece to the PFD. It’s kind of like having a fine art print on your life jacket.
