February 2017

Said Dokins & Lapiztola : Gentrification in Mexico City’s La Merced Market

Said Dokins & Lapiztola : Gentrification in Mexico City’s La Merced Market

February 4, 2017

Lapiztola & Said Dokins. Del Barrio / Mi Merced Mexico City. 2017. (photo © Leonardo Luna)

The writing is on the wall. Can you read what it says?

 

Lapiztola & Said Dokins. Del Barrio / Mi Merced Mexico City. 2017. (photo © Leonardo Luna)

“Social Cleansing” is a term used by Said Dokins and Lapiztola when describing the process of a gentrifying neighborhood in Mexico City where the enormous and historical public market called La Merced Market is now gradually disappearing, taking the people who made it possible with it.

Lapiztola & Said Dokins. Del Barrio / Mi Merced Mexico City. 2017. (photo © Leonardo Luna)

Their new piece looks at the destroying of a native culture by the forces of development that feed on its unique energy and character to sell real estate and investment opportunity but in the process negate its very authorship, its right to its formidable historical place in community.

Their new wall contains the messages from Said Dokins within his particular calligraffiti style that is both communication and ornamentation. The composition also features a stencil from Lapiztola of the face of a girl, perhaps from Oaxaca, where her dress would be typical.

Lapiztola & Said Dokins. Del Barrio / Mi Merced Mexico City. 2017. (photo © Leonardo Luna)

The states of Oaxaca and Chiapis have provided the life of La Merced for many decades – the market itself a jewel and historical institution in this neighborhood that has hosted commercial activities for more than five centuries.

“This mural was made within the project called WallDialogue2, which took place in a parking lot where several vendors from La Merced Market pass through everyday,” say the organizers of the program that took place January 20-22.

“The intentions of this project were to generate a discussion site focused on the relation between urban art and gentrification processes.”

Lapiztola & Said Dokins. Del Barrio / Mi Merced Mexico City. 2017. (photo © Leonardo Luna)

Appropriately, we have a poem written by Natalia Saucedo when she was 12 and a girl from this community of the market.

My MERCED (Fragment)

Alert in my heart the market that saw me grow up
Cruelly falls little by little
My life runs here
I can’t let it go.

From here I hear the noise of machines
Little by little
My market destroyed

Ladies and gentlemen, without a job have been left

Be strong
Those who love the market crying inside,
Smiling outside

Withered heart
Traveling hope.

~ Natalia Saucedo

Lapiztola & Said Dokins. Del Barrio / Mi Merced Mexico City. 2017. (photo © Leonardo Luna)

Lapiztola & Said Dokins. Del Barrio / Mi Merced Mexico City. 2017. (photo © Leonardo Luna)

 

WALL DIALOGUE 2 – Nuestro Barrio Wall Painting Jam
ATEA Topacio 25, Centro Histórico, Mexico City
January 20 – 22
Featured Artists: Billy, Blo, Johannes Mundinger, La Piztola, Libre, Mernywernz, Nelio, Pao Delfin, Said Dokins 

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BSA Film Friday: 02.03.17

BSA Film Friday: 02.03.17

February 3, 2017

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. NEMCO, Three Stages: Primaticcio. Part I
2. NEMCO, Three Stages: Salento. Part II
3. NEMCO, Three Stages: Tetto. Part III
4. Run AKA Giacomo Bufarini: Time Traveller Artist Man
5. Saving Banksy
6. Berlin Kidz and Grifters Code 6: Über Freaks (Trailer)


bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: Three Walls by Nemco in Italy

Taking a break from the hype, here are three in a row straight up graffiti painting videos, each intriguing in their own way, from Italian writer Nemco. Unpretentious style, clean lettering, flexible concepts, and a bit of retro flavor that lets you know this is a way of life, not a pose to strike. Enjoy all three.

NEMCO, Three Stages: Primaticcio. Part I

 

NEMCO, Three Stages: Salento. Part II

 

NEMCO, Three Stages: Tetto. Part III

 

Run AKA Giacomo Bufarini: Time Traveller Artist Man

London based Italian Street Artist RUN has completed his first book of his work, a labor that he has been talking about since we met him a year ago in Morocco.

Tristan Manco describes it as “Part travelling diary, part monograph, Time Traveller Artist Man charts the triumphs and tribulations of an imaginative soul with a passion for travel, whose worldwide voyages have become a catalyst to create art that is elemental and playful, with the ultimate goal of engaging with people from all walks of life.”

We’ll show it to you once we get a copy! It is sure to be a fine work by a fine artist.

Opening in New York Tonight February 3rd

Saving Banksy

“We paint in the streets. That’s where it belongs”, says Street Artist Ben Eine in the new “Saving Banksy” film, and that’s where the debate originates. Of course that’s never where it ends.

For this weekend’s showtimes go to Cinepolis 

260 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011
(212) 691-5519

Berlin Kidz and Grifters Code 6: Über Freaks (Trailer)

Good Guy Boris tells us that his new film Über Freaks is going to streamed live on Facebook February 8th! Of course you need to check your local times so you make sure you don’t show up to your computer with popcorn and its already over!

08 February 2017

20p.m. (GMT+1) [ Belgium / France / Germany / Italy / Netherlands / Spain timezones ]
US (EST – New York) – Wednesday 14p.m.
AUSTRALIA (AEDT – Sydney) – Thursday 06a.m.
Check your city timezone here.

“Über Freaks takes place deep in the heart of Berlin, and chronicles what it’s like to be part of a close knit group, who get their kicks by roping down buildings with the barest of safety precautions, climbing buildings by way of their exteriors, and lock-picking their way through the whole of the city and its Metro stations. The film can be considered a joyride for the viewer, as they are finally granted a backstage pass to the exclusive and hectic lifestyle of the Berlin Kidz, being privy to a whole world of adrenaline and thrill seeking that occurs just outside their apartment windows.”

Also a new book release from The Grifters!

Find out more at grifterscode.thegrifters.org

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A Wall a Month : Contorno Urbano Launches “12+1” for 2017

A Wall a Month : Contorno Urbano Launches “12+1” for 2017

February 2, 2017

Walls get buffed all the time in many cities as the municipal anti-graffiti campaigns scour the streetscape for unapproved aerosol missives and get out the bucket paint or bring by the power washer.

Irene López León. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

In one Spanish city they are doing it once a month, regardless of what’s up there. At least on one wall.

The second edition of “12 +1” by a small nonprofit organization named Contorno Urbano has planned for one new artist every month to paint this wall. The nonprofit says they are composed of local artists, a social worker and an architect – all in the city of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, a municipality of a quarter million people to the immediate southwest of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain – has been planning and executing murals for over a decade.

Irene López León. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

With a rotating roster beginning this month, the organization says it is “in an open-air art gallery” in a commercial district of the city. In a description of the event they say it “seeks to question the way we exhibit street art, and the place of these artworks in the city.”

January brought Irene López León and today we show you her new piece that incorporates elements of geometry, playing with perspective, organic elements, and a certain hypnotic quality.

Planned artists for 2017 are Iker Muro, Hosh, Miedo 12, Miquel Wert, Pati Baztán, Elbi Elem, Fernando León, Edjinn, BYG and Laura González Llaneli.

 

Irene López León. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Irene López León. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Anton)

 

For more information about Contorno Urbano please click HERE.

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“Shoe” is His Middle Name: New Book by Niels Shoe Meulman

“Shoe” is His Middle Name: New Book by Niels Shoe Meulman

February 1, 2017

“They both see words as images,” says Shoe about graffiti writers and Medieval scribes in a 2013 interview with the BBC. His latest tome extrapolates this reverence for the letterform, an obsessive repetitive family of gestures, now often abstracted, that the artist first stumbled upon as a pre-teen in the late 1970s.  Since those days he became known as graffiti artist, painter, designer, writer, calligrapher. Here is where it comes together.

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

“Shoe is My Middle Name” is the fourth publication by Niels Shoe Meulman and one that expands, amalgamates, solidifies his influences, mistakes, discoveries; forging a unique voice that is his own. Sometimes identified with Calligraffiti, but there is so much more to it; now the smudge and the smoke and the splatter has lead him in other directions, from supple and savvy wrist turning small scale to full-body massively immersive gestural painting.

Whether it is a push broom on a roof or a brush on mottled papyrus or the masterful swoop and turn of the squeegee, Shoe knows that there are no half steps once the liquefied pigment hits the surface. A commitment has been made.

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

A large coffee table book with a unifying cerulean wash / black two-tone pointillist screen motif throughout, the story of his many exploits is moderated with poetry and outtakes of reviews by or observations by the artist. In one descriptive passage about his work “The Secret Ingredient”, the Amsterdam lifer who has traveled the world says it required “a perfect mix of intuition, imagination, courage and madness.”

Carlo McCormick writes in his essay, “We honor Shoe as the great cross-pollinator who came to New York City as a kid to meet the graffiti master Dondi and brought Wild Style back to Europe, but his strength remains just how far he can still can carry this immoderate load.” Based on his path and his evolution, we’ll consider this beautiful monster to be in a mid-career retrospective and some of his most masterful work is yet to come.

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

“DID TUNNELS IN PARIS
THAT WALL IN BERLIN
DID ACID IN BROOKLYN
ALL WITHOUT SIN

DID ROOFTOPS IN LONDON
IN MUNICH SOME TIME
DID TRAMLINES AND STATIONS
NO LIFE WITHOUT CRIME

DID TRAINS IN THE BRONX
TAGS ON A PLANE
DID MURALS IN DELHI
ALL WITHOUT SHAME

DID LECTURES IN DUBLIN
GOT CHASED BY CHINESE
DID EXHIBITS DOWN UNDER
AND IN LOS ANGELES”

From “A Writer’s Song” by Niels Shoe Meulman

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

Niels Shoe Meulman Shoe Is My Middle Name Lebowski Publishers, Amsterdam 2016.

 

All photos of the book’s plates © Jaime Rojo

Niels Shoe Meulman “Shoe Is My Middle Name” is published by Lebowski Publishers / Overamstel. Amsterdam, 2016. Click HERE for more information.

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