You are what you eat. Mr Fijodor thinks we are eating cars, buildings, cities and a few other non-foods along with all the other stuff in this stack of hamburgers. Of course, he is right.
Researchers from GlobalChange.govsay that already we have chemical contaminants in the food chain, with things like mercury, carbon dioxide, and pesticides altering our daily diet.
Here at the Athens Street Art Festival the Italian Street Artist says his multi-story “XXXL Panta Burger”in Nikaia is, “A visionary section of our times, a fat and enlarged shape of it.”
He began his public art career as a graffiti writer in 1994 but these days Mr Fijodor (alias Fijodor Benzo) receives invitations to participate in quite a few festivals and create works for private clients, usually painting in his dream-inspired cartoon-style illustrations.
Since its’ beginning almost a decade ago the Athens Street Art Festival, lead and organized by Andreas C Tsourapas, has hosted more than 170 artists painting in multiple municipalities of Athens.
Mr Fijodor tells that he was supported and promoted by the Italian Culture Institute of Athens to get to this festival. He says he’s happy to do this mural, which is marked by a social or ecological criticism that he often uses, “using as a weapon a childish and astonished smile realized through a spontaneous and direct style, free from any complex technical elements.”
In an era where people may feel more under attack, more alienated, more disconnected from one another (despite “always on” connectivity), comes this new campaign from Dirty Bandits, “You Are Not Alone”. New York walls have been popping up recently (see above) with this message and somehow it completely resonates, hopefully just in time to remind someone struggling.
Brooklyn based lettering artist Annica Lydenberg of the design company Dirty Bandits tells us that this was an idea she came up with her best friend who had recently published a memoir about living with anxiety disorder. The he murals are intended to have broad appeal and offer support to anyone who feels misunderstood, victimized, or abandoned.
She tells us that people need to know “they are not the only ones struggling with mental health. My wish is to be seen as an ally, for not only mental health, but to the many communities who do not feel supported.” She says the campaign is not strictly commercial, although it is certainly not anonymous and some funding came from a media concern. But we agree that it is a very worthwhile message, can actually help people and if you want to learn more go HERE.
As long as we are on the topic, please call these numbers right now if you need help:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) Suicide Hotline 1-866-488-7386
Teen suicide hotline 1-800-USA-KIDS (872-5437)
National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY).
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Abe Lincoln Jr., Adam Fu, Cash4, Dirty Bandits, Elms, Icy & Sot, Jason Naylor, Mad Villain, Maia Lorian, Rude Reps, SAMO, Sinned, Smells, Soar, UFO907, Victor Ash, and Winston Tseng.
When the plants and
animals take over again there will still be remnants of you, as they transform
your achievements and failures organically en route to natural balance.
The evidence of this eventuality lies not only in our predilection for self-destruction but on the current existence of the 7,000 tower-fortress structures that still dot this island of Sardinia. Time and elements have not destroyed these structures built over a period of 16 centuries – long before the event of Christ’s birth. Today they are remnants, monuments of that Nuragic civilization, but are also home to birds, four legged creatures, insects, grasses, bushes, and trees.
Italian Street Artist, muralist and land artist Gola Hundun thinks of communications towers and overlays them with references of totemic massings, historical human rituals, geographical coordinates, shamanic journeys, and patterns of aviary flight. For this installation called “Torre di volo” (Flight Tower) he also is thinking about guiding birds through controlled space.
“The central element of the installation is inspired by the forms of the flight control towers of the airports,” he says, “a type of architecture that has always fascinated me and had a strong influence on my imagination both aesthetically and poetically.”
Participating in an art residency on the property of the Campidate artists residency (near Monastir), the Italian born millennial finds the support he needs to pursue his natural art-making cycle in an environment that is closest to his personal ethos.
He says that he spotted a bird of prey called a Kestrel inside the Campidarte base buildings and became inspired to imagine himself directing the flight of birds, one further degree of interaction with nature he has pursued for most of his life.
“The installation
stands today on a ridge of that land, in an elevated and strategic position,
generally loved by birds of prey,” he tells us.
A continuation of a personal artists’ campaign he calls ABITARE that more than contemplates his work as potential habitat, “Torre di volo” will be complete when Gola sees a winged friend entering the doorway of his central tower. He says the entire creation is based on his “desire to create a form capable of hybridizing my fascination for the ancestral totemic verticality and the desire to create a living space easily accessible to certain species and biological niches.”
“From the tower that I
interpreted, I hope that in the near future the flight of a bird of prey will
begin, allowing us to observe in reality the idea of flying, going and coming
back and making the structure itself come alive,” he says. “The occupation of
the tower by a bird is part of the idea of the installation and is
indispensable for its completion.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. INTI “Soleil”. Blinded by the Light. 2. Martha Cooper: Queen der Street Art 3. Elisa Capdevila x Anna Repullo. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project 4. Mare 139 : L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition. 5. FAUST: L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition.
BSA Special Feature: INTI “Soleil”. Blinded by the Light.
OMG WHERE does Chop ’em Down get their music from? Finally we said it out loud.
Yes, the monstrous archive of top-notch video that they are amassing of Street Artists and others creating work in the world is scintillating, the gut-punch editing is riveting, the pickings are lush. But time and again Zane nails it into next week with the music choices. Bless you brother.
INTI “Soleil”. Blinded by the Light. Video by Chop ’em Down Films for Peinture Fraiche Festival. Lyon, France.
Martha Cooper: Queen der Street Art via ZDF German TV (in German no subtitles)
Our sincere thanks to Susanne Lingemann and ZDF German TV for this great piece on Martha Cooper during the premiere of Selina Miles’ movie “Martha: A Picture Story” at Tribeca Film Festival. Next stop Sydney!
Elisa Capdevila x Anna Repullo. Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12+1 Project
Easily the winner of wackiest choice of concept and music for the year so far is this wiccan themed duo in Spain painting walls across from each other on an underpass. Something to do with sensuality and competitiveness and … witchcraft? Good painting tho.
L’avenir
L’avenir Graffuturism Group Exhibition
A special collection of works opened on April 26th under the banner “Graffuturism”, guided by its creator and advocate, the artist Poesia. The lineup includes a number of artists along the street art/graffiti /contemporary continuum such as Augustine Kofie, Tobias Kroeger, Carlos Mare, Doze Green, Jaybo Monk, Faust, Kenor, and Matt W. Moore – each with distinct graphic voices of their own. Below are a couple of brief profiles from the show follow here.
“L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition. Mare139.
“L’ avenir” Graffuturism. Group Exhibition. Faust.
The endgame of vulture capitalism. The implosion of the corporate culture. The subtle differences between public housing and private jailing. The melting of the ice caps.
However you have wished to interpret the work of Spanish sculptural street artist Isaac Cordal over the last decade, you probably thought he didn’t hold much hope for our future. Or us. But he says his work is more a reflection of what he sees, and he presents it will a subtle humor.
After a recent visit to his ceramic tiled and flourescent-lit artist studio in downtown Bilbao, we realized that his public art darkness is at least as hopeful as it is critical. All around the studio he has created a variety of rehearsal spaces, vignettes, and theatrical scenarios or displays with his figures interacting with other objects that he collects along the way.
It is at least as entertaining as it is educational. His sad characters and formal scenes of concrete dystopia are also humorous in their unlikely repetition, their utter lack of comfort, their repurposing of common objects as dire ones. His critiques of consumerism, environmental degradation, militarism, corporatism merging into fascism are sometimes couched by his own understated humor and attitude of childlike play as well.
Not that people were chuckling as they encircled the austere and degrading urban jungle scene he constructed in the Spanish capital for the Urvanity 2019 showcase in the courtyard of the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid. The tribal clusters of bald men in suits were situated above, partially submerged in, or up to their chins in gravel from a bombed out lot, perhaps churned rubble created by a drone.
But did the art crowd also see the two
businessmen carrying a stretcher full of wheatgrass? The absurdity is a relief.
Are they rescuing a rectangular slab of nature? Possibly cultivating it for
farming? Blissing out on a wheatgrass juice cleanse to counter the martinis and
amphetamines?
And what about these new human-faced pigs gathered around, looking for a trough? He presents the human/animal hybrids without comment under electric lights that glitter warmly across the compound. They could be a metaphor addressing attitudes or behaviors. They may also be a glimpse into a law-free amoral future where any new life-form you conjure can be sequenced and produced.
A graduate in sculpture at the University of Fine Arts near his hometown in Galicia, he also studied conservation of stone crafts and trained in London at Camberwell College. He was a founding member of a digital art community called Alg-a.org, a heavy metal guitarist in a band called Dismal, and a publisher of a fanzine called Exorcism.
As you learn these details about his life in the 90s and 2000s, you gain a greater appreciation for the powerful work of a guy who has emerged uniquely on the global street art stage with his Cement Elipses.
As hard driving electronic drums, bass, and cryptic lyric loops pounding from a radio on a shop stool, we witness the fastidious artist at work in the tidy studio area in this converted warehouse on a dead-end block. As he circles the center island in his overalls looking for the appropriate steel bit or resin mold he bobs gently to the beat, skillfully switching attachments on his drill and hand-designed vacuum device.
Here is where you see the craftsman at work; carefully attentive, problem-solving industry in play, possibly more at peace while he is creating than when he is left to think too much. He picks up a pink pig figurine and begins the plastic surgery, the fine reconstruction; a gentle whirring, a whittling away of snout and a defining of chin-line.
The result is rough and unrefined, proportions not sweet. He blazes through these final actions and presents his new hybrid man-pig, a satisfied glint flashing by as he blinks. The drill whirrs downward and he sits on the stool for a minute to flip over the figurine a few times and inspect it.
BSA:I imagine sometimes that people must think that you are walking around with a cloud over your head – but you’re not really. You’re a happy person who thinks seriously about the world and its issues.
Isaac: It’s not that I am choosing the topics. It is something that came by default. It is my personality. Also I make this work because I do not like the kind of society that we have now. I think about all the improvements that we have from our new discoveries – and I don’t understand what the reason is that we have all of these situations and problems. We should be a smarter society and more just.
We can find water on Mars but we can’t feed people here – what’s the reason for this? Why is our only worry about how we can have more and more and more? In that sense probably in my work it is like that because I don’t understand what we are doing, or our idea of progress. I say ‘Wow, it’s incredible that we cannot work on a common welfare.’ So the work is probably a reflection of what I do not like.
BSA:Do you think your work is conceptual art? Isaac Cordal: I don’t think so because it’s pretty direct. It’s not codified. It’s very easy to understand and with conceptual art there is a semantic idea, meanings. It’s more of a movement of art.
BSA:So you been doing this project using cement for maybe 15 years? Isaac Cordal: I don’t know maybe the first one was in 2005. Maybe before because I have some others that I made in cement that maybe go back 1999 it’s crazy how fast time goes. Because it was in 1996 that I started to study fine arts at the university in my hometown in Galicia. I also went to stone-carving school for five years. We were like slaves there because we were working with big stones – but I learned quite a lot because I learned to do more in terms of carving and modeling clay.
It was quite an experience for me. Most of the school was nice because it was more conceptual or theoretical – and it was interesting for me to learn more about contemporary art.
BSA: How do you feel about this time of your life as an artist? Isaac Cordal: The future for me I think is a little uncertain because every day is like a new year. I’m laying in the bed hiding behind my covers just looking over the edge. You say, “Oh my God another day that you have to prove yourself, do your projects.”
There are different venues and situations for artists but I think it is a kind of battle, a combat that first starts inside of you and after splashes onto others – your family or maybe your girlfriend. It’s not easy. It’s quite complex. I’ve had so many friends who were studying with me and they were talented but they couldn’t live their lives in this manner. It is a little bit uncertain. People may prefer to have a proper job. For me, probably not.
BSA:Do you have a sense about how people see your art? Issac Cordal: We have to deal with so many fears that this society is selling to us and it seems that you have to think about them. I think the people can understand my work very easily as it is very simple and representative.
BSA: What perceptions or reactions do you think they are having when looking at the “Yard” installation, for example? Isaac Cordal: The “Yard” is kind of a reflection of ourselves on a small scale. The topics are a little bit pessimistic but perhaps people can see it as a sort of reflection. They probably think about the topic that is suggested behind the installation.
BSA:Did you feel a sense of tension, given your worldview about politics and power and privilege and all of the societal structures we work within – your politics are so strong. How do you decide what to manifest? Isaac Cordal: I don’t want to do real political art. I think it is quite complicated. You have to be very clean. When you do political art you cannot make mistakes. In my work I am more interested in creating a reflection of what I see through the window. Sometimes I think I’m only speaking about myself. We are a reflection of the society and the society is always growing and evolving so probably as an artist we have to grow too.
Before there was a scene in Las Vegas, there was a scene in
Las Vegas.
Not in just the shimmering, drink slamming, dice rolling, pink-fur bikini with a rhinestone choker kind of way – that’s the real Las Vegas scene that you may think of – but in the urban art scene as well.
Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.
In this context the Las Vegas graffiti/Street Art scene that existed in the 1990s and 2000s that led up to a massive “Meeting of Styles” in 2012 was lively and varied and leaned more toward lettering, handstyle, and characters. Later, beginning in 2013 with a music/art festival called “Life is Beautiful”, a select group of international Street Artists were paid by public and private interests to help the city tap into a growing interest in urban decoration with eye-popping murals.
You can see both families of aesthetics at play here on the pages of the new hardcover “Street Art Las Vegas” (Smallworks Press) by William Shea and Patrick Lai, local photographers who have studied the city’s scene closely. Presenting documentation primarily from the 2010s, it is a pretty complete overview of the art-on-the-streets divided into geographical sectors of the city.
Suchart. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.
In very personal texts and essays that reference local developments and flavors, the authors give a sense of the changing political and social dynamics in the city. Notably in such a short period of a decade you learn that popular tastes, behaviors, shifts in demographics, and legal regulations evolve relatively quickly regarding art in the streets – in a city where presentation and image are often paramount.
No surprise, Vegas can take on the air of spectacle.
Aware. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.
“With the increased growth of East Fremont Street, the Arts District became a regular destination for landscape and portrait photographers. Many visitors began to utilize the painted walls as backdrops for graduation and group photos and were willing to pay the extra cost just to use the property,” write the authors to describe the near frantic adoration that surrounded the new murals in one part of town at a certain point.
Despite what appears to be a commercial element that bends the aesthetic landscape away from local talent, the choices of work here are additive, good quality, contextual and well framed.
Skul. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.
As long-time urban explorers and artists, we’re attracted to the tales of stuff off the beaten path, which they preserve in a chapter called “Outer Limits”:
“From the back-city streets to the deepest corner of the desert,
the vast landscape surrounding the city creates and environment that continues
to amaze even the most experience art seekers. Hidden from public view, large-scale
projects can be discovered for those willing to venture out, explore and get
dirty. In most cases, day trips to these areas yield the greatest finds for
those looking for something beyond your average wall.”
We’re ready!
Aware. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.Lords, ALB, Zeke. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.ROA. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.Alexis Diaz. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.Fintan Magee. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.Indecline. Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai. Smallworks Press. Las Vegas, NV. April 2019.
“Every man is the son of his own works” ~ Miguel de Cervantes.
The greatest writer in the Spanish language was inspired by the character of this region and its arid but fertile elevated plateau when creating his greatest work Don Quixote, a true titan of historical literature and one of the world’s most translated books after the Bible.
His central character is a delusional would-be knight who calls himself The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. His absurdist but imaginative self-regard is echoed in the sheer scale of the grand new Titanes (Titan) mural project. Given the camaraderie among artists and organizers here you may say that the heart of Titanes is more likely aligned with the earthy wit of his sidekick Sancho Panza.
Naturally when these characters are intermingled by an imaginative multi-disciplinary artist like Okuda San Miguel you are not surprised to see the image of movie director Pedro Almodovar co-starring along with Quixote; Okuda’s silo is seated in the filmmaker’s town of Calzada de Calatrava and Almodovar’s richly drawn characters have captured a generation of Spaniards happily. As a rainbow splits the storm clouded sky behind him, it’s precisely this painters intuitive alchemy of reality and fiction that may shake a viewers’ conscience while entertaining them, revealing Titanes as an enormous vehicle of communication.
“The past and present are seen through my geometric and surrealist filters,” says Okuda, who is a principle architect of this audacious public mural project in La Mancha. In an era of perplexing social, political, and economic upheavals, it is comforting to see modern artists take on the messages of the classics, reinterpreting and re-presenting them.
15 or so more murals on silos are on the way here from top talents before the year is complete. The societal outreach is ground-breaking in its own way with an uncommon integration and engagement with the neighboring communities.
“It’s an interesting story,” says photographer Martha Cooper, who shares her images with BSA readers today. “Okuda is working with organizations who help people with disabilities like autism and Down Syndrome. The part of the mural at the base of each one of the silos was painted by a number of these participants,” she says. “And they all seemed to be having a great time.”
Startlingly original and indelibly context-specific, Titanes is a mural/public art project that resides at the intersection of social responsibility and community participation. Organizers say that the goal is not only to bring a roster of well-respected artists here to paint but to be completely inclusive of societal members who aren’t typically thought of as artists.
From now until October, a number of artists from the urban art scene will be transforming silos into art all across this region, including Bicicleta sem Freio, Daniel Muñoz, Demsky J., Equipo Plástico (comprised of Eltono, Nuria Mora, Nano4814 and Sixe Paredes), Fintan Magee, Hell’O, Smithe, Nychos, Ricardo Cavolo and Spok Brillor. In an unprecedented program of social inclusion through public art, 450 members of the Laborvalía association will also be working alongside the artists on various creative activities.
Already the program has proven life-changing in many ways, say participants, as perspectives and relationships are evolving during the initial painting program. “Okuda worked with one boy with autism while painting his mural,” Martha tells us. “He began to speak and interact after starting to paint – much to his parents’ delight. This part of the project gave it more weight than just the usual “artists-painting-walls” event.”
Organizers say that they hope Titanes will be an epic project that will go down in history as one of the world’s biggest events to promote social inclusion. At its core are Okuda’s own multi-faceted art agency called Ink and Movement, the Laborvalía organization, the Provincial Government of Ciudad Real, and a number of other municipalities and civic and tourism-related fields who are supporting the art and its message throughout society.
Laborvalía says in its mission statement that its principal goal is to promote the integration of people with disabilities in society and the workplace.
Titanes looks like it is the perfect project to make a big impression.
Hell’O Our idea was to mix abstract shapes and figurative elements in a colorful environment. We enjoy playing with the balance between different shapes and finding a homogeneous composition. We wanted to give it an optimistic, pop, fresh touch, something that speaks to everyone
Bicicleta sem Freio
“Os Gigantes de la Mancha” (The Giants of La Mancha) represents the
power of creativity and imagination and its indispensable role in the ability
of human beings to make sense of the world and others, especially among
children and people with disabilities.
There are a number of concepts behind our intervention. First, it represents 15 years of working together as artists and friends: each medal symbolizes a story from some of the projects we’ve worked on in recent years.
It also reaffirms the building from an architectural standpoint: “decoration” in the sense of an award or honor and not just ornamentation. For us, it’s important to reaffirm the object in itself and not its political history. Finally, there’s an irony in the use of gold and its contrast with bread, a basic product produced by the silo and one that, in reality, was always represented as luminary and powerful in the imaginary of the 20th century.
Equipo Plástico (Eltono, Nuria Mora, Nano4818 and Sixe Paredes)
“Meseta” (Plateau) is a homage to the countryside, to the intractable space surrounding these silos. The tones and patterns of the surrounding areas, their textures and shades, cover every centimetre of the wall like a blanket, giving the building a round, almost sculpted look. Ignoring the limits of the building and symbolically camouflaging it in its environment accentuates its current invisibility after years of neglect and helps lighten the weight of its history.
In “Parábolas del
Pensamiento” (Parabolas of Thought), we have unified our style, based on the
phases of the brain for creation and thinking: preparation, incubation, illumination
and verification.
An impromptu mid-sized style meeting of talented graffiti writers hit up an industrial block in Bushwick last week and we’re lucky to have these fresh pieces for you today.
Locals, out-of-towners, and international visitors brought letterstyles full of spring energy, adding classic and fresh new licks together for a proper BK jam. It’s always good to see talents like these getting together to write on walls, paying tribute to their peers and catching up with old friends.
Have you noticed the number of faces and eyes that are pasted, painted, drawn on the Streets right now? Maybe they are an indicator that many more of us are truly paying attention and that we see how close the danger is, even if we don’t know exactly what to do.
The first step of course, is to pay attention. Turning off the corporate controlled media helps.
What do you see?
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Arkane, CP Won, Dylan Egon, Eyebrows, Greta Thunberg, Himbad, Hiss, Little Rickey, LMNOPI, Lungebox, SacSix, Sara Lynne Leo, Soten, The Postman Art, and Who is Dirk.
Official kick-of for release of the book “Get up again: Forty years later” by Craig Castleman
Nearly Forty years after his seminal book “Getting Up: Subway Graffiti In New York” was released, Craig Castleman is touring Spain to talk about a huge update to the story. Originally published by MIT press, it became a cult book for the graffiti/street art subculture and a bibliographic reference in the academic field.
”When the city designed the subway system they made some bad choices on colors. … If the subways were painted nice, it would make a lot of people very happy,” graffiti writer LEE is quoted from this book in the New York Times review of this 1982 release by the teacher, who had been at the High School of Art and Design, presumably with many of the young artists he researches.
An early academic record of the lively and controversial New York graffiti scene that thrilled and flummoxed the city during the previous decade, Castleman featured interviews and observations by important foundational names like Bama, Tracy 168, Phase 2, Futura 2000, and Iz the Wiz at a time when few valued their opinions.
This month, as a result of a joint initiative by INDAGE, the Spanish Association of researchers and disseminators of graffiti and urban art, and Contorno Urbano Foundation, Castleman’s visionary study is going on tour for a series of lectures and round tables in cities including Hospitalet, Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga, Granada and Madrid.
The events focus on the important contributions of the author and academic to the canon of early graffiti history. In addition he’ll be promoting an expanded volume that builds on that highly valued original book entitled “Get up again: Forty years later”. It features 160 previously unpublished photographs from the golden age of New York graffiti, a phenomenon many say Castleman first helped define and globalize.
The
tour is now underway, and if you would like to support it (maybe it can travel
further through Europe or the US), please check out the Kickstarter HERE
.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Subvertisers in London 2019 2. Cristina Lina / Contorno Urbano Foundation / 12+1 Project / Barcelona 3. Keith Haring: 4 Minute Mini Documentary.
BSA Special Feature: “Subvertisers in London 2019”
Sorry,
nothing to sell here. Not what it’s about.
Few
have demonstrated or practiced subvertising/culture jamming with such endurance
as the folks profiled in this new mini-doc. The ever more popular street art
activist practice of reclaiming public space from commercial interests is built
on the premise that a consumer mindset is blind to the necessary fundamentals
of civic life, or life. When you hear
these nuanced discussions of legal and moral aspects of hi-jacking commercial
signage you admit that it sadly reductivist to turn everything, including art,
into merely a product for buying and selling.
“I
always felt it as an aggression, as a violence. The fact that it is a visual
violence does not make it less of a violence, because it imposes a certain idea
of reality which I don’t feel is my own. When I realized that we could make
something of our own, it gave me an idea of liberation” says a commentator as
the video presents a blinking series of billboards, signs, and bus stops all
around the city in constant succession.
Advertising itself is not the issue – everyone agrees that it has its place. The issue is when it wants to be in every place, public and private. At all times. More threatening, and more contemporary, is the consolidation of media/news companies, the re-writing of regulations, and the blunt force of capital that now uses these commandeered public spaces to “educate” the populace about policy – a thoroughly different form of “selling”. Do we all see where we are going with this?
Subvertisers in London 2019
Cristina Lina / Contorno Urbano Foundation / 12+1 Project / Barcelona
“This Spanish cat named Tommy looks like he could have belonged to Matisse, due to the overlapping abstract collage method, but British artist Christina Lina says he was her grandmother’s cat – so we guessed wrong,” we said the day we featured this new public mural she did with Contorno Urbano in Barcelona.
Giving a concise history that nonetheless mispronounces the name of the town the subject was born in, the narration has an affected sage tone that shoots for earnest profundity but settles for deadpan vocal fry. Delivery aside, it’s a quick primer of the career climb and cultural significance of the Street Artist Keith Haring that firmly addresses the significance of his role as an openly gay man and AIDS activist – especially at time when even most graffiti/Street Art peers and would-be fans were still homophobic and AIDS hysteria was at its peak .
Shopping at an art fair this week? Why not buy something that directly benefits the culture that street art and graffiti came from?
In Mongolia.
Martha Cooper in collaboration with Learn & Skate. (photo courtesy of Learn & Skate)
Actually the
photographic print is a shot from New York City in late 1970 of a skater
jumping 3 barrels at a high speed. Ahead of her trip shortly to Mongolia photographer
Martha Cooper is donating 55 copies of this print to a non-profit there in
Oulan Bator (also Ulaanbaatar) which supports a burgeoning skater scene and
provides a safe space to learn skillz.
Toulouse-based skater, organizer, DJ, and entrepreneur Jean Claude Geraud tells us, “Sales of this classic shot by Ms. Cooper will help to build a new cultural center and skate park in a poor area of the city.”
Martha Cooper in collaboration with Learn & Skate. (photo courtesy of Learn & Skate)
With your help the whole team will be ready to open soon – and you’ll score a real piece of New York skater history.
Martha Cooper in collaboration with Learn & Skate. (photo courtesy of Learn & Skate)
Sérigraphie photographique / photography print Couleur / Color : Noir et Blanc / Black and White Taille / Size : 36 x 28 cm / 11 x 14 inches Tirage limité / limited proof : 55 tirages / 55 proof Signé par la main de l’artiste / signed by the hand of the artist Année / Year : fin 1970 / Late 1970
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
