Fashion and surrealism are on the catwalk called NYC with regularity thanks in part to the fact that the city celebrates the art of personal plumage and image making as a matter of course. In fact what struts through the annual fall and spring fashion shows on stage under tents surrounded by walls of flashing cameras is often originated by idiosyncratic street fashion first.
We lead this week with a few fashion-related images including Dee Dee who along with his buddy Dain often collaborates on their pop-scifi-retro-androgen-glam portraits, but also with them we can easily draw for you another 10 surrealists de la mode whom together would make a rocking collection for any designer who is looking for inspiration.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Appleton Pictures, Beast, Below Key, Dain, Dee Dee, El Sol 25, Jamel Shabazz, Parker Day, Paste Cinik, SMER, Sonni, Sr. Lasso, Stick N Twisted, and VIP Citizen.
Old, rare, nearly lost pieces of Swoon are rotating through her new The Archivist’s Circle online, along with small editions of recreated pieces like the first sticker designs, wallpapers, paper cuts, and linoleum blockprints. Prepping for her first major museum retrospective next month at CAC Cincinnati covering her street-to-studio-to-waterways-to-Haiti-to-museum career over the last 15 years, the Brooklyn Street Artist says that she’s been doing some serious crate digging.
Swoon. Hello My Name Is. 1999. These stickers, hand made were one of Swoon’s earliest street art projects. (photo courtesy @ Swoon Studio)
“It’s the first time that I synthesize the entire story of my creative progression, from the moment that I turned away from oil painting and began to carve my first linoleum blocks for the street, to the home building work in Haiti, (and everything in between) into a single exhibition. I’m beginning to understand this show as a coming of age story,” she says by way of introducing the new companion website.
Swoon. Fence Jump. 2000. Swoon’s first linoleum block created for the street. (photo courtesy @ Swoon Studio)
Just looking through the imagery on the site is educational, aiding one’s understanding of the evolution that an artist can go through, and how their taste and focus changes. Accompanying text with some of the pieces also gives context to the topics and worldview the artist had at the time she created the work.
Along with “Siamese Skeleton Fish” for example, we learn how the artist sees the dual swimmers that she exhibited as part of the show “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea” which floated down the East River to the shores of Long Island City in 2008, where we watched Swoon and 30 or so raft mates disembark and lead us into her exhibition at Deitch Projects.
Swoon. Grandpa OVE. 2001. This is Swoon’s first ever paper cut portrait, depicting her grand father here. In the following 15 years of her career paper cut portraits became part of Swoon’s vernacular on the streets and helped define her career. (photo courtesy @ Swoon Studio)
“The imagery on the walls was drawn from coastal cities, from the sea and from the mangrove swamps that Swoon explored in her Florida youth. She was inspired by the way the trees in the mangrove swamps send out huge networks of roots, both below and above the water, creating two parallel ecosystems. Above the imaginary waterline, Swoon created the image of a city rising from the sea. Below the waterline, another city reflected, yet diverged. This city echoed the subconscious mind and spoke to the vulnerability of coastal cities in an age of rising seas.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Giorgio Bartocci. Architettura Liquida in Sardinia
2. Nychos – Aussie Haze 3. I’m a TWEET
BSA Special Feature: Giorgio Bartocci. Architettura Liquida in Sardinia
An all day, into the night July fever dream from Milan based Giorgio Bartocci, the sexy beat and gently sweeping camera work brings this liquid architecture further alive as he interacts graphically with the static urban structure. Hand on the can for two decades, Bartocci integrates the brush deftly in Iglesias, Sardinia, channeling currents of emotion and intellect with a welcome series of organic forms that mirror the sometimes chaotic character of the city.
Nychos – Aussie Haze
Cocksure and performative aerosol doctor Nychos is blazing away in an Aussie Haze, bringing you up the lift in Sydney and Melbourne to catch waves of heat and witness hammer-strength skillz.
With a theme of “Art and Activism”, the 2017 edition of Wall\Therapy is happening mid-summer in Rochester with local and national artists coming to complete murals that keep people in mind. More of a grassroots mural festival than many, this one works to deepen engagement with the community through new programming intended to connect residents of all ages. BSA is happy to support Wall\Therapy again this year and we invite you to take a look at a people-powered organization that continues to keep it real.
Most of the walls have been finished here in Rochester and the artists are resting up after a pretty intense week and a half of creating new murals for Wall\Therapy. It’s a perfect time of year here – August is sunny and warm and there are sunflowers in backyards and morning glories climbing fences along empty lots. There’s a lot to do around Rocha-cha, and now there are many more murals that are drawing people together to stand on the sidewalk or hang out a window and examine and discuss.
Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as they say, and many people don’t realize how much of an adventure they can have going for a walk or a hike through their own city. We were so impressed by a short story that Street Artist Sean9Lugo shared with us that we decided to end our coverage of Wall\Therapy with it – a parable for our relationship with animals and the earth. Additionally, his illustrated, painted wheat-pastes here help to illustrate the story.
Our sincere thanks again to the Wall\Therapy founders, organizers, volunteers, artists, and photographers along with the members of the community who lent a hand and some time to making this successful event happen.
Over the years the people that have inhabited mother earth did not treat her well. She was used and abused – crying thunderous tears that flooded her rivers, cracking her foundation and exposing the howling songs of sorrow that gust across her skies. It was the animals who tried to stop us from breaking her heart but we did not listen and only continued on without any regard. We believed we were making improvements to life, yet it was not us but the flowers, trees and rest of the creatures that suffered the consequences the most.
Something had to be done and it was Olivia who made it her mission to replenish mother earth with the plants and animals that once called her home, but barely survived our arrogance, for this was the only way to revive her broken heart.
One day Olivia sat along the Lower Falls overlook apologizing to mother earth for the damage done when a raccoon nibbling on some clover and dandelion turned to her asking why there was so much sadness in her eyes. After explaining to the raccoon what troubled her he ran away in excitement only to return at a much slower pace atop a turtle. The raccoon and turtle took turns with their story, ultimately saying that it only those whose hearts beat to the same beautiful rhythm as mother earths that could bring the spark back to the horizon across the waters, land, and sky.
Immediately the raccoon ran into a deep burrow in the ground coming back up with handfuls of soil, each time placing it into Olivia’s hands who smeared it across the turtles shell. It was only the touch of a human that could slowly reverse the damage caused by all of us, and after the last handful was placed on the turtles broadened back, lo and behold the earth began to grow in an instant.
The soil upon the turtles back continued to sprout with blossoms and as it grew the air smelled sweeter, the fish could breathe better and the sky was illuminated with a luminous orb. It had been years since mother earth shone this bright. The animals all around the falls ran to see the beauty that was forming around them and rejoiced but immediately sought council as they knew there was still work to be done with the help of Olivia.
Next the ducks received her on their interknit wings and slowly raised her into the skies where she was met by the elder stork who was honored to have Olivia’s presence in the skies with him. With gratitude he passed on to her bags of life, explaining to her that they held creatures that would bless the earth, and again only a humans touch could release the contents of the bags. As she was lowered back to the growing earth around her, which was now carpeted with greener grass and trees sprouting everywhere, she gently placed the bags down. The bags began to roll around with the tops spilling open, releasing fish, land animals, insects and every other creature that for so many years did not exist on mother earth.
As soon as the animals embraced their new home they gathered around Olivia proclaiming her the Great Defender of the earth. Other people rushed to her side, tears rolling down their cheeks from the overwhelming beauty that was intensifying across the horizon. It was on this day that people promised to gently care for mother earth and her children because they finally realized that we must live in harmony with all that surrounds us.
BSA:You have been busy the last few days with wheat-pasting your characters around town. Have you been enjoying Rochester? Sean9Lugo: I love Rochester, it reminds me of a bunch of different cities – Detroit, Philly and The Bronx – all put together in a pot of arroz con gandules.
BSA:How did the collaboration on the naturescape wall come about and are you pleased with the results? Sean9Lugo: I felt like the final scene/wall needed to have a landscape to bring the story written by Savage Habbit in full circle. I reached out to Erich from Wall Therapy and asked if he knew anyone in town who would like to collaborate and paint a Bob Ross style landscape and he delivered with flying colors, putting me in touch with local artist Magnus Champlin. So to answer your question, yes I was thrilled to see how the vision came out.
BSA:What is the most common reaction of passerby to your work? Sean9Lugo: Most people either laugh, say “that’s cute” or question “why the head?”
BSA:If a bear and you were spotting a jar of peanut butter up a tree in the woods at the same time, who would win? Sean9Lugo: No contest, I would destroy the bear… peanut butter is my shit.
“How to Play with Letters” is the new monograph, “Other Inbox” is the show. Both are by RYLSEE, the visual artist from Geneva who now lives in Berlin and has been a member of Urban Spree for five years.
The new body of work at “Other Inbox” combines his fascination for the letter form and his discontent with the confusion of our current digital communications with each other and the Internet.
“Punctuality is dead, fears of missing out seem to be a common worry while there’s still no app allowing us to be in two places simultaneously,” says RYSLEE as he prepares for the new show opening Friday night August 4th at Urban Spree.
A rather nebulous set of conditions and facts that are difficult to grasp and describe verbally for many, the modern afflictions of this fragmented digital life are here visually represented – through the prism of letterform love. Letters are warped, over warmed, sliced, slid, and glitched in ways that seem perfectly normal today, even though we know that they are not normal at all.
The monograph is even moreso, as it were – an orderly attempt at ordering an artists aesthetic and personal chaos; a collection of his obsessions. Here you see his typography, design and mural painting, his love affair with word and hand-drawn type compositions. It’s good that RYSLEE is taking the time and effort to preserve a moment in this fluid time. Future us, in retrospect, may understand better what we are going through right now in a furcated, distorted time.
Rylsee’s “Other Inbox” opens on August 4th at Urban Spree Gallery in Berlin. Click HERE for details on the show. We wish to thank photographer Gabriel Balagué, @Gabee_photography for sharing his work with BSA readers.
A woeful visual play on the cold summer treat that kids in many countries have associated with good times, this Ice Cream man from Greece tells us that the situation is getting messy.
“Our world is changing because of the worst animal that has ever lived on earth – the human,” INO tells us, “And we’re all denying it.” The piece is on the side of a school, so certainly it will spark many conversations among students and teachers – a powerful example of how public-facing art can have an impact.
With a theme of “Art and Activism”, the 2017 edition of Wall\Therapy is happening mid-summer in Rochester with local and national artists coming to complete murals that keep people in mind. More of a grassroots mural festival than many, this one works to deepen engagement with the community through new programming intended to connect residents of all ages. BSA is happy to support Wall\Therapy again this year and we invite you to take a look at a people-powered organization that continues to keep it real.
Eeerbody get their hands in the air! Dance like you just don’t care!
Sean9Lugo’s been gesticulating with a victorious pose in Rochester for Wall\Therapy for the last few days, wheat-pasting his human/stuffed animal amalgams on walls here and there. The New Jersey native had to travel a half day to get here but didn’t waste any time or his signature sense of street humor once he arrived. As a collaboration with artist Magnus Champlin he even brought his creatures out to frolic in a pastoral natural setting.
Saturday’s successful panel discussions and block party have put wind under the wings (and perhaps a couple hangovers) as they work to complete their murals. Todd Stahl’s participation on the activism panel Saturday at Wall\Therapy’s first conference took him away from his wall that is inspired by the plight of refugees world wide, Syrians in particular.
Based in part on images from humanitarian photographer Manar Bilal, the collaged scene includes text, form, and warplanes – an ironic choice that reminds us that wars make refugees and cause suffering, regardless of whose fighting. Stahl is sharing the painting duties with community members and many have been eagering joining in, each bringing their particular style and talent to the overall composition.
Thematically the festival this year is closer to the ground than previous years, closer to day-to-day issues that affect residents of Roc. With a focus on art and activism – a combination familiar to the Street Art world dating as least as far back as the early billboard jammers – the themes of our systemic racism, LGBTQ issues, women’s rights, families, feminism, the war machine, and the importance of community are all on display with great tact.
We really dig these new collaged political cartoons that are on the street as quickly as the weeks news – each depicting one of the many rich white men who are impacting our minds and our bank accounts and our health and sense of security right now. Are we watching the White House or Good Fellas? The backstabbing, front stabbing, chicanery, and ongoing systemic tomfoolery makes you wonder who’s actually running things.
The news cycle is hourly it seems, with tweets and personnel changes and threats happening so fast that people are developing PTSD that is triggered by news alerts on the phone. We have to admire any Street Artist who tries to keep up with the developments and get their commentary on a wall.
Many young and old New Yorkers are wincing from high rent, high debts, crumbling infrastructure, and everyone is working longer hours, if they are lucky enough to work. Some just give up. Meanwhile the one plausible healthcare option that many have gained over the last handful of years? – the servants of the rich have been trying to stab it to death – but they couldn’t muster it this week. Even now – Trump says he’ll stand by and watch it die rather than improve it in any way. Have we ever had a leader who is so cynical?
Even Senator McCain – in our top image above – fresh off his tax-payer funded brain cancer surgery, waivered this week before providing the pivotal vote that saved healthcare for 20 million or so. Most GOP Senators ignored the majority of the US citizens who implored them to fix Obamacare not nix it. But their bank accounts proved far more important than our health. The rich and their corporations are flooding our entire political system and only after we get their money out would we be able to call the USA a democracy. Otherwise we are just fooling ourselves.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Bifido, El Sol 25, Jarus, London Kaye, Luna Park, Miss17, MSK, Myth, Otto Schade, Rime, SikaOne, Solus, Sonni, Spy33, and Wonderpuss Octopus.
“In this area the government is building a gas pipeline and to do it they are cutting many olive trees. Part of the local economy is based on olive oil production, so people are fighting for preserve their lands and trees. I wanted to address this situation with my artwork.” -Bifido
“This mural depicts a woman sitting at the window sill and reaching outwards. Turning the wall into a window is a metaphor for opening your mind and heart towards new ideas and concepts. The woman is in a red dress because I felt it would compositionally fit into the area of the wall and surrounding buildings.”-Jarus
With a theme of “Art and Activism”, the 2017 edition of Wall\Therapy is happening mid-summer in Rochester with local and national artists coming to complete murals that keep people in mind. More of a grassroots mural festival than many, this one works to deepen engagement with the community through new programming intended to connect residents of all ages. BSA is happy to support Wall\Therapy again this year and we invite you to take a look at a people-powered organization that continues to keep it real.
Wall\Therapy is progressing very nicely right now with three members of Rochesters’ youth mural program doing self portraits.
Etana Brown, Nzinga Muhammed, and Kaori-Mei Stephens are each 17 years old and are focusing the message that All Black Lives Matter. Elsewhere Jess X Snow is doing a portrait of transgender poet Chrysanthemum Tran and muralist Sarah C. Rutherford honors all mothers with her portrait of Trelawney McCoy, a celebrated Rochester native who has opened her home to children through adoption and fostering. The mural is part of Rutherford’s “Her Voice Carries” project.
Today is the inaugural Wall\Therapy conference featuring Keynote speaker Jessica Pabón-Colón and a full day of panels and discussions and a project room featuring representatives from other community-based art programs and social justice/relief organizations such as the O+ Festival, WXXI, The Ghandi Institute, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Refugees Helping Refugees, Flying Squirrel Community Space and the Visual Studies Workshop.
Tonight is the block party, a summertime celebration with Kaleidoscope Collective, a local artist space that will include an artist market, an official revealing of the murals by Aubrey Roemer and Jess X Snow, food trucks, live art, and music from Danielle Ponder and the Tomorrow People. Check out this video by the ebullient and classy Ms. Ponder performing with this talented local family of friends with an inspirational tagline, “Live Your Life, Love Your Life.”
“Yesterday was super productive. I was able to paste up everything for Rochester’s new hand cut paper mural and starting today I begin the actual process…weather permitting naturally…,” says Ian Kuali’i on his Facebook page.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. GRAFSTRACT: The Bronx Street Art Renaissance
2. Nomad Clan: “Athenas Rising” in the UK 3. DERMA TAPE// Tape Art Installation by TAPE OVER in Berlin 4. The Vanderbilt Republic x Ashton Worthington “RESIST”
BSA Special Feature: GRAFSTRACT: The Bronx Street Art Renaissance
“It’s happening here and now. It’s in the Bronx,” says Sinxero, born and raised Bronx native, artist and entrepreneur in this short documentary about his TAG Public Arts Project. The film captures some of the artists he has worked with, names that many will recognize including James “Sexer” Rodriguez, Luis “Zimad” Lamboy, the Baltimore-based street art duo of Chris Stain and Billy Mode and legendary NYC graffiti artist John “Crash” Matos.
Local Pride, Yo! Respect to Sinxero for taking his work and his community so seriously – shout out to his wife and daughter on the camera tip and of course to Dan Perez, who wrote, directed, shot and edited.
Nomad Clan: “Athenas Rising” in the UK
Nomad Clan says they’ve just created the tallest mural in the UK, with an owls’ watchful eye keeping track of the citizenry below. At 46 meters above street level, who can argue?
DERMA TAPE// Tape Art Installation by TAPE OVER
Tape artist collective TAPE OVER just completed this installation in Berlin which they are claiming also sets a world record as the” largest transportable tape artwork”. With 50 panels covered with dynamic geometric patterning in this lobby you’ll agree that it certainly is impressive.
The Vanderbilt Republic x Ashton Worthington “RESIST”
A great reverse projection mapping project in Brooklyn and easily visible from street level and the subway platform overhead, the art space called Gowanus Loft is hosting artist Ashton Worthington with the written word in collaboration with George Del Barrio. They refer to this digital projection as an evolving, purposeful lamp “in the darkness of xenophobic fearmongering and kakistocratic greed.”
With a theme of “Art and Activism”, the 2017 edition of Wall\Therapy is happening mid-summer in Rochester with local and national artists coming to complete murals that keep people in mind. More of a grassroots mural festival than many, this one works to deepen engagement with the community through new programming intended to connect residents of all ages. BSA is happy to support Wall\Therapy again this year and we invite you to take a look at a people-powered organization that continues to keep it real.
Aubrey Roemer, La Morena, Roc Paint Division, Sarah Rutherford, and Todd Stahl have already begun work with gusto (!) on their walls as the 2017 edition of Wall\Therapy gets into full swing right now in the city of Rochester in northwestern New York State.
Begun by Dr. Ian Wilson a handful of years ago and joined by professional partner Erich Lehman as co-producer, the community level interventions of murals throughout the city have been a metaphorical analogue to the medical programs he has championed, including providing high-tech teleradiology services to underserved communities here and abroad. Thinking of artists as healers and artworks as a kind of therapy for a community, Wall\Therapy takes on a unique personality among the mural festivals that are currently happening in cities around the world.
This years’ collection of artists is keeping it very local, with a few exceptions from elsewhere in the US. Organizers say they are looking to deepen their engagement with Rochester’s communities through new programming intended to connect Rochester residents of all ages and all walks of life – including a new conference component. “Arts & Activism” will feature speakers and panels organized around topics like social change, community activism, and creative practice.
No doubt many will be interested in the keynote on Saturday by Dr. Jessica Pabón-Colón, Assistant Professor for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY New Paltz. She’ll be talking about her upcoming book “Graffiti Grrlz: Performing Feminism in the Hip Hop Diaspora” and she’ll examine how contemporary street and graffiti art movements have responded critically to the demands of the creative neoliberal city, with examples of works to provoke thought on the relationship between aesthetics and politics.
Over the next week BSA will be bringing you progress shots and finished walls in this community-centric, volunteer infused festival that merges the aesthetics of community murals with the influences of today’s Street Art scene.
Wall\Therapy 2017 artists include Aubrey Roemer, La Morena, Todd Stahl, Ian Kuali’I, Sarah C. Rutherford, Jess X Snow, Sean 9 Lugo, and Roc Paint Division.
Our very special thanks to photographers Mark Deff, Lisa Barker, Jason Wilder, and Thomas Flint for sharing their images of the action for BSA readers.
The news out of Nuart 2017 is splendiforous and we are feeling celebratorious. These irregularly formed adjectives are in good company with the mismatched yet harmoniously woven characters who together have again selected and summoned artists, academics, kooks and cultural workers to Stavanger for a September synergy of Street Art, public art, and myriad interventionist ideas. It is a highly particular hybrid germinated, conjured, emancipated perhaps, by the free-form and analytical mind of its Founder and Director Martyn Reed. While sowing Nuart seeds spectacularly on the shores of Aberdeen earlier this spring, it is here in Stavanger where the new ideas germinate, are nurtured and given latitude. It is also where the tortoises of conventional thinking are happily rolled onto their backs, little webbed feet waving. We’re pleased today on BSA to publish Martyn’s new manifesto in preparation for Nuart’s festival this autumn in Norway so one might better appreciate the ruminations behind and development of this year’s theme.
RISE UP!
Nuart produces both temporary and long-term public artworks as well as facilitates dialogue and action between a global network of artists, academics, journalists and policy makers surrounding street art practice. Our core goal is to help redefine how we experience both contemporary and public art practice: to bring art out of museums, galleries and public institutions onto the city streets and to use emerging technologies, to activate a sense of public agency in the shaping of our cities.
Outside of Nuart Festival, our growing portfolio of projects represents an on-going art and education program that seeks to improve the conditions for, and skills to produce, new forms of public art both in Stavanger and further afield. For us, public spaces outside conventional arts venues offer one of the richest, most diverse and rewarding contexts in which this can happen.
Our work is guided by our belief in the capacity for the arts to positively change, enhance and inform the way we think about and interact with each other and the City.
The Real Power of Street Art
Nuart festival presents an annual paradigm of hybridity in global sanctioned and unsanctioned street art practice. Through a series of large and human scale public artworks, murals, performances, art tours, workshops, academic debates, education programs, film screenings and urban interventions, supported by a month long exhibition of installations, Nuart explores the convergence points between art, public space and the emergent technologies that are giving voice and agency to a new and more creative civilian identity, an identity that exists somewhere between citizen, artist and activist.
The real power of “street art” is being played out daily on walls, buildings, ad shelters and city squares the world over, and it’s now obvious that state institutions can neither contain nor adequately represent the fluidity of this transgressive new movement. As the rest of the world begins to accept the multiplicity of new public art genres, it is becoming more apparent, that street art resists both classification and containment. The question is, not how can this inherently public art movement be modified or replicated to fit within the confines of a civic institutional or gallery model, but how can the current model for contemporary art museums, galleries and formulaic public art programs, be re-examined to conform with the energy of this revolutionary new movement in visual art practice.
In the 1990’s, Situationist concepts developed by philosopher Guy Debord, surrounding the nature of “The City”, “Play” and the “Spectacle”, alongside sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s theories exploring the rights to shape our own public and mental space, came together to form an emergent adbusting “artivism”, which now forms the foundation of street art practice. Radical cultural geographer David Harvey has stated, “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources, it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city”.
It is here, at the intersection between philosophy, geography, architecture, sociology, politics and urbanism, that Nuart situates itself, it exists as a critique of the colonization of everyday life by commodity and consumerism, whilst recognizing that one of the only radical responses left, is to jettison the hegemonic, discursive and gated institutional response to capitalism, and engage it directly where it breeds and infects the most, in our urban centers.
The challenge for a new and relevant public art isn’t to attempt to negate capitalisms neoliberal market logics with an ever more dominant liberal discourse, both are ultimately mired in a conflict that on the surface simply serves to feed the polarization and spectacle that we’re attempting to transcend. What we need is the active participation of citizens in the creation of their own holistically imagined environments, both physical and mental, a direct and collective response to space that leads to the shaping of place. A place in which the disengaged and passive citizens desired and ever more manipulated by market forces, are inspired to re-make themselves. Nuart proposes that the production of art in public spaces outside conventional arts venues offers the community, not only the most practical, but also the richest, most relevant and rewarding contexts in which this can happen.
It is in this “remaking” of self, this deep desire to engage with the world, to develop civic agency and purpose, that transcends identity, gender and class, and enables those locked out of the arts by a post-Adorno obscurant lexicon (eh?), that street art delivers. It offers an opportunity to reconnect, not only with art, but also with each other. Hundreds of people covering a vast swathe of demographics, from toddlers and single moms to refugees and property barons, on a street art tour conversing with each other, are testament to this.
We believe that when you want to challenge the powerful, you must change the story, it’s this DIY narrative embedded within street art practice, that forms the bonding agent for stronger social cohesion between citizens from a multiplicity of cultures, as our lead artist for 2017, Bahia Shehab will attest. It is this narrative, that is acting as the catalytic agent towards street art becoming a vehicle capable of generating changes in politics as well as urban consciousness.
The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from what kind of person we want to be. The transformation of urban space creates changes in urban life, the transformation of one, being bound to the transformation of the other. What social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies, art and aesthetic values we desire, are closely linked to the spaces we inhabit. The “banalization” of current city space, combined with the numbing effect of digital devices that guide us from A to B, have rendered us passive. Consumer cows sucking at the teat of capital trapped in a dichotomy between left and right, instead of right and wrong. And for the most, the hegemonic islands of sanitised cultural dissent we call Art Institutions, are either unable or uninterested, in engaging with the general public in any meaningful way.
In the early 2000’s, the evocative power of certain already existing and often crumbling industrial interzones, including that of Tou Scene, our main exhibition space, one that we were instrumental in establishing, gave rise to a new form of engagement with art in urban spaces that is only now being fully recognized and exploited. Street Art is at times of course co-opted and complicit with the “creative destruction” that the gentrification process engenders, but Capitalism’s continuous attempt to “instrumentalize” everything, including our relationship to art should be vigorously resisted. It is these “Stalker-esque” zones of poetic resistance, that initially gave shelter to one of the first truly democratic , non-hierarchical and anti-capitalist art forms, and unlike most cultural institutions, it is still, for the most, unafraid to voice this opinion, important in a time when even our art institutions are beginning to resemble houses of frenzied consumption. Street art exists to contest rather than bolster the prevailing status quo. As such, it is picking up as many enemies as friends within the field of public art.
By attempting to transform the city, street art attempts to transform life, and though by no means is all street art overtly political, it does, in it’s unsanctioned form at least, challenge norms and conventions regulating what is acceptable use of public space. In particular, it opposes commercial advertising’s dominion over urban surfaces, an area that Nuart are active in “taking over” throughout the year and in particular during the festival period. Our curating initiatives not only aim to encourage a re-evaluation of how we relate to our urban surroundings, but to also question our habitual modes of thinking and acting in those spaces. Street art is not just art using the streets as an artistic resource, but also an art that is questioning our habitual use of public space. Street art doesn’t simply take art out of the context of the museum, it does so whilst hacking spaces for art within our daily lives that encourage agency and direct participation from the public, “Everyone an artist” as Joseph Beuys would have it, and if it is accussed of being produced without academic rigour, we are reminded that he also asked, “Do we want a revolution without laughter?”.
Nuart’s programs are designed specifically to explore and silently challenge the mechanisms of power and politics in public space. Increasingly, we see the rights to the city falling into the hands of private and special interest groups, and yet, we have no real coherent opposition to the worst of it. The 20th Century was replete with radical Utopic manifestos calling for change, from Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto of 1909 to Murakami’s “Superflat” of 2000. Nuart’s annual academic symposium, Nuart Plus, acts as a platform for a resurgency in utopic thinking around both city development and public art practice, and whilst recognizing that street art is often co-opted and discredited by capital, it also recognises that even the most amateur work, is indispensable in stimulating debate and change in a Modern society that has developed bureaucracies resistant to seeing art, once more, as part of our everyday life.
As the Situationst graffiti scrawled on Parisian walls in 1968 stated, Beauty is in the streets, so Rise Up! and support those dedicated to unleashing one of the most powerful communicative practices known to mankind, there’s work for art to be done in the world amongst the living.
Martyn Reed, July 2017
Artists scheduled to participate in Nuart Festival 2017:
Ampparito (ES), Bahia Shehab (EG), Carrie Reichardt (UK), flyingleaps presents Derek Mawudoku (UK), Ian Strange (AU), John Fekner (US), Know Hope (IL), ±maismenos± (PT), Igor Ponosov (RU), Ricky Lee Gordon (ZA), Slava Ptrk (RU) and Vermibus (DE).
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
