All posts tagged: Brandon English

GAIA and #iftheygunnedmedown in Atlanta on MLK Jr. Day

GAIA and #iftheygunnedmedown in Atlanta on MLK Jr. Day

As the U.S. reflects on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today we also acknowledge that his work, and our work, is not done.

This past year has brought more people into the streets to demonstrate across America than in many years, and the signs and slogans can in many cases be interchanged for those used by civil rights marchers half a century earlier.

In multiple cities across the country thousands of citizens have demonstrated on streets, roads, avenues, highways, intersections. They have made signs and chanted and marched multiple days and nights against injustice and many more have tweeted, facebooked, tumbled and texted – originally it was related to police brutality specifically but more largely we have seen an overall critique of a system still corroded and undermined by our history and legacy of racism.

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Gaia at work on his new mural for the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Brandon English)

From our jails to our boardrooms to our schools and universities to our media outlets to our halls of government, a system of inequality continues, supported by our own ignorance and our failure to learn and heal that legacy of racism. Every day we see a black president thwarted and insulted and disrespected – not for political motivations simply, but so obviously just because of his race. The level of disrespect for the highest office in government has been unprecendented, debasing us all, even though a majority elected and re-elected President Obama.

But just last week the Miami police department was revealed to be using actual photographs of black men for sniper training practice. A blind spot in our own consciousness that is obvious when revealed, but it’s more often a case of a thousand tiny little cuts that keeps a people down, or at least permanently on the defensive. Of course we can do better.

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Gaia at work on his new mural for the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Brandon English)

When it comes to media depictions of people and races, it’s these subtleties that might not be quickly evident until someone culls together many examples so you can see a pattern. In a recent and effective hashtag project that spurred a website by the same name #iftheygunnedmedown questions and examines the bias of new outlets that convict  or exonerate a person by the selective use of images alone.  If it’s a white guy, then it’s his high school graduation day pic. If it’s a black guy, the photo is from the drunken crazy party afterward.

Street Artist and contemporary muralist Gaia picked up the thread of that discussion and created this new mural from photos posted by people on social media for #iftheygunnedmedown. Each of the dual natures presented give cues that are picked up on by a viewer and used to interpret physical and character traits and a variety of assumptions about the person. Gaia points to the project’s founder, CJ Lawrence, as the original inspiration for the project and quotes him saying, “… I set out to indict the media for its role in how we, as Black people, are portrayed after we are killed”.

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Gaia at work on his new mural for the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Brandon English)

The newly completed mural is at the Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and it uses images of Instagrammers whose handles are @bbuckson93 , @cruelyear , @qdotjones and @fullblowndork. As you scan across the handpainted reproductions of personal and family images, obseerve your own perceptions about the person in the frame.

The portraits rise above and are demarcated by symbols and metaphors of the ruins of Persepolis. Of the relevance of the ruins to the project Gaia explains, “The centerpiece is the Cylinder of Cyrus, which is considered by some as the first universal charter on human rights.” The cuneiform inscribed clay cylinder from 6th century BC may not have the impact that an Instragram re-painting does to the average visitor, but it does ground the message in the realization that the march toward rights for all has been very long and there has been much progress – and that there is a long way to go yet.

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Gaia at work on his new mural for the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Marcus Lamar)

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Gaia at work on his new mural for the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Marcus Lamar)

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Young visitors show up to give Gaia props on his new mural for the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Marcus Lamar)

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Gaia. Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Gaia)

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Gaia. Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Gaia)

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Gaia. Center for Civil and Human Rights. Atlanta, Georgia. (photo © Gaia)

 

For more information please follow CJ Lawrence @cj_musick_lawya and Gaia @gaiastreetart

 

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
 
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BSA Film Friday 08.16.13 – Living Walls Atlanta Edition

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

Now screening: The Videos from Living Walls 2013.

BSA Special Feature: The Videos from Living Walls 2013

Part of the team at Living Walls is dedicated to documenting in video what the experience is and to finding new engaging ways of telling stories. With a nice sized media team who take their work seriously and with a healthy sense of fun, LW2013 has been talking to a number of people – the artists, the organizers, the volunteers, the neighbors. This year this crackerjack team of talents are giving you a progressive account of the behind-the-scenes events at regular intervals so you can feel like you are experiencing it with them.

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Hanging at the Goat Farm; A still from video by the Living Walls 2013 Media Team (© Living Walls)

At last nights block party in the Edgewood section the team also projected some their video pieces on a big screen during the night market to share the events with the community in a very inclusive celebratory way while bands played in front of the huge illuminated piece by Sten Lex. While ROTI completed his wall live in front of a gathered crowd in a parking lot on the main drag, other walls by artists like Gaia, Nanook, Nuezz, and JR were all receiving the star treatment up and down this developing strip for the steady stream of art fans and revelers paraded by.

At BSA Film Friday we’re happy to give a huge shout out the team who puts together this very impressive work and to salute them for their vision, creativity and collaboration. Together they are exploring and presenting new ways to capture and tell the story of Living Walls Atlanta.

The Living Walls 2013 Media Team:
Dustin Chambers
Brandon English
Wil Hughes
Albert Lebron
Mike Morgan
Justin Newton

Jason Travis

Here are the 4 sequential updates so far for Living Walls as well as a special video with Street Artist JR.

JR came in advance of this weeks events to install new pieces commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Part I – Living Walls Conference 2013

Part II – Living Walls Conference 2013

Part III – Living Walls Conference 2013

Part IV – Living Walls Conference 2013

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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