Our hearts break when we think of the families and loved ones who remain as many of our neighbors are now dying of Covid-19. May you find comfort in the fact that you are not alone and that your city is here with you. It’s going to be hard but New York is going to pull through this one. We always do.
Welcome to Wednesday, March 32nd.
Just kidding! April Fools!
Truthfully, when you are stuck inside quarantined every day is Blursday. Also all of the leaders at the top seem like fools every day, not just today.
But let’s have a glass half full shall we? We know that optimism is the only thing that can help you in times when it feels like you are full of dread.
You don’t want to spread the virus. But you can still Spread Love. It’s the Brooklyn way.
Here are new pieces on street walls from the Street Artist named #Tag in Israel, who is interpreting art-world and TV icons through the lense of the current Covid-19 crises. With new pieces on the street in Tel Aviv, Bat Yam, and Jaffa, these three are as international as they are local.
We asked him about these new pieces and his experience in the last few days as a Street Artist in Isreal, where new coronavirus guidelines are edging the country closer to total shut down .
Brooklyn Street Art: Has it been difficult to do work on the street, or has it been easier?
#Tag: I will describe it more like weird. I pasted all the three works at the beginning of the Coronavirus in Israel. I think after the Breaking Bad work, a few days after, the quarantine started. In general, it was kind of the same, but a weird feeling in general, like literally the virus was in the air.
Brooklyn Street Art: What do you hope people will experience when they discover your work?
#Tag: In general all my messages are meant with a sense of humor. I believe that art should deliver positive messages but not necessarily in an obvious way. I saw that that’s exactly what happened with my works, from things people have said on social media, and I am very happy about that.
During these days we need to stay positive, and after almost a full quarantine I started to create digital works and use Facebook / Instagram as my digital wall 🙂
The intervention “Life in Time of Corona” is Lapiz’s attempt to fight the feeling of isolation and loneliness.
“I created and glued it up a day before the first phase of lockdown happened here in Hamburg, just in front of one of the biggest supermarkets in town,” he tells us.
The young woman exists with a margin of danger following her – a buffer band of gold that prevents any other person from getting to close. Of course, the hermit-like among the human family have been practicing social distancing for years, but for most people it’s new and unusual.
For most of us the time of self-isolation, quarantine, and illness is ahead of us and we have no idea how long this might take. We can stay in contact with loved-ones, family, friends, and almost forgotten acquaintances on the other side of the planet via email, skype or video link.
This might also be a great moment of solidarity and an opportunity for empathy, but the minimum safety distance of 6 feet also excludes affection, warmth and closeness.
Highest claims for unemployment in our history. The best day on the Stock Market since 1933. People won’t get relief from the government for weeks and many live paycheck to paycheck. Typically one might predict these are conditions for a domino effect that sets in motion a revolution, if you’ve read history books. Already there are talks about mass rent strikes for April.
Meanwhile, our neighborhood in Brooklyn is in the code red zone on the maps for Covid-19 outbreak in New York; so you’ll forgive us if we don’t go outside to capture fresh new Street Art for a while. We did have to leave once this week for a friend’s medical emergency (not the virus, thankfully) but we’re back on self-quarantine. Much respect to all medical personnel all across the world.
So, as long as we’re able, we’re going to publish work from the street. But please do send us what you see, what you capture – maybe out the window. But don’t put yourself at risk, or others.
We have to flatten this curve and it will take us all to do it.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring DeGrupo, 1UP Crew, Gris, Hellon Wheels, Jeff Kowalsky, Laszlo, LOOK, Joan Aguilo, Seco, The Brujo, and Yiannis Bellis.
“Why does it seem the rich and famous get tested for coronavirus while others don’t?“
That is an excellent question from The Boston Globe. Others are beginning to ask this question, including The New York Post , The Guardian, and The LA Times,
Even the New York Times says “Need a Coronavirus Test? Being Rich and Famous May Help.”
Street Artist Trustocorp shows us how art reflects life in these messages on new signposts in the street. If only the corporate cable news were so clear.
How does this situation happen so seamlessly and without your involvement? Quick answer: Privatization of Health Care.
That’s why Medicare for All is sounding better every day. It’s so much more obvious as we watch the unfolding disaster in a country that has allowed every aspect of its social net to be sold off to private companies in the last 40 years, turned into for-profit ventures, not service to citizens. Certainly not poor citizens, working poor citizens, non-citizens, middle class citizens.
Here we see art reflecting life. And death.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Buff Covid-19
The only time most graffiti writers would love the buff; If it could wipe out this virus that is menacing the streets and hospitals of cities around the globe.
There’s professional disinformation, and then there is simply disingenuous.
This native New Yorker told us Covid-19 was a hoax, and now New York is on its way to being the epicenter for the greatest outbreak, with officials harrowingly planning for 140,000 hospital beds for our neighbors, friends, coworkers, family, with 40,000 of them needing to be in intensive care.
Graffiti writer Terror 161 favors the digital expression of political critique these days, and he shared this simple image with us yesterday. Since we’re not going outside to capture new Street Art for you, we thought we’d share this visual commentary with you.
How’s the nations’ supply of duct tape, we wonder. Because we know we don’t have enough ventilators for sick people. Or masks for that matter.
Medicare for All sounds better every day, doesn’t it?
Street Artist Jilly Ballistic has long favored face-masks on her black and white photo figures of yesteryear, so it interesting to see this vintage kid incognito in the current context of Coronavirus on the streets of New York. At the very least the mask prevents transmission to some degree, but no one seems to know how much. And what about children?
“If your child is healthy, there is no need for them to wear a facemask,” says the website Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Only people who have symptoms of illness or who are providing care to those who are ill should wear masks.”
The Street Artist named Early Riser reminds us that Kangaroos can be formidible boxers when it comes to dwindling resources, like canned tuna. And toilet paper.
As New York enters its first full day of Pause, or lock-down, the social ramifications of the panicked psyche have all been rivetingly on display.
Todays’ Street Art piece by Pure Genius lampoons the behaviors of people actually fighting one another to greedily horde supplies. The drawback with toilet paper is, it is not food, which may become a much larger topic of interest shortly.
We’re off the street now, the BSA team, as New York City goes into lock-down mode in the face of the global Covid19 virus pandemic.
We know that our medical infrastructure will be overwhelmed, because it was broken apart systematically into a thousand tiny pieces years ago. Unlike centralized medical care that many other countries have, it has been only available to some of us and usually at a great cost that outstrips our abilities to provide for our families.
Now, as New York faces the prospect of becoming completely overwhelmed for months, we see that even basic testing, medical supplies, beds, and personnel cannot be pulled together fast enough through a decentralized profit-based system. This isn’t political – this is life. Unfortunately this is also death.
So if we do get sick, we’re not even thinking of going to a hospital. If some of our older friends and relatives get sick, we’re hoping that there will be enough money and resources to serve their needs. But the signs are not good here in the country with the highest GDP in the world. Makes you wish there was Medicare for All right?
So, as long as we’re able, we’re going to publish work from the street. But for the first time since we began publishing 12 years ago, the new shots on the street will also need to come from you – since we are quarantined. Please send us what you see, what you capture – maybe out the window. But don’t put yourself at risk, or others.
We have to flatten this curve and it will take us all to do it.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 1UP Crew, 907, Fours, Kuma, Pork, Pøbel, Poi Everywhere, Raf Mata Art, Smells, Stres, The Act of Love, The Postman Art, and Zexor.
We begin with this educational and artful animation by Juan Delcan & Valentina Izaguirre
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY