Robert Muller testified before Congress this week and no one seems happy. The spin-masters distort his words and his findings to accommodate their own personal narrative…and to continue to distract us from the thieve’s hands in our cupboards across the country.
Corporate Democrats and Corporate Republicans won’t get rid of this guy, but at least it will distract us from the lowest tax rates on the rich in our lifetimes, global warming, gun violence, increased poverty, racist immigrant-bashing policies, increased homeless populations, and a corrupted medical insurance system. So far, these distractions are working splendidly.
Sorry, that’s an unhappy way of welcoming you to BSA Images of the Week! You deserve better!
The news is that summer is in full swing and people are on the streets cooling off in public fountains, dancing, watching outdoor movies on roofs and in parks, seeing theater and music performances, and hopefully hitting Coney Island for a beach splash or a thrill ride.
The streets are being plastered with art. Some with political and social messages, some with a sense of humor, others with an acute sense of popular culture. A few are just plain pretty to look at. Whatever the style, the intention or the placement, what’s important is the fact that it’s happening again with gusto. Artists are out as well, sharing their ideas and their experiments with us, all for free and with permission to touch and photograph.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Frederic Edwin Church, Judith Supine, Mattew Hyte, Shepard Fairey, The Postman Art, and Winston Tseng.
Dog days of summer
be damned, the Street Art in all of its fabulous illegal varieties, the true Vox
Populi (and self-advertisment) persists and insists through the streets this
July.
On the topic of illegal, we’ll state it again for the many persons who have an incorrect impression – Street Art, by definition, is illegal. If it is not illegal, please do not call it Street Art. That work you are looking at is probably a mural. Unfortunately we’ve seen some recent flagrant misuses of the term by some folks who probably should know better.
Good to see “Hysterical Men” here in New York, after
admiring the campaign from Philly. The artwork reminds us of Robbie Conal as
well, who is reliably skewering public officials with his wilting depictions of
them on posters on the street. This week we also were reminded of Chicago’s Dont
Fret when we saw the work of Matt Starr, with his textual witticisms. Don’t get
us wrong, its not a criticism to have similar work – it’s just an observation.
Finally, considering the treatment of immigrants, the mounting
fascism, racism, misogyny, and rageful ignorance being modelled and engendered
from the highest offices in the land, we’re shocked that, with a few notable
exceptions, Street Artists are not taking those messages to the streets. So
much for its reputation for being activist. Not so much.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Benjamin’s Brother, Bones, Cammix Vx, Captain Eyeliner, Diva Dolga, Domingo Zapata, Dr. Nothing, Hysterical Men, Invisible Essence, Little Ricky, Matt Siren, Matt Starr, Mattew Wythe, Mr. Djoul, Obey, Praxis, Raddington Falls, Rammellzee, Sara Lynne Leo, Sinclair, Sunflower Soulz, The Postman Art, and You Go Girl!
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. ENCHENTE (FLOOD) Eduardo Srur and Tché Ruggi 2. “LA PARED ES NUESTRA” por ESCIF (spanish) 3. Shepard Fairey. Facing the Giant: Three Decades of Dissent. Part 1 4. Hot Tea. New installation in Asbury Park, NJ for Wooden Walls Project.
BSA Special Feature: ENCHENTE (FLOOD) Eduardo Srur and Tché Ruggi
News from Brazil this month reminds us that annual flooding in São Paulo kills people and destroys homes, thanks to the city being built on one of the largest river basins in the country. Public artists Eduardo Srur and Tché Ruggi combine mural painting and sculpture to address the struggles that people here face – including the displacement of people and homes and destruction of their lives.
The artists say, “With its exponential urban growth, the conflict of space
between the water and the city is getting more violent each year. The public
art portrayed is an answer to this sad reality of São Paulo. The film put light
on this conflict and approaches the relation of the
public art with the city and its inhabitants.”
“LA PARED ES NUESTRA” por ESCIF (spanish)
A new retrospective video on the community
wall created in response to a people’s history. Inspired by the neighborhood
movements of 1970s Spain, specifically the city of Sant Feliu de Llobregat, an
open call to paint a central wall was responded to by 300 applicants in 42
countries. The jury selected 12 finalists and in council with local city
council, local artists, and local historians and community leaders, an
international jury selected Street Artist and ‘artivist” Escif as winner of the
residency.
With thanks to the artist, the
community, and to Kaligrafics urban art organization and Contorno Urbano
Foundation and jury members Jaime Rojo (Brooklyn Street Art, NY), Mónica
Campana (Living Walls, ATL), Veronica Werkmeister (IMVG, Vitoria), Fernando
Figueroa (Doctor of Art History) and Esteban Marín (President, Fundación
Contour Urbano), here is the story.
Shepard Fairey. Facing the Giant: Three Decades of Dissent. Part 1 by Chop ’em Down Films.
Welcome to Images of the Week! Great stuff this week from Portugal, Spain and good old NYC to flip your Aunt Betty’s wig.
The big news this week of course was that the 5 Points graffiti compound case was awarded to the 21 plaintiffs. But its not just local: it may have national implications when building owners will be insisting on contracts with anyone who paints their property. It may also confuse and scare off many opportunities for artists, where building owners will simply say no to the proposal.
The settlement, which we covered in Tell It to The Judge ; Graffiti Artists Win in 5 Pointz Case, has infuriated many and thrilled others expressing their opinion on social media. One of our 5 Ptz postings on Facebook this week garnered 1,300 comments, a nest of misunderstanding mediated by the occasional level head, offset by congratulations and victory laps. Naturally, folks from other parts of the country insulted us New Yorkers. Welcome to the world of graffiti and Street Art!
The Black Panther movie has many New Yorkers enthralled as it premiered on Tuesday night at the Museum of Modern Art. Theaters drew entire families and school groups many standing in line in costume as they waited to see powerful and positive black super-heroes and heroines. The Times Magazine says it is a defining moment for black America.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Atomik, Bigod, City Kitty, Daniel Eime, Desla, Exit.Enter.K, Fatal Fake, Free the Nipple, Gane, Gebraël, Kram, Little Ricky, Obey, Texas, We’kup, and Zest B.
Stumbling and slipping and dancing through January here in New York requires dexterity and a tolerance for dry skin and flattened hat-hair and the occasional sore throat. Thankfully there are great indoor activities sometimes like the huge trippy balloon installations by suave art dynamo Jihan Zencirli at her opening exhibition inside the NYC Ballet atrium Friday night. Hundreds of thousands of balloons, free bourbon, and a DJ after a surprisingly post-post-modern program of envelope pushing dancing on the mainstage by amazing pros! Gurl, that ballet is ballin’.
One more indoor exhibit totally worth your time is Ann Lewis’s installations at a no-name popup in Manhattatan. The conceptual Street/gallery activist artist continues to push her own boundaries, and many of ours, with her work addressing difficult social and political issues like police brutality, institutional bias against women, racism, the Resistance. At a time when we need women’s voices to rise, she collaborates with StudioSpaceNYC at a pop-up at 149 West 14th Street (shots from the installation below).
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Ann Lewis, Atomik, Jihan Zencirli, Obey, Pet-de-None, Shepard Fairey, Studio Space NYC and Tona.
Welcome to Sunday and the last free weekend of summer in New York before Labor Day. We had a fun tour yesterday with the two winners of the Magic City – Munich competition who won the opportunity to see the streets through our half cracked and mostly sunny perspective. The foot tour with Munich-based students David and Nesli zig-zagged through the Lower East Side and Little Italy before we ended with a fresh summer aerosoled view of ROA painting a brand new mural live in Brooklyn. Here as a visiting artist at a new residency in Bed Stuy, we had seen him earlier in the week in studio preparing new works of natures creature – a few shots here for you to enjoy.
Earlier in the week Shepard Fairey was here to create a new mural celebrating musician Debbie Harry and her band Blondie directly across the street from the former site of CBGB, The Village Voice announced it would not be a print paper after 60 years of culture and politics pumping from its downtown offices, and Brooklyn proudly hosts the Afropunk Festival – full of music, ‘tude, and dope street fashion by some of our BK’s finest style denizens. Already in Paris and London, next stops for Afropunk are Atlanta and Joburg. Hot!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Daze, Dr. Scott, drsc0, Hank Williams Thomas, Invader, Shepard Fairey, Jason Naylor, Rx Skulls, ROA, Rober Janz, and Voxx.
This week in Berlin we had the chance to meet so many great folks as a result of the final Urban Nation events before September’s opening of the museum. All the curators were in attendance, including your BSA friends here, for the “We Broke Night” show along with the artistic director, managing director, architect, and about 40 artists in the 225 person party that featured breakers on pedestals dancing with flourescent tape, Shepard Fairey as DJ, and plenty of new artworks created just for this event.
Along with the main museum space show, across the street was another exhibition, the Project M/12 show called “What in the World” with mainly European former graff writers/now-fine-artists curated by Evan Pricco from Juxtapoz. Overflowing from the main space, the sidewalks were a parade of aesthetes, fans, business people, graff writers, archivists, politicians, and sex workers… It’s a wild mix and it gets very rowdy and everyone is reacting to the dynamics at play and wondering aloud how a museum like this will pull this off.
We’re not wondering, however. The sheer volume and variety of interested artists and related art lovers and community supporters tells us that this museum is a success before it has even opened. Here are a few images from the last few days for you to take a look at from outside and inside.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Besonders, BustArt, Cranio, Daniel Van Nes, Fin DAC, Herakut, Lora Zombie, Millo, Nasca, Nuno Vegas, Sebastian Wandl, Shepard Fairey, Stikki Peaches, Snik, Tank Patrol.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Stick to It, Episode 1 : Sticky Community
2. Ella & Pitr / Frappés Pinpins 3. Herakut. Nuart Aberdeen. 4. 12 + 1 Oriol Vlat.
BSA Special Feature: Stick to It, Episode 1 : Sticky Community via Juxtapoz
“People had the same idea I had; ‘I wanna make stickers,’ I wanna put characters on stickers, not necessarily all graffiti, and we’re just gonna trade and we’re gonna put your stickers up in my city and you’re gonna put my stickers up in your city,” says artist El Toro.
“Right now it’s just like a storm.”
Running concurrently while graffiti and Street Art get most of the attention, the sticker slap game may turn out to be the portable protest that may get the most mileage in the end. Once a sly critique of the methodology of brainwashing that advertisers use, in the case of Shepard Fairey’s initial OBEY campaigns, today advertisers mix their messages in with the organic scene as a way to market to fans of it and to burnish their “street” bonafides.
As it turns out, we’ve learned that graffiti and Street Artists use the same methods of repetition and branding to get their name out and the ease and mobility of the sticker practice also means that small voices get into the mix quickly. Keeping it up depends on your industry – and many times your resources. This video highlights the organic artist culture that gave birth to and continues to grows around the stickering practice with guys like Roycer and Chris from Robots Will Kill, and naturally it slips in clothing and lifestyle brands seamlessly to sell you their products and strengthen their name.
Ella & Pitr / Frappés Pinpins
The French duo Ella + Pitr here revel in the simplicity of the gestural act of a full-body full-bucket splash of black paint.
Carnal, visceral, overlaid with psychographical information, the motion of splashing inky pigment across a white quadrilateral is an act of defiance and a release of the inner chaos – instantly recognizable as chaos elsewhere in the world.
The uncontrollable quality, especially when purveyed within an atmosphere of prim control, provokes amplified emotions in some. Fear, liberation, rage, release. Which ones will you experience?
Herakut. Nuart Aberdeen. Via Fifth Wall TV
“Don’t hide, because you are that light,” a quick summary of Herakut’s singular message in their mural at Nuart Aberdeen. Be a lighthouse bro.
12 + 1 Oriol Vlat.
A simple and clean presentation of Oriol Vlat’s new wall for the 12 + 1 project in Barcelona by video director Alex Miró.
Inauguration week was just as bumpy as you could have expected with an incredibly divided country discussing the outgoing president, the incoming president, the foreign interference and weird circumstances around the actual election, the nearly all white all billionaire cabinet nominees, and the Women’s March‘s that vastly overwhelmed Trumps ceremony attendee numbers while “sister” marches took place in nearly 700 cities around the world. This president, more than any one in decades, is galvanizing people to take action and get involved, just not in the way he might have preferred and we’ve been seeing a steady dialogue on the street about him since last fall.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adline, City Kitty, D7606, Drsco, El Sol 25, Hek Tad, Homo Riot, Jerk Face, Jose Feliz Perez, Lunge Box, Meguru Yamaguchi, Michael Vasquez, Nimai Keston, Not Art, Shepard Fairey, Sheryo & the Yok, and Vicki Da Silva.
Yeah, we didn’t know what it meant either so we looked it up. Here’s what Wikipedia says: Kompromat (Russian: компромат; IPA: [kəmprɐˈmat], short for компрометирующий материал, literally “compromising material”) is the Russian term for compromising materials about a politician or other public figure. Such materials can be used to create negative publicity, for blackmail, or for ensuring loyalty.
In other words, light artist Vicki Da Silva is referencing the apparent influence of the Russian government over the presidential election by smearing Clinton publicly with information they had found. Luckily they didn’t find any information to influence Trump in any way.
We will be hitting SCOPE shortly but in the interim we’ve been scoping for action or trouble; trolling around the streets of Wynwood and other selected odd locations to find Street Artists actively brush-painting, aerosol painting, markering, stenciling, wheat-pasting, even tying some wires and ribbons around fences. The walls and murals and the scene are all transforming in front of your eyes here, with photographers, videographers, and drones all flying around to capture the action as it progresses.
This neighborhood is an art fair, without the attitude. Well, maybe there is attitude occasionally on display as well.
Also, political speech was pushing through the carousing beer swilling, late-sipping, burrito chomping streets yesterday with a 50 person troop of protesters with home made signs addressing the massive oil pipeline that is routed through sacred land of Native Americans in North Dakota and a pipeline planned to go through Florida.
We followed them for a few blocks, listening to chants about water and hegemony and found that for many art/party fans it was a curiosity to see citizens demonstrating, and a few bystanders took the fluorescent green flyers offered and said thanks, while others took photos and naturally, selfies with the marchers.
Just one more element to add to your sense of cognitive dissonance.
Night time in the Wynwood District is a chaotic grimy glittery mix of high and low and middle in the neighborhood as well – where you are as likely to catch a whiff of a models’ perfume as she sashays past you in a backless silver mini dress with her 3 leggy friends flipping their long hair over their shoulders as you are to catch a whiff of sweet ganga smoke from the joint of an open-shirted, low-waisted Romeo in dreadlocks or one the acrid whiff of the rumpled grayish clothing worn by the guy who is sitting on a chair against a mural and is ready to spend another night laying on the sidewalk after you stumble back to your hotel.
An ongoing slothful and bloated and thumping network of car-minivan-limo-Escalade-motorcycle traffic is rolling into a mechanical Ambian lethargy, at times looking more like a parking lot or tailgating party, grid-locking and popping and actively cruising the options parading down the sidewalks, with windows open and music pumping.
With no police at intersections to ease the flow of this jamtastic scene, low-bubbling rage mixes with cologne and produces slick insults hurled at the guy whose car is blocking the traffic flow, or more importantly, your flow. The song of the night wafting through the air on one corner, perhaps because a bicycle would be a perfect solution here, is called Bicycleta.
Luckily for us, we are usually on foot and not afraid to walk to find the good stuff. That is the best way to experience the street and the various events and to catch artists at work. Enjoy a few scenes from the day and one from the evening in Wynwood in Miami.
New York is bracing, as is the rest of the country, for the fallout of the election.
We’ve seen an uptick in anti-semitic graffiti on the street, but not a great deal of other stuff aside from acidic disgust toward Trump – but that was true before the election. The governor and the mayor are warning the new administration that no discrimination or hate will be welcomed in the State or City. Most of the time the president elect is still hanging out at his towers in Manhattan choosing rich, connected, white men to fill all his cabinet posts. Almost every one those choices have people up in arms.
Meanwhile, the autumn has been spectacular and we’re all reminding ourselves and each other that we have a lot to be thankful for, and to fight for – for all of us across the country in every city, town, suburb, and rural home. It looks like winter is coming, so gather wood for the fire.
It’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Aaron Ki, C-3, Dan Witz, Ganzeer, Individualactivist, Livio Ninni, Mark Bode, Mr. Fijodor, ODeith, Ouizi, Qi Xinghau, Raphael Federici, Roteo, SpY, and Voxx Romana.
This hippie/punk/skater/poets/artists haven of graffiti, street, urban and postmodern all splayed across a complex of buildings that are seemingly abandoned but teaming with life, food, music, and free thought. Also, a sense of community.
There are opportunities for rock climbing, biergartening, dancing, tattoo shops, outdoor mix sessions, a furniture restoration shop, a mini- beach, the famed outstanding art gallery with a solid array of graffiti and urban art books, and if you know where the switch is, you can blow 6 foot torches of fire into the night sky from atop a tiki bar.
On the day we were there recently there was even a wedding party in one of the secreted outdoor spaces with two spinning turntables, a basement bar, a bonfire, and, naturally, cake.
Also, naturally, you can go and paint, wheatpaste, slap stickers, spray a stencil, or in the case of Bordalo II, collect together enough local garbage to create a sculptural installation of a long-billed aviary friend.
Scenes like these are always transitory so visit Berlin-Friedrichshain and Urban Spree before the moment passes.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
