ESSAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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

Now screening: Drones and Street Artist Essam.

BSA Special Feature:

Drones, Rand Paul, and Street Artist Essam

Street Artists use their medium of message on the street sometimes to entertain, engage, or educate the passerby. Whether it’s a personal, cultural, or politically relevant message, often the work provides a mirror for us to look at and examine ourselves. Sometimes the sentiments are seemingly irrelevant, other times prescient. Last year photographers of Street Art, who already had been accustomed to the multiple fake and usually comical “official” messages posted around the city on signposts by Trustocorp, began noticing the street signs that warned of drone surveillance.  Most people had a vague idea of what drones were, but couldn’t see the connection between drones and our streets. This week we had a 13 hour national education when the very conservative Libertarian Kentucky Republican Rand Paul filibustered on his feet about the use of drones in the US and abroad, stirring up a huge controversy about their use that could actually rise to become a genuine crisis for this president as citizens contemplate the constitution and the use of technology like this.

It brings to mind of course the Street Artist and his further work and what may ultimately be revealed as his role as the canary in the coalmine. According to news reports he is still under arrest for putting his art up, and there is a fundraiser for his benefit, and while the major networks talked about his signs when they came out (New Yorker, Complex Magazine, Portland Press Herald, CNN, Fox Business…), you don’t see as much news about it today. Today we feature this mini-doc about Essam and consider the impact of Street Art on public policy and how sometimes it can have the power to advance important conversation and debate.

ESSAM (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

A new mini-documentary on events of the past year surrounding Street Artist Essam and the national and local news coverage it generated.

To read more about this visit: http://www.freeessam.com/

238

138

45