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

Now screening:
1. Debut: Nils Westergard x Nanook in the Navaho Nation
2. MTO in Berlin
3. Vhils Talks About His Work
4. Sajjad Abbas In Iraq
5. Duality by MATEO

BSA Special Feature: DEBUT
Nils Westergard x Nanook in the Navaho Nation

The debut of a video seen here for the first time, this timelapse of the experience that two Street Artists had while in “The Painted Desert” project sponsored and cultivated in and around the Navaho Nation by Jetsonorama for the last couple of years.

Here we see Nanook and Nils Westergard create works influenced by the people they got to know while there, a cultural exchange that helps expand the knowledge of all the participants.  In the video you see Nils create two portraits; one of King Fowler, “who was a Navajo Codetalker during WWII,” says Nils, and who died not too long ago.  The other is a kid named Calvin, who lives on the reservation and who you can see in the red flannel shirt actually watching Nils put his face on a wall.

In a community where people know everyone else’s family and friends, Nils says it felt like a real honor to paint these people and “it was especially interesting to talk to kids around my age, and see how Navajo culture adapts to the 21st century.” Lots of conversations and even participating in a sweat lodge, Nils felt his mind being reorganized.

He smiles when he mentions the speed that paint dries in the desert, and the ingenuity he used to keep the mural going. “I didn’t have enough buckets, so almost all of my paint was held in broken 40 oz. beer bottles while I worked,” he says. “They got a kick out of that.”

MTO in Berlin

Frenchman MTO appears in this new video that is more music video and sleek hipster ode to the moment than Street Art film. Using art, artifice, nightlife and poetic romantic interludes woven with signifiers of power and light debauchery, it’s a sexy romp.  We don’t know what we just said either.

“Je me suis embarqué vers les tristes rivages de cette “île” du bonheur fictif.”

Vhils Talks About His Work

A quick primer on the work of Vhils from the man himself. “I started to see stencil as not something you paint over, but as a window you see through.”

Sajjad Abbas In Iraq

We don’t often see videos of Street Art in Iraq, but this one gives some insight into how they do it – and there are similarities to everywhere else, as it turns out.

Done under cover of night the subject matter points to the topic of militarization and the stencil itself reveals an international Street Art style that has emerged since the Internet connected us all.

Duality by MATEO

And ending on a happy note this week, here’s Mateo flipping and bouncing down a wall in a balanced performance. Also, corn on the cob.

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