BSA Film Friday: 06.03.16

June 3, 2016 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Left Out: by Maxwell Rushton and Liam Thompson
2. CHEAP Street Poster Art Festival 2016
3. Sky High: Mexico City from Tost Films:
4. RUN has a Kickstarter for New Book “Time Traveller Artist Man”

BSA Special Feature: Left Out: by Maxwell Rushton and Liam Thompson

A thoughtful perspective on a public social experiment triggered by placing a despondent figure inside a garbage bag in highly trafficked areas of London. Selected responses to Maxwell Rushton’s piece are indicative of something nearly life-changing, or consciousness-raising. Somewhere along the way there is serious discussion of the idea that people have become disposable in the minds of the modern citizen-turned-consumer.

Temper those responses with the larger number of Londoners who either didn’t recognize the shape as that of a human figure and the number whom were uninterested, disconnected, partially interested or just joking to one another blithely – and you’ll get a wider survey of our current civilized state.

A large and related story may be that some corporate brands are using the honest original work of Street Artists today to mislead and sell, short-circuiting the intent of artists who pioneer social experimentation with different goals. Even this documentary format is often re-engineered, using “authenticity” to “engage” and tell “compelling stories” with “influencers” – effectively disparaging and eroding public trust and civic connection to one another by abusing our human tools of communication.

One other artist you may like the work of: Street Artist Mark Jenkins was creating figurative public work, some of it very similar to this, in the late 2000’s and teens, but perhaps with different goals and often a little humor as well.

CHEAP Street Poster Art Festival 2016

A hybrid of advertising posters re-engineered by Street Artists here at the Bologna festival that playfully recalls public space for public art. Inspired perhaps by those groups who would like to battle the ubiquity of ads and their messages on bus stops and mass transit in large cities, this is “a collective poster art installation involving 25 international artists working in illustration and street art.” The small audiences and kids seem to like it!