This week BSA takes you to the French Polynesian Islands to see the new murals going up for this tropical island cultural festival called ONO’U Tahiti 2017. We’re happy to bring you the daily events and the insights as we discover them.

Can you drive a stick shift pickup truck?

Dude, we usually are biking or hiking through streets but here on the Tahiti island as we expertly shift through the multiple traffic circles and speed bumps of ‘Ārue, Fa’a’ā, and Pape’ete, it’s an adventure just to bomb through a busy downtown to discover the Street Art museum that is coming together. Here inside the workspace FinDAC is using a free computer on a temporary table to do his email and Kalouf is painting a small jumping whale on a rusted piece of metal while Romain Lardanchet reads aloud to him about armies, battalions and flaming meteors, sunglasses tempering the flaming hot sun and balancing on small white plastic stool.

ASTRO. Process shot. ONO’U Tahiti 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Inside one of the exhibition spaces MrZL is practicing his projection mapping on top of Marko93’s target pattern on the wall, which the graffiti writer and aerosol master is converting into a Mandela of tags that will work in concert with the digital work of his creative partner. New for both artists, this piece is intended to have some longevity in the museum space where much of the collaborations that MrZL does are similar to live performance.

This installation is a “live mix” with no one knowing exactly what the two works will produce together – revealing itself in the moment, much like a live music DJ works with songs, samples, recordings, effects, and filters to produce a jam.

“I don’t know exactly how this will look because he brought some colors and I brought light intensity variations and we put it together and the results should be beautiful,” says the Lyons based MrZL speaking of his projection work melding with the Paris-based Marko93.

Felipe Pantone. Process shot. ONO’U Tahiti 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We follow this target pattern so we have a common mise-en-page. So we can work together a little better we have this abstract graphic and work on two layers,” he says. “I chose an animals face because he often works with animals so I proposed to him an animal on the foreground, a rhinoceros, because I saw that he works with big primates a lot, or big cats like lions.”

Meanwhile Astro is negotiating his geometric scene alongside a busy gas station, jumping quickly from one vantage point to another as he creates planes of greater depth with the can. FinDAC’s figurative piece is now popping forward from the abstract beginnings of yesterday, his focus on a Tahitian model whom he photographed a series of poses with on Sunday and which he says has that extra “something” he looks for in a muse.

Findac. Process shot. ONO’U Tahiti 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This evening only one block from the FinDAC mural a series of live Tahitian muses will be taking the catwalk in a grand foyer for a unique fashion show downtown – a long planned fusion planned by the organization that pairs traditional Tahitian culture with graffiti and modern fashion couture in a much anticipated night event.

Felipe Pantone should be there for the show tonight, if his lift doesn’t freeze in a permanent state of extension again like it did last night at the top of his multi-story lift. Positioned overlooking the sporting field of a school, a small crowd of teens and teachers kicked around soccer balls and stared upward while Pantone sketched out the black and white patterning that will no doubt deliver dizzying and vibrating multi-color optics to this unsuspecting crowd. Nearby on the sidewalk film director Selina Miles commandeers a white drown overhead, giving us a verbal play-by-play of what she was seeing on her screen while steering the scene from the ground.

It’s another day in paradise, as they say. Now if we can just figure out how to get this stick shift to go into reverse, we’ll get out of the parking space…

Marko93 . MrZL Video Mapping Collaboration. Process shot. ONO’U Tahiti 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Marko93 & MrZL Video Mapping Collaboration. Work in progress.

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