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

Now screening :
1. “Realm: Shanghai” Vhils directed by Jose Pando Lucas
2. ARTRIUM, Moscow. (part 1)
3. Faith XVLII x Philadelphia, ‘The Silent Watcher’.

BSA Special Feature: “Realm: Shanghai” Vhils directed by Jose Pando Lucas

Like other fashion and luxury brands, certain contemporary art galleries are commissioning higher-end film quality videos to put muscle behind the marketing. Naturally, some artwork is camera-ready, infused with the potential for storytelling that creates the “rich content” that social media thrives on, and aids sales teams in the gallery space and at art fairs. Portuguese Street Artist Vhils has director Jose Pando Lucas along as sophisticated seer; The artist once again bringing a storyline into savvy focus, capturing your imagination with his.

“I remember the story I was told,” intones the mystical modern while staring into the camera. “That in time I would know my place in this world.”

The tone is perhaps meant to reassure an unsteady heart in a chaotic modern world, to center oneself in a dislocating environment. Viewed as an appealing sales tool, it also skillfully fortifies a self-image of the entitled powerful class who are pre-ordained or chosen to dominate and to lead. Anonymous and existential mournful stares through city windows and at bus stops, the artworks under construction are born of destruction; mottled, rough-hewn, defiant in the city’s margins.

Tradition struggles for its place amidst amazing new technology and rapidly growing infrastructure. The artist posits himself as working man pounding on walls, without airs of class. With this art in your home you are keeping in touch with the common, the everyday insecurities, for you are citizen. You can afford it because, after all, you are also a ruler.

“Nobody really got the answers they longed for.”

“Do we live as we dream?”

“Who else can hear me right now?”

Youthful, fashionable, under constraint, free of constraint, traditional and unconventional power players laying plans quietly, focusing a pent-up hunger for more. This is the ocean of wealth and capacity that will define epochs, not decades.

It ends sweetly, a bon mot that suggests a sense of human camaraderie among competitors of this race. But it is an uncertain connection, born more of wistful desire for a pleasant resolution than actual brotherhood or sisterhood.

“Yesterday is gone. This moment has ended.”

VHILS – REALM (Shanghai, 2019) A film by Jose Pando Lucas

ARTRIUM, Moscow. (part 1)

An educational insight into the people and the place.

Unusual in the Russian Federation, if not the commercialized western cultures which have willfully merged graffiti and Street Art culture to the point of quotidian, The Artrium combines a shopping mall with murals by Street Artists. What is remarkable is the list of names who regale this city skin with new pieces inside and outside, bringing to life an otherwise normal grey and beige block.

Astounding to discover in the center of Moscow, the outdoor gallery boasts artists such as Shepard Fairey, Felipe Pantone, Tristan Eaton, Ben Eine, PichiAvo, Okuda San Miguel, Pokras Lampas, Faith47, WK Interact, Faust, and Haculla. Average visitors may not grasp the remarkable collection of talents, but if you are shopping in this capital city, you wouldn’t want to miss this opportunity that captures a stunning moment in the rotation of the Street Art universe.

Faith XVLII x Philadelphia, ‘The Silent Watcher’. By Chop ’em Down Films

In the words of Faith XLVII;
‘I come from a country that is seething with the frustration of uncontrollable violence and woman abuse, xenophobia , class and racial divide.
And have moved to a country where there seems to be a fundamental crisis in the very soul of the nation.

We know this ache of our lands.
And we all know personal ache.
Everybody has their struggle to bear.

And with the weight of the world on our shoulders,
we must still be able to live with empathy
We must somehow keep our hearts open.

The words on this wall are a reference to the City Seal of Philadelphia with calls out for brotherly love.
This is no small commitment.

It also references a quote ‘Optimism is a strategy for a Better Future.’
Paying tribute to Noam Chomsky who was born in Philadelphia and is 91 years old this year. .

The harsh experiences of life can easily make us fall into a negative world view,
or inner psychological depression.
But we each have the ability to transform this base metal of knowing suffering,
into the gold of higher aspiration.

The name of this mural is ‘The Silent Watcher’
We can be the silent watcher, who knows, who loves and who endures.’

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