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

Now screening :
1. Freight Train Graffiti Melbourne. Can’t Do Tomorrow Festival
2. Anthony Lister – Head Hunter 2020

BSA Special Feature: Freight Train Graffiti Melbourne from the “Can’t Do Tomorrow” Festival 2020

Graffiti Writers and a major collaboration with Southern Shorthaul Railroad (SSR) 

There is not unanimity of opinion about painting trains these days – in fact perspectives cannot be further apart when you consider the hot invective spilled on graff writers in some cities – and the invitation and embrace of them in others.

The video above from New York in January presents a conundrum of many sorts – a full train covered by graffiti is enraging to some, an indication of lawless disrespect for society. Only a month later Melbourne government blessed the Can’t Do Tomorrow Festival which invited graffiti writers to do something very similar to an entire train. Cognitive dissonance much?

Face it, for artists and fans the two videos below are a bit of freight porn – products of the urban art festival where a group of old school and prolific graff writers transformed a 22-carriage Southern Shorthaul Railroad (SSR) freight train into the largest outdoor gallery in Australia.

From the producers of the festival “Can’t Do Tomorrow was a massive celebration of urban art and contemporary culture in one of the most iconic underground spaces in Australia: The Facility. Across 10 days, over 16,000 PEOPLE immersed themselves in a new way of consuming, or being consumed by, art.” Eloquent and on-point.

We also appreciate the description of the aspirational outlook of the organization, “We don’t pretend to be custodians of the contemporary urban art scene. We’re a micro-movement inside a macro-movement. We are serious about creating a community that will garner the contemporary urban movement the recognition it deserves.”

Freight Train Graffiti Melbourne. Can’t Do Tomorrow Festival

Anthony Lister is Head Hunting in 2020

Automated speech synthesis transcription is a current fashion and Anthony Lister cleverly frightens you while hiding behind this audio accompaniment to the video – a disjointed emotionally vacant spirit that parses at a metronomic tempo before melting into the hounds of Satan. How better to introduce the fascinating masks he has been creating for years.

“But in so far as we are social beings who live in a community of similar individuals with whom we are in continuous and direct competition, often unconsciously, primitive beings also feel the urgent need to be different, to impress, to bewilder and to instill fear, so that they may make themselves revered and respected.”  Happy head hunting!

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