BSA Film Friday

BSA FILM FRIDAY: 08.14.20

BSA FILM FRIDAY: 08.14.20

August 14, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. From the Archives: Keith Haring
2. Friday Night, August 14th – From Funkadelic
3. One Thousand Stories / The Making of a Mural / A Project by JR

BSA Special Feature: From the Archives: Keith Haring

Why are we thinking about street artist Keith Haring so often right now?
Possibly because we are remembering how he used his art practice to talk about crisis on his doorstep, and took risks to get his work out, and we are seeing more artists stepping up to that challenge on the street today.

When we think about this pandemic and the ways in which the artistic community has swiftly and forcefully responded to illustrate with their art the general mood, the ethos, the official response from our political leaders, the health providers unequivocal rush to action to save lives, the scientific community pushing to guide us during this still ongoing crisis, the dissemination of information and misinformation on social media, and the decisive actions from the mainstream media to educate the public on the pandemic one New York City artist comes to mind.

Keith Haring. He used his art to talk about Apartheid in South Africa, the crack epidemic, and the scourge of AIDS, a disease that took his life in 1990. We wonder what he will be doing on the streets if he were still alive. He’d be 62 now, still an age where he’d have the creative energy imbued with wisdom and experience. Below we share with you a vintage reel of him getting up on the NYC Subway.

As you watch this video for a mass TV audience under the guise of kooky kuriosity, it also crosses your mind that the police handle him with kid gloves – they don’t tackle him and slam him on the ground. Would his fate have been the same if he were black? And the reporter follows him around like a curious puppy, in awe of his escapades, intoning that vandalism is cute when its done by white guys from Pennsylvania who sell canvasses in Soho. There is so much we can learn from archived footage like this.

So you know what tonight is, right?

One Thousand Stories / The Making of a Mural / A Project by JR

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BSA Film Friday: 08.07.20

BSA Film Friday: 08.07.20

August 7, 2020 ,

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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BSA Film Friday: 07.31.20

BSA Film Friday: 07.31.20

July 31, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. disCONNECT, a “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover

BSA Special Feature: disCONNECT, a “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover

London / 24 July – 23 August 2020

Today a series of videos from the artists takeover of this London home, a testament to the fortitude of organizers and artists who didn’t accept “Lock-down” for an answer. Yes, everyone practiced social distancing, and no, a large public opening event could not take place. But this may serve as one welcome new model for art in the time of Corona.

The video series is expertly produced by Fifth Wall TV and a small consortium of commercial/cultural partners including HK Walls and Schoeni Projects. Details at the end of the video parade.

Mr Cenz / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV

David Bray / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV

Aida Wilde / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV

Alex Fakso / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV

Isaac Cordal / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV

Herakut / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV

Zoer / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV

To find more about disCONNECT A “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover / London / 24 July – 23 August 2020 click HERE

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BSA Film Friday 07.24.20

BSA Film Friday 07.24.20

July 24, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. BustArt Says Goodbye to Berlin-Tegel
2. Transform the Tram Wait by MurOne in Barcelona

BSA Special Feature: BustArt Says Goodbye to Berlin-Tegel

A museum curating in public space is not necessarily new. Many eyes are watching with great interest as this museum in Berlin begins an academic approach toward selecting artists and artworks in public space in Berlin as Urban Nation Museum grounds its projects in its community and local history. The new work by street artist and graffiti writer Bustart is a direct reference to the nearby Berlin-Tegel airport, which will be decommissioned later this year.

Part of the inspiration is from Otto Lilienthal, the German pioneer of aviation who became known as the “flying man”, now cast through a 1960s comic strip version of the modern hero gazing upward to witness the post-war middle class flying the friendly skies. In a twist of irony, most people in this neighborhood will probably enjoy their daily lives more now that the airport won’t be filling the air with the sound of roaring planes overhead, allowing them to listen instead to birds in the trees.

Art al TRAM by MurOne

“Cities have these rough and rigid spaces whose only purpose is to walk through,” says Marc Garcia, founder and director of Rebobinart, a Barcelona organization that brings artists to the urban environment – developing projects with social and cultural context considerations in public space.

MurOne’s new mural takes on the space where people wait for the tram – a nondescript netherworld, a metropolitan purgatory where you are nowhere, only between. The Cornellà Centre TRAM stop is transformed by the Spanish artist (Iker Muro) who has been making murals for almost two decades, combining figurative and abstract, fiction, oblique narrative and vivid color. It’s the city, and its yours while you wait to go to your next destination

Iker Muro is a Spanish artist and graphic designer who has been making murals in Spain and abroad since 2002. His work combines figurative and abstract art, conveying both tangible and fictional elements through vivid colours and figures influenced by the visual imagery in the cities where the artist paints.

“I believe that arriving in a place like this and finding a kind of art gallery is a reason for attraction,” says MurOne, “I feel motivated by these kinds of actions.”

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BSA Film Friday: 07.17.20

BSA Film Friday: 07.17.20

July 17, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. Street Art For Sustainable Development

BSA Special Feature: Street Art For Sustainable Development

With the UN’s 17+1 Sustainable Development Goals and at least as many artists on hand to interpret them, the City of Turin has had a lot of new artworks on walls throughout the city.

Tapping into a universal language of art and murals that has spread throughout cities around the world, this project imagines meeting all these goals by 2030. Here we present a short documentary that introduces the originators of this mural program, the artists who are painting, and the city of Turin.

Documentary: Street Art For Sustainable Development. Via Cinemage Studio

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BSA Film Friday: 07.10.20 / Chip Thomas and The Navajo Nation & Radio Juxtapoz

BSA Film Friday: 07.10.20 / Chip Thomas and The Navajo Nation & Radio Juxtapoz

July 10, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. Chip Thomas and True Artivism

BSA Special Feature: Chip Thomas and True Artivism

We’re switching it up a little this week and recommending an audio podcast with Radio Juxtapoz instead a film. We think you’ll dig it.

Chip Thomas (aka Jetsonorama), his art, and his photography has of course been featured on BSA and his work/life/activism perhaps 40 times since the late 2000s, but its usually been a blend of other peoples’ stories that we have helped him deliver.

Larry King, a Church Rock resident who was an underground surveyor at the Church Rock Uranium mine at the time the dam failed in 1979, speaks to a group of anti-uranium activists on the 40th anniversary of the spill, July 16, 1979.  Activists were present from Japan and across the U.S (photo © Jetsonorama) Jetsonorama Tells “Stories From Ground Zero”

Over the years we have facilitated his historically informed storytelling on the health and life of people on the Navajo Nation, the US dumping radioactive matter there, issues surrounding climate change, the voting rights act, the March on Selma, the favelas in Rio, his “Painted Desert” multi-year project with invited Street Artists.

Chip Thomas in Brooklyn commemorating the March to Selma. (photo © Jaime Rojo) 50 Years From Selma, Jetsonorama and Equality in Brooklyn

All the time Chip has been showing us how to bridge communities, raise awareness, through socially engaged street art and photography.

Here you’ll enjoy Evan Pricco and Doug Gillen as they dig deep through the personal and professional history of this artist, activist, and doctor. For once here you’ll hear his actual voice and trace his navigational route in storytelling about himself and the path he’s taken to bring to the surface of our consciousness the people who the US historically makes invisible.

Chip Thomas Is Telling The Story Of The Navajo Nation Through Street Art. Via Radio Juxtapoz.

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BSA Film Friday: 07.03.20

BSA Film Friday: 07.03.20

July 3, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. “No Weapon Formed Against Thee Shall Prosper” Cey Adams, Sophia Dawson, and Marka 27

BSA Special Feature: “No Weapon Formed Against Thee Shall Prosper” Cey Adams, Sophia Dawson, and Marka 27

Quoting Isaiah 54:17 in the Bible, this mural inspires us and girds us and reminds us that when it comes to systemic racism the battle is not for the faint of heart. Can we get an ‘Amen’?

“No Weapon Formed Against Thee Shall Prosper” By Murals For The Movement, Cey Adams, I’m Wet Paint and Marka 27 is dedicated to the victims of police brutality and mass incarceration.

Shout out to @ow.ley for creating the video.

“No Weapon Formed Against Thee Shall Prosper”

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BSA Film Friday: 06.26.29

BSA Film Friday: 06.26.29

June 26, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. 1UP in Napoli “This is Not Art Anymore” Parts 1 & 2
2. FLW_IN – Open Letter

BSA Special Feature: 1UP in Napoli “This is Not Art Anymore” Parts 1 & 2

There is spraycation, and then there is the 1UP Family Reunion, which was recently in Napoli. Members came from far and wide to see one another and to spread the familial gospel in aerosol. There were rounds of cards, bowls of pasta, storytelling, backslapping, and some family fights about perceived slights, or girls. But as far as most dysfunctional families and their reunions go, this one was pretty tame. Yeah, right.

“The architecture is chaotic and in the midst of it we are just walking around. Roll ups, roll downs. Partying hard in the streets.”

“There would be a lot less love in my life without the graffiti, without One United Power.”

FLW_IN – Open Letter

Musician Joseph Gabriel Harris AKA FLW-IN speaks from the heart in an “Open Letter” about the issues of systemic racism and being a black man in a hostile society that is now openly talking and examining. An American now living in Barcelona, he has an inside/outside perspective that can help bridge gaps in understanding. Of note, he also leans on the talents of a number of street artists/ mural artists and the Black Walls Movement for background art in this piece.

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BSA Film Friday: 06.19.20

BSA Film Friday: 06.19.20

June 19, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. FULL COLOR: An Irish Street Art Story.
2. Kermit and Fozzy are the scenario, dawg. Tribe Called Quest Goes to Sesame Street

BSA Special Feature: FULL COLOR: An Irish Street Art Story by Harry Moylan

A look at Dublin and Belfast through the work and words of 12 street artists and muralists. The crisply delivered and insightful documentary asks the fundamentals about origin, genesis, motivation of the artists and studies the subcultures that swirl about and within this particular subculture. It also has the added dimension of examining the political sentiments that run through mural art historically and specifically how “The Troubles” – the three-decade conflict between nationalists and unionists are clearly brought to bear on the collections of mural artworks created for public display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te2urQTZr-k

Kermit and Fozzy are the scenario, dawg. Tribe Called Quest Goes to Sesame Street

The Original: A Tribe Called Quest – Scenario

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BSA Film Friday: 06.12.20

BSA Film Friday: 06.12.20

June 12, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. Steven Siegel, Like a Buoy, Like a Barrel
2. Mural Intervention by Ana Barriga in Nau Bostik
3. The Revolution Starts in The Earth w/ the Self. Jess X Snow & Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn

BSA Special Feature: Steven Siegel, Like a Buoy, Like a Barrel

We’ve seen public works made with recycled materials in the street art scene for a few years – Bordalo II and Icy & Sot come to mind. American environmental artist Steven Siegel has been pulling apart and reassembling in public space for forty years or so, amassing a body of work that examines and reveals the geologic sedimentation of earth, bodies, memory, emotion.

A recent work, Like a Buoy, Like a Barrel in Providence, Rhode Island presents our collective waste in a container, front and center for all to look into, marvel at, perhaps be dismayed by.

“Piling a bunch of, for lack of a better word, ‘trash,’ is not going to move anybody. Whereas if you can articulate it into a form that is beautiful and surprising, they’re going to say ‘that’s beautiful and surprising. What does it mean?”

Mural Intervention by Ana Barriga in Nau Bostik

On the occasion of the closing of the TÀPIA exhibition, B.murals invited Ana Barriga to paint on the walls of Espai 30 La Sagrera, inspired by her tireless searches for inspiration in markets such as “El Rastro” in Madrid. Using a found item she enlarges it and takes comfort in the simple depiction of mutual affinity.

Project Highlight: Like buoy, like a barrel by Steven Siegel

The Revolution Starts in The Earth w/ the Self. Jess X Snow & Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn

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BSA Film Friday: 06.05.20 / Dispatch From Isolation # 75

BSA Film Friday: 06.05.20 / Dispatch From Isolation # 75

June 5, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. BCN Rise & Fall. Documentary History of Street Art in Barcelona

BSA Special Feature: BCN Rise & Fall, Documentary History of Street Art in Barcelona

The permissive nature of the city created a golden age of art in the streets, unencumbered by  the police or the city itself, an exciting destination for artists like Banksy, Space Invader, Os Gemeos, Aryz, BTOY, Kenor, Mark Bode, and Obey – but really it was an aerosol family reunion with relatives arriving from around the world.

Today we feature a well-researched and presented re-telling of the golden age of muralism born here in the first few years of the 2000s, spawning careers of many and attracting culture watchers of all kinds. As is the case with gentrifying spaces, the next phase after artists make everything pop with energy and new ideas, the vultures moved in to capitalize on it, and kill it.

Strict laws, strict penalties, and putting on a nice commercial face for the corporations and shoppers. Later, the creative spirit seems quashed – and the city that gave birth to a stunning spectacle seems completely unaware of how they shot themselves in the foot – until they have to pay to see the stuff in a museum exhibition later.

Now years later we have a clearer view of what transpired and why thanks directors Aleix Gordo Hostau and Gustavo López Lacalle, who painstakingly construct and deconstruct the story through colorful stories and an ocean of imagery. Political and sometimes divisive? Sure. A form of speech, undoubtedly. Pity it is manipulated sometimes to fit an agenda, even when the artist hadn’t intended it to be.

BCN Rise & Fall. Documentary History of Street Art in Barcelona

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BSA Film Friday: 05.29.20 / Dispatch From Isolation # 68

BSA Film Friday: 05.29.20 / Dispatch From Isolation # 68

May 29, 2020 ,

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

Now screening :
1. “InkStemism” from Tinta Crua in Lisbon
2. STIK at Picadilly Lights in London: Hope & Solidarity
3. The PR Economy Shapes “News” and Perception
4. Big Joanie, “Fall Asleep”

BSA Special Feature: “InkStemism” from Tinta Crua in Lisbon

Portuguese activist, street artist and illustrator Tinta Crua says he hasn’t had a lot of action in Lisbon since the virus outbreak, so he’s been experimenting with animation and seeing his figures come to life across the screen. Today we have a look at the homemade video called InkStemism.

He says he’s been using wheat-pasting to display his hand-painted original acrylic pieces on construction walls or downtown shop windows. The style of figures and archetypes may recall for some the hand-drawn aesthetic punk/heavy metal fanzines: A stark wit and a bit of sarcasm – softened by an underlying sentiment of goodwill, romantic tendencies.

“I started back in 2008 when the crisis hit Portugal with its full impact. Lots of shops closed. People lost their jobs like me at the time and now again…but this window became my canvas!” says Tinta. Given the dire economic situation that appears to be headed our way, its safe to say there will be more artists working on the street soon, addressing fundamental issues in social, economic, and geo-political spheres.

“I don’t know what will be the scenario post-pandemic,” says the artist. “I hope that people will  keep their jobs and that the shops keep open. Well I’ll keep doing my thing – just have to walk more and wait till I find a good place to paste.”

STIK at Picadilly Lights in London: Hope & Solidarity

A curious turn of events leads STIK to Picadilly. His forms unite in a warm glow, yet few are here to see it.

The PR Economy Shapes “News” and Perception

When you hear and see the same story repeated multiple times by serious faces in authoritative positions, does it affect your perception of a company, politician, poet, artist, businesswoman, race, war? Sidenote: Is this journalism?

Big Joanie, “Fall Asleep“

London based trio Big Joanie going from strength to strength. A great sound evolving from the DIY community and a fresh frank take on feminist punk.

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