To coincide with #CyberMonday we’re bringing you the satiric stylings of Billboard takeover artist Bill Posters in Manchester, England.
Bill Posters. “Waste World” (photo still from the video)
His newest ‘Waste World’ billboard and video (below) chides our blithe consumerism and the colonialist practice of dumping our waste and “recycling” on poor people in other countries – so they can sift through our lifestyles and possibly become poisoned by the toxic materials inside discarded electronics.
Installed last Friday, or as advertisers are training the population to say, “Black Friday”, Mr. Posters tells us that he was thinking of better activities to do rather than get stampeded by TV addicts in a big box store.
Bill Posters. “Waste World” (photo still from the video)
“We should probably be paying more attention to where the majority of our ‘recycled’ waste actually ends up,” he says. “In low-income countries, 93% of global waste is dumped due to inadequate urban provisions. Western countries can’t process their own waste, instead – they sell it to other low-income countries in Asia and Africa.”
It’s true, we don’t see photos of people sitting and sifting on mountains of trash when we’re chasing bargains. That’s why Mr. Posters says he wants to create a campaign that commandeers advertising space to show “the profound social and environmental impacts of consumer waste in countries and communities hidden from view”.
Bill Posters. “Waste World” (photo still from the video)
Done in concert with Brandalism and other individual artists around the world who stripped ads from bus stops, phone kiosks, and billboards on Saturday for NO AD Day, the new billboard features a collage of people celebrating the fabulous products rich people can buy amidst an ocean of consumer detritus. With new installations that take aim at at brands including Nike, Pretty Little Thing, Apple and Gucci, the artists says he is also inspired by the latest issue of the magazine New Internationalist’s which talks about our garbage stream in a scintillating piece called “Modern Life is Rubbish”.
A bit of an exaggeration, right?
“Over 15 million people around the globe – the majority women and children, earn their living as waste pickers, literally sifting through westerners waste to earn a living,” he says.
Bill Posters. “Waste World” (photo still from the video)
Every Friday you can stop by here to see a handful of videos that are directly/tangentially related to Street Art. The criterion for selection is admittedly loose so we’ll just say that BSA Film Friday is a platform for inspiration, expression, examination. Some people use video to write an exhaustive treatise, a thorough examination bolstering Street Arts’ rightful place in the canon of public arts. Others write a few verses of a poem with video. We give extra points for telling a story in a new way.
Here we collect 15 that resonated with BSA readers in 2015, along with some quotes from the original posting to show you what we were thinking. Our sincere thanks to the hundreds of videographers who work so hard and with so much passion to tell their story with this medium. We have such admiration for you and your talent.
“Narcelio Grud and “Chaupixo” brings us back into the inventive mind of this experimenter – now hand pumping a slurry of colored concrete over a stencil pattern. The results are solid!”
Gladys Hulot, AKA Hyrtis Animates David Bowie “Life in Mars”
“BSA readers will dig this animation of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars,” Gladys Hulot, also known as Hyrtis, brings Bowie to slink through the cracks and around the concrete underground, dripping with piercing drama, and plenty of distinctive style. The voice here is stunningly replaced with a musical saw, giving the chameleon just one more layer to his multiple identities. Not precisely street art, but Bowie’s ties to the street are undisputed.”
“This is almost a year old but it is also sort of timeless when you see how Shepard Fairey’s continous re-evolving of his philosophies about art and its place in our lives has come to such cogent arguments. It’s a short film, a genuine distillation of the larger themes that we have seen at work in the life and the career and public person.
Shot by a guy whose primary focus up until this point was nearly exclusively about skaters and skate culture, Brett Novak says he was pleasantly surprised to learn that Fairey was likeable and had a lot of good information to impart. “I was not aware at how incredibly inspiring Shepard would turn out to be.”
“Slab City is sometimes billed as an isolated desolated off-the-grid sort of place in California so it was an adventure for Christina Angelina and Ease One discovered the remains of this abandoned water tank and transformed it into a circular mural. They call it The Kinetoscope.”
“It’s all about Joe! While you were looking for a brunch spot or a beard wax or simply at your navel, Joe took an opportunity to connect artists with walls and did more for the “scene” in Bushwick than an L Train full of pilgrims ever could. He cleared the way for a slew of local and international artists and writers looking for an opportunity to exercise their creative speech and courted the press with his local native personal story so often that you can imagine a Netflix series will be next.”
Roma Street Art Tribes as Captured by Dioniso Punk
“Disorderly, discordant, and richly chaotic, these two videos are centered around the Italian street art paintings and artists whom you will recognize from our earlier postings on community/gallery organized urban art programming – but within the context of historical art publicly displayed, peoples movements, patronage, fascism, the classics.
Dioniso Punk allows everyone to talk – neighbors, artists, organizers, curators, public philosophers, elected officials, psychologists, sociologists, entrepreneurs, posers, professors, historians, students, an opera singer, the petite bourgeoisie, international visitors and hapless puzzled opinionated locals.”
“The ship Mara Hope, stranded for 30 years on Iracema Beach alongside the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, received a benediction of more color in July thanks to Street Art interventionist and experimenter Narcelio Grud. A mistake in 1985, the ship has become a monument over time, a symbol of the history of the fishing industry, and after so many years a symbol of personal history for people who have grown up with it.”
“A nice homemade video this week by New Zealand painter Owen Dippie’s talented wife Erin, who documented his trip to New York and LA. Without the hype this gives you an idea what it is like to be a tourist here, and it is good to see the experience through the eyes of a loving partner.”
“We debuted this video by Priest Fontaine live for the Brooklyn Museum audience with Faile and actual chills went up people’s spines. No lie. Now you can see it too here online Capturing the current Times Square as county fair with mountains of screens flashing images around the Selfie Stick Forest, all corporate creepy and still sleezey – Fontaine evokes the magic that Faile is, as well as the pure industry that it takes to make their art work. Also good to remember that it was a hot and humid overnight installation that started at 8pm and ended around 10 the following morning.”
Your Tour Through Dismaland with Butterfly and Lars Pederson
“The views are sadly hilarious, pure sarcasm and commentary on issues and behaviors. If Street Art is meant sometimes to hold a mirror to us as we pass by, this is a genuine funhouse of mirrors at every turn. Of course, this isn’t Street Art – its site-specific contemporary art – and many of the artists are street artists, but not all. Butterfly and Pederson discuss the installations as they encounter them and the viewer feels at though they have gotten a true sense of the wonderful world of Dismal.”
Ugangprosjektet 2015 in Drammen, Norway. A Film by Selina Miles
“UGANG2015 in Drammen, Norway had two weeks of murals from Street Artists and graffiti writers in late August. A relatively new event curated by local graffiti artist Eric Ness Christiansen (Eazy), the program is already slamming. A small town of 70,000 about 40 minutes from Oslo, they know how to take care of details, including inviting the inimitable Selina Miles to come and shoot it. Any questions?”
Brandalism Takes Over Bus Stops to Counter Cop21 Misinformation
“Here is a brief intro video about Brandalism’s answer to UN COP21 – and the first of what will surely be more videos about this massive effort by 82 Artists from 19 different countries to take back public space and the public dialogue about climate change from those who are skillfully employing misinformation and bending laws to enable them to continue making money at all costs.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Brandalism Takes Over Bus Stops to Counter Cop21 Misinformation
2. OLEK Working Women
3. Madame Edwarda: R.ö vs Höy
4. Lilys – High Writer at Home by Joey Garfiled and Stephen Powers
5. Miss Me By Pablo Aravena
6. So Much Winning! So Much! Head Spinning Winning!
BSA Special Feature: Brandalism Takes Over Bus Stops to Counter Cop21 Misinformation
Misinformation is an entire industry today. It’s goal is usually not to make you active, but make you passive.
Here is a brief intro video about Brandalism’s answer to UN COP21 – and the first of what will surely be more videos about this massive effort by 82 Artists from 19 different countries to take back public space and the public dialogue about climate change from those who are skillfully employing misinformation and bending laws to enable them to continue making money at all costs. “Two days before the launch of the UN COP21 Climate Conference, 600 posters were installed in outdoor media spaces across Paris – to challenge the corporate takeover of COP21 and to reveal the connections between advertising, the promotion of consumerism and climate change.”
OLEK Working Women
A new conceptual performance piece by OLEK and a troupe of Olekians on a sunny day in Union Square.
“The artwork is destroyed as it is created, and created out of its own destruction in an infinite loop. Like the perpetual punishments of Sisyphus or Prometheus, a woman’s work is never finished. Subject and object, static and metamorphic, old and new, enduring and fleeting, public and private, concealed and revealed, traditional and innovative, decay and renewal, are all interchangeable.”
Madame Edwarda: R.ö vs Höy
“Why do you do that – you see, she said, I am God.”
But seriously, this is really scored well, even if we don’t know what it is about. Something related to cutting off your head during coitus. Not your average Friday, is it?
Lilys – High Writer at Home by Joey Garfiled and Stephen Powers
Out of print for 20 years, this newly re-released album is coupled with Stephen Powers’ project “A Love Letter to Philadelphia” from a couple years back. As you get carried my the haze of the soundtrack you will swear that these two projects were originally with each other in mind.
“From the limited 21st anniversary vinyl LP pressing of the 1994 album, Eccsame the Photon Band – Lilys’ etheric second full-length album has become a shoegaze collector’s favorite.”
“When I started going on the streets, it just felt like the ultimate cry for freedom” says Montreal based Miss Me.
So Much Winning! So Much! Head-Spinning Winning!
Yes, you knew something sounded familiar. Those are your drunk neighbors winning over there. More biting revelatory critique than an hour and half of SNL, frankly.
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
