Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. The Laughing Heart – by Bradley Bell, Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits, and Grizzly Bear 2. METAL LOVERS via Spray Daily 3. HELLO FROM BERLIN – AGAIN – CTM.IOC CREWS via I Love Graffiti
BSA Special Feature: The Laughing Heart – Bradley Bell, Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits, and Grizzly Bear
It makes us very happy to share this animated short film by Bradley Bell, “The Laughing Heart”, based on a poem by Charles Bukowski, as we publish the first edition of BSA Film Friday for 2023. We believe that your life and the choices you make determine what makes you unique and who you are. Stay honest and authentic with yourself; the mistakes that you will make will be as valuable as the victories you will celebrate.
METAL LOVERS via Spray Daily
From whole cars to whole trains, the Metal Lovers Crew staked their claim in ’21 and ’22. The choice of dramatic music here makes it extra impressive.
HELLO FROM BERLIN – AGAIN – CTM.IOC CREWS via I Love Graffiti
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. The Artist Who Paints Folks on the Street, Faces of Santa Ana 2. Meet the Artists Changing the face of New Brighton 3. Banksy – Rage, Flower Thrower NFT…but for free (2022)
BSA Special Feature: Painting People Experiencing Homelessness
You can use your talents to build walls or build bridges. It’s up to you. Brian Peterson shows through his actions that art is a force for good, for healing, and even to pay someone’s bills in the process.
The Artists Who Paints Folks on the Street
Faces of Santa Ana
Meet the Artists Changing the face of New Brighton
Doug from Fifth Wall returns to New Brighton a few years after his first video here to find how the interaction between art and public space has begun to transform the town’s image of itself. Interesting to hear the primary proponent of the public art program here to say that success is contingent on a public/private partnership here in a seaside resort in Wallasey, Merseyside, England.
“Maybe this is exactly the model that we should be looking towards,” says Doug of the highly individualized approach the businesses and residence are taking toward building a community and an economy. Set your clocks; he’s looking like he might be moving in shortly. Maybe he’ll begin Nuart New Brighton and ask Juxtapoz to run some programming for a few days?
Banksy – Rage, Flower Thrower NFT…but for free (2022)
Banksy – Rage, Flower Thrower NFT… but for free (2022) – or so goes this murky offer of an NFT posted right now on Open Sea for the next three days. More confusingly, the press release for it is over a year old. – whereupon it infers that the original image is shot by Andrew Bayles but has copyright attempted by the International Street Art Man of Mystery himself.
Regardless of the veracity of any of this storytelling – and we have not way of verifying it – the animation is attractive and well done. Good luck to all the parties!
“This is not an official Banksy NFT… read below for more information. Press Release: October 14, 2021 “Attack Attack Attack” is a non-fungible token for sale on OpenSea, the world’s first and largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and NFTs. This digital creation is an artwork co-signed by Unikz, a digital artist from Bristol and Andrew Bayles, a photographer from Leeds (UK). The two artists created a digital artwork that reveals a little more about the identity of the street artist Banksy. This NFT is unique because it allows you to discover part of Banksy’s creative process. Indeed, the work, which is a digital video loop of 50 seconds, begins on the world-famous image of Banksy’s “Rage, the Flower Thrower” and then a picture representing a man throwing a molotov cocktail appears in overprinting. This photo, taken in Leeds (UK) in 1987, is obviously the base image that was used to make the famous Banksy stencil in 2005. Banksy has recently tried unsuccessfully to register this artwork as his personal trademark. The photo, shot by Andrew Bayles, was published in 1987 in an anarchist newspaper, called Attack Attack Attack, produced and distributed anonymously due to the radical information it contained. According to the artwork authors, only a member of the punk / anarchist movement in the late 1980s in England could have seen and used this image to create the famous stencil. This relaunches the discussions about the past of Banksy. According to the artist’s official biography, he was only 12 years old in 1987. It’s hard to imagine him as a punk, at that age, reading anarchist newspapers. Coïncidence? in 1988, few months after the publication of the photo in “Attack, Attack, Attack” newspaper, Robert del Naja (born in 1965) created the trip hop band, Massive Attack. The non-fungible token, certified by Verisart is available for sale on OpenSea, including an original photo print signed by the artists.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Edward Hopper’s New York. Via Whitney Museum of American Art 2. The enveloping work of Barbara Kruger: MoMA 3. Man Who Turned Trash Into Family Treasures / The Garbage Man
BSA Special Feature: New York Through Edward Hopper’s Eyes
“The city of New York was Edward Hopper’s home for nearly six decades (1908–67). For Hopper, New York was a city that existed in the mind as well as on the map, a place that took shape through lived experience, memory, and the collective imagination. It was, he reflected late in life, ‘the American city that I know best and like most.’ “
Edward Hopper’s New York. Via Whitney Museum of American Art
The enveloping work of Barbara Kruger: MoMA
“Margarita Lizcano Hernandez, curatorial assistant in the Department of Drawings and Prints, takes a close look at Barbara Kruger’s ‘Thinking of -You-. I Mean -Me-. I Mean You.’ and describes the sometimes overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by the colossal installation.”
A Man Who Turned Trash Into Family Treasures / The Garbage Man / A film by Laura Gonçalves.
At a long table laden with traditional dishes, a family shares fond memories of an uncle, who fled Portugal’s dictatorship and became a garbage collector in Paris, in this film by Laura Gonçalves.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Luna Luna – The Art Amusement Park Returns 2. Gera 1 Combines Glitch and Figurative in Berlin 3. “Forever Is Now” Second Edition at Giza Pyramids via Art D’Egypte
BSA Special Feature: Luna Luna – The Art Amusement Park Returns
35 years after its first creation, the Luna Luna is resurrected from its original home in Hamburg in 1987 to tour other cities. Inspired by a traditional luna park,the original works like a Keith Haring Carousel, the Basquiat Ferris Wheel, and many other features designed by about 28 more artists like Kenny Scharf, Roy Lichtenstein, and David Hockney, they called this “The world’s first and only art amusement park.”
“As long as I can remember, I was always interested in distortion,” says Gera1 about this new mural in Berlin, which he says combines elements of figurative painting with glitch art. He doesn’t mention his sublime sense of color.
“Forever Is Now” Second Edition at Giza Pyramids via Art D’Egypte
Forever is Now .02 showcased ambitious works by Therèse Antoine (Egypt), Natalie Clark (USA/Spain), Mohammed Al Faraj (Saudi Arabia), Emilio Ferro (Italy), Zeinab Al Hashemi (UAE), JR (France), Ahmed Karaly (Egypt), Liter of Light, eL Seed (Tunisian), SpY (Spanish), Pascale Tayou (Cameroon) and Jwan Yosef (Syria/Sweden).
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. BANKSY in Borodyanka, Ukraine 2. The Wanderers – Dabs & Myla. A Film by Selina Miles 3. The Wanderers – Elliott Routledge. A Film by Selina Miles
BSA Special Feature: BANKSY in Borodyanka, Ukraine
Banky installations by this point can feel quite staged, right down to the manner of their unveiling. Here in the Ukraine where his recent works have been presented, the unstaged and personal qualities of this short video brings a devastating rawness to the art/activism event. Without pontificating, the near-tears Ukranian, the self-grooming cat, the quietness of people snapping photos – all tell us so much about this moment.
BANKSY in Borodyanka, Ukraine
The Wanderers – DabsMyla. A film by Selina Miles
The Australian-originated Los Angeles-based duo, DabsMyla, returns down under to paint a mural in the heart of Surry Hills, Sydney. In this episode of Selina Miles’ The Wanderers, we see the duo paint a 20-meter-tall mural as an homage to one of their earliest artistic inspirations, Brett Whiteley.”
Elliott Routledge, The Wanderers
“Abstract Artist, Elliott Routledge, journeys to a remote Aboriginal community in the Tiwi Islands. We follow Elliott as he paints a series of artworks, and learns about the artistic history, cultural practices, and techniques of local indigenous artists.” The Wanderers
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. The Wanderers – Rone. A Film by Selina Miles 2. The Wanderers – Georgia Hill. A Film by Selina Miles 3. The Wanderers – Amok Island. A Film by Selina Miles 4. Barkaa – Blak Matriarchy
BSA Special Feature: The Wanderers -Rone, by Selina Miles
This edition of BSA Film Friday is dedicated to The Wanderers, a brilliantly human film documentary series by filmmaker Selina Miles. Today we share with you three of the six films. We published one of the films last week here – the film dedicated to Guido Van Helten. In next week’s edition of BSA Film Friday we’ll bring you the two remaining films.
“Directed by Selina Miles & Produced by Drew Macdonald This 6 x 10-minute documentary series explores Art as Adventure. The Wanderers profile six of Australia’s most exciting street artists as they take their work on the road to unexpected and unusual parts of Australia – discovering the influence of a new environment on their individual artistic styles.
From the Central Highlands of Tasmania to a farming town in regional NSW, a remote community in the Northern Territory to the islands in the Pacific, The Wanderers celebrates the amazing diversity of people and places found in Australia.
Along with a huge range of locations, each of the 6 artists featured in The Wanderers takes on a unique personal challenge. Whether reflecting on inspiration, learning more about Australian art history, or celebrating communities that often go unnoticed. This is a series about the discovery of self; of new cultures and places; and of Australia’s next generation of contemporary artists.”
The Wanderers – Rone
“Melbourne Artist, Rone, travels to Port Vila, Vanuatu to update a cyclone-damaged wall painted several years earlier. He creates a series of portraits of local women, hoping to use his skills to form relationships with people from each neighborhood.”
The Wanderers – Amok Island
“Amok Island journeys to the Heron Island Research facility on the Great Barrier Reef, learning about the ecology of the area and seeking inspiration via underwater photography, before painting a mural at a nearby abandoned marine park.” The Wanderers
The Wanderers – Georgia Hill.
“Georgia Hill brings her monochromatic lettering and pattern work to the isolated central highlands of Tasmania, where she explores the history and remoteness of the area before painting a 10-meter mural in the historic Hydro town of Tarraleah.” The Wanderers
Barkaa – Blak Matriarchy
A powerful message and a dope track from Barkaa.
“Blak Matriarchy is a testament to Blak women… That through all the pain and trauma we carry we cannot be broken and we are still here! It’s a middle finger to all the people who discriminated against me and who were racist towards me growing up, a testimony to the strength I hold within myself and the power I feel as a Malyangapa, Barkindji woman.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. The Wanderers – Guido van Helten. A Film by Selina Miles 2. Leon Keer. “Misfit” 3. Duality: A graffiti story. Trailer
BSA Special Feature: The Wanderers – Guido van Helten. A Film by Selina Miles
We focus today on one episode of a brilliantly human street art-related video-short series on artists called The Wanderers, directed by Selina Miles. Today we follow the muralist/portraitist/photographer Guido Van Helten as he travels to a small town in Australia to pursue stories, personalities, and a 10-car project on the train. Train writing, indeed!
“I am very interested in portraiture in a documentary style,” he says as you watch him almost tentatively introduce himself to new people. “I was a painter first, and now through this style of working, I’ve become very interested in meeting people and photography. Now I’m pushing myself to involve that in the process.”
A young veteran of storytelling, Miles allows the details of the scene to illustrate unique aspects of life and the people here. Without gawking, the subjects and their environments, and their body language are observed with the same respectful eye that the artist has as well. Each person responds differently, each brave to allow the film camera to capture them while Van Helton establishes a rapport. Ironically, he’s not comfortable with the process himself. “Sometimes this is challenging for me to introduce myself to people.”
These hand paintings of his subject’s eyes on the cars of a train may remind you of the photography of JR plastered across surfaces everywhere with a sense of spectacle – but these take such adept technical skill rendered with a unique warmth that it wouldn’t be fair to compare. Van Helten doesn’t even seem sure what his agenda is, aside from connecting in a human way to another.
Each chapter of this short film illustrates the connections, and you are rewarded with sumptuous sweeping views of the final results as well as the disarming pleasure the artist takes from it. “I enjoyed the idea of not knowing what reaction it could have with the people who see it,” he says of the project. “No one has any idea what this is going to do in the town. Maybe nothing, maybe something. Maybe someone will go home and say, ‘You know what I saw today! – Something really strange on the side of a train.’ I think that is exciting.”
The Wanderers – Guido van Helten. A Film by Selina Miles
Leon Keer. “Misfit”
Anamorphic street artist Leon Keer does a special project here at Château du Taureau in Baie de Morlaix France. His 3D floor painting ‘MISFIT’, is a reference to the previous use of this compound as a prison for the aristocracy – or at least certain members of their families who might cast them into dishonor.
“Under the Ancien Régime, most of the prisoners at the Château were Breton aristocrats,” says Leon’s description of the previous residents, “which were put in prison at the request of their own families, anxious to avoid dishonor. Libertinism, misalliance, madness, and an immoderate taste for alcohol or gambling could certainly lead to a forced stay at the Château during those days.”
Duality: A graffiti story. Trailer
A new film striking at the heart of the graffiti practice – the fact that many writers have a ‘straight’ life that doesn’t exactly run parallel to their night-time illegal escapades can in hand.
Director by Ryan Dowling, the stories of many are illustrated by the testimony of a small handful of writers who clearly elucidate the complexities of a form of expression that runs the gamut between criminalized and celebrated. Featuring a cast of DUAL, SLOKE ONE, JABER, MERES ONES, and NEVER – the stories vary, but the narratives return to foundational truths even as the scene evolves. Well produced and executed, Duality will join the list of ‘must-see’ documentaries about graffiti, street art, and everything in between.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Shepard Fairey – The Intersection of Art and Music 2. La Fuite – Pantonio. Via Street Art Fest Grenoble – Alpes 2022 3. Iran’s anti-Hijab protests enter 5th Week
BSA Special Feature: Shepard Fairey – The Intersection of Art and Music
It’s an advertisement for something but Shepard’s recollections of making the connection between art and music, specifically between the punk era and its effect on his creatively formative years, go a long way to illustrate his recurring themes and aesthetic. Interesting that the title is part of a Sound and Vision series, the same theme that is currently running through Faile’s work at their new club downtown, Deluxx Fluxx; “an immersive visual and audial art space and arcade”.
Shepard Fairey – The Intersection of Art and Music – Via Syng
La Fuite – Pantonio. Via Street Art Fest Grenoble – Alpes 2022
A gentle flickering flyby of “The Flight” by Pantonio for the Street Art Fest Grenoble in the Alps.
“Escape or think about the moment a single gesture changed direction,” says Pantonio.”When resistance collaborates in the opposite direction. Each one with his poetry or his determination”
Directed by Olivier Ruggiu Video Assistant: Yannis Lefrançois Drone by Olivier Ruggiu, Images by Oliver Ruggiu.
Iran’s anti-Hijab protests enter 5th Week
In the category of art in the streets, free speech, and protest; We focus on the fifth week of widespread anti-Hijab protests that continue to rock Iran amid the rising calls for the country’s leadership to step down. Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei has now issued a warning to the protesters- as he speaks to largely audiences of men, while the protesters are, in the majority, women.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. A tour through L’ESSENTIEL 2. Faith XLVII in Boston 3. A Team On Their Own: Maya Women Fight Inequality Through Baseball.
BSA Special Feature: A tour through L’ESSENTIEL
Updating the 2010’s magpie approach to group show curation of the abandoned industrial palace, L’ESSENTIEL presents a video tour on par with the metaverse – since we are all still awaiting a functional version of that much-ballyhooed digital world we will expect to inhabit.
Here you find a tone-on-tone parade of installations by some of the best in the street art/graffiti game- a common palette and a mostly 2D execution in the spaces that helps keep it all cohesive. Aiding, or distracting, your trip is the glitchy electronic world-wailing soundtrack and the pixel-thin placards that pop out of concrete seams to introduce the pieces hanging in the air nearby. The show is impressive and gives a wholistic aura. The question is, does this ephemerous collection exist here in the physical world or in the digital one?
L’ESSENTIEL: A Collective Experience of The Ephemerous Art. Graffiti / Street Art
Faith XLVII in Boston
“Perhaps you could dream something that happens in the future,” says Faith.
A Team On Their Own: Maya Women Fight Inequality Through Baseball. Via The New Yorker
In Melissa Fajardo’s documentary short “Las Diablillas: The Mayan Rebels,” Mexican baseball players challenge the restrictive gender norms of their small town.
If you think you are being held back, the first step may be to look in the mirror. The second is to look for kindred spirits.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. INDIGENO – Torino 2022 / Via Il Cerchio E Le Gocce 2. Procez – Berlin Metro Graffiti via Spray Daily 3. The End of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch / The Ocean Cleanup
BSA Special Feature: INDIGENO – Torino 2022 / Via Il Cerchio E Le Gocce
Oh the self-possessed, funky style and ease that the Italians have as they stroll through this video with a dirty soul guitar twang and a punchy drum track laying the backdrop for them. With each of this year’s inaugural INDIGENO Festival artists in Torino giving a brief narrative about their work, the camera pulls, sweeps, floats, zooms and shudders with equal amounts of smoothness and swagger. Hopefully, the mural art lives up to the dramatic presentation. It does.
INDIGENO – Torino 2022 / Via Il Cerchio E Le Gocce
Procez – Berlin Metro Graffiti via Spray Daily
A video postcard from Berlin and their signature yellow public metro trains, each festooned by a different writer against a dark party bass beat. The interspersals of comedic bits of video make it human, or, in the case of two pigeons going at it on a train platform in broad daylight, animal.
The End of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch / The Ocean Cleanup
Let this mark the beginning of the end for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch… Yes, there is the 3rd World War well underway, but we can still focus on positive solutions to human-made problems. Can you?
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. “Gilded Darkness” Fondazione Nicola Trussardi 2. Edoardo Tresoldi. Monumento. Procuratie Vecchie. Venice, Italy. 3. How To Make A Concrete Bike. Via DIY 4. Britain’s Long Goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II. via The New Yorker
BSA Special Feature: “Gilded Darkness” Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
“An Omni-comprehensive, multimedia spectacle,” says Massimiliano Gioni of Nari Ward’s ‘Gilded Darkness’ now on display at Centro Balneare Romano in Milan. The artistic director and the artist speak about the new exhibition that is on view until October 17th.
It’s part of an ongoing opportunity for artists to conceive of and build their sculptures and other installations in an environment that blends seamlessly into street culture, says Gioni.
“We rediscover forgotten or hidden places in the neighborhoods of Milan and invite artists to intervene in these very charged and unusual spaces. The center is a complex of buildings dating back to the 1920s; a very beautiful mixture of metaphysical architecture and rationalist and modernist architecture,” he says.
“Monumental architecture is a composition that neglects function in order to ritualize a thought by means of a three-dimensional work. The history of peoples is that of a hereditary flow of rhetorical figures which continuously recur in cycles; they redefine their own meanings and establish symbolisms that we have not only learned to read but which, generation after generation, we have absorbed as a sort of latent language of the collective unconscious.”
How To Make A Concrete Bike. Via DIY
Questions answered. That’s our job here. You were dying to learn how to make a concrete bike. You’re welcome.
Britain’s Long Goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II. Via The New Yorker
The largest funeral in modern memory, this week people said goodbye to the Queen
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
