Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Mystery Man: The Madness of Advertising by Farewell
2. TILT at NUART 2014
3. The London Police in Downtown Hollywood
4. Rubin415 from The Creative Influence
5. Ramiro Davaro-Comas and UndergroundUP
6. Jazzsoon: Portrait of a Brooklyn Hustler
BSA Special Feature: Mystery Man: The Madness of Advertising by Farewell
You ever play that game FREEZE with your friends in the park or in the street? Everybody runs at top speed away from the kid with the ball until he yells “FREEZE!”. Then somebody gets bashed with the ball. Or something like that.
Farewell (that’s his name) did a version of that game recently – surrounded by fluorescence and bars…
“This film took 300,000 photos, riots, wildfires, paintings in abandoned houses, two years and zero graphics to make. It changed my entire life,” says Jeff of this environmental cinematic stadium full of eye candy and awe.
“This film is art for the sake of art. It was made with much generosity, from the people who let me crash on their couches to the people who backed the Kickstarter to people who just wanted to pitch in: thank you. This would not have been possible without your help.
Every spare cent I make goes back into creating art.”
Play it full screen, and it may change your life as well.
Blek le Rat in NYC via Complex
Blek le Rat takes the train out into Bushwick and talks about his work, his history, and some of the Street Art folks on the scene he enjoys.
Narcelio Grud: Free Roses
Mr. Grud is back with a new 3D gift for people in a park. His mobile intervention is part art, part sociology, all heart.
HotBox: Clamo’s Secret Cubby Hole by RTST
Chicagos RTST creative collective are known for their box truck art shows, as well as the creative sense of community that is built into their events. As summer turns to fall and winter, nights like this will keep you warm.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Sofles in Paris
2. Russians Hi-Jack an Electronic Billboard in Hong Kong
3. Kid Acne: The Birth of Hip-Hop
4. RO: “Les Saigneurs”
5. David Zayas: “Animalia” From Tost Films.
BSA Special Feature: Sofles In Paris
Selina Miles has directed a few outstanding videos of Sofles in abandoned warehouses and in this comparatively tame new piece she takes you with style to a couple of quick spots on the streets of Paris, with a cameo at the end from duo Sobekcis. We say quick only because Sofles can knock huge burners out while other guys are still organizing their cans, and because he makes it look effortless. But check the concentration.
Russians Hi-Jack an Electronic Billboard in Hong Kong
‘During our last visit in Hong Kong, not only did we take a lot of awesome pictures, but we also made a video which was shot a few hours before our flight to Tokyo. The venue is the very heart of Hong Kong, a skyscraper with a huge billboard.”
Or so they SAY! God if you ever want your buzz to be instantly killed read the YouTube comments under this video – or any video for that matter.
But it still looks like it is totally possible for billboards to be Hi-Jacked these days. And it looks like a few Go-Pros and a drone can capture all the excitement. Main question remains – why didn’t they put up some pro-revolution message, or a shout out to their favorite band, or at least some guy giving his partner the old Russian sausage up on the screen. C’mon – you’re teenagers aren’t you?
Kid Acne: The Birth of Hip-Hop
One of the few Street Artist rappers out there, Kid Acne gets all Yes Yes Ya’ll on his new wall, a nativity scene to remind us what the upcoming holidayze are all about.
RO: “Les Saigneurs”
You really can’t say that you see many hand painted ink wheatpastes up under an overpass. Usually it’s a giant roller or a series of aerosol works. Here Ro is wheat pasting be-headed figures painted with average studio brushes in an illustration style remniscent of political cartoons near the dawn of the printing press.
Distinctly anti-fashion and pro-collabo D.I.Y. it is nonetheless somewhat difficult to follow with its frequent jump cuts to black and patchy audio, you gotta give Collective Souslesmurs (The Wall Collective) credit for getting out there to break some new ground.
David Zayas: “Animalia” From Tost Films.
“Hablamos un poco con David sobre sus principios como artistas, su motivo y su idea del muralismo dentro de su obra plástica,” says Tost films in this interview with 30 year old Puerto Rican painter David Zayas.
“Being an artist is not just about being talented. It’s a responsibility. and that has made me passionate,” says Zayas.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. LMNOPI: Decolonizing Street Art
2. Mitra Fakhrashrafi: Decolonize History
3. Jessica Sabogal: Decolonizing Street Art
4. SWARM: Decolonizing Street Art
5. Chris Bose: Decolonizing Street Art
BSA Special Feature: Decolonizing Street Art : Five Videos, Five Artists
“All of my work is dealing with recognizing the presence of people who are often ignored,” says Street Artist LMNOPI in this video. In fact each of the five artists this week on BSA Film Friday are addressing the unaddressed.
A simple yet powerful individual voice on the street can amplify the story of another person, or in these cases, many other people. Here laid bare is one of many junctures where it is possible to fall in love with the Street Art scene all over again, as it continues to evolve and reinvent itself.
The recently completed “Decolonizing Street Art” project in Canada this August quietly and loudly gave voice to personal and political, local and international issues as broad as patriarchy and genocide, and as personal as queer identity and being an immigrant.
Told through the voices of people who put their art in the street, the messages are simple, poignant, and meaningful. Tomorrow we’ll give you photos but today you can enjoy this collection of five artists speaking about their work.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. ELLE by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”
2. Royce by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”
3. ESOW, AIKO, KAMI & SASU: Tokyo Art In The Streets MOCAtv
4. ARYZ X FineArts Magazine
BSA Special Double Feature:
The Premiere of ELLE and Royce
Latest releases from DEGA Film series “Wild in the Streets”
BSA Film Friday is proud to premiere not one but TWO new videos this week from the 6 mini-doc series begun by Dega Films two years ago. “The goal of the series is to give the viewer a general glimpse of how the artists work in their environment and their works themselves from a first‐person point of view,” say the Atlanta native founders who settled into the neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn a couple of years ago. That was good time to witness the autonomous street art and graffiti scene that was pumping new stuff out weekly. and the film makers sought out and convinced various Street Artists to allow themselves to be followed and filmed in studio and on the street while doing their work, legal and illegal.
Free of verbal narration the videos concentrate on the actions and place of the artist in a fishbowl of human activity swimming all around them. The selections for soundtrack are increasingly dramatic to build a certain wild tension with the action – perhaps to paint the dramatic cat-and-mouse scenarios that dance in the head of the subject as they lurk in darkness and shadow; at war with / at play with the rest of the world. The most impressive scenes are when there is no music at all, and only the ebbing-flowing of street noise.
This weekend you will have the opportunity to witness a rare running of all 6 parts projected live on the streets! In a box truck fitted with a projector, Dega Films and Breaker Films will be hitting Williamsburg, Bushwick and DUMBO Saturday night and Little Italy Sunday night (free pizza while supplies last). To find out how to hook up with them on the street for some guerilla projecting follow them on Instagram @dega_films.
ELLE by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”
Royce by DEGA Films – “Wild in the Streets”
Tokyo Art In The Streets MOCAtv
While in Norway this month we intersected a few times with Kenichi Yamamura, a film maker from Osaka who was shadowing every move of Toulouse based Street Artist TILT with his camera. Both he and his buddy plan to put out a 10 minute documentary on TILT later this year, which we hope to premiere here for you.
Ken also shared with us this very well done documentary he produced a little while ago with
Director Shinsuke Tatsukawa and Assistant Director Masashi Nagara about the scene in Tokyo, and they trace the path of a number of people who make art on the street there as well. ESOW, AIKO, and the duo KAMI & SASU all speak about the culture and the compelling forces that put them out in the street with paint in hand.
The attention here to small details, textures, composition, and the rhythm of the street quickly transports the viewer – and you become engrossed in the scene at the ground level. Before you know it, this razor sharp story is over, and you realize how the creators’ thought process and storytelling has carried you gently to the end.
ARYZ X FineArts Magazine
Listen to Street Artist/ fine artist ARYZ as he contrasts his work in studio and on enormous walls here. He also speaks candidly about a few economic realities that enter into his equation when pursuing a career and he sheds some unfavorable light on people he calls parasitic who misrepresent themselves when inviting artists to participate in Street Art festivals.
“Some of these guys try to sell the idea that they are supporting this kind of ‘culture’ and in fact the last thing they care about is the artist. These kind of people appear well in front of institutions because they are kind of cheap and they pay nothing to the artist,” he observes.
The Spanish artist also lays plainly the relationship between putting his art on walls and the demand that it creates from people who want to buy his studio work, so clearly there are opportunities created by these scenarios for the artist as well. The lamentations and observations continue through the end credits about the demands of producing large quantities of walls to remain relevant in the mind of the public – and naturally there is the discussion of the meaning of the term “street art” versus “contemporary art”.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Shepard Fairey’s Wall in Little Italy
2. ARYZ for CityLeaks
3. Robots Spraying Out the Window – Jeff Soto
4. Robo-Rainbow
5. NO AD: NYC
6. Edoardi Tresoldi “Pensieri” For street art festival “OLTRE IL MURO” in Sapri, Italy
7. Ryan Seslow / Adam Void * Handstyles
BSA Special Feature:
Shepard Fairey’s Wall in Little Italy
Produced by Element Tree, this is the video by Serringe that just came out a couple of days ago of Shepard Fairey’s recent installation in New York.
ARYZ for CityLeaks
From the CityLeaks Urban Arts Feastival in Cologne, Germany, here is ARYZ speaking about the largest skeleton he’s every painted.
Robots Spraying Out the Window – Jeff Soto
This car manufacturer placed robots in a car to spray the walls to give their product some street cred. While they are busy patting themselves on the back we’re reminded of many street art autonomous innovators who have done this kind of work on the streets before, like Mudlevel, who created the Robo-Rainbow three years ago (below). Self-funded experimenters have jerry-rigged bikes, scooters, contraptions, machines, even drones to spray paint onto walls over the last decade so this brand hasn’t pioneered anything new necessarily. Possibly they just saw the Alexander McQueen robots spraying a dress in 1999.
Cool project nonetheless and props to artist Jeff Soto for his continued good work.
Robo-Rainbow
A splendid look at street ingenuity and over-thinking the simplest job. Clap your hands for MUDLEVEL.
NO AD: NYC
Augmented reality continues to grow into the consumer world and this app will help you to replace those pesky print messages foisted into the public space with, oh, art.
Perhaps soon when you scan one of those hideous new all-car subway advertising campaigns it will trigger a full car piece by Lee Quinones! Now that’s an idea worth pursuing!
Edoardi Tresoldi “Pensieri” For street art festival “OLTRE IL MURO” in Sapri, Italy
A permanent installation of electro-welded net for Oltre il Muro festival, in Sapri, Italy, bends perception depending on the angle it is seen from, especially when shot by drone.
Grafideo = Graffiti + Video * Ryan Seslow / Adam Void * Handstyles
In their second collaboration, this Street Art and graffiti duo offer up their latest experiment combining their interests and skills and feeding them through a series of texturing. “This is what happens when new-school meets old-school, when technology collides with the primal. Real life distortion of spray tags & letter styles merged with animated gifs & overlay filters.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Skewville and Two Dead Rats on Wire
2. Farewell: Velibre
3. Park Rituals” with HOT TEA
4. Project M/5 in Berlin with VNA
BSA Special Feature:
Skewville and Two Dead Rats on Wire
Produced by Dscreet, DUBL Vermin shows one of Brooklyn’s finest and one half of Skewville, Mr. Ad Deville being his usual charming bad-role-model self with a little extra disgustingness thrown in for flava. Just released, this video looks like it was shot about 3-4 years ago, we’re guessing. But after you see the major attraction/s here, you will agree that this is just a timeless piece of art. Sponsored by Heineweiser.
Farewell: Velibre
Farewell is back with a new experiment on the street entitled “Velibre” which may re-calibrate your expectations for transportation.
PARK RITUALS WITH HOTTEA
A more commercial video but yet insightful into the work of Hot Tea and the enthusiastic renaissance man from Montreal, Fred Caron.
Project M/5 in Berlin with VNA
The latest installment of the nascent UN museum Project M is curated by Roland Henry for VNA magazine a great crew of artists. You may also enjoy the community element on display here as Yasha Young and team find an opportunity to give back.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Swoon and Submerged Motherlands
2. Nuart PLUS features BSA FILM FRIDAY LIVE
3. John Fekner: NUART 2014 Teaser Video
4. ETAM CRU: NUART 2014 Teaser Video
5. DOT DOT DOT: NUART 2014 Teaser Video
6. ENTES Y PESIMO in Mexico City
BSA Special Feature: Swoon and Submerged Motherlands
This summer ended with the closing of Swoon’s “Submerged Motherlands” at the Brooklyn Museum; a nine month process that began for us by Jaime visiting her in studio during the cold January days when she began building much of the work that would be installed for the April opening. It has been a genuine pleasure to be associated with this show in some small way, including interviewing Swoon on stage at the museum, writing about the show as it opened, and documenting it. An integrated approach to life, biography, and the conversation on the street, Swoon’s work continues to inspire many others, including us, and we were pleased to see this thoughtful look some of the background of this artist and her work by the folks at The New York Times.
Tonight at Nuart 2014 – Nuart PLUS features BSA FILM FRIDAY LIVE
For all the Norwegian fans of BSA Film Friday and Street Art in general, join us tonight in a theater in downtown Stavanger to see about 18 of our favorites short video pieces from the last year. Explorers, Experimenters, and Anti-Heroes – today’s global Street Art scene is visually rich and full of life! Can’t wait to meet you!
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. VERMIBUS: PROCESS
2. Aeon in Sri Lanka
3. OS Gemeos “Opera of the Moon”
BSA Special Feature: VERMIBUS: PROCESS
We join Vermibus once again with this earlier video and a piano score by Rob Costlow to erase the faces of advertisements and reveal something about their aura, their mummy-like qualities. With gestural movements of the brush soaked in solvent Vermibus transforms the perfect models that evoke emotions and longing into a mutation of same with the brutality of Bacon. Francis Bacon that is.
Aeon in Sri Lanka
On spraycation, and his honeymoon, in Sri Lanka this summer, Mr. Aeon found this abandoned hotel in a gorgeous setting. Damaged ten years ago from the tsunami, the place needed a little paint, which he laid on while wifey was sitting poolside. So this is how it starts.
OS Gemeos “Opera of the Moon”
A primer on Os Gemeos from The Wall Street Journal on the occasion of their exhibit “Opera of the Moon” at Sao Paulo’s Galpão Fortes Vilaça.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
Sea Walls – Murals For Oceans. Isla Mujers, Mexic
HERR BÜTTNER for Whale Rights in Penang, Malaysia
“90 Percent” from Save Our Seas Foundation
BSA Special Feature: Sea Walls – Murals For Oceans
Isla Mujers in Mexico provides a gorgeous venue for these street artists to come and paint. If you didn’t get to go on vacation this year, now is your chance, if only vicariously, to be on spraycation with this talented crew.
“Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans is a ground-breaking street art project created by PangeaSeed to bring the beauty and the plight of the world’s oceans into streets around the globe. By collaborating with internationally renowned artists, we create large-scale murals that focus attention on pressing environmental issues the oceans are facing.”
Street Artist HERR BÜTTNER in Penang, Malaysia
It doesn’t get more D.I.Y. than this home made video showing the process of making and wheat-pasting various oceanic life onto the streets in Penang. Roberto Blanco HERR BUETTNER, who calls himself an “offshore warrior for fish and whale rights all over the world.”
As a side note, the drawings upon which he makes his sea creatures are notices of death from a Chinese newspaper, drawing a direct connection to the death of sealife.
“90 Percent” from Save Our Seas Foundation
Life began in the ocean. Now 90 percent of the big fish, including sharks and rays, are gone. Find out more about the threats facing our oceans and what you can do to help at saveourseas.com
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
Vhils: Diorama
Vhils: Dissection
Saber and ZES/MSK in Downtown LA
Lush and Dscreet in Amsterdam
Cranio in Shoreditch, London
BSA Special Feature: VHILS: Diorama
A tuning fork mystery infused background soundtrack suspends the slowly rotating portrait by Vhils as you hover above and within it like an alien discovering the topography of a vast cityscape. The laser cut Styrofoam enables such an exquisite experience for discovery that feels otherworldly, and then you think, “but how do I clean this when the dust builds up?”
A. Don’t be so plebeian, B. canned air, C. when was the last time you dusted anything, I’m the one who keeps this apartment clean. You just track in dirt from the streets. I just mopped this floor!
Vhils: Dissection
In this other video for the EDP foundation from Vhils, we see a further exploration of materials and construction in reverse. With the echoes of its history washing around, the subway car is dismantled; a furtherance of the concepts that the Street Artist employs in the process of creation.
Saber and ZES/MSK in Downtown LA
Its the simple things in life that make summer in the city such a blast. Like spraying paint with a fire extinguisher and collaborating with your bud on a wall while the sun shines. What’s not to like?
Lush and Dscreet in Amsterdam
And on a different note, the menacing brilliance of this outlaw reeks of mockery and societal unraveling. Yet, sexy and funny and built on a pop culture series of references that you have forgotten or never heard of. You had us at Tricky Dick.
Cranio in Shoreditch, London
In what has evidently been turned into a commercial wall that advertizes with Street Art, this four panel Shoreditch spot is next to continuous traffic and gets plenty of eyeballs. Cranio is featured here popping up and down ladders with a soundtrack of peppy celebration music to promote a gambling site with images of sports.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. This Is Berlin Not New York
BSA Special Feature: This is Berlin, Not New York
“We’re trying to express the poetry of what we are doing in a non-traditional way”
New York collectivist artist stories are still happening thank God, even if the midsummer bleached out sun of an August day on tenement bricks awakens you now in Ridgewood, Queens or Bedstuy, Brooklyn now instead of the Lower East Side or Williamsburg.
But why experience the creative chaos here only when you can find an equally tilted staircase in a Berlin neighborhood, and even more abandoned possibilities just by climbing on a plane at JFK? The Antagonists Movement, a self formed crew (or gang) of 10 artists were inspired to pick up their collected works and ideas and transport them to Berlin in ’07 to mount shows and make art and meet people and sell t-shirts.
We’re so drawn to this story because the collective we were part of called “Open Ground” on Grand Street in Williamsburg did an amazingly similar cultural exchange with Wedding in ’05 with an artists group there and they also came to BK to mount a show in our space. We called it a “Williamsburg Wedding” and even then both these sister neighborhoods were beginning to feel the twinkling fingers of gentrification. We all could begin to feel it getting the upper hand; an increased call for the professionalization of art, and dwindling space to experiment and fail and experiment and succeed.
So when we saw the unpolished cacaphony of Ethan Minkers film, comprised of low-fi video and stills and doodles and animation and sound quality that veers from ditch to highway to hallway, we swooned. We knew these poems of discovery were inscribed on his heart as they are on the hearts of many artists still. The film stands on its own as a collection of events and conversations and collaborative craziness, which when stitched together with blunt instruments and colorful yarn creates a comfortable quilt on which to crash on the floor next to your friend who is on the couch.
This is Berlin, but really this state of mind is stateless.
Thanks and congratulations to these folks: Arturo Vega, Ted Riederer, Ethan H. Minsker, Richard Allen, Brett Farkas, James Rubio, Un Lee, and Crispy T.
Screenplay By: Ethan H. Minsker Directed By:Ethan H. Minsker
Produced By: Antagonist Movement.
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
