Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Not much to say this week, except we’re all in the thick of it and 20,000 are dead in the US.
Stay positive, stay strong, say a prayer for the families who have lost someone and the medical personnel who are working so hard. Happy Easter! Happy Passover!
Check out Andrea Bocelli singing live from Milan today. Love to you all.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring P.V, Devils Fools, Hoacs, and Patrick Picou Harrington.
The numbers of sick and dying continue to climb this week in New York, and so does our determination.
And our appreciation. Stuck inside a building full of artists and weirdos, we hang our heads and hands out the window to clap loudly at 7 o’clock, our Hasidic neighbors across the street gathered on their tiny verandas to do the same. United in our illness, fears, and pain, we are reminded of our common heroes; doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, grocery store workers, restaurant workers, truck drivers, sanitation workers, friends, neighbors and colleagues
“I keep a saucepan and spoon at my window to join in the 7 pm clapping every night,” says photographer Martha Cooper as she describes her solo venture out the window while her cat Melia most likely hides under the bed. “People have even started beating drums. Of course, I never cook in the saucepan but it was my dear mom’s and I remember her cooking in it so I think of her when I’m beating it.”
“The healthcare workers deserve more than applause,” she adds. Amen.
Also, applause can go to at least one landlord in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Mario Salerno reportedly has waived the rent for April, relieving hundreds of people from fear and stress during this economic crash.
Elsewhere in Brooklyn, tenants allege their “Landlord Wants To “Take Advantage” Of Coronavirus To Deregulate Loft Law Units. ” Egad.
Bottom line is, we need BIG thinkers, BIG proposals, and BIG solutions for the hundreds of thousands of people who cannot pay the rent in this expensive city – and around the world. We need a Rent Forgiveness Jubilee, a Universal Basic Income and an actual Infrastructure building mass jobs program. The idea is not going to come from all the millionaires in the White House, the Congress, or the Senate. If people get desperate enough, these changes will be born from the street.
Let’s keep positive, safe, and strong as we weather what comes next.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Berlin Kidz, Chris RWK, City Kitty, Darla Kitty, David Saenz, Food Baby Soul, Surface of Beauty, The Postman Art, TiHumph, Martha Cooper and TV Boy.
Highest claims for unemployment in our history. The best day on the Stock Market since 1933. People won’t get relief from the government for weeks and many live paycheck to paycheck. Typically one might predict these are conditions for a domino effect that sets in motion a revolution, if you’ve read history books. Already there are talks about mass rent strikes for April.
Meanwhile, our neighborhood in Brooklyn is in the code red zone on the maps for Covid-19 outbreak in New York; so you’ll forgive us if we don’t go outside to capture fresh new Street Art for a while. We did have to leave once this week for a friend’s medical emergency (not the virus, thankfully) but we’re back on self-quarantine. Much respect to all medical personnel all across the world.
So, as long as we’re able, we’re going to publish work from the street. But please do send us what you see, what you capture – maybe out the window. But don’t put yourself at risk, or others.
We have to flatten this curve and it will take us all to do it.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring DeGrupo, 1UP Crew, Gris, Hellon Wheels, Jeff Kowalsky, Laszlo, LOOK, Joan Aguilo, Seco, The Brujo, and Yiannis Bellis.
We’re off the street now, the BSA team, as New York City goes into lock-down mode in the face of the global Covid19 virus pandemic.
We know that our medical infrastructure will be overwhelmed, because it was broken apart systematically into a thousand tiny pieces years ago. Unlike centralized medical care that many other countries have, it has been only available to some of us and usually at a great cost that outstrips our abilities to provide for our families.
Now, as New York faces the prospect of becoming completely overwhelmed for months, we see that even basic testing, medical supplies, beds, and personnel cannot be pulled together fast enough through a decentralized profit-based system. This isn’t political – this is life. Unfortunately this is also death.
So if we do get sick, we’re not even thinking of going to a hospital. If some of our older friends and relatives get sick, we’re hoping that there will be enough money and resources to serve their needs. But the signs are not good here in the country with the highest GDP in the world. Makes you wish there was Medicare for All right?
So, as long as we’re able, we’re going to publish work from the street. But for the first time since we began publishing 12 years ago, the new shots on the street will also need to come from you – since we are quarantined. Please send us what you see, what you capture – maybe out the window. But don’t put yourself at risk, or others.
We have to flatten this curve and it will take us all to do it.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 1UP Crew, 907, Fours, Kuma, Pork, Pøbel, Poi Everywhere, Raf Mata Art, Smells, Stres, The Act of Love, The Postman Art, and Zexor.
We begin with this educational and artful animation by Juan Delcan & Valentina Izaguirre
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Only two weeks ago we were making jokes here about the NYC plastic bag ban and Coronavirus. Now the city, state, and federal government are in official states of emergency. What will this city look like in another two weeks?
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring City Kitty, Erdogan Terrorist, Lego Party, Little Lucky, LMNOPI, Lunge Box, Messy Fart, Neon Savage, Sara Lynne Leo, The Mushroom, and Urbanimal.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
New Yorkers are a fearless, foolish, and Faustian lot, this much was in evidence during opening nights at the art fairs this first week of March, a month of promise.
Coronavirus didn’t put a damper on the art-weirdo festivities and the artsy sorts all put on their creatively festooned frocks and went out in droves to celebrate art, the artists, and the spirit of creativity.
The rite of going to the fairs can be exhausting, not just physically but also mentally. What are all of these people thinking? How does it reflect on the current socio-politico-psychological state of society, our lifestyles, our outlook at each other and the world? Is art something to facilitate understanding or to wear like a badge or signifier of status in your pool of influence?
The plethora of art New Yorkers was treated to this week (and weekend) becomes overwhelming to the senses and after a while, everything seems to morph into one giant abstract, endlessly self-referential canvas.
Images Of The Week today will look a bit different. We’re inside the white walls. No street art and graffiti. We thought we’d show you two shows at ends of the art fair spectrum. The Armory Show is one, and Spring Break is the other.
There is greatness in both, both serve their audience, and both and have their own ethos and philosophy and indeed two very different business models. One is 107 years old and one is 11. Both say that they are international, innovative, and dynamic. One calls itself ‘premiere’. The other calls itself ‘visionary’.
As always we love getting lost in the maze of galleries, curators, artists, buyers, observers, performers, and attitudes – and being surprised by the art along the way.
Here is a selection of some things that caught our eye, a very different set of images for the week, this week featuring Amina Robinson, Andrew Ohanesian, Asif Hoque, Dorothea Lange, Dustin Lee, Gustavo Diaz, Jessica Lictenstein, Kate Kingbell, Kehinde Wiley, Lezley Saar, Liliana Porter, Pieter Hugo, and Susan MacWilliams.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
The New York State Plastic Bag Ban is in effect March 1! That’s today.
This is troublesome because New Yorkers have started to use their single use plastic grocery bags to wrap their feet, hands, and entire heads before going outside to protect them from the Coronavirus.
Just kidding, of course. It’s not like people are freaking out about the Bag Ban or anything.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 1Up Crew, Blanca Romero, Captain Eyeliner, Flash, Frank Ape, M Quan, Makh21, Neon Savage, Neckface, Praxis, Pure Genius, RAW, Shiny, The Brujo, Theo, Yiannis Bellis.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
People came together at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to remember the victims of a racist attack in Hanau this week, vowing to stem the tide of right-wing movements in Germany and elsewhere. The more you see the remnants of the ugly past rearing their heads, the more determined we will all have to be to unify and celebrate our differences and similarities with equal enthusiasm.
Another promising sign of unity and community for us was the opening for the showcase of works donated by artists to benefit Daniel Weissbach aka DTAGNO aka COST88 in Berlin on Friday night. The musical/art-making performances were enervating and stirring – and there were so many people that the crowd on the sidewalk outnumbered the crowd in the gallery area. Please support – The online auction starts tonight and is refreshed with a new collection of art pieces donated by the old skool and new in a hybrid of genres. Please check out www.getwelldaniel.de
We also saw this incredibly well designed and curated show called WALLS at Urban Spree – with powerhouse names in graffiti, street art, contemporary art, and even a couple of pieces of antiquity, all examining the implications and ramifications of figurative and literal walls. The essays in the small catalogue further explore. More on this show later here but please go see it if you can.
One big find this week was this amazing collaboration of pieces on a wall with OS Gemeos and various other dignitaries atop an art supply store in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Hope you enjoy the show here from our Director of Photography, Jaime Rojo.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 1Up Crew, Berlinsky, Black Land, Daze, ISE.THR, Kevle, Marina Zumi, Mira, Mode2, Os Gemeos, Shine, TFB, The Birds, VLK, WENU, and Zabou.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street featuring Add Fuel, Almost Over Keep Smiling, BR163, Crash, Degrupo, Disordered, Early Riser, finDAC, Fours, Jason Naylor, Leleus, JL, Maya Hayuk, Obey, Sara Lynne Leo, Surface of Beauty, Telmo & Miel.
Okay, you are not likely to find Michaelangelo’s Pietà or Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, but you will serendipitously discover ruddy-cheeked siren or a pointillist Whistler’s Daughter made of plastic beads or a molten chess set or a brutalist architectural model as you scan the surface of the modern city for sculpture.
Easy to overlook as so much bumpy skin on the face of the metropolis, today’s street art sculptures have personality and drama and echoes of the “high art” that may be stuck on the other side of the wall, but here it is for everyone to enjoy. Or destroy.
Whether commercial or diagrammatic or exquisitely ornate, we always appreciate the added dimension that adds to what can be a rather flat “Street Art” scene sometimes – and an excellent entry point into the scene for your friend who is sight-impaired.
Here is a collection of small sculptures from Leipzig to Hong Kong to Moscow and Madrid for you to enjoy.
The pronounced disparities and hypocrisies of society are now on display and on parade in our politics, on our multiple screens, in our bank accounts, our hospitals, our music, our schools, our neighborhoods, and in our Street Art — which again proves an apt and reliable reflection of society, despite the fog.
While our politicians and political machines and corporate media and cultural institutions are now being questioned more openly and often for their alliances, their entrenched classism, and exploitation of the rank-and-file, you can see those dynamics reflected in the messages and alliances that are occurring in Street Art as well – and questioned more often as well.
Will a torrent of populism be unleashed? Will our institutions fall or further erode? Who knows. As ever, one must be vigilant to spot the colorful wolf in populist clothes, often right in front of you in black and white.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street featuring Adam Fu, Albertus Joseph, Anthony Lister, Captain Eyeliner, COSBE, CRKSHNK, JR, Poet Was Taken, Praxis, Sara Lynne Leo, Vivid Trash, Will Power, Wing, and WK Interact.
The ebullient brilliance of the street is what lifts us up in this time of disarray and misdirection. Our collective cognitive dissonance, fed by hired mercenary disinformationists of the oligarchy and their corporate armies, tells us that truth is foggy, or even a lie. No wonder the preponderance of surrealists who are spraying the streets these days. They are merely a reflection of this war on our minds, a war by the way, that you and we are not winning.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Miami, and this time featuring A Lucky Rabbit, Bunny M, Caratoes, City Kitty, CRKSHNK, Insomniak Crew, Koalas of NYC, Lauren YS, The London Police, W3r3on3, and Zio Ziegler.
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
