A great beginning to summer with the Bushwick Collective Block Party this weekend – an enduring event that features ever larger hip hop names performing right on the street amidst a sea of street art and graffiti that still characterizes this Brooklyn neighborhood. Long gone are the naysayers and those who thought this international democratic people’s art movement was in the purview of a few tastemakers and gatekeepers. Joe showed that this form of creative expression was meant by the people to be for the people, and every year thousands traipse through to enjoy it.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Cycle, Faile, Lexi Bella, HOACS, Roachi, Duel, Trace, Zaone, Ligama, Carrasco, Minus, Foursome Crew, Feroz, Gerik Duenas, Rich Vagos, Loste, and HEFS.
We return today to the streets of Paris for Dispatch 2 with Norwegian photographer Tor Staale Moen, who tells us that the streets are alive with stencils and aerosol paintings as much as ever. Our first Paris report a couple of days ago focused on the presentation of the female form and energy by street artist in this city. Today, it’s time for the guys.
Here we begin with one of the country’s most well-known stencil masters, C215. His portraits of unknown street dwellers, as well as important historical figures, have graced walls, mailboxes… even national postal stamps. Here C215 honors the memory of a French son of a Polish immigrant to France during the second world war, Samuel Émile Adoner (known as Milo Adoner). Deported with 7 members of his family by convoy in 1942 from the Drancy camp to Auschwitz, he was the only one to survive the Holocaust- along with an older sister who was not deported. With the help of activists and historians and artists like C215, the street can be a platform for the open exchange of ideas – and histories.