All posts tagged: Doug Gillen

BSA Film Friday: 09.14.17

September 14, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. “GIGANTES CERVECEROS” by Miquel Wert
2. Shepard Fairey and Johnny Cash on 50th Anniversary of “Folsom”
3. PasteUp Festival in Berlin
4. Yemeni Street Artist Murad Subay on Fifth Wall
5. Rocco And His Brothers Crash the the Party at The Police Station

BSA Special Feature: “GIGANTES CERVECEROS” by Miquel Wert

A year ago we were watching artist Miquel Wert balancing awkward family dynamics in Barcelona and today he’s painting about beer.

We enjoy watching the progression of the portraiture across these vertical fermentation tanks over about 375 square meters of space. Part of a private gig with the client, the artist chose four tradespeople involved in the production of beer to adorn these tanks in Zaragoza, Spain.

Shepard Fairey and Johnny Cash go big in Sacramento, California.

“When I was just a baby, my Mama told me, ‘Son, always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns.’ But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Johnny Cash sings with some bravado in Folsom Prison Blues on an album released 50 years ago this year. Street Artist Shepard Fairey honors the album and here in Sacramento, California to raise consciousness about the outrageously high rate of incarceration here. “The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of it’s prisoners,” he says, making you question the system in the Land of the Free.

PasteUp Festival in Berlin

“PasteUp Festival” Brings 130 Voices to Berlin Walls is the article we wrote a few days ago about this streetside exhibition of international paste-up street art. Here is a full walk-by so you can see it all.

Yemeni Street Artist Murad Subay on Fifth Wall

Doug Gillen takes us to Yemen where Street Art takes on the politics of the region and the war-torn life that has been foisted upon its citizenry. A brief overview of geopolitics followed by an Internet interview with Murad Subay is accompanied by examples of his work and Mr. Subay’s own recounting of his experiences creating work on the public sphere – even while bombs are dropping.

Rocco And His Brothers Crash the the Party at The Police Station at Monumenta, Leipzig 2018

One of the installations in the new Monumenta exhibition in an old factory in Leipzig creates a car crash into a local precinct. The graffiti crew Rocco and His Brothers have mounted the scene and we were happy to capture it at the precise time that the building security alarms happened to go off – adding an additional audio track to the troubled scene.

BSA Film Friday 07.27.18

July 27, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Yok & Sheryo: Mumbai “Varuna Vessel”
2. Mr. June Paints in June
3. Concreto #4 , Fortaleza, Brazil
4. Doug Gillen takes on Email Art Scams

BSA Special Feature: Yok & Sheryo: Mumbai “Varuna Vessel”

The Street Art duo of Sheryo and Yok plumb the depths of the urban environment in their travels, getting to know a culture and the people there – a full immersion practice that helps them conceptualize and fashion street murals, gallery shows and exhibitions that utilize the traditions, lore, language, and even the skills of local tradespeople.

This week we have a travelogue to the Sassoon docks in Mumbai where they collaborate with fisherman and women friends, fabricators and textile designers in the street, on a boat, and ultimately in an exhibition called “Varuna Vessel”. Extra points awarded here for the soundtrack, dropped on you in typical S&Y style like a needle on a record, no fade, all funk.

Mr. June Paints in June

Last month Mr. June was in Greensboro, North Carolina to paint a 45 meter diameter water tank roof. In the southern heat for 13 days painting? Give it up for Mr. June, who calls this job for a water resources facility his ode to the beauty of water.

Concreto #4 , Fortaleza, Brazil

Before the 5th Concreto Festival kicks into motion this November it’s good to look at the final video they made from the last one.

The brainchild of artist and organizer Narcélio Grud, the festival is in partnership with an urban art school that provides students with a theoretical background and support for intellectual experimentation with this kind of art in the streets that melts barriers.

Doug Gillen takes on Email Art Scams

As if it isn’t already challenging enough to be an artist – for the 99% without who are decidedly stressed for time, money, and a publicist. No matter, there are still lowlifes who will try to scam you bro/sis. Occasionally right through your inbox!

Public Security Officer Gillen introduces this underworld of squirrelly types who will try to persuade you into giving over your money to them for massaging your ego. We know that may sound appealing to some of you but in this case the only stripper involved is you, sexy.

BSA Film Friday: 07.06.18

July 6, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Gonzalo Borondo Matiére Noire
2. r1. on the corner of August House in Johannesburg
3. Banksy in Paris on FWTV
4. Joan Cabrer “Hot Pixel”

BSA Special Feature: Gonzalo Borondo Matiére Noire

A short documentary today taking us through last autumns On October 7^th in Marseille, France in collaboration with Galerie Saint Laurent and Spanish artist Gonzalo Borondo as they presented Matière Noire. A massive collection of individual installations that took over the top floor of an exhibition space normally used for shops, Borondo’s influence in the selections is throughout, a story told in three acts on Projection, Perception and Interpretation.

Artists include BRBR FILMS, Carmen Main, Diego López Bueno, Edoardo Tresoldi, Isaac Cordal, Robberto Atzori, Sbagliato and A.L. Crego, with curatorial guidance from Carmen Main.

Borondo has thrown open the doors to this cavernous space for a vitrine displaying our strong attachments to the fragile, ethereal objects and impressions. Their original meanings mixing with your own, projecting yourself as you do upon them. This is a chance for the artist to experiment and explore – perhaps to pursue something they have not been able to previously. Here is the laboratory, here in the interstitial. Yours is the gift of perception.

Directed by Matteo Dellangelo, reflections blur into paintings and tapestries, shadows morph into cats sleeking moving just beyond your periphery. An army of executives kneel, their faces distraught and mournful as they ask forgiveness for ushering in the fascist age their now caught in; Revolutions of video, scraps of family warmth and other things that aren’t there; benchmarks in social ritual, humble sets for theaters of manners, possibe deceptions, probable blurry sherries, fizzy Tom Collins, tortoise shell horn rims, cracked crystal, hair cream, horny men and haberdashers snapping apart girdles and garters, knocking over the slide tray and projector.

There are dark natural wonders and new highways in this Internet of things; prize winning cakes and first communions and turtles and turtlenecks; crying babies, bonbons, blond wood, great escapes and many lost opportunities mixed among the found ones.

But we wander….The project is to successfully outline an object onto another surface, and each artist in this curiously lit labyrinth of myth, memory and phantasma plays with these objects to bend perception. Carmen Main helps you find the way.

r1. on the corner of August House in Johannesburg

The thrilling drilling of geometic chromadek adornment of the corner installation by artist r1 in South Africa. “It took me 4 days to install and I drilled 688 holes,” he says. “One of the key aspects I love about the work is its placement on the corner wall, creating a 3D like effect. It makes the artwork seem to pop out of the building, creating a sculptural-like mural.”

Banksy in Paris on FWTV

Join Doug Gillen as he assembles and analyzes the recent Banksy installations in Paris.

Joan Cabrer “Hot Pixel”

Dig this dark funky groove that accompanies the sweep of the spray as Joan Cabrer paints a recent wall in Barcelona. For more on the story check out

“Joan Cabrer. “Hot Pixel” Digitizes Life and Nature For Contorno Urbano. 12+1 Project”

BSA Film Friday: 06.22.18

June 22, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Rammellzee: It’s Not Who But What
2. JANZ Artist in Time – Joanna Kiernan – Trailer
3. Frida Kahlo at V&A on FWTV
4. Sonner’s Sonnet by Resoborg

BSA Special Feature: Rammellzee: It’s Not Who But What

At first the cult of Rammellzee only consisted of the artist and the characters in his mind. That was a universe.

Less than 10 minutes, this crush of visuals, words, and graphics and storylines converged under the guidance of Oscar Boyson to begin to represent the New York artist. As he would have told you himself, Rammellzee is an equation, as is history, as is hiphop and theater, as is every aspect of your life, your character, your ability to fantasize about a parallel life. He was many things at once.

The grand wizard of Gothic Futurism and Ikonoklast Panzerism from Far Rockaway sprung from the underground and the streets at a time in New York when the city was bankrupt and artists could afford to live and make work there. Here. He made Gods out of garbage and weapons out of skateboards, a full immersion dive into the in-between world with fresh terminology and multiple variations.

After all its not who but what.

JANZ Artist in Time – Joanna Kiernan – Trailer

In production for five years, a feature documentary about the somewhat unappreciated New York Street Artist Robert Janz shows Janz working in different mediums and environments, primarily the streets of the city. It reveals some of Janz’s history and stays with him, revealing his philosophy of presence in the world as he acts upon it, within it.

Frida Kahlo at V&A on FWTV

London’s V&A Museum has a Frida Kahlo show up until November and Doug Gillen takes a break from the Street Art world to delve into the biography and psychological drama that formed the life and work of this great Mexican artist.

Sonner’s Sonnet by Resoborg

A small Virginia town of 6500 looks for a mural program to boost its community and revitalize it with Street Artists from the city like Gilf!, Alice Mizrachi, NDA, and OverUnder and todays featured artist, the South African graphic designer, illustrator, art director and muralist Resoborg.

BSA Film Friday 06.08.18

June 8, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1.1st Berlin Mural Fest Wrap Up
2. Pixel Pancho in Papeete. for ONO’U Tahiti Festival 2018. French Polynesia.
3. Christina Angelina in Papeete. for ONO’U Tahiti Festival 2018. French Polynesia.
4. Doug Gillen FWTV – Street Art and Anti-Semitism…discuss..

BSA Special Feature: 1st Berlin Mural Fest Wrap Up

Of course Berlin has no shortage of organically grown aerosol artworks around the city so it takes something special like a mural festival started by Die Dixons to make an impact. They have the connection to community and ability to mobilize across walls and art and performance disciplines. After the success of The Haus last year it seemed like anything was possible for the team, and the first time out shows the results in this short aftermovie.

#berlinmuralfest #nackenstarregarantiert #allewändevollzutun #berlinartbang

Props from the organizers to: Akteone, CREN, Jelio Dimitrov Arsek, Erase, case_maclaim, Die Dixons, Dr.Molrok, El Bocho, Elle Street Art, HERAKUT , Icke_art, Innerfields, Insane 51, Isakov, James Bullough, Kera1, Klebebande Berlin, Kobe Eins, Mika Yat Graffiti, Millo, Mr.WOODLAND , MTO (Graffiti / Street-art), MüCke32, Natalia Rak, Notes of Berlin, Nuno Viegas, One Truth Graffiti Street Art, ONUR, WES 21, Size Two, snik, TASSO, TELMO MIEL, Ria Wank, Michael Dyne Mieth, Anne ‘Blondie’ Bengard, Slider.Bandits, Caparso, Bas2, Daniela Uhlig, Ghettostars Crew , Monsta 179, Semor the mad one, Skenar73, Max Roche, Raws, TAPE OVER, Tape That, Tobo

Pixel Pancho in Papeete. for ONO’U Tahiti Festival 2018. French Polynesia.

Here are a couple of quick work-in-progress videos we shot this week on the island of Papeete in French Polynesia while we’re chasing artists with Martha Cooper across 4 islands of Papeete, Raitea, Moorea, and Bora Bora. Here are Pixel Pancho and Christina Angelina.

Christina Angelina in Papeete. for ONO’U Tahiti Festival 2018. French Polynesia.

Doug Gillen FWTV – Street Art and Anti-Semitism…discuss…

Is Banksy anti-semitic? The Street Artist has used his work to address social and political causes for almost two decades and this is the first we’ve heard the charge. We’ve seen all sorts of sentiments on the streets – racist, misogynist, homophobic, strains of xenophobia from different angles. But this is Israelis and the Palestinians and an active fight – with a multitude of shadings. Doug Gillen flies directly into the hornets’ nest – all for the love of Street Art.

BSA Film Friday: 05.04.18

May 4, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. FAR//FERN – An interpretation of “The Hero’s Journey” by NDZW.
2. Doug Gillen On The Road in Hong Kong

BSA Special Feature: FAR//FERN – An interpretation of “The Hero’s Journey” by NDZW.

Full of wise philosophical bon mots delivered in a modulated voice with a monastic cadence, artist NDZW stars as the hero who breaks from well established patterns to go outside his comfort zone with the possibility of being transformed by it.

Directed by Christian Fischer, the stark monochrome palette keeps the journey in Vienna and Upper Austria within visual boundaries, but the variations and textures are rich. Elements of magic are neatly punctuated by the hypnotic, at times heavenly, vocals and arrangement of musical group Down With The Gypsies. The truths are parcelled out like grandpa’s life wisdom delivered while you take a ride in an old 1993 station wagon that smells like gasoline, bumping over potholes in the asphalt on a country road. There is a pause while he looks out the window, then he thinks of something else he wanted to tell you. Pay attention.

Inspired by an interpretation of Joseph Campbells book “The Hero’s Journey” you can here the romance literature woven with Sanskrit and the Buddha here in this narration of truths. Overlaid onto the artists life, here more specifically the graffiti or Street Artists’ practice of painting in abandoned spaces, it is a curiously appropriated adaptation that is ultimately inspiring.

Doug Gillen On The Road in Hong Kong

Doug is actually in Brooklyn this weekend but here’s his latest release from his recent trip to Hong Kong. It is full of interviews, shots of the work (not all of which is part of HKWalls), and some personal existential observations.

BSA Film Friday: 03.16.18

March 16, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1.”On the Road” With Street Artist Add Fuel
2. Wandelism in Berlin
3. Flamingo Cave with Rymd
4. SNIK / Amsterdam Street Art Museum

BSA Special Feature: “On the Road” With Street Artist Add Fuel

“I’ve started a new series called ‘On the Road’ which looks at life behind the scenes in street art culture,” Doug Gillen tells us about this debut episode. Look forward to Doug’s unique perspective on Street Art festivals, art fairs, and studio visits as he expands to the world of urban contemporary.

Not typically who you think of as a Street Artist, here we see Add Fuel and Doug talk about his first book and you see examples of work from this tile maker who infuses traditional Portuguese techniques and pattern making with pop-modern cultural references and cartoon archetypes.

Wandelism in Berlin

On the street change is constant and in this scene when you stand still you get blown by. The ingeniously constructive and cooperative Street Art and graffiti community again gather to blow your mind with a new show in a newly abandoned building, opening tomorrow for hundreds of guests. We’ve seen many of the installations already, and no one is doing it like the Berlinians!

Flamingo Cave with Rymd

The briefest video contest is still afoot, with this one clocking in at little over a minute. Soon videos will be one second long, or, a picture. This missive from Stockholm graffiti writer Rymd has a nice tight bass clicking beat under it from Robin Carlheim that emphasizes without overwhelming the can action here in Flamingo Cave.

SNIK / Amsterdam Street Art Museum

The SNIK duo go to Amsterdam to create a canvas for the nascent Street Art museum that is coming! A really well executed stencil that has the flowetry you hope for when spraying out the layers.

BSA Film Friday: 02.09.18

February 9, 2018 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. “Serenity” with SNIK in Manchester
2. Hellbent in Albany, NY
3. And Now a Message From Our Sponsors: Aphukenbrake
4. Low Bros in Rabat, Morocco

BSA Special Feature: “Serenity” with SNIK in Manchester

“To women who stood against injustice. We honor you. We witness to your courage and are humbled by your sacrifice,” says the narrator and activist Leigh Cook about the suffragettes in this new video following the duo SNIK as they create “Serenity” on Little Lever Street in the northern quarter of Manchester, directed by Doug Gillen at Fifth Walls TV.

And below is a behind-the-scenes reporter-on-the-ground-and-in-cherry picker video where Mr. Gillen speaks with organizers who attempt the gentrification issue that accompanies the mural campaign they’re expanding and Laura takes a swing at the topics of feminism, empowerment and the #METOO movement. Doug does some dancing.

Hellbent in Albany, NY

A promotional video for a mobile company using the mural painting of Street Artist Hellbent painting in Albany, New York.

And Now a Message From Our Sponsors: Aphukenbrake

Low Bros #sweet15s Episode 12 / Rabat, Morocco

“Good memories of last year’s JIDAR festival in Rabat, Morocco,” say Low Bros in this very entertaining brief visit to a beautiful part of the world. The use of their own footage throughout makes this much more eclectic and personal. Thumbs up for the music track by ADP & Levi Lennox.

Top 15 Videos on BSA Film Friday From 2017

December 13, 2017 Artists

Every Friday we invite you to stop by and take a look at new videos that have been submitted or recommended or that we tripped over walking by the railroad tracks. This year we showed you about 250 of them.

We call it BSA Film Friday and it travels with us to cities around the world now when we do it LIVE with you and other audience members in theaters and lecture halls and museums. The beauty of the video/film form is you can get a full story quickly, and you are often surprised by how transformative it can be. You can also see how many people are affected by urban and street culture through these films – we see people’s eyes light up when they realize that they too can create in public space, that the world is not simply a product but is a piece of art that many of their peers are now jumping in to co-create.

As a collection, these 15 are illuminating, elevating, riveting, strange, soaring, and achingly beautifully normal. From looking at the Separation Wall and Banksy to a travelling crew of graffiti writers on farms in Polish pig country to the amazing dance troupe who interpreted the 5 floors of art installations in a downtown Berlin former bank, you have before you a massive buffet of a visual feast.

The final desert is hand-held phone video caught in the moment last month in Mexico City. We didn’t know Keith Haring was coming down the tracks to surprise us, and we didn’t know that this unpolished jewel would garner thousands of viewers and commenters – effectively placing this little piece of video at number 1 for its popularity. Maybe the fact that it is so raw is what people relate to – along with an ongoing adulation for Haring.

We hope you can take some time to enjoy some of the best Street Art videos from around the world and on BSA this year.

No. 15
Faith XLVII / Aqua Regalia Hong Kong

From BSA Film Friday 05 .19.17

“Distant universes delicately tangled,” says the near-whispering narration as you are gazing upon scenes from Hong Kong – those interstitial moments that carry you between the more remarkable ones. Faith XLVII gives us a quiet look at these inside a the dencse cacophony called “Aqua Regalia”, looking at the parts of a culture that a visitor is sensitive to because they are not taken for granted. With this ability to see, one takes a quick course of a city, a society. Invariably you end up with more questions.

“We speak of death and birth in terms of celebration and mourning.” Faith XLVII is in search of more universal truths, the timeless ones, since we understand them so poorly. Herein are glimpses, romantic and unvarnished.

“This is one of the first videos I’ve co-directed, alongside filmmaker Dane Dodds,” Faith tells us. “Its a project that is close to my heart.”

No. 14
Gonzalo Borondo / Cenere

From BSA Film Friday 08.11.17

Borondo keeps it open for you. He provides the stage, the staging area, the proscenium, the altar, the emanating light, the associations and memories you have with your belief system, or lack of one. During his artist residency with Pubblica, curated by Carlo Vignapiano and Elena Nicolini in May, the Street Artist (among other things) creates a journey as much as a destination in this intimate chapel. The video by Gerdi Petanaj captures this and perhaps a little more.

No. 13
The Haus / Lunatix Dance

From BSA Film Friday 04.07.17

From the moment it opened on April 1st, the Haus was a hit! BSA was very lucky to be there in February for a full tour while still in development in Berlin, nearly dancing ourselves through all five floors of this former bank with full scale installations in places that once held offices, conference rooms, employee coffee lounges.

By inviting Creative Director/dancer Serdar Bogatin and the film crew “Shuto Crew” into the space with members of the Lunatix Dance Production troupe, these spaces and art environments come completely alive, invoking stories and dramas – clearly making the spaces into elaborate set-design pieces.



No. 12
Ella & Pitr / Frappés PinPins

From BSA Film Friday 05.05.17

The French duo Ella + Pitr here revel in the simplicity of the gestural act of a full-body full-bucket splash of black paint.

Carnal, visceral, overlaid with psychographical information, the motion of splashing inky pigment across a white quadrilateral is an act of defiance and a release of the inner chaos – instantly recognizable as chaos elsewhere in the world.

The uncontrollable quality, especially when purveyed within an atmosphere of prim control, provokes amplified emotions in some. Fear, liberation, rage, release. Which ones will you experience?

No. 11
Indecline/ Rail Beast

From BSA Film Friday 10.20.17

“This reminds why I hate vandals! All this does is create more unnecessary work for the guys at the paint shop,” says a commenter on the Vimeo page where INDECLINE has posted this locomotive takeover.

You see kids, this is why we can’t have nice things. I just mopped this floor and you come running in here with your muddy boots! For Pete’s sake.

Truthfully, this decidedly unpolitical piece is a surprise coming from INDECLINE. Guess they were taking the day off from railing against hypocrisy and injustice with this animated train that recalls Saturday morning cartoons like Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner.

No. 10
Olek / In the Blink of an Eye

From BSA Film Friday 01.13.17

“It is one thing to read about the events in those parts of the world, but it is something totally different to actually look in the eyes of the women who lost everything while running from the war,” says artist Olek about how her world view changed when crocheting the project featured this week.

While gathering and producing materials for her installation with Verket Museum in Avesta, Sweden, the Brooklyn based Street Artist was holding informal crochet workshops with volunteers who would be producing the decorative yarn skin that covered every single item inside and outside of the house with their handmade crochet stitches.

Some invited guests were refugees who had escaped war in Syria and Ukraine and the artist and local folks shared stories and crocheted, sewed, and prepared the art materials together over the course of a number of days. It was during these exchanges of personal stories that, “a conversation started that has changed me forever,” she says – and she immediately needed to reflect it in her project with the museum.

No. 09
Sebastian Purfürst – Soniconoclasm / Broken Motor

From BSA Film Friday 06.02.17

In Berlin recently we met a photographer/media artist/musician who showed us a music video he just made of regular people whom you might meet on the city streets at night. This spring he asked more than 25 of them to recite phrases and “cut-up of army radio slang phrases” and by splicing them together with his band mate’s recitation of the lyrics synched to their lips, the rawness and rage and disconnected connectedness of people whom you can meet on the street rang true. “

This unvarnished quality bypasses the styled self-awareness of a lot of commercial media, and the anger actually comes across as fear. Perhaps you’ll think its too dark in demeanor – but then suddenly the melding together of the faces into one common entity makes it magic, even transcendent – revealing a simple sameness of everyone.

“This suspenseful individuality of the people is almost completely dissolved in the chorus,” says Sebastian Purfürst of his video with bandmate Markus F.C.Buhl.

Together they are called SONICONOCLASM.

No. 08
Pixel Pancho/ UN – Berlin

From BSA Film Friday 09.22.17

Pixel’s original installation was nixed by the city at the last moment but that didn’t prevent the Italian Street Artist from rallying to find another solution!

This new installation in the back courtyard was conceived of, designed, and constructed over a period of 4 days last week and became the secret surprise behind the museum for those who wandered there. Using landscaping techniques and botanical knowledge that come naturally from his farm in Italy, the artist create a mise en scène of epic impact with his robotic folk-futurist sculptures. Night time lighting took it to another world, but you can see the details better here in this short video Jaime Rojo shot on site.

No. 07
FifthWall TV / Occupied in Bethlehem – A visit to BANKSY’s “Walled Off Hotel”

From BSA Film Friday 06.16.17

“It’s almost become a playground for people to come to,” says your host Doug Gille as he looks at the section of the Separation Wall that the Banksy “Walled Off” Hotel is installed upon. “I think it is so crucial for people not to just come to see the wall or to paint on the wall,” he says.

“50 years under military control makes it the longest occupation in history,” is a quote that Gillen brandishes across the screen from the United Nations. The fact that Banksy is using his art star power to keep this on the front burner says a lot about the man.

“I think a lot of these people feel like we are forgetting about them and we have to remind them that we’re not,” says Gillen as he soul searches next to the Dead Sea.



No. 06
Various & Gould / City Skins – Marx und Engels

From BSA Film Friday 07.14.17

Conceptual Street Artists often perform interventions without explanation, satisfied with their own observations of the outcome. For Berlians Various & Gould the process has more often included the participation of the public – a way for more to take ownership and inspire dialogue. Sometimes many dialogues.

You may have seen our piece on their most recent public project called “City Skins”: Marx and Engels Statues Re-Skinned & Re-Located : Various & Gould. Here is a mini-documentary that shows you the artists, the process, and the thinking behind the process.

No. 05
Rurales

From BSA Film Friday 01.27.17

Now to the Polish pig farms! Another Street Art/Mural road trip movie, this time across Poland with JAYPOP, Seikon, Krik KONG and filmmaker Cuba Goździewicz. See the discoveries, the relationships, the reactions to the work from a warm and considered human perspective.

The beauty of randomness and the randomness of beauty. These guys are fully engaged with their surroundings, the opportunity, the myriad people they befriend or portend to make allies. It’s an uncharted trip where permissions are sought and often refused, but they never stop painting somehow.



No. 04
Swoon/ Fearless

From BSA Film Friday 10.13.17

Using existing and new footage of Street Artist Swoon and selected interviews with people in her orbit, director Fredric King presents and hour long documentary that looks over two decades of art making. The stories told and the insights that Calendonia Curry aka Swoon presents while en route to her next adventure illustrate the fluidity with which she pursues the creative spirit, whether on the street, on a vessel down a river, or installing in a museum. An integrated explorer, Swoon brings you into the fold to go on this journey that always feels like its just begun.

No. 03
Fin DAC/ Rooftop in San Francisco

From BSA Film Friday 08.25.17

On an expansive rooftop in rainy/sunny/rainy San Francisco, Street Artist Fin Dac brings to life ‘Shukumei’, an ebullient and mysterious muse. The film is largely a stop motion record of the work set to music, but did you notice how much dexterity and effort goes into this precision play when you are working at this angle, basically painting the floor? The remarkable integration of the glowing skylight orb, dramatically revealed, imparts the figure a mystical dimension as well.

Video editing by Tonic Media, Soundtrack by Mombassa/Lovechild, and shout out to Ian and Danielle at Rocha Art and Missy Marisa, model.



No. 02
Niels Shoe Meulman In Magic City / The Art Of The Street

From BSA Film Friday 12.01.17

Niels Shoe Meulman spent some nights in a Munich jail thirty years ago for mucking about on the walls. This year he was paid to do it in Munich for Magic City, the travelling morphing exhibition (now in Stockholm) where Street Art is celebrated along with all its tributaries – including a film program and a number of photographs by your friends here at BSA.

Born, raised and based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Shoe shares here his new improvisational piece and some of his reflections on his process and his evolution from being in advertising as an art/creative director and reclaiming his soul as a graffiti/Street Art/fine artist. As ever, Martha is in the frame, putting him in the frame.



No. 01
Keith Haring- Rough Cut / Mexico City Metro

This rough cut lil’ video reached more than 300K individuals and had 100K views with thousands of shares on FB and on Instagram with dozens of comments and high engagement was easily propelled to the #1 spot.

From BSA Film Friday 12.01.17

It all took us by surprise last week in Mexico City when suddenly a whole train covered on both sides with Keith Haring’s work approached while we were waiting at the platform to catch the Linea 2 of the Metro. He made his name in part by illegally doing drawings like these in NYC subways and here now they are crushing a whole train. The name of the project is “Ser Humano. Ser Urbano” or “Being Human. Being Urban” and it aims to promote human values and human rights. The pattern you see is from “Sin Titulo (Tokyo Fabric Design)” – now stretched across these whole cars, if you will.

The train itself is inexplicably having brake troubles, so we get some jerky spur-of-the-moment footage but all week on Instagram and Facebook we’ve received tons of comments from people reacting to this little bit of Keith video by Jaime Rojo on BSA.

BSA Film Friday: 11.10.17

November 10, 2017 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. OLEK: Keep Going
2. Aïda Gómez: Ladies First
3. A Look at the Worlds First Museum of Urban Contemporary Art
4. MurOne // 12 + 1 Project
5. Obey Giant – The Documentary

BSA Special Feature: OLEK: Keep Going

During the opening weekend of the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art (UN), BSA and the other curators invited 150 artists to exhibit indoors and about 35 to do site specific installations and performances in the 5 block radius of the museum. Polish/Brooklyn Street Artist OLEK created and performed along with a team of assistants a three hour meditative crocheting event under the elevated train line between Bülowstraße and Nollendorfplatz stations.

Entitled “Keep Going,” one can imagine a number of interpretations of what is intended by the artist. Is it to reflect the unstopping, unstoppable traffic of people on the street who saunter blithely by despite your unique and meaningful actions, née, existence? Is it a poetic and literal illustration of the cyclic nature of construction/destruction exhaustion/renewal that are earmarks of the life and death process we are all engaged in? Perhaps it is a commentary on the workers who toil day after night after day in this world, never able to get ahead, never meriting more than a curious look or consideration. Or is it an exhortation to fully live ones’ life regardless of obstacles, fears, or the senseless chaotic behavior of the world around us?

Director/cinematographer Ulle Hadding gently observes the scene, examining the performers’ body language and capturing facial expressions as they quietly perform their work amidst the currents of a human river flowing in around and through them.

Also Martha C. is there among the re-assembling assembled, bless her and bless us.

Aïda Gómez: Ladies First

While doing an artists residency in Iceland recently with ART Attack Neskaupstaður, Aïda Gómez noticed the signs around her. “The plaque shows a man followed by a woman and I asked myself, why is this signal like this? Why the feminine figure is following the masculine figure?” Indeed.

A look in the WORLD’S FIRST MUSEUM OF URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART

Doug at Fifth Wall TV puts himself in the middle of the UN inaugural events and uses his astute powers of observation about its move into contemporary art, with a stop along the way to wonder about gentrification.

MurOne // 12 + 1 Project. Contorno Urbano

The latest from the 12 + 1 Project, the artist MurOne bringing some mechanically inspired eye candy to enjoy.

Obey Giant – The Documentary

Finally it all comes together and we get a balanced insight into the art and dissent of Shepard Fairey.

BSA Film Friday: 10.20.17

October 20, 2017 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. INDECLINE: Rail Beast
2. INDICLINE: DREAMERS
3. Basquiat, Banksy & Brutalism in London
4. Restoring Banksy
5. Erik Burke: Park Blossom

BSA Special Feature: INDECLINE: Rail Beast

“This reminds why I hate vandals! All this does is create more unnecessary work for the guys at the paint shop,” says a commenter on the Vimio page where INDECLINE has posted this locomotive takeover. You see kids, this is why we can’t have nice things. I just mopped this floor and you come running in here with your muddy boots! For Pete’s sake.

Truthfully, this decidedly unpolitical piece is a surprise coming from INDECLINE. Guess they were taking the day off from railing against hypocrisy and injustice with this animated train that recalls Saturday morning cartoons like Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner.

INDECLINE: DREAMERS

Ahhh this is more like it, the acidic satire. A short punchy video that shows the creation of a satirical take on Trump’s frightening attitude toward kids brought across the border into the US. These days, they are called Dreamers and have protections and options to do radical things like go to college and get a job. But not if this clown has anything to say about it. Want a balloon?

Basquiat, Banksy & Brutalism in London. Brought to you by Fifth Wall TV

And all this time you thought it was abstract expressionism! Please people, you can throw those labels out the window. Here Doug tells you about the new Basquiat exhibit and in a fit of perfect timing, the Banksy piece that appears in support of it in London. Doug says its arguably the city’s finest hour.

Restoring Banksy. Doug Gillen of Fifth Wall TV

This is the second time London has seen a snorting copper, since this 2006 Banksy piece has resurfaced, or rather was re-surfaced, as the case may appear.

Favorite quote out of context, “just so happened to oversee the sale of ‘Slave Labor’ “.

Erik Burke: Park Blossom

“My name is Erik Burke and I am a muralist,” says the Nevadan about his new blooming temporary Mall parking lot piece. For those fans playing at home, he’s also a graffiti writer/Street Artist and there are clues embedded here in the video for you to piece together.

BSA Film Friday: 09.29.17 NUART 2017 Special

September 29, 2017 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Nuart 2017 – Re-Cap Fifth Wall TV
2. Carrie Richardt. Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV
3. ±MAISMENOS± Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV
4. Bahia Shehab. Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV

BSA Special Feature: 4 Films from Nuart 2017

A glimpse inside the urban art/Street Art/graffiti/mural festival from earlier this month, which included a powerful collection of artists, interventionists, existentialists, activists, academics, and poets, this collection of NUART 2017 videos can only point to the individual aspects of the events. We start off with Doug Gillen’s brief overview and first impressions and feature three individual portraits of artists who took part in this years Street alt-fest.

Nuart 2017 – Re-Cap Fifth Wall TV

Carrie Richardt. Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV

“For me art is just the way that I express myself. I think that we need to use all means possible,” says artist, activist and global citizen Carrie Richardt. In her opinion, we should all be activists in service of one kind or another, and art in the streets is one of a myriad ways that people can effect positive change. In her text messages via tile around town, she offers pithy and profound bonmots like “Civil disobedience is not the problem. Civil obedience is the problem.”

±MAISMENOS± Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV

Portuguese artist Miguel Januário goes by ±MAISMENOS±, a sort of avatar of interventionism that presents a critical eye on models of our political, social, economic orders. By willfully rearranging signposts of accepted norms in the public space, his installations echo in their disunifying qualities and often comedic effects.

Bahia Shehab. Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV

“Art is wonderful. It inspires. But it does not push for action sometimes,” says Egyptian professor and Street Artist Bahia Shehab, whose international acclaim for speaking up against tyranny links the act of art with the struggle throughout the world for liberation.

ELFO: Don’t Use This Wall!
November 19, 2024
Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This …Read More »
BSA Images Of The Week: 11.17.24
November 17, 2024
Right out of the gate, Pres-elect Trump is telling us that one must destroy the government to save it, just …Read More »
SpY’s “ORB” Lands in Montreal: A Mirror of Street Art’s Evolution
November 14, 2024
SpY, a prominent public artist hailing from Madrid, has unveiled his latest sculptural work titled “ORB” in Montreal’s renowned Place …Read More »
Birch Bark, Rosehips, and a Family Affair: Faring Purth’s New Chapter in Mural Form
November 12, 2024
In her latest mural, Faring Purth delivers a powerful reflection on connection, continuity, and the complexity of evolving relationships—a true …Read More »
BSA Images Of The Week: 11.10.24
November 10, 2024
Well, the world ended this week—again. Yet here we are, still standing, and so are you. It turns out Donald …Read More »
Réunion Island’s Evolution: Eko and the Graffiti/Street Art Festival That’s Making Waves
November 7, 2024
A place you may not have heard of, Réunion Island has quickly become a remarkable hotspot for urban art, largely …Read More »
Transforming Tafí Viejo: Argentina’s First International Street Art Festival in Tucumán
November 5, 2024
The Circuito Mural: Encuentro Internacional de Arte Urbano just wrapped up its first run from October 1 to 5, 2024, …Read More »

BSA Special Feature: “GIGANTES CERVECEROS” by Miquel Wert

Shepard Fairey and Johnny Cash go big in Sacramento, California.

PasteUp Festival in Berlin

Yemeni Street Artist Murad Subay on Fifth Wall

Rocco And His Brothers Crash the the Party at The Police Station at Monumenta, Leipzig 2018

BSA Special Feature: Yok & Sheryo: Mumbai “Varuna Vessel”

Mr. June Paints in June

Concreto #4 , Fortaleza, Brazil

Doug Gillen takes on Email Art Scams

BSA Special Feature: Gonzalo Borondo Matiére Noire

r1. on the corner of August House in Johannesburg

Banksy in Paris on FWTV

Joan Cabrer “Hot Pixel”

BSA Special Feature: Rammellzee: It’s Not Who But What

JANZ Artist in Time – Joanna Kiernan – Trailer

Frida Kahlo at V&A on FWTV

Sonner’s Sonnet by Resoborg

BSA Special Feature: 1st Berlin Mural Fest Wrap Up

Pixel Pancho in Papeete. for ONO’U Tahiti Festival 2018. French Polynesia.

Christina Angelina in Papeete. for ONO’U Tahiti Festival 2018. French Polynesia.

Doug Gillen FWTV – Street Art and Anti-Semitism…discuss…

BSA Special Feature: FAR//FERN – An interpretation of “The Hero’s Journey” by NDZW.

Doug Gillen On The Road in Hong Kong

BSA Special Feature: “On the Road” With Street Artist Add Fuel

Wandelism in Berlin

Flamingo Cave with Rymd

SNIK / Amsterdam Street Art Museum

BSA Special Feature: “Serenity” with SNIK in Manchester

Hellbent in Albany, NY

And Now a Message From Our Sponsors: Aphukenbrake

Low Bros #sweet15s Episode 12 / Rabat, Morocco

“Good memories of last year’s JIDAR festival in Rabat, Morocco,” say Low Bros in this very entertaining brief visit to a beautiful part of the world. The use of their own footage throughout makes this much more eclectic and personal. Thumbs up for the music track by ADP & Levi Lennox.

“We speak of death and birth in terms of celebration and mourning.” Faith XLVII is in search of more universal truths, the timeless ones, since we understand them so poorly. Herein are glimpses, romantic and unvarnished.

“This is one of the first videos I’ve co-directed, alongside filmmaker Dane Dodds,” Faith tells us. “Its a project that is close to my heart.” No. 14 Gonzalo Borondo / Cenere

The French duo Ella + Pitr here revel in the simplicity of the gestural act of a full-body full-bucket splash of black paint.

Carnal, visceral, overlaid with psychographical information, the motion of splashing inky pigment across a white quadrilateral is an act of defiance and a release of the inner chaos – instantly recognizable as chaos elsewhere in the world.

The uncontrollable quality, especially when purveyed within an atmosphere of prim control, provokes amplified emotions in some. Fear, liberation, rage, release. Which ones will you experience? No. 11 Indecline/ Rail Beast

“This reminds why I hate vandals! All this does is create more unnecessary work for the guys at the paint shop,” says a commenter on the Vimeo page where INDECLINE has posted this locomotive takeover.

You see kids, this is why we can’t have nice things. I just mopped this floor and you come running in here with your muddy boots! For Pete’s sake.

Truthfully, this decidedly unpolitical piece is a surprise coming from INDECLINE. Guess they were taking the day off from railing against hypocrisy and injustice with this animated train that recalls Saturday morning cartoons like Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner. No. 10 Olek / In the Blink of an Eye

“This suspenseful individuality of the people is almost completely dissolved in the chorus,” says Sebastian Purfürst of his video with bandmate Markus F.C.Buhl.

Together they are called SONICONOCLASM. No. 08 Pixel Pancho/ UN – Berlin

Pixel’s original installation was nixed by the city at the last moment but that didn’t prevent the Italian Street Artist from rallying to find another solution!

“50 years under military control makes it the longest occupation in history,” is a quote that Gillen brandishes across the screen from the United Nations. The fact that Banksy is using his art star power to keep this on the front burner says a lot about the man.

You may have seen our piece on their most recent public project called “City Skins”: Marx and Engels Statues Re-Skinned & Re-Located : Various & Gould. Here is a mini-documentary that shows you the artists, the process, and the thinking behind the process. No. 05 Rurales

Now to the Polish pig farms! Another Street Art/Mural road trip movie, this time across Poland with JAYPOP, Seikon, Krik KONG and filmmaker Cuba Goździewicz. See the discoveries, the relationships, the reactions to the work from a warm and considered human perspective.

The train itself is inexplicably having brake troubles, so we get some jerky spur-of-the-moment footage but all week on Instagram and Facebook we’ve received tons of comments from people reacting to this little bit of Keith video by Jaime Rojo on BSA.

BSA Special Feature: OLEK: Keep Going

Aïda Gómez: Ladies First

A look in the WORLD’S FIRST MUSEUM OF URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART

MurOne // 12 + 1 Project. Contorno Urbano

Obey Giant – The Documentary

BSA Special Feature: INDECLINE: Rail Beast

INDECLINE: DREAMERS

Basquiat, Banksy & Brutalism in London. Brought to you by Fifth Wall TV

Restoring Banksy. Doug Gillen of Fifth Wall TV

Erik Burke: Park Blossom

BSA Special Feature: 4 Films from Nuart 2017

Nuart 2017 – Re-Cap Fifth Wall TV

Carrie Richardt. Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV

±MAISMENOS± Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV

Bahia Shehab. Nuart 2017. Fifth Wall TV

Featured Video | Martin Wong’s “Houston Street”

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“This is one of the first videos I’ve co-directed, alongside filmmaker Dane Dodds,” Faith tells us. “Its a project that is close to my heart.”

No. 14
Gonzalo Borondo / Cenere

The uncontrollable quality, especially when purveyed within an atmosphere of prim control, provokes amplified emotions in some. Fear, liberation, rage, release. Which ones will you experience?

No. 11
Indecline/ Rail Beast

Together they are called SONICONOCLASM.

No. 08
Pixel Pancho/ UN – Berlin

You may have seen our piece on their most recent public project called “City Skins”: Marx and Engels Statues Re-Skinned & Re-Located : Various & Gould. Here is a mini-documentary that shows you the artists, the process, and the thinking behind the process.

No. 05
Rurales