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

Now screening :
1. OLEK: In The Blink Of An Eye
2. Москва – Artmossphere by Kevin Lüdicke
3. Morden Gore: Painting for the Italian Earthquake of October 2016.
4. Art Is Tra$h

BSA Special Feature: OLEK: In The Blink Of An Eye

“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.

The documented result is here for you today. It was decided to destroy the domestic bliss of the home with a blast from outside, shattering and scattering the contents, a dramatization of the blasts from war and the machines manufactured to create them. The results are recorded in the video that leads BSA Film Friday this week.

In a split second our lives are turned upside down by explosions like these, and we block it from our minds until it happens to us or someone we love or someone we simply see the humanity within.

“I decided to blow up my crocheted house inside the museum to demonstrate the current, unfortunate situation worldwide, where hundreds of thousands of people are displaced,” Olek says. “In 2015, over 27.8 million people in 127 countries lost their homes due to conflict, violence and disasters.”

Москва – Artmossphere by Kevin Lüdicke

A thoughtful well-paced look behind the scenes of artists at work in studio – painting, sculpting, sawing, sanding, pouring concrete – preparing brand new works for the Artmossphere exhibition. Mounted in Moscow at the end of summer 2016 with 60 or so international and local artists drawn mostly from the Urban Art scene, this short film by director Kevin Lüdicke is narrated by artists and illustrated by common scenes in the city of Moscow. The artists are reflective, unhurried, and dig a little deeper to explain their work and process. Quiet spaces are allowed – which is where a number of revelations lie.

Learn more about the event from our BSA’s visit to Moscow for Artmossphere here:

60 Artists at a Moscow Street Art Biennale: “Artmossphere 2016”

Morden Gore: Painting for the Italian Earthquake of October 2016.

Aerial scenes of rubble caused by an earthquake put you at arms length, as does the hypnotizing synth glitchy pop track from Coconut Scale that enables you to focus and swerve away, zoom in and pull out before the pain gets too intense. Two earthquakes four days apart in the center of Italy shook these mountain areas and medieval villages – houses, schools, offices, histories, lives all crumbling. Artist Mordengore painted the mobile headquarters of the CGIL in the midst of the aftermath and documented his work and the context he created it within to capture what happened as a way to “not forget what happened to these lands only because we are hard-working and peaceful people.”

“Dedicated to Sylvester, pastor of Visso, symbol of these fragile lands, but tough, because we want to rebuild, despite everything.”

 

Art Is Tra$h

The Street Artist named Art Is Trash creates a full installation in an abandoned hotel to advertise sneakers for a well known brand.