Welcome to BSA Images of the Week.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring CAM, David F. Barthold, JJ Veronis, Martha Cooper, Poi Everywhere, REVS, SoulOne, Tones, UFO 907, Winston Tseng, and WK Interact.
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.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. 1Up X Hand Mixed – “Love is Love”
2. WK Interact x Kobe Bryant
3. Bordalo II in Studio
Many old school original graff dudes kicked gay guys onto the tracks in the 1970s and 80s and 90s and 00s and…. They may have been rebels against oppression, but they could still use their own power and prejudice to keep people down.
Somewhere during that time LGBTQ people began to vociferate for social and legal equality in Western democracies, and their braver straight allies also began to fight alongside of them, and begrudgingly the graff scene began to let these folks into the mix. But homophobia, like racism, is still present in places where the dominant culture embraces homo/transphobia and has held tight to its exclusionary claims to privilege and power – including in the subcultures of graffiti, hip-hop, tattoo, punk, skateboarding, and street art.
So it’s still remarkable when a graffiti crew stands in the face of all of it and says “Love is Love” and uses its One United Power to recognize the rights of everyone, regardless of their particular crush or kink. Granted, 1UP and Hand Mixed employee rebellion and vandalism to make the point, and no one is going to hire any of these guys/gals to work on the UN Security Council because of their diplomacy, but life is messy, yo. And viewer comments on this video on Instagram and Youtube prove that change is still incremental.
WK Interact x Kobe Bryant
In the wake of the unfortunate death of basketball star Kobe Bryant, we’re reminded of that campaign Street Artist WK Interact did with him for a brand a few years ago. It was a very good merging of styles, with their intersection at the corner of movement and strategically employed power. Our condolences to his family and extended network of friends.
Bordalo II in Studio
A full interview with street sculptor Bordalo II last fall on Camões TV. Also a great opportunity for you to practice Portuguese.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Welcome to October – the time when the leaves turn yellow and orange and when your local pharmacy is selling Halloween candy and Christmas decorations because why the hell not? We’ve got The Actual Joker in the White House ready to shred all pretense of civility and rule of law before a terrified nation, not that he was holding that down at all.
Makes us think of the sentiment of this new Street Art piece below by Sara Lynne-Leo. “Why are you still holding on?”
But we know the answer — Because the grand finale of this burning dumpster fire will be huge! – friggin’ ratings will be off the charts for this one, dawg. Plus the Demopublicans have already lined up the Warren White House so we know what’s coming on TV next on DNC.
** chomps popcorn, smacks lips
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring DAK, Dede Bandaid, Dee Dee, Demure, Dirk, Don Rimx, Insurgo, Invader, Jeff Henriquez, Jona, Muebon, Neckface, Nite Owl, Nitzan Mintz, No Sleep, Panda Bear, Salami Doggy, Sara Lynne Leo, Seemerch, Unify Art, and WK Interact.
Gorgeous, tremulous days and nights in New York as we march with determination into fall – Tomokazu Matsuyama and his 12 assistants finished his epic contribution to the Houston Wall, a huge crowd overflowed the Bronx Museum to celebrate the photographer/filmmaker Henry Chalfant and his pivotal work that brought fame to graffiti writers, and Kehinde Wiley stunned Times Square with a new monument entitled “Rumors of War”, which the artist says “attempts to use the language of equestrian portraiture to both embrace and subsume the fetishization of state violence.”
Meanwhile, the highest office in the land lies in disgrace, under a cloud of increasing impeachment odds even as the state exports multiple wars and the Feds are quietly pumping 75 billion dollars into financial markets with more planned over multiple days to stave off the coming crash.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Bunny M, Diana Garcia, Matzu, Muck Rock, RED, Sunflower Soulz, and WK Interact.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. WK Interact in NYC by Fifth Wall
2. Rub Kandy & Biancoshock: “All the Lights”
3. Not Rented To Humans: Grip Face
4. Elrow’art: Kaos Garden with Okuda San Miguel and Paco Osuna
“It was some sort of freedom,” says WK in this retrospective of NYC locations that he tries to recall with original photo in hand overlaying the original city spot. For some of us, the memories of all of these spots are sufficient, as the city was different then – perhaps more wild and dirty. For WK, the
Well shot and edited, its a mature way to let the artist speak and evocative of his current manner.
Rub Kandy & Biancoshock: “All the Lights”
In the face of sexy new machine-learning and Artificial Intelligence – and the auxiliary tales related to art-making, perhaps this video is a way of preserving the authentic feeling of human discovery in its unglamorous basicness. Not to overplay this, but this conceptual piece is a meditation on the underwhelming mechanized aspects of industry, a blatant taunt of banality in the midst of high gloss unrealness.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conceptual mundanity of the Italian urban artists Rub Kandy and Biancoshock, who here demonstrate how to create electricity with a generator in an abandoned industrial space. It’s a marvelously underwhelming demonstration of the means of production. To “jazz” things up they throw in intermittent blasts of pop-star banality as well, sprinkled with blinky graphics.
…Turn up the lights in here baby
Extra bright, I want y’all to see this
Turn up the lights in here, baby
You know what I need
Want you to see everything
Not Rented To Humans: Grip Face
First, they look like run down sheds, these new wooden structures in high weeds – possibly stopped mid-construction, perhaps during the last economic downturn. Here the missed opportunity of housing, suddenly coupled with the found opportunity of art exhibition!
“There’s something both bizarre and magical in abandoned places,” writes Grip Face in the description of this video. “The course of time invades them, colonizes them, makes it into its own. The invisible imprints impregnate the walls and the experiential trace of past inhabitants slips through the cracks like winter would through a badly insulated window.”
Elrow’art: Kaos Garden with Okuda San Miguel and Paco Osuna
A warmup video for multi-disciplinary artist Okuda San Miguel and dj/producer Paco Osuna and their creative intermingling of avant-garde aesthetics with electronic music to create their vision of ‘The Garden of Delights’. The premiere of the artistic partnership of Ink and Movement and elrow will be on September 28 at Amnesia Ibiza. Here’s a taste of things to come!
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Evan Roth “Since You Were Born”
2. “Island” Hamburg Max Mortal and Robert Lobel
3. Isaac Cordal In-Studio Visit. Bilbao, Spain.
4. ARTRIUM in Moscow
Graffiti Research Lab co-founder Evan Roth has been hacking his way through life and art practice for the mid-2000s when he was a student at Brooklyn’s Parsons, where he was valedictorian. Now an older wiser daddy of two, he turns his attention to the saturated everyday data pileup generated from Internet browsing. The accumulated images, logos, maps, banner ads in the cache is like so much DNA of the person behind the mouse, and when it is printed to display, one becomes engulfed.
Our favorite term from his new exhibit? “An alternate form of art-making, memory-making, and storytelling”.
Project Atrium: Evan Roth
“Island” Hamburg Max Mortal and Robert Lobel
From
Isaac Cordal In-Studio Visit. Bilbao, Spain.
From our visit to his studio comes this silent overview of how to turn a pig into a pig-man. “Here is where you see the craftsman at work; carefully attentive, problem-solving industry in play, possibly more at peace while he is creating than when he is left to think too much. He picks up a pink pig figurine and begins the plastic surgery, the fine reconstruction; a gentle whirring, a whittling away of snout and a defining of chin-line.”
See our full interview HERE:
ARTRIUM in Moscow
When we were in Moscow last summer as curators at Artmossphere, we had the opportunity to meet the director of the new program to bring international Street Artists to paint a shopping mall. The magnetizing force that drew artists to hit these walls is pretty strong; just ask Shepard Fairey, Felipe Pantone, Tristan Eaton, Ben Eine, PichiAvo, Okuda San Miguel, Pokras Lampas, Faith47, WK Interact, Faust, and Haculla.
French New Yorker and Street Artist WK Interact has just finished a new gig on a massive wall in Japan and he is about to help make some noise about it, so to speak. The Japanese band Noisemaker has a substantive following for their nu metal sound recalling the glossy punk stylings of 1990s and bands like Massive Attack, Green Day, and Rage Against the Machine and WK has created work to help them promote their new mini-album and tour kickoff next month.
The 12 meter wall in Shibuya features WK’s signature black and white urban military police-state nomenclature with an attractive female figure bossing in the foreground while holding a vintage recording device familiar to security and law enforcement. The Bands name is splashed in blood red behind her.
It took three days and a night to complete and WK tells us he had a very good time with the bands and the fans. Given that WK’s work on the street has nearly often contained elements of blurring chaotically chopped action, you smile when he tells you “the band was jumping on a trampoline in motion near the wall for their album cover.”
BSA: What does the model’s pose and clothing signify to you?
WK Interact: The model is supposed to be one their fans who goes to many different concerts. She has a recording device that dates back to 1980 called a NAGRA. Many people these days carry their own listening device on their SMART phone. The idea is that she’s recording and transmitting to many other people. She is in her own world and listening and recording events is a passion for her – like buying clothes or surfing or traveling.
BSA: How is this wall significant to people in Japanese culture?
WK Interact: This specific place will be destroyed in the next two months and new construction will take over. It’s located four blocks from the Shibuya station and it is in the heart of a district with many different cool bars and shops. Many Japanese are sad to see spots like this vanish.
BSA: How would you describe the scene on the street in Shibuya?
WK Interact: The last time I visited Japan was 17 years ago and at that time I did an amazing opening at PARCO Museum. At the time JAPAN was the most advanced in terms of street wear and a prime environment for street art and graffiti. Tokyo has changed terribly as you almost see nothing in terms of expression from the street. None is visible. All the small little stores have vanished, the economy is not as good, and most of the big brands have taken over.
It’s part of the fascinating world that you inhabit when you follow street art – you have no idea what you will discover in any city at any time because of it’s LIVE daily evolutionary personality. Here in Moscow we don’t see so much of the improvisational extra-legal type of works that characterize cities like Rio or Berlin or Paris, but we have been seeing a bunch of familiar international names in the last few days. Here are some shots of stuff we’ve found – much of it that you will also recognize – along with some great local Moscow stuff.
We’ll bring you more of the scene at the Artmossphere Biennale this week as artists and curators like us are arriving right now at the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art. We’ve already seen Faith XLVII, FAUST, Adele, Martha Cooper, CaneMorto, Cedar Lewisohn … As the lounge singers say, “We’ll be here all week folks”. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 0331c, Ben Eine, C215, Felipe Pantone, Haculla, Interenzni Kazki, Jan & JS, Losaer, N888K, Neue, Stasdobry, The RUS Crew, Theo Lopez, Tristan Eaton, Vasya, and WK Interact.
BSA is in Moscow as curators of 50+ international artists in the Artmossphere Biennale 2018 for its 3rd edition called Street Art Wave. Till the end of the month we’ll working with a stellar cross section of people involved with Urban Art/Street Art/Graffiti at curious and fascinating intersections. We’re meeting with Street Artists, academics, collectors, gallerists, museum curators, organizers, and thoughtful pontificators of all sorts in studio, on the street, behind the scenes, and on display. Come with us!
Last week we featured several photographs from Martha Cooper of WK Interact while they were both participating at the 20x21EUG Mural Project in Eugene, Oregon. So naturally we were surprised to see him jumping from rooftops here in Moscow – or more appropriately maybe he was para-troopering down from the sky, having been dropped by a plane. As he does.
No surprise here, Martha is on her way to Moscow as well!
The city of Eugene in Oregon is preparing for the 2021 IAAF World Athletics Championships and like many cities these days it is transforming itself with murals.
With a goal of 20 new murals by ’21 (20x21EUG), the city began in 2016 to invite a slew of international Street Artists, some locally known ones, and a famous graffiti/Street Art photographer to participate in their ongoing visual festival.
A lively city that is bustling with the newly blooming marijuana industry and finding an endless array of ways to celebrate it, Eugene has been so welcoming that many artists will report that feeling quite at home painting in this permissively bohemian and chill atmosphere.
With a goal of global diversity a selection artists have included a variety of Street Art names from around the world including Blek le Rat, AIKO, Dan Witz, HUSH, Martha Cooper, WK Interact, Hyuro, Jaz, Alexis Diaz, Telmo Miel, Hua Tunan, Beau Stanton, Matt Small and local talents like Bayne Gardner and Ila Rose. With some luck organizers say they hope this year to also include artists H11235 from Nepal and Shamsia Hassani from Afghanistan.
Today you can see a lot of the painting action thanks to 2018 “20x21EUG” participant and famed photographer Martha Cooper, who had an opportunity to meet the artists this year and catch up on some of the work from previous years. We’re proud to be able to show these new images with BSA readers and we thank Ms. Cooper for sharing them.
We spoke with two important pillars of 20x21EUG, Debbie Williamson-Smith, Director of Communications and Paul Godin, Director of Artist Relations, to get a little background on the festival and to see what makes it unique.
BSA: Can you speak about the genesis of 20x21EUG? Why did you decide to start an Urban Art Festival?
Debbie Williamson-Smith: The concept of a large-scale public art project such came from Isaac Marquez, Cultural Services Director for the City of Eugene, and is rooted in Eugene’s rich history of public art, dating back to the Oregon International Sculpture Symposium in 1974. Mr. Marquez gathered a committee of arts organizations and community members passionate about the project and street art to bring the concept to fruition.
Paul Godin: We wanted to invite the very best street artists from around the country and around the globe, to create a living outdoor art gallery in Eugene for the world to see when they came. We have curated a mix of street art legends, rising stars and local heroes, all with very different artistic styles and strong voices. Street art is a global movement, of increasingly high profile, and it was a shared passion that united our committee members.
If you want to take it way back, the origin may well have been a trip to the east end of London ten years ago, on a failed quest in search of a Banksy that led instead to the discovery of the wonders of Brick Lane.
BSA: How is a project of such quality as this funded?
Debbie Williamson-Smith: Funding for the project comes from the City of Eugene Cultural Services transient room tax revenue, sponsorship with City of Eugene Parking Services and contributions from wall owners and local businesses through donations of goods and services. We have had over 50 businesses support this project since it started and volunteers have donated hundreds of hours of time. It takes a village to make a mural and a full list of partners can be found on our website.
BSA: Is it difficult to get landlords’ permission to paint on their properties in Eugene?
Paul Godin: Heck no. We have found many landlords very open to the idea of putting street art murals on their walls. Civic pride in our project, and the high quality of the work here has made it very easy to sell more wall owners on involvement. Now they are coming to us. Our biggest problem in Eugene with walls is that we do not have as many big blank walls as larger cities do. Our kingdom for a blank 12 story wall!
Eugenians are generally thrilled by the transformation that 20x21EUG has wrought. Just last week, a city police officer brought a woman to her favorite piece, a group of elderly women were seen admiring Matt Small’s piece and chatting.
Debbie Williamson-Smith: It is so electric that we have coined the phrase “mural magic”. This project has ignited the civic pride in our community and has already inspired another mural project, Urban Canvas. This initiative of the City of Eugene’s Cultural Services department matches local walls with local artists and three murals have been added to the cultural landscape since it launched in 2018. People are making mural watching a regular activity, taking children to watch artists in action and bringing visitors to see the murals.
BSA: What are you personal observations regarding the experience as a whole? What would you do different for next year?
Paul Godin: One thing that became clear about our festival this year is that we have created a family, uniting our committee, our volunteers, our artists in a unique and inspiring way. We have bonded through our shared experience, the long nights, the controlled chaos days, the communal dinners, and the stains of primer on all of our clothes.
Debbie Williamson-Smith: This has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. As an arts advocate, I am so inspired by the changes art is making in my community and this is one of the reasons why public art and street art are so important. It gives immediate access to art for the public. We are also in a time of political upheaval and for some people, including myself, this has been a difficult time for our country. To welcome people to my part of the world is my form of resistance. We can unite each other through art and as anyone who has studied art history knows, the arts have gotten us through some dark times.
If I could do anything differently, it would be to make certain all the artists travel here at the same time. When we had Dan Witz here last summer, he talked about what he called artist equity, meaning that festivals for him provide an opportunity to work with artists that he has not worked together before and that always influences his decision to attend. One of my highlights from last summer was watching him and Blek le Rat work on separate installations on the same building.
I was almost as giddy as Dan was. Almost.
For more information about 20x21EUG in Eugene, Oregon, please CLICK HERE.
Welcome back! This is our first Images of the Week in weeks! So much has changed since last year!
For example we had a Bomb Cyclone this week, which no one had ever heard of before. It sounded like it was made up for ratings on the Weather Channel which is still trying to give storms individual names and is still thought of as very dumb for doing so.
The winter bomb cyclone closed all the schools, chased cars and people off the streets. Jaime took the snowstorm opportunity to go to Central Park and shoot video till his battery died. Once the temperature dipped to 3 degrees farenheit (-14 celcius) with strong winds, seeing Street Art in New York was sort of something to do as you stumbled and slipped passed it in a hurry to the deli or laundromat or job if you work in medical services or drive a snow plow.
Luckily for us all, that was the only bomb we have had to deal with, but with the Very Stable Genius we have misleading the country, no one can say for sure for how long .
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Ai Wei Wei, Baron Von Fancy, Bäst, Basto, Havoc Hendricks, Jimmy C, Juce Boks, Li-Hill, Otto Schade, Tinta Crua, Tomadee, Wane, Wk Interact, and Zola.
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
