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

Now screening: Gorey & PAL Crew at Klughaus, Crack & Shine – PAL Crew Profiled, Jilly Ballistic: Wild in The Streets, and JR: INSIDE OUT

BSA Special Double Feature: About Spraying Buildings
Feature 1. Gorey & PAL Crew at Klughaus

We highlight these two videos as possible polar opposites on a spectrum that includes genuine practice, personal and public perceptions of the graffiti artist / fine artist – a dichotomy that may produce cognitive dissonance and swirling emotion, an uncomfortable grey area for one to see the wielder of the can as artist, installationist, situationist, expressionist, intellectual, political theorist, social alien and open law breaker with a mission, or not. Okay, maybe it isn’t all that grand, but we got out the dictionary this morning.

First, here is a departure from the more common depiction of the lone aerosol artist as nihilistic defacer of property to now lone painter creating on a studio wall; a splattery line illustration of buildings that hug one another, forming a closely knit imaginary community, overlaid by an intimate serenade for an appreciative audience. When you look at this promo for the new pop-up show by Klughaus called PALINGENESIS by a series of graff artists, it seems sort of romantic, mon amor.

Feature 2. Crack & Shine – PAL Crew Profiled on Streets and Roofs of Paris

Here, the buildings are the canvas, and the community is alarmed and in opposition to the painter. In strict contrast with the video above, this one features some of the Peace and Love Crew (PAL) appearing to actively deface property in Paris.  And by their self descriptions, there is still this romantic view of what they do. Here they are members of a crew – in a gallery they might be called a collective. Switch the signifier or situation and you are celebrated or vilified (as Jaime adroitly observed yesterday). And there you have it – the flood of emotions/thoughts that are evoked by two entirely different expressions that involve the spray can.

Spoiler alert, there is no tidy answer to tie it all together.

Jilly Ballistic: Wild in The Streets

And on another note, Dega Films, a young and earnest start-up in Williamburg, Brooklyn is taking on a new project to document 10 Street Artists on the scene in a series from the streets of New York City while it’s happening. This is worthwhile endeavor for two reasons; 1. Documenting Street Art and artists is important for the greater culture to understand what is happening and to place it in the evolutionary timeline as this global scene continues to expand, contract, and mutate, and 2. This project is not sponsored by a brand, it is sponsored by you, so you are ensuring a bit more of intellectual freedom in the storytelling.

And on that tip, this episode looks at Street Artist/Culture Jammer Jilly Ballistic, who focuses her work predominantly in the subway with messages calling into question any variety of core assumptions pedaled daily by commercial messages that commuters must encounter as they travel, and consumer culture in general.  Among other things.

To learn more about the Kickstarter for Wild in The Streets click here.

JR: INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project. A Documentary

Inside Out is the new documentary traces the phenomenon of Street Artist and photographer JR as he engages everyday people around the globe and helps them tell at least one small part of his story. Aided by the muscle of an army of committed volunteers and assistants, he is able to provide a forum for the individual to express themselves in ways that are celebrational, idiosyncratic, sometimes heart breaking, always human. Results may vary, and the reception locally is not always laudatory. Clearly JR is the name on the marquee but he makes sure that in many ways the stars are the people who get him there.

Top images are screenshots, copyright of Klughaus and OffTheWall.TV.

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