GRL: The Complete First Season @ NYC's MoMa

So, this weekend, at MoMA, the Graffiti Research Laboratory will be premiering their film, GRL: The Complete First Season on Sunday, May 4th @ 8PM. After the flick, there will be a talk with a range of artists featured in the film, including Mark Jenkins, Leon Reid, and Steve Lambert. You can learn more here, but be sure to check out the trailer below...

You can see what Mark Jenkins has been doing in Sweden lately ;-)

Graffiti Research Lab @ NY's MoMA

A video is worth a 1000 words ;-)

From their origins in the trash room of a non-profit in Manhattan to their emergence as the instigators of an international art movement, Graffiti Research Lab: The Complete First Season documents the adventures of an architect and an engineer who quit their day jobs to develop high-tech tools for the art underground. The film follows the GRL and their network of graffiti artist collaborators (and commercial imitators) across four continents as they write on skyscrapers with lasers, mock advertisers with homemade tools, get in trouble with The Department of Homeland Security and make activism fun again. Primarily using video footage from point-and-shoot digital cameras (“The Pocket School”) and found-content on the web, the movie’s visual style draws as much from the art of the power point presentation and viral media as conventional documentary cinema. Narrated by GRL co-founders, Roth and Powderly, The Complete First Season makes a humorous and insightful argument for free speech in public, open source in pop culture, the hacker spirit in graffiti and not asking for permission in general. The film was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. Available 24/7 on The Pirate Bay.

animal cruelty is not art !!!

This is horrible.
Further I read the mail I got from a friend I was becoming more disguised+angry+sad. This is what it said and click here to see the video (don't mind the song in the background!)

In the 2007, the 'artist' Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, he tied him to a rope in an art gallery, starving him to death. For several days, the 'artist' and the visitors of the exhibition have watched emotionless the shameful 'masterpiece' based on the dog's agony, until eventually he died. Does it look like art to you?

But this is not all ... the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of Central America decided that the 'installation' was actually art, so that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

Sign the petition to stop this non-sense !!!!!!
http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition-sign.html
http://www.petitiononline.com/13031953/petition.html
or just copy it in your browser to sign a petion to stop him to do it again, then digit the name Guillermo Vargas Habacuc to find the petition to sign.

explosions in the sky

The emotional journey that this band offered at their live performance yesterday is unexplainable. Truly epic. I am so moved by their music and performance that I'm not able to articulate it, just as Gean Moreno wrote in an article I recently read:

Concerts are memorialized as enchanted experiences and embalmed as vessels of secret feelings that refuse verbal translation. First encounters always happen in some other, not quite-quotidian time and space that is impossible to duplicate and available only to those who where there. These are the secret apotheoses of pop culture, what the money machine can never take away...

I can only recommend Explosions In The Sky as a magnificent band to hear live. Until then, click and .... listen.

Be Kind Rewind

In loving respect for Michel Gondry's work, I went down to SOHO last month to see the exposition Be Kind Rewind shortly before his identically titled film was released in theaters.

Be Kind Rewind is a film about two childhood friends living in Pasaic, New Jersey, trying to make ends meet. After one of the characters accidentally gets his brain magnetized by trying to sabotage a local power plant, he visits the video store his friend is taking care of while the owner is away and unknowingly erases all of the video tapes in the store’s inventory. The characters decide to make their own homemade versions of popular films in a junkyard behind the store. These new “sweded” films—recreations using commonly available, everyday materials—prove more popular with the customers than the originals, making the two friends local celebrities.

For the exhibition, Michel Gondry recreated the video store in the gallery, complete with a back lot containing a variety of movie sets where visitors can make their own renditions of films. All videos created during the exhibition were viewed in the gallery. About the project, Gondry states:

“I don’t intend nor have the pretension to teach how to make films. Quite the contrary. I intend to prove that people can enjoy their time without being part of the commercial system and serving it. Ultimately, I am hoping to create a network of creativity and communication that is guaranteed to be free and independent from any commercial institution.”

It was fun. Sometimes (and maybe because of those commercial institutions) we forget that working should be fun, primarily. The only thing that surprised me was that you could not use your own camera! Made me wonder WHY ? If it is about the creative process and networking- shouldn't that be the last thing that is restricted ??? ... Mr. Gondry, do not make me lift that eyebrow!!!

Have not seen the movie yet, but if you have any opinions, feel free to post!

come correct

It is strange, how sometimes you still have expectations, even when you get older and you have built up your experience. Its always good when you face the reality :-)

Some bubbles were bursted at the graffiti show last Thursday at The Showroom Gallery. The gallery space consisted of two rooms: a bigger one where most of the artworks where exhibited and a smaller one, where Cope2 gave presents and his designers sneakers were exhibited. DJ played, there was good mood and people had fun waiting to meet the artists, take pictures or see the artwork. But what artwork was there to see? I questioned the purpose of the group show and the works seemed very anemic lacking the energy you get when you see a 'real' piece of all those graffiti writers! Maybe because I have seen their work on the streets, I was expecting more from the show. Maybe it was just meant to be nothing more than a good party, but strikingly that was not the only thing that left a bitter kind of feeling as leaving the show. I guess after a while some of the writers just stop doing pieces outside on the streets and get involved in another form of expression and I do not argue that at all. But it makes me sad seeing great writers conforming. Like the world isn't just gray enough.

Personally, for me the queen of the night was Claw. Some people never give up the fight! I admire her. You can still see her bombing NYC beside her designers work.

There is so much to do, so little time!!! (Oh, or as Banksy said , I will paraphrase: so much time so little to say :-))) Living in NY is pushing the tempo! I haven't posted much lately, but I'll keep it fresh in future.

Stay true and eat healthy!

The Streets Of Europe

Check out this video: Life Ain’t Simple




I had the chance too see Bo130 and Microbo (from the video above) along with Blek Le Rat, Blue, D*Face and Space Invader at a beautiful show in December called The Streets Of Europe.

Jonathan LeVine Gallery’s goal in organizing this series of International Street Art exhibitions (First Brazilian, and now European) is to help create a visual dialogue within our global community, a creative exchange of ideas that transcend class and cultural differences, while crossing geographical borders. The objective is to promote freedom of expression through exposing new artwork to people in different cities worldwide.




Blek le Rat
A pioneer of graffiti writers in Europe, Blek le Rat was one of the first to use stencils on the street. His method of creating street art changed the face of graffiti and continues to influence artists around the world.



I especialy love Blu
With a penchant for drawing and public art, Blu started painting walls around his native Bologna in 2000. His pieces often cover entire sides of buildings, which he either paints using brushes mounted on long sticks, or by simply standing on a friend’s shoulders.



Space Invader
Referencing the 1978 video game, mosaics featuring “Space Invaders” became a familiar sight on the streets of Paris in the late 90s. Space Invader's usage of tile to create street art, rather than paint or stencil emphasizes his commentary of how information networks have affected and transformed society. Space Invader creatures can be found on the streets of over thirty five cities worldwide. Recently, his exhibition work has evolved, incorporating Rubik’s Cubes to create Invaders and building 3D sculptures which echo the same imagery in his two-dimensional street pieces.

D*Face
D*Face is more like a stylized cartoonist whose characters are too alive, demanding and confrontational to be limited to television sets, canvases or drawing boards. They’ve completely escaped the pen of their creator, repopulating the walls of London by transforming the streets into a cartoon landscape of slit-eyed spheres and sharp-eared gremlins. But here at this show I was truly amazed by his work (the approach and the handling of the pieces as well as the themes he chose) and I was surprised that he evolved so much and didn't just present the characters he is so well known of!