April 30, 2005
The first series had to do with religion and baseball. Each sticker showed different people (Jesus, Khomeini, etc) in baseball uniforms with religious symbols in the bottom corners. In all there were maybe five or six that we found. The stickers lasted for about a month or so and then were gone and never to return.
The second series, which went up right around this same time, told the story of "The Fats." Each one was different and each one carried the story of the Fats forward. The Fats lasted a week or two and then were gone, never to return.
Of the millions of stickers we've seen, these two series still have stayed in our minds. To this day we have no idea who did them or what they meant.
If anyone has any insight into them, please let us know. We'd love to learn more
Posted by marc at 2:10 PM in |
1. Numskull, has just updated his website with new fotos. You can check it out here.
2. Numskull will be having an exhibitiuon on May 6 in Sydney.
MAY'S PRESENTS
NUMSKULL
FRIDAY MAY 6, 2005
MAY LANE, ST. PETERS
(next to St.Peters Train Station)
SYDNEY
Opening Drinks / 6pm-8pm
For more on NUMSKULL, check out: http://www.mays.org.au/ or
http://numskull.twisted- ink.com/
Each month, May's invites a street artist to paint a 3
x 2.5 metre panel space installed on May Lane, St.
Peters. At the month's close, the panels are taken
down and replaced afresh for the next 'chapter' in the
project. The May's scenario obviously differs from
normal graffiti practice but, like all street work, is
subject to 'the elements'.
Each new artist's work is hailed in with drinks on the
first Friday of each month. Eventually, May's will
re-exhibit the panels together as a preserved account
of the lane's activity. Each artist's feature work is
for sale via May's. MAY'S also acts as a commissioning
body, connecting the featured artists with people
interested in funding or purchasing new street art
works.
http://www.mays.org.au/ (02) 9550 4232
tugi@graphicartmount.com.au3. You can buy Numskull tees here.
Posted by marc at 7:18 AM in |
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From Wikipedia:
Detournement; "short for: detournement of pre-existing aesthetic elements. The integration of past or present artistic production into a superior construction of a milieu. In this sense there can be no Situationist painting or music, but only a Situationist use of these means.", Internationale Situationiste issue 1, June 1958.
Detournement may be understood as the opposite of 'recuperation', the process by which radical ideas and images are commodified and incorporated within the 'safe' confines of 'spectacular' society. With detournement, images produced by the spectacle are altered and subverted so that rather than supporting the status quo, their meaning is changed in order to put across a more radical or oppositionist message. Such a pro-situ technique can be seen in the work of Culture Jammers such as AdBusters 1 (http://www.adbusters.org/), whose 'subvertisements' 'detourn' Nike adverts, for example. In this case the original advertisement's imagery is altered in order to draw attention to said company's policy of shifting their production base to cheap labour cost third world 'free trade zones'.
However, the line between 'recuperation' and 'detournement' can at times seem rather thin. Naomi Klein, in her book No Logo, details how Culture Jammers and AdBusters have been approached (sometimes successfully) by corporations such as Nike, Pepsi, or Diesel, and offered lucrative contracts in return for partaking in 'ironic' promotional campaigns. She points up further irony in the instance of merchandising produced to promote AdBusters' Buy Nothing day; this, she suggests, may be understood as an example of the recuperation of detournement.
(Excerpt from: Situationist International)
Posted by marc at 6:52 AM in |
photos by Kesh
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April 29, 2005
Knicked from the Heavy Trash weblog:
WHAT'S HEAVY TRASH?More here.
An anonymous arts organization of architects, designers and urban planners, Heavy Trash creates large, disposable art objects that draw community and media attention to urban issues. By explaining a particular urban problem and suggesting a solution, Heavy Trash seeks to provoke dialogue among the residents of Los Angeles.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH GATED COMMUNITIES?
Most people want to live in communities that are safe for their families and most homeowners want to protect their property values. Although these are fundamentally reasonable goals, walling off one section of the city from another is not a reasonable way to achieve them. In fact, doing so can actually harm the very communities in need of protection. According to USC Lusk Center Director Ed Blakely and UC Berkeley professor Mary Gail Snyder,
"When public services and even local government are privatized, when the community of responsibility stops at the gates, the function and the very idea of democracy are threatened. Gates and barricades that separate people from one another also reduce people's potential to understand one another and commit to any common or collective purpose."
Instead of walling ourselves off in gated communities, alternatives, such as the following, should be explored:
* Unrestricted pedestrian access. Since it is difficult to commit a property crime in Los Angeles without a car, unrestricted pedestrian access could be provided to all gated communities. This would return the parks, streets and sidewalks that have been removed from the public realm back to the residents of Los Angeles.
* Investment in public infrastructure. Encourage investment in public infrastructure -- like parks, streets, sidewalks and schools -- by restoring local control over property tax revenues, essentially fixing the unintended consequences of Proposition 13.
* "More eyes on the street." Amend zoning code to encourage more mixed-use residential neighborhoods with 24-hour activity. Legalize second units ("Granny Flats") in single-family homes. Both of these actions would put more people outside during the normal course of a day, and nothing works quite as well to make neighborhoods safer, friendlier and livelier.
In June 1997, Heavy Trash installed their first project -- a 2,000-pound stair providing temporary access to Triangle Park at Santa Monica and Bundy. A 7'-high fence had been erected around the park to prevent the homeless from using the grassy enclave. The City solved the "problem" by using $28,000 of tax-payer funds to fence off the park and permanently remove it from the public realm. For three weeks, the stair allowed the local community to use the park again.
More here.
Posted by marc at 6:54 AM in |
April 28, 2005
Well it seems that Louis Vuitton is not as much of a fan of Painted Rooms as we are. The company's "ANTICOUNTERFEITING DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAS" has just served the hotel with a cease and desist letter telling them that the series of hand painted floor-to-ceiling murals by San Francisco pop artist Tim Gaskin violates their LV trademark because the artist incorporates the LV logo into his artwork.
LV demands that the hotel .... "remove all infringing depictions of the LV trademark from your walls". The letter further requests the "name and address" of the person who created "each mural painted", and threatened legal action for "trademark infringement, false designation of origin, unfair competition, and trademark dilution".
While we're not lawyers, and legally we have no idea who's right, we're incredibly impressed that the Hotel des Arts is fighting for the artist in this case and is not simply painting over the walls the day they got the letter which is what most people would do when faced with legal action for a company like LV.
Hotel des Arts' Richard Singer said in a statement that we just read - "Removing the LV trademark from the walls of the hotel would necessitate destroying an original piece of fine art, and that is NOT something we are even going to consider," "Works of artistic expression are clearly protected by the First Amendment, and we absolutely refuse to be censored by a multinational corporation and their teams of lawyers".
Good stuff. We'll be interested to see how this plays out. If you have any thoughts on this one, drop us a note.
Posted by marc at 11:25 PM in |
Not too long ago our friend Vinnie Ray approached us with the idea of doing a series of music podcasts, called Vitamin_F, with each podcast featuring an exclusive mix of music from a different artist from the Wooster Collective website. We thought the idea was great and so for the last few weeks Vinnie has been working hard curating the Vitamin_F series and working with the artists to put the mixes together.
So without any further delay, we're excited to let you know that beginning this week, on each Friday we'll be puting up a new mix of music put together by a different artist from a different country in the world. To launch the series this week, Vinnie Ray has put together an amazing mix of cool tracks. In upcoming week's we'll be putting up mixes by a range of artists including Calma, Mudwig Dan, Pure Evil, and many more. Each mix will have an exclusive "cover" done by the artist.
So this week, Vitamin_F features our friend, and curator of Vitamin_F.... Vinnie Ray.
Length: 21 min 34 seconds
Vinnie Ray Mix run list
1 - cheese2- Ween
2- U.M.O. Three- Unidentified Musical Object
3- Outta Space- Jimi Tenor
4- Clean Up The Arena- Jackie Mittoo
5- cheese- Ween
6- Funk 49- James Gang
To subscribe to the RSS feed of the Wooster podcasts, cut and paste this URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/WoosterPodcasts) into your podcast aggregator like iPodder or iPodderX and then you'll automatically receive every new podcast as we put them online.
Posted by marc at 10:45 PM in Podcast |
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Also, we've been hearing a lot of good things about a show Rueben's organizing in May where' he's recreating the gallery as the interior of a suburban house and letting street artists loose on the walls, floors, furniture etc. You can learn more about it here.
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April 27, 2005
This new series features artwork from an amazing group of artists including Jeff Soto, Eltono, Dave, Dalek, Blek Le Rat, Urban Medium, Vinnie Ray, MCA, London Police, and Logan Hicks.
Each wallpaper costs $1.99 USD to download. When you purchase one of the wallpapers, you will be supporting two great causes - first, the artists - and second, a terrific organization called Keep A Child Alive.
We (wooster) make no money from this project, as we're donating all of our proceeds to Keep A Child Alive, an amazing organization that was set up to supply anti- viral drugs to families and communities in Africa that are being devistated by the AIDS virus. You can learn more about KCA here.
You can download the new iamges on Wooster Mobile by clicking here.
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Cross by Lolo
"Spray Can #1" by Lolo
We're extremely excited to be adding two peices of artwork from the Barcelona based artist, Lolo, on our Wooster:Collecting page. It was back in December of last year that our friends Freaklub first introduced us to the work of their friend Lolo, a fellow artist in Barcelona. Lolo's work is incredibly playful and fun and we've been a fan since we first saw Lolo's kids in the trees. You can read more about Lolo here, and here. You can see the work on the collecting page here.
Posted by marc at 7:16 AM in |
ARTIST: LOLO (Barcelona, Spain)
TITLE: "Cross"
COLLECTOR'S NOTES: It was back in December of last year that our friends Freaklub first introduced us to the work of their friend Lolo, a fellow artist in Barcelona. Lolo's work is incredibly playful and fun. You can read more about Lolo here, and here.
THE STATUS: AVAILABLE
Posted by marc at 4:13 AM in Collecting |
ARTIST: LOLO (Barcelona, Spain)
TITLE: "SPRAY CAN #1"
COLLECTOR'S NOTES: It was back in December of last year that our friends Freaklub first introduced us to the work of their friend Lolo, a fellow artist in Barcelona. Lolo's work is incredibly playful and fun. We've been a fan of Lolo's painted spray cans for a while so we're extremely happy to have one of them included in Wooster: Collecting. You can read more about Lolo here, and here.
THE STATUS: AVAILABLE
Posted by marc at 3:52 AM in Collecting |
April 26, 2005
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Posted by marc at 7:29 AM in |
"First of all, I got kind of spooked when I pulled into the Econo Lodge (to which the sign is adjacent), and saw hotel employees hauling out junk and throwing it into a dumpster directly below the sign. One of the hotel dudes looked like he might actually have some authority, and might question what we were doing climbing on their defunct sign.
But after sitting for a minute in the truck in nervous silence, Jersey Girl clapped her hands and said, "okay boys, we drove all this way. Let's hop to it!"
And with that we got started. (Goatbelt Matt was my only helper
by the way. All of my other "enthusiastic volunteers" just kind of disappeared
as the project deadline approached. Even Rachel's college friend, who lives in
Orlando and works for the billboard ad agency, stood us up. Apparently her
husband said that it doesn't look good for a school teacher in a small town if
his wife gets arrested helping a guerilla billboard artist.)...." You
can read more of the story here.
Posted by marc at 7:16 AM in |
(Thanks, John)
Posted by marc at 7:06 AM in |
April 25, 2005
Photos by timen, a photographer in Amsterdam
Posted by marc at 7:35 AM in |
From Other in Canada:
"i was in Hull ,Quebec a couple of weeks ago
i was painting there for a week and each morning walked by this street mural.
i find it to be the most inspiring thing i have seen in along time
i know the guy who painted it must be upset ...but something about layering and destruction and things falling apart just intrigues me... i always have trains coming back to town
with the eyes spray painted red and moustaches and tattoos drawn on them.
i like them better with these additions .i feel like i am dragging people to draw on trains that wouldn't normally..train workers or the people who load trains...or just hobos in the night
i am sure that most canadians can see the political/cultural reasons behind the paint splatter
but i am more interested in the splatter leaving something so time consuming hidden
what a collaboration"
love other
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April 24, 2005
Posted by marc at 5:07 PM in |
This morning we locked in the route for the 3rd Annual Wooster Collective Walking Tour. As we mentioned the other day, the walking tour through Soho and the LES in New York will take place on Sunday May 22rd at 2pm.
We excited to let you know that some of the artwork you'll see on this year's route include pieces from a wide range of artists including The London Police, Faile, Bast, Swoon, Shepard Fairey, Mike Giant, Tats Cru, Skewville, Space Invader, and many more. In addition, we'll be showing you work from some of the true legends of graf and street art including Cost and Revs, and Barry McGee. But for us, this years highlight is sure to be an original work on the street by the twins, Os Gemeos. And if you look closely you may discover a few Banksy rats lurking in various doorways along the route.
More surprises are on the way. So again, if you're planning on joining us, drop us an email to confirm your spot at woostercollective@hotmail.com. (There's no fee for the tour) So far we've filled about half of the 100 spots on the tour.
More info coming soon. Don't forget to send us an email if you're planning on attending.
Posted by marc at 12:05 PM in |