Perhaps Maynard James Keenan would have would take issue with me, but if there was any doubt that Shepard Fairey has sold out, Levi’s hired Fairey to develop a clothing line, complete with a paste up at Times Square, should remove all doubt. The art? Obey Giant in the shape of a jeans pocket, and previously work (“Stay Up Girl” 2004 (Plate 196 in “Supply and Demand”, “Obey Factory” 2000 (Plate 201 ibid), and two others) defaced with Levi’s Giant and Levi’s new slogan, “Go Forth.”
Granted the guy has to pay the bills, and he’s done commercial work before, but there seems like a line is crossed when you’re repurposing your own work for a marketing campaign, especially when your art is has a very strong anti-conformity, anti-establisment, anti-commerical bent to it. Then to top it off, you write:
One of my main concepts with the ["This is Your God" show in 2003 at the Six Space Gallery in Los Angeles] (and the campaign as a whole) was that obedience is the most valuable currency. People rarely consider how much power they sacrifice by blindly following a self-serving corporation’s marketing agenda, and how their spending habits reflect the direction i which they choose to transfer power.
At least the irony of the situation isn’t lost on one of us.
Eric Pakurar, took a photo every day of the same Greene St doorway in Manhattan for eight months straight, recording how the graffiti changed as part of his Chemical Warfare Project.
He is currently soliciting the identities of the individual artists, the individual pieces on Flickr.
After the Camden council in London removed all the park benches because bums were sleeping on them, self proclaimed anarchists, The Space Hijackers, wearing bright yellow vests installed new ones in broad daylight.
The previous post got me trudging through my big file of clippings, and where I found this video of Obscura Digital’s demo of their software for coordinating 7 HD projectors down at Mint Plaza.
Sure, it’s essentially an ad, but it is pretty cool.
Back in May, Urbanscreen, and Rossa & Rossa presented the video installation, “How It Would Be, If a House was Dreaming” at the Galerie der Gegenwart (Gallery of Contemporary Art).
This isn’t Urbanscreen’s first project, nor their first projection on the Galerie der Gegenwart, but it is their most popular to date.
On a technical note, Urbanscreen uses the free MXWendler software.
Makes me long for 01SJ, or I guess really ISEA, since 01SJ just wasn’t the same last year.
The Chron highlights some of the murals of The Mission in San Francisco. Murals are pretty common in The Mission, but this list highlights some of the best.
The 19 year old mural of Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev kissing East German General Secretary Honecker, known as “Brothers’ Kiss”, has been destroyed by the city of Berlin. Dmitri Vrubel painted the mural on September 28, 1990 along a stretch of the wall running along the Spree River. That segment – now known as the East Side Gallery – is one of several that remain as a memorial.
The wall is currently undergoing restoration. As part of this process, the wall is being steam cleaned, and the underlying concrete repaired. Officials say that the artists can then repaint their images. Vrubel has been given €3000 to repaint his iconic image, but instead he plains to paint a similar, but different image. After all, art can’t simply be replaced.
Via Grafik sent these black blocks to the Prague streetart festival Names.
In related news, Technabob found flickr photos of Gaffa’s “Giant Tetris (aka ‘One More Go One More Go’)”, an exhibit in Sydney’s “Live Lanes – By George!” outdoor exhibit that sadly ended in February.
