View this post on InstagramFrontier II , 12"x16", acrylic on wood panel, 2016
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Category: GRAFFITI
Dimitris Ntokos
Check out more of his work dimitrisntokos.com
Kevin Cyr
Saul Williams – The Stone Bench
By Chryde
It was Saul that came to us with something specific in mind: he wanted to do a movie under the city, in the catacombs of Paris. The “real ones”, the ones that are hard and illegal to access. The ones without guides or stacked up skulls simply there for show. He hoped we were crazy enough to follow him underground. And we were.
You might as well get in the mood. Close the windows of your office, disable your notifications, and start loading the video. You can even dim the lights. Set the video in full screen mode, put on a good set of headphones, and immerse yourself in the music for 30 minutes.
No doubt you will then feel the intensity of the experience. Those eight hours spent underground with Saul Williams. Off we go.
It was Saul that came to us with something specific in mind: he wanted to do a movie under the city, in the catacombs of Paris. The “real ones”, the ones that are hard and illegal to access. The ones without guides or stacked up skulls simply there for show. He hoped we were crazy enough to follow him underground. And we were.
François recruited one of his catacomb-lover friends and we bought the required equipment. François and Colin went off on a half a day of spotting and preparing the location and tried to figure out how the crew would survive… We were alas ready to take Saul and his musicians with us.
Those galleries sure are unwelcoming. They are cold and as damp as they get. Most of them are flooded, others are just wide enough to thread your way through. You need to climb, to duck, to bend yourself, walk for hours knee high in water with your frontal flashlight for only guide.
You need to fight cramps, get your equipment through an opening before painfully following it in, walk in pitch black and when you eventually discover a larger room, take a deep breath… and play.
In this claustrophobic, dark atmosphere, the build, the presence and the voice of Saul Williams are enhanced. His howling echoes, his gaze is penetrating, his voice is composed when he goes into an impro as powerful as a sermon. When only the dimming light of a mass of candles remains, when the crew is beat and embarks in the peaceful conclusion of this journey during a calm and restful song, the power can still be felt. It is diffuse. Saul inspires rest.
Voilà, show’s over. 30 minutes. Freedom. They had been there for eight hours.
Translated by Helena Kaschel
Taken from blogotheque.net/
The history of Graffiti in Greece 1984-1994
by Charitonas Tsamanakis
A book about the evolution of Greek graffiti, including interviews with the first artists and a rare image archive.
images by Paris Tavitian/LIFO
Taken from lifo.gr
El Seed – Perception
In my new project ‘Perception’ I am questioning the level of judgment and misconception society can unconsciously have upon a community based on their differences.
In the neighborhood of Manshiyat Nasr in Cairo, the Coptic community of Zaraeeb collects the trash of the city for decades and developed the most efficient and highly profitable recycling system on a global level. Still, the place is perceived as dirty, marginalized and segregated.
To bring light on this community, with my team and the help of the local community, I created an anamorphic piece that covers almost 50 buildings only visible from a certain point of the Moqattam Mountain. The piece of art uses the words of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, a Coptic Bishop from the 3rd century, that said: ‘Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.’
‘إن أراد أحد أن يبصر نور الشمس، فإن عليه أن يمسح عينيه’
The Zaraeeb community welcomed my team and I as we were family. It was one of the most amazing human experience I have ever had. They are generous, honest and strong people. They have been given the name of Zabaleen (the garbage people), but this is not how they call themselves. They don’t live in the garbage but from the garbage; and not their garbage, but the garbage of the whole city. They are the one who clean the city of Cairo.
Taken from elseed-art.com
Low Bros video footage between 2013 and 2014
The Low Bros is an artist duo, which is made up of brothers Christoph and Florin Schmidt – formerly active as graffiti writers Qbrk and Nerd. Their work most often centers around stylized animal characters with human features, and addresses graffiti, hip hop, skateboarding and other elements which influenced and shaped the artists’ youth in the 1980s and 1990s. Taken from lowbros.de/about-above/
Check out their new website
GhalamDAR قلمدار
ghalamDAR (which means “the writer” in Farsi) Is an emerging artist working primarily as a graffiti artist. He experiences and creates by using calligraphy, Miniature painting (Negar-gari) and folk objects as parts of his subject inspirations. Traditions and such art movements like saqqakhana hs directly inspired ghalamDAR to challenge the dominant pictorial material of Iranian street art aiming for developing an aesthetic with particular Iranian markers. His works share an affinity with the interlocking aesthetic of “wild style” graffiti and traditional calligraphy which demonstrate an amalgamation of these two cultures. While other artists look at the western hip hop as the source of graffiti, ghalamDAR thinks of the relations between his works and the graffiti of Iranian revolution of 1979 and past artistic streams as his roots.
More about ghalamDAR
Fun Or Dumb? Graffiti (1976)
Uploaded on vimeo by Skip Elsheimer
Using kids’ own arguments (both pros and cons), film presents overwhelming evidence that vandalism is dumb. Shows that graffiti-type vandalism costs over $20,000,000 a year.
Zone 56
Zone56 started as a Graffiti artist in the 1990‘s and changed his expertise from letter-styles to photorealistic artwork.
PANKOV 