WELCOME TO NUART 2007 SEPT 06-NOV 04 2007. OPENING THURS 06 KL1900 ROGALAND KUNSTMUSEUM NUART 2007 Nuart 2007 is our most ambitious yet, a truly international line up of artists have been invited to Stavanger to build on last years event and to produce what promises to be one of the years most outstanding “urban art” events. From legendary and much respected pioneers such as Blek Le Rat and Charles Krafft to relative newcomers Slinkachu and Wordtomother. Nuart 07 explodes across mediums and the city from a central show based this year at Stavanger’s main Museum of Fine arts, Rogaland Kunstmuseum. The event includes one extensive two month long exhibition, city wide street work, film screenings, artist’s presentations, workshops, concerts and more. The event is curated and coordinated by Martyn Reed and Leon C6, ably assisted by an amazing group of volunteers, partners and organizations. …………………………………………………………………………………………… This event could not have taken place without the help, assistance and enthusiasm of the following people, companies and organisations. Rogaland Kunstmuseum, Norsk kulturråd, Stavanger kommune, Kunstskolen i Rogaland, Kino1, Mtn colours, Ikea, Skaggen Brygge Hotell, Svein Kvia Stavanger, Stim Restaurant, Elefant art, Overspray Magazine, Artofthestate, Rogaland Avis. …………………………………………………………………………………………… Special thanks to : Christian, Jan, Peter and all at RKM, Stein Bjelland, Tore Melling (for the design dodgeball sessions), Pal Ariel, Christine Sandvik (for the weather report), Daniela Arribo, Marte Jølbo, AKB, Ian, Tomas “Tomato” Sand, Nico, Jon, Ingvild, Trude, Victoria, Emil, Tine, Pal, Dan, Tore, Johan, Jon Øyvind, Stig and all the numerous volunteers that make up the nuart crew. We’d also like to thank all of those who have donated walls for the street work. Last but not least. A big thank you to all the artists who have flown in from around the world and taken time out of their hectic schedules to come beautify our walls and challenge our minds. Respect! …………………………………………………………………….. Finally, a very special thanks to all the authors, journalists and photographers whose work we’ve *appropriated and sampled in order to fill these pages. We really couldn’t have done it without you. Well we could, but we’d have never made the deadline. *Thank god for post modernism NTRODUCTION & HISTORY Because modernism was considered positive, rational, and objective, architects like Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe championed its capacity to facilitate a new social order. They prophesized that technological progress and a reconsidered urban plan would result in “better living through architecture.” Although Le Corbusier applied his concepts to a series of theoretical, large scale housing projects, cities like Paris were wary of the plans and rejected his ideas. But by the end of World War II the need for new housing stock (both in Europe and the United States) persuaded a generation of architects and urban planners to embrace Le Corbusier’s Utopian vision. The dream that modernism could somehow ameliorate living conditions never came true. Instead, just the opposite occurred. Anonymous, cheap, high-density housing isolated its inhabitants from the greater city and exacerbated socio-economic problems. It prompted Charles Jencks, the architect credited for popularizing the term post-modernism, to date the symbolic end of modernism as July 15, 1972. That’s when the prize-winning Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis was demolished. Designed in 1951 by Minoru Yamasaki (who went on to design the World Trade Center towers) the project included 33 eleven story buildings, 2870 apartments, and when it was initially conceived, not one playground. It’s easy to see how a generation of restless teenagers growing up in high-rise and lowrise ghettos doubted and eventually rejected modernism and its oppressive reality. For them, modernism represented systemic irrationality, negativity, half-truths, poor education, and limited access to economic empowerment. However, when a self-aware subculture rose out of the urban core to embrace plurality, fragmentation, and indeterminacy, something clicked. In retaliation they shaped an honest reflection of their lives from a fundamentally post-modern lens that pitted them against larger forces that had denied them individual value and cultural identity. Adventurous teens did this with no capital and no organizational power. They fought back with one of the few things they could control, words. Hegel wrote that, “To learn to read and write an alphabetic writing should be regarded as a means to infinite culture.” The post-structuralist French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote that, “Language is oppression,” because it is developed to allow only those people who speak it not to be oppressed. During the late 1960s overcoming socio-emotional hurdles necessitated both Hegel’s key to unlocking infinite culture and Foucault’s understanding of language’s deeper power. Once harnessed, an unusual torrent of creative, language-based experimentation and expression flowed from inner cities like New York and Philadelphia. It turned tables, oppressed the oppressor, and lit the fuse for a contemporary graffiti movement. It all started with the tag Quoted from ; Bombing Modernism: By Amos Klausner
CONTENTS
A CELEBRATION OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN ART AND STREET CULTURE
Q&A
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INTERVIEW MARTYN REED INTERVIEW PETER MEYER
VISITING ARTISTS
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AROFISH BLEK LE RAT DOTMASTERS CHARLES KRAFFT DFACE DOLK EINE HERAKUT KNGEE KAROLINA SOBECKA LOGAN HICKS M-CITY MIR NICK WALKER PØBEL RENE GAGNON SIXTEN SLINKACHU WORDTOMOTHER TRISTAN MANCHO LARRY REID
25 NUART PROGRAM / FILM
WHEATPASTE GALLERY
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PURE EVIL BAST ASBESTOS BEEJOIR The NuDesign Team Content & Copy : Martyn Reed Interviews & Additional Content : Leon C6 Design & Illustration: Paal Ariél Hofstad @ elefantart.com Design & Layout : Tore André Meling
INTERVIEW : MARTYN REED NUART
Martyn Reed. Artistic leader for Nuart & Numusic, (ir)responsible for all things Nu related.Club cultural and visual art refugee relocated to Norway from London in 96 in search of a less cynical art and music environment, and found it. How and why are Nuart and Rogaland kunstmuseum partnered for this show? A happy accident to be honest, we’d approached the Museum with a view to staging concerts in the space as part of Numusic. I hadn’t started thinking about the next Nuart at this point and simply imagined it would be a continuation of the street work from 06. We couldn’t go ahead with the Numusic plans due to the acoustics of the space. When it came around to thinking about Nuart, we’d already established this dialogue with what we found to be a surprisingly open-minded institution. They were undergoing a few leadership changes and seemed to be looking at pushing things forward, plus they were already on our radar as having the biggest cleanest whitest walls in the city. The artists involved in this show are mainly found on the street. How do you think the setting for these works affect their meaning? This is something I’ve thought long and hard about and I’ve come up with numerous boring cultural and theoretical alibis for taking on a Museum and how it might negatively re-contextualise the more street based work. But I think we have a very broad and diverse show that defies the obvious problems that would be created by sticking a bunch of street art in a contemporary gallery just for the sake of it. The interest for me lies in how these works interact with each other and the audience, and not how they might appear in some abstract thesis on the meaning of street art in a museum. We’ve had similar issues in the past with Numusic venues, placing electronic music in the City Cathedral for example. The fear was that it would bring a level of religiosity to work that didn’t contain any. But it was a fear that proved unfounded. At most it transfers a level of respectability to a work which helps open it up to new audiences. People in churches are expected to listen and think. People in Museums are expected to look and think. We couldn’t really ask for more. Perhaps a better question here is how this may re-contextualise a Museum. I think the power here lies in the form and content of the art, not the institution that houses it. Something we often forget. Do you differentiate between street art and graffiti? Not really, just between interesting and not so. Though I do think this new breed have developed far more interesting ways to engage with their public than graffiti ever did. Graffiti’s codes are generally closed to the wider community, which is probably why it’s been given such a hard time. Graffiti was initially much more about the voice of the dispossessed, a territorial claim and an innate need to mark make. Here was an art form that you didn’t have to study to be engaged with. You didn’t even have to be able to draw. It was letters, the ABC, if you knew your ABC’s, that was it, you could be an artist, your friends too and you did pieces for each other, not to entertain the general public or to propagate a specific ideaology. Graffiti was revolutionary, Street art takes it a step further. It engages or tries to engage with a much wider audience. I.e. everyone. Which is maybe one of the reasons why its been embraced by a wider public. There’s no doubt street art owes a debt to the strategies developed by Graffiti. There’s still an element of “getting up” involved, but the Internet has changed things dramatically. Work can be distributed to a global audience within minutes of completion and viewed by a potential audience of tens of thousands on sites such as Wooster Collective, Overspray, Artofthestate and numerous other blogs. Of course it doesn’t hurt if you’re flagrant. The journey from the street to the commercial art world has been taken by very few, Basquiat, Haring, Banksy. Why do you think that is? Hmmm, I’d say the opposite actually. Pretty much everyone involved in the scene of the early 90s are doing very well and making a good living out of what they do. Mike Mills, Mark Gonzales, Barry McGee, Futura, Phil Frost, Spike Jonze and numerous others are all showing and selling in both international institutions and well known commercial art spaces. The new wave of street artists such as Banksy, Choe, Faile, Swoon, Neate, Bast, Shep Fairey, Dface etc are hot on their heels, we have to also keep in mind that most of these artists have been working the streets for 10 years and in some cases more. If you’re talking super league auction house results, well, it’s very early days and it’s something I’m happy knowing very little about, but there’s no doubt that the likes of Banksy and street art in general has recently aroused a lot of interest from the “art world”, art investors and the Hedge Fund bonus boys. Most of these artists have created their own markets by taking hold of the means of production, they’ve opened independent galleries, they trade online and mostly feel comfortable working with clients in the commercial sector. We’re also only just beginning to understand the early ramifications of someone like Haring on the world of fine art and consumerism. I think it’s a scene that can’t ever be fully co-opted by the antiquated and obsolete hierarchies within the fine art world, simply because it doesn’t have to engage with it in order to survive. Auction houses are so far removed from the act of making art that it’s pretty irrelevant. Why are these often illegal acts becoming more accepted by a wider society?
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massive void that needs to be filled by very plain speaking voices. I also think that artists and the public are bored to death from years of conceptual grandstanding and art that requires a degree in post-modern discourse before you can engage with it. This new representational art is able to engage with a mass audience, it likes to deal with issues surrounding current social and political developments. Something that is relevant to us all. You can turn a street corner and, Wham! It’s there in your face.. creative, independent and shockingly relevant. Do you think that shows such as Nuart & *‘Spank the monkey’ will be instrumental in the creation of a coherent policy towards graffiti? It would be quite odd to ask for a “coherent policy” towards graffiti from the powers that be. We’ve already got 24/7 access to the city streets. Spank the Monkey took four years and a hell of a budget to pull together. Institutions are very slow moving creatures. I’m not sure that they’re equipped to deal with subcultures and the avantgarde. A few more general shows like this are maybe enough. I’d much prefer seeing a few institutions and larger galleries taking on some major solo shows. I think every artists involved in this exhibition could quite comfortably take on the space alone. With this show we’re making a specific point, and once it’s made I for one will be looking at things from a different angle. If this show goes on to influence other noncommercial spaces to commission this type of work, then I’ll be more than happy to have played a small part in it, but this show doesn’t have aspirations to be part of the “art world” as perhaps “Spank the Monkey” did. Can the opposition in the dynamics between vandalism and creation be resolved in street art? I don’t necessarily think they’re in opposition. I love to see a beautiful piece of thoughtful vandalism. It’s an act of creation in itself. Mindless vandalism I have no time for even though I understand why it exists. All those outsider kids doodling and scrawling over every surface at school were the same kids getting kicked out of art class for messing around. It amazes me that we don’t recognise and support their talents at an early age. If these kids were building complex 3D models at the back of class, or solving complicated equations, they’d be fast tracked and guided to university at the blink of an eye. But a kid not paying attention and drawing all day. Well, he’ll most likely be demoted to the “special needs” class and labelled a trouble-.maker. But really, these are our true artists, not the people who make a career decision later in life and go off to university to study PostStructuralism theory or Delueze and Derrida. That to me is something else. Does the process of inclusion by the art world detract from the ethics and strategies involved in street art? I’m not sure who developed these ethics and strategies nor what they really are. I don’t think it’s necessary to embrace a leftist agenda to hit up the streets. Of course there’s a default activist element that relates to using the street, turning private property into public. But I’m not sure that painting a Rose or a Hummingbird on the street should be perceived as a political act. It isn’t by the majority of the people exposed to it, and I think that’s fine. I like to approach each artist and each piece individually and assess it in relation to other works. I’ve read the **splasher manifesto and yes, some of it is spot on, the left and the avant-garde have always been trailed by institutions looking for funding and urban developers looking to gentrify areas, and to a certain extent artists have always colluded with them. Street Artists have one job, to create interesting work that engages the public on the street. Work which gives us pause to reflect on our busy lives and the world around us. I think these little bits of street poetics should be taken one at a time and that it would be a mistake to pre-suppose that everyone had the same agenda. Some artists just prefer to draw and paint and paste their work on the street. How do you reconcile the often illegal and activist nature of Streetart with that of a government funded art institution? With a snigger As street art becomes more accepted by the mainstream, do you think it affects its broader message on the street? Advertisers, cool hunters, and “cutting edge” companies have utilised stencils and graffiti for years without it having a negative effect on what artists produce. I think the more it becomes accepted, the more opportunities artists working in this field will have, and that’s a good thing in my opinion. Fine artists are moving onto the street and street artists are moving into galleries. The exchanges are really interesting and the dynamics like nothing I’ve seen before. I don’t see why acceptance by the mainstream should undermine the form and content of the work. It’s not an art form that’s going to disappear, people have and will always be scrawling on our walls. How do you see the future for street art?
I’m only half joking when I say that perhaps the illegality of creating a beautiful painting To be continued….. on a run down dilapidated building has been placed in context by the illegality of our countries leaders bombing other countries into submission on the pretext of protecting us from non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. The rise of celebrity politics and the commercialisation of subcultures have left a
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INTERVIEW : PETER MEYER
DIRECTOR OF ROGALAND KUNSTMUSEUM Please introduce yourself My name is Peter S. Meyer, 51 years old. During my 15 years as a director of art museums I have gained experience concerning the role of the museum in society, that is to say, the conflicts between artistic freedom and development on the one hand, and the demands and wishes of a democratic society to retain control on the other. I’m not a schizophrenic, but it might have helped if I were. How and why are Nuart and Rogaland kunstmuseum partnered for this show? The Museum and contemporary art are a contradiction in terms, but since the beginning of modernism in the 1880’s the museums have understood the laws of the avant-garde and so the art museum is always interested in what goes on at the borders between different genres. It’s at these borders that the real developments in art take place. Street art is just one example of the new rules of engagement within the art world, and so it is very relevant that it be shown here. At the same time Nuart is important because as an independent organisation it takes on a role of representing a subculture that the traditional museum cannot. So the art institution benefits from the challenge of the subculture, while the subculture gets the benefit of the institutional and established aura of museum, which perhaps makes the audience take street art more seriously. The artists involved in this show are mainly found on the street. How do you think the setting for these works affect their meaning? When street art is moved from the street and into the art museum, it’s like moving a wild animal from the jungle and into a zoo. Do you differentiate between street art and graffiti? No, not really. The illegality of the action is an integral part of street art, which I suppose is where part of the legitimacy of the art form lies. Writing on other people’s things is a violation of the very principles of the idea of private property. Turning the private into something shared in this way is one of the basic principles, or perhaps even ethics, of street art. Where the line between art and vandalism is to be drawn depends on the eye of the beholder. .The journey from the street to the commercial art world has been taken by very few, Basquiat, Haring, Banksy. Why do you think that is? In all art it’s important to distinguish between the market and artistic content. Art doesn’t become bad just because it’s become commercially successful. It would be false to argue that because an artist starts to sell well, his work suddenly becomes uninteresting, although the myth of the poor and honest artist who wins in the end still lives on. Like van Gogh who only ever sold one single painting in his lifetime. Keith Haring has said that he loved the irony of selling his paintings in an expensive New York gallery while simultaneously spraying the walls of the subway for free. Why are these often illegal acts becoming more accepted by a wider society? There are always more logics working simultaneously in a society. On the one hand the law must be obeyed, but on the other it must be broken in order to be confirmed. I suppose a society is best defined by the way it treats the people who transgress its laws.
Do you think that shows such as Nuart & *‘Spank the monkey’ will be instrumental in the creation of a coherent policy towards graffiti? Perhaps, but there are art forms that can only exist as subcultures, like Fluxus, which only exists momentarily. Can the opposition in the dynamics between vandalism and creation be resolved in street art? No Does the process of inclusion by the art world detract from the ethics and strategies involved in street art? Yes How do you reconcile the often illegal and activist nature of Street art with that of a government funded art institution? I believe the wise strategy for any society is to include its opposition. All societies are brought forward by the developments of subcultures, making up their own rules that are local and sometimes in opposition to the established society. This is why the potential of a democratic society should be measured on the level of respect it has for its minorities. Whether those are artistic or other forms of minorities really doesn’t matter. If we are to believe the Russian/German philosopher Boris Broys, acceptance within art institutions has now reached a level where the art museums are more interested in what goes on outside their walls than within. He believes that art museums have become black holes, dead stars that are consuming all the energy of their surroundings and so lose their significance. As street art becomes more accepted by the mainstream, do you think it affects its broader message on the street? Yes. The street has become a common platform for communication, incorporating anything from hyper commercial signs to street art. You could say that street art is the subcultural equivalent of commercial expropriation. How do you see the future for street art? I think that street art will go up and down with the changing interests of new and young generations. Street art is a subculture and today subcultures are difficult to maintain because they tend to become incorporated very quickly in mainstream society. Take Zara, one of the most rapidly growing clothing companies in the world, as an example. Its organisation is built on the premise that it can spot a street trend and then produce a commercial copy of it within 4 weeks. This is twice as fast as its competitors. Music is another area that very quickly gets expropriated to commercial ends. In this perspective I think street art stands a good chance of staying a subculture. Not least because architecture is getting more and more uniform. Footnotes * Spank the monkey : International street art exhibition at Baltic Arts Centre ** Splasher Manifesto : Anarchist street art manifesto recently making headlines in New York Interviews made by Leon C6
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AROFISH (UK) “I was in Iraq for about 6 weeks, which took in Christmas/ New year 03/04, and the arrest of Saddam. I stayed mainly just in Baghdad, but I took a train down to Basra in the south where a friend was staying and I stayed there for 9 days. It was a beautiful, slow ride down through the Mesopotamian countryside. I’ll never forget the sight of what I assumed were oil refineries in the marshlands as we arrived in the night. The flames of the towers looked like candles on water. On the way back though, the train stopped in Hilla in the middle of the night and everything was in darkness and chaos. Some young guys with rifles almost dragged me off the train and tried to put me into a room in the tiny station. It turned out that the tracks had been sabotaged further up the line and they wanted to get me out of sight (for my own protection) as the train was going nowhere for the night and the bandits come out in the early hours. Railway security - teenagers with Kalashnikovs. No way was I staying there. After hours of confusion and frustration I end up making a deal with a guy to drive me to a “garage” where, he says, I can get a car to take me the 100 kilometres to Baghdad. That was my understanding anyway, but it was far from clear (my fault for not learning more Arabic before travelling alone in such places). So we drive off down the road and there are no signs and little light. On the way he starts talking about the war, the Occupation, the Americans, the British. Dropping bombs. Stealing oil. His brother was killed. He is shouting now, yelling, and the car is veering and swerving all over the road. I’m trying to hold myself together but I’m thinking that this is looking more and more like a kidnap scenario - let’s just see what this “garage” really is...
..“this is looking more and more like a kidnap scenario” The “garage” turns out to be a layby with a few guys just hanging around with their cars; smoking, chatting, scratching their nuts, waiting for a bit of work or a miracle like everyone else in the country. It looks genuine enough and the guy who drove me here was probably giving me a hard time just to screw a bit more cash out of me at the end. Well it worked; at that point I was actually glad to only get ripped a couple of dollars. I make sure he stays until I get a vehicle sorted out for the next stretch then I pay him off. The guy in the next vehicle is pretty slippery too, but after a couple of hours and quite a bit of arguing he gets me to a part of the capital city that I recognise and I don’t even bother fighting him for my change. I almost had tears in my eyes at this point, so overwhelmingly relieved to be back in the warmth, comfort and safety of Baghdad...”
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Notes from Iraq
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BLEK LE RAT (FR) Long before there was “street art” as we now know it, there was Blek le Rat. He was one of the first graffiti writers in Europe; one of the first people to use stencils to make public art on the street; one of the first—if not the first—to break away from the dominance of New York graffiti style; and one of the first to use icons instead of writing his name. He has been an inspiration to artists all over the world, and without a doubt is one of the reasons that urban art is so prevalent today.
“Every time I think I’ve painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well. Only twenty years earlier.” Banksy, 2005 “The Graffiti movement has no other intention than to speak via pictures. Words for the community, words of love, words of hatred, of life and death. It’s just a fine and subtle kind of therapy and an attempt to fill the emptiness of this terrible world, to cover public space with pictures that people going to work can enjoy.But the authorities were not sympathetic to our cause and declared war on graffiti. They invented a lot of laws and waged war until every little stencil graffiti or art expression had been stripped of its soul. Young artists were threatened with punishments and fines completely out of proportion to the act. As if graffiti were more dangerous than drugs. But the immense desire to paint and to express themselves encourages artists to support one another. Doing it all round the world, they made this urban art into the biggest art movement of the 20th century, just look at the spread of their pictures and the authenticity they radiate. There is no place in the world with no mural artistic traces. Even in Peking, under the strongest regime, there is a man leaving his mark right at this moment”. The Manifesto of Stencilism. By Blek le Rat.
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DOTMASTERS (UK) The Dotmasters present a series of curated popular fine art masterpieces for the urban environment. The twelve-month project which started at Nuart last year has seen classic images from the world of fine art, half toned, stencil cut, then sprayed onto gallery walls in cities across the world. These stencil works have used the well known images of the artists Michelangelo, Da vinci, Raphael, Dali, Goya, Warhol, and Damien Hurst to question curatorial policy on the outside of their ‘Art space’
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The placement of these acts of vandalism on gallery walls hopes to engage these institutions in a dialogue. Is there a dilemma for staff in cleaning of these works? Does graffiti (as an act of vandalism) override its aesthetic value? Does making the subject of that criminal damage an image of merit question its classification as a crime? Can beauty be used to damage property? Over the last twelve months different methods of documenting and engaging the public have been experimented with. Various technologies have been incorporated both on and off line to enable the public to become more involved with this series. Each act of vandalism is recorded by GPS (globally positioned satellite) coordinates and then mapped onto Google, allowing the public to tour a local street gallery, (of course this is dependant on each institutions
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curatorial policy). A series of prints has been made available at these locations via the viewers mobile phone. Each customer is given a unique price dependant on sales from that location, with the first edition being priced at cost of production and each subsequent edition increasing by the same value. Like the art market the price increases as these works become more widely known. Speculation in these localized markets is impossible highlighting the increasing commoditisation of street art. As the worlds of graffiti and fine art collide the dividing lines become blurred. The crime becomes a valuable commodity steeped in credibility for those involved. The Dotmasters is a transatlantic collaboration between C6.org and GRL (graffitiresearchlab.com). This collaboration was made possible by Nuart.
CHARLES KRAFFT (US) In the late 1980s, while contemplating the potential of visual art to influence the social order and reflect authority – a phenomena he would later define as the “Iconography of Power and Capital” _ artist Charles Krafft discovered an enigmatic group of artists, musicians and intellectuals in the newly independent Republic of Slovenia called NSK. Krafft was immediately seduced by the construct of the 14-member Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovene Art) collective, which includes a theater company, graphics studio, painters group, philosophy department, and the internationally popular industrial rock band Laibach. He soon arranged for a major exhibition by NSK and a Laibach concert in his native Seattle. This set in motion an association with the group that would indelibly transform his career as a fine artist. In 1995, with support from the Citizens Exchange Council/Arts Link partnerships program and private patronage, Krafft embarked on a journey to Slovenia to formally collaborate with NSK. It was during this trip that he accompanied designated members of the collective on a “cultural relief” mission to war-ravaged Sarajevo as a photographer for the final leg of Laibach’s ” Occupied Europe: NATO Tour l994 - l995”. Krafft found the experience so subversive it restored his waning faith in the redemptive power of art. His observations and interaction with the beleaguered citizens of Sarajevo inspired his signature “Porcelain War Museum Project,” which debuted at the Ministry of Defence Headquarters in Ljubljana, Slovenia in December 1999 with all the pomp of an international diplomatic affair. Krafft’s arsenal of blue and white Delft-style ceramic weaponry – at once alluring and grotesque – has been subsequently exhibited in galleries and museums around the globe. This installation documents Krafft’s first collaboration with NSK and examines an important episode in the history of their politicized aesthetics. “The Sarajevo trip was an extraordinary adventure in a convoy of three armored U. N. vehicles. The route was littered with the charred rubble of small towns, tanks, checkpoints, blasted bridges and stalled traffic. The LaibachNSK embassy events were a crowded conceptual tour de force conducted over two days in the bullet-riddled National Theater. Nothing coming close to this multimedia cultural relief had happened in Sarajevo since the siege of the city commenced four years ago. The mise en scene of the totaled city certainly lent extra meaning to Laibach’s spooky cover of “Sympathy for the devil.” You could smell the sulfurs of hell and the stench of death in the snow blowing through the ruins of block after block of shelled hotels, hospitals, homes and shops. The peace accords were announced in Dayton when we were there, but no one we met really cared. They’ve heard it all too many times before. Stayed above the ’84 Olympics Village that is a heap of ruins now. The nebulous front line of the Serb territories was only 300 meters away. Still, life goes on there. The dignity of the surviving victims of this medieval abomination against 20th century civilization is really moving. We all left enriched by their determination to coexist and help each other through the trauma “. Charles Krafft Excerpts from an e-mail to a friend, November 29, 1995
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DFACE (UK) D*Face is an artist who’s work is omnipresent within the cities’ visual environment, using a variety of mediums and techniques he confronts the viewer by creating a form of visual disturbance, that could be seen as a welcomed intermission from the media saturated environment that surrounds us. Known for his subversive imagery, which involve a family of dysfunctional characters whose roles are to shock as well as entertain, his work challenges orthodox thinking whilst sticking two fingers up at the establishment. His characters, such as ‘D*Dog’ are vehicles for which the viewer questions their relationship with the work, it aims to encourage the public to not just ‘see’ but to look at their surroundings. Dface is one of the Europe’s leading graffiti artists who has, over the past few years, been turning his hand to far more than just “writing” on walls. One of the legendary Finders Keepers crew and the man behind London’s renowned Stolenspace gallery, Dface has been responsible for some of Europe’s leading exhibitions dedicated to urban art. Curator, Writer, Sculptor, Designer.. the list goes on.
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DOLK (NO) Dolk is Norway’s leading street artist who’s work is undoubtedly inspiring the next generation of Banksy influenced artists. His work can be found in most major cities throughout Europe and as far afield as Australia. Dolk has taken the art of stencilling to new levels and has over the years built up a powerful body of both humorous and politically charged work that is gaining new fans and admirers every day. Dolk is a low-key idealist who leaves others to do the talking whilst he traverses the globe spreading his work.
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EINE (UK) Eine is a renowned London based “Writer” who specialises in the central element of all graffiti, the letter. From single letters, to complex and wry combinations, Eine’s alphabet can be found throughout London. Huge individual Latin letters on store-front shop shutters produced in an unmistakable style. Originality, distinctness and a clear profile that sets his or her letter apart from all others is a key goal for any graffiti “Writer”. Eine’s letters transgress the usual stylised image devised to depict form and emotion, and through a combination of colour, placement and size, become fully formed and unique personalities of their own. Eine, like all good street artists, has found in the culture of Writing, a way to not only utilise the city as a stage, but also as a medium. Eine’s concept of using store-fronts to advertise nothing but his “letters” is a stroke of genius that often goes un-credited. Instantly recognisable by passers by, these store-front letters serve as a reminder that Writing is ART with a capital A.R.T. Writing is an integral part of modern urban culture, tags have become so ubiquitous that they have become practically invisible in an urban camouflage of billboard adverts, flyers, graffiti, throw-ups, logos, stencils and stickers. Only the “Writer” who has developed his or her own personal style from a clearly defined canon of forms and who has spent years fine tuning their style can hope to compete for our attention. Eine manages to achieve with a few cans of paint what a hoard of multi-million dollar advertisements fail to achieve everyday. His letters grab our attention and through this they make the city our own. They turn cities into homes.
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HERAKUT (DE) Herakut is a symbiosis of the aliases Hera and Akut, two graffiti artists from Frankfurt and Erfurt, Germany. Their collaboration started back in 2004 when were invited to paint at the Urban Art Festival Sevilla in Spain. To everyone and themselves it was clear that despite the fact they both focused on character painting, their styles had nothing in common whatsoever. And they say that has not changed one bit. The differences in Hera’s and Akut’s way of approaching art and the painting itself are vast. Akut started creating graffiti at the age of fourteen with no artistic training. The photorealism he spray-paints is self-taught and requires a vast amount of preparation that consists of a concept mapped out on the computer, high-resolution photo-material and a predefined assortment of aerosol paints.
Today she demands as much freedom as possible in order to allow intuition and spontaneity into a work. When Akut and Hera paint together, they prefer shift work. So, after a sloppy background created by Hera, Akut produces a detailed layer for the face without knowing what kind of body will “spontaneously show up” at the end. The reason for mixing these two different signatures, and fighting as well as compromising a lot while doing so, is simply for the fun of surprising themselves with each outcome. It is a risky and slightly schizophrenic process because a piece by Herakut always contains two different messages or at least intentions, there are always two brains seeking to express themselves within only one picture.
If this is all set, Akut patiently assembles his characters dot by dot with one eye on the concept, the other on the wall, while blending out everything else. Hera in contrast thinks that preparing a piece is to handcuff yourself. It ties your perception to the sketch and allows no space for the influence of the surrounding atmosphere nor any immediate response to the wall as a very individual medium to paint on. Unlike Akut, who had been exposed to graffiti through hip-hop culture, Hera just felt the urge to work on a large scale, and the street offered the perfect opportunity. None of the usual unwritten rules and restrictions of the established graffiti scene had an impact on her work, although another mental boundary did: The years of strict education in artistic techniques that Hera received as a child.
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KNGEE (US) Kenji Nakayama is originally from Hokkaido, Japan. He is currently residing in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States where he works as a designer/ artist. Kenji’s been creating stencils for around 4 years. “When I first saw stencils in a book, I was just amazed, especially Shepard Fairey, Banksy, and Logan Hicks...those artists were huge influences” Instead of going to art school as he’d have like to, Kenji instead, graduated from the technical institute and started working for industrial firms as an engineer, however, he was always trying to spend his spare time making art. In 2004 Kenji started taking his art more seriously and shortly afterwards decided to leave the engineering industry to pursue his dreams as an artist. “I think it was a right decision at the right time to switch my career, I learned so many things while working as an engineer. I have always tried to perfect the skills of my craft and focused on the quality of my work. I believe that quality is better than quantity”. Today, Kenji is focusing on photo realistic multi-layer stencils with his unique abstract background work. His work captures a fleeting moment of his daily life, inspired by graffiti, street art, and the industrial structures that form the backdrop of most graffiti artists worlds. Kenji is also a member of NYC/Boston based Artists Collective “project SF” and is a featured artist with the Brooklyn based Tank Theory label.
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KAROLINA SOBECKA (US) “Wildlife” is a unique street art projection project developed by American artist Karolina Sobecka. Karolina works with interactivity, installations, video, animation and other new and old media. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, and educated in a tradition that has left her prepared to fight ideological battles. Her artistic interests are strongly stimulated by advances in science, technology and philosophy.
The ever-decreasing cost and ease of use of these new types of technologies should see an explosion of their uses over the coming years. The ephemeral nature of urban projections and graffiti, one purposely so, the other not so, opens up the possibility of a dynamic meeting of street art and new technologies in urban environments. In contrast to Graffiti, the legal consequences of creating and presenting this type of work in urban environments has not yet been well defined by Law.
Currently, Karolina resides in Seattle, where she creates her art and motion graphics. Her work has been shown at festivals and galleries around the world. “Wildlife” is the implementation of a speed-controlled mobile projection system that Karolina recently developed. At night projections from moving cars are shone on the buildings downtown. Each car projects a video of a wild animal. The animal’s movements are programmed to correspond to the speed of the car: as the car moves, the animal runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the animal stops also. The frame rate of the movie corresponds to the speed of the wheel rotation, picked up by a sensor. If the presence of a moving object (such as another car or pedestrian) is detected with proximity sensors, its animal “avatar” appears in the projection. The Projection disappears and flickers as it is supported by the architecture. The city itself is an active partner in creating this alter ego. We are elevated from the everyday reality through this element of fantasy into a world with more dimensions, possibilities and perhaps beauty.
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LOGAN HICKS (US) Logan Hicks, stencil artist, recently relocated to New York after several years in LA, was classically trained but cut his teeth on the industrial streets of Baltimore, Maryland. After college, Logan formed Workhorse Printing, a textile screen-printing business that worked closely with Corporate Clients for high volume textile printing. During that time, Logan began to screen-print limited edition prints of his own work. He would wheatpaste them on the abandoned buildings near high traffic areas of the city. Encouraged by the response of his art in the public arena, he chose to move away from textile printing and focus solely on his own work. This change led to a move to Los Angeles that landed him at ground zero of the urban art movement that had been gaining momentum throughout the late 90’s. Logan was unable to relocate his screen-printing shop to Southern California. Eager to continue his art, he began using stencils as a substitute for his screen. The stenciling method mimicked the principles and processes of screen-printing, but with a grittier urban look with an immediacy that was unable to be duplicated by screen-printing. This new approach to creating art was quickly adopted as his sole medium. By using the tools of graffiti artists, Logan was able to tame the crude medium and package street art into a tangible, digestible product. Now known for his hyper-detailed, meticulously hand-cut stencils, Logan has rocketed to the top ranks of his field with his borderline obsessive approach to creating stencils. Using subject matter such as urban cityscapes, architecture, and organic forms, he focuses on exploring patterns and details or finding beauty in the mundane. Past projects have included textile designs for companies such as K-Swiss, Burton Snowboards, Tribal Gear, and Upper Playground; murals for RedBull, lectures in Slovenia, as well as a stenciled animation episode. Currently, Logan is focusing on his gallery work in order to concentrate more deeply on his intricate large-scale works. While walking the line between commercial artist and fine artist, Logan has managed to showcase his work in dozens of galleries internationally.
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M-CITY (POL) By applying a unique concept to the art of stenciling, M-City take the form into a whole new dimension, if you had any doubts about artists using the stencil as a valid and complex tool within the visual arts, then M-City immediately dispels it. It’s more than another brick dislodged in the city’s stand against street art and graffiti. It’s a whole wall and then some... M-City is a unique street art project that consists of hundreds of individually cut stencil elements that can be linked and joined to create infinite cities from elements that exist in the real world. A type of stencil Sim-City that enables the artist and public to create and preserve cities of their making. An exercise in empowerment for those left at the mercy of faceless urban development companies. “The inspiration behind the architecture of the M-city project derives mostly from the architecture of Threecity; Gdansk, Sopot & Gdynia on the Baltic coast, north of Poland and it’s surrounding areas, however, there’s no avoiding motifs from other regions of Poland. The architecture of the town is in a sense a promotion of groups of people who work together for society. These include independent media, charities, non-governmental organisations, independent theatres and other independent cultural institutions. Most of the projects are realized on especially chosen walls and match the historical or architectural context of their surroundings. The characters in the stencils are generally friends or people involved in some local social activity. An M-City meeting generates an atmosphere akin to an art picnic with numerous helpers getting involved. Most of the helpers have already been introduced to the stencil technique and the technique itself is not so demanding. What’s interesting is how people unconsciously tend to create their own town/district and environments - people living in blocks of flats tend to paint blocks of flats, people from villas tend to build villas, people from around the port will picture the port etc. The same generally refers to the figures appearing in the Cities – who often seem to develop a story of their own”. At m-city.org you can find an interactive application for constructing cities of your own from the same elements as were used in the real world. The constructor was created in order to prolong the life of these cities after they cease to exist in the real world.
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MIR (NO) MIR is a difficult artist to pin down, often found globetrotting and working alongside the two other Norwegians of note Dolk and Pøbel. MIR’s work deals with social injustice and often tackles difficult subject matter with a level of sensitivity rarely used in this medium. He doesn’t simply berate the businessman, but extols him/us to throw off the shackles of 9 to 5 living with a series of characters that don’t just criticize but offer hope and alternatives. The business man burning his briefcase ala Jimi Hendrix, The sheep-headed, briefcase carrying man, stood patiently looking at his watch whilst his life, family and the city slowly slips by. These thought provoking images hopefully lead us to reflect on how we’re living. Like a favourite song lyric or a soul mate, they rouse us to thought. MIR’s work is often more of a gentle nudge, he offers up a mirror to our lives in areas of the city where it’s most needed, in areas where we are often too busy to notice and contemplate those around us. Specifically those in need.
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NICK WALKER (UK) Bristol born artist Nick Walker emerged from the now infamous & groundbreaking Wild Bunch/Bristol Sound scene of the early 1980’s. It was the artistic element of this scene that spawned Nick aka Ego.
In recent years he’s effortlessly made the transition from street to gallery, he has exhibited worldwide and participated in solo and group shows in London, Canada, Tokyo, Berlin & Taiwan as well as numerous venues in the US.
It was over two decades ago, when the baby faced B-Boy was in his mid teens, that he walked into the renowned Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol and walked out a short time later with an agreement to host a group graffiti show. He conceptualized, co-curated & exhibited work at this breakthrough exhibition, one of the first times in the UK that street work had been given a legitimate showcase. Simply entitled ‘Graffiti Art’, the show featured the work of 3D, ZBoys, Fade, Jaffa, Pride & The Bomb Squad.
‘The Art of Nick Walker’, his highly acclaimed 2006 Bristol show, took a retrospective look at his work from 1994 to present. This was followed by the release of a new work entitled ‘The Moona Lisa’, the piece stole the show at Banksy’s renowned annual shop come gallery show ‘Santa’s Ghetto’, and was also featured on the BBC’s “Newsnight”
The show elevated Nick from ‘Vandal’ (a recurring theme in his work to date) to artist and opened up opportunities to work in new areas and industries. Including painting film sets for movies ranging from Judge Dredd to Hackers and most famously, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
Having conceived and cut this latest subversion of the ‘worlds most famous portrait, Nick painted the image for the first time at our very own Nuart in 2006. The creation of the piece was filmed and posted on Youtube where it received over 40,000 views in just three weeks.
Nick continues to be hugely popular in the UK and worldwide and is an integral part of the nuart crew. It was during this brief move away from street work that he shed his infamous He’s a true gent of the street art scene (yes, way before it went showbiz!); ladies and gents, I give you Nick Walker aka The Apish Angel and man of many EGO tag and re-emerged as Nick Walker the Apish Angel. hats! As a forerunner to Banksy and the now mainstream British stencil/graffiti phenomenon, he has always been a pioneer in his field. Constantly evolving and pushing the boundaries of traditional graffiti, Nick combines intricate stencil images with more conventional freehand methods, his work has always been impossible to pigeon hole and constantly remains innovative and thought provoking.
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PØBEL (NO)
Renowned for his huge oversized stencils on the side of remote barns and abandoned houses in the north of Norway as well as his smaller intricate multilayered works. Pøbel speaks with a unique national voice that explores and dissects socio-political cultural issues and how they impact on local communities. There’s a lot to be said for a certain amount of isolation from the level of hype and interest that’s currently sweeping through “street art”. At times it seems like everyman and his dog is having a crack at making stencils, more often than not, this is usually centered around capital cities or cities that have already made a name for themselves as Street Art friendly. The isolation that the north of Norway affords, and certainly you don’t get much more isolated than Pøbel’s current location, allows a certain amount of time to reflect more on what you’re going to produce and where. It also offers an amount of space to work that’s unrivalled by major cities. This of course means that the audience for the work and the context of the pieces has to be carefully considered. All of these issues, the scale, the placement, the thought processes, the concept, the politics, the consideration of audience and the execution of the final piece, are handled by Pøbel in an absolutely unique fashion. He brings a sense of the ridiculous to his work that in turn reflects a deeper concern with his and our current realities. Pøbel’s ongoing desire to find and paint abandoned farmhouses is developing into one of the most interesting non-urban public art projects we’ve seen. Plans are underway to expand the initiative by inviting numerous artists to join him in his pursuit of creating an enormous outdoor gallery of works that span the countryside.
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RENE GAGNON (US)
Rene is a Boston based artist known as much for his abstract expressionistic post graffiti gallery work as he is for his street pieces. A unique mashing of styles and his classic “Bomber” work has brought him to the attention of the street art scene as well as curators and gallery owners throughout the land. Below are two biographies that we received from Rene which we think embodies everything that the Nuart show is about. Neither one being more important than the other.
Now, I find myself at a point in life where I am beginning to see through the spray paint haze. I now realize that an artist’s work should represent their soul. So, through the use of urban media techniques mastered as a teenager, I am attempting to bridge the gap between graffiti art and contemporary abstract expressionism.
Biography 2
In almost every city, evidence of graffiti in the form of tags, throw-ups, and burners can be found. At times, graffiti artists’ will battle with each other for visibility on the same surfaces. Over time, the multiple transformations of these surfaces reveal an abstract maze of color and composition that I see as an opportunity. The opportunity to create something much greater than what meets the eye.
“I’ve always been considered a creative individual, but my first real devotion to the arts revealed itself during the mid-eighties when my thirst for creation exploded after seeing graffiti art emanate from the streets of New York City. The enormity of the works and the care free expression of color displayed a means by which I could gain the attention that every teen is so desperately seeking. This rebellious idea of searching for your identity through the use of markers and spray paint fueled my desire to follow in the footsteps of a graffiti artist. Twenty years later, I find myself back where I began.
My vision is to recreate the battle between graffiti artists’ with my art. By taking a personal journey into my thoughts, beliefs, influences, memories and my views on life, I am able to fuel my subsequent attack on the canvas. As feelings are evoked from the written words a physical manifestation builds to a point of overflow. Ultimately unleashing itself in a furor of uninhibited energy, where time and place become nonexistent. It is in this vitality that my artistic soul reveals itself and dances its way into a flurry of whirling paint and exploding spray paint cans.”
For years, being conscious of others opinions and marketability, I thought I had to change both myself and the way I painted. Most individuals I encountered despised everything graffiti art represented; criminal behavior, destruction of property, etc. With fear of this stereotype I began to create works that did not express my true self.
Rene Gagnon
Biography 1 “I make shit that looks cool.”
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SIXTEN (SWE) Sixten created his first stencil in 1994 on a skateboard deck, but it wasn’t until 2000 that he started placing his stencils on the streets. A primary force in Australia’s burgeoning street art scene for many years, Sixten co-authored the book, “Melbourne, Street Graffiti Capital”, the first book to explore the city’s thought provoking, visually rich stencil graffiti scene and the politics that it is largely centered around. Stencil graffiti found its heart in Melbourne, Australia. Few other cities can boast such quantity and quality of stencil art, Sixten being one of the primary motors that drove this incredible scene. He has exhibited in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Hong Kong, Melbourne and LA and has worked alongside such luminaries as Logan Hicks, who will also be joining us this year. Sixten hopes to try to coax a reaction out of the viewer with his art, his messages range from blatant “popoganda” to the more subtle, but in the main his inspiration is drawn from extreme feelings of passion, angst, euphoria and rage. Sixten’s stencils aim to both provoke and amuse. Sixten is also one of the forces behind Stencil Revolution, the largest online site devoted to street art. Books that display his works are “Stencil Pirates” by Josh McPhee, “Conform” by Saskia Folk and “Schablone Berlin” by Caroline Koebel & Kyle Schlesinger. He is also featured in the film Rash, which documents the street art scene of Melbourne, Australia. The film received an award as Best Feature Documentary by The Film Critics Circle of Australia, 2005 and will be screened as part of this year’s Nuart.
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SLINKACHU (UK) Slinkachu is the creator of a unique and mysterious street art project called “little people”. “Little People” consists of tiny hand painted people left on the streets of London in various scenarios then left to fend for themselves. “Public spaces allow freedom to do what I want, within reason. Anyone can utilise public spaces to create art, whereas not everyone can get in to a gallery to display their work. Also the message and its context differs – finding art unexpectedly in a public space can be a surprise and the art can talk differently to its audience (and often to a different audience) that way. I think a desire for an artist’s work to be seen by a wide audience that doesn’t rely on the confines of a gallery, or the art establishment has lead to more and more people working on the street. I think that there is a desire to create art in almost everyone too – creating art in public is often easy and allows spontaneity. Public spaces are just that; Public. And they offer everyone opportunities to create art. Personally, my work comments on its environment and the issues associated with that environment. Often people won’t see my installations because they are so small, but that in itself is part of the fun of using a public space. I love the idea that people will look out for my work but never find it, or stumble upon it and wonder why on earth it is there”.
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WORDTOMOTHER (UK)
Wordtomother is a land mammal that likes to reside near water. He enjoys cool sea breezes and spending time with his cat Morris. Having been raised near a large wooded area, wordtomother is part ferral man and can quite easily fashion a high quality den out of fern leaves, sticks and assorted twines. Wordtomother does not enjoy being hungry and becomes erratic and unpredictable when he doesn’t draw for extended periods of time.
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WELCOME TO NUART
NUART PROGAMME LIST
SEPT 6TH-NOV 04TH 2007 OPENING THURS 06 KL 19:00 ROGALAND KUNSTMUSEUM
MONDAY 03 : Kunstskolen i Rogaland
Opening times: Tue - Sun 11:00 - 16:00
KL 1800 : Charles Krafft & Larry Reid. Artists presentation and Q&A
NUART DAY PROGRAM Alongside the static show and street work, Nuart have put together an exciting program of daytime events featuring talks, workshops, debates, artist presentations & exclusive film screenings. Public talks and presentations are being held at Kunstskolen I Rogaland (KiR) and are all free entry. Film screenings take place at Kino 1 and tickets cost 50kr.
Kl 1600 : Rene Gagnon. Public Artists presentation from the USA’s leading exponent of Post Graffiti Abstract Expressionism. WEDNESDAY 05 : Kunstskolen i Rogaland THURSDAY 06 : Kunstskolen i Rogaland / Kino1 Kl 1400 : Flightphase. Public presentation and Q&A on Karolina Sobecka’s Flightphase project. Kl 1600 : Introduction to Nuart and screening of the Street art documentary Inside/Outside. Advance tickets available through Kino 1. Kl 1900 : Public opening of Nuart at Rogaland Kunstmuseum. FRIDAY 07 : Sølvberget / Kunstskolen i Rogaland / Kino1
Tristan Manco and Larry Reid, two writers who have played an enormous part Kl 1400 : Blek Le Rat. Artist presentation and Q&A hosted by Tristan Manco in documenting and promoting stencil graffiti and low-brow art will be hosting various daytime events. Kl 1600 : RASH, film screening at Kino1 Nick Walker and Leon c6 will also be holding a hands-on stencil workshop on Saturday afternoon. So if you fancy yourself as the next Banksy, then come along and participate. The workshop is open to the public and free of charge.
Kl 1800 : Tristan Manco will be chairing a panel with a selection of this years participants and the curators of Nuart 07
TRISTAN MANCO (UK)
Kl 1200 : Tristan Manco presents a history of Stencil art and Graffiti as documented in his numerous books. This event will merge into a practical hands on workshop with artist Nick Walker
Tristan is a renowned freelance designer, author and art director, based in Bristol, UK. Over the last fifteen years, originally inspired by Parisian stencil graffiti, he has been documenting walls worldwide.
Kl 1330 : Stencil workshop with Nick Walker and Leon C6 at Kunstskolen i Rogaland
Part responsible for, not only Banksy’s rise to fame, but for the street art scene in general. His book Stencil Graffiti, started in 1999 and published in 2002 was an obvious labour of love, a book that went on to inspire thousands. Tristan followed this up with “Street Logos” published in 2005. Subverted signs, spontaneous drawings, powerful symbols and curious characters representing an unstoppable worldwide outdoor gallery of free art were all discussed, presented and dissected in full. Tristan was also editor of Nicholas Ganz’s incredible book, “Graffiti World”. “Graffiti World” is the ultimate graffiti book offering a unique insight into the very essence of graffiti and its creative explosion in almost every corner of the globe. It has become a staple reference source for anyone interested in this global phenomenon. Tristan’s last publication was Graffiti Brasil, a first hand survey of some of the most original work to emerge from the scene in the past decade, this will be followed shortly by the publication of “Street Sketchbook”, a Thames and Hudson publication that will offer a unique insight into the sketchbooks of various graffiti and street artists. Tristan will be chairing various discussions at this years event as well as presenting a lecture on his various books and work.
SATURDAY 08 : Kunstskolen i Rogaland / Kino1
Kl 1500 : NEXT, film screening at Kino 1
NUART FILM INSIDE OUTSIDE, by Andreas Johnsen Nis Boye Møller Rasmussen THURS-06 KL 16:00 INSIDE OUTSIDE is a film about the energy artists get when working in the street. An energy they’re missing when exhibiting in galleries and museums, an energy that brings life to their art and to their own lives. The artists featured in INSIDE OUTSIDE all face some kind of dilemma with the restrictions and norms of the society they live in, the forces of the commercial art world and the advertising industry who are looking for the next big thing and want to have their bite of the energy and coolness that the street art scene is brimming with. DIRECTED BY Andreas Johnsen Nis Boye Møller Rasmussen Denmark 80 mins RASH by Nicholas Hansen FRI-07 KL 16:00 Best Australian Documentary as voted by the Film Critics Circle of Australia. RASH is a contemporary story of modern urban Australia and the artists who are making it a living host for illegal artwork called ‘street art’. This feature length documentary explores the cultural value of unsanctioned public art, and graffiti’s contribution to public dialogue. DIRECTED BY Nicholas Hansen Australia 73 mins
LARRY REID (US) Larry Reid is an independent curator and freelance critic based in Seattle, USA. He has presented the work of accomplished visual and performing artists including William S. Burroughs, Chuck Close, R. Crumb, Einsturzende Neubauten, Karen Finley, Leon Golub, Mike Kelley, Nirvana, Henry Rollins, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Shag, Annie Sprinkle, Art Spiegelman, Sonic Youth, Survival Research Laboratories, Andy Warhol, and Robert Williams, among countless others. He is a regular contributor to Juxtapoz arts journal and The Comics Journal. He has co-written several recent books including Charles Krafft’s Villa Delirium, Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art, Blight at the End of the Funnel, Tiki Art Now! and Rat Fink’s Revenge. He currently serves as Curator and Events Coordinator at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle. Larry will be hosting a discussion with Nuart participant Charles Krafft.
NEXT, a Primer on Urban Painting” by Pable Aravena SAT-08 KL 15:00 NEXT is a documentary exploration of a phenomenon that was born on the streets of American cities and has come to influence youth culture all over the world. Combining verite visual moments and interviews with painters, journalists, collectors, sociologists, DJ’s, art critics and other participants within the subculture, the film will convey the dynamism and creative brilliance of this important emerging artistic movement. A vivid exploration of graffiti art as a global culture, profiling the art form in Brazil, Japan, Spain, the UK, Germany, Holland, France, Canada and the US._ DIRECTED BY Pablo Aravena, Canada 2005 95 mins Screenings at Kino1 Tickets 50,www.kino1.no
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Wheatpaste gallery. The following few pages contain a unique series of artworks that have been designed for you to cut out and paste around the place. We asked prominent *wheatpaste artists, Asbestos, Beejoir, Bast & Pure Evil, to provide us with a typical piece of work that they’d like to get up during this years event. We hope you enjoy the results and collaborate in our little public art project. *Wheatpaste is a liquid adhesive used since ancient times for various arts and crafts such as book binding, decoupage, collage, and papier-mâché. It is also made for the purpose of adhering paper posters to walls.
www.bastny.com
www.beejoir.co.uk
www.elefantart.com
Kikkut.no
L AST NED JOHN LENNONS
I N STA N T K A R M A MED U2
www.amnesty.org/noise MAKE SOME NOISE er Amnesty Internationals nye musikkampanje der mange av verdens største artister har spilt inn egne versjoner av John Lennons låter til inntekt for Amnestys menneskerettighetsarbeid. Make Some Noise handler om å stoppe overgrep. I Darfur-regionen i Sudan pågår massive overgrep. Landsbyer brennes ned, det voldtas og drepes. Over to millioner mennesker er på flukt. Støtt kampanjen og stopp krisen i Darfur. LAST NED JOHN LENNONS INSTANT KARMA, MED U2 på www.amnesty.org/noise Make Some Noise dobbel-cd er i platebutikken NÅ!