blog.vandalog.comVandalog – A Street Art Blog

Scroll down to content Posts Posted on January 13, 2018 One Year of Art in Ad Places Blue Lady” for Parker Day, installed for Art in Ad Places. Photo by Luna Park. If you thought, Hmm, Vandalog doesn’t seem to be updating as much” throughout 2017… Here’s why: We were focused on Art in Ad Places , a 52-week campaign of ad takeovers across New York City! We worked with Faust, Shepard Fairey, Molly Crabapple, Jess X Snow, and dozens more artists to install their work in NYC payphones. Now that the campaign has been going for a year, we’re ready to celebrate! On January 26th, find us at LUCAS LUCAS in Williamsburg for an Art in Ad Places exhibition, and the launch of a book celebrating all of our ad takeovers to date. We’ll have photos from Luna Park , books, a special installation with the help of fellow ad takeover activist Jordan Seiler , and drinks from Ilegal Mezcal . We open at 7pm. And if you can’t make it to the opening, the show will be open through February 3rd. Posted on January 6, 2018 We The People, Six Murals for Philadelphia Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and Dennis McNett outside of The University of the Arts, for We The People . Photo by Steve Weinik. In 2017, I curated the We The People series for Mural Arts Philadelphia , a series of six murals by some of my favorite artists. I probably should have been writing about We The People on here regularly since July, but here’s a very belated update from Philly. Before we get into We the People , a bit of context. The last year has seen the floodgates open in the USA, with national conversations on crises that have been festering under-reported for years, like sexual harassment and racism. The arts community has added their voices to the mix through projects like the Amplifier Foundation , Not Surprised , and the Whitney’s An Incomplete History of Protest . This moment demands urgent public art. And muralists have responded. In at least one case, an artist was censored after-the-fact and had to make things work outside of an institutional context . But some mural festivals have embraced a spirit of activism, most notably WALL\THERAPY in Rochester, NY and Living Walls, The City Speaks in Atlanta, GA. Questioning Whiteness by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, for We The People . Photo by Steve Weinik. It’s in a similar spirit to all of those projects that we tried a little experiment in Philadelphia with We The People . When Mural Arts invited me to curate a series of walls for them, I figured it had to be of the moment, and with artists that they weren’t already doing a lot of work with. So we invited Molly Crabapple , Chris Daze” Ellis , Tatyana Fazlalizadeh , Dennis McNett , NTEL , and Jess X. Snow to create work celebrating the best of the American spirit right now, while also reflecting current national concerns. Plus, it was a continuation of Mural Arts’ years-long effort to work with more street artists. There was little community engagement beyond what I and the project manager did while hunting for walls, but I think that by being careful about sites, artists, and content, we brought to life some strong, timely, and site-responsive work. Continue reading We The People, Six Murals for Philadelphia” Posted on December 31, 2017 December 30, 2017 Just an Idea Let’s start off 2018 on the right foot. Here’s a suggestion from Uncle Susan . Photo by Uncle Susan Posted on November 8, 2017 November 11, 2017 Clickbait Artist Heads to Palestine to Make Clickbait Artwork Lush in Palestine. Photo by Lush. Our friend Doug Gillen at Fifth Wall TV just posted a video commentary on Lush’s visit to Palestine, part of a residency at Banksy’s Walled Off Hotel . Doug echos this (somewhat flawed but worth reading) piece from Isaac Brosilow, Trolling is Not Solidarity: Against Lushsux . I’ve written very positively about Lush in the past, we released a product of his through Vandalog, and he even contributed to the site once upon a time. But I gotta agree with Doug on this one… Lush has gone off the deep end, and something doesn’t feel quite right here, to say the least. Photo from Lush’s Twitter Posted on October 25, 2017 October 26, 2017 Andrew H. Shirley’s Traveling Sideshow Visits Superchief Gallery for Halloween Screening in Reno, NV. This Wasted Land” by Greg Henderson. Costume by Wolftits. Wolfsuit by Briana Barber. Photo by Alisha Funkhouser. The word sideshow comes up several times in conversation when discussing the traveling installation centered on Andrew H. Shirley’s Wastedland 2 film. The touring exhibition is as much of a whirlwind as the artist himself, connecting collaborators from across the country in an ever-evolving project. Sculpture by UFO and William Thomas Porter at the Wastedland 2 screening at the Knockdown Center. Photo by Jaime Jarvis. While the upcoming screening of Wastedland 2 this Friday at Superchief Gallery is the first screening with an emphasis on audience participation through costumes, the film had previously shown in New York City at the Knockdown Center. At this venue, from the moment I stepped into the installation it felt like a family reunion, a theme that is echoed throughout the film. It was a feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and decided it was probably all the personal connections I had with the people and left it at that. However, when I went to interview Andrew, I had to ask if he could illuminate why even people I knew who were not personally familiar with the crews involved still came away with this sense of kinship. Shirley explained, In many ways Wastedland 2 created not only a new platform of film exhibition, but perhaps exemplified the idea of collaborative action and support from a community that is sometimes over looked as far as how genuinely loyal and generous they are. The graffiti community not only looks out for each other, but they are a family that looks out for people in need- in many ways.” From assisting in the entry of buildings to a floor to call a safe home for the night, the filmmaker was quick to name all of the people and places who helped him out. It may not have been a direct connection, but maybe a friend of a friend, because as he stated they are the family that always looks out for one another. Beyond these overarching themes, I was curious about how the process varied city to city, having only attended the Knockdown Center screening myself. Continue reading Andrew H. Shirley’s Traveling Sideshow Visits Superchief Gallery for Halloween” Posted on October 18, 2017 April 10, 2018 James Lipton Reveals the Secrets of Crisis Actors Obviously, that headline is misleading. And the above video is pretty messed up. But it’s pretty messed up inside the heads of Alex Jones’ viewers! Which brings us to… Inside the Crisis Actors Studio , hosted by James Lipton, a show based on things that far right conspiracy theorists actually believe. Admittedly, this is maybe an odd thing for me to post about, but I’ve been thinking about Inside the Crisis Actors Studio all week. Plus, although the video’s creators have chosen to remain anonymous, at least one of them has been covered on Vandalog before, and they’d be familiar to the street art/activism community. No doubt that Inside the Crisis Actors Studio is disturbing. Four actors who were due to audition declined after reading the script. But it’s also rooted in a kind of truth, the truth that some people actually believe this stuff. The references that Lipton and crisis actor” Mark Hannigan make are based on conspiracies that people Alex Jones and his fans actually subscribe to. Yes, seriously. If you’ve never before heard of the concept of a crisis actor, consider yourself lucky, but sheltered. Realizing that these conspiracies are out there starts to explain a little of why gun control is so difficult. Plus, it’s got me thinking about the media that I consume and the bubbles of odd beliefs and consumption that we all fall into. Inside the Crisis Actors Studio is some necessary but dark (very dark) comedy....