Belgium-based Roa is a street artist known for his graffiti animals, and our friends at Babelgum have nabbed a hypnotic time-lapse video detailing his recent project in East London. What we can’t get over is his speed; the two sleeping pigs appear on the wall out of nowhere. If you happen to be in Paris, swing by the Itinerrance Gallery, where he has work showing through the end of the month. Check out Roa in action after the jump, along with some images of some of his other animal-obsessed works.
If you want to scratch your eyes out over the current jeggings trend, then we suggest you meet Zentai — it’s the Japanese term for skin-tight lycra suits worn to cover the whole body. “People are attracted to Zentai fetishism because of its anonymity and how it heightens your awareness of your own body,” explains the voiceover in this video from our friends at Babelgum. They also report that the rather disturbing trend is becoming increasingly popular at parties in New York, London, and Tokyo.
“Pimping out your bike and riding around like a mobile disco is a subculture that originated in the street carnivals of Trinidad and Tobago,” explains the voiceover in Boombox Bikers, the latest installment in Babelgum’s subculture-obsessed Vice Versus series. While the trend is big in Milan, Barcelona, and Paris, this segment focuses on an emerging scene of young Trinidadians in Queens, New York. These kids have loaded their bikes up with massive speakers, MP3 players, DVD players, and TV screens. We’re intimidated. We also think they deserve their own MTV reality series.
Our friends at Babelgum tipped us off to the global premiere of “Skeletons,” the latest video from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ electro-heavy 2009 release It’s Blitz!. The band wrote this song back in December 2007 during a snowstorm up in Massachusetts where they were recording in a barn. “It has a very wintery sort of feeling to it, kind of atmospheric and melancholy — unlike any other song that we’ve written before,” explains Karen O. They plan to digitally release a bundle on February 1 that will include the original song, an acoustic version, plus the video.
Check out the video for “Skeletons” — including the brilliant costuming from Christian Joy (the same designer responsible for the Where the Wild Things Are pop-up shop — after the jump.
Ireland-born graffiti artist Conor Harrington focuses on the issues of masculinity and systems of power in his work, which is a juxtaposition of fine art with street techniques; as he explains it, “I’m interested in the dynamics between opposing elements.” Our friends at Babelgum recently caught up with Conor as he was putting up a new piece in London’s Covent Garden just before Christmas. He says that this sentry is “a 17th-century equivalent of a CCTV camera,” and is based on a small painting he did for a recent show.
Video of Harrington at work, along with some of his recent “indoor” oil canvases, after the jump.
Christopher Coleman‘s “The Magnitude of the Continental Divides” is an animated short that explores the ways we define ourselves and our nations. “It is a journey between many locations in various states of withdrawal and aggression,” he explains. “Borders become weaponized and damage is always dealt from afar. The individual is caught in the midst, unable to separate themselves, unable to define identity without place.”
It was also selected as the grand prize-winner of Babelgum’s Metropolis Art Prize 2009 (the world’s biggest contemporary art competition) by a jury that included Isabella Rossellini, and screened along with other winning videos on a giant jumbotron in Times Square last night. Coleman took home $20,000, which he plans to use to install solar panels in his home to power his filmmaking efforts.
The Yes Men, lovers of large-scale shenanigans that take down the man (and whose hilarious film we told you about back in October), have just pulled a stunt at Copenhagen COP 15, and our friends at Babelgum kindly passed along the video. According to the Yes Men’s website, the purpose was “to highlight the most powerful nations’ obstruction of meaningful progress in Copenhagen, to push for just climate debt reparations, and to call out Canada in particular for its terrible climate policy.” Perhaps these clips — in which the “Canadian delegation” publicly commits to bold emission reduction targets and tens of billions in new aid to help African nations — will end up in their next documentary.
Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw, the two masked artists from New York City in the video below, are the minds behind a new multimedia performance collaboration called Sweat Shoppe. Their aim? The intersection of art, music and technology to create something that has an element of pop accessibility. Sweat Shoppe recently showed our friends at Babelgum how to paint video at SCOPE Art Fair in Miami. “We started off doing this in the streets,” they explain. “We’d find a building that we like with the right light conditions, pull up, clamp something in some car batteries, and do our thing.”
At three minutes a piece, Radar’s concise documentaries look at the inspiring creativity of artists who stray from the trodden path.
The second season premiered on Babelgum with Undetermined Measurements, documenting ten “clean suits” patrolling Central Park as part of a performance-art experiment. Upcoming episodes include tales about the loopy domain of patents, a floating and sustainable eco-habitat on New York waterways, and a man who takes a virtual road trip via Google maps.
Damon Albarn isn’t one to indulge in much downtime. While he’s made big news lately with the announcement of a Blur reunion, he’s been making more waves this decade with his animated band Gorillaz. Director Ceri Levy was in on the ground floor when Albarn and co-creator Jamie Hewlett (of Tank Girl fame) came up with the band, and spent six years documenting it’s progress. The result is Bananaz, a 90-minute film following the cartoon group’s rapid rise to fame. Online video purveyor Babelgum has the exclusive full-length premiere up now, free to watch ahead of the June 1st DVD release. To help celebrate, we’ve got a full Gorillaz CD/DVD discography to give away. After the jump, check the details to enter, and watch preview clips from the film.
. The band wrote this song back in December 2007 during a snowstorm up in Massachusetts where they were recording in a barn. “It has a very wintery sort of feeling to it, kind of atmospheric and melancholy — unlike any other song that we’ve written before,” explains Karen O. They plan to digitally release a bundle on February 1 that will include the original song, an acoustic version, plus the video.
