This week I wanted to post about the WAFA (We Are Fucking Awesome), a collective of artists I learned about from my favorite collage blog, NOTPAPER.NET. Consisting of members from around the world, Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, North Carolina, St. Paul, Sydney, Brighton, and Norwich, all of the work posted on their website is a collaborative effort of two or more of their members. I think this way of working has resulted in a vast number of works and an inherent eclecticism. Mail art, collage books, magazines, framed works and installation are some of the categories their projects fit into. And as I will probably continue following their progress, I thought it would be best to focus on one project at time instead of a summation. Firstly, I would like to show their collage books. MORE >>
Working along with the past couple of weeks, Cristian Subirà finishes off this round with a story of his recent tour in the US. I probably should have put this up when it was fresh off of the press, but I perhaps jumped the gun with excitement over the mix and the collages that he submitted around the same time. Perhaps his story will further enrich what he has shared with us so far, as stories always do. Thanks again Cristian.
CS: Matt ask me to write some lines about my first tour around the US. I accepted because I thought it would be a good way of finishing the trip, an html apendix. I’ve never had a diary so trying to give a chronological order of the events is something I’m not used to. I’m a dispersed person that moves back and forth in conversations. It takes a while until I arrive to the point I was shooting for. Like I’m doing right now.
The thing is that a while before I decided that if I was touring as a solo act, I would not to book as many as shows I could on the days I was on the road. It would be a trip that I would fill with shows to help to pay the expenses. The places I’d visit and the locals I’d interact would be the important part, not the venue or the money. That sounds hippie as f**k. Yeah ! I know. Whatever. MORE >>
So for this week I wanted to show some paper scraps and collages that Cristian Subirà sent me last week. While looking for a different zine that he wanted to submit that was based on ‘the novel art of whiskers’, he came across a folder full of leaflets from his trip to Japan two years ago. Scraps and residue from his travelling through the country, a good way to manifest physically the thoughts of that type of experience. He explains ” I don’t keep all this kind of stuff for any given reason. The fact is that I thought I could use it to make some collages that work together as a whole. So, this is the result.” I am always excited to see trees peaking out of Japanese styled houses and floating temples. Thanks alot Cristian.
Cristian Subirà of Summer Recreation Camp sent me away from Barcelona with an awesome mix to post for this week. This will be followed next week by stories and photos of his recent 2 month tour in the US. Enjoy!
Eternal Sunrise Mixtape
Sun Ra – Of Heavenly Things
Ghédelia Tazartès – Mourir Un Peu
Pearls Before Swine – I Saw The World
Faust – Jennifer
Tangerine Dream – Movements Of A Visionary
7th Temple – Under the Burning Sun
David Bowie – Moss Garden
Velvet Underground – Pale Blue Eyes
Astray Navigations – Haight-ashbury Legal pt.1
Cheb Zergui – Ana Dellali
Astray Navigations – Haight-ashbury Legal pt.2
Fuck Buttons – Sweet Love For Planet Earth
Atlas Sound – Winter Vacation
The Deviants – Child of the Sky
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My friend Lea Elleseff and five other bandits have been huddling up in Ithaca, New York working on what they have named, The Dacha Project, an experiment in alternative housing and farming. There they are conspiring against standard ways of living by exploring the possibilities of sustainable alternatives, a house insulated with bales of hay, layered clay walls, and passive solar heat. What had started out as a mere proposition has resulted in a humble, yet gloriously successful effort. Thanks Lea!
MO: When did the Dacha Project begin?
LE: The project began in early 2007, though there is evidence of it going back much further than that.I was a recent college grad seriously cheaping it in West Philadelphia. I had this idea that it would be really great to end up doing something(s) somewhere I couldn’t even think of yet.
Back then the project was all ideas, different from the current reality. Or it might be the exact manifestation of those ideas. In any case, it was loose. The people involved were scattered around the country, so we formed an online group on which we rambled deep into the possibilities of creating a sustainability-minded space for ourselves and the community. This went on for about a year.
We talked about it enough that some rudimentary infrastructure developed almost without us knowing it. The need for something material to happen resulted in an actual search for land. After we found the spot, some had to traverse the ocean from Hawaii, road trip across the nation, say goodbye to wherever we were and arrive at the destination. Most of us made it to Ithaca before we even closed on the land in July 2008, that’s how excited we were.I’d say the Dacha Project began in those times, because the people, the times, the places all started swirling together then.
This week we post a selection of tracks from Swole, a new album by Brooklyn-based musician Cache. Swole guides us deep into the earth’s caverns where we hear the echoing sounds of pattering drips. Reflective, oscillating, crystalline, in the darkness of the Swole cave there is no direction, only colors, textures, and whispering voices. For me, each track on this album seems to represent a change in depth. “Under dance” being encounters with unknown forms of life, “Thanks for trying” being a final ascent. Forgive my cave metaphor because this album can bring many other images to mind. The use of toy instruments and playful piano lines force us to recall whatever lies in our memories. Thanks Cache. [ complete album ]
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I would like to share the digital adaptation of a zine that I created a few months ago in an edition of 50 copies. Frustrated by the distribution obstacles with such a no-budget project, I thought digitizing it would make things easier and more interesting. Also, I have been wanting to work more on interactive projects of this kind. Remember, if you are somehow anti mouse clicking, I still have some paper versions for those interested. And if you get stuck, keep clicking.
This week I would like to talk about the graphic identity that my friends Sara and Julio have developed for Russafart 2010. Russafart is an artistic event that will take place in Valencia on May 21, 22 and 23 where more than 100 artists from Russafa neighbourhood will open their studios to the general public.
For the graphic identity Sara and Julio use four type of vegetables to group the different artistic cathegories that the event includes: sculpture, painting, videoart and photography. At the same time, this concept reflects the essence of the Ruzzafa neighbourhood, which was in its origins a village of farmers and orchards. This concept accompanies the philosophy of this year’s campaign: “Cultivating Art.”
If you are in Valencia this weekend, do not miss this celebration of art in this beautiful neighborhood!
This week I ask some questions to my friend Justin Jernigan about the stories within his photos and how these reflect his lifestyle. Justin currently lives around and within the Los Angeles region, adhering to “bike life”, a lifestyle that is centered around constant movement and uprooting, and which involves a complex system of values and sense of community. Thanks Justin!
MO: If your photos tell a story, it seems one of the themes would be constant change and movement. Do you think this is a result of your own incessant need to travel, or is there something deeper, rooted within our generation that calls for this constant movement?
JJ: My freshman year of high school they had me read “The Sun Also Rises.” Hemingway, chasing women and wine across the railways of southern France and Catalonia, was the first real vagabond I came to love, and as a thirteen year old, that book did more to shape the next ten years of my life than any other person or thing. As a result, I have cultivated a fairly far reaching wanderlust for many years now. Although I agree that my own need to travel is greater than the average person’s, I do feel that this desire for movement is more pronounced in our generation than in those past.
Sociotree is a project that started in the summer of 2006 that focuses on free, independent sharing of music, art, and ideas. We share things big and small, minor and major productions, mixes and hand-made crafts to zines and book clubs. The basic questions we ask is, "What are you doing? What do you want to show us?" More often than not, we get some interesting results.
