Street theatre invades a public space, shakes it up and disappears, but the memory of the disruption haunts the site for audiences who experience it. This book looks at how the dynamic interrelationship of performance, participant and place creates a politicized aesthetic of public space that enables the public to rehearse democratic practices.
An intriguing and vibrant study of an innovative and lesser-known facet of contemporart art. Identifies significant strategies exploited by European artists to extend their aesthetic vision within the mediums of prints, books and multiples. Exploring commercial techniques, confrontational approaches and language and the expressionist impulse. Showcases the creativity being channelled into printed art by todays generation.
From Russia to Poland and Romania, and from the Czech Republic to Yugoslavia and East Germany, Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe is an ambitious attempt to chart the changing realities of the eastern half of the continent, as seen through the eyes of artists, critics, photographers and curators. New paperback edition of the popular ARTWORLD series. If the Iron Curtain and the antagonisms of the Cold War era had often kept the richness and diversity of Eastern European art hidden from the rest of the world, the contemporary era has been a witness to its unparalleled creative explosion and fruitful dialogue with the global art scene. The work featured in this book explores the correlations between shifts in the political, cultural, economic and geographical realities of Eastern Europe and the region’s contemporary art. The artists in this book revisit the region’s past to envision a better future, reaching challenging conclusions and creating some of the most powerful and inspiring art being produced today. The book features essays from respected writers in the field and profiles the most influential artists producing work in and from the region today, including Marina Abramovi�, Christo, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Zofia Kulik, Komar and Melamid, IRWIN, Natalia Lach-Lachowicz, Alexander Brodsky, Ewa Partum, NSK, Group OHO, Stano Filko, Laibach, KwieKulik, Post Ars, Weekend Art, Zbigniew Libera, Marjetica Potr�, and Mladen Stilinovic. The following countries are covered in this anthology: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Yugoslavia.
This theoretically and empirically grounded book uses case studies of political graffiti in the post-socialist Balkans and Central Europe to explore the use of graffiti as a subversive political media. Despite the increasing global digitisation, graffiti remains widespread and popular, providing with a few words or images a vivid visual indication of cultural conditions, social dynamics and power structures in a society, and provoking a variety of reactions. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as detailed interdisciplinary analyses of "patriotic," extreme-right, soccer-fan, nostalgic, and chauvinist graffiti and street art, it looks at why and by whom graffiti is used as political media and to/against whom it is directed. The book theorises discussions of political graffiti and street art to show different methodological approaches from four perspectives: context, author, the work itself, and audience. It will be of interest to the growing body of literature focussing on (sub)cultural studies in the contemporary Balkans, transitology, visual cultural studies, art theory, anthropology, sociology, and studies of radical politics.
From Paris to L.A., London to Bergen, Sao Paulo to Vienna, and many more, no one has quite captured the strangeness, heroism, frustration or surreal quality of the coronavirus pandemic quite like the world's street artists. This brilliant small volume features the best examples: heroic nurses, lovers refusing to let COVID cool their passion, strange edicts from government, presidential recommendations featuring disinfectant, feelings of entrapment and longing for freedom... These artworks aren't just a fantastic take on the pandemic, but really capture the whole range of emotions that the world has lived through. Fine art isn't up to the task of defining this era. Street artists have taken on that mantle and have done it brilliantly.
This book provides an up-to-date, critical review of theoretical concepts connecting artists and urban development. It focuses on the multidimensionality of potential and actually observed interactions between artists and cities and their impacts on urban space, its form, functions and perceptions. Departing from the viewpoint that a more nuanced geography of artists is still needed to fully conceptualise the diversity of roles artistic creatives play in urban transformations, the book presents contributions with a common denominator of distinguishing artists as a unique professional and social group. The essays focus on the complexity of the artists’ spatial preferences and analyse a myriad of expressions of artists’ presence in urban centres in different geographic, political, economic, social, and spatial contexts drawing on experiences from 16 cities across Europe. The book presents several case studies ranging from Spain to Russia and from Scandinavia to Slovenia, and offers new pathways into understanding the implications of artists’ residence and activities in contemporary cities. Apart from presenting less obvious expressions of artists’ involvement in urban transformations such as their participation in urban planning or grass root urban movements, the volume explores the ambivalence of artists’ interactions with cities. Particular chapters test several divergent narratives of artistic creatives as inspirers and instigators of urban changes, pioneers of gentrification, contesters and resisters of neoliberal urban policies or mere indicators of transformations inspired by other actors, instrumentalized by public and private stakeholders.
This handbook presents commissioned and uncommissioned street art in and from Helsinki. Helsinki is currently one of the few cities in Northern Europe with such a lively and eclectic menu of street art on its concrete and streets, and this beautiful form of art is constantly in transition. Street art does more than just offer outdoor entertainment; it frames the urban space and everyday with art. Vuojolainen interrogates whether street art and graffiti subculture offers alternative solutions to survive in urban jungles. The Pocket Handbook for Helsinki Street Art includes over 110 images. Os Gemeos (~ ̈), Thierry Noir, EGS, Ai Weiwei, Cindy Sherman, FOSKOR1, ChemiS, Miina Äkkijyrkkä, Edward von Lõngus, Breeze Yoko, Viv Magia, Hombre, Tasso, Georgia Laurie, Otto Maja, Poppamaija, Plan B, Li-Hill, Hellstrom are just some of the major practitioners whose works are illustrated in this volume. This handbook will be of great interest to researchers (GSAR), libraries, art galleries and museums. This volume is also easy accessible to community policy makers, urban planners, art historians, members of the news media and first of all to all ethnologists, street artists, street photographers and graffiti writers. Works perfectly also as a tourist guide to the Helsinki Street Art Scene.
In 1973, graffiti ran rampant in NYC, reaching its peak that summer. The work of black writers from the Bronx like SUPER COOL 223, RIFF 70 (WORM/CASH), and PHASE 2 defined the art which the kids called Top-to- Bottom or T-to-B, as it vertically covered a full subway car. Some T-to-B pieces were so elaborate and complex that the NYT hypothesized that they were a collaboration between professional artists and the graffiti writers. Here are photos from that heady era.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Deindustrialising communities have called upon street theatre companies to re-animate public space and commemorate industrial heritage. How have these companies converted derelict factories into spaces of theatrical production? How do they connect their work to the industrial work that once occurred there? How do those connections manifest in theatrical events, and how do such events give shape and meaning to ongoing redevelopment projects? This book develops an understanding of the relationship between theatre and redevelopment that goes beyond accusations of gentrification or celebrations of radical resistance. Ultimately, Calder argues that deindustrialisation and redevelopment depend on theatrical events and performative acts to make ongoing change intelligible and navigable. Working memories brings together some of current theatre scholarship’s fundamental concerns while demonstrating the significance of those concerns to an interdisciplinary readership.