Friday, April 30, 2010

GUERILLA ART


Following in the footsteps of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a new generation of international street artists is currently conquering the art market, with auction houses, collectors, and galleries demanding top prices.

This DVD features profiles of, and interviews, with key artists on the scene including Banksy, Futura 2000, Rammellzee, Os GA(c)meos, Space Invader, Barnstormers, Espo, WK Interact, Zevs, Blek Le Rat, AndrA(c), Noki, Miss Van and Eine. Graffiti-inspired street art pioneers Futura 2000, Rammellzee and Blek Le Rat discuss their own work, how street art was born out of the days of subway train graffiti, spraypainting and tagging, and how the new movement of street artists are doing things differently.

Filmed in New York, London, Paris, SAGBPo Paulo, and Tokyo, the accompanying documentary shows the artists at work: Zevs practising his Visual Kidnappings of advertising billboards; Blek Le Rat sticking up outsized stencils; Os GA(c)meos painting their lyrical, folklore inspired murals; and, Space Invader putting up his unique mosaic wall tile images.

GRAB IT HERE

PHAT TRUCKS & BUSSES


BORN REVOLUTIONARY


"A person doesn't become a revolutionary, Santiago: he is born one. For these men going out to defend the Revolution is not something outside themselves. It is part of their very being. As thought is part of yours. That is why you can judge dispassionately and even condemn their struggle: it is not really a part of you. Intellectuals are never true revolutionaries. They believe that a certain correspondence of ideas, a certain vision of the world is at stake. But, in fact, the basic thing at stake is property. It is as simple as that. There are just two camps: those who have and those who have not."  

 

Excerpt from The Disinherited by Michel Del Castillo.

METEK SOUNDSYSTEM PARTY


Metek sound system 23 06 07 
Beauduc mix

PHAT TRUCK

Thursday, April 29, 2010

ROBIN HOOD TAX

Mutate Britain On The Robin Hood Tax

RANDOM ZOMBIE LIBERE

 Journal satirique et gratuit sans publicité

Download number 80 here
(rightclick, save as)

More info on the e-zine's website here

PHAT SKETCH

By the porg

Click on pic for bigger size!
More on this artist right here

ADBUSTED BILLBOARD

More billboards here

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

OINK OINK

HATE AUTHORITY


The workers who operate the means of production have power;
The bosses who tell them how to use it have authority.
The tenants whose rent maintains the building have power;
The landlord whose name is on the deed has authority.
Armies have power;
Generals have authority.
A hurricane has power;
A meteorologist has authority.

Anarchism is not a rejection of power itself. There are so many kinds of power we affirm: the power to provide for ourselves and one another, to defend ourselves and sort out conflicts, to perform acupuncture and steer a sailboat and swing on a trapeze. We prize the freedom to develop our capacities and capabilities, especially in ways that increase others’ freedom as well. Every time one of us acts to achieve her full potential it is a gift to all.

Authority over others, on the other hand, always comes at the price of power over one’s own life. It is always derived from outside oneself:
The authority of the Constitution, the president, the general, the soldier—
Of the law, the judge, the attorney, the police officer—
The economy, the executive, the manager, the customer—
The scripture, the pope, the cardinal, the bishop, the priest—
The text, the critic, the professor—
The bluest eye, the deepest voice, the thinnest waistline.
By crimethinc

WHAT THE HELL IS MUSIC?

We love it, we listen to it, we hoard it and argue about it, but what is music and why does it have such a hold on us?


It’s the food of love, reckoned Shakespeare; it soothes the savage beast thought William Congreve, and Milton found in it “such sweet compulsion”. If you ask Madonna, she’ll just warble something pretentious about the bourgeoisie, but it saved Cevin Fisher’s life and Danny Tenaglia knows it’s The Answer. Brass Construction noticed that it Makes You Feel Like Dancing, while Stardust figured that it Sounds Better With You. Music is a human nutritional requirement, as important as the other absolute essentials of life: good friends, good sex, tasty snacks and text messaging. Anyone who says otherwise is not to be trusted – and we’ve all had one of those creepy neighbours who lives like a silent monk, only to bang a meat cleaver against the wall if we dare to play Britney at anything above a not-so-innocent whisper.

Plato thought music was so powerful it should be controlled by the state. In ‘The Republic’, his blueprint for the perfect civilisation, he argued that any new type of music should be banned, because it would upset even the most important political institutions. A couple of thousand years later, the Criminal Justice Act showed that modern governments took the power of music just as seriously, when its notorious ‘repetitive beats’ definition of house and techno made potential outlaws of anyone who got together in Britain to dance outdoors. Recently, the authorities in New York have lashed out at musical enjoyment in a similar way. Now that the city is stuffed full of yuppies, it’s got a surplus of swish designer bars with decks and dancefloors, all ripe for a little soft-shoe-shuffling. Yet thanks to the mayor’s infantile ‘zero-tolerance’ philosophies, the owners are forced to tape up polite ‘NO DANCING’ signs, because few of them have the necessary cabaret-license to allow (and this is how the law is defined) “more than three people to move rhythmically”. Ridiculous as it sounds, if there’s so much as a dip of the hips or a peppermint twist on the premises, the cops will bust them big time.

There’s always been opposition to music, especially if it’s new and different. That’s part of its power. If you like it, you’re in with the in-crowd, if you don’t, you’re your parents. Like clothes, music is a great way of defining who you are. If a new style of music comes along and it really annoys anyone over 30, you can bet it’s got a big future. That’s been true for everything from jazz and rock’n’roll to punk, house and Eminem.

But it’s not just teenagers who use music to define themselves. Since prehistoric times, music has played a central role in human culture. It’s a big part of most rituals, whether they’re state events like sending troops off to war, rites of passage like marriage and death, or something as ordinary as Friday-night lariness at Yates’s wine lodge. Certainly, apart from a few uptight (and relatively recent) European theologies, religion without music is a rare thing. The Hindu vedas, the world’s oldest scriptures, say that the universe was created through sound. The Bible tells us that “the angels dance in heaven”, and commands us to, “dance before the Lord”. Hasidic Jews (who don’t look too party-minded, with their frock coats and beaverskin hats), dance regularly as part of their religious worship and all Jews, even 90-year old aunties, are obliged to cut the rug at weddings. For Aborigines music is crucial, since they truly sing their world into existence. Their mythology is a complex blend of geography and music, and to them, every rock and tree and hill contains a spirit, each one created by singing a song. To an old Aussie tribesman, music works as a kind of spiritual Ordinance Survey map.

Music is different from other kinds of art. It moves through time but it leaves no trace. It can generate intense emotion, yet it’s not necessarily about anything. It’s “the art of combining sounds with a view to beauty of form and expression of emotion,” reckons the dictionary. The ancient Greeks only had one word (‘music’), which included music, dance, singing and poetry. Until recording was invented, it was a one-off experience, something that only happened in a particular time and place – music was a single performance, not a thing that could be repeated (no chance of a rewind!). Today, that’s the worth of a good band or a great DJ: you go to hear them because they make a night seem special and unrepeatable.

Until records you couldn’t collect music. The best you could do was buy some song-sheets and gather round the piano, or if you were one of the wealthy few, you could hire an orchestra to hang out in the lounge as your personal midi-system. Only with recordings could you get acquisitive about music, you could stockpile it and search for the bits you hadn’t got yet. Soon we’ll transcend this: thanks to online delivery, collecting music will once again be fairly meaningless. Everyone will have access to everything and the trainspotter will admit defeat (Napster and other MP3 cleverness give a foretaste of this ‘universal jukebox’ of the future).

Scientists have spent plenty of research grants pondering music’s power. The Greeks discovered that, because it’s all to do with sound waves, music is very mathematical. The relation between different notes can be described in terms of fractions (a guitar string half the length of another will produce a note an octave lower). That’s why musicians talk in terms of fourths, fifths, minor thirds and so on. What sounds good to the human ear has a lot to do with harmonics, as in ‘harmony’, which is actually all to do with numbers. Bach was so mathematically-minded he composed a lot of his music (his organ fugues especially) not by humming and whistling but by doing clever sums with a lot of fractions in.

The mathematical connection makes music easy for machines to get a hold of. A synthesiser is just a big calculator with a loudspeaker. And thanks to digital sampling and mixing, modern producers can sidestep the tricky bits of composing and do it all by ear. “Today’s music does a lot of very clever things without realising it,” says Richard Worth, a classically-trained flautist who plays in New York’s Groove Collective. “When you get a DJ combining records, or a hip hop producer making a track from samples, they’re often doing things with time signatures and harmonies that jazz musicians would get very excited about."


DJs and dance producers use a host of techniques that can be explained scientifically. Dance music is usually judged on how effective it is, meaning how good is it at getting people on the floor, at keeping them dancing, and at gaining a higher state of mental stimulation – technically referred to as “losing it”.

“I think it’s to do with dynamics, says Tom Middleton of Global Communication. “Fluctuations in the volume and frequency range. If you’re rolling along with the lower range of the spectrum – a kick-drum and a bassline – that tends to keep people rooted to the floor. Then, if you add the really high frequencies and remove the bass – for some reason – people just put their hands in the air.”

Tom believes it’s the contrast between the lower frequencies which you feel with your body and the higher frequencies which mess with your head. “High frequencies actually make your brain resonate more than your physical organs. It interferes with alpha and beta waves in the brain. You just get people going nuts. If you were to play a beat and fade in some high frequencies like white noise, and then fade out the beat, I can almost guarantee that people will go nuts. All they’re hearing is this noise that makes their brain feel really confused.” Then he smiles knowingly. “Particularly in a drug-induced situation.”

Neil Todd is an expert in music perception. He thinks he can explain why we are so partial to loud bassy sounds. Neil has recently found that the part of our ears which is mostly responsible for balance also works as a primitive hearing organ. It only responds to lower-frequency sounds (between 50Hz and 1,000 Hz), and crucially, it only really works at high volume (above 92dB). ‘It creates a feeling of movement. So as well as any vibrations and touch-sensations you might get from the music, there’s another sensation as well.” Neil uses techno in his research, because repetitious music makes the experiments simpler. “What I’ve discovered is a primitive acoustic system and it creates a feeling of movement, a pleasurable sensation, even if you’re not moving. It explains why people like rock or dance music to be really loud.”

Like many scientists trying to understand the effects of music, Neil is convinced it’s to do with finding a mate. We evolved hearing to help us understand our environment better, but the fact that certain sounds are actually pleasurable, he believes, has to do with sexual selection. “It’s about females choosing males on the basis of signals they produce”. Mating calls? “Yes, in lower vertebrates, they make vocalisations, low frequency sound. Even fish do that. What we’re talking about is direct sound that is intended to induce a response in the female.” His research into the effects of low frequencies continues, and he’s yet to confirm his suspicions, but what Neil seems to be saying is that, yes, Women Respond To Bass.


The other key force at work in loud music is resonance. The right sound frequencies will make an object vibrate violently. That’s why a singer can break a wine glass if she finds the right note (it’s also why, when people walk in step on it – ie with a regular ryhthmic frequency – the Millennium bridge wobbles). Loud club music goes beyond being just sound. It’s actually vibration, movement. Whether we learnt to like this when we were grooving to our mum’s 120 bpm heartbeat in the womb, or if it’s just a fact of being human, we enjoy being shaken up. Not for nothing do we say that music ‘moves us’.

Nutty thirties scientist Nikola Tesla was obsessed with resonance. He made tiny machines which were capable of destroying whole buildings by oscillating at just the right low frequency. It’s this principle which lies behind the sonic weapons tested by various militaries (and the KLF): find the resonant frequency of the human body and you can wobble it to death. Tesla took it even further and drew up blueprints for an earthquake machine, having cleverly worked out the frequency of vibration that would be needed to shake the earth to pieces.

A DJ’s standing orders are to keep the energy rising. Most records start simple and build. They add increasing layers of music and interest, generating a sense of acceleration. The best DJs will manipulate this to great effect. They’ll occasionally take the energy down, in order to bring it back up dramatically (all good DJs will turn the volume down when they come on), but most of the time they’re looking to take things higher. Any DJ worth his salt, by overlapping records, can create the illusion that the energy is constantly rising and never falling.

For a scientific illustration of this phenomenon, listen to the sonic illusion known as the ‘rising tone’. You can download it from Continuous Tones. This is a sound generated by computer, which uses complex harmonies to give the impression that it’s always rising in pitch. You could listen to it for days and it would still sound like it’s getting higher and higher. And that’s what a DJ can do by using records. With most, this is a case of exploiting the overall feel of the record, but some, especially trance DJs, use key-changes to achieve the same effect. A change in key gives the impression that you’ve stepped up a gear. Oakenfold, for one, organises his records into a progression of keys “Keys are a very important thing because they fuck with feelings,” he argues. “Minor keys make you feel down, solemn, sad. A major key makes you feel happy."

A lot of music works because of our in-built sense of expectation. Listen to a wrinkled guitar picker play a 12-bar blues (or even someone plodding out Chopsticks on the piano). If he stops at the 11th bar, you’re left hanging in frustration. It sounds unfinished, unresolved. Where are the last few notes? You can’t leave it there! Melodies in classical music are built of themes which repeat and develop and resolve, and dance music takes this to extremes, working the audience into a fever pitch by manipulating our need for melodic completeness.

“Anything that increases the tension and lets them know something is about to happen,” says Pete Heller, listing some of the tricks of the DJ’s trade. “You can create an air of predictability, introduce some familiar factor to give them a feeling of impending action.” This works with rhythm as well as melody. That’s why breakdowns and snare rolls are so fiendishly effective “You can bring everything down to just a kick-drum and a bassline, for a clap-along moment, or you can stop everything and have a big snare roll and it makes everyone realise it’s about to go off again."

Repetition is a crucial factor in this. Most dance tracks take a simple set of notes, a hook, and repeat it ad infinitum. If you’re dancing you get so used to this regular repetition of sound that if it disappears you desperately want it back. That’s why the most exciting parts of a dance record are where bits of it stop suddenly (drops), and when they dramatically resurface.

“I like repetition.” says Danny Howells. “Sheer relentless repetition. It’s hypnosis. If you’ve got a track really grooving along and it drops out for a bar, when it comes back with the kick-drum and bassline, you’re pretty much guaranteed to cause a stir.”

Dave Lee agrees. “If I wanted to do a surefire track that I wanted to go down well, I’d have lots of drops, bass drum fills, climaxing up to when the kick-drum comes back in.” As Dave explains, this also works with frequency manipulation or ‘EQing’. A good DJ will use the EQ controls to steal away the bass and return it at exactly the right moment. “As many effects as possible, all swelling up, a sample filtering up and down during the drops. And when the drums come in something like a siren."

The first rule of showbusiness is the same as the first rule of selling heroin: ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE. It’s almost as if dance producers and DJs are making instant junkies of us. Supply dancers with an endlessly repetitive rhythm, and if you suddenly take some element of it away they’ll go cold turkey and beg you to bring it back in. Dance music has evolved until most of these tricks are fairly well understood. Indeed, many of them are so over-done as to sound pretty corny to many producers. The breakdown and the other effects which DJs use to mess with our heads are so mind-numbingly effective because they’re all about tease. Put simply, it’s about rhythms, starts and stops and dramatic changes. You could say much the same about sex, and this might explain why DJs can punch so far above their weight when it comes to pulling.

© Frank Broughton & Bill Brewster
Originally published in shortened form in Mixmag, 2002

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

KIEREWIET - CZECHTEK 04


kierewiet/sos/decepticons 
czechtek 2004
 Roadtrip videoclip

ROA @ INTERBETON - ANIMATION


 By Roa

More of his stuff @ Interbeton squat right here

PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER


 PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER
by Patti Smith (1988)

I was dreaming in my dreaming
Of an aspect bright and fair
And my sleeping it was broken
But my dream it lingered near
In the form of shining valleys
Where the pure air recognized
And my senses newly opened
I awakened to the cry
That the people have the power
To redeem the work of fools
Upon the meek the graces shower
It's decreed the people rule


The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power


Vengeful aspects became suspect
And bending low as if to hear
And the armies ceased advancing
Because the people had their ear
And the shepherds and the soldiers
Lay beneath the stars
Exchanging visions
And laying arms
To waste in the dust
In the form of shining valleys
Where the pure air recognized
And my senses newly opened I awakened to the cry


The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power


Where there were deserts
I saw fountains
Like cream the waters rise
And we strolled there together
With none to laugh or criticize
And the leopard
And the lamb
Lay together truly bound
I was hoping in my hoping
To recall what I had found
I was dreaming in my dreaming
God knows a purer view
As I surrender to my sleeping
I commit my dream to you


The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power


The power to dream to rule
To wrestle the world from fools
It's decreed the people rule
It's decreed the people rule
Listen. I believe everything we dream
Can come to pass through our union
We can turn the world around
We can turn the earth's revolution

WE HAVE THE POWER
PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER

 Patti Smith
"Godmother of punk

Monday, April 26, 2010

FLY WITHOUT CAUTION


Banditos - Fly without caution 
(cd 2006 - Electro Lab Factory)
 ! download here !
(rightclick, save as)

More on Banditos can be found here

PRIVACY MATTERS




Check the website here

RESIST NOW - PART ONE

 
RESIST NOW!
part one


Excerpt from the RUPTURE zine, issue October 2007;

Take a close look at the world around. Our social structures are creaking: high rents and cost of living; mostly crap food and reliance on a small number of grains and the mass slaughter of animals; control and mismanagement of land by the few at the expense of the many and the alienation from nature this causes; mega-transport of goods worldwide and peak oil; casualised labour and reliance on service indus ries; the selling off and privatisation of basics such as health care, and unholistic chemical fixes; an inane political circus of personality jocking with limited voting and no real mandate for government, with corporations and arms dealers/the military running the show from behind the scenes – manipulating class, race and gender for maximum control and profit.

Look forward to: ID cards, tagging and movement restrictions, nano-tek and genetic mother-fucking.

The background to this is pollution and destruction of our basic necessities of water and air, and rapid species loss and ecological armageddon rapidly taking hold of our fragile eco-system due to industrialisation and hyper-consumption.


What are those here who have recognised the situation to do?


Some solutions are already at hand and need to be acted upon without delay:

1) Recognise that other people can’t sort things for us and that the free market will not solve the problems it has created.

2) Two strands of action running simultaneously are required, one without the other won’t work – these are resistance (direct action) and sustainability (living lightly):

a)   Form a housing co-op and a workers co-op with a few friends/like-minded accomplices, this enables you to dip the vast and probably temporary funds of cash out there to get sorted. Get some land and/or property in order to have a base of operations and a small island of security.
b)   Get the kit together you will need to survive off the grid, ie alternative technology, tools, seeds, manuals, a crew.
c)   Grow your own and realise that with the present population you’ll mostly likely have to be vegan as animals/animal feed takes up too much space and uses more energy than it puts out (and hey, all life is equal).
d)   Get educated on the history of resistance and adapt effective techniques to fuck up the parts of the system you apply yourselves to. This will involve leaving behind much that now seems familiar and constant, and will entail great risk if we intend to be thorough and successful.
e)   Pass on useful knowledge and share skills. Your closest allies will be direct experience and a willingness to learn and act quickly.

The alternatives are to: ignore the problems and get fucked up while patting each other on the backs for being oh-socool, while in real terms doing nothing to help; hope for a tekno miracle and/or disease and economic-electrical collapse; wait for the UFOs to come and rescue us...

More info: catalystcollective.org; schnews.org.uk; pfaf.org; vegansociety.com; 325collective.com; omnipresence.mahost.org/inttxt.htm


I would never make a good vegan, that is my nature. But I am in for the rest! 

Sunday, April 25, 2010

I AM SPEECHLESS


WARNING!
THE ARTICLE BELOW CONTAINS A BRUTAL POLICE ACT.



31 March 2010 - RAVE GEAR TOO BE SHREDDED AFTER SEIZURE

ILLEGAL rave equipment worth more than £2000 is set to be destroyed after it was confiscated by police.

The seized sound system will be placed into an industrial shredder at Delmonte Garage on Concorde Road in Norwich tomorrow at 3pm.

Inspector Mike Brown said; “This is a clear message to rave organisers. The date is significant as it would be foolish for anyone to hold an illegal event over the Easter period.

It will not be tolerated, your equipment will be seized and it will be disposed of. These events are not harmless, they cause significant disruption and cost to the rural communities they affect.

For the public and landowners these actions are further evidence that we have listened to their concerns and of our commitment to stopping raves from taking place anywhere in the county.”

The equipment was seized from the successful disruption of an unlicensed music event at Shotesham, Norfolk.

Source: Great Yarmouth Mercury


Imagine this happing to your own sound or anyones sound. 
This not a clear message at all, this should be illegal. 
How can one be able to take anyones baby and throw it in a shredder. 
They should hang that police force and feed their corpses to pigs!

ROA @ LONDON II


"ROA never ceases to amaze...This is his biggest wall yet, and took him (only) 8 hours to complete."
Unurth

OUT OF ORDER


'OUT OF ORDER'
A Photographic Celebration of the Free Party Scene

This has been in my bookmarks for a while now, but my list is so big and chaotic that I often forget about things like this book.


From the author:

‘Out of Order’ is going to be a photography book that will document some twelve years of squat parties and teknivals that have taken place in London, across the UK, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The work starts from the infamous ‘Beachy Rd’ venue in East London in 1997 and progresses to the deserts of Jordan and Morocco in the present day.
I have taken all the photographic work for the book myself and my photography is a testament to my sincere passion for the Free Party scene, a unique sub-culture that, to me, felt like home the moment I walked into my first rave.

My photography has always been inspired by the beauty to be found in the individuals, community, and spaces within the Free Party scene, and subsequently reflects that same sentiment. All the imagery to be included is taken from my perspective as a participant, NOT a voyeuristic observer, and it focuses on the positive, inspirational side of free parties, a side that has mostly been ignored in the press.
‘Out of Order’ will have multiple functionality: an art book for public appreciation, a personal narrative, a family album for many, and a visual reference of a sub-culture for academia.

I must stress, that ‘Out of Order’ will NOT include sensationalist-shocking images that portray the subjects in a negative light.
I encourage any enquiries from those who feature, and fully respect anyone’s wishes to not be included in the book for any reason.
Production of the book is currently underway and I ask that you join this group so I can keep anyone interested up to date with the progress, and also so that I can contact anyone for possible assistance in verifying details.

You can keep track of it's progress on a Facebook Page created for the release of this book. Bookmark this!

As a preview you can grab a list of parties that will be featured right here.

P.S. Our Facebook Page is up and running too, head over to facebook.zoneofthefree.info and get linked, share and comment.

TEKNO AGAINST SARKO

CECI N'EST PAS

Bruxelles - Belgium

Saturday, April 24, 2010

GOOD PUBLICITY?

By unknown

CLOCKWORK

A Clockwork Orange Tribute Print 
by Alan Villenueva

WORLD OF FANTASY

PHAT TRUCK

CAPITALISM - A LOVE STORY

 Michael Moore, USA, english, 2009, 127 min.

On the 20-year anniversary of his groundbreaking masterpiece Roger & Me (1989), Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). But this time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene far wider than Flint, Michigan. From Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan, Michael Moore will once again take film goers into uncharted territory. With both humor and outrage, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story explores a taboo question: What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Years ago, that love seemed so innocent. Today, however, the American dream is looking more like a nightmare as families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings. Moore takes us into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal...and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story is both a culmination of Moore's previous works and a look into what a more hopeful future could look like. It is Michael Moore's ultimate quest to answer the question he's posed throughout his illustrious filmmaking career: Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do?
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Download below (rapidshare) 

Friday, April 23, 2010

ROA - LONDON EXHIBITION


Solo Exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery 8th APRIL – 2nd MAY 2010

ROA’s eagerly anticipated UK solo debut opens in London this spring to exhibit his unique portrayal of large scale urban wildlife, disquietly cohabiting city streets, hand painted in his distinctive black and white style.
ROA started painting abandoned buildings and warehouses in the isolated industrial outskirts of his hometown – Ghent, Belgium. Fixating on the animals he found there; the wildlife became the central subject matter of his work, inspired by their clever ability to adapt into scavengers in order to survive. He used the dilapidated, coarse interiors and exteriors of the unyielding landscape as a canvas to portray his large-scale creatures.
Pure Evil Gallery is proud and extremely excited to present a new body of original artwork by ROA this spring, complete with street works in the local area. Look out for a new ROA city fox appearing on a street near you.
 --
 I recognize the lockerdoors from somewhere :)
 --
 More info here
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Videoreport of the expo can be watched here

THE SYNCHRONICITY OF 23


IT IS EVERYWHERE!

No matter when or where, it is hard to ignore it once you get hooked by the synchronicity of the number 23. Historical events, movies, music, religion, literature, ufology, astronomy, astrology, math.. even inside YOU!

- "ME?!"

Hard to believe is it? 
Here are some facts.

Your biorhythm cycle is.. 23 days.
Your body contain 23 pairs of chromosomes.


Your DNA pattern shows irregular connections every 23rd section. 
That blood pumping through your veins? 
- It circulates in 23 seconds.
That arm you are using to navigate your mouse right now? 
- It has 23 joints. 

Sure that is not impressive, but this list endless regarding countless subjects.

The Latin alphabet? 23 characters.
Julius Caeser was stabbed to death, 23 times.
Speaking of death, any idea when Laura Palmer died in Twin Peaks?
February.. the 23rd.

Still think that the date of her death is just a coincidence?
Is it? According to the Mayans the world will end December 23, 2012.



Spooky huh.. now lets add up the numbers in some dates from historical events.
9/11/2001 - Remember the WTC? 9+11+2+0+0+1 = 23
4/15/1912 - The Titanic sunk.  4+1+5+1+9+1+2= 23
8.15AM - The exact moment the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, you do the count. 
Not impressed? The date it was dropped was August 6, '45. 8+6+4+5 = 23 
Remember Kurt Cobain? He was born in 1967 and died in 1994.
So? 1+9+6+7= 23 & 1+9+9+4 = 23



Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 and died on April 23, 1616. Most of Shakespeare is known to us through the first folio published in 1623. 23 + 23 = 46. Shakespeare was 46 years old in the year 1610 (1+6+1+0=8, 8=2³), the year the King James Bible was published. Psalm 46 in that translation has as its 46th word "shake" while the 46th word from the end is "spear."

When you look out for it, it WILL be there.

Did you know that yesterday was Earth Day?

- "Yesterday was the 22th!"

Well that I obvious but did you know tilt of Earth’s axis is roughly 23 degrees? 
That earth rotates completely not 24 hours, but 23 hours and 56 minutes. 

There are more examples all over the internet, but I was only trying to make a point.

One more thing.. the internet. The World Wide Web.
WWW = 23 + 23 + 23 while the letter W symbol is 2 points down and 3 up.
Most URL's on the web contain 2 "/"s and 3 W's.




Go figure!

Find much more examples right here.

If you are new to the synchronicity of the number 23, you might want to read our guide. Which has been referred to by several sites since it has been published.

Feel free to read THE NUMBER 23 FOR DUMMIES guide.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

BATTERY PACK

By unknown

PHAT TRUCK


swoon | david-ellis | truck | nyc | 11 Nov 2007

ALL THINGS FALL AND WILL BE BUILT AGAIN


There have always been gatherings of people who want to let off steam - and there always will be. Our generation seems to prefer massive speakers and bass that shakes your chest to tie-dye and Rock throughyour parent’s gramophone. For me though, underground events have always been interesting because of the spaces they were in. Abandoned warehouses were brought back to life with an echo of their industrial past; factories next to beaches were blasted with the music of machines, a soundtrack to what that place had now become.

This creation of space, something that we had a hand or could have had a hand in making, is something that makes a free party more personal. No matter how hard you try, every movement invents its own rules; even if these are anti-rules. Through the semblance of chaos there is always order; maybe we were just happy with less order in general. Every human society, no matter how small, eventually grows its own laws, etiquette and behavior that must be maintained. If that’s the case, is there a point in this desire of disorder? Ronin, who used to be part of Headfuk sound and now does stuff with NFA, had this to say: “Even in a legitimate place with a relaxed policy towards drugs etc. you are still on good behavior because you are in someone else’s place – fair enough. When you have a TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) situation it’s your place and nobody’s place at the same time. Often enough not even the police are interested in what goes on inside the party; as long as it stays inside the party. In a world which is becoming increasingly disparate, we need to feel like it’s our world, even just on a weekend, because it is.” 

Underground parties with electronic music have been happening since there were synthesisers. The advent of raves was due to many factors; from the mutation of punk, the innovation of strong dance-friendly narcotics, as well as the upsurge in new-age travellers and a host of other things; from the gay club scene to gangster bloc parties. The travellers, who largely live in converted vans and trucks, can generally be found at the heart of most of the big free party events and teknivals that have occurred over the last ten years. Not only is this due to the implicit act of living somewhere to occupy it, but it’s the travellers and squatters who have been the lifeblood of rave and who have in general stored and transported the equipment, found the locations and occupied the space. Travelling and squatting (the occupation of a residential property) gets harder to do every year. It is also something that you will never be able to transpose to clubs, however down with things the patron of an establishment is.
Some, mainly British old skool ravers, would call the height of the rave scene Castlemorton in 1992, which was the largest outdoor unlicensed party that took place in the UK. This was considered the summit of underground dance in the UK; the event that kick started the Criminal Justice Act, which in turn provided the impetus for Spiral Tribe, Bedlam, Vox Populi and other sound systems to leave the country. This slightly patriotic view fails to take into account that at that point there hadn’t been a single French teknival, which at their largest were double the size of Castlemorton. Alternatively, if you were a Czech raver, you would probably call the beginning of the new century the peak of the rave era due to the quality and capacity of the Czech teknivals in this period. These were the greatest ever events according to some, but these 3-7 day festivals have now been commercialised and abandoned by the Czech sounds, who last year issued a statement that there would be no further CzechTeks.
Ten years ago in 1998, the biggest European sound system, Spiral Tribe had split up and the various members were on their way back to Europe after their ill fated trip to the US. Only the crew with money could go to the States, which meant that even the main live-sets and musicians got left behind (Crystal Distortion, 69db etc) as well as all the skint bods who danced all night and gave the Spirals their vibe. Maybe the trip would have still been unsuccessful even if they had managed to bring the whole crew - free parties were hard to pull off over there; ‘free’ was linked to ‘substandard’ and a depleted Spiral Tribe in a club was a very watered down version of the parties they had pulled off before.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the rave scene was blooming across the continent. In France, Sarkozy had not yet entered the political fray and new sound systems were sprouting like flies on shit. In Italy, Fintek, a squat founded on the death of Sasha Headcleaner (one of the front runners in a broken, experimental sound that would eventually give birth to breakcore) was just getting started and in its honeymoon period. Mutoid Waste, whose style of junk sculptures has never been recreated, had recently disbanded and pretty much refused (with the odd exception) to go near the free party scene. Sound Conspiracy, Kernel Panik, Desert Storm and many other big sound systems were just getting going. 

In London, United Systems were providing an infoline for those looking for squat parties every Saturday night. Although the infoline eventually died a death, these parties continued and generally go on every Saturday in London. The police don’t much care, having too many other problems on a Saturday night to worry about a small rave. Unfortunately, the ravers don’t care much about the tunes either and are on the most part there to sell or indulge in narcotics rather than beats. Ronin pointed out “When I get a glimpse of what’s going on in Europe or the outdoor party scene in the UK I think shit, there is still a rave scene, it’s still strong, people are still passionate about it. It kinda puts me in the dumps about a lot of the parties in London though!” This is not to say that London has not had its fair share of fat events; the annual Synthetic Circus halloween fancy dress rave-up being among the more memorable.
Although over the last ten years Londoners have been largely apathetic as far as music is concerned there have been other interesting forces at work. The actions of protestors like Reclaim the Streets (that amongst other things managed to squat and throw a party on a motorway, a roundabout and a central city road; if only for a day) and the squat-art movement through Random Artists (who kick-started the free open-access art exhibitions in squatted buildings around the UK known as TAA, Temporary Autonomous Art).

Over the next ten years things changed in France. Tekno with a k exploded, becoming the youth movement of the time, which was great if you wanted to sell records but not so amazing if you went to parties to get away from commercialism only to find more burger bars than Leicester Square and more stabbings than your local football match. Of course the crackdown that was started by Sarkozy created an atmosphere where it was no longer easy to get away with doing a party and from 2004, a lot of Sounds had their rig seized. Conflict with the authorities has never stopped the French who even at rave parties have not been adverse to a running battle. This was true even if it meant Molotov cocktails at dawn. Nowadays there are still parties that go on all around the French countryside; often called barbecues because they are such small events. Without a massive crowd to appease, the music is often more interesting and diverse and the atmosphere more congenial. Notably, the two or three that I have been to have been left spotless of rubbish by those in attendance; a thing unheard of in the good ol’days of the late nineties.

The Spanish have never quite got into raves, even with their strong squatting culture (Barcelona has more squats and social centers than anywhere else in the world) and a large travelling community. Yet in my opinion, some of the best raves of the last ten years have happened there, my favourite being the New Years Eve party 2001. This had a great mix of enormous sound systems, good music, performance, sculptures, as well as travellers and ravers from all over Europe.
On the issue on whether music has got better or worse most of the DJs and organisers questioned typically perched on the fence. One artist I questioned said “To try and be objective in my answer to such a subjective question I’m gonna say that music is better nowadays because we have all the music that’s been made over the last ten years, as well as new and fresh sounds just breaking through.” This is similar but not as honest as Keith from Desert Storm’s answer: “Better? Another hard question… technically yes it’s better due to the technology available to musicians these days, but does it have more heart…? I don’t know.” Unfortunately free or pay parties, clubs or tiny squat parties, cutting edge tunes being invented by musicians are rarely what are being played on the dancefloors and this was, is and will remain a constant as the underground scene in the UK and abroad has always been plagued by the ‘cool’ factor. Rick Spor agrees: “The shock of the new in dance music and parties has mostly evaporated in the race to copy each other and retread old styles across the board – behaviour, music, etc. However, for those coming in fresh and provocative, it’s still possible to be inspired and become creative, to find and make outlets for creative activities and resistance to the programmed minds and bodies that are seemingly everywhere.”

I asked Keith Desert Storm if there was a decline in the quality of parties: “Is there a decline? I was at a wicked warehouse rave in Glasgow [Scotland] at New Year… I think it goes in cycles. The old guard have retired, got kids etc… and now the new generation are coming up, and so so it starts again.” I asked Will from Dead Silence the same question. “This is a biased question that assumes there has been a decline in quality events. The rave scene lives on and, considering it’s a global scene now with events in China to Argentina, that’s a lot of events! For me raving and rave music are not associated exclusively with illegal parties. I should think the decline in quality events - at free parties and Teknivals - is due to the fact that nothing lasts forever.”
Others were quick to point out that with more police in operation in all countries, and stop and search becoming a less problematic an issue for the authorities under the banner of terrorism, it is harder to break into empty buildings, drive illegal vehicles and sell contraband - which in turn makes it harder to fund and organise free events.

The question that surely leads on from this is ‘Where do we go from here?’ Personally I am not going to stop liking industrial, experimental music or needing a place away from CCTV to meet up with my friends and escape from reality, if only for a moment. Ronin had this to say “Illegal parties are becoming harder and harder to put on, but I think people will always keep trying because that’s what really sparked our minds and got us involved in the first place. There wouldn’t be a ‘scene’ from the beginning if we only had clubs to develop in.”

So what are the options? Staging events in rented spaces; continuing to fight to squat places; doing smaller scale events; combining parties with art exhibitions; travelling further afield (Free parties are still happening; from Australia, India, Russia and Brazil to darkest Hackney Wick) or maybe a mix of all the above? Even though it’s becoming harder to live our lives, there is always a way. As Yann from Hekate sound system and Spine Records puts it “You always have to fight for your freedom and for the freedom of the others; to show that there are alternative cultures and not just a conventional way of life.”

Mutate to survive…
By Dan Hekate
Original article on datacide

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

I KNOW THERE IS LOVE

 By imminent disaster

More graffiti of this artist right here

BACKDROP BY THE PORG

By the porg

ALL YOU NEED

By unknown artist

SIDEWALK CHALK ART

 
 
In 1984, Kurt Wenner invented an art form all his own that has come to be known as anamorphic or illusionistic street painting. The form of perspective known as anamorphism was used by the great European Masters to give the illusion of soaring architecture and floating figures in ceiling frescoes. Wenner adjusted this geometry to create compositions that seemed to rise from and fall into the ground.
 

In anamorphic perspective, painted forms appear as three-dimensional when viewed from one point in space. Wenner created a special pictorial geometry that corrected the specific distortion caused by viewing his large images at an oblique angle.

“My paintings invite rediscovery of many artistic traditions, as I borrow from mythology, allegory, literature, and theater. And even if viewers cannot reference the story it tells, they sense that one exists, thus stimulating their curiosity. I enjoy teasing my audience with a wealth of allusions — historical, stylistic, and perceptual.curiosityFrom the beginning of my career, my main artistic motivation was to rediscover, transform and share neglected ideas from the past."
 
 
Click on pics for bigger sizes!

More info on this artist can be found here