From THREE THOUSAND –

This 2007 doco is an impressive achievement. Director/producer Jon Reiss (Better Living Through Circuitry) travelled the world and interviewed a who’s who of street artists (Shepard Fairey: younger, hotter and douchier than I’d thought), to illuminate a cultural world war. Graffiti artists call themselves bombers and see their work as ‘typographic terrorism’.

Bomb It! doesn’t romanticise its subject matter or settle for easy answers such as, ‘It’s art!’ ‘It’s subversion!’ ‘It’s vandalism!’ ‘It’s marketing!’ or ‘It’s identity!’ Even with a voiceover saying how rad tagging is, a building covered in tags looks pretty ugly and disrespectful to me whereas a Barcelona mural is beautiful; but I also see the bombers’ point about the commercialisation of public space, and that kids graduate from tagging to big, beautiful murals.

There’s an impressive sense of cultural specificity to the ways graffiti has evolved in various cityscapes, from racial politics in Paris and Cape Town to gang culture in LA, conformity in Tokyo, surveillance in London and homelessness in Sao Paolo. (Funnily enough, ’stencil capital’ Melbourne doesn’t figure in Bomb It! at all. Jibbed!) And while some graffiti artists see themselves as activists or entrepreneurs, others are anarchists. As the nihilistic Fuckin Revs says, ‘We’re just basically blue collar, workin’ jackasses.’

Click here for the entire article from THREE THOUSAND.

THE AGE, Australian press for BOMB IT:

RESEARCHING and shooting footage for his documentary on modern street art, Bomb It! The Global Graffiti Documentary, took filmmaker Jon Reiss around the world. There was a rooftop in Berlin on which he spent a night, after the graffiti artists he was shooting became convinced plain-clothes police were down the block; an encounter with the English police in Sheffield, who thought they’d uncovered terrorist activities; even a journey into the sewers of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, that ended mere minutes before a flash flood filled the tunnels in which they’d been shooting.

Click here for more from THE AGE and here for more from WA Today.

And we’ll be screening and all through the weekend at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image!

Fri 13 Feb 2009, 10pm
Sat 14 Feb 2009, 7pm
Sun 15 Feb 2009, 5.30pm

Click here for more

This is a new low – or a new high – but probably the former. I hope a NY writer got paid well to do the design – otherwise it is a shame that yet again graff is ripped – while kids who write on walls are thrown in jail – in “Brooklyn”.

“BROOKLYN, a fragrance by Bond No. 9, will hit stores in March … The genteel fragrance contains grapefruit, cardamom, cypress, cedar and leather, while the graffiti-inspired bottle retains the borough’s grit and edge.”

Click here for more from the NY Post.

When:
January 17 – 19th

Where:
MANIFEST HOPE: DC Gallery
3333 M Street NW
Washington DC 20007

From their site:
“MANIFEST HOPE:DC and its partners MoveOn PAC, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Obey Giant launches a contest today, calling for entries of visual artwork from artists across the country in an online contest. The online contest calls for works that use positive messaging to convey the urgency and importance of encouraging a national dialogue about three themes – Heath Care Reform, the Green Economy and Workers’ Rights.

Building upon the success of MANIFEST HOPE at the Democratic National Convention, MANIFEST HOPE:DC will, once again, gather under one roof the nation’s most talented visual artists and musicians to celebrate the unparalleled grassroots campaign that helped carry President-Elect Barack Obama to victory. Art played an unprecedented role in this election. MANIFEST HOPE:DC celebrates that role, inviting artists to contribute to this remarkable moment in history by creating a forum for both artists and activists to use their powerful voices in maintaining the momentum that will bring about true change in the United States.

MANIFEST HOPE:DC and its partners are offering the public an opportunity to submit art in an online contest, with three chances to win.  The contest is comprosed of three parts.  Artists can make one submission per category, totaling a maximum of three submissions:

Manifest Opportunity – Stimulating The Green Economy
Manifest Change – Health Care Reform
Manifest Unity – Protecting Workers’ Rights

Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of judges including famed artist, Shepard Fairey; Director, Spike Lee; Washington DC based musician, Eric Hilton of the Thievery Corporation; Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Anne Ellegood; SEIU 775NW Healthcare President, David Rolf; Creative & Cultural Director of MoveOn.org, Laura Dawn; and Co-Founder and President of Green For All, Van Jones. Fifteen finalists will be selected to show in the MANIFEST HOPE:DC Gallery alongside well-known artists such as Shepard Fairey, David Choe, Ron English, Ray Noland, Maya Hayuk, Sol Sender and Mike Murphy.

MANIFEST HOPE:DC co-creator Shepard Fairey is known world wide as one of the most prolific urban artists and as designer of the highly visible Obama HOPE posters, stickers and shirts that have been embraced by Obama supporters as the symbol of the grassroots movement. Fairey’s prolific image sparked a maelstrom of grassroots art that has been hung in not only in high-art galleries but volunteer and campaign offices as well.

Creating an inviting and inspiring destination for both those in town to celebrate the inauguration and for residents of Washington DC and the area, MANIFEST HOPE:DC (3333 M Street NW, Washington DC 20007) will be open to the public from Friday, January 16th, 2009 through Monday, January 19th, 2009 from 10:00 am – 6:00 pm.  Visitors will be invited to take in spectacular art, participate in interesting onsite activities and most importantly encouraged to continue to engage in the grassroots movement that carried Barack Obama to the White House.

In addition to the public art gallery, MANIFEST HOPE:DC will host a private, invite-only opening event on Friday, January 16th, 2009 and a closing celebration & inauguration party on the evening of Monday, January 19th, 2009.

MANIFEST HOPE:DC is produced by Evolutionary Media Group and brings together a diverse coalition of organizations working to achieve shared goals.”

Click here for more.

Bomb It! takes the viewer on a journey to the origins of modern street art in New York where the first tags ushered in a new form of communication… It embraces life – true life, not the jaded, self-indulgent views that permeate the so-called clean parts of the world. The director Jon Reiss has been named one of the “10 Digital Directors to Watch” by Daily Variety and we have to say we agree, digital or not.

Click here for the entire September 29th GRAPEVINE article!