“Low Cost” & No-Cost Festivals

@Bernardamus starring like Fan de John Boy with Santi Balmes (Love of Lesbian) - Playa de Ocata, BCN

Right now it was happening in Benidorm, the so called “Low Cost” Festival a fresh cheap alternative to all the overrated mainstream summer festivals taking place all over the world. For an affordable price of approximately 30 euros you can get the best local indie rock bands (Love of Lesbian, Los Planetas, Ivan Ferreiros, …) and some hype international live acts (Editors, Placebo, ..). Without burning all your savings in a single shot you can enjoy a post-hippie Woodstock-like atmosphere chilling out with a Mediterranean flavor.

I am sure you are biting your nails for missing such a great sonic escape but the truth is that the “low cost” opportunities to get some excellent music are there everywhere, even FOR FREE! Just follow us, read the fan forums or the facebook pages of your favorite bands and you might be surprised! Don’t be lazy, forget about your routine of pub-crawl, listen to your city, Barcelona is calling you all the time.

Our city is resembling New York’s village of few decades ago. I can be listening to my favorite band via spotify at home, the  songs tell the stories and give shape to the emotions of my town  …   “Yo vivo en una ciudad que está enferma
Barcelona sobrevivirá..” (Standstill). An hour later, I ride my bike from the virtual streaming soundscape right in front of the band playing live. It’s all happening here and now.

A lot of  local neighborhood festivals host local indie rock bands. Another excellent example was the “Montjuic de Nit” with up to 13 stages with simultaneous free live acts!  If you wanted  to mix music with beach and a bit of night-swimming your opportunity was the Festival Ritmes with free concerts by Standstill ,The New Raemon and Dorian: quite surreal to close the night with the anthemn “tormenta de arena”  (sand storm) barefoot on a beach! Another cool occasion for  an alternative beach concert was a free acustic session by Love of Lesbian in playa Ocata (Ultimo Xiringuito) to collect funds supporting a good local cause. Love of Lesbian offered an “embarrassing” number of FREE live acts in these last 2 months ( Badalona, Plaza de España, San Joan Despì, playa Ocata), they are the living proof that music can be really FOR FREE.

Are you still complaining about the prices of concert tickets? Watch out for alternative and underground concerts, follow us and jump on board because art/music/culture can be FOR FREE!

Ritmes Festival, a cool alternative NO COST festival

Nada Surf Live in Melkweg, Amsterdam 14 July

“Cats and dogs are coming down”, Amsterdam “is gonna drown, everyone else rushing round”.
“I’ve got blonde on blonde on my portable stereo, it’s a lullabye”, it’s personal.

Yeah, this is personal.

You put on an album by Nada Surf, any of their albums, and you have to get ready to get close and personal. To listen to the kind and at times, broken voice of a man that is there to sing his heart. Your heart. Your lover’s heart.

Oh but it’s about heartbreak, don’t think for a moment it’s going to be a sweet ride.

“Maybe this weight is a gift, like I had to see what I could lift”.

They say a concert is a communal experience, one you have to share with your loved ones and with perfect strangers all around.

I say, deep down, it’s personal.

It’s as if all the times you have been listening to a song that depicts the state you are in, the way you feel, come together into one big blast.

Matthew Caws gets on stage, busts a smile and then asks: Are you ready for the best concert ever?

“That it’s a dream it is what it seems”

You see,  Nada Surf is for me the shelter from the pain of feeling as the lonely underdog. So I need this concert to be my own.

But tonight, it might not go as expected.

“I’m just a happy kid, stuck with the heart of an old punk”

Ira Elliot and Daniel Lorca with the help of a second guitar and trumpet (Doug Gillard, is that you?) are here to show that this is a party. A party you might decide to witness being a wallflower and whining over the fact that everyone is having a great time and you are a loser. But a wild party nonetheless.

And on it goes! everyone around me simply jumps and screams. They might not know any verse of any song but they surely are digging it!

Matthew is aware though, that the occasional loner might want their place in the sun and for this reason he starts singing “Inside of Love”.

Now, if you do not know this song, I can only say go find it out.

It is an anthem, a soft, painful, craving, aching anthem.

The one that leaves you sweaty and melancholic with a big smile on your face afterwards.

“Must be a different view to be a me with a you”.

I “let go”.  I have to.  I jump. I sing (watch me! I do know the lyrics!). I am part of it. I am together with everybody else.

“I am gonna make you happy, I am gonna spin you around, I am gonna cut your strings!”.

Sometimes you need the words of another to express the way you feel.

Nada Surf chose the words of The Go-Betweens, and Depeche Mode’s and Kate Bush’s… and “If I had an Hi-Fi” this time around, I would throw a bash and invite all my friends instead of sitting alone, playing a record in my room.

Hell it’s been the “blankest year” so Fuck it! I deserved this hell of a party, this “best concert ever”.

But it’s not over yet.

Like at the end of the night, when most people are gone and you stay over with the closest of your friends, Matthew takes us to the back of the Melkweg to sing to only a few of us.

“Hyperspace”, “Paper Boats”, “Amateur”, “Zen Brain” all rendered with just voice and acoustic guitar.

And it is personal. As a confession. And I could not have wished for more.

twitter.com/nadasurf

nadasurf.com

Opening Act by Garcia Goodbye

myspace.com/garciagoodbye

twitter.com/garciagoodbye

melkweg.nl

twitter.com/melkweg

Streets of Amsterdam

Fark

Have you ever bumped into a graffiti artist spray painting a wall in a street at night?

It must have been at night.

And most probably it was in a side street, in an area you were not comfortable walking by.

Did you feel like an intruder?

Like a witness of a splendid crime, you must have suddenly felt the magic;  the magic of seeing colors taking over the grey and dirt of the ordinary , to turn it into a huge canvas where raw emotions or political stands have finally a place to be displayed.

New York City, Los Angeles and London have been skyrocketed into the center of the Art world, for a huge part thanks to their street artists. And yet their role is still not fully recognized.

One name for all: Keith Haring. His contribution to modern Art from the nineties on is undeniable. But then again, his apparition in museums is minor and the general public mostly know him through merchandising.

Project ASA wants to avoid just that, giving Amsterdam and its street artists a voice, before they could get silenced by the law or by the action of a sand blaster. A voice that should also be heard in institutions.

One can argue that the power of Street Art comes from and stays in the streets. The passage of spray paint from the walls to an actual canvas could cause the loss of sense and beauty.

But have you seen the works of The London Police exhibited in the Go gallery at the Prinsengracht?

You have time until the 10th of July.

Can’t you see their future cities? It’s not pure Utopia, it’s what the Circle Line brings in ten years with the justice and truth revolution of a black marker.

Look closer: Zeefdruk is Amsterdam with its trade mark houses covered by japanese neon signs.

Take away the cricket ground and make the Chelmsford car park smile again, even if only in 55 years.

You cannot help but surrender to the force that emanate from each of The London Police paintings. Even when they are confined to the linen instead of concrete. The precision of the lines fool no one. It is not geometry you see, but energy.

The London Police outside Go Gallery

You simply cannot ignore Pez, whether it’s on the rolling shutter of a shop in Barcelona or on the walls of the Go gallery. The colors are pure and dominant. The figures might recall your favorite cartoon characters or the candy dispenser with the same name, but there is no infantile technique. The teeth of the Blue Shark are in full force and not tamed by the frame.

Turn around and another animal is ready to attack: The acid and psychedelic eagle dominating a silver can that most probably has been used by Fake himself.

You might think that any representation of the mythical Ganesha has to be peaceful and convey safety. After all it should protect your path by removing obstacles. Well, not for Fake’s Ganesha. Its presence is a warning: I am here to take over, I have several arms that hold as many spray tins. I can be just everywhere.

Go to The Thought gallery until July 8th and you can see it; you can also experience Love as Fake sees it: a kid ready to give flowers to a girl ready to strike back with a wooden mace.

Considering this as Fake’s signature logo, can you still say Street Art looses its power now?

Did Hugo Kaagman lose his stature by collaborating with the City of Amsterdam in Waterlooplein or at the Rijksmuseum?

If you still think so, you might change your mind staring at his ‘Shocking Blue’, Hugo’s rendition of Blue Delft in his own creations. The Stencil King is alive and kicking and this first edition of Amsterdam Street Art Festival is honored to have him on board to lead the way to a whole new generation of talents.

Orticanoodles outside The Thought

And if one tells you that by entering a gallery, a Graffiti artist kills his/her political message, please do mention again the exhibition at The Thought, for you cannot stop staring at Ives.One’s Joker Obama.

This ain’t no Obey. The president of the most powerful states shows another side of himself here, one you have to be afraid of. Lips and eyes are covered in black and red as a metaphor. There is no Hope out there, always be alarmed when a leader speaks: lies are told and you can only find reality in the Streets of your own city.

Ives.one at The Thought Gallery

For more info:

amsterdamstreetart.com

gogallery.nl

thethought.nl

outlandstore.com / twitter.com/outlandstore

stichtingbep.nl

bobsyouthhostel.nl

The artists webpages:

kaagman.nl

fakestencils.com / twitter.com/fakestencils

ivesone.com

orticanoodles.com

thelondonpolice.com

lawebdelpez.com

For all the artists not mentioned in the article please refer to amsterdamstreetart.com to collect info

Pute

There are the thoughts you communicate, you nurture and want everyone around you to know. You want them to define you.

These thoughts are molded by the society, aiming at acceptance and integration.

And then there are other thoughts, the ones you try to keep secret. They might reflect an image of yourself that might stir trouble, rejection. Most of the time these thoughts are based on hate and fear. Hate for the others, for the ones that you just cannot understand.

You would only confess these thoughts to the people you are certain will agree. Creating even a stronger bond.

Like in a personal diary where whatever words are contained, they are not meant to be criticized.

What if instead, you’d project them right on the big tall wall of a building?

The artist Anne-Jan Reijn did just that. She first set up a public web site where everybody could submit any word that might be considered an offense, a politically incorrect act of release.

Then she associated any word with a picture. An image that might or might not, represent its concept.

Finally she took over the wall of the ex Volkskrant  building in the Wibautstraat, home amongst other of the Planet Art collective.

Chink, mongol, negerbolle, boche, schwutte, kut marokkaan, finocchio.

The list is quite long. It spans from dutch to german, to danish, italian, french up to arabic. But the content does not vary that much. Our hate, projected, seems directed to the same people. No matter the language we speak. Immigrants, homosexuals, any other nationality that is not ours.

And so the dutch hate the germans and the moroccans; the germans hate the british and the french, the french hate the germans…

Somehow, the very public display of these words together with the images that explained them, drains the fuel out of the fire that burns when they are kept secret.

But do not fall for the easy conclusion: being free to express the politically incorrect is not speaking the truth. It is instead, to realize the fallacy of hate. The basic dumbness of it all.

And at this task, Anne-Jan has the idea to mix insults with sentences that are after all, neutral, such as asielzoeker or arbeit macht frei. Sentences that turn into insults purely because of the contest they are used in.

The ‘Wall of Offense’ project goes on, you can still submit your own choice of words. Go and see how it feels like to see them spread for all to witness.

For more information:

www.wallofoffense.com

Anne-Jan Reijn – www.webzijt.nl

Planet Art – www.planetart.nl/now.htm / www.volkskrantgebouw.nl

ETC introduced @WebBar

The concept and starting activities of ETC were introduced during an invited talk @ WebBar a monthly event for internet professionals and web-workers.

Alessandro Bernardi, alias Bernardamus is  the European organizer of Encounter Twitter Culture, he was Co-organizer of the local Twestival Barcelona,  and writes for BCNWeek about (Cyber)-Culture, Technology and Life in Barcelona. Twitter Festival is organized by volunteers and took place in March in 202 cities all over the world and is the largest global grassroots social media fundraising initiative to date, raising over $1.2 million within 14 months for 137 nonprofits. With this background Alessandro spoke about Twitter as an social catalyzer and its dynamic and potential for such cultural grassroot movements as well as online and viral marketing.

ODDSAC

When was the last time you sat and listened to a whole album with the earphones on from start to finish?

Do you stop and watch a video installation in an exhibition until its end?

Do you really pay more than a 4 minutes attention span to some longer YouTube videos that somehow get posted to your e-mail, social network or simply floating over the internet?

ODDSAC forced a packed Smart Project Space to stare for 54 minutes to a perfectly matched combination of the three.

It is a Visual Album in the most complete sense. The music composed and played by Animal Collective has been created and tailored in order to fit the images and not the other way around, unlike most music videos or concert movies, so that separating the two would not make any sense and therefore, it is remarkable that Avey Tare has made clear that no audio-only album release will come out of it.

ODDSAC is the stuff of dreams or more so, nightmares. As Danny Perez himself has said, it’s the kind of nightmares that make your head spin so heavily with dark thoughts that you wake up in the morning feeling way more exhausted than the night before. Like a dream, you should not even try to find a plot. You can only add sense to all of the people appearing randomly, with faces that change, voices that say words you just cannot understand;

You close your eyes and vampires might come behind, playing drums, or tribal computer noises that seem coming from a black alley far away, until they start melting in an explosion of liquid colors in a lake lost in an unknown forest, right after a campfire where a happy group of kids and adults are roasting marshmallows that will soon be ready to take over and eat their bodies.

ODDSAC is after all, the original name of a brand of gummy bears.

For info on the next screenings and a trailer: oddsac.com / twitter.com/ODDSAC

Animal Collective: myspace.com/animalcollective

Danny Perez: diptriana.com

Smart Project Space: smartprojectspace.net / twitter.com/spsamsterdam

Art Stops the Traffic!

Remember San Francisco 1987, when Bono spray painted the words “Rock n Roll Stops Traffic”?  Art generally stops human traffic and boost our inner creative life. This was represented in Barcelona with a very cool FLASHMOB …with visitors standing still frozen in front of paintings and sculptures!

Yesterday night in Barcelona all museums were open for free, for one special night instead of your usual beer hangover you could enjoy a cultural overdose. La Nit dels museus

You can see below a video of this very cool initiative at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA !

“Can I please finish my sentence for…”

Wake Up! Deadman - Laser 3.14 at Radar, Amsterdam

The elusive Laser 3.14 has been seeding excerpts of his poems in the form of captivating graffiti haikus all over Amsterdam, for more than 4 years already. At first, bumping into his sprayed words felt like an isolate fortunate accident, up until the moment when you could not ignore him anymore. You roamed the streets gawking for a flash of a new one, hoping that maybe you could also catch him in full action, take a look of his face, possibly his mood.

For the nature of Laser’s poems is dark, almost numb. Unable to let go and yet incapable of holding back.

Amsterdam had a voice, finally. The voice of someone that could be anybody with the ability to feel pain so fully that only a tin can of spray could give some relief.

Samo comes to mind, the late seventies Alter Ego of a very young and angry Basquiat (is it a coincidence that one picture book from Jean Michel was left on a table at Radar Gallery?)

“Can I please finish my sentence for…” is not the first painting exhibition that Laser 3.14 has had in the city, but it has a distinctive quality; the one that brings the artist in touch with his own past and leads the path to a possible new wave.

The acrylics shown at Radar Gallery are representative of his earlier works and collect all the fears and sense of loss that make his graffiti so striking. They are immersed in a post punk, black industrial world where one can only ask questions in the form of shouting: Wake up!

“Maybe I’ll End Up Somewhere” and “Vorsprung durch Technik” stand next to each other almost as a warning, is this Technical life incarcerating our true selves or are we victims of our own confusion amongst all that we wish?

What about now?

The scenario has now acid colors, smaller frames and a representation of a world that no longer has any taste for humanity.

The mixed media images that have been made in 2009 show a collection of drawings that have a sci-fi graphic novel quality. It’s as Laser has seen the future and it has a Mao Tse-Tung that has survived us all so that the only men around are actually made of wires and steel spare parts. A world when the pain that Laser has expressed before and made him so powerful, has no voice anymore.

Could the era of bankruptcy bring an end to poetry?

“Can I please finish my sentence for…” closed on may 15.

For more on Laser 3.14: http://laser314.blogspot.com / http://www.laser314.com – http://twitter.com/laser314

For more on Radar Gallery: http://www.radar-amsterdam.com – http://twitter.com/radar_gallery

A A A A A- “Where Your Eyes Can See”

When you walk into an exhibition that is clearly marked as an homage to the past you can have two main reactions:

Anger to the obvious reproduction of a standard that many others have tried to achieve in the hope that no one would notice the references or sheer excitement for witnessing the work of an Artist that is conscious of his roots and is not afraid to pay his dues.

The latter is the case for the Antonio Bokel pieces shown in the Sid Lee Collective Gallery until June 30.

It is impossible not to see clear echoes of Jean Michel Basquiat in the paintings and sculptures as well as in the overall presentation of Antonio’s works and that is actually exciting for the Artist  himself replicates the crown signature of the fascinating Warhol’s protégé in the attempt to show his admiration.

Even more exciting is the realization that every piece has been done in more or less a week by re-utilizing discarded materials such as cardboard boxes, wood pieces, broken toys and other plastic parts found in the streets of Amsterdam.
One can only wonder about the coincidence or fate behind such a technique and the garbage haulers strike going on.

“No thing but the truth” claims one graffiti written with white chalk on a black wall, and Antonio does speak the truth.
He covers the gallery space with joy, a shiny fuchsia pink joy in a possible reference to the “Giro d’Italia” that has coloured the city in the same shade the past days.

Antonio does not forget to quote also Robert Rauschenberg by attaching a giant Piglet head to one painting.

“Where your eyes can see” they collect stimulation and energy in every simple but strong mark.

Now “Have a Rest” on the floor pillows and release a smile.

For info on Antonio Bokel: antoniobokel.blogspot.com

The Curator: Alexandra Onderwater – www.alex-on.com

The Gallery: Sid Lee Collective – www.sidleecollective.ca http://twitter.com/sidleenews

Tweet & the City!

Bring your tweets to the real world, leave your message to the people of your city!

The original idea started in Barcelona for Twestival, where “origami birds” were used to promote the event.

DOWNLOAD the templates and build your own bird with the message of your choice!

How to make the bird

Nos ayudas? @ cómo? @ que es la cultura?@ a dónde vamos? @que queremos?@ esto que es?@ es gratis?@ por qué?