MOCAtv has been producing an amazing series of short films featuring a number of unique artists including a fair number of street artists and the work that they do. Their latest short features Swoon talking about her Swimming Cities of Serenissima and the Konbit Shelter that she and other artists helped build in Bigones-Leogane, Haiti.
Swoon has been on our radar now for years now for her amazing wheat pastings of people and stenciled work that usually connect her art with the local stories of the community and/or various events happening in the world that need attention. For example, Swoon designed what was called the Dithyrambalina, an interactive sculpture/house of salvaged wood in New Orleans that functions like a musical instrument when you walk around it and touch various parts of the house.
Swoon also produced the salvaged flotilla called Miss Rockaway Armada and other crazy floating vessels that first sailed down the Mississippi and another in New York’s Hudson River to raise awareness about the environment and connection of the river to the people living along its banks.
In her latest project in Haiti, she and a group of artists have put together a community center built with the local people to host art events for craftspeople, a computer lab, and an education center.
In many ways, Swoon exemplifies the idea that street art can be taken to another level and making what seem impossible, possible, in tangible, concrete ways but always with a unique talent of art. It’s for these reasons that Swoon, among many other street artists, has become a cultural icon of a new generation.
Check-out MOCAtv’s short video on Swoon.
Space Invader Invades Space
Art Basel is around the corner in Miami, Florida, and Space Invader, the PacMan tiled artist from France whose work has been seen around the world, has created a special device that allowed his artwork to fly into space via a weather balloon.
The mosaic called Space One included a platform and camera, attached to a weather balloon that allowed it to rise into the atmosphere on the cusp of space and photograph itself and its surroundings including the world floating by underneath before dropping back to earth.
Images and the story of this project called Art4Space have been put into a book that will be featured at the Pulse-Miami art fair with Jonathan Levine Gallery from December 6—9, 2012, during Art Basel Miami Beach. There will also be a short video that goes along with the display and a new map of Miami where various Space Invaders can be found. Currently there are 22 city maps covering where Space Invader has invaded with his artistic tiles.
