The Empire of Death, Paris, France

Sous la ville de Paris.
"Arrete! C'est ici l'empire de la mort."

All photos by JEF.

Witches

Boo!

BEAUTY: Painting for Halloween--Mark Bryan

For Halloween, here is the delightful skeleton art of painter Mark Bryan.

https://www.artofmarkbryan.com/

That Time Of Year

Beware! Halloween is coming...

"Damned Eye See" by Chelou

Chelou (previously here and here) continues to create gentle, melancholy music, accompanied by touching, animated videos. Here is "Damned Eye See."

I have my own ideas about the lyrics, but I will resist editorializing and let you, reader, feel what you will:

Damned eye see
Reading about how it's all falling apart
Am I yours to own
Feed me a biscuit and I will fetch you a bone
When we're out of fuel
With nothing left to lose

And they say it's a matter of fact
But I'm not naive enough
To take it as a matter fact
Is everything they needed

Sure you've been having fun
At my expense
Time is a loaded gun and I'm on the fence
Warm it up enough for me
And I'll be your tool
Paint me like a pedigree
And I'll be your fool

Kill your friend
Sadly I find I'm still alive at the end
Did you taste their pain
Spare me the crime untill it's time to pretend
Feeling out of sort
You pushed me over board

They say it's a matter of fact
But I'm not naive enough
To take it as a matter fact
Is everything they needed

Sure you've been having fun
At my expense
Time is a loaded gun and I'm on the fence
Warm it up enough for me
And I'll be your tool
Paint me like a pedigree
And I'll be your fool

http://chelouworld.com/

"Loveless" and "This Is It" by Lo Moon

Lo Moon is a new music trio from LA who have made a big splash with only two songs, "Loveless" and "This Is It." The members--Matt Lowell, Sam Stewart, and Crisanta Baker--seem to be aligning themselves with the kind of expansive, transcendent, ethereal music made by bands like M83 and even Sigur Ros. I definitely hear traces of mid-to-late-period Talk Talk in there as well, and lead singer Lowell identifies Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis as an influence.

http://lomoonofficial.com/

October 1957

Happy International Coming Out Day 2017

Today is the 29th annual International Coming Out Day. This celebration started in 1988 as a way to raise awareness of the LGBT community and civil rights movement.

If you haven't yet, join us. We need you.

Sculpture by Lazar-G

"Your Space Or Mine" by Robert Montgomery

Last month, installation artist Robert Montgomery (previously here, here, here, and here) teamed with creative agency Jack to create a powerful installation called Your Space Or Mine. Here's Jack's press release for the event:

BILLBOARD POEMS IN EAST LONDON
SEPTEMBER 9 2017
We are delighted to have collaborated with Robert Montgomery this past weekend as part of our Your Space Or Mine project – an ongoing initiative providing a platform for artists and creatives on the street. This side project allows us to move away from the land of advertising every now and then, giving us the chance to flex our creative muscles by using our poster sites in unique and inspiring ways.

Montgomery has been called a vandal, a street artist, a post-situationist, a punk artist and the text-art Banksy. His work puts poetry in front of ordinary people in eye-catching visual formats, taking the written word to the most physical of spaces. The collaboration saw Montgomery takeover five of our major sites in East London, responding to these spaces by creating a series of poems using his signature style.

The poems were lyrical, dreamy and almost optimistic, covering the themes of modernism, racial and gender equality, immigration, love and hope, as well as strong statements against Donald Trump’s denial of climate change. Montgomery and urban explorer Niall McDevitt also lead an up close and personal walking tour of the Billboard Poems focusing on the poetry itself as well as the surrounding location.

“I started doing billboard works in Shoreditch in 2004 as my own protest against the Iraq War, and doing billboards in Shoreditch formed the backbone of my work throughout the 2000s. I no longer live in the neighbourhood, it’s too expensive for artists now, but being invited back by Jack is thrilling as I’m getting to take over whole streets where I used to live. It’s letting me work across multiple billboards and look at each street as a giant graphic poem and experiment much more with the visual aspects of the work. I’m thinking of them as concrete poems really with the billboard as the page and pushing the graphic elements more than I’ve been able to before.” – Robert Montgomery

http://www.robertmontgomery.org/
http://www.jackagency.co.uk/blog/rm/

"Over Your Skin"

"Over Your Skin," an experimental film of paint on skin by artist Rus Khasanov.

"The idea to shoot macro video with skin, according to the folds of which flowing paint, came to my mind in 2014. I often work with paints and my hands are constantly stained dirty, because I do not wear latex gloves while working. One day, I just looked at my hands dirty with paint and I liked the way the colors blended, the way they filled the folds on my palm.

After 3 years, I decided to develop this idea and shoot a video in which the paint will flow not only on the hands but also on the other parts of the body, I wanted to explore how different patterns on different areas of human skin. Under the macro lens it looks like satellite images where the folds of the skin looks as a riverbed along which multicolored river flow.
Basically in the video appears fingers, palms, those places of skin where there are more deep folds.

The biggest technical challenge was to minimize the effect of jitter, because it is impossible to get a person to stand still as a statue and not breathe for several minutes. Especially under the macro lens, shaking of the skin and defocusing are clearly visible. A lot of footage was removed for these reasons. I think that the video included not more than 8 percent of all footage. Most of the footage with the lips were removed, the final video included only 3 footage, and we devoted 3 sessions to this shooting and they were the most painful for the model, because the paint constantly pour into the mouth."

https://www.facebook.com/RusKhasanov

"The Meal" by Hidemi Nishida

Japanese environmental artist Hidemi Nishida created an installation and a related performance art piece featuring himself and fellow performance artists Sofie Jansson and Asa Shimada. Called The Meal, the delicate butoh-like performance explores themes of communication, connection, and awareness of small, daily moments in all of our  lives. Be sure to watch the video to see excerpts from this gentle, magical creation and to learn more about the concepts from the artists.

http://hdmnsd.com/2014/the-meal/