Videos

Videos from around the world including architecture and design films, interviews, and lectures

How One Artist Has Changed the Face of Barcelona

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Urban painter, sculptor and creator of monumental land art, Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada is an artist working against the divisive forces that are pulling contemporary society apart. His most recent mural in Barcelona, called “Panorama”, is a composite portrait that combines features from 10 women in the city’s Sant Martí neighbourhood. The result, an “everywoman”, represents and celebrates the contributions of women to community life.

The huge mural – painted on a wall 33 feet across and more than 90 feet high – was part of the Open Walls Conference 2015 and is one of his Identity Series, which he started in 2002 when he moved to Barcelona from New York City. The artist started painting murals of anonymous locals not only to question the controls imposed in public space, but to comment on consumer messages by using the the same strategic positioning and size of a billboard to create a counter commentary.

The fact that most are made in charcoal, which fades away over time, also adds a poetic dimension to the work. But with “Panorama,” he wanted to make his first permanent colour mural in Barcelona, in tribute to the city.

In his 20s, Rodríguez-Gerada, was part of the Artflux and Cicada street art crews, who subverted the messages of billboards and street signs on the streets of New York. Called ‘culture jamming’, it helped fuel a global street art movement. Naomi Klein’sNo Logo dedicates an entire chapter to it.

Why Superflex Flooded McDonald’s

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What motivates a Danish artists’ group Superflex to make a movie where one of the most famous American fast food restaurants is inexplicably flooded?

Superflex’ starting point was to focus on the idea of the mass-production of food, and they felt that the most heavily branded fast food restaurant was McDonald’s. They built the restaurant from scratch, basing it on what a McDonald’s would have looked like in the 1980s, as they believed that this was perhaps the most iconic image of it. Every detail – down to the small boxes for Happy Meals – were handmade in a studio in Bangkok. The adding of water functioned as a melt-down of the restaurant but at the same time made the different things in it come to life: “All these dead objects start to become actors.” Moreover, the water also created limitations in the set, as it was not possible to undo – they could stop more water from coming in, but not reverse the consequences of the water that was already there.

The film is shot around 2008, where there were “a lot of post-apocalyptic scenarios going on.” The financial crisis, global warming and such took up a lot of space in the media, and Superflex wanted to make their own version of this “end-of-the-world” set-up “in a mild Scandinavian way, but still using some kind of global vocabulary – the raising of the water, the most famous fast-food chain.” Though the movie is heavy on the use of symbolism, the approach is also quite humorous: “It’s almost like slapstick.”

Superflex is a Danish artists’ group founded in 1993 by Jacob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen. They describe their projects as ‘Tools’. A tool being a model or proposal that can actively be used and further utilized and modified by the user. Their oeuvre spans from beer (‘Free Beer’) and soda (‘Guaraná Power’) to alternative energy production methods to movies and installations, and their projects are often related to economic forces, democratic production conditions and self-organization. Superflex have gained international recognition for their projects and have held solo exhibitions at venues such as Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main, REDCAT Gallery in Los Angeles, Mori Museum in Tokyo and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. Furthermore, they have participated in art biennials such as Gwangju Biennial (Korea), Istanbul Biennial, São Paolo Biennial, Shanghai Biennial and in the ‘Utopia Station’ at the Venice Biennale.

Superflex were interviewed by Christian Lund at their office in Copenhagen, Denmark in November 2015.
Camera: Simon Weyhe
Edited by: Klaus Elmer
Produced by: Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015
From Timber To Tide

From Timber To Tide

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A new film in Pixillion maker series. Ben Harris is a traditional wooden boat builder based in Cornwall, UK. This film documents Ben Harris’ love … Read more

How Upscaling Is Turning Fashion Upside Down

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Eco conscious Berlin fashion designer, Wilfried Pletzinger, shows us how to put value back into the clothes we no longer love by up-cycling.

So often our wardrobes overflow with clothes that we haven’t worn in years and probably won’t wear again. Second hand stores will always remain a great charitable option for putting our unwanted garments back into use. For Wilfried Pletzinger unwanted clothes are the materials for a whole new fashion collection.

Wilfried works with unwanted sportswear transforming pieces such as swimming costumes and hockey jerseys into unique streetwear items. Although fairtrade cotton can also present an eco alternative in the fashion industry, upcycling is the most efficient way to reduce consumption and waste.

Upcycling of course presents many challenges to designers; there are no rules to follow and for every item you have to find a new way to work. However with more and more designers viewing our thrift stores as the new fabric outlet, and our old clothes as inspiration, it’s an exciting future for the eco conscious fashionista.

SUMER is a 3D Animation Short-Film by Alvaro García

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Since it started screening internationally in October 2014, SUMER has won 14 festivals including Irvine Film Festival and Phoenix Comicon, among others.

For unknown reasons, the Earth’s ionosphere has weakened dramatically during the course of the last century, resulting in the collapse of the entire ecosystem. Earth has become an increasingly hostile and uninhabitable place and with no shield to protect it, it is at the full mercy of meteors.
All animal and plant species perished decades ago. All that remains is one small group of humans who attempt to resist the hostility and hardness of the external environment from SUMER, the last hive city in the world, which has been specifically designed to keep the population alive through oxygen supply systems.

The media manipulates the available information in a manner that is purposely designed to keep people obsessed on the potential of the space exodus, letting any hope of prevailing on earth go.
A young boy, Hermes, lives alone in a compartment, the property of the government, which is located close to the wall that delimits the city, an area that is highly guarded by the SSW (SUMER Security Watchers).

While observing the desert from the roof of a building, Hermes suddenly sees something that grabs his attention…

Director: Alvaro García
Representation: Scott Glassgold / Ground Control
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