Urban Art Association

Street Art Radio Docs -- BBC World Service, by mcnuts on Nov 27, 2008 22:20:01 GMT 1, Not sure if this was posted...

Part 1 - New York with Elbow-Toe (First broadcast 21 November 2008)
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2008/11/081103_street_art_one.shtml

Part 2 - Sao Paulo with Nunca (Out tomorrow)
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p001gzjq


Series Overview
Some see it as a way of reclaiming public space, to others it's reckless vandalism. In the year Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie spent £1m on works by British stencil artist Banksy, this two-part series explores the global boom in street art.

The series looks at the phenomenon of street art in two very different cities, New York and Sao Paulo. Taking to the streets, Joby Waldman meets Elbow-Toe and Nunca. Each artist is a symptom of their age, and their neighbourhood.

Joby accompanies them while they work and meets their artistic circles, creating a highly personal audio portrait of the personalities behind the paint.

The series looks at the relationship between street art and graffiti, the interaction of global and local influences on the art found in each city, and how the rise of street art sales has led to an increase in paintings disappearing from the street - only to reappear on ebay.


PART 1 - New York through the eyes of Elbow-Toe
Despite his frivolous name, Elbow-Toe is a serious painter. Art school educated, he operates from his studio in Brooklyn where he makes original artworks and prints which he then pastes on the walls of his neighbourhood, and increasingly in galleries around the world.

This programme joins him on a late night fly-posting mission in Brooklyn. What motivates a married man in his mid 30's to risk imprisonment for the sake of art?

We also hear from one of graffiti's earliest practitioners - Json aka Terror 161, who painted subway trains back in the early 1970s, and from the MTA staff responsible for cleaning graffiti off the subway.

As street art moves into the gallery - can it retain its countercultural credibility? Is painting the streets just an alternative way for art school graduates to get noticed?

PART 2 - Sao Paolo
Programme two follows Brazilian street artist Nunca as he travels to an exhibition in London. "Nunca" (Never) is part of a wave of up-and-coming Brazilian street artists currently being invited to exhibit in Europe.

We meet him in his Sao Paolo suburb where he describes how he started out, aged 12, writing graffiti and Pichacao – the stark black lettering which is unique to Brazil and adorns every surface below 15 feet in Sao Paolo. We discover how the materials available and the lack of information about the New York scene led to Sao Paulo developing its own distinctive and highly colourful form of street art.

We go out to paint a news-stand with Nunca in broad daylight and then, when he arrives in London, ask how will he transfer his counter-cultural message to the major museum space of the Tate Modern. With contributions from Samir, a Pichador (pichasao artist) and Cedar Lewisohn, curator of the Street Art exhibition at the Tate Modern.