Picture courtesy of  Street Art Festival

Little stop motion clip for the mural ROA made for the Street Art Festival in Hasselt, Belgium found its way to our mailbox today. Pity he couldn’t make last year’s fest, but glad he found the time to turn up a couple of months later and put that straight We had previously seen the images of the finished mural turn up, but always more impressive to see such a massive piece take shape bit by bit.

For those who missed last year’s festival, we have a small round-up of how we experienced the weekend first-hand overhere. Have a look/read in order to get ready for this year’s edition because as we speak, this year’s organisation & the city of Hasselt are puzzling together yet another great (inter)national line-up.

Interested in finding out the latest info first-hand, visit the festival’s facebook page http://www.facebook.com/streetartfestivalbelgium and get the latest as soon as everything’s confirmed.

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So, started work on our own little Gidsy project/listing. Polle had launched a call to unlock Gidsy for the city of Gent and after Istanbul it seems Hasselt & Gent will follow next week. Great to see Hasselt pop  up next to Gent, an underestimated town/travel destination if you ask me (but who am I). This reminds me we have to revisit Hasselt urgently, before this year’s STREET ART FESTIVAL (in other news, a 2nd edition has been confirmed!!).

Anyways, back to Gidsy & Gent… seems we are gonna try to offer (working on several others, maybe) a Street Art/Bike Tour of Gent. A quick round up:

Take a tour through Ghent and discover some great spots and work by a wide range of local & international artists. 

Over the past decades Ghent has drawn lots of attention for embracing youth culture. Besides an interesting (electronic) musical scene it also has its own urban art scene. Roa, Bue The Warrior, Resto & A Squid Called Sebastien are just a few of the local artists, besides that you will spot works by a wide range of other local/international artists.

Depending on your available time we will take the back street of Gent and visit several spots  through town by bike (or foot), also uncovering the little stores, coffee bars and/or galleries that might interest you. Our tour will bring you across several parts of town you might not usually visit, giving you another view on the city. 

Although we have never been real fans of “street art tours” (something you should discover on your own, at your own pace) we reckon it might be nice starting point to take people across town and that on bikes.

Never done this before, but reckon its a good way of going through town with visitors and curious to see how everything unfolds the next weeks/months, hope to meet some great people and reckon even we will (re)discover parts of Gent ourselves.

Hit us up if you’re interested in doing some test-runs for the tour as it is still a work in progress that is gonna need a lot of finetuning!!

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The past month has been a long month, a busy month, an interesting month. Took a little blog sabbatical in a sense without ever having planned to do so but that’s the way the cookie crumbled.

Time for a quick instagram round-up:

Visited Huis van Alijn for the opening of : “UIT HET FOTOALBUM. AFL.5. HUN SCHOONSTE DAG“

Encountered strange characters.

Finally found some quality time to spend in my city: Ghent.

Drew some things, and then a couple of more on #DrawSome.

Finally unpacked everything and settled in…

and someone decided to finally move in :D

Received the shock of my life after having heard my dad survived a bad car crash while travelling in Turkey.

Found myself in Antwerp a couple of times.

Saw some great collabs.

Got rained on & rained on, over & over again.

So, bring on May & hopefully summer.

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Remember how the Art of Flight blew everyone in the extreme sports world away? Well, now there’s the next best thing, a fine spoof

(HT Oemebamo)

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Invader has been one of our favorite artists for years now. Ever since one of those first Paris visits he drew our attention. Back then we had no idea yet who or what was responsible for the mosaic pieces, but we knew we liked them. Small interventions throughout the city making Paris beautiful one piece at a time.

Over the past winter, Invader made a short movie inviting us to spend one night in Paris with him. A great capture of how he gets round to doing what he does best. Have a look as its a great piece.

Also, for those who find themselves in BXL over the next week(s), Invader still has a show at Brussel’s Alice Gallery then (video repo can be found here) and he recently also visited BXL for one of his largest invasions. Open your eyes while walkig through the city and check the following map as it might help you to spot some tiles There’s a great overview on Invaderblog also which might be a help.

through our longtime favorite WoosterCollective

picture courtesy of zzkt. & ArrestedMotion

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Last week I dug up some old sketch books, pencils & markers. It had been a while, although I never was a heavy user, since I had drawn anything. Felt the need to be able to do something in a little corner at home, away from other distractions. Grab a seat from time to time and plot some things on paper, in the hope it turns out to be something good.

Basically I’ve started with drawing some simple characters, stuff you can freehand in no time. A couple of lines and nothing fancy. Stuff I’m not willing/ready to share yet. Sketches and drawings that need lots of improvement. Improvement I’m looking to find… but have no idea where to look.

But for now you can just call me a bit sketchy, and who knows maybe you might spot something somewhere near you.

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Last week – out of the blue – a friend asked me to sum up what I consider my good & bad characteristics. I couldn’t answer him right off the top of my head and strangely it has haunted me for several days now. We had been talking for a while and he literally caught me red handed there.

Could not answer the question there and then and somehow still can’t seem to pin it down to some kind of shortlist…

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A while back, the hotel Au vieux Panier asked Tilt to design a room, you’ve seen images of the work/installation pop up everywhere across the web and now there’s some moving imagery to accompany it all.

“I first told them that I wasn’t interested doing just decoration in the room but I wanted to create something that will look more like an installation. I thought about it also as a huge canvas where I needed to think about the composition and play with the empty white part of the room to accentuate more the idea of Chaos on the other part. Then I asked my friend Tober who gat a great old school style for tags, Grizz who is also the man behind the camera and Don Cho who is a Hip Hop singer from Marseille but who used to be a tagger from my home town Toulouse. It took one week to do the whole thing cause the idea was to exaggerate what you can usually see in some abandoned places. Too much tags, too much drips, too much sentences, too much throw ups … What I also wanted to show is that people can appreciate any type of graffiti, even the more basic, it’s just a matter of point of view …” – Tilt

Images  courtesy of BigAddict

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London is calling for the 22tracks gang, but they still had to get one thing scrapped off the Brussels bucketlist: their own t-shirt!

With the new 22tracks t-shirt designed by Brussels artist Oli-B they finally got that item done. And it turned out to be a great new design by one of the freshest artists our capital has to offer!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the whole 22tracks concept, have a quick read overhere and definitely have a look on 22tracks.net where since last June 22nd 22 great selectors present us the freshest sound for Brussels.

The shirt is available through T-junk amongst the other 22 tracks gear.

Ow, and also have a look at UglyMelly who happened to feature Oli’s work this week.

picture ©Numbi

Video by the talented Eckelwood (get in touch with him if you need anything video done) and sounds by MonkeyRobot.

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New work by PES who once again tansforms some familiar objects into Fresh Guacamole.

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We must admit, Instagram is becoming  became an addiction overnight. We start our day with flicking through the images and usually also end it that way

Yesterday we read about a new iOS app called Decim8 and the description triggered our interest right away. Remember how a while back someone told us he was looking for an app to make really crappy pics, as he thought the iphone camera was too good and felt the need to give his cellphone pics the 90s 1MP feel. Decim8 does just this, under the motto “FILM IS DEAD”.

Contrary to many camera apps that insist to attempt simulations of that long-past era, decim8 says no to artificial nostalgia, pushing forward in the digital realm with different forms of creative destruction. It simply is a digital tool for photographic destruction, armed with a set of bit-mangling filters. There are no effects to simulate your grandpa’s snapshots. No virtual replicas of plastic instant-cams from your imaginary summer of ’73. Just mad combinations of digital data-mashing. 

You can arrange/activate effects in any order and to make it even better, effects never are exactly the same twice  You may call me a hipster now, but I actually like this app a lot and reckon its gonna be a great combination with instagram!

Download it overhere for a small fee and also check their Flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/decim8/ for more examples of the effects Decim8 got to offer. Looking forward to seeing what strange pics you’ve got, just add me on instagram. Or, just check out the group  is capable of.

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By the way, @SSTRID also took up this blogging thing.

Shaved billboard, giving it a whole new level.

Invader.

Fred le Chevalier.

Invader.

Fred le Chevalier.

Bonom.

Pole Ka.

Super Tat Pa.

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Curls in Paris.

As you might have read previously, we headed out to Paris over the weekend for the Duvel Collection finale, Showroom Belgium & the Paris Fashion Week experience. Had been 2 years already since my last visit, looked forward to it and was not disappointed at all

 PIGS ON WHEELS. No, helmets are only for smart people.

Friday started off with some cross-city walking/window-shopping. As the evening came we headed on out to the Duvel Collection finale. A quick presentation of the finalists was followed by an ‘and the winner is…’

Belgian designer Philippe Debongnie took home the grand prize and from June 2012 onwards, his glass will be available for all you Duvel lovers and collectors worldwide. Looking forward to seeing who will tag along aside him…

Saturday morning was an early wake-up call, breakfast and a quick walk around Oberkampf before heading to the Jean-Paul Lespagnard show. Tried to drop by Tigersushi amongst others, but seems stores in Paris open up later on Saturday mornings

No worries though, as we had little time to waste with the Lespagnard show starting at 12.

Was a great experience, a first for everything n’est-ce pas Got the whole 15-30min preshow-runway experience (ma’am even got to sit front-row for it) and bumped into some friends even! Rests to say that I even liked most of the stuff in the autumn/winter collection.

Paris Metro was plastered with John Carter posters btw. Happened to attend an early screening in Gent this morning and must say its a great movie! (check the trailer)

Also happend to see some great street art throughout the town. Its incredible how Paris has been covered with paint & pastes. More on that in a following post, promised!

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Finally went to the Stade de France where we saw France beat Italy in the opening game of this year’s 6 Nations. Great experience and definitely something we plan on doing more often!

February also was a cold month… glad to see that had changed.

Spotted this litte fella here & there in Gent.

February traditionally is a good month for roadkill.

Did coffee at Simon Says one Sunday.

Strange space-diver appeared one morning.

Did coffee at Bar Buro another day.

Found this old device again, was top notch in the early 9o’s to say the least. You can still wack someone with its #waterproof casing.

All great photo moments tout court.

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Ha, seems I’m heading to Paris next week to attend the Duvel Collection finale on Friday, but since I’m there I might just as well see what fashion week is all about. Now for those of you who missed Duvel’s competition last year I will give a quick rundown of the facts.

First off, Duvel gave creative talent the chance to design a Duvel Collection glass throughout several weeks . Their competition ran from September till December in several countries and at they end they gathered over 800 entries. Now, from these entries, the 20 entries with the most votes got selected and presented to a panel of international judges who selected their top 3 and their designers have been invited to Paris for an official award ceremony and party where one of them will be chosen during Showroom Belgium which is a joint initiative by the Flanders Fashion Institue and Wallonie Bruxelles Design Mode at Galerie Magda Danysz. Afterwards the winning design will become part of this year’s official Duvel Collection.

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out and seems that besides this all we also got an invite for the Jean-Paul Lespagnard show. Heard last year’s show was great so looking forward to this year’s runway.

But first things first, and that’s finding out who’s design will be joining the Duvel Collection amongst some great names likes Arne Quinze, Denis Meyers, Eley Kishimoto , Stefan van Glerum & off course Parra.

Mentioning Parra, have you seen the great interview/clip by Stussy on the man? Seems their 2012 spring collection includes a series of T-shirts from the Dutch artist’s hand and they caught up with him at his studio a while back.

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Fleischer Studios, 1930.

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Now its been 2 weeks that I’ve been more or less locked up at home, doctor’s orders to rest the arm/shoulder. No work & hardly any play means I’m a pretty dull boy right now. At least I’ve come to the point where I can type a couple of sentences efficiently without massive pain. Getting round online one-handedly *pun intended* ain’t all that efficient by the way .

Anyways, collected some of the instagrams we took along the way and hope to hit the slopes once again next year as this season might be too soon considering the projected recovery.

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Team Farang is a group of freerunners from around the world that each year gather together in Thailand to explore the unique cities and breath taking country sides. Seeking out new challenges and adventures, and having a ridiculously good time in the process. 

By the way, Farang is the bastardization of the English word Foreign; the generic thai word for your average Westerner.

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Over the weekend a couple of friends and myself started contemplating our roadtrip for 2012′s summer. Having considered several options our mind has set on ITALY and more specific Tuscany where we’ll be looking to rent a place for a week.

So, give us the boot but also give us your Tuscan travel tips & experiences as we are total novices when it comes to the region.

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Mentioned the I Am Los Angeles portraits a couple of times before and just saw that some great portraits have been added over the passed weeks! One of them features Belgian artist & expat Chase who’s murals, paintings, and stencil art graces a huge amount of walls across LA and other cities. 

More portraits at iamlosangeles.com

Picture = work by Chase & Bue the Warrior, Ghent.

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Skinemax is Koyaanisqatsi  for a generation raised on late night television and B-movie VHS tapes. It’s long form entertainment for short attention spans. An hour long VJ odyssey, it will move your body and warp your mind.

A nostalgic look back at a half remembered childhood growing up in the 80s and early 90s, Skinemax takes a close look at the culture of that era. The images that motivated, delighted, and terrified us on the silver screen, set to propulsive modern music that pines for a simpler time.

And what’s even greater, it stars Kurt Russel Lots of scenes shot by that I hadn’t seen in while …

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Spent past weekend in the Ardennes, a bank holiday in a sunny autumn setting with great/longtime friends.

Chalet Suisse life mainly existed of good food, drinks & little sleep.

It usually also involves maps, guides, walking …

and sometimes people who rather wear their trousers in their sock.

It also means not being allowed in certain areas, I blame the 1% for this personally.

Did I mention ‘a weekend amongst good company’ already?

Fitting club to come along as Volvo was so kind to lend me my horse and carriage for the weekend: V60 R design DRIVe by Volvo A great driving experience overall, with brakes that work like a charm, I can testify after having tested them intensively during a wild bore vs car stand off.

You can see me and the V60 here btw, sporting a green winter jacket and a bordeaux sweater by an unknown brand. Shoes: from the walking type with fancy red laces and stuff. Oh, I’m such a personal blogger … watchout LookBook here I come!

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Local favorites Death Shred‘s new fall-winter collection up for grabs in their store. Great new stuff amongst their line of tee’s, sweaters, … Digging the direction their heading into with the latest collection’s designs by the way.

Also, check them out on facebook in order to keep posted on future stuff from them. Keep it up! Buy while their stock lasts

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“We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists“ is an upcoming documentary on Anonymous and the history of hacktivism. Expect this.

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Mentioned SupaKitch & Koralie a couple of times before and today another great ‘making of’clip for one of their wall paintings popped up. Their work is so nice, have a look yourself. In the meantime stay out of trouble!

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Still owed you this post:

Couple of weeks ago I spent a weekend in Hasselt for the Street Art Festival surrounded by a great line-up. Coincidence has it that I happened to help out Mymo with here massive piece. Operating the bucket, painting where possible. Besides that some other great pieces got shape. Full set overhere but thought I should share a couple of them here …

A first for me and a great festival overall.

Mymo

Resto

Oli-B x Billy x Resto x Bue the Warrior

Polak x Locatelli

DinDin

Aryz

Also, as I have been getting questions/requests over the past 2 weeks I thought I should enlighten everyone that I did leave the StreetArtBelgium.com thing. Our paths were clearly going other ways. Several people had warned me for certain elements while starting our efforts, and in the end it seems they were right on this from the start.

Stuff has been done, stuff has been said, a story which has several sides to it, so I wish not to get strangled in between. Besides that I could not find myself within the way things turned out, kicking someone off a mutual project without discussing this amongst everyone does not float here.For that reason I decided to quit all efforts within the project and for what its worth, I regret it had to turn out this way as we had something nice going as a team. Personal side of the story available offline for the those interested.

For those of you who wish to support the festival and see it return once again, please join the facebook page which will keep you up to date on what happens in the future.

Also, on a final note, Oemebamo shot a great overview/recap of the festival. Hope this will return next year or the near future.

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Met A Squid Called Sebastien for the first time while organising Youthwatching several years back. He would join in with several others at the end of the day, expo some of his work, … 

Couple of weeks back we met again over some coffee at Ghent’s Vooruit. He had just returned from the 9000miles tour he did with several other artists. Told me I should check the following book I just remembered (*note to self*) and also come check out his expo at ArtSpace Leguit (which previously also hosted one of our #youngscum get togethers).

If you’re in Antwerp this Friday, definitely go check his guest expo + live painting by 9000miles featuring:

Steve Locatelli
Stanislas Lahaut
Jan Opdekamp
Nadia ‘Cymo’ Oussehmine
Digsville Music
Third Digit

The expo itself, which brings a collection of new works on wooden sufaces made in the course of 2011, will run untill the end of the month. Check the preview below & the facebook event for further details and go see them fatties!

Artspace Leguit

Leguit 23

http://www.artspaceleguit.com/

Images courtesy of 9000Miles

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Young & Free is the most significant exhibition by Australian street artists ever seen in the United States. The show features fresh work by thirteen of Australia’s finest urban art guerrillas – from the already internationally acclaimed to the burgeoning up-and-comers.This tribe of artists comes from a variety of backgrounds: brilliant new work by notorious 80’s train painters through to the sublime subtlety of a modern day Rembrandt armed with a spray can. Young & Free is a reflection of Australia’s thriving street culture with a strong grounding in the past and a firm focus on the future. These are modern day bushrangers, patrolling the lanes from Melbourne to Manhattan. This show features a mix of direct sprays, stencils and paste-ups, representing the rich and varied groundings from which these artists have grown. No matter their age, medium or style, the Young & Free artists all share one thing in common: they want to give the urban landscape a fresh coat of paint.

(HT @JonasJanssens, cheers.)

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The Ghostvillage Project was created over 3 days on the west coast of Scotland. 6 artists (Timid, Remi/Rough, System, Stormie Mills, Juice 126, Derm) were given free reign to paint in an abandoned 1970s village.

Working together on huge collaborative walls and individually in hidden nooks and crannies all over the site the artists realised long held dreams and were inspired by the bleakness and remoteness of the site. Drawing on the history of the village the artists’ stated intent on completion of the project was to populate the ghostvillage with the art and characters that it deserved.

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