Brussels Express is a documentary about bike messengers in Brussels, the most congested city in Europe with only 4% cycling traffic.

Watch it on fullscreen btw.

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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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Every now and then something extraordinary finds its way to me and couple of days ago this nice invite dropped right in my lap courtesy of Sstrid. Looks like we’re going to the Louvre at the end of the month for the opening of Wim Delvoye’s show. The show has been in the making for a while and after months of hearing her talk about how her collegues at Studio Delvoye have been working hard at getting things done it seems they have reached their final weeks of preparations.

As you might sense, we are excited as this might just turn out to become the highlight of the year, we will quote the official press release:

The Louvre invites Wim Delvoye to intervene at various locations within the museum and nearby: under the Pyramid, in the Napoleon III apartments, in the Gothic galleries of the Department of Decorative Arts, and in the Tuileries gardens. Wim Delvoye is the second artist, after Tony Cragg in 2011, to create a new, monumental sculpture to be installed at the central column supporting the Pyramid’s entry platform or belvedere: a huge Gothic corkscrew-shaped tower made of stainless steel, titled Suppo. Another imposing Corten steel sculpture will take up residence in the Tuileries in July and remain at this venue through the autumn, when it will be joined by other works featured in FIAC’s outdoor sculpture exhibition.

Within the museum’s walls, some fifteen recent works in stained glass, porcelain, and bronze, revealing the artist’s current fascination with nineteenth-century sculpture and his experimentation with computerized reproduction techniques, are juxtaposed with objects from the collections of the Department of Decorative Arts.

Delvoye’s sculptures rest on furniture, are installed in display cases, and some even line the ceremonial staircase leading to the former private apartments of the Minister of State. A large stained-glass window presented in the Lefuel staircase enters into dialogue with those installed in 2009 by François Morellet, while a Gothic chapel resonates with the tapestries and liturgical objects exhibited in the Anne de Bretagne room. From the down-to-earth redeployment of Gothic motifs to contorted and twisted crucifixes, Delvoye’s popular and decorative art, which has its roots in subversive and ironic reinterpretations of past styles, finds a particularly trenchant echo in the Louvre’s collections.

Born in 1965, the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye works in varied mediums and is perhaps best known for his “Cloaca” series which, with a seriousness reminiscent of scientists’ laboratory experiments, sheds light on the digestive process. In 2009, Delvoye was invited to create a monumental work for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection during the 53rd Venice Biennale and solo shows were held in 2010 at the Musée Rodin in Paris and in 2011 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. With each of these exhibitions, he has erected an ever taller tower, a series that reaches its pinnacle to date with the spectacular Suppo at the Louvre, a full 11 meters high.

Show runs May 31 – September 17 and off course we’ll be posting a report after our visit. Better start looking for that dinner jacket and polish my shoes…

For further info visit the Louvre site.

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Passed few days a certain Hulk has been stalking me, distrupting me from doing my work, mingling with my other compagnons, … He even followed me to the office & found his way to my #drawsome :s

Reckon Hulk is trying to tell me we have to go and see The Avengers this weekend. Heard he has a massive final scene, curious to see the result! #challengeaccepted

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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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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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Its been over a year since I hooked up with Sstrid, the perfect wingwoman in crime

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A day of sunshine and some burning BBQ’s don’t make a summer,

but we are slowly getting there, I hope

For now you can keep your bermuda’s stowed away.

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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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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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Been MIA for a couple of weeks so got some backlash when it comes to my words of the day. As you might know/have read, (almost) every single day – when I don’t forget – I post a word of the day on twitter, inspired by my Urban Dictionary Calendar.

Conintuing the tradition in 2012 with a fresh stack I reckon I need to do a quick catch-up for my slacking. What follows are some of the best words I saw the past weeks

nap mouth - The bad taste in your mouth just after waking up from a nap.

time vampire - Something or someone who literally sucks your time like a vampire sucks blood.

seat gypsie - A person or group of people that travel from one unclaimed seat to another (normally at sporting events) because their cheap asses couldn’t fork up the money for better seats. Said people are forced to move once seats are claimed by the rightful ticket holders.

nomonym - When you eat something and it tastes like something else.

cheappuccino - Any of the wide variety of flavored coffee drinks offered at convenience stores that can be purchased for less than half the price of a coffeehouse cappuccino.

X-rayted - TSA rating for airport, naked body scan images.

thrift whore -  person who shops at many different thrift stores, thereby often finding wonderful deals.

testicular fortitude - balls, guts, intestinal fortitude

dweet - Twitter tweet sent when drunk. A drunk tweet

airport vultures - Passengers waiting to board a plane who stalk around near and clog up the boarding gate before a flight, regardless of where their seat is or when boarding actually is.

masturdating - Going out alone. I.e. seeing a movie by yourself, going to a restaurant alone.

party claim - Objects left at a party may be claimed by the host.

pornocchio - A person who embellishes their sexcapades to sound cooler.

economic vegetarian - Only eating Vegatables because you can’t afford to buy meat.

dish envy - Sudden, intense longing and regret derived from watching a particularly appetizing dish being delivered to a nearby table.

Oh, and yesterday I tweeted the classic ‘ass antlers’ (known as tramp stamps amongst the general public) courtesy of @Gammet

A type of tattoo, usually worn by women, on the lower back and branching upwards from the buttcrack. From the original German “Arschgeweih”.

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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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My main companion is a trusty MacBook Pro and my Kindle E-reader which got a new custom made felt ‘owl’ cover.

Besides that I spot my Golden Half camera and some film, a spork, moleskine notebook, handkerchief, scarf, earplugs, usb cigarette lighter plug, markers, lip balm/chap stick,  broken ipod (which urgently needs replacing) and an ear light which regularly comes in handy. Also as I’ve just moved I’m carrying around  a measuring tape, has come in handy on a regular the passed weeks. Lighters, pens, … and a toothbrush finish off the clutter more or less.

Latest addition is a Duracell usb charger by the way. Got my hand on the larger version and have been testing it for a while as my iphone is not that reliable anymore. You can easily charge a variety of USB-powered devices with it and the battery itself recharges through a wall socket at home. I can only repeat that its a comfort having back-up power on-the-go in this day and age. Previously I had been using my PowerMonkey (and still do sometimes), but Duracell offers a battery that can handle any device through its own usb cable.

Besides all the other stuff I’ve also got copies of The Word Magazine‘s & Subbacultcha‘s latest issues. Worth a read!

Now as I’ve shared my junk… what do you carry around on a daily base

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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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Gunshots, people running mad in the street and lots of cheers yesterday as Spotify deployed  its services in Belgium. Or was it just twitter and my facebook wall that got flooded with Spotify related content? All I know is that lots of people were giving Spotify their praise while other unhappy hipsters were calling the music service evil and complaining about some ads that passed by every now and then?

I must admit I had been using Spotify, through a loophole in their system, for a while already. It was accesible, without any ads in between the streams, as they still had to officially get started in Belgium. Now the people from Spotify blessed  me with a premium account. No ads, unlimited access to their service on- & offline … I will extensively use this throughout the next weeks, test their service in on the road with the ol’ trusty iphone, … but reckon I already know the outcome as I have already learned that € 9,99 a month for unlimited access to their database on- & offline is not a lot of money.

For the readers who haven’t tried it out, its pretty easy Just hit the download Spotify app button, install and log in with your facebook account (OH NO, not my facebook account?! Yes, you can only log in with you facebook account and it works like a charm.) Next all you have to do is sit back and enjoy some fresh or older tunes.

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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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Kid Robot & Swatch have been a favorites of mine for a while so I could not have been more delighted to see yet another collab as this take place. I had been longing for one of my own for a while … et voila

Its Frank Kozik‘s (his name by creating full-color silk screened posters for various legendary rock bands of the 90s) contribution to the collection. ”I wanted to make the designs as clean as possible,” he explains “I like Swatch for its plastic future sense.”

As Flava Flav‘s iconically states “What time is it?!”

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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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This has been in the make for a while. Already great work by everyone involved.

For all additional info visit http://streetartbelgium.com/ or feel free to contact us.

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Over the weekend I payed Utrecht a quick visit. A wedding with friends, a 30-45min walk through the city before. Snapped some stuff on the way to the ceremony though …

Roadkill.

Urban knitting.

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Cowboy or indian? What were you? I was a cotton candy cowboy.

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Work in progress, launch is imminent.

In the meantime check our facebook or twitter.

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Went to my very first Brussels Girl Geek Dinner yesterday as sakoche for the ma’am (yes but no, our previous big day out did not count as a real BGGD I reckon). Something about cyberpads at Samsung’s dig I was said and so we head out to Vilvoorde.

Seems they’re launching a new tablet, a bigger one than their previous tab because size does matter in this case. What else did I remember about it all: it runs flash and basically does everything you expect it to do.

Girl geek dinners are awkward in a way, not because you are surrounded by cute girl geeks, but because just like at #youngscum and other online/offline gatherings you know certain people are there but you just can’t put a face to their name (although you really want to say “hello”) or you happen not to really bump into eachother.

Leaves me with an awkward feeling time and time again :s ans yes, I am no hero when it comes to strangers. Its one of the reasons I love living in the city, the anonymity.

As my mother always thought me to thank people: cheers Samsung and the other sponsors for a nice evening.

[Picture taken & sent with a Samsung 'Galaxy 10.1' Cyberpad]

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“There is no algorithm to define cool, you just know it when you see it“. – Anonymous hipster.

I have been meaning to digitalize a selection of analog photos for a while now. This is one of the first scans I got sent to see if I was happy with the result. Cracks me up every time I see it and looking forward to see the full collection. I’m betting its gonna be priceless.

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Tilting, just when planking & owling became to ridiculous for words …

[extra, extra, read all about it]

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A sausage fest, gone horribly wrong.

[Work by Kati Heck]

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Onio, Ox-Alien, Rotterdam

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Each and every day I walk by this mural. Its en route to our offices. Peeps better have a good look as it might just be your last chance to see it as demolition work has started …

Update: seems this wall will remain intact till at least September.

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