joburg city....

johannesburg inner city is nostalgic. gritted in stark memories. enormous empty high rise buildings silently speak of long nights in insecurity... the red ants have made their eviction marks - leaving only overcrowded scribbled poems on burnt bedroom walls...
allowing for the most surreal and beautiful smokey parties in the bottom floors of abandoned hotels with good friends. best early hours jumping into cold swimming pools under moonlight... we drove a taxi into a ditch. argued with taxi bosses in police stations... slept in soweto listening to tales of how it was to live there years ago from mxolis father... painted a six story building in two days... walked the mass of chinese stores of market street... climbed a 16 story empty building to get the sunrise... and painted under a bridge in newtown...
a cathedral of a home to about 60 of joburgs lost people... bedroom to the lowest economic spectrum of our society... now ive painted many areas that have left me startled but this place is just too much... joburg beer absorbed into the veins of the downtrodden children growing up with a reality so twisted... my heart was heavy from the energy there.... as we were leaving a guy with blood coming from his mouth is running from three men screaming. .. they trip him down kicking him .dragging him by his arm and leg up the gravel road... some kind of pole for hitting... my mind goes quite with noise.... today the lighting and thunder broke my heart by opening it up... there is no other city that speaks to me in this way... return home to cape town city of sun, segregation and sea with a hundred ideas and images beneath my skin.... beautiful...

this is love and hates poster for the them and us project...
which brings together 20 European and 20 African visual artists, designers, illustrators and photographers. The project aims to explore the similarities and differences between first and third world views and aesthetics by pairing up artists from Europe with their African counterparts. see more of the artists involved and the works on http://them-and-us.org/

big up!

this is the wall from last week mission to johannesburg...
2days 26 cans of white and a beautiful abandoned building in market st, johanesburg.... yes please...

my favorite time in johannesburg was exploring this abandoned building.. i took lots of photos of the strange, aggressive and profoundly naive scribbles on the walls.

smelt the burnt rooms.. a history of what was there... smut and violence and overcrowded hunger im sure..

now vacant space... for the time being..
totally silent..

this silloette was the most calm moment that ive had in weeks..

my high anxiety calmed by the sheer silence of memory.

these photos by Italian Francesco Giusti secured him second prize in the world press photo arts and entertainment category...
the photos are of the Societe des Ambianceurs et Personnes Elegantes
ie. the Society of Entertainers and Elegant People from the Congo Brazzaville.
forget new york, london and paris.... africas got the true style...

im doing some research for a new artwork..
the congo has been notoriously exploited for its mineral resources, starting with king leopolds war for rubber the country has paid dearly for its richness in natural resources.
Rwanda, Uganda, Belgium and American companies have all struggled for profit through various destabilization campaigns over the years...

The surge of cellphone manufacturing has rocketed the need for the mineral coltan...
adding more blood to our hands as consumers due to the lack of responsibility taken by multi nationals... read more about it on this bbc news article...

alright.. everybody knows that phrase... shell in nigeria...
like nike and sweatshops...
and it makes you close your ears and switch off because one feels so separated from the situation... but really were not separated from the situation and we are all responsible for what is happening in nigeria...
this documentary is really insightful and i highly recommend you take the time out to watch it... my thought for today...
also see the poison fire website...

there is never one side to a story... this documentary tells a strange and unsettling story about the notorious 32 battalion of south africa.. part of our twisted little history ..
watch it on youtube...

familia skateboards are on top of it ... with riders Adrian Day, Gavin Morgan, Clint van der Schyf, Mark Donaldson, Loucas Polydorou, Steph Morgan and Shaun Witherup they blend their top skills with an aesthetic that one can only know if one knows...
and for those that dont know... the bang chong video is my favorite skate videos of all time.
how it blends the emotions and feelings of the environments in amongst the tricks... as i think a large part of skating is about the streets.. the people.. the experiences and textures. quick moments gone but not forgotten...