Video: MOCA TV – Art in The Streets “Building Detroit Part’s 1 & 2”

The excellent Art in The Streets series from MOCAtv returned today with two new documentaries that were shot & directed by Colin M. Day on the current artistic scene taking place in Detroit. Many onomatopoeia favorites are featured in the two shorts, which you can read about in much more detail below…

Like New York City in the 1970s, modern day Detroit is a paradise for street art. The miles of unused facades and ample loads of refuse in this "bombed-out, dilapidated urban landscape" are grist for graffiti artists and writers from the United States and beyond. In this short film, Los Angeles artist REVOK discusses the creative community that has coalesced in Detroit, highlighting the fantastic assemblages he creates from abandoned houses and buildings, and collaborates with POSE to mount a tribute mural to local icon Sean Griffin, better known as NEKST, on the western facade and southern wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Without local authorities policing or buffing their work, the city itself becomes an enormous canvas. 

Featuring work by Nekst, Revok, Pose, Askew, Risk, Rime, Flying Fortress, Nychos, Decolonize.

In Detroit, Michigan, where economic demise has forced the city to shrink and turn its back on empty homes and properties, a community of artists thrives by continuing its rich tradition of building. Under the auspice of Power House Productions, a local nonprofit which supports neighborhood revitalization, Oakland artist Monica Canilao (you need to see her website) transforms a dilapidated Victorian into an aesthetic object straddling the worlds of street art and architecture. On the land surrounding his African Bead Museum, DABLS incorporates discarded construction material into his network of sculptures and installations. And in his backyard, a former General Motors employee named Dmytro Szylak continues to build and tinker with a massive visionary environment which evokes both the auto plant and his own Ukrainian heritage. The factories are closed, but the desire to work remains.

 

Artists:

Powerhouse Project: Monica Canilao, Richard Coleman, Swoon, Saelee Oh, Retna,

Ben Wolf.

African Bead Museum: DABLS

Hamtramck Disneyland: Dmytro Szylak

N'Kisi Concorde Filmmakers: Nikki Sass & Brittin Richter

Video: “The Detroit Beautification Project”

The Motor City is becoming a Mecca for art these days, especially street art. With the city being struck especially hard during the economic downturn Detroit now has half the residents  in boasted in 1950. Forty square miles that were once bustling with people and business’ are now vacant, to put it into perspective that’s the size of San Francisco. The Detroit Beautification Project aims to fill those abandoned areas with color and character and this Bankshot directed video shares some of the art, experiences and people involved in it all. With words of wisdom and art from Revok, Pose, Wane, Ces, Risk, Askew, Triston Eaton and many more you’ll get an inside peak into the in’s and out’s of this large scale venture which seems to divide the local community as art often does.