Backjumps Volume 4 reviewed by Hili Perlson on www.ARTSLANT.com

With its dominant street charm and DIY flair, it seems fitting thatBerlin is the birthplace for a project like Backjumps – a magazine for “Urban Communication and Aesthetic” cum art event. The magazine was introduced in 1994 and is now available in museum book-stores (Palais de Tokyo, Tate Modern etc.) without having lost any of its street cred. To promote and celebrate the magazine’s growing popularity, Editor Adrian Nabi inaugurated Backjump’s Live Issuein 2005 – a biennial series of street art exhibitions held in Berlin’s legendary squat, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg. Always a lively affair, the opening nights of Backjumps’ Live Issue soon became known as must-go event for many Berliners.

However, with a myriad of works by various artists, the Live Issue wasn’t always a comprehensively curated show. This year, Vol. 4 was presented in a much smaller and more concentrated format. It’s not clear if this is a result of curatorial decisions or a lack of funding in light of the financial crisis – either way: the reduced amount of art and artists being shown strongly contributed to the show’s overall unity. Vol. 4 features four aesthetic positions by seven artists living in Berlin (some working as a duo or a group), with a focus on their interactions with the city.

The first room featured a video by American ex-pat and Backjumps veteran Brad Downey. Shot in broad daylight on a busy road that connects the trendy neighborhoods of Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain, the video shows the creation of one of the artist’s “Spontaneous Sculptures” – a clever combination of disobedient behavior and action performance. The video features Downey attaching the ends of industrial rolls of adhesive tape in blue, red and white to a rotating, column-shaped billboard bearing an ad for a popular Swedish clothing manufacturer. The rolls of tape are then fixed upon street objects such as lamps and garbage cans. As the billboard rotates, it gradually becomes covered with tape, becoming the source of its own transformation. Downey can be seen running around the column trying to find more fixed objects to connect with tape. In the process, the cylindrical billboard begins to resemble a maypole with the energetic Downey a modern pagan celebrating urbanism instead of nature.

Another piece that transforms the idea of reclaiming urban space for art is the video “Zwischenzeit” (In Between) by the creative duo Wermke and Leinkauf of Stop Making Sense. In 2008, the two artists took a makeshift handcar made of metal and bike parts and embarked on a nocturnal journey on Berlin’s railway tracks. The result is a 17 minute video arrangement on 3 screens, featuring an eerie soundtrack made up of the monotonous, droning sound of the handcar rolling along the tracks at night. Trains can be seen cruising past the stations intermittently. Following their departure (after the station has quieted down and before the next train arrives) an obscure figure can be made out in the dark, slowly making his way along the tracks. Once in focus, we can see a calm but persistent person riding the handcar.

Similarly, artist Pigenius Cave built a tricycle to explore Berlin’s largely inaccessible underground for “The Immortal Youth of Pigenius Cave,” a collection of photographs and found objects taken out of city’s canalization system. Displayed in an amusing manner resembling a natural history museum, the objects and photographs allegedly reconstruct the childhood and youth of a street artist growing up in Berlin. RZM’s installation “Wandklopfen” also uses found objects and sounds recorded around Berlin to create a three dimensional collage of the city.

Without a doubt, the piece that drew most attention on opening night was Brad Downey’s “Don’t worry about that shit, René.” The work documents the controversy surrounding the artist’s spraying the front windows ofBerlin’s luxury department store, KaDeWe, with green paint in 2008. Downey used a fire extinguisher to achieve maximum results. While the scandalous piece took place on the streets of Berlin, it has less to do with the city itself than with the global phenomenon of the commercialization of art in general – and of street art in particular.

The story goes like this: To celebrate their 75^th anniversary and spice up its image, Lacoste (with the help of the KaDeWe) commissioned 12 street artists to reinterpret the brand’s green crocodile emblem. The works were to be presented in the departments store’s windows for a few weeks before being auctioned. Downey, a reputedly “hard to buy” artist, finally agreed to participate, submitting the cryptic proposal/prophesy “Something outside will turn green.” Instead of designing a piece for the department store’s windows, Downey sprayed them with Lacoste-green. The piece presented at Backjumps documents everything from the news reports speculating about the identity of the “vandals”, to the damage-control email exchange between the artist’s agents and KaDeWe managers.

Downey’s action could be understood as a much needed critique of the state of street art: alienated from its illegal, nocturnal origins, graffiti today not only features prominently on ridiculously priced sneakers and T-shirts, but is also widely commissioned by major companies for “embedded” advertisements. However, I made the unfortunate mistake of reading what the artist himself had to say about his piece. In his text, Downey describes how he was contacted by NOWADAYS, the event agency that curated the Lacoste show and tried to convince him to participate. Admitting that he didn’t know what the KaDeWe was, Downey decided to “go and have a look.” The American ex-pat, unfamiliar with Berlin’s oldest, most traditional department store, expected to find a shopping mall. While looking for the Lacoste “store”, Downey recounts an unpleasant encounter he had with a KaDeWe employee whose English wasn’t good enough to understand what he wanted.

Claiming to be “disgusted” by his first experience with the KaDeWe, Downey resolved to take part in the show. It seems strange that instead of being disgusted with a “creative” commercial industry that pays people for generating bad art (in celebration of a clothing brand, for example), the artist directs his anger towards a simple KaDeWe employee who does what Berliners do best – be rude. But giving Downey the benefit of the doubt, the work itself is hilarious documentation of commissioned art gone wrong.

–Hili Perlson

the article here.  http://www.artslant.com/global/articles/show/11355

Brad has contributed two drawings to the new colouring book by Dave the Chimp. It seems one has been rejected.

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Hi Brad, I had this email from the editor at my publisher: CHIMP

There was one artwork that we thought did cross the obscenity line in terms of the book being meant both for kids and adults. This was Brad Downey’s piece on page 25 which features in the foreground what appears to be a metal barricade either being buggered by another or possibly giving the other a blowjob. I personally found it brilliant, but all it would take is one parent pointing it out to bookshop staff or the distributor for the entire volume to be pulled off the shelves or out of bookshops entirely.

Daves response:

Technically, Brad hasn’t created anything obscene – he has just observed how barriers are joined together, and then reconfigured the positions of the barriers so that YOU give them a human or animal form and then picture them having sex! A barrier is an inanimate object with no sex organs. It can’t have sex. Therefore all we need to do is supply every shop with a text stating that, if anyone complains, the managers or staff point out that it is impossible for a street barrier to move by itself, let alone participate in the act of intercourse, and that anyone who even sees such a repugnant act in a book for children should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves and their perverted imagination. I would also recommend the store manager bans any such person from the children’s section of their store. But obviously I don’t want to have the books banned from stores, so I’ll talk to Brad and see if we can find a solution.  CHIMP

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If you live in Dublin. Come see some of the amazing speakers..

David Shrigley, Sir Peter Blake, Brad Downey, The Mill, The London Police. Asbestos,…… amongst others.

OFFSET website

Backjumps Volume 4, #1

opening party:  6th November

7th – 29th November 2009 – 12–19pm, in the “Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien” BERLIN

Artists: Brad Downey, Pigenius Cave, RZM (Ritsche Koch/Zasd/Christian Marien) und Matthias Wermke & Mischa Leinkauf.

Gallery Opening 19:00
Thursday 22. Oct. 2009
1020 Vienna, Taborstrasse 18

STOP MAKING SENSE, MARK JENKINS, BRAD DOWNEY, EVAN ROTH, GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB / G.R.L., CHRISTIAN EISENBERGER, DTAGNO, DEEP INC, BUSK, ARAM BARTHOLL, STATE OF SABOTAGE, MAX SCHAFFER, AAKASH NIHALANI , KNOW HOPE, JAMES POWDERLY, ALBIN RAY, Tempt One

Hello Brad,

I did a drawing last week and after your work in Lüneburg…(and the discussions) i thought i show it to you…..
what a chance?(what are the odds?)
different meaning
anyway
would be nice to hear from you
greets

Katharina Kulenkampff

With the change of university board in 2006 arrived an era of radical reformations at the Lüneburg university. This reformations did not only include the mandatory realization of the Bologna process but also a massive restructuring of the university. Especially the re-naming and the aligned marketing- and image campaign caused public stir. The new image of the university is clearly influenced by marketing considerations such as in private economies. A well-known German advertising agency invented the new name “Leuphana” and developed a “brand” logo which – in some peoples view – rather evokes associations of a car brand than of a university.

Along with these changes comes another big project – the building of a giant lecture hall (Audimax) by the world wide famous architect Daniel Libeskind. The costs are said to add up to a 62 million euro. In order to avoid a public bid invitation for the building contract, Libeskind was made part-time professor at the Leuphana – not for the benefit of the students though – as he is rarely giving lectures at all.

Overall, the reformation of the university has aroused remarkable suspicion and critique both amongst students and lecturers. In the light of marketing campaigns and a giant construction project, many expressed intelligible suspicion about the use of tuition fees. In 2007, a website appeared which caused further confusion. ‘leuphana.de.vu’ is a mock university homepage which resembles the business-like tone of the new university president. As the page copies the official university pages visual style they look at first sight almost identical. The page also contains an “advertisement” video for the university. This video portraits the university’s campus as a high security area where access is only possible after showing one’s ID. It furthermore shows the university as being sponsored by Coca Cola.

Brad Downey’s contribution to the Art Totale, which goes in line with the welcome week for the first semester students, has lead to further discussions about Leuphana’s politics. An artwork that could in other context be read as a plain provocation acquires a deeper social and political meaning within in the recent history of this specific university. It imbibes the earlier articulated fears of critics, that forsee Leuphana becoming somewhat of a private university serving primarily economic interests. By raising disturbance and maybe even irritation, it functions well as a means of re-initiating the current discourse amongst the students. It will now take time to see, whether the Leuphana will incorporate its own institutional critique by allowing the work to be a permanent installation.

____Daniela Kummle

A very short interview about brads new painting.

HERE

Brad Downey schafft es mal wieder den absurden Verhältnissen beim Lüneburger Graffiti-Spektakel ARTotale den richtigen “Dreh” zu geben: Anstatt, wie die meisten anderen Künstler, einfach nur die immergleichen Motive zu sprühen und kleben, reagiert er auf die totale Vereinnahmung mit der größtmöglichen Überidentifizierung – und malt gleich das McDonald’s-Logo inklusive Slogan. Das ist die wohl einzige Arbeit, die nicht der Dekoration der Stadt dient, und wahrscheinlich auch von den Einwohnern als “hässlich” und “werblich” abgelehnt wird. Und das gibt den Verhältnissen einen spannenden neuen Dreh: Wenn Werbung immer mehr wie Street-Art aussieht und Street-Art immer mehr Akzeptanz (im Gegensatz zur Werbung, die immer stärker als “visuelle Umweltverschmutzung” empfunden wird) bei allen Bevölkerungsschichten gewinnt, dann muss Street-Art vielleicht wie Werbung aussehen, um wirklich radikal zu sein. Nur so ein Gedanke. Mehr Live-Bilder von Just gibt’s weiterhin hier.

Check the original post with an unfinished photo here. Thanks RebelART

Leuphana Urban Art Project

From October 5–9, 2009 over 35 internationally renowned street artists are conquering Lueneburg urban space.

The following artists have been invited to the Streetart Event:
Adam & Akay, Akim, Alex Diamond, Almut Linde, Ash, Ben Eine, Brad Downey, Boxi, Bronco, Daniel Man, Dave the Chimp, DTAGNO, Evol, Faith47, Flying Förtress, Herakut, Herbert Baglione, Jay-One, Loomit, Mirko Reisser (DAIM), Moki & 1010, Pius Portmann, SKKI, Swoon, Tilt, Trica, Tryone, Vitché & Jana, Zevs, Zezao, 56K.

more infoi here- http://www.leuphana.de/en/artotale/artotale-portal.html