Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

A quartet of conceptual artists feasts on the corruption-ridden Nigerian political landscape in an exhibition taking place in Lagos. But this exhibition offers no glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel, Okechukwu Uwaezuoke discovers

VISUAL ARTS

Odd title, At Work. This could be a ploy to stimulate reflection. Isnt that, after all, the whole point of conceptual art? May be not entirely. For the less scholarly exhibition habitus would rather be on the look out for Wow! Moments.

Alas, not many of such moments are evident in this four-man exhibition still ongoing at Kia Showroom along Akin Adesola Street in Victoria Island, Lagos. Besides Olumide Onadipes mixed-media installation Conversation with Self, there is hardly any other flicker of novelty in the hall.

Close-up on Onadipe. Experimentation, by the way, is the theme song of his studio practice. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka-trained sculptor apparently has a predilection for manipulating tactile materials.

This is how come such found objects as polythene bags, metal, wood, jute bags and glass seem pivotal in the creation of his recent works. In a bid to repurpose these objects, he gives them new forms through a process that involves melting and twisting. Thus, the artist as part of his residency project with the Arthouse Foundation (the organisers of the exhibition) examines how individuals interact with their environments.

Among his offerings at this exhibition, which opened on March 18, the mixed-media works Road Map to New Lagos, Wheel In, Wheel Out and World Apart proudly stand out. They indeed proclaim his artistic credo.

Move over to Tyna Adebowales acrylic, pen and ink on canvas portraits of black African women. Obviously, this Auchi Polytechnic graduate is fixated on gender issues. Of course, these complemented by tangential issues like sexuality and identity.

Take the images of her women as in Bodii, Mystyk and Tom series. They are densely-patterned by traditional design motifs. Before them, the viewer needs to linger a little longer. Defiantly, they seem to inveigle their way into the viewers consciousness from their section of the exhibition hall. Ditto her 10-panel acrylic, pen and ink on canvas graffiti-like work Here, Here and Now.

What else are they there for, but to do the bidding of their creator? Through them, Adebowale stridently rails against the marginalisation of her gender. It is understandable, therefore, that they are part of her residency project with the Arthouse Foundation. Talking about residencies, the artist, who is currently an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, had previously completed residency programmes at the Instituto de Arte e Cultura Yoruba in Brazil and Asiko Art School in Ghana.

The other artist, Dipo Doherty, seems more at home with colourful stylised grotesque depictions of human forms. These forms, which seem largely inspired by the African traditional art, also hint at some Western and modernist influences. His residency project indeed orbits around his contrasting colour scheme in which a viewer easily spots vestiges of his monochromatic expression.

Yet, what would his paintings be without these contrasting hues and patterns? Thanks to them, a viewer discerns a hint of emotional intensity or restlessness in the paintings. Take the acrylic on canvas works like Eden, Woman Bathing at Night, Woman Bathing on a Beach, Abstract Figure and General on a Horse, for instance. The fragmented, distorted parts of the figures create an illusion of movement. The dispersed facial features, hair and limbs suggest the still images in the various stages of an activity. It is as though the artist is hurriedly documenting these activities.

Naturally, he would have to jettison the traditional canons of aesthetics to be able to achieve this. Besides, to be visually intelligible to many aficionados, he would first have to claw his way from out of the gloominess of his ethereal environment. Truth be told, the grotesqueness of these forms are consistent with the contemporary Zeitgeist.

But this is not all the University of Virginia graduate offers. If there are figures or forms in his patterned and somewhat blurry Ecstasy series, they are hardly noticeable. Indeed, there are forms lurking in the midst of the somewhat subdued acrylic and oil colours.

In his Covalence series fragments of photographic prints pasted on board peer at the viewer from beneath a slapdash arrangement of burnt rulers. Here too, the artists conceptual whims overrule the viewers clamour for some form of coherence. Doherty, a finalist for the a prize at the inaugural ArtX Lagos held late last year, is not entirely unknown in the Lagos scene. For he had recently held solo exhibitions at the Victoria Island-based Red Door Gallery and the Lekki-based Nike Art Centre.

Finally, there is Jelili Atiku. This 2015 Prince Claus Award recipient is best known for his performance art, though he is basically a multimedia artist. His fixation on the somewhat tumultuous political environment provides the fodder for his drawings, installations, sculpture, photography, video and performance art.

For his residency project, he deploys performances in public spaces for his exploration of the Nigerian socio-political experiences from 1914. To this end, he conceives a fictional political party he calls the Peoples Welfare Party (P. W. P.) through which he plunges headlong into the shark infested waters of Nigerian politics. The partys manifestos, printed beside a portrait of the artist smiling for the camera, suggest that it is a messianic platform for the liberation of the suffering masses from their kleptocratic leaders.

A highly committed artist, he takes a swipe at the decadent political environment and dysfunctional government policies. His oil on paper drawings, which are conceptualisation of the performance Recession No Be Mistake (Manifesto III) , seethe with so much anger and cynicism. They complement the actual performances depicting a black-clad, cape-draped figure, whose head seems encased in what could pass for a stash of antlers or antennae. This Satan-like figure, also holding a white miniature cow in his hand, could be the artists perception of the ethereal form of recession.

If his other performances Senate, Are You a Rotten Head? (Manifesto IV) and HUNHUN-UN-UN (Manifesto V) seem more synergistic than the former, it is because they involve a handful of collaborators. Nonetheless, they are only a foretaste of what should be expected from this graduate of the University of Lagos and Ahmadu Bello University at the official Nigerian exhibition of the 2017 Venice Biennale.

Meanwhile, At Work, which is on until Friday, April 7, leaves a trail of sordid tales across the exhibition hall. The exhibiting artists, who are so caught up in the web of Nigerias self-created entanglements, offer the audience little hope for the future. Surely, their depictions of the contemporary realities is no ashen heap from which one expects Phoenix to rise.

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LOOK FOR THE ART IN THE EXPRESSION - THISDAY Newspapers

THE LISTING: 38 Hugo Ave.,Toronto

ASKING PRICE:$1.325-million

TAXES: $4,609.00(2016)

LOT SIZE: 22 by 107feet

AGENT: John Pasalis (Realosophy RealtyInc.)

The homes architecture is unconventional for theneighbourhood.

Sylvie Belanger and Richard Simpson were bereft when their home at 38 Hugo Ave. was one in a row of Edwardian townhomes ravaged by fire in 2008. Not only did the blaze destroy their house and beloved art collection, it ushered in a long period of trauma, upheaval and wrangling withauthorities.

After a few years the couple has a new perspective: The calamity created the opportunity to build the new house that arose from a collaboration between Ms. Belanger and architect KevinWeiss.

Ms. Belanger is an artist who often spends long stretches working from a studio in such cities as Amsterdam and San Francisco. With the rebuilding, she was able to design her own studio in the homes former garage. The space also became their pied--terre after the insurance benefits and emergency cashdwindled.

A living space at 38 HugoAve.

Weiss Architecture and Urbanism Ltd. is located in the same Wallace-Emerson neighbourhood near Dupont Street and Dundas Street West. Ms. Belanger knew she wanted to work with Mr. Weiss when he immediately grasped her desire for light and movement and no flatroof.

I told him, you have to create movement. I want light, she says. He got excited about that. The movement and angularity of the house was something he appreciated. He got it from the firstsketch.

Ms. Belangers edict against a flat roof partly came from the homes position on a corner. On the corner in Toronto, if you see a flat building, it looks like afortress.

Instead, rooms are organized around a triangular courtyard. Roofs are tilted at variousangles.

The studios exterior is made from corrugatedaluminum.

For the exterior of the studio, Ms. Belanger chose corrugated aluminum, which she has used in her work as an artist. The material looks good and requires no maintenance, she says. Mr. Simpson also found the industrial appearanceappealing.

The reactions of some neighbours, however, ranged from curious to hostile. During construction, people would pass by on the street and make caustic remarks about the unorthodoxarchitecture.

The zeitgeist of the neighbourhood has changed in recent years with the arrival of many young professionals and creative types, Ms. Belanger says. Now they all stop to admire thehouse.

The living room overlooks CarltonPark.

The two-storey house, which was completed in 2010, has three bedrooms, three bathrooms in 1,755 squarefeet.

The main door opens to a front foyer with a 24-foot light-well above the central staircase. The open plan of the main floor includes a living room overlooking Carlton Park, a dining area and a kitchen. The kitchen was crafted of Baltic Birch for Mr. Simpson, who is the chef in thehousehold.

The kitchen cabinets are made from warmbirch.

Ms. Belanger chose the same palette of warm birch cabinets and simple grey and white tones for thebathrooms.

When you work with beautiful materials, you let them speak, says theartist.

A small home office on the main floor is the only box in the house, Ms. Belanger pointsout.

Sloped ceilings make each of the three bedroomsunique.

Upstairs, three bedrooms have sloping ceilings and angled walls so that each room isunique.

One of the elements that the couple enjoys most today is the way that shadows created by the light pouring through from outside appear on the walls. The swaying tree branches and quivering leaves create the light and movement that Ms. Belanger envisioned from thestart.

The light stays magnificent all of the time, says Mr.Simpson.

The small, triangular courtyard on the second floor provides a secret escape with a view of the stars on summer evenings. Mr. Weiss designed one angled wall to point directly at the CN Tower, which is visible in the distance, Ms. Belangerexplains.

The courtyard is breaching the interior and exterior, public and private space, sheadds.

It also creates sight-lines through the upper floor. From the master bedroom, for example, theres a view straight through the courtyard to a narrow window that frames a pine tree standingoutside.

To have a private courtyard on the second floor is incredible, says Mr.Simpson.

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Home of the Week - The Globe and Mail

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Trumps order rolls back President Obamas Clean Power Plan. Lets call it the Donald Trump Dead Planet Plan. Diana Best, a Greenpeace energy campaigner who is charged with halting the social influence of the oil industry during Trumps administration, joins me on the podcast to break down the meaning and scale of this administration of Climate change deniers, the significance of Trump not stepping away from the 2015 Paris Agreement, and the diversity of tactics required to fight back.

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Also, Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, has publicly declared that the Judeo-Christian West is collapsing and U.S. is in what he calls the fourth American turning in which an all-out civilization war is inevitable. In fact, according to Bannon, it has already begun.

These views would be easy to dismiss if Steve Bannon was the editor of a widely-discredited news website and the host of a fringe radio show, as was the case less than a year ago. Today, Bannon is Trumps main ideas guy. Abby Martinhost and producer of The Empire Fileswill discuss her recent expose on Steve Bannon. While Bannon calls himself an economic nationalist, it is a brand of nationalism that fear mongers over anyone outside the Judeo-Christian tradition and benefits only white people. So, does that make him a white nationalist? And how can we stop him before he escalates the all-out civilization war that he thinks has already begun?

Finally, Rou Reynolds, front man of the dynamic rock band Enter Shikari, joins me for an interview about the band's current tour, and how it's progressive message is going over here in the US in the Trump era. In discussing the influence of the Zeitgeist movement on his life, art, and lyrics, I ask Rou about living with the contractions of waging an anti-capitalist struggle in the modern world.

Start your workday the right way with the news that matters most.

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Donald Trump's War on the Planet + Exposing Steve Bannon - Huffington Post

Photo Credit: Atl360Pic / Shutterstock

The following is an excerpt from The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear by the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Beacon Press, 2016). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

Late August in North Carolina is harvest time for tobacco growers. Long before the sun rises above the longleaf pines, the air is already thick and heavy in the fields of the eastern sandhills, where I was raised. Men and women roll up their sleeves and bend their backs to prime tobacco, taking the bottom leaves first. I grew up in these fields, listening to the songs people hum when they know theres work to be done and the day is only going to get hotter. Some days I still wake up humming those songs.

August 28, 2013, I woke up at home in North Carolina. It had been a long, hot summer, and my body was tired. But as a mother of the church in Montgomery, Alabama, famously told Dr. Martin Luther King during the bus boycott, even though my feet were tired, my soul was rested. I woke up that morning humming a song I learned from mothers of the church in eastern North Carolina.

Ive got a feeling everythings gonna be all right. Oh Ive got a feeling everythings gonna be all right. Ive got a feeling everythings gonna be all right. Be all right, be all right, be all right.

Four days before, Id been in Washington, DC, for the national commemoration of 1963s March on Washington. Fifty years after that historic day when millions of Americans heard Dr. Kings dream on national television for the first time, civil rights leaders from around the Country gathered to commemorate the achievements of freedom fighters who gave so much half a century ago to guarantee the opportunities we often take for granted today. I sat alongside a great hero of that era, Julian Bond, commenting on the days celebrations for Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC.

But as soon as the festivities were over, I knew I had to go home. I had been invited to go to Washington because Moral Mondays had gained national attention during that summer of 2013. On April 29, 2013, 16 close colleagues and I had been arrested at the North Carolina statehouse for exercising our constitutional right to publicly instruct our legislators. We did not call it a Moral Monday when we went to the legislature building that day. In fact, it took us nearly three weeks to name what started with that simple act of protest. But when a small group of us stood together, refusing to accept an extreme makeover of state government that we knew would harm the most vulnerable among us, it was like a spark in a warehouse full of cured, dry tobacco leaves.

The following Monday, hundreds returned to the statehouse and twice as many people were arrested. Word of a mass movement spread among justice-loving people throughout North Carolina, igniting thousands who knew from their own experience that something was seriously wrong. Throughout the hot, wet summer of 2013, tens of thousands of people came for 13 consecutive Moral Mondays. By the end of the legislative session, nearly 1,000 people had been arrested in the largest wave of mass civil disobedience since the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960.

Those Moral Monday rallies were on my mind as I hummed the old spiritual that late August morning. Fifty years earlier, in Indianapolis, Indiana, my mother had gone into labor on this very day. The joke in my family is that I, the child in her womb, heard that people were marching for jobs and justice in Washington, so I decided to wait for them before my entrance into the world. By the time I was born two days later, my parents friends and coworkers who had made the long trip to Washington were back home. They had heeded Dr. Kings words:

Go back ... knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Going back home, they did the painstaking work of building communities committed to justice, educating neighbors about issues that affect the common good, and organizing poor people to register, vote, and speak out in their communities. As inspiring as Dr. King was, historians are clear that it was not him alone, but rather the thousands of unnamed people like my parents who turned the tide in America after the March on Washington, guaranteeing the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and, after Bloody Sunday in Selma the following spring, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In fact, it was my fathers commitment to go home and labor in forgotten fields that led him and my mother to return to North Carolina in the late 1960s, sending me to integrate the public schools in Washington County. I was drafted into the justice struggle before I ever had a chance to know anything else. I learned to be a freedom fighter by going home.

Half a century later, I found myself a leader in the reemerging Southern freedom movement, trying to understand a mass movement that had erupted in response to 21st-century injustice in my own home state. Moral Mondays had not just happened. They resulted from the efforts of 140 organizations that had worked together as a grassroots coalition for seven years. When crowds chanted, Thank you! We love you! each week to the scores of arrestees leaving the legislature building in Department of Corrections buses, they were cheering on their pastors, their union leaders, their professors, and their grandmothers. We didnt just know one another. We were family.

But as much as I knew the people and understood the long, hard organizing work that had made Moral Mondays happen, I did not know how to explain this sudden explosion of resistance. Though it grew out of the familiar ground of freedom, something new was happening before our eyes. Like our foreparents who marched on Washington, we in North Carolina were caught up by the zeitgeist in something bigger than ourselvessomething bigger, even, than our understanding. But we knew one thing without a doubt: we had found the essential struggle of our time. Inspired by nothing less than Gods dream, we were ready to go home and do the long, hard work of building up a new justice movement to save the soul of America.

So I was at home on August 28, 2013that Wednesday when we looked back to remember the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Our Forward Together Moral Movement held 13 simultaneous rallies in each of North Carolinas congressional districts that day, bringing together tens of thousands of people who had been mobilized for action through Moral Mondays. We were black, white and brown, women and men, rich and poor, gay and straight, documented and undocumented, employed and unemployed, doctors and patients, people of faith and people who struggle with faith. We were, it seemed to me as I drove between rallies in Greensboro, Lincolnton, and Charlotte, a glimpse of Dr. Kings dreamof the republic that, though promised and longed for, has never yet been. Baptized in the fires of mass demonstration, we were a fusion coalition of people committed to reconstructing America itself.

On national television, the networks broadcast commemorative speeches and historical reflections on Dr. King and the civil rights movement. Much of it was interesting history, Im sure. But I witnessed something far more inspiring at home in North Carolina on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. I came home to the beginnings of a Third Reconstruction. After Americas First Reconstruction was attacked by the lynch mobs of white supremacists in the 1870s, it took nearly 100 years for a Second Reconstruction to emerge in the civil rights movement. Though we ended Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s, structural inequality became more sophisticated in the backlash against the movements advances. We have a black man in the White House that was built by slaves, but the wealth divide that is rooted in our history of race-based slavery is more extreme than it ever has been. Nothing less than a Third Reconstruction holds the promise of healing our nations wounds and birthing a better future for all. But were not just waiting for it. Weve seen what it looks like.

The Forward Together Moral Movement began in North Carolina, gained attention through Moral Mondays, and has spread to statehouses and communities throughout America since the summer of 2013. [...] The most important word in the justice vocabulary is always we. This is the story of how some unlikely friends joined hands to reclaim the possibility of democracy in the face of corporate-financed extremism. It is an introduction to the fusion politics that give me hope for a future beyond the dead-end of partisan politics in America today.

Because we can never know the ecstasy of true hope without attending to the tragic realities of the poor and forgotten, this is also necessarily a movement about what is wrong in America. Among other reasons, we must heed Dr. Kings call to go home because policy analysis inside the Beltway has become detached from the lived experience of millions of Americans who live and die poor in the richest nation that the world has ever seen. I am not a politician. I am a pastor. The job of a pastor is to touch people where they are hurting and to do what is possible to bind up their wounds. You can only do this sort of work locallyamong people whose names you know and who, likewise, know you. But you cannot do it honestly without at some point becoming a prophet. Something inside the human spirit cries out against the injustice of inequality when you know people who have to choose between food and medicine in a country where CEOs make more in an hour than their lowest-paid employees make in a month.

It has been said that all politics is local, but our local struggle in North Carolina is of national significance because the extremist forces we have struggled against see our state as a testing ground for their plan to remake America not from DC down, but from the statehouse up. Without any sense of irony in places where state sovereignty commissions fought to maintain Jim Crow segregation laws 50 years ago, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) solicits donations on its website by asking people to help them return sovereignty to the states. Under the leadership of the ALEC board member Thom Tillis, then speaker of the house in North Carolina, we saw what their plan looks like in action: the defunding of state government through a flat tax that increased the burden on poor people while giving the wealthiest a windfall; the denial of federally funded health care to half a million North Carolinians; the rejection of federal unemployment benefits for 170,000 individuals and their families; cuts to public education that increase teachers workloads while decreasing overall compensation; deregulation of industries that have a demonstrated record of environmental abuse; a constitutional amendment to deny equal protection to gay and lesbian citizens; and the worst voter-suppression bill America has seen in over half a century. These were the ill-conceived and barely considered policy decisions about which we sought to instruct our legislators, as our state constitution guarantees every citizen the right to do. Rather than meet with us, Tillis and his colleagues had over a thousand of us, their constituents, illegally arrested, until a judge in Wake County Superior Court finally ruled in favor of our defense, nearly a year and a half after the first arrests. By that time, Thom Tillis was on his way to represent North Carolina in the US Senate.

As much as our Forward Together Moral Movement has sought to expose ALECs state-based strategy to remake America, we have also tried to make clear to justice-loving people that any attempt to reconstruct America in these perilous times must likewise look to the states. And among these United States, our history of inequality and injustice is nowhere more rigidly defined and painfully exposed than in the Southern states. But precisely for this reason, the South is also a deep well of resistance, struggle, and freedom movements. If we want to save the soul of America, we must look not only to states generally but to Southern states in particular. North Carolina is the one I know best.

Finally, I must say from the beginning that although my involvement in this movement is political, it is not simply that. As Ive already noted, I am a preacher. In some progressive circles this makes me immediately suspect. Not long ago I was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, with one of Americas most prominent atheists. Wearing my clerical collar, I realized that I stood out among his guests. So I decided to announce to Bill that I, too, am an atheist. He seemed taken aback, so I explained that if we were talking about the God who hates poor people, immigrants, and gay folks, I dont believe in that God either. Sometimes it helps to clarify our language.

As much as the human being is a political animal, I know that each of us is also a spiritual being. We have learned in our work in North Carolina that, whatever our religious traditions, we cannot come together to work for the common good by ignoring our deepest values. Rather, we grow stronger in our work together as we embrace those things we most deeply believe, standing together where our values unite us and learning to respect one another where our traditions differ. We cannot let narrow religious forces highjack our moral vocabulary, forces who speak loudly about things God says little about while saying so little about issues that are at the heart of all our religious traditions: truth, justice, love, and mercy. The movement we have witnessedthe movement we most needis a moral movement.

I dont say this just because I believe it (though I do). I say it because Ive seen it. Right here in North Carolina. Right here at home.

Ultimately, this is about how a moral movement can come home to where you are, exposing 21st-century injustice and giving us a shared vision for a Third Reconstruction to save the soul of America. Anything less, I fear, will mean the self-destruction of our nation. Amidst the din of those who incite old fears by saying it is time to take back America, a moral movement has arisen to insist that we must move forward together, not one step back. The Reconstruction we are engaged in aims for nothing less than liberty and justice for all.

Excerpted from The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear by the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Beacon Press, 2016). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is co-author ofThe Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics and the Rise of a New Justice Movement, published in January 2016 by Beacon Press. In January 2016 he also began filing regular dispatches from the southern movement for racial justice for The Nation, resuming a role Martin Luther King Jr. once filled for the magazine. Rev. Barber II is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement, president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of the Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro.He is also president ofRepairers of the Breach. In 2015, he was the recipient of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.

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Rev. William Barber: We Need a Third Reconstruction to Recover From American Slavery and Racism - AlterNet

It has become commonplace to see street art and graffiti being offered at auction, with works by artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy and Futura regularly selling for large sums, and a poster design by one street artist, Shepard Fairey, famously helping to win an American election. In the 1970s and early 1980s, however, things were very different, and it was only the forward thinking of a small number of dealers and collectors that led to the genre being accepted into the Western canon.

Yaki Kornblit is a Dutch gallerist credited with popularising New York graffiti in Europe, and launching the careers of many pioneering young artists in the process. Kornblit was not the first dealer to put on a New York graffiti show in Europe Claudio Bruni has that accolade, with a group show at Romes Galleria La Medusa in 1979 but before Kornblit, no one had presented the street artists as individuals.

Yaki would buy the work in New York, and then present the art in a solo exhibition. He was one of the first to do that, explains Daze, a Bronx-based artist brought to Amsterdam by Kornblit.

These works on paper from the collection of Martin Visser, many of which were acquired through Kornblits eponymous gallery, represent the remarkable story of graffitis journey from underground art form to major art movement.

Graffiti writers and visionary collectors, such as Martin Visser, faced an uphill battle to gain recognition. Some didnt care what the art world thought, others did, but all were driven by a collective sense of self-belief. This confidence is powerfully articulated in Graffiti, a 1980 work on paper by Crash; offered in the FIRST OPEN: Onlinesale, it contains the words: Graffiti is a true art the only crime is people not recognizing graffiti as a true art!

Before Kornblits intervention, the Amsterdam graffiti scene in the early 1980s produced work that was a world removed from the large, colourful and labour-intensive pieces produced by NYC graffiti artists. Street art in the Dutch capital at that time was primarily produced by punk rockers painting band names on the city walls using typography popularised in the UK punk scene.

In the pre-internet era, the arrival of New York artists in Amsterdam proved to be a pivotal moment, and one that had a profound effect on Dutch artists of the period. They painted and hung out together, Kornblit recalls. This gave the Amsterdam writers a head start. Amsterdam became the capital of style writing [a technique which uses letters in a highly stylised way, often unreadable to the untrained eye] between 1983 and 1986, which in turn influenced graffiti artists from all over Europe.

I could see why graffiti was embraced there, says Daze. As a society, the Netherlands was very liberal-minded. At the same time it could be permissive and look at the work as art without the various social and economic connotations that were very often attached to it.

Polaroids of works from the exhibitions staged by Yaki Kornblit. Photo courtesy Aileen Middel

Yaki Kornblit discovered graffiti by accident. Looking for any art that excited him, he was first drawn to a work that hung on the wall of the apartment he was renting from a friend in New York. It was by Futura 2000, now known as Futura, a superstar of the graffiti world who was famous for his abstract style.

Kornblits friend offered to introduce them. Something happened with me at that moment, says the gallerist. I met Futura and it was like a revelation. His excitement for this new art from the street grew. The more I saw, he says, the more enthusiastic I became.

His enthusiasm was not universally shared, however. There was no fine art expectation whatsoever, from anyone, he recalls. Daze concurs: No one had an idea that anyone outside those involved in the culture would have any interest in it at all.

Kornblit was undeterred. Determined to showcase the artists fuelling his new passion, he selected ten New York graffitists Bill Blast, Blade, Crash, Daze, Dondi, Futura 2000, Quik, Rammellzee, SEEN and Zephyr he wanted to exhibit in Amsterdam, one month after another, and paid for their tickets, accommodation and expenses. The first solo show, in January 1983, exhibited works by Dondi (1961-1998). The exhibition sold out as did the following nine.

Attitudes moved slower than the art on show. The opinion about graffiti in the art world at the time was that graffiti was not art, says Kornblit. There were only a couple of collectors in the Netherlands who believed in the graffiti art I was showing. One of them was Martin Visser, who revelled in graffitis outsider status, stating, Nearly everyone who is anyone at all is against the graffiti artists. And that is the way it should be!

Gradually, however, graffiti began to find mainstream acceptance. William Bill Blast Cordero, another of the artists given a solo show at Galerie Yaki Kornblit, predicted as much in his 1983 work on paper New York, which shows a subsection of the city from the subway to the sky. I was trying to express how this art form started underground, he explains. It starts from a real lower level, and it comes up through the city streets and comes up towards the sky.

Bill Blast (b. 1964), New York, 1983. Signed Blast (upper centre); dated 83 (lower left). Marker, watercolour, pen and pencil on four attached sheets of paper. 48x 9in (123 x 25 cm). Estimate: $1,000-1,500. This work is offered in FIRST OPEN: Online, 4-13 April

This uplifting and energetic piece was a reflection of the zeitgeist in New York. The people vibed with it, they were inspired by it, Blast remembers of the enthusiasm of the growing community around graffiti. The neighbourhood would bring lights, they would bring sandwiches. They would provide ladders.

The colourful anecdotes from this formative period include Bill Blast painting the mural in the music video for Malcolm McLarens seminal hip-hop single Buffalo Gals, which featured the world-famous breakdancers The Rock Steady Crew.

InThe City Below, The City Above(below) from 1982, Daze showcases the different elements of his work. The background of the piece is painted in spray paint, which is what my medium was for doing public works, he explains. The addition of the photograph shows that the drawing is kind of a study for the work that became public. I wanted to show the process in that piece.

Dazes second piece in the sale, Untitled(below), is, he says, more of a traditional piece, in that what you see is basically what I would have painted on the side of a subway car or on a wall somewhere. There arent many works like that of mine around.

Daze (b. 1962), Untitled, 1982. Signed and dated Chris Daze Ellis 82.II.two (lower right). Marker, felt-tip pen and pen on paper.10x 14 in (26.5 x 35.5 cm). Estimate: $800-1,200. This work is offered in FIRST OPEN: Online, 4-13 April

Remarkably, the first work Daze ever sold was a collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Keith Haring worked at The Mudd Club in Tribeca and he invited Fab 5 Freddy and Futura to curate an exhibition called Beyond Words [1981], he says. I sold my first work through that exhibition a collaboration between myself and Jean-Michel, a very impromptu one. I wrote my name in different stylisations; he wrote Flat 6 on it and then did a crown. The piece was bought by the art critic Rene Ricard, who went on to write The Radiant Child, a famous 1981 ARTFORUM essay on Basquiat.

Another artist featured in the FIRST OPEN: Online sale is the legendary Rammellzee, who was an art theoretician as well as a graffiti writer. His works were based on his theory of Gothic Futurism, which he described as a battle between letters and their symbolism and the standardisations enforced by the rules of thealphabet. Kornblit remembers him as one of the most focused members of the group while the others celebrated their sold-out shows, Rammellzee never went out, except for a good T-bone steak dinner.

The collection of Martin Visser, offered in the FIRST OPEN: Online sale, is a time capsule of one of the most exciting movements in contemporary art. Works from the period are extremely rare, as graffiti art is inherently ephemeral municipal walls, subway cars and other canvases are regularly cleaned, which makes these works on paper even more collectible.

Additional interview material provided by Aileen Middel, aka graffiti artist Mick La Rock

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'The only crime is people not recognizing graffiti as a true art!' - Christie's

Posted by Samantha Sanders on Mar 29, 2017 | 0 comments

Overview: Years of conflict between a communal Black Liberation group, its neighbors, and the city of Philadelphia came to a head with disastrous consequences in 1985. Zeitgeist Films; 2013; NR; 88 minutes.

Long-Simmering Conflict: America in the 1970s was a particularly movement-driven time, with the idealism of the 60s giving way to a new righteous pragmatism. Determinism was out, and self-determination, often in the form of conscious and strategic organizing, was in. It was in this context that MOVE was was founded in 1972. Led by the charismatic leader John Africa, MOVE was a separatist collective of largely Black young people who lived communally and espoused a hard-to-categorize philosophy emphasizing a return to the natural world. Their headquarters was a home in West Philadelphia, in a dense, blue-collar neighborhood. Initially their lifestyle was largely accepted in the neighborhood as harmless, if eccentric, but that soon changed. Conflicts with neighbors led to increasingly volatile relations with the police that escalated first to a 1978 shootout, and ultimately, to an armed standoff on May 13, 1985. The way the police chose to end the conflict was swift, forceful, and highly controversial. The events of that day and the controversy that followed form the narrative backbone of this meticulous and often riveting documentary.

Sifting Through the Rubble: Let the Fire Burn tells its story simply, without narration and with only a few title cards to orient you. Filmmaker Jason Osder uses a mixture of raw footage, interviews, and testimony, much of it pulled directly from the televised public hearings of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission, created by the citys mayor in an attempt to make sense of the bombing. For those civic-minded or bored enough to have watched city council meetings on public access, these proceedings might at first seem empty procedural theater, toothless and ineffectual. But with such an emotionally charged event, instead the film captures moments of raw anger, bold truth-telling and surprisingly vulnerable exchanges between witnesses and those on the commission to which theyre reporting. Osders editing decisions and narrative framing choices are masterful, ensuring the tension is palpable on film, even more than 30 years later. Your only respite is an occasional shift to news footage but even those, so often featuring children, offer few moments to breathe deeply. Even if you dont know the story beforehand, the title is enough to let you guess how this will end.

At the end of the documentary, we learn the more about the very real consequences the neighborhood, police, and MOVE members dealt with in the months and years after May 13. While not played for sensationalism, there are several gasp-worthy reveals. This is a film that sheds light on an event largely forgotten outside of Philadelphia, and while it doesnt offer answers it brings up critical questions. May marks an anniversary of the event, the 32nd. Not a landmark date by any means, but still significant when the scars havent yet fully healed. Let the Fire Burnwith all the wounds it re-opens and its grime that shows in the lightproves that sometimes the closest we can come to a palliative remedy to pain is an honest reckoning. In this way, it does its duty honorably.

Overall: The availability of extensive archival footage is a treasure for the documentary filmmaker, but while its exclusive use here is intentional and respectful, the viewer might yearn for moremore context, more texture, more to hold on to. However, Let the Fire Burn is a brave and clear-eyed, if sometimes dry, look at the events that took the lives of 11 people (five of them children), left more than 250 people homeless and permanently altered the emotional and physical landscape of Philadelphia.

Grade: B

Let the Fire Burn is available for streaming rental on iTunes and Amazon Video

Featured Image: Zeitgeist Films

Samantha Sanders lives and writes in Brooklyn, but don't hold that against her.

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Discovery Process Review: Let the Fire Burn is a Soberand SoberingLook at a Nearly Forgotten Chapter - Audiences Everywhere (press release) (blog)

Every time I swipe my debit card to buy something that I dont necessarily need, but that I want, I cant help but feel guilty. I feel worse when I realize that the four people standing behind me in line at the cashier desk are also guilty of the same behaviour.

So, in 2017, lets talk about Vancouvers battle with capitalism. The city is trying to establish an economy based on mutual utilization and benefit the movement is slow, but growing. Vancouver, a growing hub of multiculturalism, has already started to challenge the zeitgeist of ownership and consumption methods by nurturing spaces that encourage the sharing of goods and services.

Sharing through donation, public goods, lending and borrowing, co-owning, and bartering are manifestations of this earthly trend. Such manifestations are, in fact, occurring in our metropolis as you read between neighbours, families, and other community organizations.

The fundamentals of sharing

The origin of the word sharing comes from the Old English scearu, which means division, or to break into parts. Fast-forward, and today this word can be used in multiple contexts with varying connotations. For a lot of us, sharing is more about togetherness than division. From sharing tangible goods to ideas and spaces, sharing economies maximize on collective interest and benefit, rather than self-interest and profit.

Secondary school was a time when we never questioned the demand meets supply and a market is created theory of economics, but as we go through university, more and more questions arise about the gaps in capitalist theory.

Now, some are abandoning the capitalist thought entirely, but every new initiative is accompanied by multiple raised eyebrows. For many traditional businesses, the sharing economy model appears as an epidemic that is taking away business opportunities. On the other hand, a lot of debate exists on the nature and social impact of sharing.

A sharing economy model is used differently by every organization, which makes it difficult to appreciate its cause. Airbnb is a multi-billion dollar company that quickly rose to success by connecting short-term renters to house-owners.

However, Airbnb has been recently tagged as an anti-sharing model due to its exclusivity, its profit margins, and its lack of social impact. Recently, it was announced that Uber and other ride-share services were coming to Vancouver its clear that Vancouver is interested in growing the sharing is caring network.

Then, what really defines sharing? What constitutes a sharing economy? What type of sharing organizations contrast existing business models? Despite being heavily contested, there are a couple things that could be agreed on: a sharing economy provides goods/services that can be utilized by many people either economically or free of cost.

Property, services, transportation, and material objects are just a few examples of parts of everyday life undergoing mass transformation.

Understanding sharing

Chris Diplock, co-founder of the Vancouver Tool Library Co-operative, breaks down what a sharing economy means for Vancouverites. His perspective on an ideal sharing economy model consists of, briefly put, financial stability, social impact/welfare, community integration, and environmental sustainability.

Vancouver Tool Library is a co-operative where tools can be borrowed for barely any cost so that locals do not have to buy a tool they would use once in a blue moon. In this process, people are brought together, consumption is reduced, and its easy on the wallet.

Looking to the success of Vancouver Tool Library, a co-operative library that lends tools acquired through donations, Diplock has well-informed arguments to make for sharing economies.

When asked whether the sharing economy is an alternative to capitalism, Diplocks response confused me at first: It depends on our definition of these models and the structures in place, he explained. If we have large corporate enterprises such as Airbnb maximizing on rentals, nothing is going to change.

Im not saying that these corporations havent had any positive impact. But if we were to evaluate these models based on social impact, they could do a lot better, he elaborated.

Diplock used the word social impact frequently during our discussion. But social impact is one of those nebulous terms that is often misinterpreted. It is important that we gauge the purpose of an enterprise before we include it in a sharing economy. We have to understand how to measure the social impact of an organization, he continued.

For example, a co-operative model, like the Vancouver Tool Library, exists within a capitalistic economy. However, they are financially, socially, and environmentally sustainable, Diplock added. Large corporations cannot achieve these on their own. They could provide a large platform, however, to co-operatives to realize and actualize the true social benefit.

Non-monetary, peer-to-peer lending is an appealing aspect of [a] sharing economy and acts as a driving force against capitalism, said Diplock. People dont engage in a sharing economy to make money, but rather to maximize the use of goods and to connect with people.

After the Vancouver Tool Library, we wanted to develop a model that can share and benefit the community, he said, referring to Thingery, a micro-lending library. Thingery embodies the epitome of sharing wherein neighbours can donate excess goods that could be used by others. The truth is, people want to share within proximity and want to share many different things; they are only waiting for an opportunity.

Vancouvers very own

For every person in search of a sharing model, there is an initiative that exists in Vancouver to meet their shareable demands. Vancouver has its very own spectrum of sharing economy models that range on a scale of low-end to high-end goods and services.

Outlets such as the Vancouver Tool Library and Modo, a car co-op, have been taxing on commercial orientation of goods and services. An exciting aspect of this budding sharing economy within Vancouver is that it resolves the issue of increasing living costs. Fatter wallets make everyone happy but, when delving a little deeper, sharing economies contribute to sustainable economies. Sustainability is directly opposed to capitalism, and hence, sharing economy models become our new best friends.

The research report that Diplock collaborated and found Thingery on, The Sharing Project, thrives on the social capital that can be accumulated through sharing. The Hive in Vancouver is an exemplary organization that works towards harbouring social impact of sharing by providing free work-spaces or hosting events to build a sense of community.

Simbi is another model which is an online platform to trade services, and one that highlights Diplocks statement of a non-monetary model. One-of-a-kind, every individual can set Simbi prices on their service and can receive credits when their service is used. These credits could be, in turn, used to receive services from someone else.

There are so many other companies pushing for and thriving in this new zeitgeist. Sustainable fashion is being achieved by Flaunt Fashion Library in Vancouver, an online platform that lends clothing. Sustainable environment is being rooted for through the Vancouver Bike Share with approximately 1,500 bicycles stationed at 150 posts around downtown for cleaner transportation. Garage is another organisation that attempts to build communal spaces by enabling owners to rent out private parking spaces to other drivers. The sharing isnt about to stop or slow down.

Shortcomings of sharing?

Alienation by and subordination to machines have become underpinning pillars of our society. But sharing economies tear down these walls between us. Neighbours that never interacted before could possibly become peers in such an environment.

We have communities that believe in the virtues of sharing. The only shortcoming might be that it isnt pushed forward effectively. The Sharing Projects report indicates that different understandings of what sharing means can impede the growth of the economy and a cohesive network between organizations, an awareness among people that there are alternatives to ownership would boom the economy. Vancouver has an affinity for sharing and it needs to be channelled productively.

Is it possible, then, if promoted effectively, that this economic concept could possibly overtake capitalism? I think so. The key viewpoint is to look at capitalistic notions as being artificial and recognizing that they are subject to change with time.

We share stories; we share our happiness and sorrows. Perhaps now we could learn to introduce practices of sharing things that liberate ideas of private ownership. What makes sharing economies so appealing is their applicability through economic textbook theory. Comparative advantage is when two agents trade certain goods voluntarily at a gain as each of them are specialized to produce that specific good. Sharing economies behave similarly while bridging connections whats not to love?

Interested in sharing goods and services? Check out the following groups:

Vancouver Bike Share

A recent addition to Vancouver, Vancouver Bike Share has 1,500 bicycles strategically distributed at 150 stations in and around downtown. Whether youre commuting, touring the city, changing up your routine, or just wanting a fun activity to do with your friends, you can now borrow a bike owned by everyone for a day.

Flaunt Fashion Library

Wanting to make fashion affordable, sustainable, and accessible, this online clothing sharing initiative is helping locals look fly.

ShareShed

Renting outdoor gear to others has never been so easy. Profit from the gear you own or rent other gear you need for trips.

HitchPlanet

What started as a BC ride-share organization is now connecting people across North America.

Garage

Help the city go green by renting out your parking space and maximizing space.

See the rest here:

When it comes to the economy, sharing is caring - The Peak

TOKYO, Japan Masataka Hattori knows that his taste captures the zeitgeist like no other and he isnt afraid to say so. To put it bluntly, I only trust myself. As long as I think its good, it must be good, says the unlikely tough guy whose sensual styling was a highlight of Tokyos Amazon Fashion Week, which wrapped up this weekend.

In a rare display of offbeat elegance, Hattori styled the show for designer Shinpei Yamagishis label Bed J.W. Ford. At a time when Tokyos runways are awash with brands that reflect a sensible aesthetic in contrast to the increasingly vibrant designs on show in competing Asian cities like Seoul and Jakarta it is left to fastidious stylists like Hattori to keep Japanese fashion eye-catching and internationally relevant.

According to Daisuke Gemma, the creative director of Sacai, Japanese stylists are particularly good at knowing how to coordinate because the bar is set high by the public. The way they mix clothes is unique [because] in Japan even normal people on the street have interesting style [so] our stylists are influenced by them, he says.

Yet while Japanese style is famous the world over, Japanese stylists are a relatively enigmatic bunch to the outside world. Few have enjoyed the international spotlight like their designer compatriots. It is curious because, collectively, they are known for their unparalleled commitment to the craft.

Perhaps more importantly, some of Japans stylists have propelled important historical style movements forward. And others continue to push boundaries in ways that would surprise and delight the international fashion industry, if more were known about them.

Styling by Kumiko Iijima, December 2016 | Source: So-en magazine

From Bowie to Cutie

Yacco Takahashi is regarded as one of Japan's first professional stylists, and is best known for her work with designer Kansai Yamamoto; together they created David Bowies exotic androgyne Ziggy Stardust in the mid-1970s.

Sonya Park, the Korean-born, Japan-based founder of the brand Arts & Science, is often credited alongside leading menswear stylists like Tomoki Sukezane for putting Japanese style on the map in its 90s heyday, when brands like Nobuhiko Kitamuras Hysteric Glamour were all the rage.

While the mainstream Japanese fashion industry didnt rate Park's style at first, before long her aesthetic in magazines like Cutie had captured the burgeoning energy of the Japanese street scene, and today she is widely regarded as the stylist responsible for the Western perception of kawaii fashion.

Kyoko Fushimi, a stylist who curates The Happening, a collective of avant-garde designers who have gained attention for putting on guerrilla shows on Shibuya streets, takes inspiration from Parks approach which celebrated the native talent around her.

Sonya Park worked with the Japanese photographer Takashi Honma, and started using more Japanese models. She did away with international brands and promoted Japanese clothes by Japanese designers, and so created street style [in Japan]."

Nowhere has Japanese fashion flashed between such extremities as it has in Tokyos Harajuku district where the over-styled subcultures that gave the area its reputation as a fashion mecca are often difficult to disentangle.

They have this innate sense of fashion thats so different. In the West its very sexy and more about the body, whereas here its not.

From the Ura-Hara streetwear scene to Decora devotees, it was up to Japanese stylists to make sense of it all. Minako Milly Yoshihara, for example, is the stylist responsible for much of the Visual Kei aesthetic. By styling influential '90sVisual Kei bands like Pierrot, a subculture centred around pop-goth androgynous style was born.

Kumiko Iijima, a former Vogue Japan employee, is well-known in Tokyo as the stylist behind singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's hyperbolic Harajuku saccharine look. Iijima's protge, Miki Aizawa, has inherited that rainbow spirit, and is a successful stylist in her own right, working closely with Punyus, the cheerful marshmallow girl label created by the plus-size model and comedian Naomi Watanabe.

Iijima and Aizawa use lots of props with the clothes in their shoots, promoting that pop shojo [young girl] style, which was perfect for when Kyary came on the scene [in Harajuku], says Misha Janette, the founder of bilingual fashion blog Tokyo Fashion Diaries.

Styling by Masataka Hattori | Source: Eyes Cream magazine

[They] work with what is known as So-En style [named after the Bunka Fashion College magazine], which means very layered styling, and focuses on big volume. They have this innate sense of fashion thats so different. In the West its very sexy and more about the body, whereas here its notYou might have young girls looking like grandmas. Its very much a fairytale that sells a story.

Tension between creativity and protocol

Surprisingly, the colourful aesthetic of this type of Japanese styling is often at odds with Japans relatively conservative mainstream fashion industry. A common frustration among Japans creatives is the many stipulations and limitations that high-end brands put in place. While this happens in most other markets, it can be particularly strict in Japan.

As a stylist, I believe my job is create images by mixing high-brands, street, vintage and everything [but] Japanese magazines have strict policies about this. Most high-end brands require you to shoot a total look, and youre not allowed to mix with other brands, says Shun Watanabe, the fashion director of Nicola Formichettis Japan-based contemporary publication Free magazine, and stylist to model Kiko Mizuhara.

I think it's a shame to have those restrictions [and] I find it stressful. Young people are not interested in pages full of total looks from high-end brands. It holds no attraction to them either, because they cant buy a total high-end look anyway, adds Watanabe, citing his love of layering, genderless looks and homegrown brands like Toga, G.V.G.V. and Kapital.

Some who have found Japanese protocol creatively stifling have simply gone elsewhere. Nobuko Tannawa, senior fashion editor at TANK magazine, moved to London in her 20s: The reason I wanted to start fashion in London was that Japanese magazines are mostly very commercial. European magazines like The Face and i-D felt like they had a cultural message, a form of expression, whereas most Japanese magazines often looked like catalogues for the materialistic consumer.

Takashi Kumagai, one of Japans leading photographers as well as a top stylist, branding expert, and fashion designer, agrees: The Japanese stylists who prefer to work more freely with their work go abroad, he says, naming stylists Kanako B. Koga and Mika Mizutani, who have both carved out successful careers in Paris. Other exports include Yuji Takenaka, a former fashion editor for Commons & Sense who has spent the last decade working in New York with brands like Robert Geller.

I admit that I like the Japanese stylists who work on a global level, says Kumagai. They make the world their stage. But all Japanese stylists are unique in that they have a deep understanding of the history and background of clothing. They are, in a way, artisans. Styling in Japan might best be understood as descriptive in the way that it pays closer attention to the clothing, rather than focusing on the final photograph.

Styling by Shun Watanabe | Source: Nylon Japan

Being meticulous is a quality that many Japanese stylists have become famous for. Take Kanako B. Koga who has been helping to create Uniqlo U advertisements for the past two seasons, lending her hallmark sensuality to the commercial brands identity.

One of the shots in the Spring/Summer 2017 campaign is of a female model standingon a dirt track. They are soft images, easy to look at, but it took Koga three days to perfect: I worked closely with the art director to study the movement of the body, to find out how we can make a nice composition of colours with 12 images, she says.

Leading publications such as Vogue Japan and Ginza are generally full to the brim with practical trend-led fashion advice, and Japans stylists are expected to achieve painstaking levels of research and detail.

Mitsuko Watanabe, the editor-in-chief of Vogue Japan, explains: Because the amount of information in Japanese fashion magazines is so extensive, its the job of our stylists to keep the magazine up-to-date by applying current trends [in their styling] and matching the intricate developments of fashion to the current period, to visually convey [these trends] to our readers.

Regarding the stylists that work with Vogue Japan, Ms. Watanabe lists Rena Semba, an experienced stylist who understands the global movements of high fashion, Michiko Kitamura, a veteran fashion editor who is involved in styling for cinema and costumes her deep knowledge of clothing enables her to do styling in a contemporary and avant-garde way, and Tsuyoshi Noguchi.

Among Japanese stylists, Noguchi is one of the most famous. He does both mens and ladies styling, and takes care of a large number of Japanese celebrities. [In fact], there are many Japanese celebrities who agree to photoshoots upon the understanding that Noguchi will be doing the styling, Ms. Watanabe adds.

Jey Perie, the creative director of Kinfolk, as well as brand development manager for Japanese menswear label Bedwin & The Heartbreakers, spent five years working with Japanese stylists in the mid-2000s.

Japanese stylists are unique in that they have a deep understanding of the history and background of clothing. They are, in a way, artisans.

Like Ms. Watanabe, Perie also mentions Tsuyoshi Noguchi as a powerful creative force: "I remember he played a big part of the [cult streetwear label] Wacko Maria collaboration with [womenswear retailer] Baroque. He made the deal, styled it, and brought his creative direction [to the project]. It was interesting to see how a stylist could be involved in the whole business and the creativity also."

Great respect for experience

Deep knowledge and experience are often more valuable than hype in Japan. Trendsetting magazines dont desperately search for the next hot stylists name like some do in other markets. Kazumi Asamura Hayashi, who was called in to oversee the recently-launched i-D Japan as its editorial director, says that the magazine initially tried working with up-and-comers, but quickly found out that it was more mature stylists who did the best jobs.

Styling by Yoko Irie for Japanese retailer Beams | Source: Courtesy

We started off working with not-so-experienced stylists. They were good and had a lot of energy, but it wasn't quite enough. Hayashi says Mana Yamamoto, Chiharu Dodo, and Keiko Hitotsuyama are names to know. Those three have stayability and consistency, a knowledge of fashion. They know what publications are looking for.

However, a few talented young names are rising to the top. In addition to established figures like Tetsuro Nagase [also known as Giant], one name to watch is Lambda Takahashi,according to Sacais Gemma.

They very much have their own style. Especially Lambda, he mixes streetwear brands like Supreme with Huntsman [from Savile Row]. I think that's a really Japanese thing to do, says Gemma. It helps that the stylists here are more connected with music and hang out in other scenes outside of fashion. It's hard to tell what makes Japanese styling different from other countries, but it is somehow. It's like a feeling, he adds.

Yoko Irie, who has multiple Nylon Japan covers under her belt, works to create scintillating shoots for the magazine and captures the punchy attitude of Japan's young female generation as well as vivid campaign imagery for iconic Japanese retailer Beams. Risa "Ribbon" Kato a homegrown stylist and another regular Nylon contributor, combines coveted western brands like Vetements with vintage sportswear, as well as gritty Tokyo labels like M.Y.O.B.

Masataka Hattoris career is taking off too. Besides runway work, Hattori is also working with Japanese magazines like Pen, Brutus, and New Order. On top of that, he styles J-pop bands like Radwimps and Exile.

Akiko Shinoda, director of international affairs for Tokyos Amazon Fashion Week, attributes Hattoris recent success to his straightforward attitude: Hattori has selected what he wants to do, and he only works with what he likes, she says.

While Shinoda is surprised that some of Japans most talented stylists havent yet found fame beyond their home market, she isnt overly concerned.

Whether theyre internationally well-known or not, the quality of work is still there, she says. And todays young stylists are doing an amazing job for Japanese fashion. That's what matters most.

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Tokyo Dandy, Fashions Fixers in Japan

Unmasking East Asias Beauty Ideals

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Who's Driving Japanese Style? - The Business of Fashion

See-now-buybye? And then there were four. Of the five major brands that have beat the drum for see-now-buy-now within the last 12 to 18 months, one has drastically shifted course from the strategy in the last two weeks, specifically Tom Ford. That leaves Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Burberry and Rebecca Minkoff as the main poster children for the movement. The industry at large was never wholly sold on the idea of see-now-buy-now, so how does Fords defection bode for it? It depends on whom you ask. Ford alone might not be enough to scare off the power brands that have embraced the concept, but there is a growing sense that the momentum that drove see-now-buy-now into the zeitgeist for the September 2016 shows has dwindled. For now, all of the remaining designers who have implemented see-now-buy-now fashion shows are planning to go forward with them, at least in the short term. That doesnt mean there isnt some degree of wait-and-see going on. Right now, its doing well, said Ralph Lauren, who radically shifted his model beginning inSeptember, staging a see-now-buy-now collection show even after he had already shown and produced a fall 2016 collection the previous February. Lauren noted that opting for immediacy drew

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Instant Fashion: Doubts Grow - ForexTV.com

Hundreds of thousands of people marched in cities around the world on 21 January 2017 to protest threats against womens rights. Photograph: Barry Lewis/Getty

Protesting is back. People have woken up to the undeniable fact that power ultimately lies with them. We cant change whats already happened, but we can organise to ensure that the huge progress we have made tackling some of the worlds greatest problems is not lost.

We are returning to the traditional and most effective form of protest marching, with placards, bull-horns and a collective, defiant voice.

The fragmenting of political systems across the globe has worrying implications for democracy. But it has also sparked greater determination. A visible, protesting public is one of the most effective ways to hold political leaders to account and push the agendas that matter.

In Romania, its estimated that 500,000 people recently took to the streets to protest about corruption. A friend, Bea, who took part in the protests, described them as driven by anger, but that people were left with a sense of community, hope and solidarity. Those protesting included families, professionals, creatives, journalists, students and more. They exchanged tea, snacks and water. Reminiscent of the days of Jubilee 2000, a human chain of 30,000 people was formed around parliament.

Activism must become as much a part of our civic duty as paying council tax or dividing rubbish for recycling

Bea believes the protests have produced a mindshift, people now understanding that we can only drive positive change together. That in itself is an incredible outcome.

Anyone who has been on a protest can attest to the exhilaration that people power provides. This renewed protest zeitgeist offers a golden opportunity to reawaken those causes. But how can this new found vigour have the most impact?

It would intensify impact if we link protests to the UNs sustainable development goals, aiming to make the world a safer, fairer, cleaner and more peaceful place by 2030. In 2015, 193 countries signed up to the SDGs and its up to the people to hold their governments to account to achieve them.

Reminding our leaders of their duties requires everyone who cares to take action. With renewed purpose, activism must become as much a part of our civic duty as paying council tax or dividing rubbish up for recycling.

We at One campaign are marching all the way to 2030, armed with pens and placards, bull horns, biros and banners. We urge you join us to capitalise on the re-energised protest movement and join fellow global citizens to push for the SDGs to do as they are intended make us all safer and the world a fairer place.

Theres a saying: if you want to build a ship, dont ask people to collect wood and assign them tasks, but teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Its the same same principle for campaigning if people care about an issue, they will take action.

Saira OMallie is the UK director (interim) at One Campaign.

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter. Join the conversation with the hashtag #Dev2030.

Link:

Activism is mainstream again how can protests create change? - The Guardian