Culture exists beyond time and space. It’s what happens when humans come together to explore and express life in all of its pain, pleasure and duty.  Culture becomes “urban” or otherwise labeled, once it gets documented and enters the world of language, description and categorization.  In that vein, Martha Cooper is one of the first artists to contribute to the formal category of “urban” through her collective documentation of the early stages of hip hop culture.  Widely known for the seminal work, SUBWAY ART (with Henry Chalfant), published in 1984, and a series of other books including Hip Hop Files (2004) and We Be* Girlz (2005), Cooper serendipitiously found her artistic heart walking and photographing the late 1970’s streets of the Lower East Side in New York City.  Eventually she met old school graffiti writers HE 3 and DONDI and the rest is history.

(Image: Martha Cooper, Untitled, (2008), from We B* Girlz Summit in Berlin, Germany)

In 2008, Cooper ventured out of publishing, briefly, and launched the first annual We B* Girlz summit in Berlin, Germany, which took place throughout the month of August.  Women and young ladies from all over the world convened to participate in, contribute to and document women in hip hop culture, through a series of events that included MCs, breakers, djs, graffiti artists and educational activities.  During the summit, female graf writers, from South America and South Africa to Germany, Japan and New York City, joined forces to create a 100ft wall for the ARCHIV community youth center. A wall that will live on as a visible historical marker of the 2008 worldwide presence of women in graffiti. (VIEW THE WALL!)

(Image: Martha Cooper, Untitled, (2008), from We B* Girlz Summit in Berlin, Germany)

Still on tap for 2008 is the release of Cooper’s latest book, Tag Town, on the evolution of New York graffiti writing from 1963 - 1982.  Graffiti has grown to become the world’s largest art movement and the progenitor of the Street Art movement.  At the foundation of the art form lies, what on first glance appears to be simple, the tag.  As is the case with any artist, the development of consistency and originality constitute the early stages of artistic development.  In the world of graffiti, the development of a universally recognizable tag is the first qualifier for genuine participation in what appears to be a free spirited public art form.  However, similar to the art school/gallery/museum system, the rules of the game are only apparent to those who pay attention.

(Image: Martha Cooper, Untitled, (2008), from We B* Girlz Summit in Berlin, Germany)

Tag Town (2008), which hits bookstores and retailers this fall, offers solid insight into the life of tags dating back to the 60’s, the origins of NY style graffiti and rare images of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, all inspired by the tag.

(Images left to right: Martha Cooper, Tag Town (2008), book cover, and Martha Cooper in Sao Paolo, Brazil)

If you’re out there trying to cultivate your chi in the world, TED.com will motivate, captivate and invigorate your third eye with its video archive of some of the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers of the 21st century.

TED’s clearinghouse of 18 minutes talks offers free knowledge and inspiration on some of the world’s most pressing issues, creative ideas and obscure topics.

Including:

Eve Ensler on security and insecurity
Vik Muniz makes art with wire, sugar and chocolate
Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives
Stew says “Black Men Ski”

Enjoy.

(Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Mildendranthema Grandeflorum, 2008, (detail), mixed media installation - steel, fabric, plastic, acrylic paint, glue)

Born in Jamaica and raised in Miami, artist Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow says of her work, “…Ultimately, my work may read as sensual, romanticized and idiosyncratic versions of the feminine perspective. Surprise transformations seem to be a common link in my work from sculptures to videos, to performances. I wish to portray an ambiguous relationship between fantasy and reality while questioning the subject, the object and the interplay between the two.”

Lyn-Kee-Chow’s latest performative project, Mildendranthema Grandeflorum, combines photography, video, sculpture and installation.  The work follows the protagonist, the “flower thief’ as she fiends to satisfy her unquenchable thirst for flowers.  Her journey takes viewers through the landscapes of St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, the White House’s Rose Garden in Washington D.C., and Queens, New York.  Inspired and influenced by Lyn-Kee-Chow’s grandmother, a prize winning horticulturist, Caribbean folklore and legends, and a preference for work that is beyond catergorization, Mildendranthema Grandeflorum is a captivating example of contemporary Caribbean art in a global context. At a moment when politics are looking a lot like Disneyland (i.e. Sarah Palin) and the diversity of the feminine experience is at center stage (i.e. Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton), Lyn-Kee-Chow’s out of the box questioning of the blurred interplay between fantasy and reality, from a feminine perspective, is quite timely. However, her use of flowers and landscape also speaks to a timeless global folklore on the divine feminine’s dominion over the earth, and her/its capacity to create, protect and destroy.

View photographs from the project or watch a video clip.

Mildendranthema Grandeflorum is currently on view at Rush Arts Gallery and Resource Center.

After spending many years involved in the art world it became evident, to YOUNITY founders/artists Toofly and Alice Mizrachi (AM), that urban contemporary women artists were in need of a properly organized forum of exchange amongst themselves, the public at large and female youth artists on the rise. After only one year, the organization is emerging at the forefront of a global movement to establish platforms and infrastructure for urban contemporary women artists.  With an eye on the past, present and future, the collective embraces and includes, among others: legends Martha Cooper and Lady Pink; contemporary scenemakers Toofly and Swoon; urban inspired fine art creators Mizrachi and Meredith McNeal; photographers Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and Abeni Garrett; and, the YOUNITY Youth team.  Worldwide members include passionate graffitistas Faith47 (South Africa), Sofia Maldonado (Puerto Rico), MAD C (Germany) and Shiro (Japan), to name a few.

(Image: Martha Cooper, Alice Mizrachi, 2008, painting at We B* Girlz in Berlin, Germany)

Although the YOUNITY collective spans a diverse array of artforms and styles, one of its goals, “…to allow members to explore their own flavor while retaining their identity within the context of a collective body…”, is anchored by the collective’s roots in urban culture and that culture’s divinely appointed art form – Graffiti.  YOUNITY’s goals also include a commitment to the creation and documentation of a space specific to the expressions of contemporary urban women artists, a space that has largely been represented in popular culture as the domain of men. To this end the collective is involved in producing exhibitions, establishing an online presence and the publishing of a collector’s book series.

(Image: Martha Cooper, Toofly, 2008, painting at We B* Girlz in Berlin, Germany)

YOUNITY’s second annual exhibition, Heart & Soul, will feature the launch of the collective’s first book in its collector’s series, also entitled, Heart & Soul (self-published by YOUNITY Arts).  The book and the exhibition features 60 artists and promises a site specific installation and video projection within the shows indoor/outdoor gallery space. Heart & Soul opens on October 17, 2008 and is on view until November 17, 2008, at Alphabeta in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For details click here.

(Images from left to right: Abeni Garrett, Heart & Soul (2008), book cover, and Abeni Garrett, Younity Collective, Queens, NY, 2008, documentation of a YOUNITY Collective meeting)

A public art project can’t get much bigger or more urgent than one that tackles our personal responsibility for the environment, and thus our collective responsibility for our future. Privileged Tactics II, a project of Sara Heitlinger and Franc Purg, attempts to do just this, and inspire action, by asking the question: When is waste one person’s trash and another’s privilege?  A 2nd place winner of the UNESCO Digital Arts Award in 2007, Privileged Tactics II, is a work-in-progress that focuses on the low-impact and low-tech model of waste disposal by 70,000 Zaballeen (“people that collect rubbish”) who live in Cairo, Egypt.

(Image: Privilege Tactics II, Recycling plastic in Moqattam, Cairo)

What Sara and Franc aim to do is to help the Zaballeen model gain global visibility and notoriety: 1) as an alternative to the replacement of their own system by international waste-disposal companies that are ecologically unsustainable, impractical, and socially irresponsible; and, 2) as a environmentally benevolent tool for waste management in cities across the global south (a.k.a. the developing world/third world).  The Zaballeen model is not only low-tech and low-impact, it’s a life-sustaining economic model for family-run cottage industries built around the collection and recycling of garbage in a city of over 17 million people.

(Image: Privilege Tactics II, Central Cairo)

The Privileged Tactics II project is in the midst of executing and developing a digital-public art project built around Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, technology.  The technology can be used to develop a system of tagging on objects and products, that in this case would be used to track garbage items along their path of creation, use and disposal.  By maintaining tag codes within a computer database, individuals could potentially base their consumer practices on information such as: the energy, pollution and materials consumed and created in an object’s production; how far it and its source materials traveled; where and how the object is disposed of; and, if manufacturers have taken responsibility for a product throughout its life cycle, including its disposal.

(Image: Privilege Tactics II, Plastic in Moqattam, Cairo)

There’s no doubt that the problem that Priviledged Tactics II is attempting to address is monumental.  However, it is truly a much needed contribution to the civilizing of humanity’s collective ego.

Sara and Franc’s first RFID tracked garbage item will be bottled water distributed in the Cairo area.  So far, action/exhibitions on the project are scheduled for Hamburg, Germany, Nottingham, UK and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Check the Privileged Tactics website for updates on Privileged Tactics II, and to find out about Privileged Tactics I, which asked: When is stealing a criminal tactic, and when is it a legal, or privileged tactic?