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I’ve had a decent run in the media lately, which continues with a fairly lengthy article on me in the October issue of EnRoute magazine. It’s interesting that years ago articles were being written about me bringing street art into the gallery, and now the articles are about me bringing the gallery into the streets. I guess the circle is complete.

It’s a well-written piece which features, both in the magazine and online,  some nice images of Roadsworth and I hanging out while he does some new work (as seen above), and quotes from others and their observations on what I do. (Now I know.) While it’s rewarding to hear a critic comment that “Burnham creates opportunities to tell stories that aren’t being told in mainstream galleries,” I’m also left to ponder how I feel about being referred to as “a kind of anti-curator”; (though “irreverent”, I do like). So while I wrestle with those issues, make up your own mind and read the article here.

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For those who would rather read than watch, an interview with me and an overview of Urban Play is on design.nl, with some great images from the street hits of Mark Jenkins and Windowzoo in addition to the design interventions.

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After waking up a bit groggy from the festivities of the Urban Play opening party last night, I went for a walk around the installation sites to see how they had progressed after their first night in the public realm, and, well, I got a little more than I had expected when looking for Stefan Sagmeister’s piece: it was gone.

I had asked Stefan to create a new work for Urban Play, and his piece – a sentence designed using 250,000 Euro cent coins – blew me and everyone away each day as it progressed. I had expected a certain ebb and flow to take place within the piece, which is of course the point of the entire Urban Play project, but to have the entire thing completely disappear overnight was more than anyone had expected. After recovering from the shock, I did some research and discovered that the story behind its removal was stranger than anything I could have imagined.

It seems that the Amsterdam police were called by a resident of one of the overlooking buildings early Sunday morning to report that someone was “stealing an artwork”. As the story goes, people were pocketing a few of the coins, which was also expected, but things got a bit out of hand when a resident saw this happening. So the police responded, and, in a rather bizarre instance of police efficiency, they proceeded to “secure” the artwork, by sweeping up the entire installation.

The event is superbly captured on the flickr page of anjens, who lives in a flat overlooking the site. 

I will update with more info if and when I get any, but for now, I’d like to give my huge thanks to Sagmeister’s team of Joe Shouldice and Richard The, who along with an amazing team of volunteers worked for many days, literally from dawn to dusk, to install the piece. It was a beautiful addition to the Urban Play project, and will be sorely missed.

For now, let’s remember the way it was on Sagmeister’s page on the project.

UPDATE: So, the police say we can have the coins back. Anyone want to suggest what we do with them now?

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Until I can find the time for some quality updates, you can take a look at my flickr photos of the preparations here.

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Today’s preview of an Urban Play artist brings Poland’s Truthtag into focus.

As is the case with putting together any show, there is an ebb and flow to the list of artists as work progresses, but within the Urban Play roster, Truthtag has always had a core position in the show and its larger concept of DIY Urban Design. 

Based in Wroclaw, Poland, Truthtag works at the intersection of street art, urban intervention and architecture, augmenting existing buildings and urban areas with slight touches of shapes, colours and geometric forms. For Truthtag, the city’s built environment is a plug-and-play system, able to be augmented and enhanced in an ongoing, generative fashion.

Working with what he refers to as “aesthetic break-ins” in cities for eight years, Truthtag was recently invited by the Polish Cultural Institute to bring his brand of architectural remixes to London as part of the London Festival of Architecture – a fitting embrace for a fresh creative working with the physical city.

In addition to his fantastic ability to play with the visual context of the building and jam off of its lines and structure, Truthtag also maintains a gallery entitled “changes” which documents how the organic forces at work in nature and the city take their own hand at augmenting and altering his pieces over time. 

I encourage you to spend some time exploring more of his work here.

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Today’s preview of an Urban Play artist brings Madrid’s SpY into the light.

The thing I’ve always liked about SpY is the width and breadth of his work and media. From anchoring glow sticks into the pavement to turn a traffic arrow into a firing spaceship (above), to simply attaching a Pac-Man shape onto a bus stop to turn it into a video game scene, SpY is particularly skilled at slipping urban easter eggs into the daily adventures of Madrid’s residents.

As the excellent street art writer Javier Abarca says of his work, “SpY’s interventions do not jump out at you, they wait until you come across them. They are not a monologue, but rather the result of a dialogue between the artist and the surroundings, between the passer by and the piece.”

On the more aggressive end of the spectrum, SpY has a great love for physically re-working the road barriers and hoardings around Madrid to spell his collective’s name. The re-design of the object, where its final state is identically functional to that of its origin, yet contains a great deal more significance and personality, is always a favourite urban intervention technique for me.

Again, as Abarca puts it:

“This work is a way of giving us back an object like the hoarding, whose ubiquity had made it virtually invisible, and, with this, it opens another small window on a certain activation of the consciousness, on a slightly sharper perception of the surroundings. Which is necessary in a city that silently contemplates how fountains, benches and, in general, the possibilities of using the public space disappear, among other outrages.”

From the aggressive to the sublime slight hits as below, it’s been a pleasure to work with SpY and get to know him in the process. You can enjoy more of his work at his website here.

And please remember to subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of this series.

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And here’s Josh’s previous work which it was inspired by:

I was emailing back and forth with Josh today, and he said he did an ad with Ogilvy New York, but wasn’t sure where it was going to run, so now he, and everyone, knows. Of course, I’m really happy that this is all legit, because for one, I really like Josh’s work, and also of course because I’m featuring him in my Urban Play project in Amsterdam, so it’s always good to see a worthy artist get some buzz all around.

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dblt (diablito) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

It’s been very satisfying to watch 3D urban intervention come into its own in recent years due to the historically unparalleled roster of people hacking and remixing the physical city with their work. But even out of this immensely talented pool, Esparza has emerged as something of a game-changer. His Urban Parasites – small robotic creatures made from recycled consumer goods which wander, climb, crawl and explore the marginal areas of the city – bring a fresh, unexpected dimension to the city itself and to urban intervention in general.

While his early works required direct human interaction to be animated, he said in a recent conversation that he then began looking at the natural energy sources in the city, using for example “wind or water to help a shapeless sculpture move through the irregular urban geography.” His combined interest in mechanics and a frustration with the lack of an entirely self-sufficient animated object in the early stages on his interventions introduced him to the study of robotics, and “the way they can express or project their ideas, wishes, or fears.”

To hear him talk about the “ideas, wishes or fears” of robotics in the city is only the tip of the iceberg in understanding his emotional and philosophical approach to the inter-relationship of his objects and the city. Inspired by the street vendors (ambulantes) of Mexico City, who get the power for their sidewalk shops from nearby electrical posts, Esparza’s creatures also use the electric cables for power and as a means of movement, such as with diablito (little devil).  And on the ground below, his “ppndr-s” (pepenadores) intervention is Esparza at his best. Abstract, mechanical beetle-like creatures, made of recovered and recycled consumer electronics and discarded materials, pick and forage their way through piles of trash which have gathered in the corners of the city’s streets:

ppndr-s (pepenadores) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

I always find immense satisfaction in work which uses existing, cast-off areas of the city as opportunities for interaction and animation. But more than that, the pleasure lies in seeing the perplexed, confused and eventually amused look on the passers-by as they begin to decipher what is taking place. Which, as Esparza says when thinking about the larger picture of cities in general, is quite substantial. For him, the “micro” interventions of his work, are directly part of what is happening at the “macro” level:

“I believe that the city, as a concentration of human beings, is the epicentre of the most radical transformations in human history – it is also the materialisation of a human project that facilitates the meeting of imagination, knowledge and information. All this happens in an environment for survival, where social and economical relationships and other aspects depend on a continuous negotiation and fight for power with others. The city is a live organism, in which many life forms subsist. I also think technology is an essential part of the city. It creates trends and situations, which are influenced by and subordinated to the environment, but sometimes these make their own rules…”

clgd (colgado) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.

From small mosquitos which fly around the inside of subway cars to the amazement of children, to odd creatures which move towards lamps and lightsources in the corners of buildings, Esparza’s work opens new areas of expression in the ongoing narrative of creative interaction with the city, and I’m honoured to be working with him. A complete overview of his work can be found at his Parasitos Urbanos website.

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Previously, on scottburnham.com…

As I wrote last week, I was an instructor for UQAM’s (University of Quebec in Montreal) Design International Masterclass. My workshop functioned as an creative urban laboratory to explore the objects and areas of the city with a new approach to design and the city: how can shared spaces, objects, visuals and aesthetics be created which invite creative participation by the public?

To say I was pleased with the outcome would be an understatement. For a more visual overview and a play-by-play in French, with a cameo by some of Montreal’s city officials who wanted to get inside the concept a bit more, go here.

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