Last night’s screening, today’s graffiti

another what’s-been-going-down type post, but stay tuned for some more useful ones coming soon on the subject of open source, code politics, and software for arts and artists.

We traipsed down to Stanley and St.Catherine’s last night- to the dark heart of malls, strip clubs, movie theatres, and tourist swarms known as downtown- and crept our way up stairs, above a sushi shop, and into the welcoming oasis of off-beat creativity known as the Actor’s Studio. We had a heart warmin time watching the music videos that had been made last weekend, during the 24hr Music Video Making Contest part of our launch weekend. It was sweet listening to folks’ stories about how they got tangled up in this project, what they tried to do, and how it went. We sat around a big table together afterwards and on the cozy haphazard collection of couches, and it was so cool to hear people from different stylistic backgrounds and age groups and whatnot querying each other on their makin’.

And today, right now I’m heading down to Under Pressure, the annual graffiti convention that takes place around Foufounes Electriques- two stories of good trouble, a bar with indoor half pipe and stages- near the corner of St.Laurent and St.Catherines. Artists have been bombing the walls around this local institution for the past 3 days, and one of them was talking some sweet trash at the indyish show about putting OneNeck’s indyish mohawk dude into his painting. This I gotta see.