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Who better to delve into the matter – with his signature satirical and self-deprecating style – than the urban world’s equivalent to MJ, the name on every street art aficionado’s lips from Manila to Bogotá, the notoriously MIA man of political dissent, London’s Banksy. In his »pseudo-documentary » Exit through the gift shop, which is being billed as "the world’s first street art disaster movie", Banksy himself appears under a hood, blurred out and voice digitally altered to make room for a smattering of the world’s greatest street artists doing what they do best, where they thrive and how they get it done. It’s all framed around the a tale of French-born, L.A.-based filmmaker Thierry Guetta (love it) who feels this uncontrollable yearning to record everything with his camera, leading him to "document" street artists in their element. The film has garnered overwhelmingly positive buzz post-Sundance preem, and it’ll be interesting to see how the popularity of such a film might impact the culture of street art and how it’s regulated.
For those looking to satiate their stage cravings, two interesting offers are up for grabs. On the French, though speechless end of things is L’amour à trois at Espace Libre. And by threesome, they’re referring to 3 texts (Tibullus, La femme aux peupliers, Cornemuse), 3 directors (Francine Apelin, Caroline Binet, Marie-Ève Gagnon) amd 3 tales of lascivious desires in which actors speak through movements and rhythms. It’s a three-way clusterfuck of love set in different eras, and the cast (which includes the always stellar François Papineau and Markita Boies) will work its way through author Larry Tremblay‘s texts in what’s gearing up to be a veritable pageant of non-verbal articulations and intimations.
Elektric discharge of wicked art
Finally, you know spring is in full swing when the cutting-edge digital arts crew over at Elektra is charging ahead with a line-up that’s so forward-thinking, it makes Willie Gibson look like a techno relic (Is he? Still a big Neuromancer fan, on a purely personal note). In any case, the 11th edition if the fest bursts out of the gates today and runs till Sunday. Too many events and performances to list here, but the two I’m most looking forward to are Laser Sound Performance, an immersive laser beam, colour wave and Xtreme sensory assault by Dutch artist Edwin van der Heide. (May 6, 7 and 8)
