Tag: Detroit
Detroit, a city beset by serious crime, recently issued an arrest warrant for street artist Shepard Fairey. His crime? About nine pieces of paper that authorities claim he pasted up last month while he was in town painting the largest legal mural of his career. In a May interview about the 18-story undertaking, he blatantly […]
Things are fucked up in Detroit. And they’re not just hidden-behind-the-scenes fucked up, but in-your-face fucked up. Throughout the city, there are deep pockets of half-collapsed buildings and blocks of burned-out homes. Once elegant places now look so abandoned that if it was not for the graffiti, there would be virtually no evidence of human […]
Graffiti writers love Detroit. With its industrial ruins, abandoned buildings, and decaying structures, it’s a magnet for urban art and exploration. Artists from all over the United States make yearly pilgrimages there — and the city has had enough. Local paper Metrotimes spoke to a councilmember about some of the proposals they’re considering. One of […]
Over the past twenty years or so, Detroit has become a symbol of a failed city, to America and to the world. Yet, recent reports show that artists are flocking there, believing it’s the new hellhole that can be revitalized to provide cheap rents, urban inspiration, and deep artistic roots. But unlike the Lower East Side […]
There were no protestors outside the modest lakefront veteran’s lodge in St. Clair Shores, just outside Detroit, Michigan. The very official-sounding First International Conference On Men’s Issues was relocated here from a downtown hotel, because of what the organizers alleged were “death threats,” but was later reported by local media to be space limitations. By the time yesterday’s planned 3pm […]
These Google Street View photos show just how quickly abandoned or foreclosed property in Detroit is overtaken by the forces of nature and poverty. Over the course of five years, houses have turned into vacant lots or were stripped down to skeletons. The resulting photos look like an entirely different place. It’s hard to believe […]
“Listen In“ is a weekly feature in which we ask musicians to curate a mixtape-length YouTube playlist of songs they’re currently digging. This week’s playlist comes from the Detroit punk band Protomartyr, whose excellent sophomore album Under Color of Official Right was released today via Hardly Art. Though the new record mellows out the raw, drunken […]
Here’s the latest installment of MOCAtv’s Building Detroit mini-doc series with DABLS, Dmytro Szylak and ANIMAL favorite Monica Canilao. Part 1 featured writers REVOK and POSE, a giant tribute to the late NEKST going up on the side of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and walls used as infinite canvases for graffiti and street art. Part 2 focuses […]
In the above mini documentary, MOCAtv takes a look at the late graffiti legend NEKST and the graffiti scene in Detroit. There’s some footage of the big NEKST tribute going up on the side of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, which we’ve covered before, as well as remembrances from fellow writers REVOK and POSE […]
The Verge’s entire video profile of the maker space i3 Detroit is worth watching, but if you’re in the mood for some spectacle, fast forward to about 6 minutes. That’s when i3 president Matt Oehrlein shows off his mind-controlled flamethrower, which, yes, throws flames and requires only brain waves as input. Watch it in action above. […]
