ArtBeat 2006 Report
ArtBeat, a Red Bull project, is an international innovation platform for young, non-museal art, that is 'street art', and the beats that go with it. The second edition of ArtBeat, which took place during the Amsterdam Museum Night on saturday november 4, 2006, drew over 3000 young urban street art lovers to BG and 11 in the culturally vibrant Post CS building. All this while ArtBeat, Red Bull's annual international street art happening, is not even an official part of the Museum Night, in style with the discipline this event is dedicated to.
In spite the fact that since it's pilot edition last year ArtBeat got the reputation to be the afterparty of the Museum Night, -because of the cutting edge international Beat-programming of DJ's and live acts-, for the real street art lover the party starts way earlier in the evening.
For this year's edition ground floor exhibitionspace BG was, in less than a week's time, transformed in a true 3-dimensional street art wonderland by a selection of Europe's finest and most innovative street artists. The often more than men's high objects in wood, cardboard and other rest materials by Boris Hoppek, Point, Mind, Viagrafik, Heiko Zahlman, Akim One machine and co-curator Zedz, made an unexpected perfectionist impression. Gathered in the huge casco-like space of BG and against a backdrop of murals and wall-pieces by Keramik, Cream, Karski, Reply Design and Viagrafik, this made a rarely seen landscape of contemporary street art, which later that night transformed into a unique dance floor environment. The 'dark room' labyrinth by Akim One machine in which the desired explicit activities, to some frustration of the artist himsef, stuck to a chaste minimum- and the Hanazuki pop-up store smartly housing in a huge Zedz sculpture, were so popular that some crowd control had to be applied.
Amidst all this sat guest curator Esher, quietly staring at his monitor. Surrounded by three fences and armed with his laptop and 360 degrees camera set up, he stealthily recorded the whole week long process, from scratch till the wee hours of the 'after party'. (The result of which is now on line.) Internet after all is of increasing influence in street art, discarding the usual ephemeral and local character of street art. While the accent of this collective exersize in BG was on innovation in street art, like 3 dimensional or architectural objects, interactivity and multi media applications, many of the artists managed to spare some time in between to spray an 'old school' piece on the site. This way the roots of street art became a self evident part of the ArtBeat experience, just like the spontaneous breakdance battles later that night. In the mean time on top floor 11 a completely sold out ArtBeat dinner took place in the midst of work and performances by the international computer art collective Neen. Although most Neen artists don't have a litteral street art background like graffiti, the collective operates in a similar way with their ad-hoc creativity, dogma free artistic attitude and form free expressions typical for street art today. Neen projected a selection of visual art works on the set screens in 11 and programmed a series of rather experimental performances by the likes of Legowelt and Aux Raus.
About the Beat part, after this rather unusual dinner the spicy live performance by Brazilian duo Tetine effortlessly moved the crowd up and away from their tables with their straight up 'baile funk'. The infamous ArtBeat 'afterparty' had kicked off and was carried on untill the break of dawn by local DJ heroes Cinnaman and Tom Trago. While Tetine brought their digestive effects to the stage, Jahcoozi took over from DJ´s O´Boogie and Lamme Tonnie to energize the crowd in BG. The transition between art show and clubbing moved a bit slower in the immence and crowded BG space, Jahcoozi´s raw blip hop raga-tech, RnB punk, Ill-ectronica performance was not to blame. Corresponding DJ sets by fellow Berliners Sick Girls and the French-Sweedish outfit Radio Clit eventually brought a similar collective climax to BG that lasted until the birds came out singing the next morning.