Sounds & Colours Brazil

Late last year, Sounds & Colours launched Colombia, the first in a series of publications themed around the countries the blog covers. It’s a beautiful book that comes with a 16-track compilation of new and classic music from the likes of Meridian Brothers and Son Palenque, which The Quietus called an “expertly collated volume” and a “uniquely immersive experience”.

I’m delighted to see that the second book  in the series is going to focus on Brazil.

sounds-and-colours-brazil-logo

Obviously for a self-run, self-hosted blog, the costs of putting together a publication like this and making sure it’s worth the paper it’s printed on are not inconsiderable. So they’re running a campaign over at indiegogo asking for contributions to help make it happen. You can pitch in anything from five to a hundred dollars, and what you get for your money varies accordingly: from a word of thanks in the book right up to limited edition prints and a subscription to the series. Here’s what you’ll be helping to make:

“From Rio to Recife, from São Paulo to São Luiz, from the Southern plains of Porto Alegre to the pumping soundsystems of Amazonian Belém, we’ll be covering every inch of Brazil, bringing its music, film, art and literature to life. With a team of expert writers, photographers and artists, S&C Brazil will be a passionate, in-depth, authoritative and thoroughly enjoyable journey into the Brazilian way of life.”

Stephan Doitschinoff: Cras

Heri-Hodie-Cras-2This totally passed me by at the time, but Stephan Doitschinoff, the artist formerly known as Calma, published his second book Cras back in September.

Alongside characters like osgemeos and Nunca, Doitschinoff was part of the first wave of Brazilian street artists to make a name for themselves outside of the country at the back end of the noughties, exhibiting all over the place and making an incredible video for DJ Zegon’s star-studded N.A.S.A. project.

In more recent years, his career has tended more towards the art than the street, and the religious imagery that’s long been a feature of his work has really come to the fore – culminating in the work collected in this new book. Launched with an exhibition at Berlin’s Gestalten Space, the book’s also available from their online shop - I wouldn’t advise flicking through the slideshow on that page unless you’ve got £40 to spend on buying a copy.

Disposable Fashion

Brazilian designer Jum Nakao makes haute-couture dresses out of paper. At the end of the show, the models are asked to rip her creations apart:

This dress collection made its debut in 2004 at Sao Paulo’s Fashion Week, in a paper themed runway performance titled Sewing the Invisible. Unbelievably at the end of the show, the models were told to tear up their dresses (yep, this brought a tear to my eye also) “as a reminder that fashion is a medium and not an end in itself”.

Graffiti interviews: NOVE

Last year I wrote a piece on the Graffiti/Fine Art biennale in São Paulo for JungleDrums. Along the way I interviewed a handful of Brazilian (and one Portuguese) graffiti writers but because of space limits the majority of the actual interviews ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor. I always felt like they were pretty interesting and deserved to see the light of day, but have only just got around to translating them in full.

Read the first one, with São Paulo’s NOVE, after the jump. Continue reading

Brazil’s Google Doodles

Probably everybody else knew this and I’m just late to the party. But I’ve only just discovered that there’s a publicly-accessible archive of all the cool ‘doodles’ that Google put on the homepage to mark various special occasions.

I especially like the two they did for Carnival (on March 8th)

…and Tom Jobim‘s birthday (Jan 25th)

But the pick has to be the one commemorate the birthday of incredible Japanese illustrator Katsushika Hokusai (October 31st, in case you were wondering):

Nina

I don’t know about you guys but I sure am glad that International Women’s Day is over so that we can get back to enjoying International Men’s 364-Days.

Anyway it seemed like a good moment to point up Flavorwire‘s rundown of their top ten female graffiti writers, which kicked off with São Paulo’s Nina. She’s a badass, and actually probably definitely of the top ten street artists out there full stop. Check it.

Greg Tocchini for Marvel Comics

Brazilian artist Greg Tocchini has done five covers for Marvel Comics’ celebration of Captain America’s 70th Anniversary, which all fit together into one mega-cover (above). They’re pretty incredible, too. H/T to the excellent Brazilian Graphic Design blog for the link.

 

Brazil: The Cultural Contemporary

Brazil: The Cultural Contemporary is a free event this Friday at London’s RCA.

The conference aims to inform a UK-based audience about Brazil’s visual culture, with a focus on areas of craft, design and social change. Speakers include Tristan Manco, designer and author of Graffiti Brasil, Frederico Duarte, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Scholar and Justin McGuirk, award-winning design writer. Keynote address is by leading Brazilian design writer and curator Adélia Borges.

Definitely worth checking this one out. Tristan Manco is an interesting guy and a key player in the global rise of Brazilian graffiti. Cristiana Tejo’s talk on Carioca artist Adriana Varejão ought to be worth a look too. More details on artacademia.net.