DJ Carlos CAPSLOCK has a) the best DJ name in the world
b) a startling, and rather avant-garde style
and c) a funny/disturbing “logo” in the form of a smiling blonde face.
He is one of the crew for Sao Paulo’s Voodoohop parties discussed before on the blog here.
A projection turns a Sao Paulo skyscraper into a gigantic retro arcade game, playable by passerby with iPads. More here.
Watch the sweet Brazilian short film “Curta – Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho” here, in its entirety with English subtitles (click on the CC in the bottom bar). It is about a blind boy and his (predictable but still sweet) crush on his new friend. The film is now being reworked into a two-hour feature.
Sao Paulo’s arresting multicoloured tribute to Oscar Niermeyer, the architect who passed away this year aged 101. He was responsible for one of the city’s landmarks, the hulking masterpiece or to some,dystopia, of the Copan building. Famed for its massive bulk and sinuous curve, this skyscraper was built as an innovative mixed-income housing project, complete with luxury penthouses and cheap public flats (supposedly favoured by the city’s tranny hookers). It houses so many people it has its own postcode, and a local Buddhist group uses its summit for meditation (in place of the traditional mountain top).
Local street artist Kobra has produced this massive mural right in the heart of the city, on Avenida Paulista.
True Blood, Game of Thrones, the Wire … and now Destino? HBO is not only the home of many of the best American TV series it is also home to (who knew?) a Brazilian wing. Destino is an HBO Brasil minseries dramatizing the waves of immigration that have built Sao Paulo, with episodes on the city’s African, Korean, Bolivian and Jewish communities (the last of which features avant garde fashion designer Alexandre Herchcovitch in his acting debut).
African episode:
Jewish episode:
Corações Sujos is a film about the fascinating but little-known story of Shindo Renmei, a Japanese terrorist organisation that killed 23 people in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state in the dying days of World War 2. Refusing to believe in the surrender of the Emperor, die-hard loyalists set out to attack those within the Japanese immigrant community they accused of defeatism and spreading Allied Propaganda.
The film is – according to a Brazilian friend – not actually very good, but I’m still grateful that it introduced me to such an interesting episode of history, one that has apparently long been a taboo conversation among the Brazilian-Japanese community, eager to show its degree of assimilation.
The film inspired me to check out another book on a similar topic, “A Discontented diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militarism”. I’ve ordered it from Amazon but not yet read it fully – from the sample pages it seems an interesting and surprisingly readable discussion of the Japanese community in Brazil, considered either a goody-good ‘model minority’ or more interestingly to me, a dangerous hotbed of violence and sedition. Evidence of this is in newspaper clippings from the 1960s cited in the book of dangerous “Japanese-looking” criminals hounding Sao Paulo.
Works by Japanese-Brazilian street artist Titi Freak (above) and below, the warped monsters of Mexican-Brazilian, Fefe Talavera.
Ex-members of Cansei Sur Sexy with their new (English-language) dark rock direction.
Ah, Brazil. What is not to love? While Rio staged a gay pride party this weekend at Arpoador with roughly a million requisite buff beach bodies, the ever-arty Sao Paulo is indulging its avant garde side with a new “festival of fashion films”. A nice complement to its recent pornography festival, I think.
Amazing images of a light projection show on Niemeyer’s iconic Auditorium in Sao Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park.
Discovering Sao Paulo is an interesting expat blog I have just discovered. It details all kinds of quirky facts about South America’s biggest and baddest concrete jungle, a strange mutant metropolis that is constantly evolving in alarming and unexpected ways. The blog is a must for Paulista-philes (like me) with everything from pictures of the city’s riotous street art to reports of alien sounds emanating from UFOs over the city, a visit to a ballet school for the blind ( very “Sao Paulo” in its incorporation of two seemingly random elements) and a discussion of the notoriously violent city’s crime rates – and their recent spectacular improvement; the city’s murder rate is the purple line. Rudolph Giuliani, eat your heart out.
Plus there are amazing only-in-Sampa scenes like this – surfing through the inner city streets (in this landlocked metropolis) after flooding from a recent tropical storm.
The illustrations of Brazilan illustrator Fernando Volken Togni.
From Brazilian-Argentinian artist Madame Mim.
Voodoohop is an amazing-sounding Sao Paulo party. Freshly returned from their “EuroMAcumba” (macumba being black magic) tour of Germany and France, the party is gearing up for a new set of events in the South American city. Its modus operandi is secret-location flash raves and art gatherings on freeways (the Minhocao) and in the slightly scary areas of the old downtown.
The party’s aesthetic is bright, brash, modern-day-primitive-tropicalist-hippie-electro abranavista and its sound is equally enticing. You can download some of their DJ setlists from Soundloud via the group’s suitable anarchic website.
The Google autotranslate of the site’s Portuguese text adds to the allure further with oddly disjointed descriptions like: “In a central district of the city, we will take the shed off of a plant tissue, with two celebrations in one (Cosmic & Voodoohop) and later participation of Backyard Muamba with a fair bazaar / fair exchange. Activities refreshing on the street: graffiti in neighboring bath hose, space sounds, beer and iced tea! From 19h The party starts at the factory! with intergalactic sounds on the track and knits adorn”
Artist Daniel Melim takes advantage of Sao Paulo’s anti-advertising ordinance to cover what would otherwise be an ugly bare wall with this massive pop art piece in the neighborhood formerly known as ‘Cracolandia’.
Sao Paulo funk/dub singer Curumin has jumped on a potentially alarming bandwagon. He is another talented Brazilian artist who is giving away his music for free. Following on from Criolo leaking his own album No Na Orelha (one of the best offerings of recent years) free of charge on his website, Curumin is now giving away his newie, Arrocha.
Of course its great for the casual listener – but what does it mean for the Brazilian music industry when some of its leading lights have to give themselves away? Filesharing (and lets face it, we are all guilty) is particularly popular in Brazil and the only real income most musicians there make is now from touring – hence the rationale of building a buzz by releasing your music for free in the hope it will pay off in performance fees later.
It seems like a risky strategy. I hope it pays off for Curumin, (he is actually on tour in California with CeU now, so perhaps its already working, not to mention Criolo’s current tour of Europe – above).
In the meantime, at least we can all enjoy the music….
Download Arrocha, with the artist’s blessing, here.
Beautiful images by Brazilian photographer Marcelo Krasilcic, from beefcake (featuring model Rodrigo Brava, above and below) …
To high fashion:
And portraits, like this one of Brazilian fashion icon Christine Yufon (see below):
Christine Yufon is an eighty-year old Chinese-Brazilian fashion icon. Her jewellery designs, although nodding to the East, exemplify the wildly colouful, urban primitivist vibe Brazil has made all its own. Her twisted necklaces, carved of sculptural serpentine metal, or carved from wood and forest nuts, owe as much to the jungles of the Amazon as the pages of Vogue.
It is not hard to see why she has been championed by a range of new generation Sao Paulo fashion figures like Marcelo Krasilcic (above), Alexandrew Hercovitch and Neon.
Just one week after Tel Aviv had its Pride party, another red hot gay Mecca hit the streets for its annual celebration. Sao Paulo’s Pride was – as usual – huge. Three million partygoers marched. But also as usual (puzzlingly) there was a dearth of good pics of the party on the net afterwards. For a supposedly very colourful street festival with three million in attendance, you would think someone would take a few snaps of something other than ‘outrageous’ drag queens ™ or buff boys in shorts dancing on trucks.
The image below is interesting: skinheads and punks against homophobia, presumably a reaction to the skinhead ‘anarchists’ who went on a stabbing rampage at the event a few years ago, supposedly inspired by “A Clockwork Orange”.
