Edgy Video from Babelgum Metropolis Contest Winners
Babelgum, the integrated web/mobile video content platform, announced the winners of its Metropolis Art Prize, judged by a jury chaired by art house actor/video artist Isabella Rossellini. MobilizedTV published a notice of the opening of that contest 
here. The winners’ work was screened in Times Square in New York City on Dec. 17.
The Metropolis channel focuses on art, design, architecture and the urban experience, and the contest was to find “the world’s best and edgiest artists” working in those arenas in the global village
The Babelgum Metropolis Grand Prize–which was $20,000–went to Denver, Colorado-based artist Christopher Coleman for The Magnitude of the Continental Divide. An animation exploring the way we define ourselves and our nations, the piece deals with various states of withdrawal and aggression. It is a think-piece on the state of modern warfare, where weapons and damage are dealt impersonally from afar.
“Coleman’s winning piece is digital graffiti that plays into the graphic style of socio-political concepts of 21st Century style street graffiti, almost animated aerosol if you will,” states contest judge Lee Wells. “All of his work is impressive and this work suits the digital screen medium better than any other of the 450 plus entries.”
Coleman, who is a 2003 MFA graduate of New York State University in Buffalo, is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver. His work has been shown in exhibitions around the world, and he was twice a participant in the VIPER Basel Festival in Switzerland. His winning entry can be viewed here.
The Babelgum Metropolis Best Street Art Award ($5,000) went to Jacopo Ceccarelli aka 2501 for Mask, a dreamlike excursion into Brazil’s dark colonial past through a nighttime examination of statuary and monuments in Sao Paulo, the country’s busiest city. A Milan-born artist who divides his time between Italy, Berlin and Sao Paulo, his approach to painting evolved after contact with major names in the South American graffiti school. Since 2004, Ceccarelli’s work has been featured in 13 solo and groups shows including “Muralismo Morte” at Motorhalle in Dresden (2009), “TEC 2008” at Berlin’s MYMO Gallery and “Urban Edge Show at Esposizione Collettiva in Milan (2006). See The Mask here.
Website visitors gave the top vote, and hence The Babelgum Metropolis Audience Award ($5,000), to the New York City-based collective, Improv Everywhere, for Subway Yearbook Photos. In the piece, the troupe of actors and artists installed a photography studio on a random subway car, claiming that the MTA had hired them to take photos of every single person who rides the subway to produce a high school-styled yearbook at the end of the year. The resulting photos and video demonstrate the diversity and range of emotions expressed by New York City subway riders. Founded in August 2001, Improv Everywhere’s mission is to “cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” The group has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of “undercover agents.” See their winning video below.
Rossellini declared herself pleased by her role in launching the first Babelgum Metropolis Art Prize, to the arts community. “None of the other art competitions that I know of have the ability of publicizing art globally and the explicit mission to establish a firm link between art and video,” she said. “The quality, passion and political viewpoints of the entries was very exciting.”
Laurence Billiet, publisher of Babelgum Metropolis noted that “showcasing these edge-pushing videos by emerging artist perfectly complements our existing programming slate, which provide the newest and best in art, street art, urban culture and documentaries.”
The entries were judged by a panel that included Lee Wells, the Curator-at-Large for the SCOPE Art Fair and Co-founding director of the video art archive Perpetual Art Machine; Cedar Lewisohn, curator of the Tate Modern gallery’s Street Art exhibition in 2008 and Howard Halle, chief art critic for Time Out New York and former curator of Performance Art at The Kitchen.
Contest runner-ups include: Metropolis Grand Prize Runner-Up: Hye Yeon Nam, Atlanta, USA for Wonderland; Sjors Vervoort, Amsterdam, The Netherlands for Cardboard; Street Art Runner-Up: Jason Eppink, New York, USA for Pixelator; Jeorge Simas, Sao Paulo, Brazil for Suspended Gardens of Babylon; Audience Award Runner-Up: Davide Pepe, Brindisi, Italy for Last Kodachrome 40 for a Nizo S800 and Simple Future Present; Special Mention: Bruno Levy, New York, USA for Modeselektor and Peter Vadocz, Hungary for Colourful EU.
Tags: Babelgum, Babelgum Metropolis Best Street Art Award, Babelgum Metropolis Grand Prize, Improv Everywhere, Isabella Rossellini, Metropolis, mobile video content platform, mobile video contest, MobilizedTV, The Babelgum Metropolis Audience Award
This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Content, Events, Home Feature.
