8oinks

The Four Stages of Cruelty is a series of four printed engravings published by English artist William Hogarth in 1751. Each print depicts a different stage in the life of the fictional Tom Nero. (Read More)

First stage of cruelty (Plate I)

Second stage of cruelty (Plate II)

Cruelty in perfection (Plate III)

The reward of cruelty (Plate IV)

Find more etchings by  William Hogarth on gutenberg.org

Let him laugh now, who never laugh’d before;
And he who always laugh’d, laugh now the more.

Don Hertzfeldt’s 2005 animated epic; this short took approximately four years to create.

Andrea Babaganoush on flickr

Looking back on the past ten years through news photographs. view 50 photos total

1 minute animation about life. view on filminute. (via)

Director: Monica Gallab, Belgium - The surreal, perpetual conveyor belt of life pushes these characters towards the promise of a picnic. (read more)

Nollywood is said to be the third largest film industry in the world, releasing onto the home video market approximately 1 000 movies each year.
Such abundance is possible since films are realized in conditions that would make most of the western independent directors cringe. Movies are produced and marketed in the space of a week: low cost equipment, very basic scripts, actors cast the day of the shooting, “real life” locations. Despite the improvised production process, they continue to fascinate audiences.

Welcome To the Terrordome. And Nollywood is scary shit, but not in a Hollywood way. Rather than employ the rituals of history, myth and mystery to seduce and then placate us, scare it all away — all the shit that’s not suppose to be scary but really is, Pieter throws it in our face.

What Nollywood seems to be suggesting is that it is not the “I” of the photographer or even the “I” of the viewer, but the eye of the camera. We’re thrown from “representation” (of something real) to “simulation” (with no secure reference to reality), the normal relation between sign and referent radically remixed so that we lose the connection, once presumed to exist, between sign or image and the reality to which both were thought to refer. (via)

take a look at the complete Nollywood series on Pieter Hugo’s website or gallery

Gino Rubert born 1969 in Mexico; lives and works in Barcelona.

Les Stone; Plaine du Nord, Haiti. Two men in the possession of the Loa support each other in the sacred mud of a festival of honoring the spirit of Ogoun. Voodou believers make this pilgrimage from all over Haiti to the festival of St James to be “baptized” in the mud and find strength from this and other rituals.
Hundreds of people come to this tiny village of Souvenance over Easter weekend to participate in one of the holiest pilgrimages showing their devotion to the African spirits brought to the island by slaves from West Africa. Wrapped in white satin scarves, initiates to the sect chant and dance throughout the night to beckon spirits as onlookers gather. Rum, cane liquor and herbs are offered to appease a pantheon of spirits.

Benjamin Goss: “To those of you who have low humor, and are curious about what Sweden really looks like….this is the book for you!
It contains 75 spontanious and twisted b&w photographs from the province of Värmland Sweden. I have been working on this project off and on for the past two years. This is the first edition, there will most definitely be a sequel.”
link to blurb: You know, people from Värmland

Värmland flickrset

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are two of China’s most controversial artists, renown for working with extreme materials such as human fat tissue, live animals, and baby cadavers to deal with issues of perception, death, and the human condition. In Old Person’s Home Sun & Peng present a shocking scene of an even more grotesque kind. Hilariously wicked, their satirical models of decrepit OAPS look suspiciously familiar to world leaders, long crippled and impotent, left to battle it out in true geriatric style. Placed in electric wheelchairs, the withered, toothless, senile, and drooling, are set on a collision course for harmless ‘skirmish’ as they roll about the gallery at snail’s pace, crashing into each other at random in a grizzly parody of the U.N.dead. (via)

Jerzy Kucia (b.1942) was trained as a painter and graphic artist at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, where he is currently a professor and the head of the animation department. His first animated film, Return, was completed in 1972, and demonstrates beautifully Kucia’s interest in the interplay between reality, memory, dream, and emotion.

Strojenie instrumentów (Tuning Instruments) 2000, 16min
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox9ns3s

Odpryski (Splinters) 1984, 10min

Refreny 2008, 13min Part1 / Part2

I got into art when I was really young. I have always been drawing and creating paintings ever since I can remember. As a child, you never really know what you want to do, I just knew it had to be something to do with art. I went through art college and studied Fine Art at university. While there, I met some people who had a real hunger for art and they had a really big influence on me. I fed off their desire to create and it made me realize that it was possible to make a living as an artist. (via)

Antony Micallef has exhibited throughout the world from L.A, Tokyo to Palestine. As well as exhibiting at the National Portrait Gallery recent group shows include the Royal Academy, Burlington Gardens and a print show at the Tate Britain.

Also make sure to check out Antony Micallef’s face studies and portraits

And Jesus Says, ‘Love Thy Enemies’

In Manchester, we ‘pride’ ourselves on hosting the largest Gay Pride parade in the solar system. This year was certainly the best, and biggest and the most gorgeous.

Ladies, gentlemen and persons of undefined gender - I give you Manchester’s finest homosexuals - on parade!

Maya Bloch was born in Be’er Sheva (1978). Anna Veronica was the original, now almost forgotten, name of Maya Bloch’s mother, before she was granted a new, Hebrew one, upon her arrival in Israel at the age of five. Its employment does not point to a preoccupation with the artist’s biography, but vice versa - to a kind of metaphorical ghost symbolizing for her the possibility of otherness to inhabit a familiar space and the possibility of melding real and fictional biographies.
This doubling is expressed in the way Bloch produces the subjects of her portraits, which are based on photographs from newspapers, other people’s family albums and the internet; she “harasses” these family photographs and “imports” them into her own world, in this way resuscitating unknown identities and making up other people’s emotional worlds. But even though she relates to the photographs’ characteristics by borrowing their compositions, she does not search for a realist context but rather dredges up the dark psychic situations that lie behind the photographed figures’ representational “poses.” mia.in.the.sky

While Gropper is most closely associated with the artistic movement known as social realism, he himself eschewed labels: “I don’t like labels. I am interested in mankind. People create the “landscape” in my paintings. I fight wrongs. I fight in a creative sense. I am not fighting myself and I have no emotional conflicts. All my stuff is myself, passionately myself. I am involved with ideas and concepts. I am not trying to indoctrinate, I am trying to express my thoughts”

Visit the People are my Landscape exhibition to read more about William Gropper and see all the works in high resolution.

League of Nations, 1919

Taking the News at Face Value, 1926

Melbourne based Illustrator Kristy Milliken

Music and animation by Dustball. “The figures are rotoscoped. I filmed myself doing the action then outlined every frame by hand. The sounds were created using everyday objects.”

Dont forget to check out Dieter VDO’s fantastic comic’s and paintings

Emmanuel Smague is a Music Teacher from Lannion, France. His work is made in humanist photographic tradition.
Transportraiton is a collection of portraits and outtakes of Emmanuel Smague’s journey, which he shares on flickr Russia / Central Asia / Normadic people / China
(view all sets)

Chris Pell is a 21 year old recent graduate of Brighton University and has a very unique and diverse portfolio ranging from animation, photography to illustration. He enjoys fantasy worlds/alchemy/soca music/mysticism/the internet/horror movies/sparse marshlands/medieval armour/elaborate quests and cats. Just incase you were wondering.

Chris Pell’s animated illustrations on vimeo: Germlin - Scumbag

Ryan (2005) is based on the life of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who, 30 years ago, produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. In the film, we hear the voices of prominent animators and artists discussing Ryan’s work, and from waitresses, mission-house caretakers and homeless people who make up Ryan’s life.

Walking 1968 by Ryan Larkin

Matthew Palladino is a 22 year old artist from San Francisco. Matthew’s a recent CCA student who dropped out and felt that he’d do alright by educating himself instead. Say hi to Matthew, enjoy his work and what he has to say. Read an Interview with the artist at Fecal Face.

Recording our everyday lives has gone from the privacy and simplicity of writing in a diary to real-time, digital exposure on the internet. This exhibit reveals the many ways we see ourselves in the 21st century. Watch your portrait quickly emerge from lively patterns on a flat screen TV, view an artist’s 70lb weight loss via video in a matter of minutes, or experience a decade of an artist’s life through daily Polaroids. These works and more showcase the art of today’s self-portrait. Read more at Shiffman.net

Art Stinks

Last upper 1

more work by Bogaert (don’t miss the Musicseries!)

This is a little known documentary based on the book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.

This movie came out in 1972 and features Orson Welles as the narrator. I was most amused by the high amount of paranoia in regards to the future… some of the segments (like people choosing their own skin color) are downright hilarious. Worth a look - at the very least for its historical value. (via)

See review and full movie at Odd Culture

Intro:
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox1t4ci

Fernando Gutierrez, aka Huanchaco, develops the story of Superchaco, a decadent Peruvian superhero trying to get to grips with the Chaotic City, Lima. Influenced by comics and pop culture, Huanchaco embodies the worst aspects of the Chaotic City. Devoid of any qualm, he is lazy, obnoxious and vulgar. Superchaco doesn’t have any particular talent nor superpower. Yet, authorities call him, children look up to him and women fall for him. (via sweet station)

also take a look at Superchacos fabulous oil painted stories:

Shigeru Ito is a Bangkok based Japanese illustrator.
He was born in Fukuoka, Japan in 1978. (more)

also take a look at: i’ve been so far from home

8oinks is collaborating with Crashroots!
crashroots is an opensource music collaborative - crashing and mashing samples from around the globe. ’Make em dance’ is the title of our collaboration and our goal
pick any song you like from Crashroots’ Releases and create a Mashup-Music-Video, using the endless sources of youtube. upload your video to the 8oinks blog (featuring the url’s you used and the name of the track) Tag: make em dance

Latincontra - Cachaopeople Videomashup by samim

Babalao - 20Points Videomashup by shirin

Latincontra - se me olvidio el delay Videomashup by shirin

Latincontra - Pasito tun tun Videomashup by shirin

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(Youtube sources)

Shannon Taggart Photography