Yayoi Kusama

Plagued with hallucinations and an unnatural obsession with tiny circles since childhood, avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama started painting dot motifs at the age of 10. Instead of seeing her fixation as a setback, she embraced it, painting trees, furniture, and sometimes even the people around her in brightly colored polka dots. Then, in 1957, she moved to New York City, where she joined scores of other creative types in spearheading crazy art events in Brooklyn, anti-war demonstrations, and body painting festivals in studios across town. She shared exhibits with the likes of Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenberg, and represented Japan at the Venice Bienniale several times throughout the 1990s. Since 2000, she’s had solo exhibitions in France, Denmark, Korea, Hong Kong, and her native Japan, where she has received numerous awards.

What happens when you unleash 1,000 fancy journals into the wild? Determined to find out, Brian Singer, a 34-year-old graphic designer, started buying notebooks in bulk. Then he got one hundred artists and designers — among them, big names like Joshua Davis, Michael Mabry, and Gary Taxali — to do ten covers each. In August 2000, he sent all 1,000 journals out into the world. Some traveled abroad in the hand luggage of acquaintances. Others were sent to those who requested one via the project website. The rest were left in porta potties and phone booths around his hometown of San Francisco. Singer also asked participants to scan and upload their entries onto the site, hoping it would result in a collective record of the location and content of each notebook.
Six years, fifty states, and more than forty countries later, 998 of the journals are still out there documenting sob stories and art projects and random tidbits of creative energy input by people from all walks of life. Director Andrea Kreuzhage’s documentary, 1000 Journals, tracks down journal participants from Marseille to Zagreb and weaves them into the inspirational story of the designer whose curiosity blossomed into a global phenomenon. “We were all creative people at one point in our lives, and now we all go to work every day and sit in traffic. So…what happened?” Starting in Berlin, 1000 Journals is slated to tour the film-festival circuit throughout the year.

Photo By Allen Benedikt

What do biker gangs in Tokyo and tombstones in a South African township have in common? According to Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon, they are both part of a rising subculture of global urbanites who create art and entertainment using their surroundings. Because young people travel and bring their customs and fascinations across borders, this culture becomes a global phenomenon. In Street World, a collection of over 500 photographs taken by amateurs and professionals on five different continents, the editors display bold, full-page images of street culture’s various façades in chapters divided by theme — skateboarding, hip-hop, fashion, graffiti, and transportation. Diamond-studded teeth, kids hanging out in the streets of New York, and colorful shots of people all over the world standing in their closets are also considered part of the movement.