5. Total Installation and the Cave: To create space for believing the “fictions” of emancipation, the proletarian subject and differentiated totality. The total installation of Ilya Kabakov (theorized by Boris Groys) is useful here. We have been told that metanarratives are inherently oppressive; that dreams of collective emancipation failed; that history and ideology ended (more or less). By creating a fictive environment, a conceptual metanarrative, both inside and beyond the “white cube,” we can allow the art audience to suspend disbelief. We can construct a world in which “dreams can take revenge” (to paraphrase a Greek activist following the election victory of SYRIZA). We can reconstruct the “primal” origins of art and simultaneously attack “Platonic” neoliberal disbelief. We can evoke the dreams of a human gesamtkunstwerk to counter the digital “total installation” of contemporary capitalism.

6. Gothic Naturalism, Magic Realism and Surrealism: This evocation, however, must be tied to the actual concerns of the majority of the human race. This does not mean appealing to the “lowest common denominator” (see differentiated totality). It means relating to the actual tragedies and comedies of “real life” beyond the rarefied art world. Think of Zola, the war etchings of Goya, EC Comics, George Romero. This should be coupled with magic realist and surrealist anti-capitalist literary traditions. Our work must connect to the way in which the proletarian subject dreams personal liberation and individual revenge: How the individual subconscious intersects with the collective subconscious (see Breton and Benjamin).

7. The Return of History: Its return was not marked by a new October (yet) but by new slaughter and immiseration. The contemporary anti-capitalist studio artist stands in the tradition of the revolutionary history painters. It cannot, obviously, mimic their work. We speak the “post-modern” visual and cultural language inherited from modernism. Moreover, our relationship to history is complicated by the gothic quality of capitalist culture. As I have written elsewhere:

The material convulsions of capital constantly create new spaces (and the promise of new spaces) for semi-autonomous social and cultural relations — only to tear them asunder. Each of these is a trauma to the social unconscious… The initial impetus for the Gothic in art and literature stemmed from the marginalization of medieval forms by bourgeois relations and industrialization. The Gothic castle and the abbey stood in ruins, projecting both a nostalgia and fear of the past — things that were lost but also alien and threatening to modern life. The dynamics of capital continually recreate this process in contemporary culture, on various scales and in various geographies. This dynamic is the cultural echo of combined and uneven development. We therefore experience temporal displacement when confronted with cultural artifacts—both within the “art world” and the broader culture. It is a displacement intimately connected with the subconscious and conscious histories of art, of social struggle and (so far largely) failed emancipations and emancipatory dreams.

8. Material Poetics: Art is marked the 20th century and the language articulated by Duchamp, and developed by Beuys: the language of material poetics and the actuality of the materials that comprise the artwork. What are the (immense and varied) material poetics of the (immense and varied) proletarian subject?

9. The Weak Avant-Garde: The heroic avant-garde is dead. It played its role in the creation of contemporary culture—not unlike a deflected permanent cultural revolution (see Tony Cliff). Against most ruling-classes avant-garde artists (often allied with anti-capitalist politics) created the visual and cultural language of full-blown capitalism. The inheritors of the avant-garde model—the academic wing of the “art world”—are likewise marginalized from the bulk of the population. Unlike the modern avant-garde we have no historic mission. This is not to argue that the weak avant-garde produces nothing of value (see Boris Groys). It suffers, however, from relative isolation and the “lack” of an historic mission.

10. The Problem of Audiences: The contemporary anti-capitalist studio artist faces a crisis of audience. We can find a “weak” home in the academic avant-garde. Here we find intellectual validity and vitality but we are separated from the social forces that can realize actual change. The established art market, dominated at the top by so-called “cultural entrepreneurs,” is obviously problematic. Social practice art appears to offer a dynamic working-class audience, but the need for financial backing and the potential for messianic relations “problematizes” social-practice art. Finally, the small size of the left makes it hard for it to sustain “serious” art production. The anti-capitalist artist, therefore, must relate to multiple audiences: the academic avant-garde, the art market, the working-class and the left. This means accepting the commodity status of studio art within capitalism. Academic and non-profit art is also commodified (through financial underwriting, tenure, etc.) In making this “concession” to actual conditions we free ourselves to reach working-class and left art audiences by selling our work at reasonable (but compensatory) rates to working-class patrons. We do this while simultaneously engaged in the ideological struggles of the “art world.”

11. Modularity and Muralism: Our work is therefore modular, able to combine into one thing in the academic space, another for the established art market, another to be sold (in its parts) to working-class, anarchist and socialist patrons. Together it is a “mural.” Separate it is “easel painting.”

12. Anthropomorphic: Finally, in this way our work reflects the proletarian condition within itself. Collectively it asserts something beyond its commodity status: the crowd. Separately it is bought and sold, piecemeal, until the day it dies: the atomized individual.

Shepherd Fairy

Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist, illustrator and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (…OBEY…) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), which appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News.

He became widely known during the 2008 U.S. presidential election for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has described one the best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Shepard Fairey has always been open about controversial social and political topics and often donates and creates artwork in order to promote awareness of these social issues and contributes directly to these causes.

The Obey Awareness Program, operated by Obey Clothing, was founded in 2007 as an extension of Fairey’s humanitarian efforts. This program allows Fairey to support causes he believes in by selling specially designed merchandise and donating 100% of the profits raised to handpicked organizations and their causes. Past non-profit organizations benefiting from this program include Hope for Darfur, 11th Hour Action, Feed America, earthquake relief in Haiti, Dark Wave / Rising Sun for Japan relief, and Adopt-a-Pet.com. Environmentally related non-profit organizations such as the Surfrider Foundation, Urban Roots, the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge and more also received donations. The latest Obey Awareness T-shirts benefitted the Go Campaign, an organization that improves the lives of orphans and vulnerable children around the world by partnering with local heroes to deliver local solutions.

In 2009, Fairey teamed up with artist and activist Ernesto Yerena, activist Marco Amador and musician Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, to create, distribute, and sell posters countering dehumanizing and anti-immigrant rhetoric for the We Are Human Campaign. A majority of the proceeds went to the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON) and Puente, a grassroots community group that fights for human dignity.

In December 2011, Fairey contributed to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s inaugural "Artist as Activist" print project to benefit the Coalition for the Homeless. Fairey created an original print called "The Future is Unwritten" to commemorate Rauschenburg’s dedication to important social issues and the mission of the Coalition for the Homeless. The print was sold on Artnet to raise over $150,000 to support the Coalition’s life-saving programs.

In July 2013, Fairey did a public arts project for the nonprofit L.A. Fund for Education. Fairey's design titled "Create Your Future" was one of three installments in the #ArtsMatter campaign, which was a collaborative effort with P.S. ARTS and featured the art displayed on billboards and buses across the city of Los Angeles to send the message that arts matter in schools. Again in 2015, Fairey contributed to P.S. Arts, and collaborated with Marc Phillips Decorative Rugs to create a one-of-kind rug for a benefit auction for P.S. Arts.

They Live

They Live is a 1988 American satirical science fiction horror film written and directed by John Carpenter. The film stars Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster. It follows an unnamed drifter (referred to as "John Nada" in the film's credits) who discovers the ruling class are in fact aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to spend money, breed, and accept the status quo with subliminal messages in mass media. They Live is based on the 1963 short story, "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson.

At release it was number one in the box office, but sales soon suffered, though the film was nominated for two Saturn Awards. They Live has since become a cult film. The film has had a lasting impact on street art, particularly that of Shepard Fairey; its quotations have entered the popular culture, and it makes appearances on all-time lists for best fight scenes.

Banksy

Banksy is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director of unverified identity. Their satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. Banksy's works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that they were inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist who later became a founding member of the English musical group Massive Attack.

Banksy once characterised graffiti as a form of underclass "revenge", or guerilla warfare that allows an individual to snatch away power, territory and glory from a bigger and better equipped enemy. Banksy sees a social class component to this struggle, remarking "If you don't own a train company then you go and paint on one instead." Banksy's work has also shown a desire to mock centralised power, hoping that his work will show the public that although power does exist and works against you, that power is not terribly efficient and it can and should be deceived.

Banksy's works have dealt with various political and social themes, including anti-war, anti-consumerism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, nihilism, and existentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that the works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation. Although Banksy's works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth his message, Bansky has made several politically related comments in his various books. In summarising their list of "people who should be shot", they listed "Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, (and) people who write lists telling you who should be shot." While facetiously describing their political nature, Banksy declared that "Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world, I can't even finish my second apple pie."[159]

Several artworks by Banksy were vandalised, painted over or destroyed. In 2008, in Melbourne, paint was poured over a stencil of an old-fashioned diver wearing a trench coat. In April 2010, the Melbourne City Council reported that they had inadvertently ordered private contractors to paint over a rat descending in a parachute adorning the wall of an old council building behind the Forum Theatre. Many works that make up the Better Out Than In series in New York City have been defaced, some just hours after the piece was unveiled. At least one defacement was identified as done by a competing artist, OMAR NYC, who spray-painted over Banksy's red mylar balloon piece in Red Hook. OMAR NYC also defaced some of Banksy's work in May 2010.

Banksy is Back With “The Walled Off Hotel” in Bethlehem

Banksy is back with a brand new project on the streets of Bethlehem in Palestine. The mysterious artist has just opened a nine room hotel called “The Walled Off Hotel” located in an area very close to the controversial West Bank barrier which has been heavily decorated by artists. “The Walled Off Hotel” exhibits Banksy’s typically politically charged and tongue in cheek aesthetic. Rooms include the “Presidential Suite” and “Room With A View”, while installations include “Out of Service” and “The worst view in the world”. On a budget? Then this hotel is just for you… bunk beds are also available for just £30 a night.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO©, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk, and street art movements had coalesced. By the 1980s, he was exhibiting his neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums internationally. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.

Basquiat's art focused on "suggestive dichotomies", such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.

Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a "springboard to deeper truths about the individual",[2] as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism, while his poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle. He died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at age 27.

Fred Hoffman hypothesizes that underlying Basquiat's sense of himself as an artist was his "innate capacity to function as something like an oracle, distilling his perceptions of the outside world down to their essence and, in turn, projecting them outward through his creative acts."[2] Additionally, continuing his activities as a graffiti artist, Basquiat often incorporated words into his paintings. Before his career as a painter began, he produced punk-inspired postcards for sale on the street, and became known for the political–poetical graffiti under the name of SAMO. On one occasion Basquiat painted his girlfriend's dress with the words "Little Shit Brown". He would often draw on random objects and surfaces, including other people's property. The conjunction of various media is an integral element of Basquiat's art. His paintings are typically covered with text and codes of all kinds: words, letters, numerals, pictograms, logos, map symbols, diagrams and more.[31]

A middle period from late 1982 to 1985 featured multi-panel paintings and individual canvases with exposed stretcher bars, the surface dense with writing, collage and imagery. The years 1984–85 were also the main period of the Basquiat–Warhol collaborations, even if, in general, they were not very well received by the critics. A major reference source used by Basquiat throughout his career was the book Gray's Anatomy, which his mother had given him while he was in the hospital at age seven. It remained influential in his depictions of internal human anatomy, and in its mixture of image and text. Other major sources were Henry Dreyfuss' Symbol Sourcebook, Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, and Brentjes' African Rock Art. Basquiat doodled often and some of his later pieces exhibited this; they were often colored pencil on paper with a loose, spontaneous, and dirty style much like his paintings. His work across all mediums displays a childlike fascination with the process of creating.

In March 1982 he worked in Modena, Italy, and from November, Basquiat worked from the ground-floor display and studio space Larry Gagosian had built below his Venice, California, home and commenced a series of paintings for a 1983 show, his second at Gagosian Gallery, then in West Hollywood.[23] He brought along his girlfriend, then unknown aspiring singer Madonna.[24] During this time he took considerable interest in the work that Robert Rauschenberg was producing at Gemini G.E.L. in West Hollywood, visiting him on several occasions and finding inspiration in the accomplishments of the painter.[23] In 1982, Basquiat worked briefly with musician and artist David Bowie.

Keith Haring

Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing concepts of birth, death, sexuality, and war.

Haring's work was often heavily political[3] and his imagery has become a widely recognized visual language of the 20th century.

Haring is the subject of a composition, Haring at the Exhibition, written and performed by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero in collaboration with DJ Nicola Guiducci. The work combines excerpts from popular chart music of the 1980s with samples of classical music compositions by Lorenzo Ferrero and synthesized sounds. It was featured at "The Keith Haring Show",[34] an exhibition which took place in 2005 at the Triennale di Milano.

In 2006, Keith Haring was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the LGBT History Month.

In 2008, filmmaker Christina Clausen released the documentary The Universe of Keith Haring. In the film, the legacy of Haring is resurrected through colorful archival footage and remembered by friends and admirers such as artists Kenny Scharf and Yoko Ono, gallery owners Jeffrey Deitch and Tony Shafrazi, and the choreographer Bill T. Jones.

Madonna, who was friends with Haring during the 1980s, used his art as animated backdrops for her 2008/2009 Sticky and Sweet Tour. The animation is standard Haring featuring his trademark blocky figures dancing in beat to an updated remix of "Into the Groove".

Keith Haring: Double Retrospect is a monster sized jigsaw puzzle by Ravensburger measuring in at 17' x 6' with 32,256 pieces, breaking Guinness Book of World Records for the largest puzzle ever made. The puzzle uses 32 pieces of work from Haring and weighs 42 pounds.

On May 4, 2012, on what would have been Haring's 54th birthday, Google honored him in a Google Doodle.

Haring designed the album cover for the A Very Special Christmas music compilation album which consists of a typical Haring figure holding a baby. Its "Jesus iconography " is considered unusual in modern rock holiday albums.

Haring had a balloon in tribute to him at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The balloon slammed into the NBC broadcast booth during the 2008 parade, and the program went off the air for a moment.

A. R. Penck

Ralf Winkler, alias A.R. Penck (born 5 October 1939) is a German painter, printmaker, sculptor, and jazz drummer.

He was born in Dresden, Germany, and studied together with a group of other neo-expressionist painters in Dresden. He became one of the foremost exponents of the new figuration alongside Jörg Immendorff, Georg Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz. Under the East German communist regime, they were watched by the secret police and were considered dissidents. In the late 1970s they were included in shows in West Berlin and were seen as exponents of free speech in the East. Their work was shown by major museums and galleries in the West throughout the 1980s. They were included in a number of important shows including the famous Zeitgeist exhibition in the well-known Martin Gropius Bau museum and the important New Art show at the Tate in 1983.

In the 1980s he became known worldwide for paintings with pictographic, neo-primitivist imagery of human figures and other totemic forms. He was included in many important shows both in London and New York City.

Penck's sculptures, though less familiar, evoke the same primitive themes as his paintings and drawings. They use common everyday materials such as wood, bottles, cardboard boxes, tin cans, masking tape, tinfoil, and wire, and are crudely painted and assembled. Despite their anti-art aesthetic and the rough-and-ready quality of their construction, they have the same symbolic, archetypal anthropomorphic forms as his flat symbolic paintings. The paintings are influenced by Paul Klee's work and mix the flatness of Egyptian or Mayan writing with the crudity of the late black paintings by Jackson Pollock. The sculptures are often reminiscent of the stone heads of Easter Island and other Oceanic art.

A keen drummer, he was a member and with Frank Wollny co-founder of the free jazz group Triple Trip Touch (aka T.T.T. or TTT) and took every opportunity to play with some of the best Jazz musicians of the late 1980s including Butch Morris, Frank Wright, Billy Bang, Louis Moholo and Frank Lowe, organising events at his country mansion in Heimbach in 1990 involving installations by Lennie Lee, performances by Anna Homler and paintings by Christine Kuhn.

A.R. Penck lives and works in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Dublin and New York City.

David Walker

David Walker is an English street artist and clothing designer.[1] Over the course of a few years he has developed a signature style using multi-layering, photo-realism, scrawled lines and many different colors of spray paint.[2] His art often incorporates images of women. Walker has painted buildings in many locations, such as New York City, Hong Kong, Bali, Lisbon, and Berlin. His first major solo show was “Brides on Fire” which was presented at the Rook and Raven Gallery in January 2012. His work has become highly collectible.[2]

Walker's first job was creating T-shirt designs for The Prodigy, an English electronic dance music group, which eventually led him to create his own streetwear label "Subsurface".

Element Skateboards

Element Skateboards is an American skateboard company, founded in 1992 by Johnny Schillereff, that manufactures skateboard decks, apparel, and footwear. In 2014 Element created and moved to The Branch, a creative space in Costa Mesa, California, United States.

Crytocurrency Branding Design

A selection of branding and logos by some of the best known crytocurrencies on the market today:

Feng Shui Prosperity / Wealth / Money

If you want to significantly increase your wealth and if you think that Feng Shui might provide the answer, then you need to read this entire article. I am a 3rd generation Feng Shui expert and my advice has helped thousands of people improve their wealth through Feng Shui. Prosperity Corner Overview Based upon the principles of Feng Shui, when improvements are made to the Prosperity corner of your surroundings in combination with improvements made to complementing areas, you can start to see real results to your wealth and income. I’m not talking about the kind of money to put food on the table or to keep you from going underwater with your mortgage. I’m talking about the type of wealth that you can retire with. Best Colors: Purple, Green, Gold, & Red Here are some of the best money items you can place in your Wealth / Prosperity / Money corner to stimulate positive Feng Shui.

The Color Purple In Feng Shui, purple is the best color to stimulate and increase your abundance. Historically-speaking, purple was the hardest color to make, so only royalty wore purple to show that they were wealthy. Hang purple curtains on your windows or have a purple throw blanket on furniture that you may have in this corner. Alternatively, you can use a purple vase that can work as your Prosperity Vase, where you can put money in everyday as you are imagining this money growing like magic beans into a huge money tree that will take you to that giant in the sky.

The Midas Touch Gold is another wealth color in Feng Shui. Do I really need to explain why? In your Prosperity corner you could have gold coins, gold jewelry, or gold frames with photos of people or family members whose wisdom and financial success you admire. If you admire a wealthy figure, such as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, you could place a picture of such a person in the corner of your home or office. Alternatively, you could have figurines of golden-laced guardian angels or saints.

Name Ideas

Shock Coin
Cash Cow
Golden Nuggets
Nuggets
Nug
Gold
AU
Gould
Gold Dinar (Gaddafi's Currency)
Gaddafi
Kadafi
Anti Trump Coin
Anarchy Coin
Wonga
Palladium Coin
Plutonium Coin
Tritium Coin
Anti Matter (Most valuable substance in existence worth $6.25 Trillion per gram)
Coinage
Age Coin
Echo Coin
Tornado Coin
Paradox Coin
AltCoin
FlipCoin
Tsunami Coin
HurricanCoin
Crown Coin

List Of Ancient Currencies

Ancient Lydia,
Stater (electrum and silver),
Trite (coin) (electrum third of a stater),
Hekte (electrum sixth of a stater),
Lydian coin,
Ancient Persia,
Daric (gold),
Sigloi (silver),
Aeginian stater (silver),
Corinthian stater (silver),
Athenian drachma (silver),
Stater (silver),
Tetradrachm (silver),
Drachma (silver),
Ancient Rome,
Antoninianus,
Argenteus (silver),
Aureus (gold),
Denarius (silver),
Dupondius (bronze),
Follis,
Sestertius (bronze),
Solidus (gold),
Talent (silver, gold),
Tremissis (gold),
Qiran - Iran,
Ruble - Tajikistan,
Rupee,
Javan rupee,
Ryō - Japan,
Tibetan skar,
Tibetan srang,
Tibetan tangka,
Akçe,
Daler,
Rigsdaler - Denmark and Norway,
Rijksdaalder - Netherlands,
Riksdaler - Sweden,
Speciedaler - Norway,
Dinar,
Lira,
Livre,
Karbovanets - Ukraine,
Marka - Poland,
Ruble - former Soviet Union,

Lucid Coin Final Decision

Lucid means; clear and easy to understand (In the marketing this is what I hope to achieve)

A Lucid Dream - Is a dream during which the dreamer is aware of dreaming, consequently the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dreams characteristics. (We are making the public aware of the dream the banks and the governments have forced them to believe, in doing so we give them back the control)

Potential Coin Icon - Dreamcatcher.

Tagline Ideas

Crystal Clear Currency

Revolutionizing Money

The Future Of Money Is Clear

Giving The Power Back To You

Apprehensible Crypto Currency

Straight Forward Money

The Imminent Investment

Clear Cut Investment

Waking Up From The Dream

Cryptocurrency Clarity

Wake Up To The Future

Freedom In Currency

The Revolution Of Money Made Clear

The Clarity Of The Future

Its Time To Wake Up

Take Control Of Your Money

Change To Freedom

Change Money

Change Currency

The Change Of The Future

Change To The Future

Progress Is Impossible Without Change

Change Your Thoughts, Change The World

Change Your Currency

Change For Change

Freedom Is Free

Inevitable Change

Change Is Constant

Who Needs Money, When You Have Change

Change The World

Exchange For Change

Its Time To Change

It Takes Change To Make Change

Migrate to Accumulate

Change State To Accumulate

Eradicate The Middle Man, To Accumulate & Generate

Liberate & Accumulate

Don't Underestimate What You Can Accumulate

Speculate To Accumulate

Wake Up & Smell The Coffee

Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes

Liberate & Accumulate

Branding

Bellow i am experimenting with different type faces:

Connecting to the meaning of Lucid Dreams, I felt dream catchers could be good inspiration for design:

Potential Colour Pallets

Icons & Shorthand

Marketing Concepts

Icon