IDEAS AND FILM

JOIN THE RED BULL NATION!

an examination of Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull President and Amazing Art Patron

By Luke Shalan

Drink it and live!

I’m going to start off by stating the obvious. Where the Trail Ends is a Red Bull Media House production, which means two things: it has incredible financial backing and it holds the expectation of showcasing extreme action sports at a level never seen before, both physically in its execution and artistically in its filming. It also represents a new kind of hybrid in filmmaking, the corporate-sponsored documentary of a real event that wouldn't exist without the corporation, a truly odd form of real. Still, what it allows is more thrilling and human than most indie Sundance films. This brings up many questions about what we think of the documentary, reality, corporate sponsorship and extreme sports. The answers to these questions begins with Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder and president of Red Bull, the executive producer of Where the Trail Ends and the force behind much of the recent mainstreaming of extreme sports. He seems to view all this as a form of motivation for the generations to come and, most importantly, creating an ideal of the extreme.

ART

THE RIGHT WAY TO SELL OUT

the Barry McGee Retrospective at BAM/PFA

By Luke Shalan

Photo: Sibila Savage
All rights reserved to BAM/PFA

Is the artist a sellout? That’s the central question about all street artists. From the beginning of the street art movement, one of its core philosophical beliefs is that art should not be restricted to galleries, museums and wealthy people’s living rooms, but should burst out into the public sphere and take claim of the world. From this perspective, everything is a potential canvas and the gallery becomes the streets and buildings we share everyday. It is both a civic-minded and civil-disobedient ideal and there always has been an inherent tension between street artists and the law.