#block watching

On Wednesday April 24th  2013 Go! Push Pops re-performed “BLOCK WATCHING Remix”  (based on footage we Youtube hijacked from Luis Gispert's 2002 video Block Watching) with founding member Anna Souvorov for the cocktail hour of the annual Artists Ball. An event honoring several esteemed figures in the Arts, the Push Pops were asked to perform twice by Luis Gispert.

Gispert’s cheerleader series of lush, color photographs depicting cheerleaders accessorized with the hip hop gold chains and jewelry, first brought him to the art world’s attention. Although this series was perceived as a reference to popular culture and cultural identity, Gispert approached the subject from the perspective of Baroque religious paintings depicting levitating saints at moments of epiphany and the conventions of sports photography, which established the iconic image of the sports hero in mid air. The cheerleader photographs were achieved with cinematic techniques and methods to produce special effects, most notably the green-screen. Gispert used a long exposure to photograph his models suspended on wires in a chroma-key green room. In movies, actors play against the green background, which is typically superimposed onto another backdrop to complete the illusion. However, Gispert retained the green field to reveal the artifice.