TED Talk

"How painting can transform communities," a presentation by two artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn. Link here to watch. 

To summarize this presentation, artist Haas and Hahn explains their journey of an idea they came up with while shooting a documentary story about life in the Favelas. Favela is within a small community called Vila Cruzeiro located in Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil. The vision they had while overlooking the hills of Favela was to attempt to paint every house in that area because they saw that most houses were unfinished building and only a few were painted. Throughout their campaign they accomplished three painted areas, one on a side of a house of a boy flying a kite, second was a painting on an up-hill street covered in concrete of a Japanese style river with koy carps, and lastly was in the community of Santa Marta consisted of 8 to 10 houses painted in coordinated colors from left to right. In their process, they not only did painting, but built relationships involving the community, and understood from locals that things were built from the ground up.

The argument of this inspiring presentation in my belief was said by the artists themselves, "if your idea is ridiculously big, it's easier to get people to go along with it," which holds truth. Ideas are endless when everyone shares them with each other and expands off of it. Having ideas is something everyone shares where they can come to a common agreement doesn't matter their race, gender, religion or age. Like they had mention, everyone in the community sticks together and work together in times of hardship. 

Visuals in Haas and Hahn's presentation were used effectively by scrolling through each one as they spoke showing what they did and how it got the community involved in the project.

Take a look.

Haas and Hahn not only let the visual speak for itself, but also spilled humor upon the crowd like how to bond with the neighborhood by barbecuing or how the kids wanted to see the kite that wasn't included in the boy painting and that they are to imagine it. Although, the pace of their presentation was a bit slow, it was still enticing for the audience just by the artwork it seemed.

Being an artist myself, of course not anywhere near as good as these two I really enjoyed watching this presentation. One reason was because they presented it as a story as if they were holding my hand and walking me through it. It kept getting more and more interested as they started explaining the detail of their vision in transforming this little community into an art gallery.

To conclude this, I believe that ideas can go a long ways from start to finish and these two artist showed that with the vision they had. Whether your vision is big or small, you stand behind it and believe that it is possible to accomplish whatever it may be; because if an individual doesn't already believe they can do it, then no one will. There is an innovative side in everyone, someone else just needs to bring it out of them and this was a great example of it through the actions of Haas and Hahn work.