CULTURE JAMMER JOHNNY HAMCHECK

Making his mark in the social media/internet arts environment, is a culture jammer going by the handle Johnny Hamcheck. Through a relentless stream of on the street video pieces, Johnny approaches random subjects and creates some of the finest “WTF” moments the internet has seen. 

Instead of the usual run of the mill “prank video” pieces which are all over social media outlets and which aim to create immediate shock or instant laughs before being scrolled on and forgotten, Johnnys work is more an improvisational performance art approach, which weaves in ongoing story lines and regular characters, creating a situation which builds confusion on top of confusion, as the viewer grits their teeth in anticipation of some sort of ridicolous resolution. 

One never knows which characters will pop up in the performance or if story lines will change, interweave, or take a completely different direction based on the subjects response, especially since the subjects range from street addicts to high end businessmen, and every now and then we will be gifted with a confrontation of a real life legend in their own right. 

The absurdist story lines range from attempting to deliver mysterious “six and a half inch cables” to construction workers (which turn out to be nonsensical TV cables), trying to pitch revolutionary “footlong eggrolls” to Chinese restaurants (where the prototype is a few eggrolls duct taped together), luring individuals into going on mysterious “side quests”, reaching out to street urchins in attempts to put together “a crew” for unclear nefarious activity, trying to score the new drug “Crypto” on the street which Johnny often has to explain is essentially bitcoin somehow downloaded from your phone and extracted into a smokeable form, and many other “openers” which Johnny uses to set up the scene and carry it though the jam (usually starting with a semi obnoxious attention getter laugh, then followed with a  “Sorry I’m late!”… Hey its Johnny how’ve you been?…Who’s running this shit?”)

The lead character in the ongoing narratives is often the mysterious Steve Balboni, who is essentially the man in charge of whatever operation is going down. There is also Tommy Toughknuckles a sometimes associate of Balboni or the head of Toughknuckles construction company where the TV cables come from. Other characters re-occur, and Johnny himself always introduces his own character “I’m Johnny Hamcheck”, while never revealing his face to the camera which adds a whole ‘nother layer of “WTF” mystery as to what the hell is going on here.

Culture jamming is the art of throwing a monkey wrench into the day to day machine of life; taking people, if only momentarily, off the mundane assembly line of routine and creating absurdity, which in turn creates a unique, one of a kind style of humor, greatly appreciated by the viewer on a level that goes above and beyond the usual quck laugh prank video.  

Johnny manages to create pure absurdity in his work which is uniquely his own style and defines what true, live on-the- spot, culture jamming really is. 

A welcome treasure in these times of political correctness and conformity where “being offended” has become progressively trendy. Johnny tosses the wrench in the cog creating situations where the subject doesn’t know if they should be offended, irritated, or humorously amused when confronted with the jam, or mistaken for their “four foot one” doppelganger. 

You can see Johnny’s work on instagram updated consistently with new works as well as previous jams @johnnyhamcheck

His youtube page youtube.com/@johnnyhamcheck

He has a merchandise site at http://johnnyhamcheck.com

THROWGOD – The Internets Greatest Video Artist Quarterback

SEEMINGLY OUT OF NOWHERE the internet has recently been graced with the presence of THROWGOD. A potential internet phenomena who is just as much video artist as he is viral commodity, THROWGOD has digitally emerged from who knows where and is owning the internet of 2020 with his nonstop daily uploads which are mesmerizing, mysterious, hilarious, and absurd.

Without explanation, a frenetic blizzard of videos have recently emerged, and continue to emerge daily, on the TikTok platform. They feature a man, often shirtless, sometimes wearing a mask, sometimes a wig, throwing a football from great distance into a net containing three ”catch holes”. Every throw recorded, the ball makes it into one of the three holes. After the throw, sometimes before, commentary is made by the man, as well as occasional voiceover at the end.

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Various levels are at play here. ThrowGods amazing athleticism, his hilarious and often non-PC commentary, his occasional batshit crazy manic episodes, his artistic and experimental edits, and of course the mystery of who the fuck this guy is.

His skills appear legit enough to likely have been a former high level quarterback. Perhaps someone who had success, then life gets in the way, and now he returns to the core – his love for throwing.

Yet it seems his age is still within range for a potential professional stint back on the field. Matter of fact most comments to his pieces are usually “you should play for the XFL”. Yet it’s the Zen of ThrowGod who rebukes such comments by telling his audience that this is his nirvana; an open field, a net, a half dozen footballs…and throwing.

Indeed this is his stage. It’s where he comes alive, improvising one-liners, creating characters, all while strenuously and accurately heaving a football from ridiculous distance. With laser like precision it lands perfectly in the net, again and again and again.

ThrowGod recognizes his greatness; both in his arm and in his gift for improvisational gab. “Believe in Yourself” is a mantra of ThrowGod, which he repeats to himself often. The mantra has been effective. He is an artist who has found his medium, and the perfect, most relevant outlet for expressing it.

Between his daily throwing sessions, and his nightly video editing, THROWGOD is currently one of the best, and most prolific, video performance artists out there.

https://vm.tiktok.com/bCFCQ1/

To witness the art of ThrowGod, go to his TikTok account – @throwgod

His website is http://ThrowGod.com
(be sure to check his blog out, he has the gift for written word as well).

Also twitter @throwgod

Hubert and the Night People – A film by GUS FINK

 

Around 15 years ago or so, an outsider artist emerged on Ebay by the name of Gus Fink. His profile picture was a blurry, vintage photo of an older man in a tuxedo, and his vibrant art brut paintings suggested he was an elderly eccentric oddity who had been creating art for years and now was offering up his work on Ebay.  A solid following for Gus quickly emerged, and the prolific artist seemed to be slowly, but steadily selling his paintings.  

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As it turned out, Gus was not the old man eccentric oddity that the vintage color profile photo suggested. He was actually a young guy in his 20’s at the time, who was more focused on creating art and becoming a full-time artist, than promoting his own personal image. Indeed a rarity nowadays with the emergence of social media, where artists spend more time curating their own persona, rather than actually creating art.

Eventually Gus dropped the vintage photo and came clean. He replaced it with a small partial picture of himself. His art was solid enough that people let the whole old man eccentric angle slide, and they continued to gobble up his unique and affordable paintings.

Gus has never stopped creating since, to this day still selling his art on Ebay, while branching out to create toys, apps, and even experimental music.

Gus has now taken the moviemaking plunge with his first short film called HUBERT AND THE NIGHT PEOPLE. It’s a very well made, interesting piece which moves along incredibly well and relishes in various absurdities throughout.

The characters that Fink creates in his paintings come alive in awesomely designed costumed beings who fluidly move around dreamlike, the way you would imagine them to, if they rose from a Fink canvas. He smartly includes many of his drawings in the film, which one of the characters gives to Hubert on his nightly visit.

Hubert is the  main character,  an eccentric, disciplined recluse of sorts, who uses his artistic mind to lose himself into his own world on a nightly basis.  Perhaps mirroring the artist life of an early Gus Fink, eventually we see our absurdist hero deciding to personally take the plunge into this otherly world.

Just as Gus decided to become a full-time artist while dropping the old man image, Hubert drops his own constructed outer image, and commits to becoming the other worldly being, that he truly is.

HUBERT AND THE NIGHT PEOPLE is a wonderful film and it can be viewed on Amazon in the link below.

HUBERT AND THE NIGHT PEOPLE

For Gus Fink art, go to – GUSFINKSTUDIOS.COM

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“HOMESTEAD” – The how-to performance video finale (Broich,Kaup,Elliott 45min.HD 2016)

Rounding out the trilogy of performance video featuring Kelly Broich, Eli Elliott, and Brad Kaup, is HOMESTEAD. The “how to” series started with MUSH, where the performance centered around a cooking demonstration on how you can have a high calorie diet for less than $20 a week by combining dollar store food items, then FASHION revealed how to take thrift store clothing  and turn them into high dollar fashion items, concluding with a $40,000 created garment, and now HOMESTEAD reveals how one can live for free in style by simply finding some land, staking it, then creating cardboard homes which you can decorate to your liking.

The performance takes place in a striking outdoor location, where a river runs near and  mountains serve as back drops for the pair of pilgrims, Pink Face and Roy, who stake their land and proceed to create cozy and decorative little homes for themselves.

The performance plays on a level that is somewhere between the trendy “tiny home movement” and the classic homeless/cardboard box scenario. This indeed is a murky area that rarely gets talked about as now those with money are purposely downsizing and creating very fashionable tiny homes on trailers, while declaring it to be a new fashionable trend and indeed a “movement.”

Meanwhile “tiny homes” have essentially been created for years by houseless individuals, in the form of tented encampments, wooded shacks, or inexpensive mobile RV’s and trailers. It has now become a trend to become “homeless”, as long as you build your dwelling on a trailer and make it look nice on the inside, and out.

Pink Face and Roy create their own little tiny homes, yet they do not exist in skid row, but won’t be making any of the trendy tiny house blogs either. It’s a gray area which seems to speak on the absence of in between individuals who can’t afford to play in the pretentious tiny home scene, yet don’t deal themselves the helpless/homeless card either.

In HOMESTEAD the relationship between the two characters remains a mystery, as do their choice of facial wear. Yet in this piece we see Roy engaging in more central action, rather than just serving as a sidekick for Pink Face. They both build their homes, create a kitchen area, empty their toilets (a nasty scene), and set up their individual play tents while squabbling over their choice  of women’s clothing, “is this your skirt Roy or mine?”

MUSH, FASHION and HOMESTEAD are designed to be shown on 3 separate HD screens simultaneously in a gallery setting. For inquiries contact the artists HERE

HOMESTEAD (dir. Kelly Broich. Cinematography Brad Kaup. Featuring Eli Elliott. HD, 45min. 2016)

“FASHION” Video Performance by Broich/Elliott/Kaup

In the second installment of video performance directed by Kelly Broich with Eli Elliott and Brad Kaup, comes FASHION, a surreal absurdity focusing on Pink Face’s obsession with making money through the creating of high priced “designer” garments. The garments are taken through various techniques  devised by Pink Face to provide “added value”. Pink Face cuts clothing, repairing them with neon duct tape (“rip and repair”) while assistant Roy applies sandpaper to shirt collars to “distress” the garment further. The result is clothing that goes from $10 retail to now being able to confidently place them at values in the several hundreds.

Where MUSH took rejected food that ends up in the dollar store and shows you how to create a goulash of caloric meal replacement to save you tons of money, FASHION takes rejected thrift clothing and adds necessary  uniqueness and flare, showing you how to make massive amounts of money. The techniques fall in line with the real life fashion racket, implementing methods of “distressing”, while adding avant garde original uniqueness to items such as “boy shorts”.

The vibrantly dingy visuals colorfully pop equally to MUSH as the poster paints, glitters and fish hooks turn the clothing line into an absurd looking goulash of their own; the end products proudly hang by rafters in the inexplicable dirt floor shack  the two “fashion designers” are operating out of.

Pink Face ultimately unveils the coup de gras of his spring collection. Roy proudly models the garment while a price tag is decided upon.

FASHION is the second in a three piece  video performance series. Screening/Gallery inquires contact HERE.

FASHION (2016, HD, 31m. Directed Kelly Broich. Cinematography Brad Kaup. With Eli Elliott)