Justus Bruns is an incredible creative and ambitious guy, who’s chasing dreams and initiating projects with a passion that could easily make one jealous. One of the dreams and probably the main one and a great one is, his ambition to free Times Square New York from all the advertising and to replace it with art with the ‘Times Square 2 Art Square‘ project, for which he recently moved over to New York. In the meantime he organized the brilliant ‘Airplane Food Event‘, an evening where people, seated in airplane chairs, were served airplane food for diner, after taking off for flight…
I feel embarrassed when I find out how little I know about arts when Ilja asked me if I could put together a list of my favorite artists, writers, musicians, designers, photographers.
I mostly find myself tracking down sites like ‘It’s nice that‘ and ffffound to get inspired. Exactly those sites where you’ll tend to forget names of the artists. I also rarely visit museums these days, probably about once a month at max (SHAME ON ME).
I mostly get inspired by random things, people’s clothes, the way they articulate, how they dance, things that you capture with your head and then push through your imagination.
But hey don’t worry, I still managed to make a list of people who seriously inspire me.
Rams once wrote a piece about his ten design principles. One of his design principles was: “Good design is as little design as possible”. As he explains himself Apple is till now the only company that follows these principles.
Leo Babauta (of Zen-Habits):
Continuing being minimal and leaving the ‘real’ expected curated arts a bit behind 
, I think I have to introduce you to Leo Babauta. His blog inspires me weekly. His writings talk mostly about how to live more in the present moment. How to breathe slower. Become less willing to buy new stuff and to be happy with things we already have.
(not made by Leo, created by Learning Fundamentals, based on Leo’s lessons)
She’s my most played artist of all time. Everytime I listen to her songs I hear a different song, it’s very much refreshing. According to Wikipedia she started playing when she was three. She played in church when she was twelve. During her first performance her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. She refused to play until her parents were moved back to the front. Surely this incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement.
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Besides the fact that I know Iepe personally, I think he’s still a huge inspiration to me. Just doing things, creating chaos, provoking people. If life seems just all too serious to you, please get in touch with Iepe’s work and you’ll be smiling all day. Iepe’s approach is also something Mingus and I try to do with Les Oiseaux de Merde. Trying to push the boundaries with serious absurdism.
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It’s really when you try to dive into reasoning why he’s doing this and making this art, you’ll never get the answer. Man will leave you at the point where you decide yourself what to think of the artwork. It can disgust you, or just refresh you. Bartlett is particularly famous for using social media in his art. Mostly performance art. For example, he could stay 24 hours in a Best Buy shop buying nothing and tweeting under the hashtag #24bestnonbuy.
With Times Square Art Square we did a little interview with the guy himself.
It may not come as a surprise to you., but this is yet another fan of the Delft Kinetic Sculpture Artist/Engineer. For me he really is the most inspriring artist out there. His work truly blasts everyones minds. And after having read a wonderful article in the New Yorker about his work, I fell in love again.
If only we would have more Theos
Brendan Oerlemans a refined photographer you may not know. But I know him very well. I lived with him five years under the same roof right next to one of the Delft canals. I bet you’ll be thinking I chose him to be on this list because I know him personally. Sure. But if you take a closer look to his pictures, they’re truly amazing little pieces of art. Captured glimpses…
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Justus
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