Bandana Fever

Following the success of the last two 50 Jeans Live Unbuttoned art installations, Levi’s and VICE have come together to find the UK’s most talented painters, illustrators, designers, sculptors, artists, whatever to have their work displayed on HUGE sites throughout London.

There are absolutely no guidelines for this project, other than that your work should try and capture the essence of what it means to “Live Unbuttoned” – living un-restrained and celebrating self-expression and creative freedom. This may involve freedom, creative expression, full-frontal nudity or however else you interpret the project. Basically, this is an offer to have your work displayed in the capital on a huge scale, no strings attached.

If you are selected from the teeming hordes of hopefuls to have your work featured as part of the Live Unbutton campaign, your work will be blown up to HUGE proportions, and displayed in Camden (The Lock Tavern), Shoreditch (Village Underground) and Soho (The Breakfast Club).

The winner will work with the project mentor, Ben Freeman, a regular Vice contributor and general expert on design, graphics, photography and the publisher of all round amazing magazine FUN, to translate their work from small scale, to ‘size of a large building scale’. Once up, your work will remain on show for one month (21st September – 21st October).

Your work need not be in any fixed medium or format, be it oil painting, papier-mâché, carved granite – whatever, we want to see it. All entries simply need to reflect the essence of the 501 jeans Live Unbuttoned campaign.

The competition opens on the 3rd of August and closes on the 1st of September.

For further information on the competition or to submit your entry please visit viceland.com/liveunbuttoned

Everyone might be flying into Los Angeles for the 2009 BET Awards this weekend. But, for you New Yorkers who opt to stay in your city at least for Friday night (June 26), here’s a perfect way to fill your weekend.

The Sneaker Pimps tour is headed to New York City for its last date in June, before taking a two-week break, going down at Terminal 5 and is open to all ages.

The New York tour stop will not only feature the latest, greatest in the sneaker arena, but also include performances by Big Boi, Jadakiss, the Clipse, Wale, and the Cool Kids, as well as live art installations by artists Claw, Jor, IRAK and others.

The Sneaker Pimps has already landed in cities such as Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami on the tour, so we spoke to its founder, Peter Fahey, to talk about how this year’s tour has gone so far and its growth over the years.

BallerStatus.com: You’ve been on tour since the beginning of May. What surprises have you experienced thus far?

Peter Fahey: Big Boi hitting the stage in ATL with fake kicks was a pretty big surprise — it was funny. All the sneaker boutiques that have closed down since last year, crazy!

BallerStatus.com: Has the turnout been what you expected, in light of the sagging economy?

Peter Fahey: Man, coming into this I was kinda anxious to see how it would affect our events, but it really hasn’t at all. We have had really good attendance in most cities. The one major difference we noticed was that the crowds are much younger than any other year.

BallerStatus.com: Have there been any behind-the-scenes missteps that had to be diffuse that regular folk didn’t even notice take place?

Peter Fahey: Yeah man. In Houston, Scarface was scheduled to perform — he arrived late and so he had to wait for like 30 minutes in his green room before hitting the stage. But I guess he got impatient and tried to straight leave without performing. We blocked the door and luckily were able to chill the situation out. But man, there is always mad drama.

BallerStatus.com: So far, which city had the livest show and why?

Peter Fahey: ATL with Big Boi — despite the fake kicks — his set was one of the best performances I have seen in my life. It was basically like watching an OutKast show.

Miami was pretty crazy too — sold out show with Clipse and The Cool Kids.

BallerStatus.com: The Sneaker Pimps show has been around since 2003. What has changed since then? What kind of things were different and remained the same this year?

Peter Fahey: Well the biggest difference is the level of music performances that we have at the events. We went from booking unknown DJs to everyone from Nas, Public Enemy, Ghostface, Travis Barker, etc. etc.

Live skateboarding is definitely a part of the show we try and build on. People being able to buy and sell shoes at our events is new. The shoes are always changing and evolving. Really the only thing that stays the same is the name and the basic premise of what we do.

BallerStatus.com: For a fan who has never been to a Sneaker Pimps event, what should they expect?

Peter Fahey: Over 1,000 sneakers on display of all sorts, live artist installations, dope music line-ups, live skateboarding, Xbox 360 video game battles, a vintage video game display, Verizon Wireless TXT message battling … so much going on.

BallerStatus.com: The tour is running through August. Are you worn out yet, lol?

Peter Fahey: Well, we actually are about to add another ten cities to this tour, which will take us through November and we still have shows overseas after that, so no definitely not tired, just having a blast doing what we love to do all day everyday!

BallerStatus.com: Last words to add on?

Peter Fahey: Huge THANK YOUS to our sponsors — Verizon Wireless, Xbox 360 — to my crew that tour the world with me and all the fans who come out to the shows and keep supporting!!

For more information and remaining dates on the annual Sneaker Pimps tour, visit SneakerPimps.net.