Space Invaders
The Earful Tower: Paris
Oliver Gee
4.8 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2018
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Paris is home to some of the most famed classical art in the history of the world. The Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Rodin's sculpture of The Thinker. Monet's game-changing forays into Impressionism.
But there's one Paris art movement that's getting a lot of people very excited - and it's right beneath our noses, by our shoulders, and above our heads.
Yes, I'm talking about the mosaic-tiled works of urban artist Invader, a man whose identity remains unknown but whose work has sold for up to €200,000.
He has put up 1,341 pieces across Paris and you've maybe seen them without even realizing.
But who is Invader? And why is he putting art around Paris? And why are people going around with their phones and "collecting" them?
For today's episode, we have the insights of Jay Swanson, a YouTuber in Paris, who is a "Flash Invader" - someone who goes around collecting photos of the art as part of a popular app by the same name. He tells us all there is to know about Invader.
And Jay is followed by a second guest, journalist David Chazan, who once found an Invader mosaic in his own home. Unfortunately, that one ends as a tale of woe - but it's a great story.
Oh yes, and welcome to Camille from French Today who joins us at the end to teach me a French lesson in one minute, this time how to pronounce a word related to Invader and his work.
Now, enjoy the episode, buy one of my tote bags before they run out, and be sure to leave an iTunes review for me to read out next week. Oh yes, and become a Patron here.
All photos used on The Earful Tower site on this story were taken from the official Space Invaders website - check it out for more cool pics.
Talk next week!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi guys, it's another Monday in Paris. That is another episode of the Earful Tower for you. |
| 0:04.5 | If you're new and you've got no idea what you're listening to, this is the Earful Tower, |
| 0:08.7 | kind of like the Eiffel Tower, but for your ears, hence the name. If you've been here before, |
| 0:14.2 | if you've been here since the beginning, welcome back. Thanks for hanging around. |
| 0:17.7 | Now, before we even get into today's episode about Space Invader and what all that |
| 0:21.8 | means, I want to share some big news, and that is that at the time of speaking, the podcast has |
| 0:27.4 | just crossed over 20,000 downloads a month for the first time ever, and it's likely to keep |
| 0:32.9 | growing by the looks of it. |
| 0:34.1 | So, I don't know, that's a crazy number for me, considering as all podcasts, |
| 0:38.1 | we started at zero listeners, or one and two, really, James Vazina, my old sidekick on me, |
| 0:44.8 | just listening to them back. It's just crazy to think that there's so many of you guys out there, |
| 0:48.1 | and thanks for your support. As for me, I had a very interesting week indeed with the highlight, I think, was, uh, |
| 0:56.4 | I met with a future guest who I'm not going to reveal yet. And he took me down into a secret |
| 1:01.1 | part of the Paris catacombs. So you know the big tourist attraction, the catacombs, all the bones and |
| 1:06.2 | the skeletons and the skulls. There were no bones down there. This was just this secret |
| 1:10.5 | museum. It's actually a museum. |
| 1:12.4 | It's really well maintained and I don't think you can even find it on Google if you go looking |
| 1:17.5 | for it. But it has like a proper entrance and everything hidden. And it's not like these catafiles |
| 1:24.5 | they call people that sneak down storm drains and gutters to get down there. |
| 1:27.5 | This is a proper, proper museum. |
| 1:29.8 | And I'm going to be talking about it in an upcoming episode, but I've been sworn to secrecy not to tell you where it is in Paris, other than that it's on the left bank. |
| 1:38.4 | But a little bonus, if you are following on Instagram, the earful tower on Instagram, there's a bunch of stories with all little |
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