At the end of August 2026, the Italian street artist headed into the countryside near Reggio Emilia and installed a gigantic portrait of French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline on an abandoned, half-collapsed farmhouse in the middle of pretty much nowhere. The piece is called “Want Justice? Here Justice”. It measures roughly “15 metres high by 6 metres wide”, and it is the biggest work Beast has made so far.

No festival. No shiny city-centre façade. No sponsor logo underneath it. Just a dead French writer, a crumbling building, a cherry picker and a field in Emilia. Very Beast.

The artist has been working in public space since 2009, producing more than 200 interventions across over 40 cities in Europe, the US and Japan. But over the last three years he has developed a particularly odd obsession. Rather than chasing pop icons or whatever happens to be trending that week, Beast has been dragging writers, philosophers, artists and thinkers back into view. Albert Camus. Carl Gustav Jung. Philip Roth. Jackson Pollock. Noam Chomsky. And now Céline. He puts them on ruined buildings, usually far from the crowds, in places where the architecture looks as if it gave up years ago.

The technique is even stranger. For every work, Beast first photographs the actual wall in obsessive detail. Cracks, stains, missing plaster, damp marks, erosion, all the stuff a sensible person might pay someone to repair. He then takes that exact texture and digitally works it into the portrait. The image is printed on paper at huge scale, taken back to the original building and pasted onto the exact same wall. Then comes the properly fiddly bit: lining up the cracks printed across the portrait with the real cracks underneath. Yes, really.

It is an absurd amount of work to make something look as though it was never added in the first place. When it works, the portrait almost disappears into the building. The skin of the person becomes the skin of the architecture. A crack runs through the face because the crack was already there. The series is called “…and we hired a bloke to fix the wall”, which tells you quite a lot about Beast’s sense of humour. Nobody fixes anything. The walls stay knackered. Beast simply gives all that damage another job.

Céline is not exactly the safe option either. He was one of the most influential French novelists of the twentieth century, an extraordinary stylist and, to put it mildly, a deeply problematic human being. His antisemitic writings remain indefensible, while books such as “Journey to the End of the Night” continue to loom over modern literature. This isn’t Céline fan merch at 15 metres high. It is closer to asking what happens to important cultural figures when history refuses to make them conveniently good, bad or forgettable.

And this is where Beast’s peculiar corner of street art gets interesting. He has made a habit of doing something almost nobody else in the scene seems especially interested in doing: taking cultural figures from history, giving them monumental scale, and putting them somewhere miles away from the usual attention economy. It is almost anti-Instagram street art. The farmhouse will keep deteriorating. The paper will fade. Céline, annoyingly enough, may be around for a while.

beaststreetart.com

Instagram: @beastwalls

Online dating has a trust problem. You match with someone, start a conversation, and three messages in you’re wondering if you’re talking to the person in the photos or someone running a script from a call center overseas. Fake profiles, catfishing, bots posing as humans. It’s exhausting. HundRoses, a dating platform in development for Canadian and American users, has a straightforward solution: make people prove they’re real before they can send a single message.

Here’s how it works. You can browse profiles without any verification, scroll through potential matches, and get a feel for the app. But the moment you want to actually talk to someone, verification is required. It’s a hard line that most dating apps won’t draw, but HundRoses is prioritizing safety over convenience.

The verification requirement only for messaging is smarter than forcing everyone through it upfront. People want to explore before committing, and there’s no point making someone verify their ID just to see if the app even has users in their area. But once you’re interested enough to reach out, proving your identity becomes part of the process. It’s the difference between casual browsing and genuine engagement.

This approach directly addresses what makes online dating feel unsafe for a lot of people. Women deal with harassment, fake accounts, and people who aren’t who they claim to be. Men waste time talking to bots or scammers. Everyone’s been ghosted by someone who was probably never real in the first place. Verification raises the floor. If someone has to verify their identity to message you, you know there’s an actual human on the other end. That baseline level of accountability changes how people interact from the first conversation.

The platform calls itself a dating app “built around respect and trust,” and the verification system backs that up. It’s not just a tagline or marketing language. It’s baked into how the app functions at its core. You can’t operate anonymously when it comes to making connections, which changes the dynamic from the start. There’s a real person behind every message, and both people know it.

HundRoses is launching in Canada and the USA, targeting North American singles who are tired of the same recycled experiences from Match Corporation’s family of apps. They’re currently offering early access to VIP members while the platform’s still in development, building a user base that values verified connections over anonymous browsing. The focus on Canadian and American markets gives them a contained launch to refine the experience before considering expansion.

The verification barrier separates people who are serious about meeting someone from those who just want to browse without accountability. For users fed up with fake profiles and dead-end conversations, that barrier is exactly the point. It filters out the noise before it even starts.

Dating apps have spent years trying to make everything as frictionless as possible, removing any obstacle between swiping and messaging. HundRoses is adding friction back in, but only where it matters. Browse all you want, but if you’re going to reach out to another person, you’re doing it as yourself.

Learn more at HundRoses.com or follow their development on Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.

There’s something captivating about how Wang Gang approaches traditional music—he doesn’t just preserve it, he breathes new life into it. His latest composition, “Memory of Xinjiang,” continues this approach, building on the success of “Spring Rain” from his Eastern Journey series, which earned a Global Music Award.

Wang’s new composition draws from the folk song “Our Wonderful Xinjiang,” and here’s what’s fascinating—he preserves its traditional rhythms and modal structures while incorporating modern electronic elements. The result creates an auditory experience that honestly feels like traveling across Xinjiang’s diverse geography. You can almost see the Nalati Grassland stretching endlessly, feel the imposing presence of the Tianshan mountains, and sense the shifting sands of the Kumtag Desert.

Wang acknowledges that we’re living in an era dominated by short videos and the pursuit of online traffic, yet he firmly believes in pure music’s power to anchor listener attention. His goal is transforming simple auditory perception into what he describes as a multidimensional musical experience that evokes profound emotional resonance.

What’s interesting is how Wang’s approach reflects broader changes happening in Chinese folk music. As globalization and digital technology reshape how music gets made and shared, traditional sounds are finding fresh expressions through cross-cultural partnerships and technological innovation. It’s not just about preserving the past anymore—it’s about making it relevant for today.

For “Memory of Xinjiang,” Wang assembled an international team of musicians working across borders—no small feat in today’s world. The collaboration includes violinist Zhang Yi, cellist Yu Ping, Guzheng artist He Ying, and Pipa artist Zhou Yating from China, alongside vocalist Li Sisi. Producer Mei Zi worked with Canada’s Osmanthus Music Studio for recording and mixing, proving that great music doesn’t recognize geographical boundaries.

What’s particularly striking about the piece is how it weaves together instruments from different traditions. Traditional Xinjiang and Central Asian instruments like the Sitar, Daf drum, Rawap, and Tambur blend seamlessly with digital synthesis and modern production techniques. This isn’t just musical fusion for its own sake—Wang genuinely sees it as the future of composition and music distribution. The efficiency and creative flexibility this approach offers has clearly impressed him, and honestly, the results speak for themselves.

The project reunites Wang with executive producer Fei Yun, a Chinese Canadian musician who’s built quite a reputation for curating original compositions that highlight Chinese folk elements. Her track record is impressive—previous projects include acclaimed works like “Drum Zen,” “Spring Rain,” and “The Song of the Drums” series, which have earned recognition at international art competitions. What makes her particularly valuable isn’t just her artistic insight, but her practical experience in bringing Chinese music to global audiences without losing its authenticity.

Fei Yun’s background as an independent producer gives her a unique perspective on how traditional elements can resonate with contemporary listeners worldwide. She understands both the creative and business sides of music, which is increasingly important in today’s industry. Her involvement brings a level of credibility that matters when you’re trying to bridge cultural gaps through music.

Wang’s work sits at a really interesting intersection. He’s deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture but equally engaged with contemporary aesthetics and technology. Whether through remote collaboration or the fusion of digital and multimedia art, he’s constantly pushing boundaries while respecting the source material—a balance that’s harder to achieve than it sounds.

The composer’s range is genuinely impressive, spanning from the delicate melodies of Jiangnan Tanci to the complex rhythms of Xinjiang’s Maqam musical tradition. His ability to move between classical instruments and electronic textures speaks to a broader evolution in how Chinese music engages with the world. It’s not about choosing sides between old and new—it’s about finding ways to make them work together.

“Memory of Xinjiang” represents more than just musical innovation—it’s part of a growing movement where traditional music doesn’t simply preserve the past but actively engages with the present. Through collaborations that cross continents and genres that blend centuries of musical development, Wang is helping Chinese music find its rightful place on the global stage.

The success of projects like this suggests that audiences are genuinely hungry for music that honors tradition while speaking in contemporary terms. As technology continues to reshape how music gets created and distributed, composers like Wang are proving that cultural authenticity and modern innovation don’t have to be opposing forces. In fact, when done thoughtfully, they can enhance each other in ways that create something entirely new yet deeply familiar.

There’s something hopeful about this approach to music-making. In an era where cultural divisions often make headlines, Wang’s work demonstrates how artistic collaboration can build bridges between different worlds, creating shared experiences that transcend geographical and cultural boundaries.