As part of an end of year round-up, the team at NOWNESS (https://www.nowness.com) has produced a series, 12 Days of Performance, featuring dancers, musicians, and prominent creative individuals, such as Sergei Polunin in this “capsule performance”, directed by Bunny Kinney. Simply gorgeous.
with joy
Image: @murmurestreet, L’enfance de l’art : Paris
Whatever you believe in—peace, love, creativity, freedom—here's to celebrating whatever matters most to each of us, and hopefully with the people who matter most in the coming holidays. With joy.
butterfly
Image: @exogalaxies
Butterfly nebula. Just a reminder of the beauty that’s out there.
stellar axis
Artwork: Stellar Axis: Antarctica, Lita Albuquerque, 2006
Stellar Axis; Antarctica was created by Californian based artist Lita Albuquerque in 2006 as an incredibly ambitious ephemeral art project inspired by Albuquerque questioning the place of humans in the enormity of infinite space and time.
The installation was created in Antarctica at the Ross Ice Shelf, and later replicated in the North Pole. It was comprised of 99 blue spherical structures arranged on polar ice calculated exactly to align with 99 stars. Each sphere’s diameter correlated to the relative brightness of each star. The installation was in effect a stellar map on Antarctic ice. And as the planet rotated on its axis, the alignment of spheres and stars shifted, creating a spiral of motion at the South Pole. This motion was enacted in a performance where 51 scientists and technicians from the nearby McMurdo Station research facility walked the spiral path of the spheres, their feet visibly tracing the unseen relationship of the planet, stars, and humans.
Albuquerque speaks about these epic connections in her art practice:
Artwork: Stellar Axis: Antarctica, Lita Albuquerque, 2006
"I am interested in change of scale: how the observer affects the object of observation; space as a void; non-space existing in time. By altering the scale and context of the grid (as a scientific tool of measurement), the grid becomes an artistic tool of perception.
The fossilized brachiopod from three hundred millions years ago appears to be an ancient remnant of star, waiting to be transformed back to its stellar origin.
Some brittle stars exist in the Antarctic and Arctic, and some are found even in the deepest parts of the ocean where there is no sunlight. Others have exquisitely developed crystalline lenses, formed from the bone in their skeletons, which focus light inside their bodies and enable them to see.
But this is not blackness, it is full of something from long ago with the potential of something yet to be.'"
(quote source: domus)
city of flowers in the sky
Inspired by Botticelli’s painting in the Uffizi, La Primavera, artist Cia Guo-Quiang (@caistudio) created a fireworks spectacle in Florence at the Piazzale Michelangelo, City of Flowers in the Sky which also marked the opening of his exhibition at the Uffizi, Flora Commedia, from November 20, 2018 until February 17, 2019. Magic.
instructions for time travel
Loving this. The Deru remix of Robot Koch and Savannah Jo Lack’s, Instructions for Time Travel. Cosmic.
no hesitation
Artwork: No hesitation mural in Pistoia by millo
Gorgeous mural by millo (@_millo_) in Pistoia: No hesitation.
About the project: “The aim of the entire project is to renovate a small area close to the historical centre of the city, it has been wonderful to be there and see how much we can do for our spaces. Sometimes we should just take off our structures, let somebody turn the key and open our heart’.”
water flame
Two elements, opposing forces, where one could at an instant, smother the other. Jeppe Hein’s installation, Water Flame (2006) is an improbable balance akin to wonder. Mesmerising.
geyser
Artwork: Michelangelo Bastiani, Geyser III, 2016
Water is an element I love. Its liquid flow and flux. Its transformation through states of gas, liquid, to ice. Its fundamental necessity to life. And swimming in the ocean, immersing myself in its briny depths, I feel closest to the energy that supports all life, this very earth. We need the ocean to breathe, to support the earth’s climate, to feed the ecosystems we all depend on to survive.
Artwork: Michelangelo Bastiani, Geyser III, 2016
So I’m especially drawn to art that explores water such as Italian Michelangelo Bastiani’s work Geyser III (2016), an interactive video projection that engages with states of transformation and change between nature and technology, between reality and perception, and between the viewer and the artwork.
Bastiani states: “Water, and liquidness in general, is my preferred field of investigation. My favorite subjects are natural phenomena of different magnitude, from the most tumultuous storms to soft clouds, relaxing water lilies, cold icebergs, waterfalls, fountains, galaxies, travels to the center of the earth… For instance, an artificial lake might take shape in a room and, thanks to digital techniques, the spectator becomes an integral part of the work by simply passing in front of it, thus becoming a part of the kinetic process. Analog and digital blend in these holograms which are enclosed in transparent bottles and jars, and direct interaction from the viewer results in infinite variables. The relationship between work and observer become stronger transforming what we imagine as the traditional ‘passive’ visit into an ‘active’ experience.”
halloween
Image: @yonopo
Couldn’t resist—Yayoi Kusama’s mini-me tricked out for Halloween!
we are coming!
Huh! Maybe they’re already here…
(image: @nicestreetart)
Four Tet - Lost Village Festival
Been listening to Four Tet’s set from Lost Village Festival in August this year. It’s fabulous. Check it out on SoundCloud here
small stories: the wilds
Image: Film still from Andrew Kaineder’s film Beyond the Noise, 2018
where are the wilds
and the the edges of this world
that free us
where echoes of fears
and terrors unspoken
are overcome
where hope is not salvation
but a kindness linking
us to all
where breath is born
of fire that fuels imagination
for so much more
© Angela Jooste
To Whom It May Concern
Artwork: Elmgreen & Dragset studio, To Whom It May Concern, Place Vendôme, 2018
Starfish are sometimes seen as the reflection of the stars in the sky in the ocean’s depths. These magical creatures navigate the world through touch, reflexes and instinct. They have an incredible ability to regenerate, even survive amputations. And like so many creatures in the sea, they are under threat from environmental pollution.
Image: Starfish/sea stars from the Galapagos Islands (photo: @perrinjames1)
Elmgreen & Dragset studio have created a site-specific installation, To Whom It May Concern, currently in the Place Vendôme, Paris. It consists of 100 red bronze starfish scattered in the square, as if the ocean has flooded then ebbed to leave them stranded. The radical strangeness of their placement out of water spotlights how their survival is at peril, and the threat posed by ocean pollution such as plastics. Yet with their remarkable abilities to regenerate and survive, they are also a symbol of hope—the possibilities of new ways of living.
the little prince
Artwork: The Little Prince by @seth_globapainter
Truly gorgeous. Wall mural by SETH (@seth-globepainter) inspired by one of my favourite books, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.
For the love of books…
underwater
Water, water—everywhere.
Kylian Castells was inspired to create this short film to refocus on his passion:
“Last year I was caught on deadlines, working extra hours for clients, waiting endlessly for reward. From one day to another my passion became my job. I needed to feel water at it’s purest form, the beat that forces me to wake up first light in the morning, the silence underwater and the noise of each wave holding me down; that’s exactly what keeps me running.
This is not an under assignment job, this is a portrait of all those little things that makes everything worth it. Pure love.”
kin
Fabulous just completed mural in Williamsburg, Brooklyn by @sonnysundancer titled, Kin.
We’re all connected and as artist Sonny wrote: “The planet belongs to all of us.”
Artwork: Kin by @sonysundancer, Williamsburg, 2018
begin again
A short video created by and featuring surfer John John Florence and friends in Oahu and Maui, Begin Again.
Mood today :)
double-quadruple-etcetera-etcetera
Image: Still from Sondra Perry's Double Quadruple Etcetera-Etcetera 2013
When I first saw American artist Sondra Perry’s video, Double-Quadruple-Etcetera-Etcetera (2013, watch versions I & II here) I was mesmerised by the frenetic energy and the thought came, “I wouldn’t mind cutting loose like that.”
But there’s a violent undercurrent that’s hard to ignore, and has nothing to do with cutting loose and expressing yourself freely.
Perry works with digital production and performance, foregrounding the use of new technologies to explore issues of identity, subjecthood, representation and blackness. In Double-Quadruple, Perry used the content-aware function in Photoshop to mask most of the moving figure. She instructed the performer to “move around ferociously”. The program registers most of the image as background or wall-space, delegating the figure to a kind of erasure or abstraction, despite the thrashing movement signifying an actual body. Applied frame by frame, the figure becomes a mini-whirlwind, the digital masking straightjackets the figure so that they appear to be trying to escape confinement. This fighting back is almost symbolic of the performer wanting to assert their presence in the face of being completely whited out—obliterated.
Perry currently has a solo exhibition Typhoon coming on at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, until 20 May 2018. You can check out Perry's work at http://sondraperry.com.
books & time
Artwork: Street art by millo (@_millo_), Once upon a time, Milan, Italy
Insightful quote from Carl Sagan about the magic of books:
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time."
(source: @_nitch)