where words fail

October 16, 2019

This kind of sums up a story I recently posted, The thought of you is everywhere (it’s a long read!). It’s a love story, but it’s also a love story about music.

universe of water particles

October 15, 2019

teamLab, 2019, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

There’s an expansiveness, freedom and openness to change in teamLab’s digital installations.

In their words: “teamLab believes that the digital domain can expand the capacities of art, and that digital art can create new relationships between people.” (teamLab website)

This year, a major teamLab immersive digital installation was featured at the opening of the Tank Shanghai art complex, titled Universe of Water Particles (2019); a cascading waterfall that responded to people’s “touch”. When an individual “touched” the streaming water it then flowed as if meeting a rock in a stream, which in turn caused flowers to scatter in the corresponding artwork Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled but Live. It’s an artwork alive to the beauty of nature and its connection to humans, with a surreal edge in the use of digital technology to simulate this heightened awareness.

Using digital technology teamLab explore pre-modern Japanese notions of space, where 3-D reality was depicted as a flat/2D spatial awareness. TeamLab flip this perspective so that digital projections on flat surfaces become 3D spatial experiences. They term this spatial structuring as “ultrasubjective space”, resulting in immersive and transformative environments, where individuals engage with the work from their unique point of view. It’s also an interactive space where the individual’s very movements/behaviour can alter the artwork, becoming co-creators in its continuous unfolding. This blurring of the boundaries between the individual and the artwork is also enabled by “splitting, folding and dividing” the images/screens, creating a space of connection and fluidity, of mutability, where the artwork doesn’t feel bound by physical space and also, a sense of play and wonder.

ways of seeing

October 14, 2019

Image: Portico Quartet’s album, Memory Streams, 2019 — Image: Portico Quartet’s album, *Memory Streams,* 2019

Been listening to Portico Quartet’s new album Memory Streams, and this gorgeous track is a fave—feels kind of like flying—Ways of Seeing. Check it out.

be me

October 11, 2019

A new artwork from American artist Kelly Akashi to be featured at FIAC Contemporary Art Fair in Paris this year at François Ghebaly Gallery’s booth, Be Me (Cultivator), 2019. Love her work (see my two art stories Feel Me and Ripple).

Simply exquisite.

the secret commonwealth

October 9, 2019

I’ve just begun Philip Pullman’s second volume of The Book of Dust trilogy: The Secret Commonwealth. Set in Oxford almost ten years after the end of His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy (the HBO/BBC tv series will be released in November) , the story continues the adventure of Lyra Silvertongue, now a student at Oxford, and her daemon, Pantalaimon. Pullman’s storytelling is masterful, and as with the previous books, I’m already loving it!

le bateau ivre

October 9, 2019

Amazing and devastating artwork by Pejac (@pejac_art), Le Bateau ivre (2015).

And in his words: “Once upon a time in our planet...”

A cautionary tale, and quite real.

ghosteen

October 5, 2019

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I didn’t know what to expect from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ new album, Ghosteen, not after barely being able to listen to The Skeleton Tree, with its raw grief and pain. The first thing that hit was Cave’s voice—it wasn’t the brittle, thready and barely able to breathe voice from the previous album. No, it’s rich and deep, with a range of effects that weave with the often sparse, electronic and piano score that reminds me more of Warren Ellis and Cave’s soundtrack collaborations. And the songs…Cave is a poet and storyteller and these songs speak of hope, light, wonder, longing and a spiritual dimension; of deeply felt experiences and dreams, but mostly, each song is a love song.

If you have the time, just listen to Ghosteen (you can stream it on SoundCloud). It’s a beautiful, surprising and haunting journey.

creativity takes courage

September 25, 2019

Writing by @jsnwrks (source: @buber_nebz)

A quote from artist Henri Matisse. And yep, it does 😊

being of everything

August 24, 2019

Artwork: Tracey Emin, Believe in Extraordinary, 2015 — Artwork: Tracey Emin, *Believe in Extraordinary*, 2015

Great insight on creativity from Tracey Emin:

"I gave up painting, I gave up art, I gave up believing, I gave up faith. I had what I called my emotional suicide, I gave up a lot of friendships with people, I just gave up believing in life really and it’s taken me years to actually start loving and believing again. I realized that there was a greater idea of creativity. Greater than anything I could make just with my mind or with my hands, I realized there was something…the essence of creativity, that moment of conception, the whole importance, the whole being of everything and I realized that if I was going to make art it couldn’t be about…it couldn’t be about a fucking picture. It couldn’t be about something visual. It had to be about where it was really coming from."

(Source: @_nitch)

phoenix

August 16, 2019

Another beautiful work by Seth (@seth_globepainter), Phoenix, for the ‘Out in the Open’ mural project with @kirkgallery in Aalborg, Denmark.

Butterfly Kid

August 12, 2019

Love this—Yinka Shonibare’s mixed media installation, Butterfly Kid (boy) IV 2019.

British-Nigerian artist Shonibare’s work deals with issues of race, migration, post-colonialism, globalisation, and often features iconic Western art references with an ironic and playful twist. The Butterfly Kids series was inspired by environmental issues, and suggests notions of escape, endangerment, collapse, and extinction, yet also, it alludes to liberation, beauty, freedom and hope.

And perhaps that kids, in their efforts, will and knowledge, will be the creators, activists and leaders of a new world.

I loved it so much—I wrote an art story about it. Check it out.

A Yoshitomo Nara Day

August 9, 2019

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Yep—so over it.

Born To

August 5, 2019

Flow and freedom.

A short film about Ukranian skateboarder and jazz musician, Sasha Protenko. Living in the moment, doing what makes you feel present and alive, going with the flow.

Director Pavel Buryak spoke about the film saying: “I tried to show how jazz and skateboarding culture can exist together in one person. The saxophone is meditative and helps you journey into the subconscious. Then there’s skateboarding, which is part of the road to self-discovery and real courage.”

Magic.

(source: www.nowness.com)

seesaws at the border

July 31, 2019

Image: Seesaw installation by architecture studio Rael San Fratello, 2019

Three pink seesaws were installed recently at the US/Mexican borderwall. Positioned between the steel slats along the stretch of wall between El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, the installation allowed children on both sides to play together. The seesaw installation was created by the architectural studio Rael San Fratello.

In an IG post, architect Ronald Rael (@rrael), who has protested Trump’s call for development of the borderwall, commented on the installation: "The wall became a literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations and children and adults were connected in meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side."

words shape reality

July 24, 2019

American artist Christine Sun Kim was born deaf and makes art about sound. She creates art that hinges on communication—its visual, social and textual subtleties—challenging the notion of sound as simply an auditory experience. She incorporates language—sign (ASL, American Sign Language), written, spoken—using symbols, words, drawings, noise, vibration, sight, touch, movement, performance and technology, expressing an expansive engagement with the world, and a complex relationship with deaf culture. Through her art Kim extends the possibilities of language and communicating, shifting people’s perception of being deaf as a restriction, of being “less” involved and able to interpret and communicate complexity.

The statement featured on Kim’s billboard Words Shape Reality powerfully underpins her artistic practice, in all its potentially layered meanings. The billboard was situated in Jefferson City, Missouri, USA, (2018) as part of a nationwide crowdfunded project by arts organisation For Freedoms called the ‘50 State Initiative’, created to engage the public in political participation and reaction. The organisation’s name was inspired by American artist Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms painting series (1943) based on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 call to Congress, advocating the basic human need for the public freedoms of speech, worship, want and from fear.

hang the moon

July 17, 2019

Artwork: by SpY (@spyurbanart), Luna, Madrid, 2019 — Artwork: by SpY (@spyurbanart), *Luna*, Madrid, 2019

Terrific installation by artist SpY (@spyurbanart, www.SpY-urbanart.com/) Luna, Madrid, 2019.

the one who loves it

July 2, 2019

A new and great work by WRDSMITH in Hollywood.

Find the one who loves your work.

Plastic Waste Labyrinth

June 20, 2019

Luzinterruptus is an anonymous artistic group based in Spain creating urban interventions in public spaces. They began creating work in the streets of Madrid in 2008 with the single purpose of using the medium of light to focus people’s attention on problems they found in the city that appeared to go unnoticed by citizens and authorities. The aim of the team is to leave lights on in the city so that other people can put them out.

The poetry of their work stems from this illumination: “We use light as a raw material and the dark as our canvas… light allows us to make interventions in a smaller degree and greater in others.”

One of their larger scale interventions has been the Plastic Waste Labyrinth in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor for its 4th Centennial Celebration (2017), constructed around the statue of King Philip III. They did a smaller iteration in Poland in 2014 and more recently in Buenos Aires (2018). Built using a month’s worth of plastic bottles that had been consumed in the plaza, the work graphically emphasised the amount of waste generated throughout the city every day, and that’s often not recycled appropriately.

The walls of the maze measured 3 metres in height and comprised 15,000 bottles hung within transparent bags. Additional bottles were gathered from hospitals, universities and official institutions to make up the required amount to make the labyrinth. However they weren’t able to source bottles from the city’s recycling services, as they didn’t separate PET plastic waste from collections, which only highlighted the need for such an intervention.

While visually mesmerising—especially at night—the piece was not meant to be easy to experience. Luzinterruptus wanted people to feel discomfort when entering it, to experience the sense of being lost and hemmed in by plastic waste. This claustrophobia and sensory overload gave direct experience of the weight of the problem of plastic pollution—not just engaging with it as an abstract idea. Walking the labyrinth meant being immersed in the actual pollution so that it could no longer be ignored.

(source: www.luzinterruptus.com)