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. 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)

a poem

Artwork: Drawing, Poem by Pejac (@pejac_art)

Wonderful words written by Robert Frost to poet, Louis Untermeyer in a letter:

“A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfilment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”

A Yoshitomo Nara Day

A messed up, mixed up kind of day! A bit of heaven & hell. 

love sonnet

Image: Jen Szeto (@windowofimagination)

Read this today. Sublime. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet Love:

We cannot live, except thus mutually 

We alternate, aware or unaware, 

The reflex act of life: and when we bear 

Our virtue onward most impulsively, 

Most full of invocation, and to be 

Most instantly compellant, certes, there 

We live most life, whoever breathes most air 

And counts his dying years by sun and sea. 

But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth 

Throw out her full force on another soul,

The conscience and the concentration both 

Make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole 

And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,

As nature’s magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.

to be immortal

Interesting advice from the “constellation poet” (@r.cliftpoetry).

mondo cozmo

This is the kind of track where you just lie outside somewhere and drift, Mondo Cozmo's single Sold from his album, Your Motherfucker. Check it out.

Sold

Mondo Cozmo

a new beginning

Artwork: by @deih.xlf, A New Beginning

Something otherworldly from artist @deih.xlf, titled A New Beginning. This mural was painted for a festival called ‘Encrucijada Sangüesa’ in Ciudad de Sangüesa, a small town in Navarra, in the North of Spain. Deih said this about the mural: “When you directly confront your stone, you always get an answer with a new way of shining. (The real knowledge is for brave people.) A new beginning is possible." Maybe switch “soul” for “stone” and it kind of makes sense.

music connects

Yes, it does,

beautiful things

Image: Saul Bass quote featured here on 5preview's naoko silk dress

This hit home—a quote from graphic designer Saul Bass: “I want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares.”

carolina's pony

Artwork: LET (@l.e.t._les.enfants.terribles), Carolina's Pony

Latest terrific and edgy stencil in Berlin by LET (@l.e.t._les.enfants.terribles), Carolina's Pony.

sergei x rankin

I love dance, especially contemporary, but once in a while a classical ballet dancer comes on the scene who defies categorisation, is so out there, unique and adventurous, that you just have to take notice. Ukrainian Sergei Polunin is that dancer. Here's a short film collaboration with photographer Rankin, soundtrack by Husky Loops, for Hunger magazine that showcases his incredible talent. I mean—wow! Just wow.

skee mask

I've been listening to this track on repeat since it came out a couple of weeks ago, Skee Mask's Soundboy Ext. from the album, Compro. A trippy, dreamy landscape to get lost in. Check it out.

Soundboy Ext.

Skee Mask

the sun will fall to the sea

ARtwork: wall mural by Ricky Lee Gordon, the sun will fall to the sea, Berlin, 2016

Artist Ricky Lee Gordon's wonderful mural in Berlin, the sun will fall to the sea, is a response to people's quest for progress, how the decisions of so few in power affect so many, and especially how this negatively impacts on the environment. Gordon believes that with people becoming more aware of their connection to nature they're “creating an uprising of creativity, sensitivity and consciousness, but it’s also creating a lot of despair because people don’t know what to do”. And his message is, that's okay. Nature will have its way, no matter what we do:   

The sun will fall to the sea.

The moon and tides will rise.

These kings and their castles will wash away.

die Sonne wird im Ozean versinken .

Der Mond und das Wasser werden steigen.

Diese Könige in ihren Schlössern werden weggewaschen.

Berlin 2016. For Urban Nation Museum
121 Landsburger Allee
Photos-Nika Kramer

paths

Imagine walking through a forest, the colours dense and dark with old growth trees and lush greenery. The sky is overcast, and you can smell the mulchy iron of the earth, wet from the recent rain. And perhaps you're walking aimlessly, thinking of nothing much, or you're searching for something: a sign, inspiration, a way through a difficult situation. Or you're happy simply to be in nature, away from the city smog, just so you can breathe. Out of nowhere, you come across words written in chalk on the bark of the trees: Trust Your Path.

It stops you in your tracks. It makes you wonder.

This is the latest work of artist Sean Yoro, aka the hula (@the_hula). Revisiting the site of a previous biodegradable chalk work, now washed away, Yoro said this temporary piece was inspired by, "the struggles of finding your own path in life".

muggles

Some wise words for the beginning of the week from the marvellous J.K Rowling: “Don't let the muggles get you down.” (@_nitch)

dream delivery service

Image: Mathias Svalina preparing for the day’s delivery, 2017

Poet/writer Mathias Svalina spends his days writing surreal stories—dreams (and sometimes nightmares), and then, at 2am he gets on his bicycle and delivers these handwritten tales on pink cards, in pink envelopes (he likes the colour), to the recipients' homes. He can make up to 40 deliveries depending on the town and city he finds himself in. 

Originally from Denver, Svalina ditched his adjunct poetry professor gig at the University of Colorado to combine two things he loved—writing strange fiction and riding his bike (and travelling). After 4 years, Svalina's Dream Delivery Service is self sustaining, and what he doesn't deliver by hand, he does through the mail.

So, if you'd love to have a dream delivered to you (he delivers overseas as well), find out more about this fabulous project at the Dream Delivery Service website (here).

Here's just one of them:

Day 26: February 9, 2018.

You are walking around the city at night & see a small cocktail bar that looks inviting. You step inside & the entire place is full of people you don’t want to see, disliked co-workers, exes, that weird dude who used to follow you around. They are all there. And as you walk in, they all look up & see you. You can’t leave—that would be weird. But you don’t want them to recognize you. The host says Hello! Welcome! And then, to disguise yourself, you respond in a heavy Cockney accent Oi! ‘Ello! Ahm jus popped in from ‘cross the pond! Immediately, none of the people you don’t want to see can recognize you. The host guides you to the bar, where you order & cocktail. The cocktail, when it arrives, has a living plant in it, the roots dangling over the ice. And with each sip of the cocktail the flower grows, until, with your final sip, the plant blooms into a wide, beautiful sky-blue flower. Then later you are at Home Depot looking for a new set of windows to install into a house you just bought on an island somewhere. All the windows are too much, too ornate, too delicate, too dark. And finally you realize that on this island windows are superfluous, a waste even. Then you are in your house on the island, the ocean breeze washing over you like a calming caress. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the world that is permanently bad, you realize.

don't lose your aim

Artwork: wall mural by millo, Don’t lose your aim, Mexico

Wonderful wall by Millo (@_millo_) in Conalep, a National College of Technical Professional Education in Valle de Santiago, Guanajuato, Mexico. The piece is titled: 

No pierdas el tino,
Mide la distancia
Que hay en el camino

It's a sentence from “Cantos para romper la piñata” and translates as: Don't lose your aim, Measure the distance, That's on the way.”

The wall is part of a bigger social project in Guanajuato and Millo states: “The goal of the project is to bring art where there isn't and closer to young people in order to let them feel inspired by another point of view.”

director's reel

I stumbled upon Samantha Casolari's 2018 Director's Reel, which is basically a mash-up of highlights from her recent video work. Casolari is a photographer and video artist based in New York who works across portraiture, fashion, music, film, contemporary culture and dance. What hooked me in was the melding of mood, movement, colour and a killer song by American electronic duo, Boy Harsher, Suitor. Check it out, and you can listen to the track on SoundCloud here. You can also check out Casolari's work at her website www.samanthacasolari.com. 

the world is a song

Photo: Chalkie Davies

Musician/artist David Byrne's point-of-view of how the world “works— 

"I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe...I wouldn't be surprised if poetry...in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes and designs...is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song."