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
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.
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…
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.”
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
A short video created by and featuring surfer John John Florence and friends in Oahu and Maui, Begin Again.
Mood today :)
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.
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)
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.”
Grrrrrrr...a messed up/mixed up kind of day! Two steps forward and one back. A bit of heaven & hell.
A pretty chill kind of day (and freaking cold!!!). And here's a pretty chill track by Paul West Refractions. Check it out on SoundCloud here . Also, check out the Youtube download of it (no vid, just sound).
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.
Here's another great short film titled Right as Rain from Finisterre (Cold Water Surfing), promoting their commitment as a business to environmentally sustainable practices. Team Manager, Matt Smith, and Finisterre ambassador, Fergal Smith, talk about their passion for surfing, the land, and sustainable organic farming at the co-operative Molly Hill Farm, Ireland.
Enjoy!
Love this from the “constellation poet” (@r.cliftpoetry).
Sunday—mood :) Mondo Cozmo's single Sold from his album, Your Motherfucker.
Check it out (and maybe lie outside somewhere and drift with the sky...).
Artwork: by @deih.xlf, A New Beginning
Something otherworldly and wonderful 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."
Swap “soul” or “heart” for “stone” and it also resonates beautifully, although a little less intergalactically!
Yep, it does :)
Artist Ricky Lee Gordon was recently commissioned to create a work for the Paxos Contemporary Art Project in Greece. Titled: THE SON OF THE SEA CREATED AN ISLAND FOR HIS LOVER SO SHE WOULD REST HIS TIRED HEART, he had this to say about its inception, disruption, and that despite not being able to finish the work, the surrounding issues in his view, gave the work its completion:
“Whilst nearing completion of the installation which would serve as a shrine to the story and aching love of Poseidon the Church arrived and asked me to stop. The property which the festival organizers were given and thought to belong to municipality in fact belonged to the church.
The installation consists of a portrait of Poseidon as a young boy overlooking the remaining columns and roof tiles of an abandoned house to represent self and the dismantling of self. Also in some way it was my intention to create a self portrait, reflection on and ritual for the letting go of longing.
The situation and experience of being confronted by the Church and the uncompleted installation is for me the final work. It took on a life of its own out of my control like everything in this constant ever changing flux of a universe. The other interesting link is that it was the Church who dismantled and put an end to any and all belief in the mythology and ritual for the Greek gods.
Aphrodite hid from Poseidon’s love at the ‘end of the world’ so he created the island of Paxos to convince her that if she were to love him she would have the power to soothe his chaotic ways and bring balance to his restless heart.
The myth is also significant as it is thought to symbolize the end of the ancient world and the dawn of the Christian era.”
(http://rickyleegordon.com, @rickyleegordon)
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.”
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.