Image: @yonopo
Couldn’t resist—Yayoi Kusama’s mini-me tricked out for Halloween!
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.
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 and change.
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.
kin
Fabulous just completed mural in Williamsburg, Brooklyn by @sonnysundancer titled, Kin. Commenting on the mural, 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.
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.
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.
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