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’.”
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.
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.”
Image: @yonopo
Couldn’t resist—Yayoi Kusama’s mini-me tricked out for Halloween!
Huh! Maybe they’re already here…
(image: @nicestreetart)
Been listening to Four Tet’s set from Lost Village Festival in August this year. It’s fabulous. Check it out on SoundCloud here
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…
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...).