Archive for April, 2008

Bang On a Can – David Lang

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Listen to David Lang Cheating, Lying, Stealing
He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion, composed in 2007 and based on the children’s story by Hans Christian Andersen.
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Together with Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon, Lang co-founded Bang on a Can in 1987 (Wiki)

NPR on David Lang and hear an excerpt from The Little Match Girl Passion’ from Carnegie Hall

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(What holiday is today? Today is April 30 – not April 1 – so the Jeff Koons iGoogle artwork first spotted in the UK this morning is no April Fools Day joke.)

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Jeff Koon IGoogle remixed

Ironic Sans’s IGoogle is here

Floating Reflection – Adam Frelin

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

B-flat

B-flat (collaborative project with Shunichi Ogawa) from adam frelin on Vimeo.

“It’s all magnet and gravity. And once in a while it’s floating.Adam Frelin

See more videos here

Samples of images and installation by Adam Frelin
White Heat – Burnt out SUV

Floating Reflection

Adam Frelin is linked at Deborah Fisher

Yasukuni Controversy

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

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(image from Japan blind to a dark past)

“I made ‘Yasukuni’ for both Japan’s sake and for my sake,” said Li, the director, a 19-year resident of Japan. It took him nearly a decade to complete the work, which won the best humanitarian documentary prize last month at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. The film received rave reviews when it was screened earlier this year at the Berlin and Sundance film festivals. (Herald Tribune)

Yasukuni” director voices fears after HK film award

Photo of Li Ying viali-ying1
(Li Ying’s next film will be about the Olympics and Tibet.)

John Junkerman interviews Li Ying

Some background info on Yasukuni Shrine here.

A photo of Yasukuni Pathway and BBC slideshow of Koizumi past visit to Yasukuni Shrine

Still More Controversy over Yasukuni Shrine” (Cross reference to Haruki Murakami’s plea for Japanese to do more soul searching)

Earthache Day

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

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How many earth days do we have left? (Alternet)

America’s unhealthy attachment to spring water. By Meghan O’Rourke (Slate)

Bad news from China – Gas guzzlers a hit in China, where car sales are booming (See previous post or see Bikers nostalgia by Zhang Hongtu)

The Energy Challenge – various articles from NYtimes

The Car of the Future (NOVA) Click on Iceland’s HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS (Chapter 2) or here.

Nuovomondo

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

(direct link)
(Nina Simone has been providing soundtrack for films a lot these days. Malkovich’s “Dancer Upstairs”, “Before Sunset” etc. Here is the list of films)

Photos from Nuovomondo and the trailer here.

Emmanuel Crialese talks about Golden Door (Nuovomondo)

Crialese came from Italy to New York in 1992, intending to stay for a few months and take a quick film course at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, but the short film he made landed him a full scholarship that lasted for several years. He lived on the Lower East Side, in tenements occupied by generations of immigrants.
“Golden Door” was insipred by Crialese’s Lower East Side experiences. Set in the late 1900s, the story follows Salvatore Mancuso and family who leave their hardships in Sicily to seek a better life in America.
My inspiration came when I visited Ellis Island and saw close-ups of people looking into the camera as though it was a strange instrument. These intimate images made me fantasize about their past, their culture. I started researching and never stopped for five years, says Crialese.

Crialese and the actor Vicenzo Amato both live in New York City and have made a film Respiro together previously.

Baryshnikov, Malakhov and More

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Baryshnikov at Joinville

I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov on Charlie Rose yesterday.
Micha is showing his dance photographs (Merce Cunningham dancers).
Charlie Rose managed to insult him. He suggested he should try filmmaking like Julian Schnabel. Charlie often acts real weird like that. Telling people you can do better.

Micha Teaching Ballet class in Cuba 2007 (Youtube)

Born To Be Wild: Ethan, Angel, Jose and Vladimir (Mark Morris working with the elite male dancers)

Vladimir Malakhov – Voyage

And one more Malakhov – Handel (short clip)

Bitter Tears

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Dance with Petra (The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Klant by Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant is about one of the pet themes of Fassbinder which he referred to as “Fascism of everyday life”. Here Fassbinder paints a bleak picture of life, where every relationship is inherently manipulative and our ‘potential use’ is our only worth, sooner and later we realize that not only we are used by someone, but we also use others from time to time in the name of noblest emotions of love and friendship. (via)

Petra’s nervous hysterics mask the same kind of character found in most of Fassbinder’s films — someone desperate for love. At the same time, her antics are juvenile and faintly ridiculous, the foolish tantrums of a child used to getting her own way. (via)

At least Fassbinder knew that Petra Von Kant was him, self knowledge, alas, that is lacking in Hillary. She is keeping us entertained even if a little sadly.

Learn German with Petra (a found spoof on youtube)

Learn wedge issues with Hillary, her memory is very sharp.

Danke Hillary for bringing us back Petra Von Kant. Bitte schön or bitter emotion.

Bitter Melon wedge is good for health.

“A “bitter Gourd face” (苦瓜臉) is a common Chinese description for a serious or sad face.

Update: a good collection of cartoons on Bitter and Elitist here.

Valeska, Viggo and Voodoo

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Look at the Valeska Gert portrait; she’s important to me – wrote Alan.

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Valeska Gert, the great grotesque pantomime
Photographs by Mark B. Anstendig

Valeska was in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits, she played the hermaphrodite.
In time we will learn more about Valeska Gert from Alan.

Viggo Mortensen reads Bartolomé de Las Casas

Impeach and jail them (or teaching kids the wrong things)

Narrates Howard Zinn “Empire or Humanity?”

Viggo immerses himself in Russian culture.

Zora Neal Hurston and Voodoo

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Listen to Zora Neal Hurstorn (homepage)

Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun

Alice Walker On Zora Neale Hurston, pt. 1

Her life will be chronicled on the PBS show American Masters: Zora Neale Hurston — Jump at the Sun.

”I hope that after being with Zora so long, I was able to bring her alive,” says Andersen, 56, who lives in Tampa. “She is so difficult to understand. And the best way is to try to place her within her time.” (Kristy Andersen)

R.I.P Angus Fairhurst

Monday, April 7th, 2008

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Angus Fairhurstangus (4 October 1966 – 29 March 2008)

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Britart founder Angus Fairhurst found hanged

Lucas said: “Angus was a lovely man. Funny and kind. Very much loved by all his friends. Very much loved by me.” (Guardian)

Hirst pays tribute (BBC)

Witty and perceptive’
“Angus Fairhurst was always deprecating about his own talent,” Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota said.

Sabina Spielrein and Lou Andreas Salome

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

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About a week ago I saw the film My Name is Sabina Spielrein.

Sabina Spielrein stands out, both for the role she played in the rift between Freud and Carl Jung and because—no mere victim—she became a devoted convert to psychoanalysis’s cause. Drawing upon letters found in a Swiss basement in 1977, Elisabeth Márton’s documentary vividly illuminates a complex woman whose achievements were long relegated to the footnotes of history. -Jung Love: Vivid Doc Untangles an Affair of Hearts and Minds (Villagevoice)

Then I found out that there was an Italian film adaptation of her life which was on (youtube,1 2)

Sabina Spielrein – Russia, 1885-1942 (World Peaple’s Blog)

Jung to Freud, 4 June 1909: ‘Spielrein is the person I wrote you about. … She was, of course, systematically planning my seduction, which I considered inopportune. Now she is seeking revenge.’
(There are several books written about Freud, Jung and Sabina Spielrein, here is an article to get an introduction of Sabina Spielrein life story.)

It is interesting to note Lou Andreas Salome and Sabine Spielrein the two Russian intellectual women who had affairs with famous thinkers both became Freudian psychoanalysts and authors.

Sabina was born two decades later than Lou Andreas Salome, she had to endure the rise of Nazism and she and her family were killed by the Nazis troops.

Lou Andreas Salome loufr and Freud
Lou on the other hand died in the late 30’s, saw the birth of Psychoanalysis and the rise of Nazism but not the Holocaust.
She became first known for her affairs with Nietzsche and Rainer Maria Rilke, and later her work as Freudian analyst came to light with the publication of her correspondence with Freud.

This I did not know.

It was rumored that Ibsen had modeled her famous Hedda Gabler, who desired to live like a man, after her, but Andreas-Salomé expressed particular dislike of the character: “She resembles a ravenous wolf on which a sheep’s skin has been growing for a very long time and who has forfeited its predatory strength only to keep its predatory soul.” (via)

Before meeting the founder of psychoanalysis, Andreas-Salomé had published a study of sexual love, Die Erotik (1911). In 1912 she asked in a letter to Freud his permission to come to Vienna for psychoanalytical training. Andreas-Salomé was still in her fifties, and youthful in appearance and when Freud first encountered her. He warned one of his younger followers that she was “a woman of dangerous intelligence” but that “all the tracks around her go into the Lion’s den but none come out.”

Poet and Muse.(The Nation) (Photos of Andreas Salome and Rilke)

They became lovers and constant companions for the next few years in a typically counter cultural, proto-hippie, turn-of-the-century way, walking barefoot through the woods, eating fruit paps with yogurt, studying religion as an artistic experience and art as a form of religion. Tolstoy, whom they traveled to Russia to meet, was their patron saint.

One amusing episode that I read somewhere long ago was that Tolstoy who was courted by Lou and Rilke, was not too impressed with Rilke, when they went to see Tolstoy, the great thinker and novelist. Tolstoy was more interested in Lou’s husband, an orientalist and a philologist.

Gifs for Gaffe

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Hillary arrives in Bosnia.

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Update: found this headline, “Hillary Clinton’s Self-Swiftboating into Irrelevance”

Click to animate here true

Gif animations by Hans Heiner Buhr and lunch images by Fung-Lin Hall (recycled from “No Camping for Old Men”).

Gifs for Fools

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

(Heart of the World by Guy Maddin from here)mad

ffound Day Night gif from fffound

Footlight from Dziga Vertov and Busby Berkeley footlight The Machine Art

John Lurie Strange and Beautiful johnlurie

The I Ching — – – — – – jingfanganim

Update: April 1 was Dan Flavin‘s birthday!
Here is “Looking at Flavin’s neon wall sculpture” Flavin , Minimoma by Craig Robinson

And one more, revisit the Clown Family from previous post.