Vitro Nasu

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Vanishing Techniques – photography of Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was born on 27 July 1929.

RIP Jean Baudrillard (previous post)
Sainte Beuve

Then, on one of my trips to Japan, I was given a camera, and I began to try it out a bit, taking photographs from the plane on the return journey.
I like photography as something completely empty, ‘irreal’, as something that preserves the idea of a silent apparition.

Marcel Duchamp

Military avoidance

The essay traces military relationships in the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), paying particular attention to his notes of 1912 known as the ‘Jura-Paris Road’. These are interpreted as ‘military texts’ and the author shows how military concerns remained with Duchamp throughout his career, resulting in facetious outcomes that obscured uneasy preoccupations.

Marcel Duchamp was born on 28 July 1887.

The Music Never Stopped

Based on Oliver Sacks’ essay The Last Hippie, the film tells the father-son relationship between Henry Sawyer (J.K. Simmons) and his son, Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci), who suffers from a brain tumor that prevents him from forming new memories. Henry, with his son unable to shed light on their strained relationship, must connect with him through music.

Oliver Sacks – My Periodic Table (NYtimes)

11 Beautiful Oliver Sacks Quotes That Capture the The Power of Music

“Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

Oliver Sacks

As Oliver Sacks observes the mind through music, his belief in a science of empathy takes on new dimension.

photo via Doron Gild

On the move,the Brain and the Heart of Oliver Sacks

Silicon Valley Rebels (youtube)

These two documentaries recount the history of Silicon Valley and the creation of the digital integrated circuits without which modern digital technology would not exist. They focus on pioneer Fairchild Semiconductor founded by Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and others and their second move to start Intel (founded on this day July 18, 1968), creator of the microprocessor. Forming the backbone of a new industry, the later work of Apple and others would not have been possible. Yet these pioneers and their companies do not get the attention given to those applying their technologies. Early on, Gordon Moore saw that advances in digital integrated circuitry was so rapid that the capacity of the devices doubled every 18 months. This became known as “Moore’s Law” and still holds today. Your tiny phone with built in camera, GPS, WIFI, etc. is the result of these continuous advancements now in their fifth decade.

Robert Noyce Intel

Robert Noyce

Steve Jobs and Robert Noyce

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior…
— Pablo Neruda, An Ode To An Artichoke

Born: July 12, 1904, Parral, Chile

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” Pablo Neruda

Poetry foundation

Veinte poemas also brought the author notoriety due to its explicit celebration of sexuality, and, as Robert Clemens remarked in the Saturday Review, “established him at the outset as a frank, sensuous spokesman for love.” While other Latin American poets of the time used sexually explicit imagery, Neruda was the first to win popular acceptance for his presentation. Mixing memories of his love affairs with memories of the wilderness of southern Chile, he creates a poetic sequence that not only describes a physical liaison, but also evokes the sense of displacement that Neruda felt in leaving the wilderness for the city.

The art of poetry Pablo Neruda (interview)

INTERVIEWER

Did you choose “Neruda” because of the Czech poet Jan Neruda?

NERUDA

I’d read a short story of his. I’ve never read his poetry, but he has a book entitled Stories from Malá Strana about the humble people of that neighborhood in Prague. It is possible that my new name came from there. As I say, the whole matter is so far back in my memory that I don’t recall. Nevertheless, the Czechs think of me as one of them, as part of their nation, and I’ve had a very friendly connection with them.

Philippe Noiret as Pablo Neruda from Il Postino

Pablo Neruda Chile’s Greatest Poet, murdered by Pinochet?

Neruda, famed for his passionate love poems and staunch communist views, is presumed to have died from prostate cancer just days after the 1973 coup that ushered in the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

“There is initial evidence that he was poisoned and in that sense the signs point to the intervention of specific agents … that could constitute a crime against humanity,” Francisco Ugas, the head of the government’s humans rights department, said on Wednesday.

The poet’s chauffeur has said Gen Pinochet’s agents took advantage of Neruda’s illness to inject poison into his stomach while he was bedridden at the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago.

See Pablo Neruda illustrations. Artists on Pablo Neruda

Remembering Omar Sharif – a star in two skies

Legendary Egyptian actor Omar Sharif died today in Cairo, according to his agent. He was 83.

Reactions from his friends.(LA times)

“Omar Sharif” was not the name given to him by his well-to-do, Catholic parents.
From Movie Interviews
50 Years On, Sharif Looks Back At ‘Lawrence’
“My name was Michel,” he told NPR in 2012. Michel Shalhoub, to be exact. In his memoir, he wrote about wanting an Arab-sounding name that was easy to pronounce in different languages — essential to a man who spoke not just Arabic but also French and English. “I went to the school where the priests were French. And then after, when I was 9 or 8 years old, I went to an English school — thank God. And there was a theater there. And that’s how I started to become an actor.”
Egyptian director Asaad Kelada says this multicultural preparation meant Sharif “was able to travel from nationality to nationality with conviction in the roles that he played. And so he was really the go-to person for any role that was of an exotic or different nature at that time.”
For his next big film after Lawrence of Arabia, Sharif transformed himself from an Arab freedom fighter to a Russian revolutionary poet in Doctor Zhivago

Oliver Sacks

Happy birthday Oliver Sacks! (July 9, 1933)

“I sometimes wonder why I have spent more than fifty years in New York, when it was the West, and especially the Southwest, which so enthralled me. I now have many ties in New York—to my patients, my students, my friends, and my analyst—but I have never felt it move me the way California did. I suspect my nostalgia may be not only for the place itself but for youth, and a very different time, and being in love, and being able to say, ‘The future is before me.'” —from ON THE MOVE

David Ehrenstein Exemplary Life of Oliver Sacks

Famed neurologist exchanged his white coat by nightfall for motorcycle leathers

Oliver Sacks on Twitter

Vanity Fair with photo slideshow

Atlantic –Oliver knows what it really means to live

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Oliver Sacks and Robin Williams

In Bloom (youtube trailer)

NYtimes review In Bloom Coming-of-Age in Wartime

Film Comment In Bloom – Nana Ekvtimshvili and Simon Gross

Georgian Filmmaker – Nana Ekvtimishvili

The debut feature from Georgian filmmaker Nana Ekvtimishvili, In Bloom, is a powerful coming-of-age story that takes place in in 1992, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shot in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, it’s about two 14 year-olds, Eka (Lika Babluani) and her best friend Natia (Mariam Bokeria) whose ordinary lives—school, friends, domestic strife—are set against the sudden changes to the social order of the country as well as a backdrop of war in the Abkhazia region. Ekvtimishvili, who attended film school in Potsdam- Babelsberg, Germany, wrote the script based on personal experiences, and co-directed it with her German husband, Simon Gross.

Zhang Kechun born 1980 in Sichuan, China, is a artist currently based in Chengdu

Buddha

Photography of China

Thanks to Giulo Tosi