Category: ART

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Hotel des Arts – On the Streets of San Francisco

All in one – a slide, a bed, and a balcony, a new concept in architectural design?
Or a bed trying to escape from the building?

bedwindow.jpg

The image was copied from a news headline from SF gate a couple years ago. It was a time people were fleeing the city, losing their jobs and rents remained expensive.

Yesterday from the same newspaper came this delightful news:
Local California artists are busy decorating the rooms of a new hotel in San Francisco.
Three photos on view, here.

Gallery of Hotel des Arts.
(great idea)

New Can below by Los Angeles street artist Buff Monster who decorated the rooms of Hotel des Arts.

New Can #4 New Can

Back to Ephemeral Cities

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Phillip Petit – Walking in the Clouds

Man on Wire Trailer

On Aug 7, 1974 Frenchman Philippe Petit
(an illegal street juggler, consumate pickpocket, poet and the grandest tightrope walker) walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.
Quick digest of the event, here.

<> <> <> <>Philippe Petit
Digital image Aug 7, 2005 ( made it this morning with 2 coffees in between)
Digital photo collage dedicated to all street artists and poets.

The miraculous walk of TWC started with a tooth ache.
“The adventure of the World Trade Center begins with the first appearance of such thoughts, in a dentist’s waiting room in Paris. I am barely eighteen years old. ”

Stepping Into the Void
It took all night to complete the rigging, securing the steel cable a quarter of a mile in the sky across the 130-foot gap separating the towers. Wall Street was just beginning to come to life when, at a little past seven on the morning of August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped onto the wire stretched out across the void.

Spellbinding
Philippe Petit On the street below, people stopped in their tracks — first by the tens, then by the hundreds and thousands — staring up in wonder and disbelief at the tiny figure walking on air between the towers. Sgt. Charles Daniels of the Port Authority Police Department, dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, looked on in helpless amazement. “I observed the tightrope ‘dancer’ — because you couldn’t call him a ‘walker’ — approximately halfway between the two towers,” he later reported. “And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire… And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle… He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again… Unbelievable really…. [E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.” (Via)

Marlon Brando invited Philippe at his workshop, from here.
(This info will be filed to Marlon did this and Marlon did that collection )

Summer reading for kids:
The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

Back to Ephemeral Cities

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Around the World – August Memorandom

1) Leave it to Bush (well crafted animation by Ken McKintyre.)

2) Celebrity Verite – Brad Pitt is a closet conceptual artist – his collaborator Fashion photographer Steven Klein is showing his work at Gagosian L.A. ( for above 2 links from here)

3) On this day today (August 3) in Milan and Sicily:
1778 The opera house La Scala opened in Milan, Italy, with a performance of Antonio Salieri’s ”Europa riconosciuta.’
1943 Gen. George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice.

Good Chinese Women
4) Sky Burial and One woman broke the silence.

5) Something caught my attention.

6) Sokurov on Emperor Hirohito, The Sun. (Added Sokurov’s homepage to vitro nasu sidebar menu.)
The comic Japanse actor Issey Ogata plays the Emperor Hirohito.
“Recently, Ogata has been basking in the limelight, having played the lead in two critically acclaimed feature films. One is “Tony Takitani,” the latest work by Japanese director Jun Ichikawa, which is based on a short story by the best-selling and world-renowned novelist, Haruki Murakami. ” (More here – you can see the chameleon in the sample photos of Ogata playing different characters.)

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The Brave New World and the Odyssey

  • <> <> Pina Bausch 1
    (This image was selected to hold your attention till next post. )

    Many powerful visionary were born between July 22 to July 29.
    Here are random links. Click the links to check who thy are.

    July 22 – go to this old article by Errata . How he influenced film images – priceless.

    July 23 – Poet who wrote about Goddess and mythology +
    “Lawrence and the Arabs.” Written in translucent English, this book studies not only the events of the Arab Revolt; it also evaluates the geopolitical significance of the Middle East at a time when the glance of most observers was turned elsewhere. He understands perfectly the stake of the European powers in the Middle East. He also explores the exact significance of T.E. Lawrence. (from here).

    July 24 – See his polaroid photos and his Drugstore Cowboy friends here.

    July 26 – Brave New World ranked one of top five novels. The philosopher and the satirist with two great wives and friendship with D.H. Lawrence and many others. Read his biography and this (The Case for Constructing Peace) for now.
    Tripped on Acid before taking his last breath. (Planned and carefully executed celebration for departure and not an accident)

    July 26 – A medicine man who talked to pots and pans. Archetypes, Syncronicity, collective unconscious, he got all these ideas from his patients and girlfriends. Juicy scandal – became a play on Broadway.
    Read “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” for a starter.

    Stanley Kubrick by Weegee
    July 26 – What can we say about this man?
    Alex Rose (music critic for the New Yorker)blogged about his friend.
    He and Andy Warhol got stuff in boxes all organized, to make sure we would keep finding things and remember them.

    July 28 Dada or Our Daddy of avant garde – did not think we should own cars.
    He has a reputation of being controversial, and uncompromising but for me he was a great teacher who fused art and life, he represents good sense, sanity and humor. I happen to think many of his paintings beautiful and mysterious for someone who disdained the retinal in favor of concept.
    “When I once asked Beatrice Wood how Marcel was in bed, fearing that I would never forgive myself in the future for not having asked that question (impertinent though it certainly was), she responded with a tribute that would be the envy of any sensitive and caring man: “All I can remember is that he was as gentle in bed,” she said, “as he was out of it.” ( from here).
    See “Jules and Jim” by Francois Truffaut a film vaguely influenced by Henri Pierre Roche’ friendship with Marcel. (The information about Roche came from Pauline Kael. According to Pauline Kael, Roche introduced Picasso to Gertrude Stein). Jim seems like a model for both Henri and Marcel. Who was Jules?
    Eggnudes Descending the Stairs was dedicated to him, anyone care to celebrate his birthday?

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    Marcuse, Marshall McLuhan & Nam Jun Paik – M. M. Nam Eros and Media

    July 19 was Herbert Marcuse’s birthday.
    “Yet Herbert Marcuse was important beyond his writing, because he was a very brave man. He put body and soul on the line in demonstrations and sit-ins, stood up to threats from opposites of all stripes (even of death, from the Klan) with unfailing energy and wry humor. He was an authority utterly unafraid to stand up to dominant authority and the pernicious powers that fed it.”
    Direland blog has an impressive coverage on Marcuse, here.
    (The blog has a new entry on the disturbing news about the
    execution of Iranian gay teenagers. Horror, horror.)

    V Idea2 by Nam Jun Paik
    Nam Jun Paik
    via
    Yesterday July 20 was Nam Jun Paik’s birthday. Happy Birthday.
    Pike Studio Nam Jun Paik.
    Everyone loves his TV Buddha.
    I am the World’s Most Famous Bad Pianist, here.
    TV Clock at the bottom of this page.

    Today (July 21) is the birthday of Marshall McLuhan. (Many innovative people were born today. Hemingway and Hart Crane)
    How interesting that Nam Jun Paik and McLuhan were born a day apart. Paik expressed McLuhan’s idea with verve and Korean chopsocky style.

    Understanding the Media – Media is the Message

    Marshall McLuhan Reconsidered by a Vispo poet/web artist Jim Andrews.
    One of many early examples of web art by Jim Andrews, (Yes I am a pop up poem)
    Jim Andrews is Canadian and so are McLuhan and Glenn Gould and don’t forget William Gibson.
    Viva Canada.

    Humming with Gould is a review of a book by Richard Cavell
    McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography.

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    Summer Interlude – Missing Dahlia – Iris and Derrida

    The shrine of Francois Dorleac as prologue.

    Dorleac and Deneuve
    Iris Negative
    Digital image Jul. 16 2005

    Derrida and Iris Murdoch share a birthday,* they were both born on July 15.
    The film “Iris” was unfortunate for Iris Murdoch’s legacy. Now she seems stuck with disabilty of the old – the Alzheimer disease.
    On the other hand “Derrida” helped soften Derrida’s image. He seemed like a quiet thoughtful fellow. He was dressing up eggplant with Extra Virgin Oil with great skill and attention. Or listening to his surprise response that he was most curious about philosophers’ sex lives.

    I knew superficially of Raymond Queneau pre-Iris-days from Louis Malle’s film Zazie dans le metro. Raymond Q was important to Iris. So was Elias Canneti. I read his autobiography and I found him to be full of himself. He appeared as a character in three of Iris’ novels beginning with “The Flight of Enchanter” and ending with “The Sea, The Sea”. Wittgenstein appeared in “Under the Net” but I did not know about him back then. (Under the Net was my first book I read and it was Iris’ first as well, captivating page turner very different from all of her later novels.)

    Missing Dahlia
    Iris and Derrida
    Digital image Jul. 14, 2005

    Once she surprised me with a theme of incest (The Time of the Angels)- this was very rare in the old days.
    I tend to see Iris as wise, deep and odd, as opposed to someone like Susan Sontag who was great as an activist, authoritative, glamourous and commanding. Friends of Iris described Iris as an ego less person.

    Fun Iris Murdoch – Fragments of Recognition site from Texas.

    “Until the escape into art, then nature,
    the stories are dark, dark, dark.
    Parsifal with no Grail.
    Isolde with no Death.
    Papageno with no flute.”

    “Murdoch’s implicit philosophical position is austere, classical, rigorous: unromantic, and pessimistic. Not that pessimism precludes comedy: on the contrary, it is probably the basis of the comic spirit.
    Life after all is comic, not tragic, in Murdoch’s cosmology. It is comic because it is not tragic—merely terrible” (from Joyce Carol Oates – the Sacred and Profane Iris Murdoch).

    Go(o)d in Iris Murdoch, by Alan Jacobs.

    Location, Location Zazie Said
    Iris Murdoch
    Digital image Jul. 15 2005

    Today, Iris Murdoch does not evoke a passionate response like Derrida does. I think the reason is that Derrida has had a greater influence in the world of academia and intellectuals and he has been the focus of extreme hate or devotion.

    Read Judith Butler on Derrida, here.

    Derrida’s Elswhere, the film I did not see.

    Find Derrida “On Death Penalty” and other great interviews and links from here.

    Matt at Pas-audela has many intriguing writings on Derrida. (Try June 05 archive).

    Summer Interlude
    Murdoch and Derrida
    Digital image Jul. 14 2005

    *The NYtimes honored Iris M. with a big photo On this day birthday page but failed to do the same for Derrida. This year on July 6, they (NYtimes) forgot to mention the Dalai Lama (an exiled leader) who shared a birthday with George W. (pretender)

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    RIP Claude Simon

    Claude Simon passed away. He was 91 years old.
    Simon died on Wednesday, but the death was only announced on Saturday – when he was buried in Paris.

    Claude Simon

    Here is a digital image of his book and his last sentence captured on the right. Just leafing through the pages, his stream of consciousness writing run on with no separation of paragraph and chapters.
    I confess not having finished reading his book beyond two pages, a fact should not discourage some readers for trying.

    From Independent on Claude Simon, here.
    Reading Claude Simon by John Taylor.
    Maud Newton “tried” one of Claude Simon’s novels.

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    Sign, Language and Declaration of Incompetence

    Two botched digital images, a sign of incompetence at Vitro Nasu shamelessly displayed.

    <> <> <> <> Slant
    Slant and Missing “OF”

    <> <> <> <> Sign
    So faint you can not see the signs.

    Thank you Google, tonight we celebrate.
    <> <> <> <> July 4 at night
    July $th, 2005. ( oops wrong sign, shift unintended)

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    Hammer


    Darrow was the inspiration for the character of Johnathan Wilk in the 1956 novel Compulsion, a thinly fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb case. In 1959, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name, starring the legendary filmmaker Orson Welles as Wilk. Welles, whose closing monologue was the longest ever committed to film at that time, shared the Best Actor award with co-stars Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.
    Compulsion (Youtube)

  • True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
    Clarence Darrow

    <> <> <> <> <> Hammer “Hammer” digital collage by Fung Lin Hall
    Related link
    Dean Stockwell – Delicate to Delirium