December 15th, 2008
The ones I found so far are either in Portuguese or Spanish (more to come, maybe)
Official Website: http://www.28bienalsaopaulo.org.br/
Extra “Bienal ETC.”, is a project by Fernando Oliva that gathers lots of articles about the 27th São Paulo Bienal: http://www.canalcontemporaneo.art.br/arteemcirculacao/archives/000993.html
More about the 27th here: http://forumpermanente.incubadora.fapesp.br/portal/.imprensa/fundacao-bienal-onde-esta-a-transparencia
Filed by rhwinter at December 15th, 2008 under art
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December 9th, 2008
“Is Good For You. Oh, so good!”
Enjoy:
http://www.emulgator.net/
Filed by rhwinter at December 9th, 2008 under art
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April 27th, 2007
A small spacecraft landed on my head today. Of course I was not aware of it immediately. As I walked down the street I felt a sort of sting, one of those that really bother to the point of making you stop whatever it is you are doing in order to reach it with your hands and do something as quickly as possible.
And that was precisely what I did. At first I thought it was a mosquito. But is just hurt a bit too much, which led me to conclude it had to be something else; a bee, probably.
This conclusion, as a matter of fact, took place in the very short time during which my left hand traversed the space between wherever it was and the point in my head where I had felt the sting. (Why does this matter?) So this made my arm decelerate abruptly and the hand reached the target much less strongly than it thought it would when it set off. But it really didn’t matter, perhaps because I hadn’t come fast enough to the conclusion that it was probably a bee; or even because my arm isn’t really well trained to perform the maneuver it was ordered to.
No, it didn’t matter: whatever it was I felt it was crushed right when my palm touched it. Not only did I feel it crushed, I felt it was different from what I expected. So different, in fact, that I took a bit longer than before to reach a new conclusion: it was actually not a bee, nor an insect, much less even organic at all, it felt like some kind of metal. “Aluminum foil, maybe” I thought of saying while I foresaw myself telling this story later. But that wasn’t even entirely true; as I approached this thing to my unbelieving eye in order to scrutinize it further, it were not them, but my ears which got ever more unbelieving: a very faint sound came from this thing, which, now so close to my eye, I perceived as what one would say was a little lump of baked potato oddly escaping its original aluminum foil wrap.
I don’t remember very well what ensued, but I’m pretty sure I heard a noise which reminded me of that made by screeching tires sometimes, but not often, when they go really high pitch. Still, the noise was faint. And was going even fainter as time passed and I stood there doing nothing.
By then, somehow, I was pretty sure of what was going on: a spacecraft the size of a rice bean, probably after traveling for longer than is worth mentioning, reached the Earth only to land exactly on my head; but, before it could do anything, I mercilessly crushed it to undistinguishable state. I immediately felt guilty (but, I have to acknowledge, not nearly as much as I should have been).
I still hadn’t the faintest idea what to do, so I did what anyone on those conditions would: closed my hand, taking care not to inflict more damage on the ship, and ran home as fast as I could. It is hard to explain as I think of this clearly now, but I thought then that, somehow, I’d be better equipped to help them if we went home.
What is even harder to explain is how I dropped it along the way without noticing and got home with nothing than more sweat on my face that it’s ever had in years and an empty hand. True story.
This very short story is part of a series of stories never before published (and, probably, unpublishable) simply because they were written, in a serial manner, by none other than me (who had never bothered to publish them).
Filed by rhwinter at April 27th, 2007 under art, short
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April 11th, 2007
“How many people lived in there?” she found herself thinking yet again. No, this wasn’t the first time she thought of this thought. Nor, rest assured, would it be the last. As a matter of fact the first time she thought of this was a long time ago and the last would be in a long time in the future, only minutes before she was to pass away. But even before the first time she thought of this, there had already been others who had done it. “How many people lived in there?” a seemingly simple question which can have such a myriad of possible answers. All of which could surprise whoever asked it. But it was not meant to be now that these answers would be discovered. It so happens that none of these answers would ever be discovered, for she who asked them was both unable to answer it herself and unwilling to let others help her answer it. Multiple personality disorder is, indeed, a bitch.
This very short story is part of a series of stories never before published (and, probably, unpublishable) simply because they were written, in a serial manner, by none other than me (who had never bothered to publish them).
Filed by rhwinter at April 11th, 2007 under art, short
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April 9th, 2007
Probably the best videoclip I’ve seen in years (for more than one reason). The band playing is Lyapis Trubetskoy (or Ляпис Трубецкой) and it is from Belarus! (the official website seems to be down, which prevents us from knowing much more about him/them/etc.).
- Get the average quality quicktime here
- Watch on youtube (not even worth it if you ask me)
Even more images here, in case you’re not convinced yet!
The guys who made it claim to have invented bullet-time. Mad-genious kind of people. Their website in russian or english (what I watched there doesn’t even come near to this videoclip).
Oh, and I have no idea what the lyrics are saying, but I’ll find out, anyway these are pretty in-your-face:
According to a youTube comment the lyrics are:
I dine
Gold bars
Diamond for dessert
Oil cream
My name is Beelzebub
Master of the Stratosphere
I’m realy cool
Respect to me infinity
On the left hand Snickers
On the right hand Mars
My PR manager is Carl Marx
I dine cities
I am drinking seas
My beard covers the sky
Thunders and lightnings, fogs and rains
Ministers and leaders kiss my boots
More Links
- Over at obtusity you can find an impressive review on this.
- And the comments at antville are also very interesting.
[via motiongrapher]
Filed by rhwinter at April 9th, 2007 under art, video, music
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It is true that the television was on, and that so-called celebrities were to be seen chit-chatting inside of it about the most uninteresting subjects known to Fred. Still, his mind cared about one thing. One single thing. One tiny single thing. One very tiny single thing.
It comes very in handy to interrupt this approach before it gets to drag itself much too long. That is why a proper explanation is needed at this point. And that explanation, no wonder, is about the inner workings of a television set. The simplest way to put it is the following: it consists of an electron-sensitive screen and a cannon of the later mentioned (i.e. electrons). As the cannon ejects electrons, these short-lived bastards hit the screen one by one and are transformed into light, which is, inevitably, emitted towards whoever happens to caught sitting in front of the whole marvelous device (not that it is at all possible to sit in front of part of the device, unless, of course, it is disassembled; but that does not really matter right now). What really matters is that the screen is made in such a way so that it is divided in very small little squares, each with a certain color, designed specifically to be hit by the ill-fated electrons. These tiny squares are, for some not-important-reason, called pixels.
And that was exactly what Fred held all his attention to: a single pixel on his television. Not even the unquestionably loud sound of voices, music and the eventual wild donkey could bother him. At all.
As he stared at this specific pixel he could notice how it went on and off, how rapidly it changed, how it, apparently for no reason, did all those things without even having time to think about them.
And this, thought Fred, as he showed by his utter and unshakable concentration on that pixel, was something to think about. It really was.
This very short story is part of a series of stories never before published (and, probably, unpublishable) simply because they were written, in a serial manner, by none other than me (who had never bothered to publish them).
Filed by rhwinter at April 9th, 2007 under art, short
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March 23rd, 2007
Statement
In this image there are two elements which are a clear allusion to what I intended to convey: first it is handmade, second, and this might not be so clear to those who do not live in Brazil or, even, São Paulo, it represents the cover of a very big local newspaper. Given these two elements, the possible unfolding can already be envisioned pretty clearly, especially because it is being presented in this space. (I want to make it clear that there was no intention to bring up the specific subjects of the particular edition of the newspaper I chose.)
This being a handmade drawing addresses the complicated, and often dualistically simplified, relations between humans and machines and the creations sprouted from these relations. More specifically those mediated entirely by computers as opposed to those which are mediated by tangible mediums, in this case: blogs vs. newspapers (or periodicals in general). In this specific context it is particularly important to mention the facts that blogs are created by ordinary people, are often biased and, more than anything, are usually open to discussion. Thus, blogs tend to promote direct relations, but, at the same time, they are presented in a medium which has not been entirely incorporated in most people’s lives, which introduces a certain limitation to these interactions.
Newspapers, on the other hand, are almost everywhere and they don’t provide direct communication channels (between readers and writers). Maybe because of this they have acquired an almost super-human status, dictating what/how/when one should think. With all its seriousness, given by both the way it is shown to us and by the “important” themes it presents, a newspaper seems formal and entirely machine-made, with the intention to disclose some sort of absolute truth. It has to convince the reader that it is worth reading (this has, of course, origins in the fact that newspapers are also commodities). But the interplay between the importance of what is presented and the fact that we know that newspapers are, ultimately, expressions of human thought is exactly what paves way to its deconstruction: it easily becomes obvious that newspapers are also biased, they are, as much as blogs, the products of whoever makes them. Newspapers carry the contradiction between their proposal (evidencing facts) and the means to reach it (an analysis of reality carried out by humans).
A contradiction which is, for obvious reasons, not clearly evidenced by newspapers themselves: no newspaper would ever have an entirely handmade front cover. They could make it, and surely in a much more appealing way than I did, so it is not because of a technical difficulty, but because it would make no sense to do it. And this is another important aspect of the discussion I want to bring up: what are the things that make sense in a newspaper? What are the things that make sense in a blog? How do the techniques involved in the creation of each of these limit what they can present?
There is undeniable freedom in whatever topics are approached in a blog: there is no editor, there is no need to review content, there are practically no boundaries, there is no need to please anyone. Which is, the way I see it, an evidence of the selfishness of blogging; despite the fact that they are thought of as a means to bring people together. Not that newspapers aren’t like that, but it seems that newspapers are much more attached to an ideology, a corporate conduct that dictates a more or less strict path of thinking; in a sense newspapers express ‘collective selfishness’, they are concerned with what is important to all their readers/buyers.
When we compare newspapers and blogs, a big difference that comes up is that the latter are allowed to change, they are allowed to shift and modify their ideas as much as the writers are willing to (by running the risk of discrediting themselves). Blogs are fluid, they are changing, the very medium in which they are written allows for them to be modified in a way that newspapers can’t: once you commit and article to a newspaper the only way of going back is by writing another, but you can always change (and even delete) a blog post.
Because of all this, blogs force us to permanently question them, they bring doubt, and doubt is thought, independence. Instead of having a swarm of information thrown at you by a large chunk of paper, which you must incorporate and be ready to spill out in appropriate moments, you are required to make your own mind about what you (choose to) read and form your opinions. And, as much as reading newspapers has confused the way we read blogs, blogs are changing the way we read newspapers.
This very essay is an evidence of all this. For instance, in the third paragraph, when I state that newspapers “have acquired an almost super-human status, dictating what/how/when one should think (…) with the intention to disclose some sort of absolute truth” a series of questions emerge: in which context is this true? For whom? Is is true at all? I am not entirely sure myself (which leads us back to the conclusions in paragraph six).
Thus, by presenting, on a blog, a handmade image of a newspaper we are exposed to a series of questions and contradictions between the forms and mediums in which all of these three elements exist and are expressed, requiring us to (re)evaluate them.
Even higher resolution image here.
[Some of these ideas or related, have already been discussed elsewhere from a different angle]
Filed by rhwinter at March 23rd, 2007 under art, meta
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February 10th, 2007
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| Vladimir Dubissarsky & Alexander Vinogradov, who make contemporary art, just like |
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Franz Ackermann, who is German, just like |
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Adolf Hitler, who was a vegetarian, just like |
| Andrei Tarkovsky, who was Russian, just like |
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The Dalai Lama, who is a religious leader, just like |
| Béla Tarr, who makes movies nobody seems to understand, just like |
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Pope John Paul II, who spoke Spanish, just like |
| Amon Tobin, who contributed to recent Hungarian cinematography, just like |
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Alex Trochut, who does not have a name that seems to be from where he is, just like |
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Filed by rhwinter at February 10th, 2007 under art, cinema, circular, music, type
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