Bingo

I thought I had it under control. The internet, after all, is not that difficult to move around. Not if you know what you're looking for. One does expect the unexpected, but to some extent. And then comes a site which just blows the lid off your expectations. I've had it happen to me several times, and this is one of them. i heart photograph probably only appeared on my radar now because I thought, well, it was about photography. Which it is. And its brilliant. And its curatorial eye is just damn good. It plays with the concept of photography as an art form, extending to basically any photographic work, whether it is manipulated or a documentation of an installation or anything that at a given point went through a lens. So while I'm working hard to make a show, you go ahead, and betray me. As you can see, it's worth it.

Stefania Galegati, Untitled (Dwarf 2)
Sannah Kvist, Untitled
Vibeke Tandberg, Mother+Dog, Variations #1
Koen Hauser, from Modische Atlas der Anatomie
Joel Tauber, My Lonely Tree

Adrian Nießler and Catrin Altenbrandt, from Um Was Es Nicht Geht
Melanie Bonajo, Bears
Kjersti Berg, Opp/Up
Yvonne Todd, Anonymous Cat

All images via i heart photograph.

Technorati: blog, blogs, photography, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Trying to make a frog fly

K’ung-fu-tzu (Confucius) by mi-mi (Mila Kalnitskaya and Micha Maslennikov)

Notice this is real.
Notice the starting point is water.
Notice the frog has no choice but to fly.
Notice she doesn't seem to care.
Notice we hardly have a way of knowing.

(via)


PS: From an interview about the performers in the various pictures:

Confucius is unequivocally a Shakespearian character. He is superb in tragic roles. If the project could continue, he would make a remarkable King Lear.

Hamlet Light - rehearsalsss

I am now going back to rehearsals of Hamlet Light, which will have its premiere on September 15th at the Teatro Municipal de Faro and will be in Lisbon on September 28-30.

In order to enjoy theatre, shouldn’t we forget it? Forget that we’re inside a theatre, forget how it works? How about if we just forgot the whole idea of a production and simply focused on how to advertise it? If instead of the play the audience saw the creation of a play’s trailer? What would remain? What would the new scale of possibilities be?


More on this later.
(My activity here might slow down a bit. Or not.)

Technorati: theatre, theater, performance, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Light

Lucy Pullen Ropeswing (2003)
(via)

Technorati: photography, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Two films by Tomek Bagiński

Bagiński's work is just incredibly Polish. He seems very fond of moral stories, on the verge of moralizing, there is usually the question of the individual and the individual choice vs. disappearing, becoming nothing. Also, besides the social critique, the visual side of The Cathedral (which was nominated to an Oscar for best animated short film in 2003) is reminiscent of (or plain inspired by) the great Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński:

Art as seduction?

The problem with seduction is that in its core it contains, if not deception, at least a non-truth. Seduction can only be effective as a cynical process.The image above is by Ronan Spelman, but because I find the underwear quite inadequate, I am giving no link, you will have to look for him yourselves.

Technorati: art, contemporary art, vvoi

The Ophelia that was Icarus

Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (ca. 1554-55)

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Floating in the Harbor (2005)


Tadeusz Różewicz's Rights and Duties is a better review of the above work than I could try to make. So here it is, in my humble translation:

A time ago I know not when

a time ago I thought I had the right the duty

to shout at the ploughman

look look listen you piece of wood

Icarus is falling

Icarus is drowning the son of a dream

let go of the plough

let go of the earth

open your eyes

there Icarus

drowns

or the shepherd here

turning his back to the tragedy

the wings the sun the flight

the fall

I would say you blind men

But now when now I know not

I know that the ploughman should plow the earth

the shepherd should watch the flock

Icarus’s adventure is not their own

this has to end that way

And there is nothing shocking

in the ship moving on

to the port of destination

I can't resist finding an excuse to put some more Julia Fullerton-Batten images, so let me quote another Polish poet, Czesław Miłosz:

Song on The End of the World (transl. Anthony Miłosz)

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.