360Photography

Check out these visual art images:

[ D ] Salvador Dalí – Portrait de Paul Éluard (1929)

Image by Cea.
"Painted in 1929, the present work is a masterpiece of Surrealism and arguably one of the finest Surrealist portraits. Reaching deeply into the psychology of portraiture, it displays many of the most important elements that were key to Dalí’s rich visual vocabulary.

It unites two of the movement’s pivotal figures –Salvador Dalí and Paul Eluard –and reflects the untamed imagination and technical virtuosity of Dalí’s first
mature Surrealist paintings. Dalí and the French Surrealist poet Eluard met in 1929, around the time when the artist was staying in Paris where he assisted Luis Buñuel with the filming of Un Chien Andalou. During his stay in the capital, Dalí came in contact with the Surrealists and invited them to visit him in Cadaqués in the summer. Among those
who spent the summer with Dalí were Paul Eluard with his wife Gala and their daughter Cécile, as well as Buñuel and René Magritte with his wife. This visit would soon prove to be a major turning point for the young painter, and was to change both his private and artistic life.

"Depicted with minutely executed details, the iconography of the present work combines all the major motifs of Dalí’s early –and the most innovative –stage of Surrealism. Whilst Eluard formally sat for this portrait during his stay on the Spanish coast, the imagery
that surrounds him is a complex web of Freudian symbols reflecting Dalí’s own
personal universe. Writing about the present work, Ian Gibson observed: ‘It is
impossible to resist the temptation to look for allusions to Gala. Perhaps relevant is the fact that the locust has lost its arms and legs and that the former are pushing up through the fingers of the delicate female hand on Eluard’s forehead, which presumably are crushing the dreaded insect along with the moth. Might the suggestion be that Dalí senses that Gala could help to allay his sexual fears? One notes, also, the two hands clasping each other, affectionately it would seem, at the bottom of the portrait, linked by a mane of flowing tresses to the rocks of Cape Creus. Beside them a mop of hair
suggests a maidenhead. An allusion, perhaps, to Dalí’s seaside walks with Gala, to their growing intimacy, to his hopes for sexual potency and liberation’

"Beside the bust of Eluard, who looms large over a desolate landscape and looks directly at the viewer, is another head, coupled with a grasshopper or praying mantis. The animal had a highly personal reference for Dalí, who had a youthful fantasy of being a ‘grasshopper child’, while the praying mantis was a favourite symbol for the Surrealists due to their ritual of the male being devoured by the female immediately after the sexual act. Eluard himself kept a large collection of praying mantises, and Dalí
was able to observe their behaviour.

The sleeping head, which here appears to be metamorphosing into a toothed fish, has often been interpreted as the portrait of the artist himself. It features as the main protagonist of Dalí’s masterpiece Le Grand masturbateur, as well as in several other paintings of 1929, and ultimately in Persistance de la mémoire of 1931, as part of a complex assemblage with underlying themes of desire and erotic tension. The head is always depicted with its eyes closed; as Dalí wrote in The Visible
Woman, ‘sleeping is a form of dying’: the sleeping head, coupled with the praying
mantis, becomes another symbol of the indestructible bond between love and death.

The most explicit appearance of this head as a self-portrait is perhaps in L’Enigme du désir, where the rest of the amorphic body is filled with the inscriptions ‘ma mere’ (‘my mother’), a direct reference to the Oedipal complex.

"The head of a lion, a Freudian symbol of passion and violence, also appears in severalpaintings of 1929. Here it is seen in the upper right of the composition, confronted by a jug in the shape of a woman’s face, a common Freudian symbol of woman as a receptacle. This confrontation of the male and female symbols has been interpreted as the artist’s neurotic apprehension of his relationship with Gala. Furthermore, the image of a detached arm with fingers is in several places superimposed over the figure of Eluard. These fragmented body parts can be seen as phallic symbols, alluding to Freud’s castration complex. In the distance behind the apparition of Eluard, minute figures of a man and a child possibly refer to Dalí’s fear of the impending break with his
father. This rich and complex symbolic imagery, along with its technical mastery and its importance as a document of this pivotal moment in the history of the Surrealist movement, set this painting apart as a true masterpiece of Modern art."

Source: Sothbey’s Catalogue

The painting was sold at the auction in Jan 2011 for about 13,5 mln GBP.

Some cool visual art images:

SET / Erik Carver & Marisa Jahn

Image by AGoK
"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people– though at times enlightening– can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player’s relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one’s authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people– though at times enlightening– can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It’s a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player’s relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one’s authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

—

Erik Carver

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)– an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition– as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia’s Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

Marisa Jahn

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn’s work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT’s Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

SET / Erik Carver & Marisa Jahn

Image by AGoK
"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people– though at times enlightening– can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player’s relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one’s authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people– though at times enlightening– can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It’s a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player’s relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one’s authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

—

Erik Carver

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)– an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition– as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia’s Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

Marisa Jahn

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn’s work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT’s Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

A few nice visual art images I found:

MUSCAT INTERNATIONAL ( SEEB ) AIRPORT : The Sultanate of OMAN : A wonderful airport, great facilities and ever expanding in size and quality! Very ENJOYABLE! Great for connections too! WORLD : SENSE : ENJOY! 🙂

Image by || UggBoy?UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL ||
Visit Oman Airports = Muscat

– Hanno Hardt

ICON : MUSCAT INTERNATIONAL ( SEEB ) AIRPORT : The Sultanate of OMAN : A wonderful airport, great facilities and ever expanding in size and quality! Very ENJOYABLE! Great for connections too! WORLD : SENSE : ENJOY! 🙂

Image by || UggBoy?UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL ||
Visit Oman Airports = Muscat

– Hanno Hardt

ICON : MUSCAT INTERNATIONAL ( SEEB ) AIRPORT : The Sultanate of OMAN : A wonderful airport, great facilities and ever expanding in size and quality! Very ENJOYABLE! Great for connections too! WORLD : SENSE : ENJOY! 🙂

Image by || UggBoy?UggGirl || PHOTO || WORLD || TRAVEL ||
Visit Oman Airports = Muscat

– Hanno Hardt

Check out these visual art images:

“Haragizkoa” el 5 de maig a Barcelona.

Image by Joseba Barrenetxea Altuna
vimeo.com/29266230
Espectacle que uneix paraula, música i imatge, basat en el llibre de poemes d’Omar Nabarro

· Edorta Jimenez (veu)
· Rafa Rueda & Jaime Nieto (música)
· Joseba Barrenetxea (imatge)

Bartzelonako Euskal Etxea
Arc de Sant Vicenç
08003 Barcelona
www.euskaletxea.cat
Telèfon.- 93.310.22.00

Anticipada 3€ (socis gratuït), taquilla 5€ (socis 3€)

Nou textos on la paraula escrita mostra la seva llengua i on el so complementa les imatges de cada lletra i les seves pròpies. Haragizkoa és un dels projectes més suggeridors de l’any, un treball simbiòtic replet d’emocions, sentiments i mirades cap a un costat i un altre de la vida.

Arkibea: caixa de fusta per a sèpies, fonamentalment, dotada de diversos orificis, que es deixa en l’aigua del mar per mantenir vives a les preses. (Bizkaiko Arrantzaleen Hiztegia; Eneko Barrutia).

L’expressió Haragizkoa, que es podria traduir en català com “en viu”, tant com a “carnal”, resumeix el contingut de l’espectacle al que dóna títol. Sobre l’escenari, en viu, estan els músics Rafa Rueda i Jaime Nieto, al costat de l’escriptor Edorta Jiménez que presenta en carn i os al seu heterònim Omar Nabarro. Al fons de l’escenari, sobre una pantalla, es projecten les imatges creades per Joseba Barrenetxea, donant alè visual a una trobada de dos mons: el musical de Rafa Rueda i el poètic d’Omar Nabarro, heterònim, com ja s’ha dit, de Edorta Jiménez.

Rafa Rueda i Edorta Jiménez ens van deixar en la memòria una sèrie de concerts en homenatge al poeta Lauaxeta, treball que quedo reflectit en el disc CD Ehungarrenean hamaika. A partir d’aquell treball en comú els dos creadors han seguit col·laborant en diversos moments, fins a arribar a aquest espectacle, Haragizkoa, en el qual han tractat d’unir els seus mons per mitjà d’un mar de sensacions. En aquest mar la presència de Jaime Nieto aporta el color i el salitre del músic especialment sensible que és. Ells, al costat de Joseba Barrenetxea, han creat un espectacle global i autònom, nou, que va més enllà de la combinació de música i poemes ben cantats o recitats.

Sobre l’escenari no hi ha més element que una simple caixa, el arkibea dels pescadors tradicionals, com a metàfora d’aquest mar de sensacions en el qual es tracta de submergir a l’espectador. Una caixa en la caixa escènica que fa al seu torn de caixa de ressonàncies i de la qual Omar Nabarro va extraient parts de la seva pròpia biografia acompanyat de Edorta Jiménez. Així, el poeta llegeix textos dels seus primers llibres, si ben el pes fonamental recau sobre els poemes de "Haragizko amoreak" (Susa, 2010), que ha tingut un gran acolliment. Rafa Rueda ha convertit en cançons varis d’aquests poemes. A més d’aquestes, altres cançons del seu repertori i temes musicals diversos s’escolten en Haragizkoa. Sense artificis. Buscant el sentit profund del titulo Haragizkoa: espectadors de carn i os que sentin l’alè dels creadors també de carn i os a una distància gairebé imperceptible.

Literaldia 12 (L’Euskal Herria d’avui en la literatura)
www.haragizkoa.com

Trash Chaos Vessal –“What Lies Within” 03

Image by Urban Woodswalker
This series of art is a commentary about society: our over stimulating culture, bombardment of visual "noise" and attention deficits, as well as being graphic, eye catching conversation pieces made from trash usually thrown out in the garbage.
"What Lies Within" measures 4.5" wide by 3 " wide, and 2.75" deep.

Some cool visual art images:

Los Angeles Music Center : Disney Concert Hall

Image by JohnnyRokkit
Designed by architect Frank Gehry, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, is designed to be one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world, providing both visual and aural intimacy for an unparalleled musical experience. The 2,265-seat auditorium with natural lighting in which the audience surrounds the orchestra was designed to look and feel like a ship’s hull.

www.musiccenter.org/about/venue_wdch.html

Art & Architecture

Image by New York Public Library
Digital ID: 1153320. Juley, Peter A. — Photographer. Date depicted: 1911

Source: New York Public Library Visual Materials / Lantern Slides / Research Library / Art & Architecture (more info)

Repository: The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Archives.

See more information about this image and others at NYPL Digital Gallery.
Persistent URL: digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1153320

Rights Info: No known copyright restrictions; may be subject to third party rights (for more information, click here)

Recuento Brocoli: Pixelations Virtual Tour 2008, Cordoba Argentina

Image by Frocoli
PVT se destaca es su carácter “Conceptual” e “Interdisciplinario”, no sólo es un congreso de Diseño Gráfico y Comunicación Visual, en él se exponen y conviven el Diseño Industrial, Diseño Textil, Diseño de Indumentaria, Diseño Experimental, Motion Graphics, disciplinas de actual interés aplicadas a la demanda laboral regional, donde participan profesionales y artistas, estudios de diseño, que han realizado con su intervención un encuentro regional destacado y enriquecedor por el continuo intercambio de ideas.
Fue a Nivel de Intervención en el espacio como brocoli se involucro un, “chillout brocoli”.

A few nice visual art images I found:

IMG_3975Arsenalshorts

Image by uniondocs
The program collects films that are asking the same questions: What was here before? And how can you show it if it’s not there anymore? When and how did absence turn into presence? Does it always do that?
It also connects places in East and West, New York, Berlin and Warsaw. Shanghai and Venice. Not only through images, but also through the people who made the films (and are in them): For them, 1984 had been fiction and 1989 a reality. They are from a generation that has been producing images and sounds before and after the Berlin Wall, in East and West, until today.
Program runtime is 62 minutes.
a-b-city by Dieter Hormel and Brigitte Bühler
BRD 1985, 8 minutes, digital projection

Accompanied by a score using music of Pere Ubu and Einstürzende Neubauten, a-b-city revolves around West-Berlin’s psychodelic atmosphere. Brigitte Bühler and Dieter Hormel, who were renown for their fast paced and skillfully edited Super-8 clips, mix TV images and time-lapse shots of nightly streets, drifting clouds, and a men continuously jumping in front of the Berlin Wall, bringing about an impression of the enclosed city that constantly shifts between ecstasis and depression. (Text: Florian Wüst)
Haunt No. 1-3 by Niklas Goldbach
2007, 2 minutes, digital projection

Haunt No. 1, Video Loop, 35 sec., Stereo
Assistance: Daniel Reuter
Haunt No. 2, Video Loop, 28 sec., Stereo
Assistance: Viktor Neumann
Haunt No. 3, Video Loop, 36 sec., Stereo
Assistance: Viktor Neumann
The video triptych focuses on the historical background and the future of up to now abandoned places in Berlin’s former working-class district Prenzlauer Berg where the gentrification process is almost accomplished.
5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown by Shelly Silver
USA, 2009, 10 minutes, digital projection

You live somewhere, walk down the same street 50, 100, 10,000 times, each time taking in fragments, but never fully registering THE PLACE. Years, decades go by and you continue,unseeing, possibly unseen. A building comes down, and before the next one is up you ask yourself ‘what used to be there?’ You are only vaguely aware of the district’s shifting patterns and the sense that, since the 19th century, wave after wave of inhabitants have moved through and transformed these alleyways, tenements, stoops and shops.
10 square blocks, past, present, future, time, light, movement, immigration, exclusion, gentrification, racism, history, China, America, 3 languages, 13 voices, 152 years, 17,820 frames, 9 minutes, 54 seconds, 9 questions, 5 lessons, Chinatown.
View Excerpt
Former East/Former West by Shelly Silver
USA, 1994, excerpt 10-15 minutes digital projection

Made up of hundreds of street interviews done in Berlin two years after the Reunification, FORMER EAST/FORMER WEST is a vital, surprisingly open, and at times disturbing documentary. Silver questions the very notion of a shared language, focusing on changing definitions of words for political and economic systems – democracy, freedom, capitalism, socialism, nationality and history.
Magnetic [eye] Berlin by Gunter Krüger
Germany, 2007 / 08, excerpt 10 minutes, digital projection

Since 1997, Gunter Krüger has been archiving media fragments which he finds on the street – broken audiotapes, scraps of VHS and discarded compact discs. At the location he records additional filmic notes.
In the second part of the “Magnetic [eye]” series, “Magnetic [eye] Berlin”, a selection of media fragments forms a portrait of his living space. The film is designed as a generative structure, i.e. there is no final version.
In 2007 and 2008, three different playlists were made, each varying in both the selection of the media fragments as well as their compilation. By integrating new modules, new playlists with predefined running times can be created for each screening.
Nullpanorama by Martin Ebner
Germany, 2003, 1 minute, digital projection

The ascent and decent of an advertiser’s captive balloon over the roofs of the capital.
Proprio Aperto by Judith Hopf, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Florian Zeyfang
Germany / USA, 2005, 6 minutes, digital projection

The single channel video and installation work PROPRIO APERTO, which was first presented in February 2005 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in the exhibition, “Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist’s Eye,” shows a walk taken through the giardini, the grounds of the Venice Biennale, in winter.
The conversations that took place there among Judith Hopf, Natascha Sadr-Hadhighian and Florian Zeyfang result in a text that circles around landscapes of ruin, ghosts and the Dasein in cultural hegemony. The images — actually photographs — are presented in slow pans, and the various levels of destruction of the pavilion come more and more into the center.
The tone of voice and language congenially conveys the suitably contemplative mood during the walk, which carries over to the spectator.
The Rooms (excerpt) by Tim Blue and Paul Rowley
USA 2010, 5 minutes, digital projection

With rich sound design and diverse formats, THE ROOMS is an experimental study of an abandoned world that somehow continues to operate. This excerpt feautures the HAU 1 / Hebbel am Ufer, a historical theater in Berlin, that turned into a cultural space for contemporary experimental and innovative theater and performance art (HAU 1).
We will be strong in our weakness. Notes from the first congress of the Jewish Renaissance in Poland.Performance by Yael Bartana with Susanne Sachsse and Slawomir Sierakowski
Israel/Netherlands/Poland, 2010, 15 minutes, digital video projection
Jewish Renaissance movement in Poland, Tel-Aviv/Amsterdam/Warsaw

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus is a film and video curator who lives and works in Berlin. She is Co-Director of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art (with Milena Gregor and Birgit Kohler) and Member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum and founding director of Forum Expanded, a new section of the Berlin International Film Festival which negotiates the boundaries of cinema. Her curatorial work comprises numerous film programs, retrospectives and exhibitions, among them Michael Snow, Guy Maddin, Heinz Emigholz, Birgit Hein, Ulrike Ottinger, Stephen Dwoskin and many others. She recently co-curated (with Susanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel) LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in A Rented World (October 2009).
Her texts have been published in Frauen und Film, The Moving Image, Texte zur Kunst, Ästhetik & Kommunikation, Schriftenreihe Kinemathek as well as in various festival and exhibition catalogues. She is the editor of: Kinemathekheft Nr. 93: Germaine Dulac (with Sabine Nessel and Heide Schlüpmann), Berlin 2002; “The Memo Book. Films, Videos and Installations by Matthias Müller”, Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2005; “The Primal Scene: Christine Noll Brinckmann. Films and Texts”, Berlin: arsenal edition, 2008; “Who says concrete doesn’t burn, have you tried? West Berlin Film in the ’80s” (with Florian Wüst), Berlin: arsenal edition, 2008. www.arsenal-berlin.de

Paul Rowley was born 1971 in Dublin. He has worked for more than ten years as a filmmaker and visual artist.
His critically acclaimed feature documentary Seaview, which he co-directed with Nicky Gogan, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and has toured festivals internationally since.
Together with David Phillips, Paul completed a collection of films to accompany a live performance of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes, premiered at The Stone in New York in collaboration with pianist Emily Manzo. They recently completed a 60 screen permanent video installation in the international terminal at LAX airport.
Paul was artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida with Gillian Wearing, and has received many awards from the Irish Arts Council for his work since 1997. He was a fellow at the Macdowell Artist Colony in New Hampshire, and the Bogliasco Foundation, Italy. He was awarded a residency at the Experimental Television Center in New York, which led to a grant from NYCSA, the New York State Council for the Arts. He lives in Dublin and Brooklyn.
See also www.condensate.net and www.stillfilms.org

Shelly Silver is a New York based artist utilizing video, film and photography. Her work, which spans a wide range of subject matter and genres, explores the personal and societal relations that connect and restrict us; the indirect routes of pleasure and desire; the stories that are told about us and the stories we construct about ourselves.
Silver’s work has been exhibited and broadcast widely throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Screenings and installations have been mounted by venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Yokohama Museum, the Pompidou Center, the Kyoto Museum, the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Museo Reina Sofia, and the London, Singapore, New York, Moscow, and Berlin film festivals. Her work has been broadcast on BBC/England, PBS/USA, Arte, Planete/Europe, RTE/Ireland, SWR/Germany, and Atenor/Spain. Silver’s numerous fellowships and grants include awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the DAAD, the Jerome Foundation, the Japan Foundation and Anonymous was a Woman. She is based in New York where she is an Associate Professor of Visual Arts in the School of the Arts, Columbia University.

IMG_4018Arsenalshorts

Image by uniondocs
The program collects films that are asking the same questions: What was here before? And how can you show it if it’s not there anymore? When and how did absence turn into presence? Does it always do that?
It also connects places in East and West, New York, Berlin and Warsaw. Shanghai and Venice. Not only through images, but also through the people who made the films (and are in them): For them, 1984 had been fiction and 1989 a reality. They are from a generation that has been producing images and sounds before and after the Berlin Wall, in East and West, until today.
Program runtime is 62 minutes.
a-b-city by Dieter Hormel and Brigitte Bühler
BRD 1985, 8 minutes, digital projection

Accompanied by a score using music of Pere Ubu and Einstürzende Neubauten, a-b-city revolves around West-Berlin’s psychodelic atmosphere. Brigitte Bühler and Dieter Hormel, who were renown for their fast paced and skillfully edited Super-8 clips, mix TV images and time-lapse shots of nightly streets, drifting clouds, and a men continuously jumping in front of the Berlin Wall, bringing about an impression of the enclosed city that constantly shifts between ecstasis and depression. (Text: Florian Wüst)
Haunt No. 1-3 by Niklas Goldbach
2007, 2 minutes, digital projection

Haunt No. 1, Video Loop, 35 sec., Stereo
Assistance: Daniel Reuter
Haunt No. 2, Video Loop, 28 sec., Stereo
Assistance: Viktor Neumann
Haunt No. 3, Video Loop, 36 sec., Stereo
Assistance: Viktor Neumann
The video triptych focuses on the historical background and the future of up to now abandoned places in Berlin’s former working-class district Prenzlauer Berg where the gentrification process is almost accomplished.
5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown by Shelly Silver
USA, 2009, 10 minutes, digital projection

You live somewhere, walk down the same street 50, 100, 10,000 times, each time taking in fragments, but never fully registering THE PLACE. Years, decades go by and you continue,unseeing, possibly unseen. A building comes down, and before the next one is up you ask yourself ‘what used to be there?’ You are only vaguely aware of the district’s shifting patterns and the sense that, since the 19th century, wave after wave of inhabitants have moved through and transformed these alleyways, tenements, stoops and shops.
10 square blocks, past, present, future, time, light, movement, immigration, exclusion, gentrification, racism, history, China, America, 3 languages, 13 voices, 152 years, 17,820 frames, 9 minutes, 54 seconds, 9 questions, 5 lessons, Chinatown.
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Former East/Former West by Shelly Silver
USA, 1994, excerpt 10-15 minutes digital projection

Made up of hundreds of street interviews done in Berlin two years after the Reunification, FORMER EAST/FORMER WEST is a vital, surprisingly open, and at times disturbing documentary. Silver questions the very notion of a shared language, focusing on changing definitions of words for political and economic systems – democracy, freedom, capitalism, socialism, nationality and history.
Magnetic [eye] Berlin by Gunter Krüger
Germany, 2007 / 08, excerpt 10 minutes, digital projection

Since 1997, Gunter Krüger has been archiving media fragments which he finds on the street – broken audiotapes, scraps of VHS and discarded compact discs. At the location he records additional filmic notes.
In the second part of the “Magnetic [eye]” series, “Magnetic [eye] Berlin”, a selection of media fragments forms a portrait of his living space. The film is designed as a generative structure, i.e. there is no final version.
In 2007 and 2008, three different playlists were made, each varying in both the selection of the media fragments as well as their compilation. By integrating new modules, new playlists with predefined running times can be created for each screening.
Nullpanorama by Martin Ebner
Germany, 2003, 1 minute, digital projection

The ascent and decent of an advertiser’s captive balloon over the roofs of the capital.
Proprio Aperto by Judith Hopf, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Florian Zeyfang
Germany / USA, 2005, 6 minutes, digital projection

The single channel video and installation work PROPRIO APERTO, which was first presented in February 2005 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in the exhibition, “Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist’s Eye,” shows a walk taken through the giardini, the grounds of the Venice Biennale, in winter.
The conversations that took place there among Judith Hopf, Natascha Sadr-Hadhighian and Florian Zeyfang result in a text that circles around landscapes of ruin, ghosts and the Dasein in cultural hegemony. The images — actually photographs — are presented in slow pans, and the various levels of destruction of the pavilion come more and more into the center.
The tone of voice and language congenially conveys the suitably contemplative mood during the walk, which carries over to the spectator.
The Rooms (excerpt) by Tim Blue and Paul Rowley
USA 2010, 5 minutes, digital projection

With rich sound design and diverse formats, THE ROOMS is an experimental study of an abandoned world that somehow continues to operate. This excerpt feautures the HAU 1 / Hebbel am Ufer, a historical theater in Berlin, that turned into a cultural space for contemporary experimental and innovative theater and performance art (HAU 1).
We will be strong in our weakness. Notes from the first congress of the Jewish Renaissance in Poland.Performance by Yael Bartana with Susanne Sachsse and Slawomir Sierakowski
Israel/Netherlands/Poland, 2010, 15 minutes, digital video projection
Jewish Renaissance movement in Poland, Tel-Aviv/Amsterdam/Warsaw

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus is a film and video curator who lives and works in Berlin. She is Co-Director of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art (with Milena Gregor and Birgit Kohler) and Member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum and founding director of Forum Expanded, a new section of the Berlin International Film Festival which negotiates the boundaries of cinema. Her curatorial work comprises numerous film programs, retrospectives and exhibitions, among them Michael Snow, Guy Maddin, Heinz Emigholz, Birgit Hein, Ulrike Ottinger, Stephen Dwoskin and many others. She recently co-curated (with Susanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel) LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in A Rented World (October 2009).
Her texts have been published in Frauen und Film, The Moving Image, Texte zur Kunst, Ästhetik & Kommunikation, Schriftenreihe Kinemathek as well as in various festival and exhibition catalogues. She is the editor of: Kinemathekheft Nr. 93: Germaine Dulac (with Sabine Nessel and Heide Schlüpmann), Berlin 2002; “The Memo Book. Films, Videos and Installations by Matthias Müller”, Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2005; “The Primal Scene: Christine Noll Brinckmann. Films and Texts”, Berlin: arsenal edition, 2008; “Who says concrete doesn’t burn, have you tried? West Berlin Film in the ’80s” (with Florian Wüst), Berlin: arsenal edition, 2008. www.arsenal-berlin.de

Paul Rowley was born 1971 in Dublin. He has worked for more than ten years as a filmmaker and visual artist.
His critically acclaimed feature documentary Seaview, which he co-directed with Nicky Gogan, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and has toured festivals internationally since.
Together with David Phillips, Paul completed a collection of films to accompany a live performance of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes, premiered at The Stone in New York in collaboration with pianist Emily Manzo. They recently completed a 60 screen permanent video installation in the international terminal at LAX airport.
Paul was artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida with Gillian Wearing, and has received many awards from the Irish Arts Council for his work since 1997. He was a fellow at the Macdowell Artist Colony in New Hampshire, and the Bogliasco Foundation, Italy. He was awarded a residency at the Experimental Television Center in New York, which led to a grant from NYCSA, the New York State Council for the Arts. He lives in Dublin and Brooklyn.
See also www.condensate.net and www.stillfilms.org

Shelly Silver is a New York based artist utilizing video, film and photography. Her work, which spans a wide range of subject matter and genres, explores the personal and societal relations that connect and restrict us; the indirect routes of pleasure and desire; the stories that are told about us and the stories we construct about ourselves.
Silver’s work has been exhibited and broadcast widely throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Screenings and installations have been mounted by venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Yokohama Museum, the Pompidou Center, the Kyoto Museum, the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Museo Reina Sofia, and the London, Singapore, New York, Moscow, and Berlin film festivals. Her work has been broadcast on BBC/England, PBS/USA, Arte, Planete/Europe, RTE/Ireland, SWR/Germany, and Atenor/Spain. Silver’s numerous fellowships and grants include awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the DAAD, the Jerome Foundation, the Japan Foundation and Anonymous was a Woman. She is based in New York where she is an Associate Professor of Visual Arts in the School of the Arts, Columbia University.

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Taggers vs. Art

Image by the_toe_stubber
On North Figueroa, Highland Park, CA.: In which dumb taggers deface another mural while leaving hundreds of perfectly empty billboards untouched.

Don’t get me wrong, this has nothing to do with the law. I have no idea if this mural is legally legit, though I suspect it probably is, since it’s on the side of a building in an open area and probably took a while to paint. (This is only a detail of it.) It’s not the greatest mural in the world, but it’s pretty ambitious, with cool images, and I think it’s well-done. My argument is NOT to get cops involved, or that "there oughtta be a law" (the first civic resort of people with absolutely no imagination – don’t get me started). I’m just pissed off.

I like graffiti. It’s not even a matter of how long it takes to do – some artists can throw up a piece in a couple of minutes that you want to stare at for far longer. It’s just that this scribbly toy tag shit is just so fucking weak. Hell, I know there’s no recourse – it’s the wild wild west out here – but it just says so much when a person is this clueless about the visual world but still considers himself qualified to wield a paint marker. Must be all that self-esteem crap I keep hearing about.

Is it gangbangers or Timberlake fans or right-to-lifers? Who cares – all I know is, they could have smeared their kindergarten scrawl on anything in the neighborhood, but chose to piggyback on someone else’s creativity. Nice going, doucheface.

Taubman Museum of Art

Image by o palsson
The Taubman Museum of Art is an impressive new building in downtown Roanoke, Virgina, designed by L.A. architect Randall Stout (who was a senior associate of Frank Gehry’s for many years, as can be seen from the style of this building). I had no idea it was there, I haven’t driven through Roanoke in at least a decade. I was very pleasantly surprised to spot this fascinating architectural creation right by the side of the main road through town, so I had to stop and take some pictures in a hurry. This is a partial side view, shot with the camera tilted to bring together in one visual whole many of the key style elements of the building’s design.

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An American Puzzle

Image by cliff1066™
An American Puzzle, 2006, wood and metal type by Lloyd G. Schermer

Lloyd Schermer created An American Puzzle out of antique printing type, advertising plates, and engravings created for mastheads. Some of the type blocks are as much as two hundred years old and include carved maple, birch, ebony, walnut and mahogany, as well as forged metal pieces. In 1964, when Schermer’s newspaper in Missoula, Montana, converted from typeset printing to offset lithography (which uses photography to transfer the image of each page of a newspaper), he salvaged much of the old type and stored it in his home until he could decide what to do with it. Almost thirty years later, Schermer began working with the type, using a strong solvent to clean the ink from the typeface, then waxing and buffing the sculptural bits before mounting them to a support. An American Puzzle is a richly abstracted field of shapes that evokes an archaeological remnant, a layer of history rescued from a "dig." It suggests the visual impact of the printed page as well as the thousands of voices that contribute to a community’s history over the generations. Schermer has served on several boards within the Smithsonian, and the wide variety of elements in this piece reflects the broad interests of the institution as well as the artist’s memories of the publishing business.

americanart.si.edu/luce/object.cfm?key=338&artistmedi…

“I give you… the future”

Image by kandinski
He didn’t really say that. Tenori-on is the musical+visual instrument he is developing with Yamaha. He has taken 4 years to bring Tenori-on to fuition (this is the second prototype), and he reckons it might be in production in late 2006.

Four years. Compare that to three months for Elektroplankton.