An idea worth spreading
December 24, 2011

Via TED: "Bennington president Liz Coleman delivers a call-to-arms for radical reform in higher education. Bucking the trend to push students toward increasingly narrow areas of study, she proposes a truly cross-disciplinary education -- one that dynamically combines all areas of study to address the great problems of our day. (…)

If you followed higher education news in the 1990s, you have an opinion on Liz Coleman. The president of what was once the most expensive college in America, Coleman made a radical, controversial plan to snap the college out of a budget and mission slump -- by ending the tenure system, abolishing academic divisions and yes, firing a lot of professors. It was not a period without drama. But fifteen years on, it appears that the move has paid off. Bennington's emphasis on cross-disciplinary, hands-on learning has attracted capacity classes to the small college, and has built a vibrant environment for a new kind of learning.

Coleman's idea is that higher education is an active pursuit -- a performing art. Her vision calls for lots of one-on-one interactions between professor and student, deep engagement with primary sources, highly individual majors, and the destruction of the traditional academic department. It's a lofty goal that takes plenty of hard work to keep on course."

by Marcus Schmickler and Julian Rohrhuber
November 2, 2011

by Jenny Holzer
October 22, 2011

Documentary about Carl Gustav Jung
October 15, 2011

Via Dangerous Minds: "Matter of Heart: The Extraordinary Journey of C.G. Jung is a fascinating 1986 documentary that explores Jung’s life through interviews with the man himself and reminiscences from his colleagues, friend and students, some of whom were analyzed by Jung. This is a fine introduction to Jung’s concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious. Written by Suzanne Wagner and directed by Mark Whitney."

Sung by a nightingale
October 9th, 2011

"Through his use of Beethoven in Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick forges a connection with A Clockwork Orange that underscores some of the central themes of the film — the complex nature of vision, and of looking/seeing, of free-will, of directorial control (the two psychologists in A Clockwork Orange are surrogates for the director) and places Eyes Wide Shut within the larger context of his own work.
The full title of Beethoven’s opera is Fidelio, or Married Love (Fidelio, oder Die eheliche Liebe) and Kubrick’s film is a dissection of a married love that seems, on the surface, all too perfect. Eyes Wide Shut gradually peals away the protective layers and forces the characters to view the deceptions beneath the surface. The film forces us to do the same. The simple password Fidelio means literally I who am faithful, and this suggests a very different orientation for the speaker than the password of Schnitzler’s novella. One enters the inner sanctum not by drawing on past fantasies of sexual infidelity, but by reaffirming – however ironically – some notion of fidelity.
Not only is the meaning of the password important, but so is the bearer of that word and the context in which the transmission takes place. Bill seeks out Nick at the Sonata Café, a dive where he is playing in Greenwich Village. Bill enters and descends into the café by way of a narrow staircase that is illuminated with red lights. He sits at a table in the darkened room and when Nick later joins him, red holiday lights illuminate Nick from the rear, giving him a Mephistophelean air. What’s in a name? His Christian name, Nick, implies a demonic temptation, and that is certainly what takes place. The nightingale is a migratory species of bird whose male sings beautiful songs during the mating season. In Keats’s famous Ode, it is the song of the nightingale . . .
. . . that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
What could be a more apt description of the world Nightingale permits Bill access to?
The name of the café - the Sonata Café - also suggests a possible structural principal for Eyes Wide Shut. Music informs Kubrick’s films in many ways — thematic and structural. The sonata form consists of a three-part structure that is particularly appropriate to a work that spans three days. Moreover, each of the days has the structure of a sonata: exposition, development, and recapitulation, the recapitulation consisting of an emotional scene in the bedroom followed by a black screen. On the final day, the night never ends, as the passionate confessional scene becomes Bill and Alice’s all- night discussion of Bill’s peregrinations, followed by a coda in the light of day."

From Eyes Wide Shut – The dream-odyssey of Stanley Kubrick by Stuart Y. McDougal

Billy Cobham and George Duke
September 11, 2011

Steve Jobs about working with the legendary graphic designer Paul Rand
September 10, 2011

I asked him if he would come up with a few options. And he said, "No. I will solve your problem for you. And you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how. And you use it or not. That’s up to you. You’re the client. But you pay me."

Watch full interview.

The Quay Brothers
August 26, 2011

Via Wikipedia: "Stephen and Timothy Quay (born June 17, 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania) are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators."

Via Dangerous Minds: "A new documentary by the Quay Brothers which focuses on the The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the fascinating Mütter Museum will have its premier on September 22 in Philadelphia.
'Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting (Limbos & Afterbreezes in the Mütter Museum) is a documentary on the collections of books, instruments, and medical anomalies at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Mütter Museum. This short film (running time: 31 minutes) is the first made by the internationally recognized Quay Brothers in the United States.'
The Quay Brothers discuss the making of their new film here."

Am an admirer of their work and highly recommend the DVD The Short Films of The Brothers Quay.
Via Zeitgeist Films: "Best known for their classic 1986 film Street of Crocodiles, which filmmaker Terry Gilliam recently selected as one of the ten best animated films of all time, they are masters of miniaturization and on their tiny sets have created an unforgettable world, suggestive of a landscape of long-repressed childhood dreams."

by Stan Warnow
August 25, 2011

On a personal note, I so enjoy living in Cologne. Just saw Deconstructing Dad about the life and work of Raymond Scott on the roof top of the Museum Ludwig right next to the lavishly, colossal cathedral in a silky summer night.

Via Deconstructing Dad's website:"Raymond Scott (1908-1994) was one of the most prolific and central figures in 20th century music, with a career that began in the 1930s swing/big-band era, and continued through the experimental electronic music age of the 1970s.
Although Scott was a famous figure during the mid-twentieth century, and currently has a dedicated cult following (that includes some of the most renowned artists in the music world), his name — not his music — remains largely unknown to the general public.
But now there is a documentary film about this maverick musician, composer, inventor, and electronic music pioneer that will help raise awareness of this under-appreciated visionary. (…)
Raymond Scott was more comfortable with technology than with people, including his own children. This personal angle is intertwined with the compelling story of a true American music innovator — one who had a meteoric rise to household-name success, followed by a slow spiral into obscurity and now, posthumously, a growing acknowledgment of his central role in modern music and music technology.
In recent years his work has been performed by groups ranging from Rush, Devo, and They Might Be Giants to the Kronos Quartet, and sampled by numerous DJs and hip-hop acts, and adapted by the virtual super-group Gorillaz.
This documentary is a vibrant tapestry of stills, home movies, film and television excerpts (Scott was orchestra leader on the weekly Your Hit Parade TV show during the 1950s), musical performances and interviews."

[Sorry, no English translation available]
August 6th, 2011

Aus dem Buch nur die von Heike-Melba Fendel:

"Sehnsucht ist ein Suchscheinwerfer. Sie wirft ein klares Licht in Ungewisse. Dorthin, wo sie ihre Erfüllung vermutet. Dabei beleuchtet sie manches, was sich in ihrem Strahl verschönt, unwillkürlich. Trifft sie ins Schwarze einer Erwartung, wird sie von ihr verschluckt. Wenn, umgekehrt, Vorhandenes Sehnsucht weckt, leuchtet es auf; aus der Dunkelkammer der Ahnung tritt das Erlebnis ans Licht.
Das Sehnen will in die Ferne, die Sucht in die Poren. Der Widerspruch formt einen rechten Winkel. Von seinem Schnittpunkt aus spreizen sich zwei Geraden Richtung Unendlichkeit, gehen in deren sternenlosem Dunkel dauerhaft verloren. Und mit ihnen all jene, die aus ihrer Glücksvermutung eine bemannte Raumfahrt machen. Das Glück will keinen Aufwand. Es nistet ganz unten im Winkel, dem rechten, in dem sich nicht zu viel Staub gesammelt haben sollte. Neue Besen fliegen gut, aber die alten kommen bis in die Ecke. So sagt man in Köln, wo man um die Vergeblichkeit aller Anstrengung weiss."

They tried to make me go to rehab
August 2nd, 2011

Via Wikipedia: "On the advice of Belgian concert promoter Freddy Cousaert, Gaye moved to Ostend, Belgium, in February 1981 where for a time he cut down on drugs and began to get back in shape both physically and emotionally. While in Belgium, Gaye began to make plans to renew his declining fortunes in his professional career, starting with a tour he titled The Heavy Love Affair Tour in England where he was greeted more warmly by the same London press that had criticized him of the Princess Margaret snub the previous year. The tour ended with two concert dates in Ostend. A documentary leading up to his Belgian concert performances titled Transit Ostend was initially released to just Belgian fans, and was later issued on VHS in bootleg copies following Gaye's death.
After signing with CBS' Columbia Records division in 1982, Gaye worked on what became the Midnight Love album. Gaye reconnected with Harvey Fuqua while recording the album and Fuqua served as a production adviser on the album, which was released in October 1982. The parent single, Sexual Healing, was released to receptive audiences globally, reaching number-one in Canada, New Zealand and the US R&B singles chart, while becoming a top ten U.S. pop hit and hitting the top ten in three other selected countries including the UK. The single became the fastest-selling and fastest-rising single in five years on the R&B chart staying at number-one for a record-setting ten weeks. Gaye wrote Sexual Healing while at the village Moere, near Ostend. Curtis Shaw later said that Gaye's Moere period was 'the best thing that ever happened to Marvin.' The now-famous video of Sexual Healing was shot at the Casino-Kursaal in Ostend.

Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky
July 31st, 2011

Via Wikipedia: "The Bell, Spring-Summer-Winter-Spring 1423–1424: Andrei's life turns around when he witnesses the casting of a bell. As the bellmaker has died, his son Boriska (Nikolai Burlyayev) lies to the men that he knows the secret of casting a bell. Boriska is another creative character. He is aware of his own importance and the difficult task at hand. He is able to create through a combination of natural skill and pure faith. Boriska supervises the digging of the pit, the selection of the clay, the building of the mold, the firing of the furnaces and the hoisting of the bell. Boriska collapses in tears when the bell rings perfectly at the inauguration ceremony. Witnessing the ceremony Andrei breaks his vow of silence and tells the boy that they should go together. 'You’ll cast bells. I’ll paint icons.'"

Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami
July 24th, 2011

Via The New Yorker: "It’s a mysterious, paradoxical, and deeply ambitious film, which is also something of a lovely manifesto—a tribute to the freedoms that Kiarostami considers essential yet also a warning to those who might consider political and social freedom to be a self-fulfilling and self-sufficient liberation. The film breathes the air of freedom from outer constraints, and the story itself—an unusual one, in which the man and the woman go on a drive to a nearby village soon after meeting and, once there, take on the role of a long-married couple—suggests a range of romantic and erotic options that can’t be depicted in Iran. Yet other constraints are at the core of the film—there’s the bond of marriage, which the couple may or may not have undertaken, and which a host of other newlywed couples seen in the village (famed for bringing good luck) hopefully choose. And there’s the bond of the self, the inescapable and apparently immutable force of character, which seems to compel the free-spirited, unconstrained man, out on a spree, to choose as a mistress the same woman as the one he was, or is, married to. In effect, Kiarostami is filming a version of the Nietzschean eternal return."

TED talk by Daniel Tammet
July 16th, 2011

Via TED: "Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia – meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world. The author of Born on a Blue Day, Tammet shares his art and his passion for languages in this glimpse into his beautiful mind."

Thanks to Heiko Schulz!

Alejandro Jodorowsky (*1929)
July 14th, 2011

Via Dangerous Minds: "Alejandro Jodorowsky and Daniel Pinchbeck 2012 Time for Change is a documentary shot for German TV series Into The Night which aired in November 2009.
This is lovely… literally lovely. Alejandro Jodorowsky and Daniel Pinchbeck meet and discuss many things in this intimate conversation between an old wizard and a youthful spiritual gunslinger. Alejandro gives Daniel a Tarot reading and advice on how to treat women. Pinchbeck wants to discuss the cosmos in general mystical terms but Jodorowsky keeps pointing back to the feminine principle and familial love as the ultimate source of bliss.
Jodorowsky, the master of symbols, has turned toward less flash in his old age and seems somewhat impatient with Pinchbeck’s talk of extraterrestrials and drugs. Jodorowsky has become the old yogi armed with the butterfly net in El Topo who defeats the young gunslinger with his own bullets. In this case, the bullets are Pinchbeck’s didactic cosmic buckshot and the butterfly net is Alejandro’s heart. Art is dead, spiritual materialism is dead, all that matters is what heals… and love heals. It seems that Jodorowsky, even amongst his clutter of books and icons, has found peace within an internal space uncluttered by the flotsam and jetsam of the symbols that he long ago mastered like a juggler masters colorful balls and spinning silver hoops. The glittery aspect of the mystic has given way to the pureness of love. The video ends with Daniel and Alejandro in the presence of their female lovers. Alejandro pats Pinchbeck’s girlfriend’s arm and says to Pinchbeck 'you take care of this here.' In other words, forget about the fucking extraterrestrials and learn to love the Earthlings in your life."

John Cage about silence
July 4th, 2011

A Zen Master was walking in silence with one of his disciples along a mountain trail. The disciple, a young monk, had been thinking a lot about the state of Zen, and wondering just how to achieve this state of being. After hiking through the mountains for some time, the two stopped for a break and rested in silence along side a large boulder. The disciple broke the silence and asked, "Master, how do I enter Zen?" The Master remained silent. After several minutes, the disciple began to feel uncomfortable, wondering if his Master would ever reveal the secret. Just as he was about to ask another question, the Zen Master spoke. "Do you hear the sound of the mountain stream?"
The disciple has not been aware of any mountain stream. He had been too busy thinking about Zen and how to achieve such a state. Now, as he began to listen for the sound, his noisy thoughts subsided. At first he heard nothing. Then, his thinking gave way to a heightened alertness, and suddenly he did hear the hardly perceptible murmur of a small stream in the far distance.
"Yes, I can hear it now," he said.
The Master raised his finger, and with a sage-like look in his eyes that was both fierce and gentle, he said, "Enter Zen from there."
The disciple was stunned. It was his first satori – a flash of enlightenment. He knew what Zen was without knowing what it was that he knew!
They continued on their journey in silence. The disciple was amazed as the aliveness of the world around him. He experienced everything for the first time. Gradually, however, he started thinking again. The alert stillness became covered up again by mental noise, and before long he had another question. "Master," he said, "I have been thinking. What would you have said if I hadn’t been able to hear the mountain stream?" The Master stopped, looked at him, raised his finger and said, "Enter Zen from there."

In this morning's inspiring one-on-one session with a student John Cage's insights and this teaching tale came up. Thanks to Tom Vermaaten!

by Adam Curtis
June 29th, 2011

Via Wikipedia: "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is a three part BBC documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis, well known for other documentaries including The Trap and The Power of Nightmares. It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around us."

Via Top Documentary Films: "1. Love and Power. This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the Internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.

2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. This is the story of how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components – cogs – in a system.

3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey. This episode looks at why we humans find this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed – so we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure."

Thanks to Sascha Geddert!

by Terre Thaemlitz
June 27th, 2011

Via Resident Advisor: "But that's what Routes Not Roots is all about: Thaemlitz makes his audience feel things, channeling every bit of pain, deprivation and release that led to house music's birth into what sounds like a rebirth, an idea he would go on to focus and perfect with Midtown 120 Blues. Even if it's a little meandering at times, imperfections or not, Routes Not Roots is about one of the most unique and affecting house albums you'll ever hear."

Am a huge fan of Terre Thaemlitz aka DJ Sprinkles. His mission can not be appreciated enough in this newborn century, which is so concerned with identity and self.

Thanks to Marcus Schmickler!

Bazon Brock, 75 today
June 2nd, 2011

From e-flux: "Bazon Brock, born in 1936, studied German philology, philosophy, art history, and political sciences in Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Zurich. During his university years, he also studied to become a dramaturge at the Landestheater Darmstadt. From 1969 on, he initiated first happenings together with Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Hundertwasser, and Alan Kaprow. He held a professorship for non-normative aesthetics at the College of Fine Arts in Hamburg from 1965 to 1978. In 1978, Brock was appointed professor for the theory of design at the College of Applied Arts in Vienna where he taught until 1981. From 1981 to 2000, he held a professorship for aesthetics and cultural education at Wuppertal University. He has organized visitor schools for the documenta in Kassel since 1968. Bazon Brock regards himself as an executive engine propagating his aesthetics of reception in the context of an unusual practice and theory and strives to reintegrate culture into the material process of life in a radical change. A generalist operating in many different media, Bazon Brock has published numerous books, papers, manifestoes, projects for radio and film and presented himself in the USA, Japan, and Europe with about 1600 action teachings, audio-visual performances, and happenings. Aesthetics as Communication. Biography of a Generalist (1977) is regarded as his main work. The focus of his present work is on neuronic aesthetics and imaging sciences. Brock is a member of Forscher-Familie bildende Wissenschaften, an association primarily concerned with cultural genetics and the development of concepts for the civilization of cultures."

Bazon Brock supervised my diploma thesis and dissertation. Still a huge influence on various levels.
Much appreciation and respect plus happy birthday, professor!

The graphics guru to the power elite who is revolutionizing how we see data
May 18th, 2011

Via Washington Monthly: "Edward Tufte is a philosopher king who reigns over his field largely because he invented it. For years, graphic designers were regarded as decorators, whose primary job was to dress up facts with pretty pictures. Tufte introduced a reverence for math and science to the discipline and, in turn, codified the rules that would create a new one, which has come to be called, alternatively, information design or analytical design. His is often the authoritative word on what makes a good chart or graph, and over the years his influence has changed the way places like the Wall Street Journal and NASA display data. (…)

If Tufte’s first book was a critique, his second was a manifesto. Envisioning Information, published in 1990, implored readers to think of information design as a discipline that encompassed far more than the charts, tables, and other purely quantitative forms that had traditionally dominated the field. Graphics aren’t just useful for displaying numbers, in other words, but for clarifying just about anything one person is trying to tell someone else. The book opens with a print of a visitor’s guide to the Ise shrine in Japan and ends around 120 pages later with Galileo Galilei’s drawing of the rings of Saturn from 1613. (…)

As Tufte explains it, basic human cognitive questions are universal, which means that design questions should be universal too. 'I purposely don’t write books with names like How to Design a Web Site or How to Make a Presentation,' he told me.

This attitude puts him in opposition, at least in his own mind, to much of the contemporary design world. As Tufte sees it, graphic design has become a tragic field, a rich and storied craft knowledge that has been taken out of the realm of nonfiction, as he calls it, and into that of fiction, or marketing and propaganda. He told me several times of his contempt for commercial art, the graphic design that is 'part of a fashion and a style and will be different someday.' Most designers, he said, want to do something new each time. 'But I’m interested in the solved problem,' he said. 'I’m interested in high art and real science.' (…)

'That’s the very reason I’m here!' he told me, laughing. 'To fight against decoration replacing precious substance.'"

On another note, also check out the visualcomplexity site.

by‪ Bill Callahan‬
May 12th, 2011

One last black bird without a place to land
One last black bird without a place to be
Turns around in hopes to find the place it last knew rest
Oh black bird, over black rain burn
This is not where you last knew rest
You fly all night to sleep on stone
The heartless rest that in the morn, we'll be gone
You fly all night to sleep on stone, to return to the tree with too many birds

Here is a rare interview, but go see him live.

That which is in the way is the way.
April 30th, 2011

Eckhart Tolle talk @ Omega Institute in 2003.
A bit repetitive, but worth your time. Wonderful teaching tales and very funny.

Double Feature
April 19th, 2010

Via Quantum Leap: "There is a striking contrast between the extremely formal structure of giant Vuitton and Jacobs's extremely laidback attitude. Hired in 1998, confident and media-wary, he has invented Vuitton's ready-to-wear line, and turned over the world of luxury with limited series of handbags designed by contemporary artists. Marc Jacobs stands at the center of this globalized organization. He is recognized as one of the most potent purveyors of taste and trendsetting. Yet, Marc Jacobs neither sketches nor sews… He is no sewing hand, he is an eye of fashion.
No camera has ever been allowed to film Vuitton's and Jacob’s creation process yet the film unravels an economic and artistic system in a lively manner, maintaining the accuracy of the facts and the glamour, with maximum pleasure for the viewer.
The narrative is not only the classical suspense that builds up before a collection, it is also a demonstration of a new way to make fashion, a very modern mix of chaos and glamour."

Via Medea Film: "Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that uses some of the central ideas of 19th century German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx to try to make sense of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. This crisis prompted the US government to spend more than 1 trillion dollars in order to rescue its banking system from financial meltdown. But can the largest financial losses in history really be put down to the natural risks and uncertainties of the free market? Or is there another explanation as to why the crisis happened and what its implications are for the future of our society, our economy – for our whole way of life?
In the early months of 2008 a huge event began to rock the global financial system to its foundations. Billions of dollars were wiped off share prices and commercial banks throughout the world began to collapse like a pack of cards. As the global economy entered the deepest recession for 70 years the message from the mainstream media was simple: this was an anomaly, an isolated financial blip as unpredictable as a tsunami or lightening strike. Although devastating for the millions of ordinary people around the world whose homes were lost and whose jobs and savings disappeared into thin air, the crisis itself was simply one of those extraordinary things: a cataclysm that escapes all rational thinking.
But what were the real origins of this crisis? And what are its ongoing implications for the future prosperity of us all?"

Thanks to Georg Brüx!

Taryn Simon, photographer
April 17th, 2011

Via Frieze Magazine: "While her photographs are so frank and tightly composed that there is little room for abstraction or interpretation, the density of information in the texts that accompany them opens each one up again, like unlocking a Pandora’s box. An image of a handgun frame being poured from molten metal allows for a caption concerning handgun statistics in the USA, while the caption beside an image of four apprehended Mexicans at the US/Mexican border provides data about the number of times each of the four men had attempted to cross illegally. But Simon skirts a definitive position or agenda. The texts maintain a consistently objective voice, like that of an instruction manual, offering details almost ad absurdum. Her command of arcane statistics and terminology such as Exotic Newcastle Disease or Cryostasis adds to the intrigue of an image rather than explaining it away. She hasn’t just photographed these sites, she has become an expert on each one, and we trust her expertise implicitly: what we see and what we read make for a complete, authoritative package. Without the captions, we wouldn’t know the difference between a controlled avalanche blast and the blast of nuclear weapons testing."

Via Wikipedia: "Taryn Simon (born 1975) is an American fine art photographer. She is a graduate of Brown University and a Guggenheim Fellow. She was born in New York. (…)
Her series The Innocents documents cases of wrongful conviction in the United States and investigates the role of photography in that process. Her series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar documents a diverse range of subjects within the United States that are largely unknown to its citizens. Her most recent body of work Contraband includes 1075 photographs of items detained or seized from passengers and express mail entering the U.S. from abroad. Simon is also known for her photographs documenting international regions in turmoil."

Taryn Simon's TED talk.

Banksy
March 23rd, 2011

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
March 19th, 2011

From Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1966): "I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past. I like to imagine, in consummation and resolution of those jangling chords, something as enduring, in retrospect, as the long table that on summer birthdays and namedays used to be laid for afternoon chocolate out of doors, in an alley of birches, limes and maples at its debouchment on the smooth sanded space of the garden proper that separated the park and the house. I see the tablecloth and the faces of seated people sharing in the animation of light and shade beneath a moving, a fabulous foliage, exaggerated, no doubt, by the same faculty of impassioned commemoration, of ceaseless return, that makes me always approach that banquet table from the outside, from the depth of the park — as if the mind, in order to go back thither, had to do so with the silent steps of a prodigal, faint with excitement.

Through a tremulous prism, I distinguish the features of relatives and familiars, mute lips serenely moving in forgotten speech. I see the steam of the chocolate and the plates of blueberry tarts. I note the small helicopter of a revolving samara that gently descends upon the tablecloth, and, lying across the table, an adolescent girl's bare arm indolently extended as far as it will go, with its turquoise-veined underside turned up to the flaky sunlight, the palm open in lazy expectancy of something —perhaps the nutcracker. In the place where my current tutor sits, there is a changeful image, a succession of fade-ins and fade-outs; the pulsation of my thought mingles with that of the leaf shadows and turns Ordo into Max and Max into Lenski and Lenski into the schoolmaster, and the whole array of trembling, transformations is repeated.

And then, suddenly, just when the colors and outlines settle at last to their various duties — smiling, frivolous duties — some knob is touched and a torrent of sounds comes to life: voices speaking all together, a walnut cracked, the click of a nutcracker carelessly passed, thirty human hearts drowning mine with their regular beats; the sough and sigh of a thousand trees, the local concord of loud summer birds, and, beyond the river, behind the rhythmic trees, the confused and enthusiastic hullabaloo of bathing young villagers, like a background of wild applause."

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) – a Leprechaun
January 22nd, 2011

Via Dangerous Minds: "Two of the planet's most dangerous minds, Timothy Leary and Paul Krassner, meet in a video shot by Nancy Cain, Paul's wife, a few months before Leary's death.
There is an aura of sadness (perhaps mine) laced with much humor and hope in this intimate video. Understandably wistful and distracted at times (he's dying), Leary becomes most alive when talking about death. He seems to be genuinely excited about exploring the psychedelic possibilities of the final frontier (or is it?), the ultimate out-of-body experience, THE death trip. In these moments you see the fearless shaman who always embraced expanding his realities, regardless of public outcry or legal persecution. And it is both moving and inspiring. (…)

We're pleased to share Nancy Cain's video of Paul Krassner interviewing Timothy Leary on September 5, 1995 in its entirety.
For insight on the cultural impact of video read Nancy's fascinatingly informative Video Days.
Paul Krassner's homepage is a motherlode of wit, insight, provocation and counterculture history. Indispensable."

Needs radical thinking
January 16th, 2011

Via VPROinternational: "Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek aka The Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Žižek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly criticize modern capitalism and to give his view on our common future.
We communists are back! is the closing remark of Slavoj Žižek's provocative performance. Our current capitalist system, that everyone believed would be smoothly spread around the globe, is untenable. We find ourselves on the brink of big problems that call for big solutions. Whatever is left of the left, has been hedged in by western liberal democracy and seems to lack the energy to come up with radical solutions. Not Žižek."

Also, you might want to consider Slavoj Žižek's talk at LSE (London School of Economics) about his latest book, Living in the End Times.
Plus, his lecture What does it mean to be a revolutionary today? at Marxism 2009.

"There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent." –Mao Zedong

Walks of Life
December 18th, 2010

From Wikipedia: "Cyriak Harris is a British freelance animator better known by his first name Cyriak, and his B3ta username Mutated Monty. He is known for his surreal short web animations.
A regular contributor to the British website B3ta since 2004, Cyriak displays a surreal and often disturbing animation style with a distinct British theme. Many of his animations are based on Z-List celebrities, television shows and his hometown of Brighton. (...)
Cyriak's YouTube account features a compilation of his animations, which have been popular throughout the blogosphere and noted by Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk, and he was featured on the front page with his animation Moo.
As a freelance animator he has been commissioned by Coke for a Coke Zero advert, the video sharing website sumo.tv, and a music video for Grand Popo Football Club, among others. Some of his work is set to his own electronic music compositions of which he creates in Image-line's FL Studio."

Waiting by Roland Barthes
September 23rd, 2010

I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign. This can be futile, or immensely pathetic; in Erwartung (Waiting), a woman waits for her lover, at night, in the forest; I am waiting for no more than a telephone call, but the anxiety is the same. Everything is solemn; I have no sense of proportions.

There is a scenography of waiting: I organize it, manipulate it, cut out a portion of time in which I shall mime the loss of the loved object and provoke all the effects of a minor mourning. This is then acted out as a play.

The setting represents the interior of a cafe'; we have a rendezvous, I am waiting. In the Prologue, the sole actor of the play (and with reason), I discern and indicate the other's delay; this delay is as yet only a mathematical, computable entity (I look at my watch several times); the Prologue ends with a brainstorm: I decide to "take it badly," I release the anxiety of waiting. Act I now begins; it is occupied by suppositions: was there a misunderstanding as to the time, the place? I try to recall the moment when the rendezvous was made, the details which were supplied. What is to be done (anxiety of behavior)? Try another cafe'? Telephone? But if the other comes during these absences? Not seeing me, the other might leave, etc. Act II is the act of anger; I address violent reproaches to the absent one: "All the same, he (she) could have . . . " "He (she) knows perfectly well . . . " Oh, if she (he) could be here, so that I could reproach her (him) for not being here! In Act III, I attain to (I obtain?) anxiety in the pure state: the anxiety of abandonment; I have just shifted in a second from absence to death; the other is as if dead: explosion of grief: I am internally livid. That is the play; it can be shortened by the other's arrival; if the other arrives in Act I, the greeting is calm; if the other arrives in Act II, there is a "scene"; if in Act II, there is recognition, the action of grace: I breathe deeply, like Pelleas emerging from the underground chambers and rediscovering life, the odor of roses.

(The anxiety of waiting is not continuously violent; it has its matte moments; I am waiting, and everything around my waiting is stricken with unreality: in this cafe', I look at the others who come in, chat, joke, read calmly: they are not waiting.)

Waiting is enchantment: I have received orders not to move. Waiting for a telephone call is thereby woven out of tiny unavowable interdictions to infinity: I forbid myself to leave the room, to go to the toilet, even to telephone (to keep the line from being busy); I suffer torments if someone else telephones me (for the same reason); I madden myself by the thought that at a certain (imminent) hour I shall have to leave, thereby running the risk of missing the healing call, the return of the Mother. All these diversions which solicit me are so many wasted moments for waiting, so many impurities of anxiety. For the anxiety of waiting, in its pure state, requires that I be sitting in a chair within reach of the telephone, without doing anything.

The being I am waiting for is not real. Like the mother's breast for the infant, "I create and re-create it over and over, starting from my capacity to love, starting from my need for it": the other comes here where I am waiting, here where I have already created him/her. And if the other does not come, I hallucinate the other: waiting is a delirium.

The telephone again: each time it rings, I snatch up the receiver, I think it will be the loved being who is calling me (since that being should call me); a little more effort and I "recognize" the other's voice, I engage in the dialogue, to the point where I lash out furiously against the importunate outsider who wakens me from my delirium. In the cafe', anyone who comes in, bearing the faintest resemblance, is thereupon, in a first impulse, recognized.

And, long after the amorous relation is allayed, I keep the habit of hallucinating the being I have loved: sometimes I am still in anxiety over a telephone call that is late, and no matter who is on the line, I imagine I recognize the voice I once loved: I am an amputee who still feels pain in his missing leg.

"Am I in love? -- Yes, since I'm waiting." The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely: I am the one who waits.

(In transference, one always waits--at the doctor's, the professor's, the analyst's. Further, if I am waiting at a bank window, an airport ticket counter, I immediately establish an aggressive link with the teller, the stewardess, whose indifference unmasks and irritates my subjection; so that one might say that wherever there is waiting there is transference: I depend on a presence which is shared and requires time to be bestowed--as if it were a question of lowering my desire, lessening my need. To make some wait: the constant prerogative of all power, "age-old pastime of humanity.")

A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. "I shall be yours," she told him, "when you have spend a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my windows." But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm, and went away.

Thomas Metzinger and his Self-model theory of subjectivity
August 26th, 2010

Been watching the three Leibniz lectures "Niemand sein. Ethik, Menschenbild und die Auflösung des Selbst im Zeitalter der Neurowissenschaften" by Thomas Metzinger. There is a shorter English version – his talk Being No One at the UC Berkeley 2005. Totally recommend to expose yourself to these mind-expanding ideas.

From MIT Press: "According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a transparent self-model. In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analysed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds."

Thanks to Tobias Gallé!

RIP Christoph Schlingesief (1960-2010)
August 21st, 2010

This post has to be in German. If you do not know the exceptional estate of Christoph Schlingensief familiarize yourself! Now! No excuses accepted.

UPDATE, August 25th: The New York Times obituary.

Heute morgen habe ich den Text Radikale Demokratie von Reinhard Heil und Andreas Hetzel gelesen. Und heute nachmittag erreicht uns die Nachricht des Todes von Christoph Schlingensief. Etwas viel für einen sonnigen Samstag. Jetzt werde ich tun, was Schlingensief nicht mehr wollte, Rotwein trinken. Ich werde auf seinen Mut anstossen und hoffen, dass sich sehr bald eine adäquate Nachfolgerin zeigt.
Verdammt, was für ein riesiges Loch.

Geschockte Patienten.

Aus Hotel Ruhe: "Mut zum Gegenwind, Mut zum Verkannt-werden, Mut zum Alleiniger-Rufer-in-der-Wüste-Sein. Christoph Schlingensief hat dem deutschen Film und der Filmförderung den Zerrspiegel vorgehalten, und er hat das Theater und die Oper revolutioniert. Die Geschwindigkeit seiner Gedanken ist legendär, um seinen Assoziationsprüngen folgen zu können, bedurfte es Intuition."

Der letzte Eintrag aus seinem Blog: "07-08-2010- DIE BILDER VERSCHWINDEN AUTOMATISCH UND ÜBERMALEN SICH SO ODER SO ! - 'ERINNERN HEISST : VERGESSEN !' (Da können wir ruhig unbedingt auch mal schlafen!) Wie lange war es still... lange stiill. stoße jetzt nach ca. 3 wochen auf das letzte video hier. habe ich gleich gelöscht. wen soll das das interessieren? vielleicht sind solche vidoeblogs oder einträgen nur dann von intererrägen, wenn die angst zu gross wird. die angst, weil diese kleine illussion von --- aber nun nach den knapp 4 wochen scheint es anderes zu sein. die bilder (ixen) sich aus... da ist ja kein sentimentaler schmerz. die bausupsanz ist erstaunlich gut... und nun? wieder ein neues bild? wieder infos zu neuen dingen, die ,...... ja eigentlich was ?..... alles sehr oberflächlich und rechtschreibefehler häufen sich die dinge .... das baut läufz seit tmc auf. der appetetit läßt rasant nach. - ARD- TATORTREKA7 ...(warum werde ich icht nicht denn nicht wenigstes einer meiner halbwegs siution normalererenen situatuin aufgeklärt. so macht es mich nur traurig, piasch und"

Aus Radikale Demokratie: "Im radikaldemokratischen Diskurs, dem etwa die Schriften von Claude Lefort, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Etienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière und Jacques Derrida zugerechnet werden können, wird Demokratisierung als unend­liche Aufgabe begriffen. Im Mittelpunkt der Ausführungen dieser Autorinnen und Autoren steht mit unterschiedlichen Akzentu­ierungen und Konsequenzen der Gedanke, dass Demokratien agonal verfasst sind. Demokratische Ausein­ander­setzungen über die an­gemessene Einrichtung des Gemein­wesens lassen sich aus dieser Perspektive nicht in transzendentalen Rechts- oder Vernunftprinzipien verankern. Daraus ergibt sich die Forderung, dass die Mitte der Macht leer bleiben muss (Lefort), dass Demokratie im Kommen bleibt (Derrida), dass sie sich also niemals eine endgültige, durch einen Rekurs auf universelle Prinzipien ver­bindlich abgesicherte Gestalt geben kann und sollte. Es ist aus dieser Perspektive gerade eine Leerstelle im Zentrum der Gesell­schaft, die diese zusammenhält. Die demokratische Auseinandersetzung – auch über die Möglichkeits­be­dingun­gen der Demokratie – kann und sollte nie zu einem Ende kommen. Als wesentli­ches Anliegen des Diskurses der radikalen Demokratie könnte man eine Verteidigung des Po­li­tischen, verstanden als Kraft der kollek­tiven Selbstinstituierung einer Gesellschaft, gegenüber der Politik, verstanden als Verwaltung des Gemeinwesens innerhalb etablierter Parameter, begreifen, die sich praktisch etwa in einer Forderung nach der Demokratisierung von Bürokratien, Wirtschaft, Bildung und Wissenschaft ausdrückt."

Bill Bernbach (1911-1982)
August 20st, 2010

From The Enduring Legacy Of Bill Bernbach: "Most readers come away from their reading not with a clear, precise, detailed registration of its contents on their minds, but, rather, with a vague, misty idea which is formed as much by the pace, the proportions, the music of the writings, as by the literal words themselves."

Visual Poetry by D.A. Levy
August 19th, 2010

Learned at least two things today. About D.A. Levy and – with no direct connection – about the meaning of 420. Am very grateful for the elucidation.

Thanks to Helen Schneider!

by Paul Auster
August 18th, 2010

“To think of motion not merely as a function of the body but as an extension of the mind. In the same way, to think of speech not as an extension of the mind but as a function of the body. Sounds emerge from the voice to enter the air and surround and bounce off and enter the body that occupies that air, and though they cannot be seen, these sounds are no less a gesture than a hand is when outstretched in the air towards another hand, and in this gesture can be read the entire alphabet of desire, the body's need to be taken beyond itself, even as it dwells in the sphere of its own motion.

On the surface, this motion seems to be random. But such randomness does not, in itself, preclude a meaning. Or if meaning is not quite the word for it, then say the drift, or a consistent sense of what is happening, even as it changes, moment by moment. (...)

In the realm of the naked eye nothing happens that does not have its beginning and its end. And yet nowhere can we find the place or the moment at which we can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is where it begins, or this is where it ends. For some of us, it has begun before the beginning, and for others of us it will go on happening after the end. Where to find it? Don't look. Either it is here or it is not here. And whoever tries to find refuge in any one place, in any one moment, will never be where he thinks he is. In other words, say your good-byes. It is never too late. It is always too late.

To say the simplest thing possible. To go no farther than whatever it is I happen to find before me. To begin with this landscape, for example. Or even to note the things that are most near, as if in the tiny world before my eyes I might find an image of the life that exists beyond me, as if in a way I do not fully understand each thing in my life were connected to every other thing, which in turn connected me to the world at large, the endless world that looms up in the mind, as lethal and unknowable as desire itself. (...)

Consider the word "it." "It" is raining, we say, or how is "it" going? We feel we know what we are saying, and what we mean to say is that it, the word "it," stands for something that need not be said, or something that cannot be said. But if the thing we say is something that eludes us, something we do not understand, how can we persist in saying that we understand what we are saying? And yet it goes without saying that we do. The "it," for example, in the preceding sentence, "it goes without saying," is in fact nothing less than whatever it is that propels us into the act of speech itself. And if it, the word "it," is what continually recurs in any effort to define it, then it must be accepted as the given, the precondition of the saying of it. (...)

It happens, and as it continues to happen, we forget where we were when it began. Later, when we have traveled from this moment as far as we have travelled from the beginning, we will forget where we are now. Eventually, we will all go home, and if there are those among us who do not have a home, it is certain, nevertheless, that they will leave this place to go wherever it is they must. If nothing else, life has taught us all this one thing: whoever is here now will not be here later.

I dedicate these words to the things in life I do not understand, to each thing passing away before my eyes. I dedicate these words to the impossibility of finding a word equal to the silence inside me. (...)

I realize in the end that I am probably powerless to affect the outcome of even the least thing that happens, but nevertheless, and in spite of myself, as if in an act of blind faith, I want to assume full responsibility. (...)”

From Disappearances – Selected Poems (1988) by Paul Auster

Thanks to Nicola Richter!

Waltzing with Mantovani
August 11th, 2010

From Wikipedia: "The version of Charmaine by the Mantovani Orchestra is used quite often in comedy to provide comedic effect whenever a romantic situation is created."

by Pawel Althamer and Artur Żmijewski
August 10th, 2010

Saw this piece on the weekend at Maastricht's Bonnefantenmuseum and was glued to the screen by its humour, courage and emotional impact.
From culture.pl: "Resembling Althamer's student-era work is also the film series, recorded with Artur Żmijewski, called The So Called Waves and Other Phenomena of the Mind (2003-2004). The films document Althamer exploring various ways of non-rational cognition, which he deems to be means of broadening human perception, using consciousness-altering substances (LSD, peyote, hashish, the truth serum) or hypnosis. (...)
One of the films of the So Called Waves... series is Weronika (2004), showing the artist 'discover the world anew' during a walk with his daughter. In many of his works and actions, Althamer tries to persuade the viewers to perceive the world around them more creatively."

Paintings by Chris Wool
August 6th, 2010

From the New York Times: "Here is a fine time capsule. In the 1980's, Christopher Wool was doing a Neo-Pop sort of painting using commercial rollers to apply decorative patterns to white panels. One day he saw a new white truck violated by the spray-painted words sex and luv. Mr. Wool made his own painting using those words and went on to make paintings with big, black stenciled letters saying things like Run Dog Run or Sell the House, Sell the Car, Sell the Kids. The paintings captured the scary, euphoric mood of a high-flying period not unlike our own.

In 1989 Mr. Wool created a series of word paintings on paper for a tome called Black Book. The 22 pieces are exhibited for the first time here, in an elegant wrap-around installation. Each page bears a nine-letter word broken up into a stack of three-letter groups. Blocky nine-inch letters spell the names of disturbing character types: terrorist, anarchist, mercenary, paranoiac, and so on.

The percussive typography joins the verbal content to aggressive and somehow morally imperative effect. With minimal means, Mr. Wool conjured a world of political anxiety that the novelist Robert Stone might have envisioned."

by Chrissie Abbott
August 3rd, 2010

Found via the wonderful My Love for You Is A Stampede Of Horses.

You can not afford to miss this!
July 19th, 2010

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes was made for Channel 4 in the UK by Guardian journalist Jon Ronson. His 2004 article, Citizen Kubrick, is the basis for the documentary.
From the Guardian: "Stanley Kubrick's films were landmark events - majestic, memorable and richly researched. But, as the years went by, the time between films grew longer and longer, and less and less was seen of the director. What on earth was he doing? Two years after his death, Jon Ronson was invited to the Kubrick estate and let loose among the fabled archive. He was looking for a solution to the mystery - this is what he found."
(Thanks to Stephan Telaar!)

Thus: 53, 55, 56, 57, 60, 62, 64, 68, 71, 75, 80, 87, 99.

1953 – Fear and Desire
1955 – Killer's Kiss
1956 – The Killing
1957 – Paths of Glory
1960 – Spartacus
1962 – Lolita
1964 – Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey
1971 – A Clockwork Orange
1975 – Barry Lyndon
1980 – The Shining
1987 – Full Metal Jacket
1999 – Eyes Wide Shut

The Dream Before by Laurie Anderson
July 15th, 2010

From Dangerous Minds: "I'll cop out and leave it to our able Dangerous Minds readers to discern the meaning of the shared birth date of Benjamin the leading German Marxist philosopher (who would have been 108 years old), Derrida the French founder of deconstruction (80), and Curtis the lead singer of the century's most existential pop band (54). If you went to a liberal arts college from 1980 onwards, you probably have your opinions about it.
And so, please enjoy some fragments of the lives of these auspicious birthday boys. Party hats & thinking caps ON!"

Fragments for Walter Benjamin

Wesendonck-Lieder by Richard Wagner
July 5th, 2010

Sag, welch wunderbare Träume
Halten meinen Sinn umfangen,
Daß sie nicht wie leere Schäume
Sind in ödes Nichts vergangen?

Träume, die in jeder Stunde,
Jedem Tage schöner blühn,
Und mit ihrer Himmelskunde
Selig durchs Gemüte ziehn!

Träume, die wie hehre Strahlen
In die Seele sich versenken,
Dort ein ewig Bild zu malen:
Allvergessen, Eingedenken!

Träume, wie wenn Frühlingssonne
Aus dem Schnee die Blüten küßt,
Daß zu nie geahnter Wonne
Sie der neue Tag begrüßt,

Daß sie wachsen, daß sie blühen,
Träumend spenden ihren Duft,
Sanft an deiner Brust verglühen,
Und dann sinken in die Gruft.

(From: The Lied and Art Song Texts Page)

"In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false." Guy Debord
June 20th, 2010

Via the New Shelton wet/dry: "The Preface to the Phenomenology, all by itself, is considered one of Hegel's major works and a major text in the history of philosophy, because in it he sets out the core of his philosophical method and what distinguishes it from that of any previous philosophy, especially that of his German Idealist predecessors (Kant, Fichte, and Schelling).

Hegel's approach, referred to as the Hegelian method, consists of actually examining consciousness' experience of both itself and of its objects and eliciting the contradictions and dynamic movement that come to light in looking at this experience. Hegel uses the phrase pure looking at (reines Zusehen) to describe this method. If consciousness just pays attention to what is actually present in itself and its relation to its objects, it will see that what looks like stable and fixed forms dissolve into a dialectical movement. Thus philosophy, according to Hegel, cannot just set out arguments based on a flow of deductive reasoning. Rather, it must look at actual consciousness, as it really exists." (From Wikipedia)

by Laurie Anderson
June 12th, 2010

Yes, it's been a while but since I have been reminded this week it is now time to reveal that I still am a fan of hers. So, reconsider Home of the Brave (1986).

"Flying Birds.
Excellent Birds.
Watch them fly.
There they go."

"Well I was talking to a friend
And I was saying:
I wanted you.
And I was looking for you.
But I couldn't find you. I couldn't find you.
And he said: Hey!
Are you talking to me?
Or are you just practicing
For one of those performances of yours?
Huh?
Language! It's a virus!"

"O Superman. (...)
And I've got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come
as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go."

"Anyway, we got into their boat and left the island.
But they never stayed anywhere very long.
Because the woman was restless. She was a hothead.
She was a woman in love.
And this is not a story people tell.
It is something I know myself.
And when I do my job, I am thinking about these things.
Because when I do my job, that is what I think about.
Oooo la la la.
Yeah La La La.
Voici. Voila'.
Here. And there.
Ooo la la la.
Oh yes.
Voici le Langue D'Amour.
This is the language of love."

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1995-1986)
March 26th, 2010

From Wikipedia: "Jiddu Krishnamurti was a renowned writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual subjects. His subject matter included: psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, human relationships, and bringing about positive change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social."

Am currently working my way through seven talks and five Q&A meetings, which took place in Saanen, Switzerland in 1980. Reconsider!

by Paula Scheer
March 6th, 2010

From Identity Forum: "I never knew a designer that got hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a logo.  Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace.  This is a process that can take a year or more.  Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali*. The complicated process is worth money.  That's what clients pay for. The process, usually a series of endless presentations and refinements, persuasions and proofs, results, hopefully, in an accepted identity design."

* From Wikipedia: "Svengali is the name of a fictional character in George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby. A sensation in its day, the novel created a stereotype of the evil hypnotist that persists to this day. (...)
The word svengali has entered the language meaning a person who with evil intent manipulates another into doing what is desired."

Gagosian Gallery's homage to J.G. Ballard
February 17th, 2010

From Dangerous Minds: "As a tie-in to the Gagosian show, Iain Sinclair, writing in today's Guardian, offers up a wonderful account of his trip to Shepperton, where Ballard spoke of the art and artists that most inspired him. When it came to such things, Ballard was clearly a lucid, passionate speaker. You can get a rare glimpse of this yourself in the '93 interview from British television."

From Guardian: "The incantatory manifesto, What I Believe, deploys Ballard's favourite device, the list, as he curates a museum of affinities: 'I believe in Max Ernst, Delvaux, Dalí, ­Titian, / Goya, Leonardo, Vermeer, Chirico, Magritte, / Redon, Dürer, ­Tanguy, the Facteur Cheval, / the Watts Towers, Böcklin, Francis Bacon, and all the invisible artists / within the psychiatric institutions of the planet.'"

(Painting by Ed Ruscha) 

Dr. Jane McGonigal
February 3rd, 2010

Tomorrow we have another round of final-year project's presentations at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. One of the students, Roland Sigmond, will present a concept for an alternate reality game.

From Wikipedia: "The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants' responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium."

That might be the reason why I was thinking about Jane McGonigal today. She just launched a new ARG called Evoke.
In 2006, Dr. McGonigal was named one of the world's top innovators under the age of 35 by MIT's Technology Review.
In 2008, Dr. McGonigal was named one of the Top 20 Most Important Women in videogaming, and World Without Oil received the South by Southwest Interactive Award for Activism.
Check her out, she is really something.

is drawing dance.
January 26th, 2010

William Forsythe: "So I began to imagine lines in space that could be bent, or tossed, or otherwise distorted. By moving from a point to a line to a plane to a volume, I was able to visualize a geometric space composed of points that were vastly interconnected. As these points were all contained within the dancer's body, there was really no transition necessary, only a series of foldings and unfoldings that produced an infinite number of movements and positions. From these, we started making catalogues of what the body could do. And for every new piece that we choreographed, we would develop a new series of procedures."
(Thanks to Phillip Schulze!)

by DJ Sprinkles aka Terre Thaemlitz
January 9th, 2010

Always had this thing going for Terre Thaemlitz. Listen to some excerpts of his Midtown 120 Blues album.

From SFBG: "DJ Sprinkles is one alias in a vast arsenal overseen by Terre Thaemlitz, who also makes records under the monikers G.R.R.L., Terre's Neu Wuss Fusion, and Kami-Sakunobe House Explosion, among others. Thaemlitz's approach to electronic music is playful and dead up serious about its capacity for political content. His (or her, depending on your preference; Thaemlitz's gender identity is fractured and fluid) current release as DJ Sprinkles, Midtown 120 Blues (2009, Mule Musiq) opens with a thesis statement: House isn't so much a sound as a situation."

A permutation poem by Brion Gyson
January 6th, 2009

"He's the only man I've ever respected in my life. I've admired people, I've liked them, but Brion Gysin was the only man I've ever respected." William S.Burroughs

From UbuWeb: "The Englishman Brion Gysin, one of the founders of the beatnik movement and inventor of such new formulas as the collage-novel, has composed his phonic texts on this principle. I am is a classic of the genre. Composed exclusively of permutations of the biblical words 'I am that I am', with ever more marked accelerations, he succeeds in rendering, from the initial nucleus, a crowd of 'I am's, the creation of the world in geometrical progression until it fades away in the sidereal silence."
Also check out Brion Gysin in UbuWeb Film.

TED talk The power of time off by Stefan Sagmeister
December 29th, 2009

From Motionographer: "One of those most intriguing parts of his talk is the idea that we spend around the first 25 years of our life focused on learning, the next 40 years are dedicated to work (and lots of it in our industry) and around 15 years towards the end of our lives are reserved for retirement. Sagmeister not only suggests, but has put into practice the idea to cut off 5 of those retirement years and intersperse them between the working years with creative sabbaticals."

Mark Pellington and Jon Klein
December 16th, 2009

Today, for no reason, I thought about Mark Pellington and Jon Klein's 13-part international series Buzz, which they created in the late 80s. This format had a huge impact on my work back then. From boing boing: "Buzz was a fantastic experiment in non-linearity and cut-up that drew heavily from - and presented - avant-garde art, underground cinema, early cyberpunk, industrial culture, appropriation/sampling, and postmodern literature. Experientially, it feels like what Mondo 2000 would have looked like as a television show, and in fact Mondo founder RU Sirius was interviewed on the first episode. Other notable contributors/subjects included William S. Burroughs, Jenny Holzer, Genesis P-Orridge, Syd Mead, and many other happy mutants. This was the future of television, circa 1988. Too bad it didn't quite pan out this way."
Amongst others Mark Pellington also directed the video clip for U2's One, which I still like a lot.

Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009)
October 31st, 2009

In June I saw her installation Brückenfindings at Cologne's Brückenmusik. She used the bowels of a bridge as her instrument. It was a mind-blowing experience to walk through this long and dark tunnel.
From NYT: "Maryanne Amacher, an influential composer whose experimental sound installations and multimedia works sometimes required full buildings to present their powerful melding of electronic timbres and live, natural ambience, died" on October 22nd.
"Ms. Amacher was drawn to extremes: some of her scores — for example, the music she composed for the choreographer Merce Cunningham's Torse (1976) — could be so soft as to be nearly inaudible at times. But more typically, she reveled in powerful, high-volume sensory assaults, combining high-pitched electronic chirping and solid bass drones to produce a visceral effect. (...) 
Ms. Amacher, who left no surviving relatives, taught electronic music at Bard College, beginning in 2000. She was also an important influence for a generation of composers who combined rock instrumentation and avant-garde sensibilities, among them Rhys Chatham and Thurston Moore. The documentary film Day Trip Maryanne, by Andrew Kesin, captures discussions and performance collaborations between Ms. Amacher and Mr. Moore."
Check out the Maryanne Amacher Archive.

by Nick Tosches
October 9th, 2009

From If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger...: "And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlesly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."

Sculpture by Mauro Perucchetti
September 19th, 2009

"Sycamore got to grow down to grow up
Young girl told the soul like baby's first cup
And when they bend you in two
And say too green for the fire
When all you want to do is be a part of the fire
All you want to do is be the fire part of fire
Like sycamores"
Bill Callahan: Sycamore

by Cyndi Lauper
September 15th, 2009

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick, 

And think of you 

Caught up in circles confusion 

Is nothing new 

Flashback warm nights 

Almost left behind 

Suitcases of memories, 

Time after
Sometimes you picture me 

I'm walking too far ahead 

You're calling to me, I can not hear 

What you have said 

Then you say go slow 

I fall behind 

The second hand unwinds
If you're lost you can look and you will find me 

Time after time 

If you fall I will catch you
I'll be waiting 

Time after time
After my picture fades and darkness has 

Turned to gray 

Watching through windows you're wondering 

If I'm OK 

Secrets stolen from deep inside 

The drum beats out of time

Townes Van Zandt
September 6th, 2009

From idiolect: "I don't think, as a matter of fact, that I'm going to benefit from anything on this earth. It's more like that, I mean, if you have love on the earth, that seems to be number one. There's food, water, air and love, right? And love is just basically heartbreak. Human's can't live in the present as animals do; they just live in the present. But human's are always thinking about the future or the past. So, it's a veil of tears, man. And I don't know anything that's going to benefit me except more love. I just need an overwhelming amount of love. And a nap. Mostly a nap."

Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni
July 29th, 2009

Am not sure how many times I've seen this film. But I remember very vivid the first time: I was about 12, alone at home and not supposed to watch TV. Switched to Zabriskie Point by accident - well, back then we had only three TV channels anyway.  Three decades later I can easily see how the shock that masterpiece initially provoked when I was still a girl entered as a underlying theme into my life. The style, the music, the two main characters. Saw it again last night and in that sense it really was revelation. 
From Wikipedia: "It tells the story of a young couple — an idealistic, free spirited young woman, and an aspiring radical turned fugitive. They meet in the desert under bizarre circumstances, instantly connect with a fearless spirit, and then part with tragic consequences. When the fugitive dies in an attempt to reconcile his minor transgressions with the police his new-found lover's connection to the corporate and government establishment is psychologically and permanently severed when she visualizes the home of her corporate lover/boss exploding in slow motion."

Cut hands
July 18th, 2009

Had the great pleasure of being at the Salon des Amateurs in Düsseldorf last night to hear William Bennett play a live set. He chose to show Les Maîtres Fous to his music. Haven't seen the film in a while and it is still disturbing.
Jean Rouch always pushed the limit of his scientific research and is still a huge source of inspiration. From Wikipedia: "Rouch's practice as a filmmaker for over sixty years in Africa, was characterized by the idea of shared anthropology. Influenced by his discovery of surealism in his early twenties, many of his films blur the line between fiction and documentary, creating a new style of ethnofiction."

Summer 2009
July 11th, 2009

Exams are finally over. Seen some incredible projects which make me really proud of the students. Will upload some of them soon. Been totally exhausted from the week and went for a few drinks to hear my favorite DJ and funny friend last night. Check out some of his tracks.

Matt Webb @ Copenhagen's Reboot conference
July 6th, 2009

Matt Webb is one really handsome Brit giving an inspiring speech with a wonderful conclusion. From boingboing.net: "It's a great Webbrant, thought-provoking, learned, wide-ranging, weird and great."

gives the 2009 commencement address at RISD
June 10th, 2009

Watch his inspiring, witty and humorous speech. From the RISD Site: "One of the world's leading thinkers on creativity, Sir Ken Robinson was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for outstanding achievements as a writer and tireless advocate for creativity, education and the arts. His latest book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything became an instant New York Times bestseller and has been widely embraced by leaders in business, education, government and the arts. In the late 1990s, Robinson was appointed by the British government to lead a national commission on creativity, education and the economy, which resulted in the widely acclaimed 1999 'Robinson Report,' All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. His subsequent book Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (2001) firmly established his reputation as one of the world's leading authorities on the value of creativity. Known for his ready wit and deep humanity, Robinson speaks throughout the world on the creative challenges facing business and education in the ever-shifting global economy. He has advised governments in Europe, Asia and the US; worked with international agencies and Fortune 500 companies; and guided some of the world's leading cultural organizations."
And RISD's president John Maeda introduced him. It might really be the best school for design nowadays...

Paula Scher
May 30th, 2009

Renown designer Paula Scher "believes failure is the secret to artistic success. 'You have to fail in order to make the next discovery,' says Scher. 'It's through mistakes that you actually can grow.' (...) The thing about your mistakes is, when everybody praises something, you don't learn anything. But when you do something terrible, you know what not to do. And that's fantastic. You also learn what you could do if you manipulated it a different way. You have to try these things. You have to see where the failure takes you. That's very scary and risky and also hard to do while you're trying to do something professional." (from an interview in Psychology Today). Also check out her TED talk Paula Scher gets serious on the difference between serious and solemn.

Joseph Campbell 1904-1987
May 21st, 2009

Joseph Campbell in The Hero's Journey: "When you follow your bliss and by bliss I mean the deep sense of being in it and doing what the push is out of your own existence. You follow that and doors will open where you would not have thought that there were gonna be doors and where there wouldn't be a door for anybody else and there is something about the integrity of a live and the world moves in and helps."
Essential reading: The Hero with a Thousand Faces

by The Knife 
May 9th, 2009

"One night to be confused
One night to speed up truth
We had a promise made
Four hands and then away
Both under influence
We had divine sense
To know what to say
Mind is a razorblade
To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no
One night of magic rush
The start - a simple touch
One night to push and scream
And then relief
Ten days of perfect tunes
The colors red and blue
We had a promise made
We were in love
To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no
And you, you knew the hand of a devil
And you kept us awake with wolves teeth
Sharing different heartbeats in one night
To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no"

I wanna hold you hand
May 5th, 2009

From a site about the Sparks: "Even though 'Big Beat' was going to be a more stripped down album with more guitars and fewer of Ron's keyboards Russell Mael was going to do a lush, orchestral duet version of Lennon & McCartney's 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' with Marianne Faithfull. Producer Rupert Holmes did syrupy score for the song, yet Marianne Faithfull dropped out of the project at the last minute leaving Rupert Holmes, Jeffrey Lesser and The Maels with a score and no one to sing it. Russell Mael ended up singing the song, yet it seemed so incongruous even for Sparks, that this execrable orchestral assault produced by Jeffrey Lesser never appeared on an album." (via boingboing.net)

Crystal clear: Send in the clowns
May 1st, 2009

Coral, crochet, hyperbolic geometry and Susan Boyle.
April 29th, 2009

First, watch Margaret Wertheim presenting the Crochet Reef Project at TED. Margaret Wertheim writes about the interaction between science and mathematics and the wider cultural landscape. In 2003 she and her twin sister Christine (a professor at Calarts) founded the Institute For Figuring, an organization devoted to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of math, science and the technical arts.
An then, read her article "Margaret Wertheim: Susan Boyle and The Beauty of Crochet" on Design Observer. From that: "Like everyone else on planet earth I have been moved to tears by Susan Boyle's amazing performance on Britain's 'Got Talent'. Any of you who haven't yet watched her on YouTube, do yourself a favor. I want to reflect here on Boyle's massive appeal from a very personal point of view, for I have spent much of the last three years managing a project that harnesses the creative energies of hundreds of middle-aged female 'nobodies.'"
As I write this, the video of Susan Boyle singing has been watched 47.427.374 times on YouTube, so far! And, maths at school could have taken such a very different path for me...

by Florian Fossel
April 27th, 2009

From Florian Fossel's portfolio on SHOWSTUDIO: "At first glance this serial of portraits seems to be a random compilation of people of all ages, social classes and different ethnics."
(Thanks to Manu Burghart!)

For example: Eric Satie
April 26th, 2009

From Daily Routines - How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days: "On most mornings after he moved to Arcueil, Satie would return to Paris on foot, a distance of about ten kilometres, stopping frequently at his favourite cafés on route. According to Templier, 'he walked slowly, taking small steps, his umbrella held tight under his arm. When talking he would stop, bend one knee a little, adjust his pince-nez and place his fist on his lap. The we would take off once more with small deliberate steps.'
When he eventually reached Paris he visited friends, or arranged to meet them in other cafés by sending pneumatiques. Often the walking from place to place continued, focussing on Montmarte before the war, and subsequently on Montparnasse. From here, Satie would catch the last train back to Arcueil at about 1.00am, or, if he was still engaged in serious drinking, he would miss the train and begin the long walk home during the early hours of the morning. Then the daily round would begin again.
Roger Shattuck, in conversations with John Cage in 1982, put forward the interesting theory that 'the source of Satie's sense of musical beat - the possibility of variation within repetition, the effect of boredom on the organism - may be this endless walking back and forth across the same landscape day after day... the total observation of a very limited and narrow environment.' During his walks, Satie was also observed stopping to jot down ideas by the light of the street lamps he passed.
(Thanks to Kira Bunse!)

Neville Brody
April 23rd, 2009

With an attitude
April 20th, 2009

Been thinking about these two grand ladies the last couple of days. They manage to look even better the older they get. Brilliant designer Andrée Putman (not only for the interior design of my favourite plane of all times) and top artist Cindy Sherman (not only for evoking all that egoism for altruism). Absolutely admirable - in every aspect.

by Kent Rogowski
April 3rd, 2009

Spring is finally here! From the 20x200 website: "Love=Love is a series of surreal and spectacular landscape photographs that were created using pieces from over 60 store-bought jigsaw puzzles. Kent Rogowski deconstructed the original idyllic images first by removing flowers and skies from each puzzle and then by re-combining them to form disorienting and fractured montages."
April 25th, 2009, Kent Rogowski's first European solo show will open at the In Focus Gallery in Cologne, Germany.

by Tomas Schats
April 1st, 2009

Kenneth Goldsmith
March 27th, 2009

Am in the process of researching online archives and the most impressive, inspiring and likeable is UbuWeb. Its founder, publisher and patron saint is Kenneth Goldsmith. He has done an incredible job collecting 1000 avant-garde films among other outsider arts and made them available online. If you'd like to get to know him better, watch "Sucking on words: Kenneth Goldsmith" (2007), a film by Simon Morris. Kenneth Goldsmith in the documentary: "I believe that information management is the way we are writing now and will continue to write in the future. (...) There is enough language in the world, that we need not create any new language. (...) The interest is in the remix, the accumulation and the filtering. We become intelligent agents."

Sculpture by Kevin Francis Gray
March 26th, 2009

Watch Johnny "Guitar" Watson perform Superman Lover. Listen to Marathon Man by the French house group The Supermen Lovers. And, as a consequence, spring might show up. Turquoise it is. Can't wait no more.
"Look, look up in the sky,
Come on look, look, look
And you'll see me flying by"

The Peter Saville principle.

Amazing short film
March 14th, 2009

It has been a long time that any design struck me. "Please Say Something" by David O'Reilly did. The animation is about a troubled relationship between a cat and mouse set in the distant future. It won the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2009 Berlinale. From Motionographer: "Doing what other people don't is how O'Reilly rolls. Narrative risk-taking, boldness in aesthetic simplification, and self-imposed creative rules lead to epic creation. PSS is strange, insanely original, and some of the most authentic storytelling you'll ever see." I couldn't agree more.

Danah Boyd
February 20th, 2009

One of the most inspiring, challenging and lovely students I ever had the pleasure to work with pointed me to Danah Boyd's blog today. Never before I have read an About Me page online that made me so curious to get to know that other person. Thanks, Nina Juric!

by Dmitry Orlov
February 15th, 2009

From boingboing.net: "In this lecture hosted yesterday by the Long Now Foundation, Dmitri Orlov describes the Russian economic collapse of the 1990s, and explains how he thinks an American decline/collapse would differ."
Quote: "If you still have a job, or if you still have some savings, what do you do with all the money? The obvious answer is, build up inventory. The money will be worthless, but a box of bronze nails will still be a box of bronze nails. Buy and stockpile useful stuff, especially stuff that can be used to create various kinds of alternative systems for growing food, providing shelter, and providing transportation. If you don't own a patch of dirt free and clear where you can stockpile stuff, then you can rent a storage container, pay it a few years forward, and just sit on it until reality kicks in again and there is something useful for you to do with it. Some of you may be frightened by the future I just described, and rightly so. There is nothing any of us can do to change the path we are on: it is a huge system with tremendous inertia, and trying to change its path is like trying to change the path of a hurricane. What we can do is prepare ourselves, and each other, mostly by changing our expectations, our preferences, and scaling down our needs. It may mean that you will miss out on some last, uncertain bit of enjoyment. On the other hand, by refashioning yourself into someone who might stand a better chance of adapting to the new circumstances, you will be able to give to yourself, and to others, a great deal of hope that would otherwise not exist." A must read!

by Paul Virilio
February 9th, 2009

During my years at university we spent a few days at the stormy coast of the North Sea studying and drawing bunkers. Today a post at the, always inspiring, Design Observer evoked some of those long forgotten memories. From The Morning News: "Approximately 1.500 bunkers were built during World War II along the French shores to forestall an Allied landing - 'the Atlantic Wall'. Decommissioned after the Allied invasion of Normandy, this elaborate defense system now lies abandoned. At the age of 25, Paul Virilio stumbled upon these relics with his camera and began a study that would continue for 30 years. His 1975 book, Bunker Archeology, has recently been translated into English and reprinted by Princeton Architectural Press: an inquiry of war and its structures and a personal memoir of exploration, merging technical analysis with philosophical questioning." Also, go and check out the images.

Kevin Kelly
February 4th, 2009

From The Quantified Self blog by Kevin Kelly: "The central question of the coming century is Who Are We? What is a human? What does it mean to be a person? Is human nature fixed? Sacred? Infinitely expandable? And in the meantime, how do I get through all my email? Or live to be 100. We believe that the answers to these cosmic questions will be found in the personal. Real change will happen in individuals as they work through self-knowledge. Self-knowledge of one's body, mind and spirit. Many seek this self-knowledge and we embrace all paths to it."

Barney Bubbles
January 29th, 2009

"Bubbles' sleeves are graphic constructions, offering multiple points of interest, dispersing the viewer's attention. He showed that the visual language of design - type, symbol, pattern, shape, often reassembled in unfamiliar configurations - could be a powerful, exciting and subtle medium for involving a popular audience. Although conditions often conspire against such freedoms now, he is a leading figure within the evolution of intelligently reflexive design. Known but unknown. It's about time the slower moving design history books caught up with him." (Rick Poynor on designobserver.com)
To do some research on Barney Bubbles read Julia Thrift's feature, go to this new blog about Bubbles and check out John Coulthart's post. Or consider Paul Gorman's book Reasons to be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles - but read Rick Poynor's review first.
In any case, when talking about the design for covers there is no getting around Barney Bubbles.

Hawkwind 10 Seconds To Forever
In the tenth second of forever I thought of the sea and a white yacht drifting.
In the ninth second of forever I remembered a warm room where voices played.
In the eighth second of forever I thought of the life I would not lead.
In the seventh second of forever I thought of a leaf a stone, a plastic fragment of a child's toy.
In the sixth second of forever I saw your mouth whispering something I could not hear.
In the fifth second of forever I thought of the vermillion deserts of Mars, the jewelled forests of Venus.
In the fourth second of forever I could remember nothing that I did not love.
In the third second of forever I thought of rain against a window, I thought of the wind.
In the second second of forever I though of a pair of broken shades lying on the tarmac.
In the first and final second of forever I thought of the long past that led to now and never... never...

Five rules for directing
January 26th, 2009

Jim Jarmusch: "Rule #5: Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: It’s not where you take things from - it's where you take them to." (from MovieMaker magazine)
Thank you, Eric Baker!

Unique Bird Photography
January 25th, 2009

From Rick Lieder's website: "An ordinary bird feeder, an ordinary day: and the ordinary, beautiful, eternal ballet of survival, flight, and falling, the aerial acrobats forever in motion, a rush of speed and feathers past the wondering human eye."

Merlin Bauer and Manu Burghart
January 24th, 2009

My dear friend Manu Burghart is a brilliant designer with interest in various areas. Her current project involves giving shape to a book about Merlin Bauer's Liebe deine Stadt project. This initiative, on the often unloved architecture of Cologne, has kept my interest over the years. I have great respect for Merlin's unremitting energy. Now I had the chance to see the first layouts of the documentation and it looks stunning. A must have!

Die Hamletmaschine / The Hamletmachine (1977)
January 10th, 2009

5
WILDHARREND / IN DER FURCHTBAREN RÜSTUNG / JAHRTAUSENDE
Tiefsee. Ophelia im Rollstuhl. Fische Trümmer Leichen und Leichenteile treiben vorbei.
OPHELIA
Während zwei Männer in Arztkitteln sie und den Rollstuhl von unten nach oben in Mullbinden schnüren.
Hier spricht Elektra. Im Herzen der Finsternis. Unter der Sonne der Folter. An die Metropolen der Welt. Im Namen der Opfer. Ich stoße allen Samen aus, den ich empfangen habe. Ich verwandle die Milch meiner Brüste in tödliches Gift. Ich nehme die Welt zurück, die ich geboren habe. Ich ersticke die Welt, die ich geboren habe, zwischen meinen Schenkeln. Ich begrabe sie in meiner Scham. Nieder mit dem Glück der Unterwerfung. Es lebe der Haß, die Verachtung, der Aufstand, der Tod. Wenn sie mit Fleischermessern durch eure Schlafzimmer geht, werdet ihr die Wahrheit wissen.
Männer ab. Ophelia bleibt auf der Bühne, reglos in der weißen Verpackung. 

5
WILDSTRAINING / IN THE FEARSOME ARMAMENTS / MILLENIA
Deep sea. Ophelia in wheelchair. Fish wreckage corpses and body-parts stream past. 
OPHELIA 
While two men in doctor’s smocks wrap her from top to bottom in white bandages. 
Here speaks Electra. In the Heart of Darkness. Under the Sun of Torture. To the Metropolises of the World. In the Names of the Victims. I expel all the semen which I have received. I transform the milk of my breasts into deadly poison. I suffocate the world which I gave birth to, between my thighs. I bury it in my crotch. Down with the joy of oppression. Long live hate, loathing, rebellion, death. When she walks through your bedroom with butcher’s knives, you’ll know the truth. 
Exit men. Ophelia remains on the stage, motionless in the white packaging.

by Harmony Korine
December 28th, 2008

Harmony Korine's debut film Gummo had a huge influence on design back in 1997. Still love the title sequence. I saw his second movie Julien Donkey Boy at the Berlinale in 1999 and was struck by Werner Herzog's performance and deeply disturbed by the experience Korine provided. Today I watched his latest work Mister Lonely (2007) and a rather weird chain of associations let my back to another mind-blowing cinematic discovery: anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch - more precisely his film Moi, un Noir (Me, a Black). He is considered as one of the pioneers of Nouvelle Vague, of visual anthropology and the father of ethnofiction. And obviously he remains a huge influence on contemporary filmmakers. Rouch is a giant and Korine still worth checking out.

Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664)

Eric Baker's "Today!"
December 16th, 2008

Received another unexpected and inspiring mail - this time from Eric Baker. "Eric Baker Design Associates is a Manhattan-based design firm established in 1986. Eric teaches the history of graphic design and corporate identity at the School of Visual Arts, and has twice received National Endowment for the Arts Grants for independent design history projects. He is inveterate collector of books and ephemera." (from designobserver.com)
Each morning, before starting work, Eric spends 30 minutes looking for images that are beautiful, funny, absurd and inspiring. And he then sends them to interested people in an email. Thank you, Eric, for your outstanding research and for putting me on to that mailing list!

Ed Ruscha
December 14th, 2008

From Wikipedia: "Since 1964, Ruscha has been experimenting with painting and drawing words and phrases, often oddly comic and satirical sayings. When asked where he got his inspiration for his paintings, Ruscha responded, 'Well, they just occur to me; sometimes people say them and I write down and then I paint them. Sometimes I use a dictionary.'"

from The Perfect Human
December 10th, 2008

Lars von Trier's favourite film is Jørgen Leth's The Perfect Human (1967), it ends with the words "Today, too, I experienced something I hope to understand in a few days". Von Trier gave Leth the task of remaking this short film five times, each time with a different obstruction given by Von Trier. By now I don't remember how many times I have seen the superior documentary The Five Obstructions which resulted from this provocation. It is an all time favourite of mine because every time I watch it new insights emerge - on fandom, failure, freedom, depression, competition, role models, rules, expectation, challenge, subjectivity, vodka before noon, and so much more. 

First few lines of the poem by Roy Campbell
November 25th, 2008

"With breath indrawn and every nerve alert,
As at the brink of some profound abyss,
I love on my bare arm, capricious flirt,
To feel the chilly and incisive kiss
Of your lithe tongue that forks its swift caress
Between the folded slumber of your fangs,
And half reveals the nacreous recess
Where death upon those dainty hinges hangs."

by Barnaby Barford (photo above)
November 24th, 2008

Via boingboing.net: "Here's Tom Waits in a YouTube video singing the Depression-era "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)":
"I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad,
I made it run
I made it run against time
Once i built a railroad,
and now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime? ...
Once in khaki suits,
Ah, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee-doodle dee-dum!
Brother, can you spare a dime?"

Bruce Sterling
November 18th, 2008

"It's not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.
Do not "economize." Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It's melting the North Pole. So "economization" is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.
The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don't seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones.
They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It's in your time most, it's in your space most. It is "where it is at," and it is "what is going on."
It takes a while to get this through your head, because it's the opposite of the legendry of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get." (Excerpt from The Last Viridian Note by Bruce Sterling)

John Lobb, shoemaker
November 17th, 2008

Handcraft rules. Visited the beautiful John Lobb shop on St. James's Street in London this weekend. Can't afford even a single shoe - yet. But desperately want at least one pair in my life time.

Francis Bacon @ Tate Britain
November 16th, 2008

"His images are indelible, irrational and beyond summary, and his modest ambition for them - that they should be as vividly realised as possible - has surely turned out to be true." (Laura Cumming) Exihibition runs until January 4th. Do not go on a weekend.

William Bennett
November 10th, 2008

A subversive, wonderful and challenging quote from William Bennett's blog: "What is the nature of the stories that you tell about yourself? The purpose they serve those who listen to them is not at all obvious, while themselves serving as the building blocks of who we think we are. Thus, the belief is the being, as is the reiteration. An old man once told me about the time he was shocked to be told by a doctor that he was dying and that there was no cure, and at that point he began to profoundly wonder what it meant to be a person who was dying as opposed to one that was living. And the further he entered the domain of that inquiry, not to seek answers but to just look around, the more he lived. As indeed would you and I."

The Songs of Scott Walker
November 5th, 2008

Bought the ticket for this concert, November 14th in London, months ago and always wondered how Scott Walker will manage to stage his last two albums without himself singing. Since yesterday the final line-up is online: Featuring Damon Albarn, Dot Allison, Jarvis Cocker, Gavin Friday, Michael Henry and Nigel Richards. Am so excited!

"To those of us who knew the pain"
November 2nd, 2008

I was twelve when my friend Vicky Tiegelkamp played a record of her older sister to me. It blew me away. And it was more than twenty years later when Justus Köhnke played Janis Ian on a party and reminded me of my teen emotions. Still love her records. Still listen to them. Saw an early live performance of her today. Simple, moving, beautiful, and timeless. 

Halloween
November 1st, 2008

Saw a beautiful sunrise this morning on my way home from a heart-warming party. Jamal Moss didn't make it. But some times drowning in music and friendship is just enough.

Herzensbrecher (Heartbreaker)
October 26th, 2008

Initially I went to see Gerhard Richter's abstract paintings at Museum Ludwig today, and it was a most welcome surprise to see that they were also showing about 60 or so of Thomas Bayrle's works. Thomas Bayrle creates graphic pieces from other images, multiplying and distorting motifs obtained from books, films, video art, graphic art. The basis for all his work is generally the same - the transformation of a repeated motif by anamorphosis, shifting into another image, creating a truly mind-boggling result. A must - the exhibition runs until January 25th, 2009.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - no more
October 15th, 2008

"For well you know that its a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder."

Gina X Performance
October 15th, 2008

A1. Nice Mover (4:30)
A2. No G.D.M. (Dedicated To Quentin Crisp) (5:55)
A3. Plastic Surprise Box (3:05)
A4. Casablanca (5:35)
B1. Be A Boy (4:00)
B2. Exhibitionism (5:00)
B3. Black Sheep (3:45)
B4. Tropical Comic Strip (5:05)
Unfortunately I can't find the lyrics of "Be a boy". We listened to Gina X Performance back in the early 80s and I've been reminded of this joyful experience last night. Thank you, Lena!

"O Superman" by Laurie Anderson
October 14th, 2008

"O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad. O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad. Hi. I'm not home right now. But if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone. Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home? Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me, but I know you. And I've got a message to give to you. Here come the planes. So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go. And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said: This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the hand, the hand that takes. Here come the planes. They're American planes. Made in America. Smoking or non-smoking? And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. 'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's
always Mom. Hi Mom! So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms. In your arms. So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms. In your electronic arms."

Tilt-shifted
October 13th, 2008

"The German word 'unheimlich'is obviously the opposite of 'heimlich' ['homely'], 'heimisch' ['native'] the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is 'uncanny' is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar. Naturally not everything that is new and unfamiliar is frightening, however; the relation is not capable of inversion." Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny
Sydney, Australia-based photographer Keith Loutit creates lovely tilt-shifted time-lapse short films. His aim, he says, "is to present Sydney as the Model City, and help people take a second look at places that are very familiar to them." You can see more of his films here. (via boingboing.net)

Advanced style
October 10th, 2008

Enjoy the Advanced Style blog: "Proof from the wizened and silver-haired set that personal style advances with age." We all need role models - for example Iris Apfel (above), fashion iconoclast and true original.

Bruce Cockburn, Strange Waters
October 8th, 2008

"The Wit of the Staircase: From the French phrase 'esprit d'escalier', literally, it means 'the wit of the staircase', and usually refers to the perfect witty response you think up after the conversation or argument is ended. "Esprit d'escalier", she replied. "Esprit d'escalier. The answer you cannot make, the pattern you cannot complete till afterwards it suddenly comes to you when it is too late."
The blog by extraordinary Theresa Duncan († 2007) is still a huge inspiration.

Peter Saville
October 2nd, 2008

Finally there is a second reason to come back to London: the Scott Walker concert on November 14th. Also, I really look forward to having another inspiring, witty and far-reaching conversation with Peter Saville. The students know that I keep talking about this singular design hero of mine. I had the great pleasure to work with him on two projects and he always managed to challenge my perception and perspective. If you'd like to get the idea, read this article by Alice Twemlow. - By the way, my dear friend and wonderful designer Manu Burghart took that hilarious photo the last time we met him in London - his car, my shawl.

"That was it."
September 30th, 2008

I've always been interested in Stefan Sagmeister's work. His recent piece Obsessions make my life worse and my work better and its fate really got me. Just back from Amsterdam myself, feeling and researching obsession and in the midst of a misunderstanding I just love this artwork. What a wonderful coincidence.

Filed under: People

75th birthday
May 2008

The musicology department at the University of Cologne performed three of the movements from tektra (1979-80) by Roland Kayn to celebrate his 75th birthday. This rare treat took place on May 30th. Wholeness and nothingness - a wonderful evening. Roland Kayn (b. 1933) is a theoretical electronic Dutch/German composer, who draws more inspiration from linguists and information theorists than from other music or musicians. Here is a nice long stream of other compositions by Roland Kayn. Thanks Elmar!

Neil Turok's 2008 TED Prize wish
May 2008

Saw this mindbowing talk on ted.com. Neil Turok is working on a model of the universe that explains the big bang - while, closer to home, he's founded a school to promote math and science studies in Africa. Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, physicist Neil Turok speaks out for talented young Africans starved of opportunity: by unlocking and nurturing the continent's creative potential, we can create a change in Africa's future. In his talk Neil Turok recommends the Worldmapper for a different view on our planet.

Cologne DJ and Art Director Christian S.
May 2008

Went to an exceptional party last night in Cologne. We danced until the next morning - thanks to the DJ team Christian S. and Korkut Elbay (lost). Christian also does beautiful flyer art work. Invited him to do a seminar with the students at the Institute For Music And Media on June 5th.

Seen at Art Cologne
April 2008

Saw some stunning drawings by artist Jorinde Voigt at the Art Cologne fair. She calls them scores. Buy one for my birthday.