Archive for the 'Performance Art & Design' Category

In honor of Mother’s Day, a little poetry.

blackoutpoem.gifAustin Kleon, an Austin Tx. writer/cartoonist/designer, has developed a new art form: Newspaper Blackout Poetry. It’s more than just the design or layout of his poetry that is so fascinating, but the fact that he can look at a paragraph (or two) from an article in a newspaper and find such profound meaning. For more, go here. And, Happy Mother’s Day.

Thank you to How Magazine’s blog for the heads up on this one.

Mummenschanz: my spelling disaster.

“> Anyone ever heard of the Swiss dance/mime group Mummenschanz? For the longest time, Mummenchance was one of the biggest searches on this blog…..(among others); now that I am spelling it correctly, I wonder what will happen?

I compared them to a performance art group, the Rinpa Eshidan who do these elaborately painted rooms and record themselves while doing the painting, in the post “Not Since Mummenschanz: Room.”

To visit the real Mummenschanz and I strongly urge you to…on their homepage you can view a clip of your choice of one of their shows, go here. There is a new show, “3 x 11,” which is a 33 year retrospective of their work but you’ll have to go to Switzerland or Israel to see it, at least in 2008; later dates and venues are not yet published.

Mummenschanz is some of the most creative performance art I’ve ever seen……..the Rinpa Eshidan is also quite clever. And I understand “3×11″ does not disappoint.

Bringing Art to a Craft and Coming to a Museum Near You.

crocheted-with-skulls-as-trim.jpgRadical Lace and Subversive Knitting” originally showing at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City the first half of 2007 is now a traveling exhibit with available dates (in case you are interested) but showing first at the Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana April-August 2008.

The trend for craft to get kicked up a notch by artists using such traditional crafts as knitting and crochet to “explore new relationships between structure, design, color, and pattern, and using the materials and techniques to examine pressing contemporary issues that range from international politics and global problems to concerns of gender, race, and religion” is happening at the same time popular interest in knitting, lace making, and crocheting is at an all time high.

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But, don’t confuse this exhibit with traditional uses: the installations are exactly as the title states, radical and subversive. Visit Museum of Arts & Design traveling exhibitions for more specific information on the installations and artists and more imagery, plus exhibit availability and throw open those craft drawers to see what points you can make.

1st image, Hildur Bjarnadóttir Untitled (skulls), 1999 Crocheted cotton yarn, wood table 5 x 136 x 136 cm (4 x 54 x 54”)

2nd image, Cat Mazza’s Knitoscope is computer software that translates video images into “knitted” images to educate about sweatshop labor.

AT NIGHT

by Marko.

Well, dear readers, the time has come for me to say goodbye. It has been a pleasure to help Kim, and contribute to her blog. I’m leaving you with pictures from Ljubljana, my home town. They were taken yesterday. As you can see, the decorations follow the theme of space, with a slight nod to human sexuality (hence the scandal a year ago when the sexuality theme was pushed to the maximum). The theme changes every two years. Now, there are only slight remnants of that oh so controversial theme: not so subtle hints there, the DNA spiral over there, the X and Y chromosomes next to it. I’ll leave the judgements to you. Aynway, have a merry December, and all the best in the year to come.

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TOO-MUCHNESS AND GUILT-FREE LUXURY

And yet it’s never enough.

by Marko.

As an example:

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Beyeren

Here are certain paraphrases or memories of a book I’ve read a while ago. Appreciate the immediacy of my twisted memory and imagination, please. You can hold it against me, if you so desire.

May a Vuitton nurse help us all. Or a purse.

Desire is a very peculiar thing, I hear you say. Well, you’re right. It is very odd, very strange. Of course, it has nothing to do with the simplicity of wishing or wishes. Desire is a mechanism that twists and distorts. The presence of desire is nothing but the distortion or modification of an element by the presence of another one. Find it in the repetitive element of your mind, in the twist, the distortion, the opacity. In the supposedly redundant. In luxury? In what needs not to be there? The last thing to come, the first thing to go – as they say. For most anyway. A necessity that begins where all necessity ends – as spoken by Coco But it gives so much pleasure, it is so supremely satisfying, even if only for a while. Little nothings. Doing nothing, like smoking. Cigarettes are sublime – or so they say. Just don’t take pleasure in them too loudly, too obviously. Too much pleasure sparks up envy, resentment and disgust. We can’t have equality based on that. Like looking at a Russian billionnaire buying a Mercedes covered entirely with Swarovski crystals.

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I hear that some now talk of »ethical luxury«, of »deep luxury«. Which sounds like alcohol-free beer or if you’re French: cheese from non-pasteurized milk. A product deprived (is that the right word?) of its supposedly malignant property. Guilt-free luxury (think Stella McCartney, etc.). The bad needs to be immediately countered, even with a clash of opposites in one product: you’ll have a beer, but no alcohol. There is something utterly false about this. Close to luxury posing as restraint (in delirious amounts of cashmere): Luxury or restraint? Yes, please!

(My notions about luxury are perhaps best seen and explained by two examples. One is the film (or Isak Dinesen story) Babette’s Feast (you’ll see when you see it, from danger to its religious aspect, even with a reconciliatory side), the other I will give now. Take a dream, a dream may be an obvious wish, yet completely distorted. You are freezing and starving, caught in the snow of the North Pole. You fall asleep. But you don’t simply dream of a bed, and a piece of bread. Simple food or shelter. No, your wish is an alibi for true fulfillment, for dreaming about a bowl of caviar and a four-poster bed.)

So…

Giving pleasure. Selling pleasure. Controlling via pleasure. Now take a look at this fashion cornucopia. Is this the opposite: unabashed pleasure?

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Vuitton Spring Summer 08

You can almost imagine her saying: »Come closer, don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.« Then take a look:

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Vuitton Spring Summer 08

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Galliano Spring Summer 08

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Treacy for McQueen Spring Summer 08

Walking piles of fabric, of layers, colors, accessories, makeup. Saturation, sensation (as in: attack on the senses), and a certain flatness, even fading. It won’t last. Desire is here just to promote and sustain itself, not the objects it picks along its curvy ways.

You don’t have to feel guilty.