TROPICALIA

In Brazil during the mid '60s, radical artists rallied around the poet Oswald de Andrade and his idea of "antropofagia" (cultural cannibalism) and came up with the idea of divorcing themselves from puritanical, Eurocentric art forms and the artistic elite. Art, fashion, theater, architecture, music and film converged in a revolutionary movement known as Tropicália, the title of this first comprehensive survey of Brazil's cultural transformation. The show at the Bronx Museum of the Arts brings together 250 pieces, including work by Hélio Oiticica, whose installations involve not just visuals, but smells, sounds and textures. Lygia Pape, for her part, proffers flavored liquids, while Lygia Clark provides masks, goggles and gloves to help visitors transcend the typical art experience. Also on view are contributions from a younger generation influenced by the movement, including assume vivid astro focus, Ernesto Neto, and Karin Schneider. (source)

The Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, (718) 681-6181. Oct. 7–Jan. 28.

VECTOR FACE me

Maddy Nye, designer for YouWorkForThem, and her abstraction of
my summer self.

MARNI talked to me!

Interesting elements in this Marni Spring collection: the colors, the shapes, the many styles elegantly yuxtaposed.

Gun Control in motion

Christina Rosenvinge

AS THE WIND BLOWS

Solitude what a lame excuse
you forget...as the wind blows
Do not cry over same old news
do not tell what the skin knows
So you fade away, like a summer day

Knell no one cares but the bells
in my hands empty shells
all those days.....gone in vain
solitude solitude...my friend

Lay me down by the summer breeze where young girls find new lovers
wash my face with a white chemise leave your coat as a cover

knell no one cares but the bells
in my hands empty shells
all those days, gone in vain,
solitude solitude....my friend

Your fucked love vs my tough love

To my friends that found fucked love, some points to take into account:

In traditional terms men are NOT supposed to be constantly aware of how their emotions rule them, because they are supposed to hide feelings.... to the point of burying all sorts of mental issues -that eventually are passed as a bill to pay to women-. The funny thing is that neither those men nor those women are happy with their affective choices, and then suffer due to the neglect they participate on: fucked love.

As grown ups many men don't seek mental help: they are in control of their feelings by ignoring them.Why?
because they can not change patrhriarchal structures of abuse!
..what a bunch of ARCHAIC bull SHIT is this denial state of abusive harmony! .

Many of these "affected by disaffection" loners, were victims or witnessed emotional abuse by a role model when they were kids.

The conflict comes when this male idealize the origin of the abuse:
the conflic caused by love for the abuser. Abuse and love are then redefined:
A new lenguage that isolate those whom share the new emotional syntax.

Then they follow the role of abusers and separate themselves from the victim: the dynamic of the fucked!

Absent creatures on the midst of all!
Is anybody else (besides the ones "loving") staring at the devil in these men's life?

Now the academia:

Borderline Personality Disorder

A person with a borderline personality disorder often experiences a repetitive pattern of disorganization and instability in self-image, behavior and close personal relationships.

This can cause significant distress or impairment in emotional life.

A person with this disorder can often be bright and intelligent, and appear warm, friendly and competent. They sometimes can maintain this appearance for a number of years until their defense structure crumbles, usually around a stressful situation like the breakup of a romantic relationship or the death of a parent.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder report a history of neglect, or separation or abuse (emotional or physical) as young children originated by people they trusted and loved. The generate ideas of love towards abusers, constantly shaping their self identity.

These fears of abandonment seem to be related to difficulties feeling emotionally connected to important persons when they are physically absent, leaving the individual with BPD feeling lost and perhaps worthless.

They may feel unfairly misunderstood or mistreated, bored, empty, and have little idea who they are.

Such symptoms are most acute when people with BPD feel isolated and lacking in social support, and may result in frantic efforts to avoid being alone even manipulation, reinforcing the perception of being "wrong".

People with BPD exhibit other impulsive behaviors, such as excessive spending, eating, promiscuity.

Relationships with others are intense but stormy and unstable with marked shifts of feelings and difficulties in maintaining intimate, close connections.

The person may manipulate others and often has difficulty with trusting others: loners accusing others.


People with BPD often have highly unstable patterns of social relationships. While they can develop intense but stormy attachments, their attitudes towards family, friends, and loved ones may suddenly shift from idealization (great admiration and love) to devaluation (intense anger and dislike).

Thus, they may form an immediate attachment and idealize the other person, but when a slight separation or conflict occurs, they switch unexpectedly to the other extreme and angrily accuse the other person of not caring for them at all. Acting on those feelings of neglect they abuse people's trust, breaking social connections as an act of fairness to them.

----UPDATE:

maybe we all are disaffected.

son of rambo

Stars

Eeating baked potatoes and mushrooms watching "ma mere" at 4am...My friend: "look at this, you are a taurus." ...I said, "yes I'm a taurus...but I hate actresses".


-
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "Dear StarMan: I want to be a famous actress like Scarlett Johansson. I know my natural talent is as good as hers, but I'm not especially beautiful. On one of those 'am I hot or not?' websites, I was rated 3.2 out of 10. Can you look into my future and see if I'll ever make it big in Hollywood? And would it help if I got cosmetic surgery? - Taurus Dreamer." Dear Taurus: It's a favorable time for you Tauruses to explore ways you might be kidding yourselves about your destiny. So let me ask you this: Does the dream you articulated express the primal truth about your purpose here on earth? Or is it a fantasy your ego has fabricated out of a deluded longing to pursue inappropriate ambitions that won't satisfy you in the long run? Instead of saying, "I want to be a famous actress," try this desire on for size: "I want to be a good actress."

Hotness

Ladies and gentlemen:The best fashion photographer of the time or....
my strongest visual aesthetic direction influence for the past 2 years.

Jil Sander: Sprachpanscher

Admiring the latest Jil Sander Collection I decided to find out more about the status of affairs of the bussines this fantastic creative gave life to. I found some good stuff (wikipedia).
"In 1999 Prada Group bought a 75% share in JIL SANDER company. Ms. Sander, remained creative designer and became chairwoman in the new joint venture. Six months later, in January 2000, Ms. Sander unexpectedly left after confrontations with Prada CEO Patrizio Bertelli, a quick-tempered Italian businessman. She, an uncompromising perfectionist, refused in using cheaper materials and at bringing the traditionally slim fits in line with standard sizes. Mr. Bertelli had demanded of Jil, some very drastic cost cuts and a more affordable mainstream approach. Bertelli also insisted on giving up the contributary workshops in Germany in favor of the shops in Italy owned by Prada. Thus, for the first time in many years, Ms. Sander was able to indulge in extensive travelling, sailing, going to the opera and taking care of her gardens after her resignation but the fashion house, not surprisingly, plummeted without the designer who defined it.

Milan Vukmirovic, a former buyer from Colette and Gucci team designer, had been installed as Ms. Sander’s successor by Bertelli. He unsuccessfully tried to follow in her footsteps. Pressured by Prada to cater to a wider audience, Vukmirovic came up with mediocre but commercially viable sportswear collections in 2002 and 2003 that drove away longstanding Jil Sander patrons and failed to attract new customers. The company had been in the red since 2001. It was said that with rapidly sinking sales Prada Group had to go to huge expenses just to keep the house of Jil Sander going.
[edit]

Comeback and Abandonment

To everyone’s surprise Ms. Sander, whose heart was probably bleeding when she looked at what Prada had made of her fashion house, returned to the company she had founded more than 30 years before as head designer and partner in May 2003, after her noncompete clause had expired. Supposedly, Bertelli had begged her to come back. Her sensational comeback was celebrated unanimously and with much fanfare by the international press. Her designs, bearing the unmistakable Jil Sander signature with a more feminine look, were loved by customers and critics alike. She re-invented herself. She designed two collections that were both shown in Milan, she altered Vukmirovic’s existing sketches for the men’s collection, she redesigned some of her boutiques and even sat down to go through the books herself. Everyone was certain that with the spirit of the company back in the house things would get well again. But in November 2004, Ms. Sander agreed to terminate cooperation with Prada and resigned from her post again after insurmountable differences with Mr. Bertelli.

It is rumored that it had been Bertelli’s turn to financially support the company, after Ms. Sander herself had made heavy investments, so that Jil Sander AG could be sold from Prada Group, already heavily indebted itself as the result of Mr. Bertelli's management. But apparently the banks refused Bertelli the necessary loans. Subsequently, the glamorous Jil Sander showroom in Hamburg was closed, production was entirely moved to Italy and of more than 300 jobs only about 50 remained. All that was left in Germany in early 2006 was an office for press, distribution and marketing personnel, the staff at the boutiques as well as the Hamburg atelier for the women’s collection. The corporation was supposed be transformed into a holding company with the Italian subsidiaries taking over administrative and business duties. Prada Group still held a 98% stake in the company which generated losses of €10 million after taxes in the first half-year of 2005. The losses in 2004 had been almost €30 million.

For the time after Ms. Sander’s departure an in-house design team was formed to take care of the collections. The slim fits, so typical of Jil Sander, had meanwhile been adjusted to mainstream sizes.


Designers at JIL SANDER

In May 2005, it was announced that Raf Simons, a Belgian industrial designer who also has his own men’s label (Link) and is a professor at Vienna's University of Applied Arts, had become creative director for the women’s and men’s collection."
" * Ms. Sander was known for both her shy appearances in public and her power mania trying to bring everything under her control behind the scenes. She would rarely give interviews and not talk about her private life, a trait that only cultivated the myth about her person, and at the same time she would buy the rights to pictures about her in order to be able to control her public image and meticulously plan all the steps in her company where she was used to being the boss.

* For her notorious (and sometimes ridiculous) habit of mixing German and English words into gibberish sentences when being interviewed in German in the 1990s she was awarded the title of Sprachpanscher ( Sprache = language, panschen = to adulterate) by the Association of German Language (Verein Deutsche Sprache) in 1997."

Ojibwe words

AUDIO open with REAL PLAYER

C'etait Un Rendezvous

C'était un rendez-vous (It was an appointment) is a short film made in 1976 by Claude Lelouch, showing an eight-minute drive through Paris at 5:30 AM. Despite (or due to) the limited availability of video tapes, it gained cult status over the years among motoring enthusiasts who admired the experience of speed and the reckless style of driving. Due to the increasing popularity and the lack of original tapes, the film has recently been re-mastered from the 35 mm negative and released on DVD, as well as being published on the Internet. This example of a cinéma vérité film was made in a single take with no editing, using a camera attached to the bumper of a Mercedes. The length of the film thus was limited by the capacity of the camera reel which lasted under 10 minutes. Source.

The spirit of the beehive

Reviewed by Noel Murray
September 20th, 2006

Though it's still relatively obscure, Víctor Erice's 1973 cinema-poem The Spirit Of The Beehive often lands on lists of the greatest movies ever made, because those who see it even once have a hard time forgetting its dreamy imagery and subtle symbolism. Ana Torrent and Isabel Telleriá play preteen sisters whose scientist father and moody mother have moved the whole family to a remote Castilian plain to escape the Spanish Civil War. After the girls see a traveling screening of Frankenstein, Torrent becomes obsessed with finding her own "monster" to befriend, and her search brings her closer to understanding the world of adults, and what "death" means. The Spirit Of The Beehive was written by Ángel Fernández Santos and directed by Erice during the regime of Francisco Franco—the instigator of a lot of the history referenced in the movie—and some have called Beehive a complex metaphor for the death of individualism under fascism.

But understanding modern Spanish history isn't essential to understanding what The Spirit Of Beehive meant to some Spaniards in 1973. Sometimes art inspires people just by giving them a deeper feeling for beauty during a time of pervasiveness ugliness. In the case of Erice's film, the extended meditation of what animates us becomes cumulatively moving. Torrent and Telleriá drift through their days in a sparsely populated village, getting instruction on human anatomy, classifying poison mushrooms, and finding clues to their parents' interior lives. Then the girls start to experiment. Telleriá jumps through bonfires and strangles the family cat, testing the limits of when pain begins and life starts to end. Meanwhile, Torrent considers ways she might kill herself, and stares at her fractured reflection in a moonlit pond.

The onion

For many Americans the Onion is a printed media common place: a pinch of dark humor on mundane life, highlighting what otherwise will be totally uneventful. As a foreigner I had to find the taste for this type of humor through prolonged exposure, specially when coming from a land where uncertainty, fatality and craziness are the mundane.

Milk & Honey (Nick Drake)

Monday morning,
cold wind, bright sun.
-song by Nick Drake,
intrepreted by Jackson
C Frank-













Gold and silver is the autumn, Soft and tender are her skies, Yes and no are the answers, Written in my true love's eyes, Autumn's leaving and winter is coming, I think that I'll be moving along, I've got to leave her and find another, I've got to sing my heart's true song, Round and round the burning circle, All the seasons, one, two and three Autumn leaves, and then the winter Spring is born and wanders free Gold and silver bounds my heart on, All too soon they fade and die, And then I'd know There'd be no others,
Milk and honey Where they lie

...mais

transformation

origen

NYC Brit Architecture

project: Hearst Tower, New York City client: Hearst Corporation architect: Foster and Partners, London—Norman Foster (chairman, founder); Brandon Haw (lead architect); Michael Wurzel (project architect); Peter Han (associate architect); Mike Jelliffe (team member) associate architect: Adamson Associates development manager: Tishman Speyer Properties engineers: Cantor Seinuk Group (structural); Flack & Kurtz (M/E/P); VDA (vertical transportation) lighting: George Sexton
"In a nod to the fashion industry promoted by Hearst magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Seventeen, elevator panels are lined in Italian purple silk laminated between layers of glass. Compared with the sculptural and considerably smaller LVMH Building housing the Louis Vuitton headquarters across town on East 57th Street, designed by Christian de Portzamparc in 1999, a certain je ne sais quoi is decidedly absent here. Hearst’s seat of power is muscular, while the latter is refined; beyond an obvious issue of scale, it’s a matter of rhetoric versus understanding, and posturing versus the execution of a tailored fit. "

Pretty in flash

animated paper and the sports shoe

A controversial woman

Oriana Fallaci lost her protracted battle with breast cancer on September 15, 2006.

Oriana Fallaci (June 29, 1929 – September 15, 2006) was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A former antifascist partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career. She died in her native Florence, Italy. She was 77 years old and had been suffering from breast cancer for some 15 years.

She was called "our most celebrated female writer" by Ferruccio De Bortoli, former director of the newspaper Corriere della Sera.^[1] Decades ago, the Los Angeles Times described her as "the journalist to whom virtually no world figure would say no."

Her books

Skinny girls as terrorists

State of emergency, or the current state of global paranoia is the new concept behind the latest Italian Vogue's fashion editorial. Models look so devoid of life that is it feels flat to see such action in dummies...but that is the limitation of the fashion editorials, the nature of mannequins!

Last days of sun

Social beings and TV

Sublime images - STEVE McCURRY

L.A.M.B.

The S 2007 collection from LAMB is one of my
favorite this time.

The Brown Bunny (2003)

It's the story of one man's tragic loss of the love of his life. He is Bud Clay. And he races motorcycles. He rides in the 250cc Formula II class of road racing. Round and round he goes, repeating laps over and over until the race is over. The story begins with Bud racing in New Hampshire. Bud's next race is in California in five Days. And so his journey begins across America. And everyday Bud is haunted by the same memories of the last time he saw his true love. Bud will do anything to make those memories disappear. And every day he tries to find a new love. Making outrageous requests of women to come with him on his trip and then leaving them behind after they've agreed. He can't replace Daisy, the only girl he's ever loved and the only girl he will ever love. But every day he tries.

Vincent Gallo shocked the 2003 Cannes Film Festival with this highly personal film that he wrote, directed, produced, edited, photographed, and stars in. Gallo plays Bud Clay, a motorcycle racer on his way from New Hampshire to California in a van. The cross-country trip includes stops at a gas station, where Clay meets and falls for a gas station attendant named Violet (Anna Vareschi); a roadside food stand, where he meets the sadly beautiful Lilly (Cheryl Tiegs, making her feature-film debut); and the Las Vegas strip, where he picks up local prostitute Rose (Elizabeth Blake). As he comes into contact with these women, he can't let go of his past, which centers around Daisy (Chloe Sevigny), whom he hopes to find when he returns home to Los Angeles.

Nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, THE BROWN BUNNY is a poignant, emotional drama that features long scenes with little or no dialogue, as Gallo uses natural sound and lighting, jazz and folk music, and long, lingering shots of the open road, raindrops on a windshield, and the scraggly-haired protagonist to create a nearly suffocating atmosphere of loss and loneliness. Winner of the FIPRESCI prize at the 2003 Viennale "for its bold exploration of yearning and grief and for its radical departure from dominant tendencies in current American filmmaking," THE BROWN BUNNY is sure to cause a stir because of its infamous and shocking X-rated sex scene near the end of the picture, although it is a tender, soft, and powerfully subtle film.

Gallo Brutal

Vincent Gallo is selling his body and part of his soul (many precious things) while making many prerogatives... Maybe to bring attention to his ego. I like the dude, but from the distance we have I have enough of his very full self. His raw attitude borders total brutality. Brutality as lifestyle?...Maybe a weekend. Knowing this he decides to sell his "company" for an evening or a weekend. This is a description of his escort service:

"I, Vincent Gallo, star of such classics as Buffalo 66 and The Brown Bunny have decided to make myself available to all women. All women who can afford me, that is. For the modest fee of $50,000 plus expenses, I can fulfill the wish, dream, or fantasy of any naturally born female. The fee covers one evening with Vincent Gallo. For those who wish to enjoy my company for a weekend, the fee is increased to a mere $100,000. Heavy set, older, red heads and even black chicks can have me if they can pay the bill. No real female will be refused. However, I highly frown upon any male having even the slightest momentary thought or wish that they could ever become my client. No way Jose. However, female couples of the lesbian persuasion can enjoy a Vincent Gallo evening together for $100,000. $200,000 buys the lesbos a weekend. A weekend that will have them second-guessing.".

He keeps going on making multiple sided offensive comments that I don't want to disseminate here. I ask my self, what is the purpose of publicizing such humor? Art? He says artists have a purpose when communicating and that he is not an artist. Flamboyant egotism at its best: amusing yet kind of toxic...

Graphic melody

Mentors and paisans: aesthetic apparatus.

Mysterious

The work by Julia Fullerton-Batten has many magical elements precisely by omitting some elements: the magic of engagement. One of my favorite photographers.

Relaxed collection

Vena Cava's S2007 collection was presented in an unusual way: a picnic in a school for girls. I really liked this to shots for the frogs and the snake. Click the images to go to the coverage and complete collection.

Side effects

A campaign for beauty products that uses some very funny and hot guys. My favorite side effect is firefighter opening champagne with an axe...hot.

Cult cinema

A trailer of a cult film "they call her one eye". Tarantino obviously took many elements of this sort of movie for his Kill Bill series. Pretty funny and totally twisted.
100% pulpfiction material.
Also at MySpace.

moving editorial

click on the image

Deconstructing China

Amazing photo work by Michael Wolf: old China, new China, beautiful images of an ancient land that is changing rapidly. A really extensive study of a nation, of its people, from multiple angles.

Baloon I: Latex for fun

Baloon II: Lamp

Lovely

I loved the way this collection was presented in a very casual and romantic setting. The collection has the same sensibilities, very romantic. "Jovovich and Hawk said they were trying to create a "Sunday afternoon feeling" with their collection, and they achieved it with pieces like a caftan banded and belted in bordeaux, as well as a shirred-front and ruffled halter gown."

Sabyasachi: Dorky and girly

From the NYC Spring 2007 collections, Sabyasachi has been one collection I've found interesting so far. It exudes sophistication keeping elements of innocence. It feels like a travel to a different land without making it totally folk dressing. It would be what a very well travel librarian in her 20's would assemble when feeling playful.