martedì 27 gennaio 2015

conrad e l'uomo

buonasera lettori

torno al blog dopo aver chiuso Luce e City Life Magazine di gennaio, un gran bel lavoro, che vi invito a leggere.
Come vi invito a leggere un libretto, breve e a tratti cattivo, ma dai contenuti molto attuali, anche se scritto quasi 120 anni fa. A pag. 79 il ritratto dell'uomo, di sempre e anche di oggi: "Il sospetto del male, sempre al lavoro da qualche parte dentro di noi, trasformava l'immobilità profonda e opaca intorno a lui in un'entità infida, malvagia, nella maschera serena e impenetrabile di una violenza senza giustificazione." (Joseph Conrad, La laguna, Adelphi 2014)
L'edizione ha una delle copertine più belle che ricordi, arriva dritta dietro agli occhi e si fissa sulla retina, indelebile. Il blu della cornice si lega alle orbite vuote, il bianco del titolo al fiore, tutto amalgamato dal rosso sangue, fresco, delle foglie.

Buone letture

sabato 10 gennaio 2015

uno sbadiglio vi seppellirà/a yawn will bury

Sebastian ErraZuriz
Triggers Contagious Yawning in Times Square

Image by Sebastian ErraZuriz Studio


Midnight Moment

A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps

January,1-31, nightly at 11:57pm

Times Square's spectacular signs,
42nd - 47th Streets, between Broadway and 7th avenue.

 
Image by Ka-Man Tse


Opening Reception
 
Saturday January, 17 at 11:45pm

in Duffy Square

Image by Sebastian ErraZuriz Studio

We are thrilled to announce Sebastian ErraZuriz's new public art piece in Times Square every night of January with the support of Times Square Alliance, PS122 and COIL15.        

Times Square 
Times Square is the number-one visited place globally with 360,000 pedestrian visitors a day, amounting to over 131 million visitors a year. This translates into $4.8 billion in annual retail, entertainment and hotel sales, with 22 cents out of every dollar spent by visitors in New York City being spent within Times Square.

Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as "The Crossroads of the World. Over 100 different sized and shaped giant screens compete for attention offering services and products. The ads displayed simultaneously 24 hours a day 365 days a year are characterized by their short time frames, intense colors, camera movements, fast editing and strong motion graphics. The Times Square billboards and screens are the most coveted and expensive and are only affordable by the biggest commercial brands.

A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps
“A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps” is a site-specific video installation created by artist Sebastian ErraZuriz for Times Square. The project is part of Midnight Moment, a monthly presentation by The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts. The video is shown simultaneously in approximately 50 different screens within Times Square.

The 3-minute video by Sebastian ErraZuriz contrasts with its environment by being extremely slow paced and filmed exclusively in black and white. There are no camera movements, no editing cuts and no motion graphics. The video portrays a close up of the artist slowly looking around him and yawning multiple times during the whole duration of the video. The simultaneous projections of slow black and white images of the yawning figure dominate and momentarily transform the environment of Times Square. Many of the visitors looking at the screens find themselves suddenly coerced into joining the artist in yawning, consequently getting others around them to contagiously yawn too.

The video can be interpreted as a peaceful and personal act of protest by the artist against the overwhelming market system that he is surrounded by. The contagious character of the yawn video seems purposely designed to get others to yawn with him and appear as if they had voluntarily gathered every night to join the artist in his protest.

Sebastian ErraZuriz expressed that he hopes the video can offer a brief moment of pause that can remind us of our urgent necessity for free space and time that can allow us to recover a stronger sense of awareness. When asked if the project was strictly criticizing the market, he expressed he also finds himself tired of how the art market in influencing much of the current artistic production.
"I'm yawning at everything and all of us; we need to wake up".

venerdì 2 gennaio 2015

klein + fontana


buonanno lettori

si parte subito con due delle migliori menti (e mani) del XX secolo. Yves Klein e Lucio Fontana, in mostra al Museo del 900 di Milano fino a marzo.
Una mostra decisamente bella ma allestita in modo disordinato, per mantenere la visitabilità della collezione permanente i curatori in accordo con il Museo ha deciso di sparpagliare su tre livelli il percorso espositivo. Si sale al quarto piano per i primi pezzi, poi di accede al quinto e alla splendida vetrata con la doppia installazione di Fontana accompagnata da una di Klein, si prosegue al quinto per poi ridiscendere allo zero, nella grande sala delle mostre temporanee e si esce. Sali, scendi, svolta e via. Un pò complicato e dispersivo, ma comunque molto bella e dalle forti emozioni.
Molto buona anche l'illuminazione, anche se in alcuni casi i plexiglass protettivi tendevano a riflettere la parete alle spalle, le luci non entrano nel campo visivo.
buona visita