The most innovative and daring ideas lately coming not from philosophers, artists or academia. They come from the kitchens around the world. Wonderful interview with celebrated cooks Chef Ferran Adrià & Chef Jose Andres from Spain just proves that statement. Fantastic.
My brother's Tomas Andrijauskas photo show UNREALx36 opens at Photography Museum of Siauliai (Lithuania) on March 20. Pictures taken with snapshot camera, without any thinking at parties and all kind of encounters with friends in Siauliai between the late 90's and 2003. Raw and unpolished.
Considering how conservative Spanish society is, photographer Alberto García-Alix deserves double respect and attention than he receives. For some reason he is not very well known and represented beyond Spain. His raw and sensitive portraits of human soul materialized from the drops of the artist's blood and sweat, soaked in wine and cigarette smoke. He lives his images and photographs people alike, friends who balances danger, self destruction and lust for life. Alberto García-Alix's images very Spanish, Latin. When I look at his images it reminds me films of Argentine film director Jorge Polaco, who is even less known, yet makes wonderful and strange movies. Blend of machismo of corrida with passion and sexuality of flamenco serves more like shell and temporary safe place for naked bodies with vulnerable faces and sad wondering eyes.
You can't judge music record by the sleeve, but in most cases it works. Smart and talented musicians has good enough taste to pick right visuals. Sometimes record artwork much better than music it contains. Many wonderful vinyl album covers from 70's stuck in my mind, but I can hardly recall music of quite a few. Artwork alone was enough to enjoy record as an object. At that time I was not aware that majority of them was produced by single creative unit called Hipgnosis. Founded in 1968 by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell in London, this company created packing for the best albums of Led Zeppelin, Genesis, UFO, Black Sabbath, Peter Gabriel, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Paul McCartney, Syd Barrett, Scorpions, Styx and The Alan Parsons Project among others. Storm Thorgerson was responsible for the imagery of Pink Floyd stage shows. Based of photographic image, playful and daring ideas rather than gimmicks of Photoshop, Hipgnosis work remains unsurpassed by this day and most likely will never be, since Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell still in business and full of fresh ideas as ever.
Film director Yasujiro Ozu known for his distinctive visual style. Use of normal lenses, static low angle camera placement, geometrically balanced compositions and subtle color coordination creates beautiful images. They can live itself outside of film's context and carry strong emotional and aesthetic energy projected by master filmmaker.
While I was wondering in Kyoto my attention attracted buildings with small, deep-set windows with heavy cement shutters. Windows of this design called takamado are unique to the kura (storehouse). Build as separate structure of the machiya, or city merchant house, they was used to protect valuables from fire, in particular.
This distinctive architectural form based on the unit of single tatami mat (around 90cmx180cm) emerged in Edo period, which spanned more than 250 years from 1603 to 1867.
If I read fiction I prefer French authors for their philosophical references, wit and dash of misanthropy. Michel Houellebecq's work is my latest find. Started with The Possibility of an Island and got instantly hooked up. Michel Houellebecq sees world as it really is, the place where the blind leading the blind. It's hard not to agree with many of his observations expressed through his character's inner monologs. Like: "Without beauty a girl is unhappy because she has missed her chance to be loved. People do not jeer at her, they are not cruel to her, but it is as if she were invisible, no eyes follow her as she walks. People feel uncomfortable when they are with her. They find it easier to ignore her. A girl who is exceptionally beautiful, on the other hand, who has something which too far surpasses the customary seductive freshness of adolescence, appears somehow unreal. Great beauty seems invariably to portend some tragic fate." (Michel Houellebecq, Les particules elémentaires)
Lately I enjoying finds of work by Japanese photographer Daidō Moriyama (森山大道). It's total opposite to slick look of today's digital look. The man can produce wonderful images of any place in the world he goes.
While not much old and traditional buildings remains in Japanese cities, the new ones bears distinct Japanese passion for things small and compact. Some buildings are amazing manifestation creativity and engineering, but here are plenty simple dwellings of impressive smallnes.
Spent a day just to locate Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower in the Ginza area of Tokyo. Originally designed as a Capsule Hotel to provide economical housing for businessmen working or drinking late. The one-man-room capsule, a modified (4 x 2.5 meter) shipping container, has a circular window, a built-in bed and bathroom unit, and is complete with TV, radio and alarm clock. The capsule interior was pre-assembled in a factory then hoisted by crane and fastened to the concrete core shaft. Kurokawa's design theory was to replace the capsules when needed, but the building has not been maintained in 33 years which has caused drainage and water pipes to be damaged. The international heritage protection group Docomomo, have unsuccessfully pleaded for the United Nations' heritage arm to protect this landmark building.
I and my friend Saulius did a weekend road trip to Pennsylvania. Our main destination was small town Ehrenfeld in coal-mining area of Scooptown not too far Pittsburgh. Birth place of Charles Bronson (born Charles Dennis Buchinsky, Lithuanian name Karolis Bučinskis). He was the 11th of 15 children born to a Lithuanian Tatar immigrant father and a Lithuanian-American mother. His father was from the Lithuanian town of Druskininkai. Charles Bronson known for "tough guy" roles who starred in such classic films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape and the Death Wish series. We expected to find depressed mining town, but instead we saw very well kept pleasant place set in beautiful fall forest collors. Some mines got reopened lately, jobs coming back. We met old time Ehrenfeld resident here, who owns local convenience store. He told us many stories about Charles young days here. Stuff like starting fights and letting others to finish them, knocking down outhouses and other innocent pranks. Local people have a bit of resentment at Charles Bronson for not doing anything good for town, beyond being only one famous person who was born here.
James Nachtwey breaking a news story in a way that demonstrates the power of news photography in the digital age. On October 3, his work will be simultaneously revealed online, disseminated through numerous media channels, and projected on monuments and public buildings throughout the world.
The Warao are an indigenous people inhabiting northeastern Venezuela and western Guyana and Suriname. The term Warao translates as "the boat people," after the Warao's lifelong and intimate connection to the water. Most of the approximately 20,000 Warao inhabit Venezuela's Orinoco Delta region.
Man - nibura Woman - sire, iboma Father - dima Mother - dani Baby - sanufida River - ho Food - nahoro Good aftenoon -zakraokanaka Boat - guibaka Monkey - Naku Bird - koro Gringo - xolroko Rain - Naha Crocodile -puludulu Bird - koro Dangerous - xavaniraxa Tomorrow - xaki Water - -xo Jungle - dnikija kukotani Night -diaanai Sun - hokoi Dog - bexoro Cat -misi Mosquito -kuxoboto Snake - tuba Thank you - zakira
Many the best movies in film history was made by talented and driven people who had insatiable urge to create and express themselves in the language of moving image. They had no excuses not to make films. Movies were made without bloated crews by group of friends. If they needed equipment they stole it. Films were made on real locations without permissions, with plenty creativity and passion instead of special effects. Today, despite affordable digital technology we live in not a very creative and visually sophisticated time. Something was lost or pushed aside. It's not bad or good, just a fact we need to deal. Pencil and sheet paper was available for ages, but worthy masters of word can be easily counted. May be we just learning a new language, may be we are a little disoriented, and intoxicated by mass culture.
One of my favorite records of a all times is My Life in the Bush of Ghostsby David Byrne and Brian Eno released in 1981. Bush of Ghosts was very unique and revolutionary album for this time. Filled with various percussive and voice samples, wild tribal drumming and innovative use of electronic recording techniques set benchmark for a new kind of sound as much as Blade Runner set for film making. Almost 30 years late Brian and David produced new set of 11 songs called Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. "The foundations of some of the tracks are much like those of traditional folk, country, or gospel songs before these styles became harmonically sophisticated. Brian's chord structures were unlike anything I would have chosen myself, so I was pushed in a new direction, asked to face the unfamiliar, and this, of course, was a good thing. The challenge was more emotional than technical: to write simple, heartfelt tunes without drawing on cliché. The results, in many cases, are uplifting, hopeful, and positive, even though some lyrics describe cars exploding, war, and similarly dark scenarios." - writes David Byrne. The album is available exclusively from Web site. You can stream all of the songs for free and purchase it in a variety of digital and physical formats, including a limited edition Deluxe Package designed by Sagmeister Inc. One of the songs, “Strange Overtones”, is available for free download via everythingthathappens.com
American hotels/motels known for ever present Holy Bible on night stand. I'm not sure what the reason to have Word of God in the rented room. May be to make drifters guilty for sins done at musty motels, o to help to have last dialog with the god before one writes last note. Bible in the motel room plain creepy and disturbing. It was pleasant surprise to find "Teaching of Buddha" instead in one of California's motels. I didn't spent night reading, but bright orange cover of the book cheers up the room.
I was always telling that Golden Age of American film making was in 70s, and most likely never will be surpassed. I'm completely ignoring cinemas lately, just because I don't want to feel cheated by half cooked products of recent film industry. As The Guardian blogger Jonathan Jones rightly points in his recent post: "What these films lack, in comparison to the golden age of American cinema, is ... well, pretty much everything that matters. Their morality is shop-bought: it doesn't feel like it was worked out on the streets. Most of all there isn't the sense of life, the spontaneity and improvisation, that you get in a truly great film like Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller. Watching such a film is like encountering a new city, a real living place: it has longueurs, bagginess, loose ends, because these are life. By comparison, the vaunted new masterpieces of American cinema are just not baggy enough. They are only half-alive."
by David Byrne and Brian Eno released in 1981. 
