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Last Issue: #31 The Journey
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (1825-1905). This book is the answer to my thoughts on travel. It certainly anticipated the saga...Read more
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Remember Studio 54, the legendary New York nightclub where Andy Warhol and Grace Jones partied away the last days of disco until the Aids epidemic brought everything to a screeching halt?
Unthinkable today! There are no legendary night clubs in New York anymore. … That doesn’t mean, of course, that there is no nightlife. It just took on a different shape…
One of the best-known scenes in the history of cinematography is the beginning of 2001: a Space Odyssey. In prehistoric times a group of ape-like humans is searching for food. One day they discover that old bones can be used as weapons. Not only to kill other animals for food, but also as a way to wield power over the other apes.
Imagine all those guys that André Breton used to call the Surrealists, sitting around a table at a weak candlelight.
One draws a figure and the other receives the drawing folded and hidden, with just two signs where he was supposed to start drawing again.
I like chaos very much! I can´t help it! It´s may be the memory of my messy room when I was a girl and I leant my snack on the Divine Comedy letting the jam spread on the Beatrice´s beauty. Or it may be because – sticking to the point – I like to think at mankind as the daughter of a primordial jam. That´s why I prefer chaos to cosmos.
For sure order originates from chaos. Not that we witness much of it these days: the wars, a devastated Europe, the scandals, serial killers .. well…maybe the chaos is taking its time to give birth to the cosmos, in other words to the order.
Maybe this won´t happen and that entropic sense of creativity and stimulation that is part of the chaos will not lead to any concret results. It’s a pity! But this is not bad. It´s in the deeper nature of creativity the acceptance of the potentiality of not leading anywhere.
Chaos is the monthly theme of our illywords blog. I can´t wait to read the examples that our editorial contributors around the world will make of this.
As for me I would like to read something about your own chaos and only if you have to… about your cosmos.
It was an unseasonably muggy evening as I arrived at Galleria illy for a discussion about the internationally acclaimed sculptor Barry Flanagan with Robin Marchesi, writer and poet, and Enrique Juncosa, director of IMMA the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.
Last night Galleria Illy visitors were treated to a special preview of an installation by Christian Frosi, winner of the Moroso Award for Contemporary Art.
The striking white space of the Galleria was altered with reflections of light and shadow formed by the geometric shapes and cosmic formations of Italian artist Christian Frosi’s installation.
Galleria illy kicked off its latest series of arty events last night as design powerhouses FLOS and Moroso, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Marina Abramovic joined forces in Clerkenwell.
The venue was transformed into a striking white space with bright stripes and splashes of colour, an illy bar, bookshop and a cavernous corner housing a load of candy-coloured chairs and the evening’s entertaintment – a jive-y double-bass player, backed by vocals and drums.
Curated by the Italian artist, Pistoletto, who was there looking sharp in a purple trilby, the centrepiece is his free-form mirrored table, edged in wood and surrounded by several chairs – each based on a different culture or religion. Chairs are also stacked up in rows on shelves to admire. The most comfortable by far? The squashy orange blocks that looked more like playing cubes than a sofa.
Pistoletto said of the concept, ‘Coffee and art are a basic physical need. Let’s join in the common desire to produce a better life for everybody.’
Upstairs, espresso cups are lined like dominoes, each representing the design of a particular artist and a particular year. Since its first incarnation in New York in 2005, Galleria illy has spread art appreciation through communing with coffee in Milan, Trieste, Berlin and Istanbul.
The galleria brings an exotic taste of the Mediterranean and Africa to this urban London quarter – from the gilded Persian-inspired cushions to the recycled outfits designed by Cameroonian artist, Alioum Moussa.
The food had a distinctly Italian flavour, though, with Giorgio Locatelli of Locanda fame flying the flag for his nation’s gastronomy: guests were treated to crostini with a spicy Calabrian salami, burrata and rocket pesto on toast and bresaola, goat’s cheese and rocket involtinis, as well as cylinders of punch-packing tiramisu. The baristas from illy’s Università del Caffé were also on hand to educate in the art of coffee-making, and Illy Wines kept glasses topped up.
The space will be in action until the 16th of October, with a busy calendar of events keeping the art crowd happy – and fuelled with coffee.
Back to Shanghai after a 3 months break in Italy: cloudy weather, cloudy and jetlagged feelings, I am not in a good mood. … After two days … I am ready to do something nice to bond with the city again.
So I am heading slightly north of downtown Shanghai to the cradle of Shanghai’s Art scene, Moganshan Lu …
If you see “Savage Beauty”, the retrospective that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has dedicated to Alexander McQueen, you will fully understand why 7,000 visitors push their way daily through these dark galleries.
The exhibition with its 100 outfits and 70 accessories gathered by the Met’s curator Andrew Bolton, is simply breathtaking!
For the 12th Biennale di Venezia this year, architect Aldo Cibic (and his studio) present four projects based in reality but utopic in their vision. Billed as “new realities for changing lifestyles”, the projects are not “just architecture” but are conceived of as a film with a storyline developed by economists, sociologists, architects, designers, urban planners, landscape designers and interested citizens.
The project “A campus in the fields: Venice agri-techno valley” is the one that best fits with our theme of “techno-ecology” here on illywords blog, and it’s also one that touches me personally…
In the editorial of illywords #15, we wrote “converting to being virtuous may be considered the business of the future”. Our 2005 issue on Techno-Ecology did not deal with social media because they barely existed at the time. Now social media are an important part of the everyday lives of internet users. I asked Lorenzo Martelletti and Federico Garcea of Treedom to tell us about how they are harnessing the power of social networks to encourage people to reduce carbon emissions.
The amazing Philadelphia Museum of Art is hosting, until January 16, 2011, the retrospective exhibition “Michelangelo Pistoletto: From One To Many, 1956-1974″. Young brilliant curator Carlos Basualdo has traced a very interesting path through Pistoletto’s creative work, clearly depicting his deep involvement, since the very beginning and until the present day, with the most current social and political topics.
andrea illy angela vettese architecture Art artist berlin Biennale business coffee Colour communication community company creativity culture Design europe experience food future history idea ideas innovation internet Italy knowledge life london michelangelo pistoletto milan mind new york Passion past people school social Society Students time tradition university venice world
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