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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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With the victory of Fratelli Taviani´s movie the 62nd Berlinale film festival closes under the sign of “Italianness”.
But when I thought the “party” was over I came across an independent documentary film entitled “Italy, love it or leave it” directed and interpreted by Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi.
Are you a visual artist?
Or you are a music composer that would like to innovate the conventional character of Berlin´s musical life?
Or you are rather a writer and you want to engage a dialogue between cultures through the verbal mode of communication that you so well know is able to supercede all cultural limitations? … Well, then you should apply for the Berliner Künstlerprogramm to get a scholarship and come to Berlin for one year.
The comidian and artist Alessandro Bergonzoni explains from his personal perspective the two concepts – competition and collaboration – cohesisting in this month´s theme: coopetition.
With his usual hilarious and sarcastic way of going in depth into concepts and into the eclectic use of words, he will entertain us in this video narrating his experience.
Looking back over my notes from last night’s Q&A with industrial designer Ross Lovegrove, I’m struck by the breadth of topics covered in such a speedy sitting.
If the designer’s conversation is as bright, colourful and complex as a patchwork quilt, what seams it together is enquiry. Question marks pepper my pages…
Galleria illy was abuzz with crowds of design fans this afternoon, as innovative product and interior designer Marcel Wanders visited to launch his Mini Can Can and Chrysalis lights and share his thoughts on the importance of “lightness” to the world of design.
“The naked place”.
Should I give today a title to my editorial of the magazine issue of the year 2004 on the topic “Place, Not Place”, I would call it like that.
A naked place is a place that I can cover or fill with my presence, my choices and my content.
Daniel Buren said at that time: a place can be transformed by an intervention and what transformed it becomes an integral part of it.
No place exists without a project, no space exists without a mind that conceives it.
There are many kinds of examples. Here I want to give you a very simple one. In the supermarket where I usually shop, there is always Rod Stewart as background music. I guess the director is a fan of him and me too, that´s why I like shopping there even though I could find my favorite cookies everywhere. The supermarket is described by Rod Steward´s music so deeply that once happened that there was no music in there and the place suddenly appeared to me as if it were naked.
Sites are created and behind their creation there is a thought.
I’m curious to see how it will appear Galleria illy London: an example of a place that changes and becomes something else.
Indeed on September 12th until October 16th galleria illy will be in London hosted in the showroom by Flos and Moroso. In this special place a series of cultural events will take place for one month giving birth to connections between creative minds and their thoughts. A crossover of stimuli all around a work of art by Michelangelo Pistoletto: the “Table of the Mediterranean”. Do you remember it at the Venice Biennale in 2003? Once again we can speak of “place or rather not place?” . The nakedness of the space dressed by the content, because “wherever there is a relationship there is a place”.
I am curious, tell me your story…
“I can loose my sense of direction but I can´t loose the instinct to dream”. This quote by our Chief Editor started this month issue about “Orientation”. So we decided to close the month with a video about “a dream that comes true” by the 23 years old Maggie Doyne who tells her story at the Do Lecturers (Talks that inspire action).
At the age of 18 Maggie took a gap year to travel before starting the university. She came back with a dream: starting a school in Nepal.
Travelling gave her the possibility to discover her personal orientation in life. She realised that during her travel suddenly the “world had opened up. There was so much to learn and so much to discover outside a four walls classroom.”… She “got her passions back: to live, to learn and to be human on this earth again”..
She got overwhelmed when she got to know that in the world there are over 80 millions orphans or abandoned children. But instead of getting paralysed by this huge number she decided act. She dared and decided to risk. So she started helping the first one. In 5 years by then she realised the project Kopila Valley Childrens´Home and School for 30 little Nepali orphans, based on the conviction that only “solid foundations” – love and education – can guarantee a good orientation in life.
She just decided to live her dreams and to follow her heart…
Maggie Doyne — Why the human family can do better from The Do Lectures on Vimeo.
“Ex-Offenders at the scene of crime”: sad stories with a happy end.
Stories of people who lost their bearings in life and found them again.
Stories of the lack of a sound sense of direction, of an ethical guidance. Stories of people who did a crime and found in it the strength, also in desperately difficult circumstances, to go finally straight.
I can loose my sense of direction but I can´t loose the instinct to dream.
I´ll pass this saying on posterity authorizing it to use it!
In 2003 I faced this issue. After so many years I want to ask you all if we are able now to choose the right direction. To orient yourself means to choose, browsing through all the abundance that surrounds us.
Choosing is difficult, that´s why we regularly entrust other people the task of making a choice for us. Companies put consultants in charge of choosing. Search engines pick up the contents for us on the net.
My God! How many blunders we make! Let´s be honest: we are fashion victims, we are subject to clichés. You know what? We never dare! At the restaurant we choose “tiramisú” but not the “vesuvian surprise”. Why? Only because we do not know what it is and we do not want to run any risks. On the motorway restaurant we choose the most common sandwich of the world the “Camogli” but not “the meatball of your dreams”.
I dare to say that the problem is not reaching the goal but rather finding it. This is the eternal dilemma of teenagers, that if you do not manage to overcome, it can lead you as an adult to depression and despair.
Lucky is the one who doesn´t find the goal but has nevertheless the strength to dream. And as well as Oscar Wilde said “unfortunately dreams sometimes come true”, the dream is now coming true. So I wish you to dream because – unfortunately or rather in this case fortunately – the summer break is coming true!
Have a nice holiday!
A 20 minute animation of the consumerist society, narrated by Anne Leonard.
The Story of Stuff explains where our stuff comes from and where it goes when we throw it away. It shows the life cycle of material goods and in simple words of our actual consumeristic society.
Watch it. It´s a must see video!
When the Viennese immigrant Victor Gruen designed the first Mall ever, the Northland Shopping Center in 1954, he only had good intentions.
Once the customers had entered this world, they were shielded from everything that stood in the way of shopping: noise and congestion, heat and cold, and, of course, the criminal, the homeless and the poor who roamed the historic city centers in increasing numbers as the middle class escaped to the new suburbs.
Considering that Milan in July is definitely not a key destination for art crowds, I finally managed to find a must see exhibition, in a hot and humid post-Basel fair artistic vacuum (the most important appointment of the year for several Italian galleries ended the 17th of June with the close of Art Basel fair, and Liste the Basel young art fair).
The Humboldt Box has been inaugurated yesterday in the stormy Berlin weather.
Walking along Unter den Linden direction Alexanderplatz, in the middle of the baroque Berlin, just in front of the Berliner Dom you cannot do without coming across this postmodern asymmetric building.
The arte povera movement remains strong, propelled by its most representative artists whose manifesto is to use or reuse materials available to anyone. I’ve been thinking about the arte povera artists I’ve met over the years – Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz who passed away in 2003 – and how I have personally experienced their message. From Greek-born Jannis Kounellis (1936) perhaps I best understood how the arte povera movement made its mark… For me, he embodies the contradictions of a consumer society that has to think about reuse if it wants to survive.
The RE+ light fixture is a project winner of La Casa del Terzo Millennio (2009); designed by Stefano Giovacchini (who told us recently about his profession of colour design, remember?) it’s a flexible light fixture made from a plastic core that is re-used from the textile yarn dyeing process.
Waste Land is a film about finding the beauty in an ugly place. It’s about garbage and recycling, sort of. Or it is a film about looking at art, or about making art. Or about the potential of art to change people. It is all these things and more, I think, as I attempt to digest the powerful story that I saw last night at the Italian premiere (part of the Lo Schermo dell’Arte film festival in Florence).
Directed by Lucy Walker and featuring New York contemporary artist Vik Muniz, the documentary film recounts the three-year project by Muniz “as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of catadores, self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. His collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores.”
Colour and attraction, Colour and seduction. They seem to go hand in hand. What role does colour play in the process of seduction by things or people? To verify my theory I consulted artist and seduction expert Laura González. Here is our conversation.
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The premiere of "Italy, love it or leave it" in BerlinWith the victory of Fratelli Taviani´s movie the 62nd Berlinale film festival closes under the sign... More in Photo | Latest suggestion
The premiere of “Italy, love it or leave it” in BerlinWith the victory of Fratelli Taviani´s movie the 62nd Berlinale film festival closes under the sign... More in Suggestion | Latest link
The new trend in NY: global nomads meeting in hotels. A new shape for your nightlife in the Big Apple.Remember Studio 54, the legendary New York nightclub where Andy Warhol and Grace Jones partied away ... More in Last link |