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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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Started in 2010 the project MarcoPolo by the University of Trieste and the Hospital Burlo Garofalo – our neighbours – aimes at studying the relationship between genetics and taste.
For the first expedition a group of genetists and researchers went along the silk route animated by this question: why food habits differ so much?
Is it due to genetics, culture or to the resources of the territory if people like more certain food than others?
The results will be than useful not only scientifically but also for the health sphere.
In this interesting video the researchers with the support of Terra Madre and Slow Food had been interviewing for 48 days multiple communities from West to East, along the Marco Polo trail, along which the most different cultures, genes, populations and food habits intertwined and mixed up the most during the centuries.
If you want to know more about the project read the interview by Mauro Scanu to the leader of the expedition Paolo Gasparini, which was issued in September on illywords magazine.
In the year 2011 it was the turn for Armenia and Crimea. Let´s see what will be the route of 2012!
A few years ago I have been to Kanding, a little city in the middle between China and Tibet.
I was looking for a place to sleep, so I went into a hostel to ask for a room. As usual the owner couldn´t speak English so I asked Matteo, one of my trip mates who was waiting outside, to try in Chinese. After a while Matteo came out laughing aloud: the receptionist mistook him for me.
Berlin is freezing. The days are very cold, – 14°, but blessed with wonderful blue skies. When it is cold like that I can´t do but shudder every time that I see brave mothers on the bike with their as much brave children on the trailer or on the kids bicycle seat, who don´t complain nor cry.
Surfing the net we came across this clip by a very normal man who explained very cheerfully how different cultures have different understandings of things.
This makes us think..before going anywhere in the world it is defenetly useful to understand the main differences between our cultures.. just to avoid misunderstandigs.
Watch the video!
In a warm January when travelling around Italy seems so hard, it´s time to meet in Bologna for one of the most unmissable events of the year – ArteFiera Art First – where dealers, collectors and in general art lovers want to meet and melt to start the new year in a big way.
Hello everyone!
Even though at the start of this year there is not much enthusiasm around us – well, as a matter of fact the news are not supporting our mood … the ship sinking at the Island of Giglio, as well as the spread in Italy and the politics in Europe – we at illywords think positively! That´s why we have been working hard to shake up and restart in a big way our cultural research allthrough the themes of the year.
First of all, I would like to welcome our new bloggers Chiara, Steve and Danilo that will write from the United States and Brazil and that will join me, Manuela, Silvia and Eleonora to chase up people, facts and unpublished short stories coming from their cities spread all over the world.
The first theme of the year “Different Cultures” seems to fit like a glove because it lets compare thoughts and experiences.
I think that difference is a value as long as it doesn’t feed discrimination or separation among people. Nevertheless I am defenetly convinced that we are getting closer and closer to a global culture that threatens to flatten and smooth the cultural uniqueness that is the lifeblood of different people.
I’m curious to read the examples of cultural differences that the bloggers will nose out in their cities.
Here I will give you my example.
I live in Trieste, in the north east corner of Italy, at the border with Austria and Slovenia. When someone answers to a question with an embarrassed smile using the expression “volentieri” – which in regular Italian means “Yes, I would be glad to…” – he or she means “No”! The total opposite … can you figure this out? It´s quite strange, isn’ it?
So, just a suggestion from me .. be aware of this when you ask for something in my city… just not to get disappointed.
——–
Ciao a tutti, bentrovati!
Intorno a noi si sente ancora poco entusiasmo in questo 2012. Beh in realtá gli ultimi eventi non é che siano proprio consolanti … la Costa Concordia a picco all´Isola del Giglio, lo spread in Italia e la politica in Europa… ma al di lá di tutto questo, noi di illywords pensiamo positivo! Ci stiamo allenando per scrollarci questo clima pesante e riprendere alla grande la nostra ricerca culturale all’interno dei tanti temi dell’anno. Dò dunque il benvenuto ai nuovi blogger Chiara, Steve e Danilo che ci scriveranno dagli stati Uniti e dal Brasile e si uniranno a me, Manuela, Silvia ed Eleonora per scovare persone, fatti e racconti inediti nelle loro città.
Il primo tema Different Cultures sembra calzare a pennello per mettere a confronto pensieri ed esperienze. Penso che la differenza sia un valore purchè non alimenti discriminazioni o separazioni tra le genti. Sono tuttavia consapevole che ci stiamo avvicinando sempre più ad una cultura globale ed omogenea che rischia di appiattire le tante unicità che sono la linfa culturale di genti diverse. Sono curiosa anch’io di leggere gli esempi di differenze culturali scovati dalla redazione. Io vi porto il mio molto semplice. Nella mia città Trieste, nell’angolo nord est dell’Italia a confine con l’Austria e la Slovenia quando uno ad una domanda risponde con un sorriso imbarazzato “volentieri” significa una negazione anziché un “si”…strano vero? Ricordatevi di questo mio suggerimento se passate dalle mie parti…giusto per non rimaner scottati!
It may seem a truism to say that every industrialized society lives in a state of torment, great changes and deep contradictions. Every day an enormous amount of information, data and streams of numbers pass through cables or over our heads in imprecise regions between earth and sky. … In my opinion the best contemporary definition of “Nomadic knowledge” is the way we dress.
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.
In London partying is something that can not be avoided.
In London doing strange things is something that seems more than normal.
In London during the weekend everything can happen, more than anywhere else.
I think that London still embodies the destination par excellence for new nomads, like in the ´80s. It still attracts young people looking for ideas but also professionals in search of new opportunities. It looks like the city itself is nourished and built on these people that come and go, take and give experiences, designing the identity of this city upon the contamination of multiple cultures.
Big part of this ‘nomadic life’ is meeting new people and possibly spending good time together. Giving parties is a practice that needs as much skills and experience as any other else, especially here if you do that seriously, it might become your proper job!
A few months ago a dear friend of mine said to me: “I’ll take you to an extraordinary party tonight! It’s organised by an Italian guy. I don’t know him and I’ve heard it through the word of mouth, but should be really cool.”
Since then every time that the Italian guy organises something, I always try to be there.
The last time was the seventh edition of the Rumpus party, which is held almost every two months in a different venue in central London. I have to admit that if I think how a party should look like, this is exactly what I want.
This time the theme was Pirates vs. Ninjas. You feel ashamed if you are not dressed up at least a little bit!
Juggles and acrobats, musicians and costumed dancers performing in every corner, sax players hanging over the crowd wearing a fake tail that you can buy for a few pounds to be part of the circus, hairdressers styling hair of girls making eccentric hairdos. Then there were even five different dance halls and a cinema, all concentrated in an old iron factory in a hidden street near Angel station.
Amid all this it can happen to discover new things like the exciting balkan jazz of Gorgeous George, a young band that makes you dance all night.
If you pop by in London this weekend, go to the next event organised by the same guys on December the 17th. It will take place at The New Empowering Church, another truly nice place in East London to have a great night out, with the Balkan Beats. Don´t miss it!
Roberto Ceresia is a young Italian man with a passion for art inherited by his family running for years an antique art shop in Palermo. In 2005 he started a contemporary art gallery in his hometown, began focusing on new artistic waves from China and introduced young talented Chinese artists on the Italian scene. Next, in 2008, Roberto felt it was time to be on the move and to settle down in China to pursue his vision.
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…
Watch this video message by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and be part of the petition “Wikipedia for world heritage” in order to get the chartiy institution recognized as one of UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage Sites.
It seems at the first glance a quite weird idea, but Wikipedia can be considered as a real place even though on the world wide web, it is a platform of free knowledge. Defined moreover by its founder the ”Temple of the mind” it has become in the last 10 years a vital part of our daily searches for information on the net.
Would you like to be part of the movement?
Message from Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia for World Heritage on Vimeo.
When friends come and visit in Berlin, from Italy for instance, they always get surprised because of the multitude of young and not-so-young people comfortably sitting in the cafés of Mitte with a tall cappuccino and a computer in front of them. And they ask me intrigued: “What are these people doing? And by the way, why are they so relaxed?”
Pixar celebrates over 2 decades of success with an exhibition that opened at MoMa in New York (2005-2006) and it is now travelling Europe, starting from the Milan venue at PAC (until February the 12th).
What is amazing of Pixar production is that there is no country in the world where an animation can’t be fully appreciated in every possible reference and detail. How does Pixar communicate with every type of viewers no matter what his/her culture, language or age is?
A very controversial issue that makes me anxious. In 2004 when we launched the theme “Nomadic Knowledge”, WikyLeaks was still very far to come. At that time we did not know this international organization based on the transfer via web of encrypted information, which got so powerful to get his key man Julian Assange into trouble.
At that time, my “romantic” idea was to support a civilization based on knowledge value which could become even economic profit for Nations, companies and people.
For sure romantic, but still and firmly convinced that there isn´t any progress without any knowledge. Furthermore I am more than convinced that knowledge has to be equally spread among everybody in an ethical, democratic and healthy way.
Unfortunately knowledge is actually in the hands of few and most of the time it does not correspond to a real economic recognition for the one that owns it. In fact, how often do we speak here in Italy about brain drain?
Anyway we are at the end of the year and for this occasion I would like to propose you all the last activity for this 2011 of illywords. Let’s give an idea, a concept or a text as a gift to the readers, it may be simple or complex provided that it is a gift of knowledge.
Mine follows straight away: if you add some grappa to the potato gnocchi, they become much more digestible. At a first glance it could seem a very modest gift but you’ll understand the value of my suggestion when you eat a bunch of them.
How do you return my idea?
Tomás Saraceno Cloud Cities exhibition is one of the most charming examples of interdisciplinary cooperation, I have ever experienced. This visionary young artist actually truly combined architecture, science and art to create a breathtaking installation done out of big bubbles floating in the main hall of the Nationalgalerie in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.
Is Maurizio Cattelan going to be back anytime soon, or is he really withdrawing from the “competition”?
Hard to say, but the 51-year-old announced he would retire after the closing of his current retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Two different products designed for two totally diverse consumption moments merge one into the other and collaborate together in the name of solidarity.
We are talking about the 64 limited edition moka pots illysustainArt, presented in November at Artissima in Turin.
To get the permission to renovate it, they made application at the “Bauamt” for “a family house with a basement”. Incredible to notice that this basement is a 5 floors high building while the apartment is an amazing one floor penthouse on top of it!
I am talking about Bunker Boros, probably the coolest place hosting contemporary art in Berlin.
In this speech Howard Rheingold – artist, designer, theorist and community builder – enlightens us about the virtues of evolving communication technology able nowadays to amplify the power of collective interaction.
He lets the story start from the very beginning, when biology rhymed with war, when businesses and nations succeeded only by defeating, destroying and dominating competition, when politics meant to win at all costs…
And here starts a new amazing story, of which we are only at the beginning and of which we are all the protagonists. It is the story of the interaction, cooperation and collaboration of people all around the world who share information, knowledge, goods, bites through open platforms like google, ebay or Wikipedia, just to mention a few of them.
Let´s listen together what the writer of the bestseller “Smart Mobs: the next social revolution” said about the power of mobile phones, internet and personal computers. The new era of open cooperation is just at its start….
Have you ever lived in a city that is going to host the Olympic Games?
The feeling is of a general acceleration and improvement!
The city has been dressing up, tiding everything, getting ready for the big 2012 event. The Olympic Games in London are going to be held from the 27th of July to the 12th of August followed by the Paralympic Games from the 29th of August to the 9th of September.
We never thought about a taste as something that could come in “3D”. It was exciting to listen to the explanation of this master of mixology – London based Tony Conigliaro – illustrating how flavours can cooperate instead of competing.
Watch the video!
Cool Hunting Capsule Video: Tony Conigliaro from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.
Acclaimed as one of the best exhibitions in Shanghai since long time, “Window in the wall: China and India – imaginary conversations”, is hosted in the beautiful huge new space of Pearl Lam Fine Arts, near the Bund and of course I could not miss it. By the way, the exhibition surprisingly fitted perfectly our monthly theme, coopetition.
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.
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.
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.
The solo show by the French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot – now on view at Hangar Bicocca in Milan until December the 4th – a huge space that once belonged to Ansaldo group that produced coils for electrical train engines, has just every component of a dreamlike natural – artificial musical recipe.
Have you ever wondered how does the backstage of an art exhibition look like one day before the big opening?
Just to give you an idea right now I am at Artissima 18, the International Fair of Contemporary Art at Oval Lingotto Fiere in Turin.
When in 2004 I spoke in illywords magazine about coopetition, many people thought I had used a neologism. We said, that coopetition is not short on dissociated thinking as it entails being co-operative and competitive at the same time.
It seemed to be absurd!
Nowadays it would be hard to conceive a world divided with walls or any kind of barriers. What’s needed instead is bearing into mind and putting into practise the old but nevertheless true motto ”united we stand, divided we fall” when we handle with a good idea that requires a strong commitment together with a considerable outlay of financial and human resources.
Professor Yaneer Bar Yam, expert of complex models and President of the New England Complex System Institute said that in the near future ten billion of human beings will be linked one another in an ongoing exchange process able to create a sort of “hyper-individual” whose creative potential is at this point in time still inconceivable.
I am firmly convinced that human evolution should benefit from the mutual exchange even if competitive. Today we celebrate the 7th billion new born. We are not so far from what professor Bar Yem predicted, but I have the feeling that we still face great competition and less cooperation in our way of working and living.
Is there any young person or group of young people that is using the concept of coopetition in their life, studies or work? I’d like to hear your voice.
The first moments you spend in the tent city of Occupy Wall Street at New York’s Zuccotti Park can be a bit of a shock. It’s total chaos. Or so it seems, as tourists and protesters squeeze past each other, trample over posters while the deafening drums on one side drown out slogans yelled on the other. More than once I almost fell into one of the densely arranged tents where weary 20-somethings try to find some privacy.
Puzzled but at the same time attracted by the title “The uncanny familiar, Images of Terror”, I went yesterday to see the exhibition at C/O Berlin, the Internation Forum for Visual Dialogues at the Postfuhramt in the Oranienburgerstrasse in the heart of Scheunenviertel.
It’s a bit like the role of pause in music, I said to myself after my journey. It´s like one moment of silence perfectly placed right after an hysterical rhythm in crescendo. It manages to load itself with such a deepness that it is able to give meaning and power to all what came before.
That’s how my October journey through south east Sicily felt like.
In a city of 22 million people the opportunities are, as you can imagine, overwhelming. Any country cuisine is well represented: obviously Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shanghai,,,, Shanghai is certainly a place which leads you to be adventurous and try new paths: Fabrizio Pizzioli arrived here less that 1 year ago and tried to pursue his passion for food and cooking daring to experiment a new formula-restaurant launching “Il Nascondiglio”, which means “the hideaway”.
I woke up with a certain hangover last Thursday morning, after an immense number of galleries opening. Just a warm up for me and my friends to get ready for the forthcoming four days of the London Art Week! And I mean Art with the capital A!
The city is not usually asleep, but during these days, all around Frieze Art Fair it’s been an explosion of art insiders jumping from one venue to the other
Burrata is a fresh cheese having a mozzarella-like outside with bits of mozzarella and cream on the inside. It’s also the name of the group show at VAVA gallery, the latest contemporary art gallery opened in Milan.
Being of a convenient size, in central location (Piazza Lavater, next to Corso Buenos Aires), with cutting edge program of international young artists with a very good cv, makes the Vava gallery a must for art seekers.
In a crowded Galleria illy, especially plenty of young people, Martin Parr arrived and did his show.
A tall, brilliant man who clearly loves staying on the stage gave to the audience an hour of entertainment and discussion going through his photographer’s career.
Venice is a chaotic city. Venice is not a chaotic city. At first glance both statements could be said to be true, but on reflection sound more like banalities.
Venice is not a superficial city to be summed up in one sentece. It is not the city of millions of tourists in shorts and sandals shuffling their feet, neither is it the city of Carnival or of holiday cruisers. It is a complex city, bound and formed by its history, by the tides, by nostalgia, by its troubles and by all the lives that it has attracted and made its own.
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.
When I read that the Guggenheim Foundation was opening a “lab” in collaboration with BMW in the East Village, downtown Manhattan, I just could not believe it.
I had lived around the corner and knew that there simply was no space for that. The last time I was in the area there was no sign of construction. Where did they find the money anyway?
“Any German. East or West, who sets foot on the strip is shot on sight”.
I live 100 meters away from the Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, the street that after the wall was erected, with the help of western media spreading the voice, seemed to be a good place to escape and leave finally the Berlin wall behind. And every day when I bring my daughter to school, we walk just across the area between the two walls..
At Nicoletta Rusconi gallery, I could appreciate a really well curated show (what a rare gift today!). Every artwork selected by Marco Tagliafierro added a layer on the apocalyptic ends that Pier Paolo Pasolini predicted for our society, crashed by a new fascism with capitalism and consumerism addictions.
As a food writer, when I’m asked what I look for in a restaurant’s cuisine, I usually answer the chef´s ability to create a menu that tells my taste buds the story of the place where he or she lives and works. I like it when food conveys the local traditional flavours, which implies in Italy a myriad of variations from one village to the other.
Since when I went to University, I love a certain kind of photography. I mean the one that is able to look at things objectively, that slams the world in your face with offish gaze, with an aseptic but at the same time personal point of view. Quite a hard kind of photography to many, but to me, just beautiful.
For this reason, the School of Düsseldorf photographers – avant-garde born in 1976 and founded by Bernard and Hilla Becher – has always given to me everything I wanted in a picture with a sharp simplicity.
The Literature Festival in Mantua (Italy) just started.
Among the many meetings between writers and public (more than 200) and the myriad of initiatives that will be taking place in only 5 days in Mantua (from September 7th to 11th) a pivotal role in this special event is played by the places. Every single corner of the city is full of history and personality.
When I first moved to Shanghai, 6 years ago, I had no idea about what exactly to expect and I certainly was a little anxious, almost scared by the size of the city. … I clearly remember the comfort I felt by seeing people spending their time outside their houses, in the streets, playing, chatting, washing themselves or simply observing what was going on around them.
“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.
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 …
Objects have been talking to us in more or less articulate ways for quite a while. From dolls that cry or laugh (until the battery runs out) to electric toothbrushes that tell us when it’s okay to rinse. “Talk to Me”, an exhibition recently opened at the Museum of Modern Art explores….
“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.
At the end of July London hosted the Hackney WickED Art Festival. It was the 4th edition for this particular event for contemporary art culture, held in the area of Hackney Wick and Fish Island, a few steps away from the Overground station, in one of the areas with the highest concentration of artist studios not only in London but in Europe!!
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 long time ago people did their weekly shopping at the local markets, usually over the weekend. For most of the population shopping was also a social opportunity.
Since the end of the 19th century local markets have been replaced by supermarkets which deeply transformed the traditional habits of the consumers.
But original markets still exist! In London for example, markets are a pretty typical and popular appointment on the weekend.
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.
„This work is about the process of exploring historical amnesia, sustainability, consumption and the future”. This is the description of Back to the Futurama, the work by the American artist Jeremy Dean that you can see in this video.
Back To The Futurama Debut from jeremy dean on Vimeo.
There’s one thing that had always bothered me when I go out to dinner, especially in pizzeria: 50 pages menus with endless lists of never-heard-before pizzas with funny names made of gorgonzola cheese, horse meat, mushrooms, shrimps, raisins, chicory…
The result is that I take half an hour to choose always a classical Margherita with tomato and mozzarella cheese.
I recently realized that my pizza problem is a well defined research issue for psychologists. The question is: if choice makes people free, why having so much of it makes us feel so overwhelmed?
Sheena Iyengar (1969) is the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School and the Research Director at the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business.
She is one of the main experts of the “psychology of choice”.
Born in Toronto, Canada but with a very deep Indian Sikh background, blind from the age of 17, Sheena has always nurtured a peculiar interest in “choice”. How did she come to the idea of investigating this territory? She explains this very well in her book “The art of Choosing”:
“My parents had chosen to come to this country, but they had also chosen to hold on to as much of India as possible. They lived among other Sikhs, followed closely the tenets of their religion, and taught me the value of obedience. What to eat, wear, study, and later on, where to work and whom to marry—I was to allow these to be determined by the rules of Sikhism and by my family’s wishes. But in public school I learned that it was not only natural but desirable that I should make my own decisions. It was not a matter of cultural background or personality or abilities; it was simply what was true and right. For a blind Sikh girl otherwise subject to so many restrictions, this was a very powerful idea. I could have thought of my life as already written, which would have been more in line with my parents’ views. Or I could have thought of it as a series of accidents beyond my control, which was one way to account for my blindness and my father’s death. However, it seemed much more promising to think of it in terms of choice, in terms of what was still possible and what I could make happen.”
In this video Sheena investigates the value of choosing under multiple cultural perspectives coming to the evidence that “choice no longer offers opportunities but rather imposes constraints. It is not a marker of liberation but a suffocation by meaningless minutiae”.
By the way, why do we need dozens of kinds of detergents, diapers, cosmetics? Do we really need them or rather do we really think to be more free because the choicerange is wider? In this video an acute analysis on this.
Have a nice vision!
Steel, gum, resin, polyester, plastic, plexiglas, methacrylate, these materials are massively used for design objects, which have definitively become consumption items, as they fill up our abodes either they are expensive pieces or cheap disposable items – Ikea docet.
Loris Cecchini instead, an artist born in Milan and living in Tuscany, uses these materials to create projects that are in the middle between technology and art.
The society drives you out. The family drives you out.
The society with its distorted rules repels you. You only feel the need to escape!Or rather your family – the nest that in theory should protect you and help you anytime to overcome all difficulties in life – on the contrary it turns out to be your worse enemy and you dream to escape!
This is the leitmotiv of the touching photo exhibition “Broken Manual” by the American photographer Alec Soth now at Loock Galerie at Halle am Wasser in Berlin.
It´s always a pleasure to interview the charismatic Giulio Iacchetti.
Forerunner of the Italian designers, Iacchetti has been working in the field of industrial design since 1992 alternating his activity with teaching at Italian and international schools and universities.
As a designer he is on a constant quest for the ideal combination between form and color. This is the focus of my interview which is an interesting dissertation about color and its sense all through the indiscriminate use of it in our consumerism world.
In this interview Iacchetti reveales his nostalgic approach to color, remembering the time when, like in the movies of the 50s or 60s, cars had all colors … as long as they were black, white or olive green!
Irritated, Iacchetti states that nowadays the consumption society passes us the multiple variety of colors as freedom but this is not, at all! It is all about a very subtle way of handling of the market to deceive us, meaning that we have a very high potential of choice.
This is unfortunately on the contrary all fake…
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).
In 2003 opened the 50th Venice Biennale directed by Francesco Bonami, in my opinion one of the best editions in the recent years. Stimulated by the subtitle of his exhibition “The Dictatorship of the Viewer”, illywords asked Bonami if the classical rules of marketing used by a consumption oriented company can also fit the art world.
He answered that, if marketing creates in the individuals unnecessary needs with the aim of selling, art is on the contrary a real need of the society and he added that the material consumption is bound to fear. The one who is dominated by the existential fear consumes everything pretending in this way “to be” but the one who is not afraid consumes less. He rather turns his search into himself.
In these last eight years I have often wondered if the society has complied with and applied this thought. But considering the economy being poorer and poorer due to the excessive of consumerism and seeing the society poorer and poorer of values I have to realise that the world has shown more fear than courage until now.
This month, I propose to address the issue to the contemporary consumption. Which kind of examples do we have, which kind of consequences on the environment, which new trends are born?
I´ll take my personal example of life: I am consuming time, more than necessary. The various mobile devices enable me to accomplish multiple works simultaneously and I deceive myself to optimise my time by writing e-mails, answering the phone even at home while cooking the “parmigiana” with my favorite recipe.
Well, when I switch off the light at the end of the day, I have a feeling of frastruation because I do not know to whom I wrote and to whom I spoke. I know that tomorrow everything will start the same and even worse, I do not even remember if I ate my parmigiana at all…
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!
In a video from the series “Drawing Restraint”, Matthew Barney and Björk take a bath, cover themselves with perfumed balms, dress with linen and silk as if they had to face a holy ritual. One far from the other, they meet afterwards in a narrow and dark pool. The liquid they get into will soon become red: little by little, after slow sensual hugs, they kill each other by cutting with a special knife pieces of the other’s flesh.
have always been fascinated by the history that says that denim, the so called “blue de Genes” which became the “blue jeans” fabric, was invented in my hometown Genoa. Since the Middle Age it was a rough cotton fabric, naturally dyed using the blue from the indigo plants (indigofera tinctoria). It was originally used for port workers’ clothes because of its durability and comfort.
Passion rhymes with having guts to try.
Passion rhymes with living with a greediness for a new experience.
Passion rhymes with believing you can push your boundaries.
This is the extraordinary experience of Roz Savage, described in this video clip. Roz Savage is a British ocean rower and environmental campaigner. In 2005 she competed in the 3,000 mile Atlantic Rowing Race, the first solo woman ever to compete in that race. Between 2008 and 2010 she crossed the Pacific Ocean in three stages.
“They said I was crazy. They said I wasn´t big enough, not tall enough, not strong enough” says Roz, who against all odds quit her job as management consultants at an investment bank in her mid-thirties to make sense of her life.
Rowing across the Pacific Ocean in 2010 she made a lucky encounter with some fellow environmental campaigners, also on a mission to bring attention to the plastic pollution in the North Pacific Garbage Patch. The encounter with the Junk Raft offered the opportunity for a surreal dinner party in mid – ocean and changed her life once again for good: she became also an activist campaigner and a United Nations Climate Hero.
Before living her comfortable life Roz wanted to write two versions of her obituary. The first was the one she wanted to have, the one that normally is dedicated to people who give life a try, the adventurers and risk takers. The second one was a very normal – lame – one. Well it´s clear what she will get…
The encounter with Roz Savage has deeply inspired us, so we wanted to share with you. You can follow her on her website and blog and get informed everyday about her adventure now across the Indian Ocean direction Mumbai.
„Photography has always been my big passion. A fil rouge describing my whole life”.
This is Kristyan Geyr, the German photographer that I met today at one of my favourite places in Berlin, the Weltempfänger Café. …
The name is Limoncello gallery. It is obviously a reference to the famous Italian drink even though it had nothing to do with Italy so far.
In the little space at the 15a of Cramer Street E2 8HD, just in the heart of one of the most exciting area of North East London, Limoncello gallery has been focusing on representing mainly young artists famous for their fresh and essential style.
You know that you are aging by the fact that schools and universities start asking you to teach food journalism classes. Instead of pretending that I’m way too young, I accept, excited.
What I try to teach my students? In one word. It´s passion.
I went in the German Pavillon at La Biennale di Venezia three days ago spending more than two hours, watching the films of the artist Christoph Schlingensief and the documentaries on his work. I just lost the sense of time the very moment I got in the main space, sitting on a bench in “A Church of Fear vs. the Alien Within” that represents the circle of life, illness and death.
Passion for art has been the lowest common denominator for artists, collectors, curators, institutions and art lovers who met at festival arte Contemporanea in Faenza from 20 to 22 May.
Here some clips of the event together with some good advice! Check it out!
Do you think it´s possible to go to school and learn passion?
Unfortunately it does not seem it works like that…but if only it existed this possibilty I guess we wouldn´t be in a bad humor all the time when we wake up in the morning to go to work or to the university. In 2003 illywords had already faced this theme in the magazine providing a definition for passion: “a state of excitement of the soul”. This is how the ancients explained this concept. Great!
Today, I think we are afraid to show passion: it is inelegant or rather scaring. If you are passionate you spend a lot of energies. In return you don´t get much if not the personal satisfaction to act passionately whatever you do. Today everything has to be moderate – in politics, in the social world, at work – everything has to be in a way politically correct … I think this is all about an alibi that paralyzes our instincts, our urge to scream or to tell someone to go to hell because unpleasant.
This is why we do not engage ourselves to fight against the environmental scandals or to help African countries from starving. We are so freezed that we do not react if violence or any lack of values become part of our daily lives. But I am persuaded there is an antidote to this. Art and creativity in general can teach, feed and spread passion. This is also the task that illywords incarnates in its interventions and articles. I leave you with the theme of the month “the passion” and with the image of Marina Abramovic and his ex partner Ulay running in big strides towards each other, as if attracted by a magnet. Their bodies slam into each other. They fall down and get up to start again their run. Is this nonsense? Maybe, but it is definitely full of passion!
This month I invite you to be attracted by and towards us. We might sometimes collide on some opinions but we will do it with passion!
The “Festival of Ideas for the New City” is a first time event created by the New Museum, together with an association of universities and downtown organizations, with the common dream of finding future possibilities for the city.
A big issue the arrest of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. In London it is something that everybody in the art field must talk about, even more because of the significant tribute series of exhibitions that have just opened around the city. In a day off from job, wide awake late, I took the bus in direction Sumerset House…
If you are living in China as an expatriate, so far from home, “lost” in this foreign and exotic country, the first and the main relationship you are weaving is certainly the one with your Ayi. … Surely one of the grounds where the relationship is strengthening is the kitchen. The tai tai (the Madam) and the Ayis are often cooking together disclosing to each other old family tips…
There are some books which, although hard reading, are for various reasons widely known. We know many of their ideas, they are often quoted, found in bibliographies and are relevant to the present day. …. One of these books is Kandinsky’s “The Spiritual in Art” (1910). … But, like a sudden unexpected breath of wind, my feelings towards this book recently changed during an evening at PARCO, the new Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Pordenone.
Nowadays Berlin is considered to be the Mecca of culture and art in Europe, the “place to be” for artists from all over the world who want to enrich their biographies with a dash of Zeitgeist. In some districts wherever you go, supermarket, kindergarten, park, if you happen to meet someone, the probability that he or she is an artist is very high. But how can so many artists survive in this city which is as glamorous as poor?
Escaping from London in the hottest weekend of the year, with the Royal Wedding and the city attacked by tourists from all over the world, I went to Amsterdam. Well, actually the city was very busy as well… for the queen’s birthday celebration.
A present is an exchange of emotions. It’s a symbolic third part that summarizes the relationship between two persons.
At her solo show, Barbara Bloom imagines a gift from Marilyn to Arthur Miller, from Freud to his loyal supporters, an exchange of gifts between Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir, from herself to the artists Bruce Nauman, to her adopted daughter and from us to Allan McCollum. Thus, the viewer can only imagine the giver and the recipient feelings, even though they are well known popular icons.
Behind each of these artworks, the artist stresses the difference between public and private. In fact, by giving a gift to a friend we refer to common memories, shared secrets, similar view of life. On the contrary, there is no memory with the viewer by showing a present as an artwork, but only few info on the relation between the two characters mentioned in the title of the piece.
Bloom plays with this gap between what we know, what we think we know and what we would like to know. In this way, every viewer is challenged to figure out the type of relation that emerges from the gift, by projecting his own interpretation on the object.
The only real clue offered by the artist is the role of the gift as messenger between different human beings. In this sense, the work entitled “To Allan McCollum from each and every one of us, together in harmony” underlines more than every other piece, the beauty and value of diversity. Referring to Allan Mc Collum’s works, Bloom creates a table with different types of glass pitches producing the sound of a finger on half full glass, to sonorously toast to him. Every pitcher has its own way, but all together they have one voice.
The very last present of the exhibition is for the gallery audience in form of a cd of pop songs that every viewer can take away, thinking of a generous gift from a stranger. The exhibition is on until May 15th at Raffaella Cortese Gallery in Milan.
I recently met the Editor Marzia Corraini, one of the initiators of Festivaletteratura of Mantua, Italy (Sept. 7th – 11th, 2011). This encounter turned into a splendid opportunity to hear from her very voice the genesis of the most important cultural event in Italy dedicated to literature.
Inspired by the example of the family Gonzaga, who invited to Mantua their contemporaneous, Marzia Corraini and the Organisational Committee started in 1997 to invite the intelligentsia of today´ s world together with the most common people in order to meet and share thoughts, perspectives, ideas with great simplicity and spontaneity. Watch the video!
When we at illywords talked about the theme “Weaving Relations” in 2002, we also started considering the concept of “value of a relationship”. I believe that we anticipated at that time a topic that has then become very hot, especially after the social networks´ boom.
By relationship I also mean friendship and here I come up with a question: “are the hundreds of people that we regularly meet on Facebook, who we wish a good weekend to, to be considered real friends or should we call friends only those relationships that last over the years, whom we grow up with?” Here I venture to say that relationship is every kind of human relationship: it may be with your son, with your client, with your colleague or your wife. It may occure in the physical or in the virtual world.
Illywords weaves relations with you every day and investigates the discovery of the “other” stimulating a mutual exchange. From this month on, in addition to the regular lively work of our editorial team, we will have one more friend, Irina Zucca, who will be writing from Milan, one of the most active and important centres of cultural activities in Italy and at international level.
Moreover, we will be following through a daily novel chronicle the “Festival dell´Arte Contemporanea” (Contemporary Art Festival) of Faenza from May 20 to 22 highlighting over 120 leading figures of international art and creativity, more than 50 events and as many side events, for its fourth edition titled “Forms of collecting”.
Together with Cyou, a community of over 500 festival´s volunteers, illywords will gather and tell you stories about faces, ideas and words of the festival through interviews and insights realised during the three days event.
Follow us weaving relations!
I was searching on Internet an unconventional place to spend my holidays when I found out that, for “just” 35 millions of dollars, I could stay for one week aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit around the Earth.
Exactly as Guy Laliberté did in 2009 shipped by the Russian spaceship Soyuz. Two years ago the eccentric billionaire (founder of the entertainment company Cirque du Soleil) spent two weeks in space and from the ISS he launched a campaign to ensure the access to drinkable water to everyone in the world.
When you wake up in Shanghai you don´t know what you will see from your window, especially if you live downtown.
No kidding!
The landscape and the skyline are literally changing overnight sometimes: building sites are open 24/7 allowing the light-speed growth of modern compounds, skyscrapers, malls, hotels and some of the most iconic building of this century.
Shanghai is a paradise for contemporary architecture and designers
Gourmet food is served on trucks that used to sell greasy kebab.
Pop-up restaurants open in strange locations.
Even artists get involved: Marina Abramovic recently created a flaming desert for the restaurant Park Avenue Spring. The conventional idea of eating out is being tweaked and subverted everywhere. One of these projects is star chef John Fraser’s “What Happens When” in SoHo.
London is blossoming!
In this beautiful time of the year it is so enjoyable on a Monday evening to hang out with some friends at the Barbican Art Centre. I highly recommend this unique place as it is ideal to chill out on the terrace, sipping a beer and then join one of the hundreds of cultural events available.
This time I bumped into the Spill International Festival, an artist-led international event dedicated to experimental performance, theatre and live art highlighting exceptional artists from around the world. The festival takes place at the Barbican from the 18th to the 23rd of April offering a variegate schedule of happenings involving a mix of unusual cultural events: from the director Romeo Castellucci and his company Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio to the English performing artist Harminer Jude all through Ryoji Ikeda, whose performance I have attended last night. The 45 years old, Paris based, innovative Japanese sound artist, declared as one of the most radical examples of contemporary electric music, performed live one of his most acclaimed shows ‘datamatics‘. I booked the ticket two months in advance, “just in case” I thought… then I realized that after a few hours the event had already been sold out. Only one night for just one hour to enjoy one of the most sophisticated composers of our time. And I’ve got in!
It has been an amazing and powerful audiovisual exhibition that involved in a single happening concepts of contemporary art, music and performance. Ryoji Ikeda uses just datas as source for sound and images. I was impressed to see the theatre literally full of people totally concentrated, moving their heads like in a classic concert, enjoying a sort of futuristic, electronic, hypnotic trip.
Ryoji´s work cleverly transforms something that originally was a meaningless output, even a mistake, into an unexpected opportunity for a visionary digital experience. His project explores the potential of data surrounding and filling our world. Mainly black and white patterns generated by computers errors and software code images, turn from 2D sequences to 3D visions and kind of geometrical landscapes or architectures. The soundtrack is synchronized with imagery and describes a space in turn, repetitive and nicely endless.
In his career Ryoji Ikeda has collaborated among others with Carsten Nicolai, Hiroshi Sugimoto, the architect Toyo Ito, the art collective Dumb Type.
In a way I see this performance as a test of strength especially for a generation of “ears” grown with drum’n'bass in the headphones all the time, but if it’s true that we live in the digital age then we need a digital composer who expresses our time, so raw, electronic, cruel. I think he incarnates all this.
After being featured at Palazzo Grassi in Venice and MaerzMusic in Berlin, datamatics will be in a couple of days at the Geneva’s Electron Festival. Go and see it if you are around there, it is really worthwhile!
Are you aware of where you are? Not always. Or, more often, not with a comprehensive view on your position in the space; on which is your direction both in a conscious or in a blurred but deeper way; on your age and the way you are aging; on your state of mind; on what is leading you there and will guide you out of the spot you are in. Only when you fully understand your position in the world and in yourself, you can decide which opportunities you can have.
It´s so hard to start an art career and to give relevance to a work of art! With this in mind, two Brazilian established artists, Sandra Cinto and Albano Afonso created in 2000 Ateliê Fidalga in São Paulo. This is a place where artists, especially the young ones, can gather to give the right start to their careers. In the early days, the two founders started offering painting and drawing classes, but today Ateliê Fidalga, which literally means “Atelier for Noblemen”, is much more than that.
Camillo Benso, the Prime Minister of the 1861 newly born Italian Kingdom, used to say: “We created Italy, let’s now start creating Italians”. It took 150 years to cultivate and enhance the people feeling to belong together, to be “part of”. However, in Italy, I believe it is still a work in progress. … what mostly connected and unified Italian people, from snowy Val d’Aosta till sunburned Sicily, was neither the railway system, nor a common language, but rather food and wine.
It is one of the most beautiful, impressive and unusual art galleries in Berlin. It has been in the spotlight of the contemporary art scene of the city since April 2010. I am talking about the Ambasciata d´Italia in Berlin, which inaugurated one year ago ITaliens, the group exhibition highlighting some of the best Italian artists who left Italy to move to the cultural-bohemian Mecca in Europe.
Recently I had the chance to visit the exhibition led by a special guide: Elena Valensise, the Ambasciatrice in person who welcomed me with a bright warm smile in the huge and elegant living rooms of the so called “Palazzo Rosa” of Berlin (“Pink Palace”).
The cycloptic spaces of the Embassy – which had been built between 1938 and 1943 in New Renaissance style by Friedrich Hetzelt under the supervision of Albert Speer as a gift from Adolf Hitler to the alley Benito Mussolini – the majestic boardrooms, the ancient precious furniture and the untouchable works of art of the Ambasciata could have intimidated the creativity of our artists once called for the project developed by the Embassy in partnership with the Istituto di Cultura Italiano. But Elena and Michele Valensise thought out of the box. They decided to invite the 60 Italian artists living in Berlin for a brunch. They wanted them to “fare amicizia” (to become friend) with the Embassy. They guided them through all the building, till all the “reverential awe” was overwhelmed. The best part happened when they arrived in the bunker. Here the creativity erupted, it had no boundaries any more. From that very moment on they began to develop ideas for site specific works creating a fascinating exchange between their works and the spaces.
This process led to the actual exhibition, where near some works of the artists of the first edition, about that we talked in September 2010 – Daniela Comani, Armin Linke, Gianluca Malgeri, Cristiano Mangione and Patrick Tuttofuoco – I could admire the works of: Antonio Catelani, Riccardo Benassi, Paolo Chiasera, Jonatah Manno, Andrea Melloni, Rosa Barba, Vedovamazzei, Martina Della Valle and Luca Vitone. Curated by the two Italian historians of art Alessandra Pace and Marina Sorbello, the exhibition is about to inaugurate its third edition on May 16th.
Elena Valensise stroke me for her passionate love for art and her willingness to open the Embassy making it into a place of encounter for Italian artists and local institutions, media, art critics, collectors, galleries. The Italian Embassy is very active and alive. It regularly organises events, brunches, media lunches around and for this exhibition. “We try our best to make things happen” says enthusiastically the Ambasciatrice. I can confirm this. For sure I definitely overcome the prejudice that the Embassy was a dusty, old place for diplomatic meetings only. By leaving it I could only think, it´s a place where our artists cannot feel like “aliens” any more!
The cherry blossom season is one of the most beautiful times of the year in Japan. We have the tradition to celebrate under the cherry blossom trees to enjoy their beauty. Spring also marks new beginnings in Japan. The new school year starts and businesses welcome in fresh new faces. The city of Tokyo usually sparkles with life, celebrating these festivities. But on March 11th, at 14:46 everything changed.
Ai Weiwei, one of China’s most prominent artists and an outspoken critic of the communist regime, was taken from Beijing’s airport by security agents Sunday, April the 3rd as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong. Police later raided his studio. I was stroke yesterday with this piece of news and I suddenly felt the impulse of writing.
Meeting means learning. This is what illywords said in occasion of Festivaletteratura of Mantua in 2002. Now I feel the need to add a line to that: meeting and learning can create new opportunities. This happens more than ever today thanks to the web when the news that we come across are really stimulating and curious. Genuine contents and interesting evidences are just what we need. In fact our editorial team has been working on interesting storyangles reporting in real time from all over the world.
It will be an exciting month full of challenging stories coming from New York, Shanghai, London, San Paulo and Berlin. Moreover, for this month dedicated to “creating opportunities”, our blog will turn itself into the occasion for two new friends to tell us all two different stories. From one side Makiko from Tokyo will tell us how deep the recent catastrophe in Japan and the nuclear fear changed her daily life and her approach to the future. From the other side, Nazzarena, a curious Neapolitan who travelled around the world to finally land once again in Italy to keep learning, will talk about a special wine celebrating the Italian Unification.
This is also the opportunity to have your say on many topics presented by illywords. Seize the day!
Today is the last day dedicated to the theme “Timetables & Scoreboards” and our editorial team selected for you the video “Transit” by the American media artist Scott Snibbe. Transit is a large-scale video installation in the Los Angeles International Airport’s Tom Bradley International Terminal that plays on fifty-eight back-to-back HD monitors curving above the arrivals waiting area.
It is all about a poetical pause in the daily frantic rhythm of the hub. It evokes a parallelism with our hectic lives, always “on duty” and the need to stop sometimes and enjoy life. What did it suggest to you?
Friday March the 25th. I was at the press conference presenting the big installation by Cyprien Gaillard “The Recovery of Discovery” at KW in Auguststr. 69 in Berlin. In this occasion I could realise once again how this city is liberal and unconventional. “An exhibition like this could be presented only here in Berlin”, stated proudly the curator Susanne Pfeffer lighting her self-rolled up cigarette – inside the exhibition hall – sitting on the top of a pyramid made of cardboard boxes full of beer bottles.
In 1989 Gianni Berengo Gardin’s camera immortalized the entrepreneur Alberto Alessi together with a group of Italian designers. All of them collaborated with him. It is a famous photograph showing Achille Castiglioni, Enzo Mari, Aldo Rossi and Alessandro Mendini all together in a workshop and all dressed in overalls.
In a brief trip just out of London in a singular sunny and windy day, I came across our topic of the month, once again. In the industrial, and to be honest not very attractive city of Birmingham, I discovered the Eastside Projects, an experimental gallery that hosts contemporary art practices and exhibitions. Their latest ongoing project is Again, A Time Machine which is the first part of a touring exhibition imagined and organised by Book Works.
“What´s time for you?” With this question I opened my video interview to Arthur Duff, the American artist who recently won the price MACRO 2% with his permanent installation “Rope” at the new MACRO´s venue of Odile Decq in Rome. “I am always trying to manage a compromise between what I think I can do and what I can actually do. Compromise is often quite difficult”, so states the author of “Love Letters”, “Borrowing You”, “Spin Series” and “Transparency”. Check out in this video the perspective of Arthur Duff about “managing more things in a small space”…
One of my favorite things about São Paulo is that it is full of surprises. But sometimes the city is so intense you don’t even notice it that much. The other day I was just waiting for the subway and suddenly I realized an amazing panel. A huge colorful stone mosaic made by Tomie Otake, an abstract Japanese artist who lives in Brazil since the 50s. My day was made. My boring waiting time turned into a great contemplative art delight.
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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"Where I am, makes me what I am"
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