life is an adventure of our own design...

Patti Smith | Dream of Life - part I door mrbigjohncork

...and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents
Patti Smith | Dream of Life - part II

the metadata alphabet to contemporaneity

Anachronism/Bipolarity/Community/Dissociation/Expulsion/Formula/Glamorization /Honor/Interactivity/Jubilee/Key/Light/Meaning/Nonsense/Oligarchy/Poetry/Quintessence/Resistance/Sharing/Transgression/Urbanism/Virology/War/Xenophobia/Youth/Zero

David Lynch - Modern House (2012)

Theoria

Theoria 1
Orquidea Calisto - 2013



Theoria 2
Orquidea Calisto - 2013



Theoria 3
Orquidea Calisto - 2013

can I have a can of sea breeze, please?

I wish I could take a Sea Breeze can from one of those vending machines that sell snacks, chips and sodas. Unfortunately they all sell just snacks, chips and sodas. I wonder why in this creative, resourceful, and business oriented world, nobody (researchers, designers, fashionistas, environmentalists, priests) ever thought of canned senses, flavors, and fumes as rewarding goodies. We know the scented candle cans, the (obnoxious) fragrant toilet paper, the flavored condoms and even the viewy Comme des Garçons’ anti-perfumes (…as they say: clone odors from inorganic materials such as the freshness of oxygen, freshly mowed grass, wash drying in the wind – my favorite!…etc), but these are just innuendos. We are not actually sensing the wash drying in the wind smell, but its idea. 
I wish I could just drop a coin in the machine’s coin slot, press the button, and as easy as that, get a can of Sea Breeze…
…open it, and deeply inhale its puff of the moist and salty freshness...

Good Friday, Good Monday, Good Sunday

Pope Francis
"Via Crucis" - St. Peter's Basilica,  March 2013

  

Tilda Swinton

"The Maybe" - MoMA, March 2013

Marina abramovic

"The Artist is Present" - MoMA, March 2010

Me, Robert, Barbara and Adolph

Today, I don’t feel like writing. Instead, I feel like posting a list of words, 1 image, 1 link to a video, and a citation. It all makes sense together or separately, as you wish. The 4 things together as a whole, provide you with infinite possibilities of reading, perceiving and experiencing, as well as each of the pieces separately. Enjoy!

List of words:
word, text, context, non-narrative, dematerialization, space, time, light, colour, sound, object, artwork, medium, media, marketing, consumerism, image, photography, saturation, appropriation, experience, perception, existence

Orquidea Calisto - 2013

Robert Barry - 1969

VIDEO
Barbara Kruguer - (Plenty) 2008


"Words in art are words.
Letters in art are letters.
Writing in art is writing.
Messages in art are not messages."

Ad Reinhardt

Pop flirtation

Never paid much attention to Lana Del Rey, until I bumped into Christopher Glazek’s online article (The Year in Pop) in Artforum’s December issue - I know my distraction might sound out-fashioned in a world of global multi-layered and overlapped interests, where “being in” means to know and like it all...
I clicked on the video Ride (directed by Anthony Mandler), and abandoned myself to the seduction of the moving image. It is indeed a charming, very well done video piece. In the beginning, Del Rey’s voice-over, going on and on about American carpe diem clichés is quite annoying, but the images do the trick on holding one’s attention to what’s coming next. And then she starts singing; no doubt, a great voice. Del Rey’s flexible voice is naturally powerful, and has all it takes to do whatever she wants to do with it. The lyrics glamorise the errant lifestyle of a certain white American uneducated fringe, preaching “craziness” and triviality as the foundation of freedom. The music itself falls into the patterns of the sharp simplicity meant to reach out to the broader possible audiences, and of course, to fit also the purpose of the song-turned-into-ring-tone. And it works, the whole thing together works perfectly, as it always will when restraining reason to emotion.
Would I have the same opinion if I had listened to the music before watching the video? Well, I’m not sure, but maybe it doesn’t really matter, what matters now is the result and impact of the mishmash, the interweaving, the jumble of information. This is the fabric of contemporary reality, the tool, the trap, and the addiction that caught intellectuals, scholars and classicists into pop flirtation...

"Motion" - Laurent & Lewis

Video by Orquidea Calisto & Sandra Guarda, Amsterdam 2008

Situationists International

Situationists International part 1



Situationists International part 2


Situationists International part 3

The revolution of everyday life

In 1958 Guy Debord produced his “Theory of the Dérive” where he defines dérive [literally: “drifting”] (one of the basic situationist practices) by “a technique of a rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.” What captured my interest in the situationists and the definition of dérive is its legacy to our contemporary society. There are tons of exemples one could pick up to ilustrate this legacy, from basically all areas of the knowledge, but I want to focus my attention in something that although is already out there for quite a while is still unknown for the common urban inhabitants – parkour. “Parkour is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls.”...and yes, art became part of the fabric of everyday life.

 

...and I never thought I would find traceurs on my small home town!
"Traditional art is inadequate for the new dynamic complications of modern life." - Charles Baudelaire