Papierkrieg / Origami War

Papierkrieg from Makaio Tisu on Vimeo.

Images by Megatron
Sounds by Qalaih Doskope

Papierkrieg / Origami War

IDENSITAT #5 // MANRESA, BARCELONA

IDENSITAT#5 // Convocatoria para la realización de un proyecto de intervención en el espacio público

Manresa abre una convocatoria de proyectos para participar en el programa de intervenciones en el espacio público que tendrá lugar a mediados del mes de abril de 2010 en diferentes puntos de la ciudad de Manresa.

La convocatoria se dirige a creadores residentes en el ámbito territorial de la Cataluña Central que quieran desarrollar un proyecto de intervención en el espacio público de Manresa. Los participantes tendrán que formular una propuesta que integre el Dispositivo Itinerante de Idensitat y proponer uno o diferentes espacios de la ciudad para su ubicación. Aparte de este condicionante, la característica de la convocatoria es amplia, de manera que los objetivos de los proyectos tanto pueden facilitar respuestas como plantear cuestiones, detectar conflictos o plantear estrategias de diálogo, camuflarse en el espacio u ocuparlo, involucrar a la gente en el proceso o buscar espectadores; sea como sea, la táctica y la formalización tendrán que mantener negociaciones con elementos de tensión latentes en el espacio público. La ubicación definitiva de la propuesta seleccionada en el espacio público estará sujeta a la obtención del permiso municipal.

El proyecto seleccionado formará parte de iD#5 Manresa conjuntamente con los siguientes artistas y colectivos:

Domènec, Democracia, Basurama, Patrick Raddatz, Traces of Autism (Jozua Zaagman, Maartje Dros, Jacqueline Schoemaker) y Oriol Fontdevila/Laia Ramos.

Dispositivo Itinerante. En diferentes momentos del 2009 el Dispositivo Itinerante ha formado parte de talleres y seminarios como un elemento expositivo que vehicula actividades específicas generadas en el entorno de Idensitat. Ha estado presente en Calaf (Espacio Hivernacle Cultural), Prat de Llobregat (Torre Muntadas) y Barcelona (La Capella). Persigue la idea de exposición expandida en el territorio y funciona como un emisor-receptor de datos. Su carácter itinerante permite incidir en aspectos específicos del territorio a través de la movilidad. En este caso se propone como elemento de soporte que se integra en el proyecto seleccionado a partir de la convocatoria. El dispositivo itinerante podrá ser modificado y adaptado a las necesidades del proyecto.

El proyecto seleccionado dispondrá de 2.100 eur, de los cuales 600 eur en concepto de honorarios y el resto para producción (impuestos incluidos).

El dispositivo itinerante cuenta con algunos elementos complementarios como son proyector, diversas mesas, sillas, pantallas de proyección y soportes verticales. En caso de proponer varios emplazamientos, el desplazamiento del dispositivo tendrá que estar incluido en el proyecto.

Las propuestas junto con el currículum se pueden enviar por correo electrónico a idensitat@idensitat.net o por correo postal en el Centro Cultural el Casino, paseo Pere III, 27 bajos. 08242 Manresa hasta el 18 de marzo de 2010.
Descargar bases pdf

IDENSITAT #5 // MANRESA, BARCELONA

Emergent Cities

As any emergent system, a city is a pattern through time.

Intelligence is an emergent system generated by the brain, therefore it is mandatory that we think about cities as a brain, the same way that we think about ant colonies in the scale of a super organism, as patterns of activity that through complexity and intensity generates a city.

Cities are the solution to the human brain storage capacity problem. Cities store and transmit new ideas useful for its general population. Avoiding that new and powerful technologies disappear once they’re invented, as also the communities of self-organized neighborhoods helps its inhabitants to be more ‘intelligent’.

A city its a set of cells that interact among each other, each cell depends strongly of a DNA code for its development, but also need a sense of ‘location’ to perform its specific task in the “organism”. As Jane Jacobs mentioned, sidewalks are the main catalyzer for the flux of information between inhabitants of a city. Information is Anything that has the capacity to change something. Sidewalks provide the correct amount and type of local interactions. This can be thought as the inter-cellular connections in the city life.

The value of the exchange among unknowns lies in how this benefits the city’s super-organism. Life in cities depends on the un-even interaction among unknowns, which produces a change in the individual behavior.

All the differentiated abilities like memory, pattern recognition, and computation capacity, have a parallelism with the development of urban centers: it is in their shared-information cores their capacity to mirror and amplify patterns of urban behavior, and the ability to solve complex supply and demand problems.

In any case, intelligent systems depend simultaneously of its “structure and organization” as also in their “interconnection”, intelligence requires connectivity and organization. Intelligent systems have reciprocal relations: you affect your neighbor and your neighbor affects you.

This influence is generated by “informal” encounters of unknown (among each other) agents, Te way ‘informal’ illuminates the city is in stressing patterns that emerge from new relations and interconnections. Te city is a “natural environment” and formal patterns do underlie some of nature (spherical planets, hexagonal snowflakes) but most of the cosmos shows non-linear organisations. Brain waves, heartbeats, or the growth of galaxies show paterns that are fractal and dynamic.

Contemporary and emergent cities are often defined as ‘chaotic’. Chaos definition is: A mathematically determinate state of turbulence. Is it chaos just a different kind of order?, it is more and different patterns and arangements which give order to a whole, all happening at the same time and with different levels of intensity, and emergence can be defined as the internal will of chaotic systems to reach coherence.

Add more information, energy, mass, or whatever, and a system will reach a critical point and jump into a new regime. Under these conditions new patterns of organization are emerging spontaneously: Surfaces not lines, zones not points, Scatter not equal support, and moving locus instead of fixed centers.

 Mariano Arias-Diez |

Emergent Cities

Rocking at the Whitney Museum of American Art

What if you ask a Brooklyn lofi indie rock band to perform at an American art museum? What if you ask a bro like Ray Concepcion to come and capture the gig with his camera, doing only one long shot for each song?

Well, what happens is that you get a beautiful audiovisual document like this. Woods at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Rocking at the Whitney Museum of American Art

NEW YORK // IMPORTANT INFORMATION // SPACE AVAILABLE

or sent an email to 

g@lasbellasartes.org / k@lasbellasartes.org / e@lasbellasartes.org

NEW YORK // IMPORTANT INFORMATION // SPACE AVAILABLE

Festival NRMAL / 2010 / Monterrey, MEXICO

Festival NRMAL / 2010 / Monterrey, MEXICO

TPD/LBA : THE BOOKMARK PROJECT:100 SITES | A YEAR || No. 2

An event about graphic design based in Monterrey, N.L.

...............................................................................................................

Two days of talks by key personalities from Monterrey's design scenario, dealing with different topics related to the local graphics plus workshops with the intention of establishing new projects after the Mitosis congress.

Mitosis010 is meant to promote a sense of community between designers, to remember the conception of the designer in the society and its responsibility towards it, it's a model for theoric analysis of the local graphics that can be applied to a different context and also a kick-start for other projects.

The concept is based on an analogy done between the mitosis, or cellular division. Each piece of the project functions it's related to this core concept. The cell as a micro element, an organism capable of exponential reproduction caused by a little initiative.

To promote the event, publications were and are being produced, each one based on the five phases of the cellular process. A blog is refreshed every week with new content.

Mitosis is all about the one-on-one interaction experience, to celebrate the importance of dialogue, debate and teamwork. A free event about design, focused on cultural and social issues, a place for opinions, but also a workshop for production. We want to convince others to invest their time and intellect in alternative projects, to promote the approach to society through the critic and aesthetic eye of design. We want to prove that its possible to make a free event, with relevant content through everybody's effort.

Concept & Original Idea by 

Gabriela Salinas 

Daniel Miranda

Luis David Bañuelos

Francisco Martínez

Ricardo Ojeda

TPD/LBA : THE BOOKMARK PROJECT:100 SITES | A YEAR || No. 2

Creativity and fear

So, let’s say that you are wealthy and rich, let’s imagine that you don’t have the necessity to generate any kind of income, you simply do not have to worry about it…well, then what would you do? … I assume that for some of you this will be the opportunity to fantasize with different kinds of luxury and excess, so there you go, do it, then try to think a bit more seriously about that, what would you do?

Excess of time, resources and idleness lead to inventions, that it’s not a secret, think about couture, fine arts and sports, they are products of a relatively secure community with enough money and resources. Take for example Stark’s “juicy salif” lemon squeezer, do you think this beautiful object but completely useless product could have been designed and manufactured in a marginal and poor community? I don’t think so, however this product is completely logical to picture it in the hands of a French designer and an Italian manufacturer.

If we understand security as the loss of preoccupation of a certain thing or matter, we can picture that there are different levels of security, it’s different to be afraid of finding where to pass the night than to be afraid of loosing an appointment with the manicurist. Sure that ironically both could cause the same amount of stress on certain people, but they sure have different consequences.

It is not a surprise that we live on societies with many, exaggerated or not, threats and fears; terrorism, global warming, natural catastrophes, crime, feeding, H1N1, global crisis… you name it, sure there is place for it.

However creation is everywhere, under stressful situations where only a limited amount of resources are available there is also a unique power for inventiveness and innovation, from simple hacks to revolutionary products and systems… We can find one recent popular example in the story of William Kamkwamba a young Malawian boy who found the way to design and build a windmill that generated electrical power for his house, William managed to write and publish his story in the book “The boy who harnessed the windmill”, now he is very popular and supported by all kinds of organizations (as you could imagine).

But this is not extraordinary, is a an everyday thing on many places in the world, one simple look at a Mexican village could give you a huge lesson on how to solve many problems with simple, yet extraordinary inventions.

Now that we are starting to feel the anguish and fear from the much commented war against the drug trafficking in Mexico and other, not less important, problems in our country such as lack of employment and a pretty mediocre education, we as creative people have to analyze where is our opportunity in all of these, where we can find a shifting point in order to change our environment.

Fear, lack of opportunities, violence, ignorance are also stimulants, let’s deal with it.

Miguel Melgarejo

Creativity and fear

Nuit Blanche : Noir Paris

Set in a film noir Paris,Nuit Blanche explores a fleeting moment between two strangers, revealing their brief connection in a hyper real fantasy. The film captures MAGICALLY, a surprisingly violent moment of connection between these two strangers attracted to each other with such magnetism that neither panes of glass nor speeding vehicles can keep them apart. 

The entire film is told in slow-motion, with sculptural explosions of glass and water enshrining the two would-be lovers like heavenly gossamer. The elongated seconds echo the longing each character feels for the other, and time itself seems to be an expression of their aching desires.

 

Directed by: Arev Manoukian
Produced by: Stephanie Swedlove & Arev Manoukian
VFX by: Marc-Andre Gray
Music by: Samuel Bisson
Starring: Michael Coughlan & Megan Lindley
Cinematographer: Arev Manoukian
Casting: Jeff Marshall
Assistant Director: Andrew Cividino
Production Designer: Arev Manoukian & Marc-Andre Gray
Art Director / Costumes - Dan Levy
Camera Operator: Jay Pavao
Camera Assistant: Max Armstrong
Gaffer: Alan Poon
Editor: Arev Manoukian
Compositor / Animator: Marc-Andre Gray
Effects Supervisors: Marc-Andre Gray & Arev Manoukian
Additional Compositing: Arev Manoukian
Matte Painter: Pat Lau
Colourist: Andre Chlebak

Nuit Blanche : Noir Paris

Boys, Boys, Boys! /// Patterns of Beauty and Function :The Naked Adonis

Image: The Death of Adonis by Giuseppe Mazzuoli / Poster of Mystic Knights of Adonis Mardi Gras Parade.

Since my previous installment was about Venus in Art, I supposed it would be fair ( and logic) to talk about her male equivalent: Adonis, used as a synonym for any depiction of a beautiful boy. Certain formulae have been used to determine this through history.

Image: Kourós / Advertisement for Eau de Toilette Kouros by Yves Saint Laurent

We begin with the Kourói, statues that represented teenage soldiers and were based on geometrical figures. Hair and muscles in perfect symmetry, broad thorax and tiny waist. The pose was stiff; and there’s an awkward attempt of facial expression, an “archaic smile”.

Image: Discobolus of Myron / Logo for Gymnasium UNT, Argentinian high school for men

Stiffness left, eventually. With the Olympics, gorgeous man sculptures were all about action. The Discobolus was an example: twisted right before throwing the disc. Although deadpan, as if he wasn’t making an effort.

Image: Doryphoros of Polykleitos / Marlon Brando as Julius Caesar

The first proper Kanon was developed by Polykleitos. According to it, the idealistic human figure must be eight heads tall, pubis at mid-height, arms so long their wingspan is equal to height, with a certain correlation between the lengths of body parts. However, we’re just about 7-7.5 heads tall.

Image: The Vitrubian Man / Stormtrooper

Then Da Vinci drew The Vitrubian Man, or Canon of Proportions; accompanied by notes on the architect Vitruvius, who considered humans the main source of proportion in classic architecture. Everything was based on the width of palms and feet, and distances were strictly calculated.

Image: Le Modulor / Real human comparing himself at habitational unit in Marseilles

In the 20th century, Le Corbusier brought these ideas back with Le Modulor. He used him as a universal scale in construction. The first version was 2.16m tall – including raised arm, with a body shape similar to that of the kourós. Not quite realistic, yet the arm up and relaxed position are meant to leave enough room, in theory.

Today, we use any of these patterns - or a mixture of them - to represent men as units, sex-symbols, or mere depictions.

Now that we agree beauty is subjective, and mathematics aren’t always right: are they still of any use? Do we need new ones? Or none at all? / Cynthia Rodriguez

Boys, Boys, Boys! /// Patterns of Beauty and Function :The Naked Adonis

EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION

rum46

presents the exhibition
EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION
March 5 - April 8, 2010
Opening: March 5 17.00-20.00

Participants:

Luke Fowler (GB),

 Hanif Kureishi (GB),

 Thomas Hirschhorn (CH),

Renzo Martens (NL/CG),

 Taller Popular De Serigrafia (AR),

 Michel Tournier (FR). 

Curator: Razvan Ion

Assistant curator: Silvia Vasilesco

The return of the repressed is a crucial theme, a key to understanding recent history. "The project of the West, the Nietzschean project, has been to drive out religion and to produce a secular society in which men and women make their own values because morality is gone. Then suddenly radical religion returns from the Third World. How can you not laugh at that? How can you not find that a deep historical irony?" (Hanif Kureishi, in International Herald Tribune).

According to Freud, the very act of entering into civilized society entails the repression of various archaic, primitive desires. For Freud repression is a normal part of human development; indeed, the analysis of dreams, literature, jokes, and "Freudian slips" illustrates the ways that our secret desires continue to find outlet in perfectly well-adjusted individuals. However, when we are faced with obstacles to satisfaction of our libido's cathexis, when we experience traumatic events, or when we remain fixated on earlier phases of our development, the conflict between the libido and the ego (or between the ego and the superego) can lead to alternative sexual discharges.

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious." This return of the repressed, of ideologies forced to marginalization, of sexuality subject to forced secrecy, has resulted, in recent years, in an almost dramatic change of a society filled with anguish, hallucinations, repression imposed by unnecessary regulations that serve to the repressive violence of governments against their own citizens. (Excerpt from the text "Exploring the return of repression" by Razvan Ion).

Publications:
EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION
Edited by Razvan Ion. Texts by: Andrei Craciun, Tatiana Greif, Daraka Larimore Hall, Razvan Ion, Rolling Thunder, Ronald F. King, Urban Larssen, Jose Louis Meiras, Suzana Milevska, Naeem Mohaiemen, Maria Eva Blotta & Diego Posadas, Eugen Radescu, Michel Tournier.
31,5 x 42 cm, 32 pages, black & white, English/Romana
Published by Pavilion, Bucharest.
Distributed for free. 

Free download of pdf version:

http://pavilionunicredit.ro/ziar_ETRR.pdf


This exhibition is a version of the "Exploring the Return of Repression", exhibition presented at PAVILION UNICREDIT, Bucharest, Romania.

Image: Taller Popular de Serigrafia, "Serigraphy Workshop for the Masses - Dario and Maxi presents / Work, Dignity, Social Change", July 26, 2002. Image printed for the first time at the cultural day celebrated at the Puente Pueyrredón (province of Buenos Aires, Argentina), a month after the shooting execution of Maximiliano Kosteki and DarioSantillán assasinated by the state armed forces, in the name of democracy. "Work, dignity, social change" was the principal slogan of the politically active organization, the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD)-Anibal Verón.
 
Opening hours:
Thursdays 14.00-17-00 and by appointment

( All this Information via Pavilion Unicredit)

EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION

Tejército 2010

Tejército 2010

MONDAY QUOTE

Wise Oscar Wilde. I hope this quote inspire you to achieve every single goal you have in mind. You´ll  have a week  full of success!! I´m sure about that.Eva Guerra LujanEditor in Chief --

MONDAY QUOTE

Forever Mexican Crimson tide.

RED.

The flag of eternal visceral feelings: passion, courage, sexuality and love. Many of us ladies have worn - or secretly died to wear- red on our lips, because who on Earth can resist a pair ofluscious shiny kiss-my-pout lips? (FYI a biological fact: red lips are considered to be the sexiest everywhere because in the arousal stage of the human sexual response, the lips fill up with blood, causing it's hue to raise to a full red.)

The cosmetic and fashion industry have always

turned to red because of its strong appeal and eye-catching

-ability to human nature. 
But, have you ever wondered where the red pigment these industries use to dye lipsticks, eye-shadows, blushes and fabric comes from? Easy. From Mexico's nopal (prickly pear).

The one to blame for the hue that can even attract bulls is a little insect that nests on the nopal plant called "Cochineal". This little insect produces carminic acid that deters predation by other insects. Carminic acid, which occurs as 17%-24% of the weight of the dry insects, can be extracted from the insect's body and eggs and mixed with aluminum or calcium salts to make carmine dye (also known as cochineal). The carminic dye has been used since pre-hispanic times in Mexico and South America to color fabrics, and in Mexico's Colonial period, it became the second largest export to Spain. (Source: http://wikipedia.org here)

Cochineal became a prized commodity on the Continent

(Spain refused to trade it with the English), and it created huge profits for Spain. For this reason, the cultivation of cochineal was aggressively restricted to Spanish-controlled Mexico, although this changed when a French naturalist managed to smuggle cochineal-infested cactus pads to Haiti in 1777. From there, cochineal production eventually expanded to South America, India, Portugal, and the Canary Islands, where it became particularly successful. The long-time demand for cochineal started to decrease in the late 1800s as new synthetic dyes were developed, and soon it was no longer economically viable to continue its production. (Source: Cochineal, Interesting Fact of the day). However, insect dyes (such as the carmin dye from the cochineal) have always been used for cosmetic (shadows, blushes, lipsticks) and pharmaceutical (pills, syrups) dyeing because of its organic friendly-to-the-body nature.Nowadays, with the raise of eco-friendly fashion, organic dyes' production is increasing, directing the attention of everybody around the globe to the Cochineal Farms on Oaxaca, Mexico (like the Tlapanochestli Cochineal Farm) and to other insect-dye farms around the world. Reasons on why this organic dyes are better for the environment discussed here by Eco-friendly fashion designer Behnaz Sarafpour.

Crimson organic dye is still very popular, and the amount of Cochineal-dye exports that Mexico produces is a great sustainable method for small and indigenous families across one of its economically-challenged states: Oaxaca. But beware, buying Cochineal-dye is no cheap business: the reddish power can cost up to $1,000 the kilo (that explains the luxury of wearing such a powerful hue). 

So, whenever you feel witty, agressive and passional and plan on wearing red on your lips, pout them out for Mexico, its indigenous hard-working people and it's little nopal "cochinilas" (cochineal)./FLAII

Forever Mexican Crimson tide.

Mexico and its huge textbooks

A couple of years ago I visited the then brand new MUNE (Museo del Noreste) in the city of Monterrey, Northern Mexico. Stupidly enough, I didn't take any notes, but I'm pretty sure what I remember is accurate enough for making a point out of it.

The flamboyant, shiny and spoiled museum occupied a huge cube building adjacent to the Museo de Historia Mexicana, right in Monterrey's Macroplaza. I roamed from up to downstairs, just as the tour was designed, confusingly following the region's history starting from the present and going backwards intro preshispanic times, supposedly time traveling after a kangaroo rat, the museum's mascot. After one hour, I was not even half the way down, still on the fourth level, with my eyes hurting and trying to make a mental inventory of what I had seen... perhaps 10 multimedia stations, four objects and walls and walls and walls covered with text and pictures illustrating text. Hustling my step, I rapidly went through the halls of the rest of the levels, taking quick glances at those walls with letters and letters and letters... and no more than 10 objects.

As a young museum professional, perhaps I shouldn't be scandalized about not-so-conventional museographical projects. But, although I won't get into controversies like science centres being or not being museums, I do miss collections when visiting a museum.

From my perspective —that is, a Northern Mexico perspective — I can perceive a tendency on Mexican institutions to open as many museums as possible in the shortest time possible. Is as if the only vocation for restored buildings was to turn them into museums. Museums with no collections. Museums with text and text and text and letters and letters and letters and a picture. Literally, six storie high textbooks.

Now, according to the International Council of Museums, a museum is a ‟non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment”. When ICOM sanctions museums as institutions open to the public, I don't think about them having extended schedules or being government funded. More so, it refers to them as being spaces where the people pours its culture, via objects that represent something valuable for that people's society.

Where are our Mexican museums heading to? I visited a museum dedicated to mining. Text, text, text, three computers, a couple of scale models and one object, which was a facsimile of a silver bullion. Now take a look at this video. It sure looks like fun. No doubt it offers a very innovative perspective on a hard-learning human activity that most kids would find repulsive to approach. I bet is a powerful outreaching educational tool. But, is it really a museum?

Mexico and its huge textbooks