Visitas

lunes, 24 de marzo de 2014

Cine a cielo abierto - Egipto


A veces , una imagen nos deja con más preguntas que respuestas, y el espectral teatro abandonado en el extremo sur de la península egipcia Sanai es uno de esos casos . Apodado el "End of the World Cinema ", en el teatro al aire libre pueden caber cientos de personas en sus filas de asientos bien ordenadas , pero nunca se ha proyectado una película que sólo se asienta en el desierto como una versión ligeramente más extraña del Cadillac Ranch. El fotógrafo estonio Kaupo Kikkas ha capturado recientemente el sitio.
 El "Fin del Cine Mundial" fue construido por un francés rico como un cine privado para él y sus amigos. Importó un conjunto de localidades de teatro , proyectores , pantallas y generadores a esta ubicación en la base de una de montaña del desierto , pero en la noche de apertura , un grupo de gente luchadora saboteó la fuente de alimentación. Abandonado en un duro paisaje del desierto donde el clima puede desgastar incluso las estructuras más fortificadas , el teatro sin techo es completamente vulnerable, aparentemente destinado a desvanecerse en polvo como sus alrededores. Funciona como un monumento misterioso a una vida cinematográfica del pasado. Este tipo de lugares y objetos abandonados se encuentran en todo el mundo . Las imágenes fantasmagóricas de las ciudades del oeste americano de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX son omnipresentes . En China , la inversión y la especulación agresiva combinada con brotes económicos han creado una serie de pueblos fantasmas contemporáneos. Parques de atracciones abandonados, seguidos rápidamente de complejos de ocio fallidos de memes digitales. De hecho, estos lugares tienen una existencia dual , actuando como atracciones para los viajeros de los dos caminos del desierto y de la autopista de la información . La yuxtaposición entre la antigua función y la decadencia se crea una zona de juegos para los fotógrafos y artistas.



Sometimes, an image comes along that leaves us with more questions than answers, and the ghostly abandoned theater on the southern tip of the Egyptian Sanai Peninsula is one of those instances. Dubbed the
"End of the World Cinema," the open-air theater can fit hundreds in its neatly arranged rows of seats, but it's never screened a film—it just sits in the desert like a slightly weirder version of the Cadillac Ranch. Estonian photographer Kaupo Kikkas recently captured the site.


Images via Kaupo Kikkas.
The End of the World Cinema was built by a wealthy Frenchman as a private movie theater for himself and his friends. He imported a set of theater seats, projectors, screens, and generators to this location at the base of a desert mountain range, but on opening night, a group of feisty locals sabotaged the power supply.

       
Abandoned in a harsh desert landscape where the weather can wear down even the most fortified structures, the roofless theater is completely vulnerable, seemingly destined to fade to dust like its surroundings. It functions as an eerie monument to a past cinematic life.


       
These sort of deserted places and objects are found all over the world. Images of the late-19th and early 20th-centuries' ghost towns of the American West are ubiquitous. In China, aggressive investment and speculation combined with economic busts have created a number of contemporary ghost towns. Abandoned amusement parks quickly segue from failed entertainment complexes to digital memes. Indeed, these places hold a dual existence, acting as attractions for travelers of both desert roads and the information superhighway. The juxtaposition between former function and decay creates a playground for photographers and artists.

viernes, 14 de marzo de 2014

Bauhaus stage costume

   
 
Metal Party, 1929
 
"La Bauhaus se celebró conjuntamente tanto por las reuniones sociales y fiestas como por la visión de Gropius para una nueva escuela de arte. Estas celebraciones promueven el contacto entre la escuela y el público, dando rienda suelta a los maestros y estudiantes para demostrar la creatividad y el diseño invención, concibiendo invitaciones, carteles, trajes y decoraciones.

"Las fiestas de la Bauhaus se trasladaron de improvisaciones y festivales de temporada para producciones teatrales espectaculares y monumentales de Dessau. El punto culminante fue en 1929 con el Partido de metal resplandeciente. Entraron en el edificio por deslizarse por una gran rampa que los depositó en la primera de varias salas decoradas con bolas esféricas de plata "

- Barbican Art Gallery, 2012. Bauhaus: El arte como vida. Koenig Books
 
“The Bauhaus was held together as much by  social gatherings and festivities as by Gropius’s vision for a new art school. These celebrations promoted contact between school and public, giving free rein to masters and students to demonstrate creativity and design invention, conceiving invitations, posters, costumes and decorations.
“The Bauhaus parties moved from improvisations and seasonal Festivals to spectacular and monumental stage productions in Dessau. The highpoint was in 1929 with the resplendent Metal Party. They entered the building by sliding down a large chute that deposited them in the first of several rooms decorated with silver spherical balls”
- Barbican Art Gallery, 2012. Bauhaus: Art as Life. Koenig Books

martes, 11 de marzo de 2014

DESDE ARRIBA - David Thomas Smith



Antropoceno: 
miles de archivos digitales tomados de vistas aéreas tomadas de imágenes de satélite a Internet, este trabajo reflexiona sobre las complejas estructuras que conforman los centros del capitalismo mundial. 
Este trabajo se basa en los patrones y motivos utilizados por los fabricantes de alfombras persas, sobre todo en la forma en que los tejedores afganos usan la alfombra para grabar sus experiencias más literalmente con imágenes vívidas de la tierra devastada por la guerra que los rodea. Esta colisión entre lo viejo y lo nuevo, realidad y ficción, la vigilancia y la invisibilidad, es parte de una estrategia para reflexionar sobre el orden global de las cosas. 

David Thomas Smith


Anthropocene:
thousands of digital files drawn from aerial views taken from internet satellite images, this work reflects upon the complex structures that make up the centres of global capitalism.
This work draws upon the patterns and motifs used by Persian rug makers, especially in the way that Afghani weavers use the rug to record their experiences more literally with vivid images of the war torn land that surrounds them.This collision between the old and the new, fact and fiction, surveillance and invisibility, is part of a strategy to reflect on the global order of things.
David Thomas Smith










viernes, 7 de marzo de 2014

Pioneras de la Bauhaus

Female Pioneers of the Bauhaus

Bauhaus Archive, Berlin
Self-portrait by Gertrud Arndt at the Bauhaus in 1926-27.

    Lou Scheper-Berkenkamp.
    ‘‘Mask-Portrait No. 34’’ by Gertrud Arndt, 1930-31.
    No chance. The Bauhaus was in tumult because of the long-running battle between its founding director, the architect Walter Gropius, and one of its most charismatic teachers, Johannes Itten, who wanted to use the school as a vehicle for his quasi-spiritual approach to art and design. Arndt was told that there was no architecture course for her to join and was dispatched to the weaving workshop.
    Not that she was alone. Most of the other female students had been forced to study the supposedly “feminine” subjects of weaving or ceramics too. The Bauhaus Archive in Berlin is now trying to make amends to the women like them, who felt marginalized at the school, by celebrating their work in the “Female Bauhaus” series of exhibitions, the latest of which is devoted to Arndt.
    As well as her student work in textiles, Arndt’s exhibition, through April 22, includes the photographic experiments she began at the Bauhaus and continued for the rest of her life. She is the third female Bauhaüsler to be featured in the series that started with a fellow textile designer Benita Koch-Otte and Lou Scheper-Berkenkamp, who forged a career in theater design, illustration and color theory after leaving the school. The Bauhaus Archive plans to continue the series with more shows in the future.
    All three of the first “Female Bauhaus” subjects were unusually talented, determined and resourceful, yet each would have been justified in feeling that she faced greater professional obstacles than her male contemporaries both at the Bauhaus and afterward. Why did a supposedly progressive school turn out to be so misogynistic?
    The Bauhaus, which ran from 1919 to 1933, was not always unfair to women. It was only in the early years that female students were relegated to particular courses, despite Gropius’s claim in the school’s manifesto that it welcomed “any person of good repute, without regard to age or sex.”
    “The Bauhaus had progressive aspirations, but the men in charge represented the prevailing societal attitudes of the time,” said Catherine Ince, co-curator of the recent “Bauhaus Art as Life” exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. “It was simply a step too far to bring about equality across the board.”
    The situation improved after Gropius succeeded in ousting Itten in 1923 and replaced him with the radical Hungarian artist and designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Having ensured that female students were given greater freedom, Moholy encouraged one of them, Marianne Brandt, to join the metal workshop. She was to become one of Germany’s foremost industrial designers during the 1930s.
    But Arndt, Koch-Otte and Scheper-Berkenkamp were unfortunate in having joined the school before Moholy’s arrival. Koch-Otte was the only one of the three to persevere with her original course of study, eventually becoming an influential figure in both textile design and art education. Whereas Scheper-Berkenkamp dropped out after marrying a fellow student only to help out at the Bauhaus Theater when he returned to the school as a teacher several years later. Similarly, Arndt abandoned weaving after completing her course in 1927 but forged informal links with the Bauhaus at the turn of the 1930s when her husband, who she had also met as a student, accepted a teaching post there.
    Even so, all three women ended up working in areas that the male-dominated design establishment did not deem to be as important as, say, architecture or industrial design, partly because they were seen as female preserves. Fewer books and exhibitions have since been devoted to them than to other disciplines. And even the most successful Bauhaus textile graduates, including Anni Albers, Gunta Stölzl and Koch-Otte, have featured less prominently in histories of the school than their male counterparts, who studied “weightier” subjects, have done.
    Not that gender stereotyping by the Bauhaus was the only professional problem they faced. As Ms. Ince pointed out, the school’s initial ambivalence toward women reflected the prejudices of the time. Each of the trio faced the same challenges as other working women in juggling domestic responsibilities with their careers. For them, those problems were aggravated by the risk of being overshadowed by their husbands, who worked in similar fields.
    Arguably, they and their spouses also suffered professionally from staying in Europe during World War II, rather than seeking refuge in the United States like Gropius and other prominent Bauhaüslers. Remaining in Europe not only isolated them from Gropius’s circle, which has since dominated historic accounts of the Bauhaus, but left them to deal with the brutal consequences of the continent’s mid-20th century politics.
    Worst off were Koch-Otte and her husband, who were banned from teaching in Germany by the Nazis and fled to Prague. Tragically, he died in an accident there, leaving her to return to Germany to rebuild her life. Neither Arndt nor Scheper-Berkenkamp suffered as severely as Koch-Otte, or Brandt, who ended up on the East German side of the Iron Curtain, but they and their families faced the trauma and hardship of life in Nazi Germany.
    The “Female Bauhaus” series is a touching way of acknowledging their achievements and the difficulties they faced during and after their studies. It also reflects the growing interest in the work of female designers, both inside and outside the Bauhaus, by a new generation of design historians and curators, like Ms. Ince.
    A group of them is to meet at the inaugural International Gender Design Network conference in New York March 28 and 29 to discuss an equally thorny issue: the degree to which the sexism that blighted the early years of the Bauhaus persists in design today.
    Fuente: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/arts/25iht-design25.html?_r=4&

    jueves, 6 de marzo de 2014

    La casa de Chipperfield



    Photos by Ute Zscharnt

    David Chipperfield sure knows how to assert his presence within the urban lands cape of Berlin. Like many of his designs for museums and cultural institutions, this British architect's live/work space is spartan and well-ordered: a simple cubic volume of raw concrete intersected by square glazings. The rather reticent building stands in sharp contrast to its neo-classical neighbors. The interior includes midcentury Italian furniture and is entirely neutral, save for a green velvet sofa and an orange bookcase.

    miércoles, 5 de marzo de 2014

    La casa de Zaha



    Photos by Davide Pizzigoni


    The trademark sweeping forms for Zaha Hadid's headline-generating designs for the Dubai Opera House and an upcoming metro station in Riyadh can be seen throughout her London flat. Paintings on her walls appear to be preliminary sketches for an upcoming museum, while her dining table, chairs, and flatware are all smooth and edgeless. Also: Is that a knockoff Judd sculpture?