jj

cursing in a beautiful way
jj is a swedish indie band founded by Joakim Benon and Elin Kastlander.

jj is coming to Hong Kong on 11 February.

more details in here

Up in the Sky

Walk the Moon

Walk the Moon is formed by four young men from Cincinnati, OH sharing mutual love of Talking Heads, Animal Collectie and Local Natives. The band makes captivating, danceable Art Pop laced with vintage synth riffs, funky guitar lines, playful, creative rhythms, layered vocals and harmonies. You will find yourself humming and dancing to the beat. Their Debut Album 'The Anthem' has captured the attention of local press and TV, assisting them make their way to UK. Walk the Moon is a band to watch.




performances by A. Galvin (drums, vocals), N. Lerangis (guitar, vocals), N. Petricca (keys, vocals, perc.), and A. Reifsnyder (bass, vocals)

PINA BAUSCH

(27 July 1940 – 30 June 2009) was a German modern dance choreographer and a leading influence in the development of the Tanztheater style of dance.

1982 Nelken (Carnations)

「康乃馨」其實就是這樣的一個故事：關於花、人、舞蹈、天堂的故事，故事的開始先從舞台上成千上萬粉紅色的康乃馨花田說起，每朵綻放的花，似乎都在訴說天堂的快樂，舞者們拿著椅子陸續進入舞台，將椅子排列成馬蹄形，優雅的歌劇烘托出愉悅的氛圍，樂曲終止，舞者安然入座，竊竊私語，交換愛的蜜語。爾後，一名舞者以肢體語彙詮釋「我所愛的人」，歌聲引領出婚禮祝福的意像，共築永恆愛巢的夢想繞樑迴盪，舞者欣喜若狂，在一大片花海中分享快樂的時光，在天堂花園中尋找失去的童真。

但包許並未刻意沉溺在如此歡樂的氣氛中，她搓揉暴力的色素投入海水中，一群舞者在沙灘邊將手埋在土壤，當玩得盡興時，外力介入干擾，為什麼快樂總是難以持續？「康乃馨」提出了一個非常重要的問題，答案則留給觀眾自我推敲。舞者在花園中尋求那份兒時的童稚與快樂，雖然一次又一次的被外力驅逐，但又再接再力的回到舞台上，嬉戲的意念為重或禮教的規範為先？舞台上呈現兩相較勁的角力戰，一如真實人生的舞台，霎時台上台下難分軒輊。

說故事的時間到了，舞者排成一行以接力的方式進行，內容可能是幼時的夢想，可能是父母的諄諄告誡，也可能是有關家庭紀念品的歷史。他們渴望分享彼此的愛，然而愛是一種很複雜的情感，溫柔是最容易了解的部份，但是因忌妒而產生的暴力行為卻常常是社會版的頭條新聞，「愛情如同死亡般地壯烈，忌妒如同墓碑般的無情」，包許使用大量重覆性的暴力肢體語彙來表達她內心深處渴望的溫柔，如同美國導演大衛林區的「藍絲絨」，在目睹一連串血腥暴力性虐待的感官刺激之後，乍見一片溫熙的陽光，才能真正的聽見溫柔的鳥鳴。

演出者帶著道具踐踏康乃馨，狂烈的表演使觀眾秉氣凝神，舞者一個接著一個帶著椅子走至前舞台併排座好，雙腿不時畫著橫線及交叉，這種笨拙的姿勢逐漸地轉變成急馳的狂奔，如同行人們穿梭於街道，翻飛的外在舞蹈技巧及內在的想像力交會在舞台交叉路口。這些生活化演出的舞者，看起來倒像是在城市交叉口奔馳的巴士旅人，而魔術師、體育家、馴狗師、提琴家等客人的出現，更打斷了一貫傳統的平鋪直敘陳述，加強了這生命片斷的疏離感，想必受到劇作家布列希特(Bertolt Brecht)精神感召所致。燈暗了，只見舞台上殘留的康乃馨花瓣，它是唯一的見證人，只有它知道曾經有過的童心及愛的爭戰。

BODY LANGUAGE BY MATTHEW STONE

Karley Sciortino interviews Matthew Stone for Vogue Hommes Japan Vol 5 2010

This is the first time you’ve shot fashion. What was different about this way of working?

I wanted to make images that functioned as fashion photography and not just a repackaged version of what I normally do. Normally I shoot people naked. As much as I love clothes, and have spent years dressing up like an idiot, I feel they are distracting in my work. But I saw this shoot as an opportunity to be more playful with my aesthetic, and to show some of my humor, which doesn’t always come across in my other work.

Your work has always aspired toward the spiritual. However this shoot seems to employ more overt references to pre-existing religious imagery, for example the crown of thorns and the portrait of you cradling a naked body, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pieta. Was this intentional?

I often try to avoid specific religious references in my work because I want to find a new spiritual language, rather than just comment on the nature or politics of the past. Fashion, however, is a specific cultural conversation that celebrates the recycling of imagery, without demanding that the intentions behind their use be justified. This is what makes it so powerful culturally. The fashion world also welcomes aesthetics and beauty, whereas both are often seen as problematic in contemporary art.

In your self-portrait you wear a crown of thorns. How do you identify with Jesus? Are you a leader?

I think casting myself as a proto-Jesus is essentially where the humor I mentioned comes in. Although if you were to consider that Jesus was basically an anti-capitalist, hippy shaman with a fundamental belief in the transformative powers of love and humanity, then yes there are striking similarities.

More seriously though, anybody that makes culture is in a position of influence, and becomes a leader of sorts to other people. This is why the model of shaman as artist is so appealing to me. An artist can do more than make expensive objects. Artists should live to inspire others to further their own unique creative potential within the world. That is the role of the shaman.

So what exactly is your role as an art-shaman?

The shaman is an ordinary individual who enters non-ordinary psychological states to gain knowledge and energy. This energy is then given a bodily form as art, and shared with a community to effect positive change. So essentially the shaman acts as a bridge between the divine and real worlds. This is still happening today. Art, movies, fashion and music everywhere are all metaphors for supreme energies that everyone can learn to access and be empowered by. Culture constantly speaks of the eternal, but it becomes powerful and resonates when spoken of in the language of our times. Warhol particularly recognized this. I think we can consider his factory a spiritual home to a group of modern shamans, and his portraits as depictions of the saints of his society.

So if Warhol’s sanctified Marilyn, and claimed celebrities as newfound Gods, do you think he saw them as fulfilling a genuinely spiritual role for their devotees?

I don’t know whether Warhol intellectualized what he did to that extent, or whether he just intuitively moved toward something that people loved because it would be successful. I see Andy Warhol as a deeply spiritual artist who worked in a very intuitive way. He had a religious upbringing, so the art he experienced from a young age would have been Byzantine Catholic icon paintings—portraits of saints, the Virgin Mary, devotional figures—and you see that reflected in his paintings. Warhol’s legacy was totally of his own time, but it also transcends it. That’s what all art should aspire toward.

It’s not common for artists today to speak so overtly about the spiritual, but you seem to embrace it.

People are disillusioned with religion and associate it with hypocrisy, war and small-mindedness. Historically we have killed off Gods as they have ceased to serve the social and political reality of our times. In the twentieth century, when God died, we were left with a spiritual vacuum, and nihilism emerged as a new belief system. It’s now up to us to determine new ways of understanding our place within the universe.

How do you choose who you photograph?

Mainly I shoot my friends. Ultimately I want to make images of people who truly inspire me. Somehow I feel that if I work with people who have beautiful minds and beautiful bodies, the images will become infused with the combined energy of their physicality and thinking. Beauty on every level.

So in a way the work becomes a collaboration between you and the people in the images.

Completely. This is what I find so interesting. You can’t use people in the same way you use normal materials. You have to work with people, the same as in everyday life. The artist Joseph Beuys proposed a type of collaboration that resulted in “the world as a living sculpture”.

You’ve referenced Beuys as an influence in the past. Some say his greatest artwork was his statement that “Everybody is an artist.” How do you define an artist?

Artists are not special or worth more than any other person. They are simply those that have come to be conscious of the fact that every action is creative and can be beautiful in some way. The mindful choices that they make not only define their own lives, but shine like happy, truth-loving stars, born to illuminate and inspire the lives of those that encounter them.

WRONG BY ASGER CARLSEN

                                                                                                                   

The Doctor Is In(sane) : The Questionable Reality of Asger Carlsen

What are these?  

They appear at first, like so many photographs do, as candid moments, mundane vernacular portraits or documents of small news events from the pages of a weekly local paper.  The on-camera flash blasts in with that harsh direct light we are used to seeing in our family albums, the black and white palette inexplicably adding to their authenticity 

Why is that?

They are familiar, and there is nothing out of the ordinary in these photographs except everything.

Are they even photographs?

 I think of the bumper sticker, stuck upside-down that reads "Question Reality", where the gesture itself is a visual pun of it's own sentiment.  The "truth" of photographs has always been in question, but in these images, it's the un-truth you are left wondering about, like vivid hallucinations you see out of the corner of your eye. They are optical illusions in the grandest sense, doctored images with invisible scars.

I can look and know that no one has two functioning wooden legs, but there he is, vacuuming the floor. There he is, stopped at a red light on his motorcycle, and I believe in him, over and over.

There is a funny expression that people use online in reaction to awful or disturbing images: "Cannot Un-See!" they say in dismay. The image is burned in, the damage is done. I cannot un-see the alternate reality that Asger has created in these images. I am convinced.

- Tim Barber

NYC, March 21, 2010

Shao-Yen Chen

Is a London-based fashion designer whose works bring together sculptural forms and innovative textiles. His graduation collection at Central Saint Martins’ MA Fashion Design was selected to participate in London Fashion Week A/W 2010.

WHEN I SEE HIS GRADUATION COLLECTION LAST YEAR, I KNOW THIS GUY WILL BE A SHINING STAR. AFTER I READ HIS INTERVIEW, I CAN'T BELIEVE WE ARE REALLY SIMILAR IN PERSON. 

HERE IS HIS WEBSITE: www.shao-yen.com/ 

HERE IS HIS INTERVEW ON DAZED: www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/8085/1/shao-yen-chen 

UN COUP DE DES PART TWO

JAROSLAW KOZLOWSKI


According to Kozlowski, language does not correspond to reality but reflects it by virtue of its symbolic construction. Punctionuation marks, he believes, are of particular significance in this context: they neither describe nor reflects reality; instead, “what eludes confrontation with extra-linguistic reality […] in (written) language is punctuation […] even though we colloquially call these signs ‘sentence-marks,’ they do not signify any-thing but what they are. There are no models in extra-linguistic reality they refer to, and conversely they are not the models for any element in that reality. They designate nothing even if they—simultaneousl—are not empty; they are neutral with respect to extra-linguistic reality. In this sence,,:;--()//,,“?!... By effacing the text from the critique of pure reason, from a work that raises the questions of being and presence, the artist engages in a play with Kant’s language, retaining nothing but what is linguistic—and is yet nothing: the marks that in turn mark the absent work, the blanks, the void.

Propositions raise the question of reality and of the relationship between images and language. The first page shows small black square, its corners marked with the letters a, b, c, and d. Underneath the square appears a label, the statement / this is a square/, which already illustrates the discrepancy between image and word. The next page bears the heading (language), followed by the proposition this square is black. And the square is missing on this page as well as the following ones. On the third page, the metalinguistic level commences, indicated by the heading (metalanguage); the square is missing, and there is the proposition the proposition “the square is black” is true. Two subsequent pages give the metalinguistic screw further truns, resulting in (metametametalanguage), followed by the final sentence “the proposition // i ascertain: ‘it is true that the proposition “the square is black” is true’// is true.”




The extreme accumulation of metalinguistic propositions and the absence of the image referred to leads language to abdicate its relationship with reality; it becomes its own reality. Kozlowski “proves”that this is indeed so by repeating the same construction on the following pages while relacing “true”with “false”and “is” with “is not”.

Kozlowski’s artist’s book a, b, thus the artist, is a play with relativism. The first page of this landscape—format book already bears the two titular letters. A and b are separated by, and positioned at equal distances from, a vertical line that runs, slightly aslant, across the entire height of the sheet. On the pages the follow, the letters and the line progressively turn counterclockwise—depending on the respecive positions, the line is extended, but the letters remain unchanged in their placement relative to one another and the line—until the entire arrangement has turned 180 degrees and the letters are exactly upside down. The back cover, too, is upside down, and the reader can simply turn the book over and read it from the other end; the line and the letters now rotate clockwise. By not predeter-mining the direction in which the book is to be read, kozlowski gives the reader a new role and the liberty of deciding for him or herself how the book ought to be read.

IAN WALLANCE

In 1979, i made a large photographic work titled image/ text,  which combined images of me in the studo making the itself, with a text meditating on this concept of self-referencing. The concept of image/text developed out of the photographic documentation of my studio practice that i began in the late 1960s. This documentation was conceived as an inttegral part of the work process,and as a reflection on the making of art-work as a performance—an acting out of meaning-making in the processof fabricating the art object itself. This work was an early attempt to reconfigure a conceptual art practice through its literary antecedent in the work of stëphane mallarmé, who i had come to recognize as an important precursor to visual poetry as well as conceptual art.

EWA PARTUM

With her poems by ewa, the artist offers proof that poetry cannot be defined by language and workd alone.instead, she expands the concept of poetry by two essential factors: the author’s creative action and the letter as an imagistic sign, “visual poetry.”

ANA TORFS

Every installation ny ana trofs makes for a powerful cinematic experience. Each of her works enables me to distinguish more nuances in the difference between film projection and installation, between movie theatre and gallery, between telling and showing. Torfs’ work is always on the boundary between something or other: slightly uncomfortable but with increasing confidence.

UN COUP DE DES PART ONE

MARCEL BROODTHAERS

He aims at a complete elimination of the words by masking them with black bars similar to those used to render portraits anonymous by obscuring the eyes; the words of an entire line are fused in one black block.

Through the use of language, one can bring the world into one’s own reach. Things are named, distinguished from each other and classified, letters become words, and words are linked with animals and things. Language shapes the way in which the world appeals to us and allows us to establish common meaning. According to broodthaers, however, this means that the object of language is dependent on the individual who uses it: “we pass from the alphabet to the world, from the word to the elementary phrase and from there to the object, which has become dependent on the word (..), that is to say, the subject.” In his work he constantly endeavors to overcome the supremacy of language, to which the work of art is also subjected on the one hand, by manifesting its conventional and subjective nature and, on the other, by abolishing the primacy of language by approaching words, objects and images in the same way and bringing them as close together as possible.

GERHARD RUHM

In the early 1960s, i began to reduce the copy in some brochures and books by blotting out the type area with ink, leaving only few selected words, to the synoptic view, i hoped, they would form a free-floating constellation in the sense of “concrete poetry”, an extremely compressed poem that would now transmit its own message. Entirely blackened pages function here as pauses that are part of the composition, silences that delay and create tension. Turning the pages becomes an act that structures times, redering us consious of the processual character of reading. The extent, however, to which the sequence of isolated terms ultimately forms a meaningful “whole” depends also on the reader’s interpretive ability. After all, every word by itself, like an acoustic event, an accord, already triggers sensation that call forth associations.

DOMINIK STEIGER

I LOVE HOW DOMINIK PLAY ON WORD.

“They lack discipline...They're not strict enough with themselves." 


 - Rei Kawakubo 


when WWD interviewed 68-year-old Rei, talking about new designers and the possibility of a successor of the house

Head to the West