A 24-hour documentary film, narrated in real time and on real life, about a modern metropolis, Berlin, can be now watched for free on the Auteurs website. (LINK)
I recall Le Corbusier once quoted in his "Après le cubisme" book suggesting that the grande beauté is something appearing mediocre at first, but which can nevertheless sustain itself and even augment, finally even leave us in admiration. That's how my impressions of the TV program exactly went through. Inspiring and inspired.
During one episode on an opera singer's T-shirt it reads "art is truth". How true. But above all, I feel my greed for life only grows hence on.
lördag, oktober 17, 2009
onsdag, oktober 14, 2009
Wikipedia entries
Still couldn't figure out how to add pictures to Wikipedia when logged in. Meanwhile, ...
1. Elephant Parade Amsterdam 2009
"From September onwards, a hundred full size art elephants will swarm the streets of Amsterdam: together, they form a remarkable open-air exhibition, the Elephant Parade, that is dedicated to the Asian elephant."
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_parade
2. Memorial in the rear courtyard of Dohány Street Synagogue
in Budapest in honor of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who heroically rescued the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doh%C3%A1ny_Street_Synagogue
3. Galil Jewish-Arab School in Israel
"To build peace between Jews and Arabs in Israel through our bilingual and multi-cultural school. A model of the only future for Israeli society: one where friendship and trust between all citizens overcomes hatred and violence."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galil_Jewish-Arab_School
1. Elephant Parade Amsterdam 2009
"From September onwards, a hundred full size art elephants will swarm the streets of Amsterdam: together, they form a remarkable open-air exhibition, the Elephant Parade, that is dedicated to the Asian elephant."
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_parade
2. Memorial in the rear courtyard of Dohány Street Synagogue
in Budapest in honor of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who heroically rescued the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doh%C3%A1ny_Street_Synagogue
3. Galil Jewish-Arab School in Israel
"To build peace between Jews and Arabs in Israel through our bilingual and multi-cultural school. A model of the only future for Israeli society: one where friendship and trust between all citizens overcomes hatred and violence."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galil_Jewish-Arab_School
lördag, augusti 01, 2009
"Utanförskap"
Eritreanska midsommarfirande i Husby, den omtalade "utanförskapsområden". Många reagerar på begreppet strukturell diskriminering men när jag var där, jag såg en annan sida av de marginaliserade som bor i miljonprogrammet.
Reportage Gallery
Reportage Gallery
torsdag, juli 02, 2009
Where is my Iranian vote?
Anyone who has watched Nahid Persson Sarvestani's documentary "Drottningen och jag" from last year, a surprising tale of encounter between a communist girl and the Iranian exiled empress, would perhaps be less surprised to find both the Iranian communists and royalists coming together to demonstrate against the alleged vote rigging in Iran's current presidential election.
On June 23rd, hundreds of overseas supporters of Iran’s defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, many of them wearing masks, turned out in Stockholm to began an almost daily protest for Iranian democracy and press freedoms, culminating in the break-in and storming of the Iranian embassy in Stockholm several days later.
Some dissenting voices were also heard during the open demonstrations. While I was attending a rally at Sergel's Square, at its conclusion all of a sudden a few pro-government old guards started to yell at a young female protester, who, then, angrily retorted: "I'm not going to be shut up by you orthodox zealots!" Luckily with the police standing by, the argument didn't descend into violence.
I was asked why most of the slogans were exclusively in English, but how many of us could actually tell the difference of Farsi from Arabic just by looking at the written signs? There are other plausible reasons as well, or does it really matter?
On June 23rd, hundreds of overseas supporters of Iran’s defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, many of them wearing masks, turned out in Stockholm to began an almost daily protest for Iranian democracy and press freedoms, culminating in the break-in and storming of the Iranian embassy in Stockholm several days later.
Some dissenting voices were also heard during the open demonstrations. While I was attending a rally at Sergel's Square, at its conclusion all of a sudden a few pro-government old guards started to yell at a young female protester, who, then, angrily retorted: "I'm not going to be shut up by you orthodox zealots!" Luckily with the police standing by, the argument didn't descend into violence.
I was asked why most of the slogans were exclusively in English, but how many of us could actually tell the difference of Farsi from Arabic just by looking at the written signs? There are other plausible reasons as well, or does it really matter?
onsdag, juni 10, 2009
My new baby
Thanks to the jerk who stole my D300 in downtown Stockholm the other day, I finally come back to tinker with films - not that bad, huh?
The good deal I found at tradera.se gave me a mint conditioned Contax G-1 plus Carl Zeiss Planar T* 45mm f2, costing less than 3,000 SEK in total. I wished it was a G2, but I actually liked the older version more, which felt more right in the hand, a great back-to-basics I should add. The Zeiss planar is said to the sharpest 35mm lens ever made, but nay, more relevant for me is its "normal" focal length I'd like to accustom my eyes to.
Last evening I shot my first Tri-X roll, how neat! Mastering the rangefinder focus is a wild guessing game, though. I assume I missed roughly 50% of all the exposures. An alright start.
That's what happens when you lose motivation or ambition, feel stuck or slow forward - just unlock the shutter and press on.
The good deal I found at tradera.se gave me a mint conditioned Contax G-1 plus Carl Zeiss Planar T* 45mm f2, costing less than 3,000 SEK in total. I wished it was a G2, but I actually liked the older version more, which felt more right in the hand, a great back-to-basics I should add. The Zeiss planar is said to the sharpest 35mm lens ever made, but nay, more relevant for me is its "normal" focal length I'd like to accustom my eyes to.
Last evening I shot my first Tri-X roll, how neat! Mastering the rangefinder focus is a wild guessing game, though. I assume I missed roughly 50% of all the exposures. An alright start.
That's what happens when you lose motivation or ambition, feel stuck or slow forward - just unlock the shutter and press on.
lördag, mars 14, 2009
tisdag, februari 24, 2009
Yves Saint Laurent’s collection on sale
Auction house Christie’s intends, as planned, to commence on this Wednesday February the 25th with its sale of two Qing dynasty artworks looted from the Chinese Summer Palace near Peking during past imperial Frenco-British "expedition" in the Second Opium War era. In Christie’s press release, the positive corporate spin is that auction proceeds would go to help form Yves Saint Laurent Foundation dedicated mainly "to scientific research and to fight AIDS". (Christie’s)
I have no idea why this rings stridently familiar to me despite the fact that the historical background was nearly 150 years ago. As far as I can gather from the history books, the entire Chinese palace was set ablaze and the burning lasted three full days. Lord Elgin, the son of Thomas Bruce who was the responsible person authorizing the removal of Parthenon Marbles (now Elgin Marbles, i.e., Elgin collection) from the Greek Acropolis to Britain, motivated his decision for the destruction of the Summer Palace "to exact revenge on the mistreatment of almost twenty western prisoners". Almost 20, and the buzz word "torture" obviously held the conscience of an enlightened people in shock. Thus an army of almost 20,000 troops, in the old pre-aeroplane days, marched half of the globe only to teach this important leçon d'humanité on the foreign soil. It's not about petty territorial disputes because, nostalgia aside, geographically the Far East has never been even in the remotest neighborhood of Europe. But the champions of universal principles were not accorded automatic break-in rights by those unruly hordes of crowds they encountered in China, for the locals were not like the "noble savages" they had assigned elsewhere. What? One quarter of humanity did not, alas, share their way of life, their mercantile ideals, and above all, their missionary values. Quelle intransigeance.
In his correspondence writing from year 1861, Victor Hugo hoped that one day France would repatriate its war plunder to the Chinese on moral, not merely legal grounds. He told the following story: "'Two robbers forcing themselves into a museum, devastating, looting and burning, leaving laughing hand-in-hand with their bags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain." To continue: "We, the Europeans are the civilized people, and for us, the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what the civilization has done to the barbarous."
By all accounts Yves Saint Laurent's coming €300m auction appears to be a serious business and is just being dubbed as "the auction of the century". Incidentally, the collectionneur Pierre Bergé was said to be otherwise so concerned about the human rights conditions in the country from which these two œuvres d'art pillées were stolen that he, in France Inter's interview, failed to mention the ostensible aim of that glorious 1860 war France pursued had something way less grandiose to begin with: to forcibly open China for occidental commerce, and especially, uninterrupted opium(!) traffic. Or was he really talking about the rights for the drug-dealers in a vague way, I wonder?
I have no idea why this rings stridently familiar to me despite the fact that the historical background was nearly 150 years ago. As far as I can gather from the history books, the entire Chinese palace was set ablaze and the burning lasted three full days. Lord Elgin, the son of Thomas Bruce who was the responsible person authorizing the removal of Parthenon Marbles (now Elgin Marbles, i.e., Elgin collection) from the Greek Acropolis to Britain, motivated his decision for the destruction of the Summer Palace "to exact revenge on the mistreatment of almost twenty western prisoners". Almost 20, and the buzz word "torture" obviously held the conscience of an enlightened people in shock. Thus an army of almost 20,000 troops, in the old pre-aeroplane days, marched half of the globe only to teach this important leçon d'humanité on the foreign soil. It's not about petty territorial disputes because, nostalgia aside, geographically the Far East has never been even in the remotest neighborhood of Europe. But the champions of universal principles were not accorded automatic break-in rights by those unruly hordes of crowds they encountered in China, for the locals were not like the "noble savages" they had assigned elsewhere. What? One quarter of humanity did not, alas, share their way of life, their mercantile ideals, and above all, their missionary values. Quelle intransigeance.
In his correspondence writing from year 1861, Victor Hugo hoped that one day France would repatriate its war plunder to the Chinese on moral, not merely legal grounds. He told the following story: "'Two robbers forcing themselves into a museum, devastating, looting and burning, leaving laughing hand-in-hand with their bags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain." To continue: "We, the Europeans are the civilized people, and for us, the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what the civilization has done to the barbarous."
By all accounts Yves Saint Laurent's coming €300m auction appears to be a serious business and is just being dubbed as "the auction of the century". Incidentally, the collectionneur Pierre Bergé was said to be otherwise so concerned about the human rights conditions in the country from which these two œuvres d'art pillées were stolen that he, in France Inter's interview, failed to mention the ostensible aim of that glorious 1860 war France pursued had something way less grandiose to begin with: to forcibly open China for occidental commerce, and especially, uninterrupted opium(!) traffic. Or was he really talking about the rights for the drug-dealers in a vague way, I wonder?
Veuillez trouver le texte original de Hugo sur le lien ci-dessous:
afi.ouvaton.org/article.php3?id_article=47
afi.ouvaton.org/article.php3?id_article=47
tisdag, november 11, 2008
Rain Man
"Little drops of rain whisper of the pain, tears of loves lost in the days gone by."
Thank you, Led Zeppelin.
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