Art visual np2

Still from Diana-Sofia Estrada's 'Ways of Making Love in u.s' (2006) on display today at Alice Yard, Woodbrook, Port of Spain . For crying out loud just find out more by clicking here ! WATCH a teaser of Diana-Sofia Estrada's 'Ways of Making Love in u.s' here .

Wall at upper Edward Street, Port of Spain. FROM THE ORGANISERS: "Come witness for yourself the record and results of an amazing journey. EVENT: "From Concrete to Canvas"   AT: Queen's Hall  WHEN: April 29 to May 2 Former vagrant/mural (so-called graffitti) artist Clinton Cummings shares the heart-rending, painful and ultimately inspiring story of his challenging journey from the desolate depths of addiction, homelessness, crime and violence towards a clean, purpose-driven, dedicated life of wonder, beauty and hope, on the continuing road to fulfilling his dreams, through this, his first ever official exhibition of his latest works since that life-changing moment less than one year ago when he began to turn his life around. This remarkable transformation, almost metaphorically reflected in the evolution from crude murals on concrete walls and city streets, to expressions on canvas sheets is a rousing testament to the tenacity of the human spirit. Grasp the opportunit

Our friend Yaohua Wang (see his Carbon tower and his interview of Wes Jones, his thesis tutor ) from Sci-Arc sent me his thesis project he just presented in a room apparently fully packed ! The production of work is simply amazing and the ingenuity of the project is being proven in every rendering. However, a very important part of what makes his Latent City such an amazing projects is embedded in its narration and in this regard I HIGHLY recommend to take the time of watching the 15 min long movie below that explains very didactically why this city is called latent. The narration implies the architect Foral (aka Yaohua !) finding an agreement with the State in order to build a new city for almost no money. The agreement has to remain secret because it implies a manipulation of big industrial corporations that will own the land for twenty years, build an industrial city according to Foral's plans and therefore providing an important infrastructure. When the city is built, local

Macram é  cord and wood bead belt by Denise Hendrie. Photo coutesy Kerry Samuels-Noel/Chic Shak. Place: Chic Shak Lifestyle. Jerningham Avenue, Belmont, Port of Spain.  Dates: Wednesday,28th April 2010 and Saturday, 1st May 2010.  Time: 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm and 12 noon - 4:00 pm.  Chic Shak, in Belmont, is starting another ' Meet the Maker ' open house series and the first designer for 2010 is Denise Hendrie. To create her fashionable belts and jewellery, Denise uses mainly macramé cord and hemp twine/yarn, embellished with various types of beads. Her pieces are like nothing you’ve ever seen before, so, if you don’t like fading into the background and you like to be different, come meet Denise and see her stuff. READ  more at the Chic Shak blog here . 

Photo courtesy the artist. Trinidad 'cross-over' artist Eddie Bowen calls this one of his favorite paintings. It's called 'Ghost of Carnival' (2009) and was shown in a select exhibition of work that opened on April 22 at 29 Syndenham Avenue, St Ann's Port of Spain. Bowen lists his inspirations as: "the Great Pyramid at Giza, my dad, Leonardo da Vinci, Durer, Ghiberti, Michaelangelo, Shakespeare, living in Trinidad, the Bhagavad Gita, the study of Yoga since 1993, the Psalms, Egyptology, sci-fi, cricket, sacred/ancient architecture, teaching, questions arising from skeptical, objective, analytical, spiritual and speculative enquiry into mankind’s history and evolution, painting, growing trees (the oxygen machines),'outsider' art, world affairs - the environment, Cydonia, architecture." FIND  out more about Bowen at his website  here . From 'The Rock Machines' by Eddie Bowen (c) 1997

Architecture is the physical form which envelops human lives in all the complexity of their relations with their environment. Jean Renaudie, 1968 In my opinion, Jean Renaudie is one of the very best French architects of the last fifty years. His two housing complexes in Ivry sur Seine near Paris (see previous post ) and in Givors near Lyon are two very successful examples of architecture becoming urban in an era (50's-60's) that created what is now famous as the French suburbs catastrophe. In fact, those two housing complexes are extremely interesting in the fact that they embody a real urban density, mix several social levels, organize urban life on a multitude of storeys, blur the limits between private and public areas and supply a little piece of garden to every apartment. This architecture is full of episodes, surprizing moments of beauty in an urban artefact/landscape full of hideaways. In order to know more, I recommend Irenee Scalbert 's book: A Right to Difference

This Thursday, Francois Roche ( R&Sie(n) ) will be giving a lecture at the Architectural Association entitled Ecosophical Apparatus and Skizoid Machines (using Guattari's terminology). This lecture accentuates the launch of R&Sie(n)'s new book called BIO[re]BO[o}T that gathers the Paris based office's work on machines and schizophrenia in architecture.

My seven-year-old nephew was playing with these Sesame Street cards. But he was more interested in the reverse of the cards than the other side with the writing. He scattered them on the floor, with the images and colours facing upwards. I liked how it looked. A puddle of monsters.

CAISO on Thursday continues its series of movie screenings with The Times of Harvey Milk , a moving and funny Academy Award-winning film about the first openly gay elected official in the US. (This is the original Harvey Milk film, not the Gus Van Sant-directed Sean Penn movie). TIME : 19:00 - 22:00,  LOCATION : Bohemia, Woodbrook. Free; donations accepted. Refreshments on sale.

"I have been working on a proposed set design for Mount Irvine Bay Hotel And Golf Club- JAZZ ON THE BEACH 2010 for about 3 months and this weekend things materialized. Last year I noticed people stayed far away from the stage as there wasn't any shaded area close enough. Working with the idea "SHADE"... this lead to the design of a canopy that felt like the sky came closer. It was both aesthetically appropriate and functional as this year people actually got to lay or sit in the shade near the stage"-Trinidadian design artist Marlon Darbeau. READ more at Marlon's blog here . SEE an interview with Marlon here .

'Eve' by Marilyn Morrison. Exhibited at Island People's 'If House' during Erotic Art Week 2009. Erotic Art Week is an annual festival that was conceived by a collective of visual, graphic and performing artists living in Trinidad & Tobago. 2010 will be the second year of the Caribbean's first Erotic Art Week which will run under the theme "Wider". CHECK out the blog here .

picture: Illinois State Penitentiary Stateville 1916 Forms of Constraints: A History of Prison Architecture is a book written by Norman Johnston which investigates the physicality of prisons from middle age to the XXth century. It is very interesting, not only as an understanding of the retaliation institutions prison embodies but also because prisons represents the quintessence of authoritarian societies, one can very easily compare their plans with those of "normal" architecture and find a lot of similarities. Architecture is systematically used as an apparatus of control and the plan almost always expresses this dimension very clearly. Johnston Norman. FORMS OF CONSTRAINT. A history of prison architecture . Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003 Pentonville Prison London 1844 Moabit Prison Berlin 1844 Prision Modelo Madrid 1877 National Penitentiary Mexico City 1885 Maison de Force Ghent 1839 First Western Penitentiary Pittsburgh 1820 Eastern State Penitentiary P

Still following the adventures of Julius Corentin Acquefacques, prisoner of the dreams (see previous article ), here is another graphic novel by the extremely talented Marc-Antoine Mathieu . This one is entitled La Qu... and has unfortunately not been translated in English (apparently only Dead Memory has been). This novel is once again extremely Kafkaian, but also borrows a small part of its narration to one of the best (and not so known) short story by James Graham Ballard called Billennium , which depicts an overpopulated world in which each citizen has the right on 3.5 square meters. The first image above also illustrate the influence of Marc-Antoine Mathieu since Lars von Trier's Dogville has been released ten years after La Qu... 's publication in 1993. An important precision here, I tried not to spoil the novel by including the best frames of it, so you can still be fascinated while reading it for the first time.

Afghanistan Wartime Architecture is a (huge) series of pictures taken in Afghanistan by photographers from the U.S. Army since the war started in 2001. Of course, the photographs are extremely self-indulgent and maintain the American propaganda (coming from the Army, nobody was waiting for something else !), but also shows interesting military architectures that have been built or appropriated there. Those instant fortress recalls the Roman Legion's camps that were constructed very quickly and the logistic behind it is interesting to observe. For example the American who originally produce the Bulldozer D7, seem to have bought a certain amount of those back from the Israeli who customized it in order to make their best oppressive weapon against the Palestinian out of it. Thanks Eleni