Art visual np2

Almost as a sequel of the article I wrote about the notion of Urbicide, here is a invitation to read Andrew Herscher 's essay, Violence Taking Place. The architecture of the Kosovo conflict which attempts to illustrate the role of architecture destruction in the second conflict of the Balkans in the 90's (the first one being the Bosnia war). In fact, destructing buildings in an asymmetrical conflict is not anymore a strategy of diminution of the enemy's forces but rather a symbolic negation of the otherness' culture and to a broader scale, the otherness' existence. Herscher thus recounts the three phases of the Kosovo conflict which all dramatized this perspective on architecture assassination. The first one (1st and 2nd images) is the 1998 series of attacks, massacres and profanation from (Christians) Serbians towards (Muslims) Albanians in Kosovo. The second one was the surgical bombing of Belgrade by NATO (3rd image) targeting not only political objectives but al

The Truffle is a self sustaining small shelter designed and built by the Spanish office Ensamble Studio (see previous article about their incredible Hemeroscopium House). The most remarkable aspect of this building to me is its construction process. In fact, in a way which recalls Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev's Bell construction, the team has first created an empty hillock, then assembled the negative of the architecture with hay bundles within this emptiness, cast concrete in between and eventually after the concrete dried, destroyed the earth hillock. The remaining step then consists in the evacuation of the hay from the inside of the building, task which is ensured by Paulina the cow in the following movie: thanks Xinyang for reminding me of this beautiful project !

52 Episodes in all available to fans of Leo Carillo (Pancho) and Duncan Renaldo (the Cisco Kid).

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Poema des los dones (Poem about Gifts) is a poem written by Jorge Luis Borges after he was nominated Director of the National Library in Buenos Aires. That is that time that he strongly lost his sight and this poem expresses the beauty of the irony of his inability to fully appreciate his function. He is in fact condemned to be the blind warden of the Library. Original Spanish version follows the English one: POEM ABOUT GIFTS Let none think that I by tear or reproach make light Of this manifesting the mastery Of God, who with excelling irony Gives me at once both books and night. In this city of books he made these eyes The sightless rulers who can only read, In libraries of dreams, the pointless Paragraphs each new dawn offers To awakened care. In vain the day Squanders on them its infinite books, As difficult as the difficult scripts That perished in Alexandria. An old Greek story tells how some king died Of hunger and thirst, though proffered springs and fruits; My bearing lost

I recently evoked the series of lectures organized by Parsons via its assistant Dean Ed Keller (see previous post ) entitled Design and Existential Risk . The first event of this series occurred on October 9th with a conversation between the same Ed Keller , Carla Leitao , science fiction writer Bruce Sterling and the figure of the blogosphere, Geoff Manaugh . The next lecture will occur on Thursday with the interesting author of the book Enduring Innocence , Keller Easterling.

Alexandre Farto is an artist who creates monumental faces by scratching facades' material until it composes beautiful bichromic compositions. He also works with wood, metal, paper and billboards but the wall series seems to be the most architectural one. As every piece of art which is created by subtraction of material (sculptures coming obviously first in mind), it is beautiful and vertiginous to think that the work is already contained within the material and that the artist content himself to reveal it. Thanks Martin.

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Two drag-queens (Anthony/Mitzi and Adam/Felicia) and a transexual (Bernadette) contract to perform a drag show at a resort in Alice Springs, a resort town in the remote Australian desert. They head west from Sydney aboard their lavender bus, Priscilla. En route, it is discovered that the woman they've contracted with is Anthony's wife. Their bus breaks down, and is repaired by Bob, who travels on with them. Written by Randy Goldberg

Brittlebush is a desert dwelling designed and built by Simon de Aguero in Arizona. 90% of the construction material have been found on site or nearby which makes this shelter being both high-tech and vernacular at the same time... More to read on Designboom Thanks to Nikolas (who sent me this link after finding disturbing similitude with the project I am currently working on !)

Dublin, 1922. Gypo Nolan, strong but none too bright, has been ousted from the rebel organization and is starving. When he finds that his equally destitute sweetheart Katie has been reduced to prostitution, he succumbs to temptation and betrays his former comrade Frankie to the British authorities for a 20 pound reward. In the course of one gloomy, foggy night, guilt and retribution inexorably close in... Written by Rod Crawford ^^RAT^^

JUST BECAUSE.

Gardening in the Tropics, you never know what you'll turn up. Quite often, bones. In some places they say when volcanoes erupt, they spew out dense and monumental as stones the skulls of desaparecidos -- the disappeared ones. Mine is only a kitchen garden so I unearth just occasional skeletons. The latest was of a young man from the country who lost his way and crossed the invisible boundary into rival political territory. I buried him again so he can carry on growing. Our cemeteries are thriving too. The newest addition was the drug baron wiped out in territorial competition who had this stunning funeral complete with twenty-one-gun salute and attended by everyone, especially the young girls famed for the vivacity of their dress, their short skirts and even briefer lives. --From Olive Senior's book of poems, Gardening in the Tropics (2005).

Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti , the two founders of Decolonizing Architecture (with Eyal Weizman) will be presenting their work at Columbia University on November 10th (at 6:30pm). Their lecture entitled Profaning Colonial Architecture will introduce their strategy of re-using abandoned Israeli settlements in the West Bank for the future new state of Palestine. Their projects are therefore based on a pretty optimistic scenario (Israel leaving the West Bank (1) without destroying their own settlements as they did in Gaza (2)) but as said in a BBC article that a reader just sent to me, the colonization's impact on land is such that it can now be considered almost as irreversible which make Decolonizing Architecture's projects even more important.

Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is among the most powerful antiwar films ever made. A fiery Kirk Douglas stars as a World War I French colonel who goes head-to-head with the army’s ruthless top brass when his men are accused of cowardice after being unable to carry out an impossible mission. This haunting, exquisitely photographed dissection of the military machine in all its absurdity and capacity for dehumanization (a theme Kubrick would continue to explore throughout his career) is assembled with its legendary director’s customary precision, from its tense trench warfare sequences to its gripping courtroom climax to its ravaging final scene. "Hello there soldier! Ready to kill more Germans?"

Sorry, but it's in Hindustani without subtitles, but I always have contended that great films need no verbal cues. It is 1856, the eve of the first Indian struggle for independence (The Mutiny of 1857). A British firm, "The East India Company" rules much of India; directly or indirectly through 'treaties of friendship.'The kingdom of Avadh is under such a treaty of friendship with the British Company. Its ruler, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan), is an indifferent ruler, who prefers arts to the matters of state or politics. He is a poet, composer, singer, dancer and a choreographer. In reality, he is merely a figurehead. The British Company has allowed the landlords to become fairly independent of the state. The Company, in addition to collecting the riches from the state, also takes a share of the taxes collected by the landl

The biblical episode of the battle of Jericho has always fascinated me. The story from the book of Joshua (6:1-27) introduces the first battle the Israelites had to win in order to conquest the land promised by God after the Egyptian slavery period and the forty years spent in the desert. God gave Joshua instructions in order to take the city of Jericho: the Israelites had to march around the city's walls once every day during six days. Then on the seventh day, they had to do the same but in addition to blow in their horns which would make the walls collapse and the city easily defeated. It always pleases me to imagine a poetico-scientific explanation to this episode by thinking that the horns actually reached the resonance frequency of the walls; this same phenomena that explains why military manuals prevent troops to march on bridges not to risk to make them collapse. I find very compelling the potentiality of destroying whole buildings with only human means (or in that case, mu

Archinect just released an article about a very ironic project which proposes to build a " terrorist motel " instead of the controversial Muslim Cultural Center in Down Town New York. Mocking the idea of associating Muslims with terrorists and acknowledging the fact that the West always needs enemies in order to sustain itself, Stealth Architects proposes to provide terrorists directly on the U.S. ground thus authorizing an organize a local hunt rather than expensive abroad wars in Afghanistan. This project is also a small ode to the act of excavating by creating construction documents that indicate the process of digging in order to achieve this negative labyrinth. More to read and to see on Archinect's page about the project .

Grace Jones photo by Jean-Paul Goude Just a look at a few pages inside of Island, a history of the famed record label out of Jamaica. Florence and the Machine by Tom Beard

SEE it all at Rodell's blog here .

Old Liar Vomit 18" x 24" Acrylic and Oil on Hardboard Socks 31'' x 23'' FIND OUT MORE HERE .

For the weirdo in this melodrama, a young man who kidnaps a girl and keeps her locked in the cellar of an old English country house, is a puzzler if ever there was one. He violently captures the girl by cornering her in a vacant alley and knocking her out with chloroform, the way he does the butterflies he also gathers. Then he hauls her off in a small van. But once he has got her in the cellar, he treats her with soothing gentleness, brings her trays of food with flowers and begs her to fall in love with him. Stern though he is about insisting that she not go beyond the door, he is equally as lenient and indulgent in trying to be agreeable to her. No wonder, the girl, an art student, is more bewildered than frightened by him, more inclined to be cautious and analytical than to try to crack him over the head. And no wonder she is altogether baffled and terrified now, indeed—when she finally offers to give herself to him and he shuns and reviles her hideously.

MARLON DARBEAU :  "I have been working on a new project for sometime now, it's all coming along pretty fine...One great moment was while working one night at my Dad's workshop, he came outside to see how things were going. He realized I needed his help to get the angle on a component right, which was really hard for me to do alone on the metal bender... And that was the first time we, should I say... made something together, funny, I never imagined that moment." CHECK  the preview on Marlon's blog  here .

In case you didn't notice ;) PLEASURE XXX

CHECK the Never See Come See blog here .

photograph by Anita Gould in New Zealand...