• Very Bushwick and very fabulous (NYT)
• You know how we do in Brooklyn (Inc.)
• Pitchfork is Times-worthy.
• I managed to avoid reading any commentary on Inception until I actually saw it for myself yetserday, though at this point, I cannot possibly hope to catch up with all of the bandwidth that has been spilled (not to mention plot spoiled)—in theory and in practice, for example—over Nolan’s polarizing masterpiece. Also: A.O. Scott on film criticism in the digital age in theory and in practice; Dileep Rao (who plays Yusef) gives us the straight dope; Jonah Lehrer speculates on the neuroscience behind the film. Plus, Jonah Lehrer on LSD (in a manner of speaking)
• Am I guilty of “a breezy writing style”? (The Economist; related: China’s microblog macro-crackdown)
• Amid all the talk of his new book Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis also finds time to reflect on American Psycho (The Guardian)
• Sasha Frere-Jones endorses music in cloud form (The New Yorker)
• Tom Vanderbilt included a link to Dave Horton’s unabashedly self-righteous five-part essay on the fear of cycling in his own musings on bicycle highways for Slate. Definitely required reading for anyone who chooses to bike for transportation (as opposed to simply for leisure), with the caveat that it feels a bit too much like justification for my sense of entitlement that I feel when I tell pedestrians to get out of the bike lane. Still, the car culture of the US is easily worse than that of the UK (where Horton’s expertise lies; at least London has congestion pricing) and the essay actually affirmed my fear that cycling still has a long way to go.

• Deitch’s new projects (NYT)
• Brillo: from design to art (Print via BoingBoing)
• An amazing tale of art forensics (highly recommended) (New Yorker; cf.)
• Brion Gysin at the New Museum (NYT); interview with curator Laura Hoptman (AnOther)
• Graffiti prosecution in the Bronx vs. abroad
• Rhizome visits Babycastles.
• Wu Guanzhong, Chinese Artist, Dies at 90 (NYT)
• Why the Art World Hates “Work of Art” (Salon)
• Why Saltz kind of likes “Work of Art” (NYMag); he’s been recapping the show lately. (GQ, for their part, has been interviewing guest judges lately, but New York, not to be one-upped, has exit interviews, including why token outsider Erik kind of likes Jerry Saltz.
• Saltz on the Whitney as it should be (NYMag); Christian Marclay reviewed by his significant other (NYT); plus, the Whitney as it might be and Whitneys that never were; last but not least,  The Future Is Stupid: Jenny Holzer × Keds × Whitney = Bloomingdale’s Live Art

Conversely, I just watched Sebastian Peiter’s Guerilla Art documentary, available in full on Babelgum, which forgoes the knowingness for the straight dope… including interviews with the late Rammellzee.

His name was derived from RAM, plus M for magnitude, Sigma (Σ), the first summation operator, L for longitude, L for latitude, Z for z-bar, plus a couple more summation operators (Σ) for good luck.

–Daryoush Hah-Nahafi, Rammellzee Fashion, Viceland Today, July 7 2010

More obits at NYT / The Guardian, among other places.

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Also, a production worthy of Nowness:

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Related: Invader Walk

Too much, too much—

Full coverage & photos at Arrested Motion

Exit Through the Gift Shop premiere in L.A. I missed it in NYC… guess I’ll have to throw down $12.50 to see it at the Sunshine. (AM)

NYT’s review speculates about some kind of deeper meaning; NYMag’s interview with the Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash yields no answers whatsoever. UPDATE: Jon Reiss reviews Exit for HuffPo; GOOD has another bizarre interview with the filmmaker.

(Meta Alert) A sneak preview into the sequel, Exit Through the Garage Door. (SlamxHype)

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I Love Graffiti has a decent, if somewhat lengthy, interview with Os Gêmeos; worth checking out the photos for sure. (TBWE)

OGs doin' work last summer...

Apparently, the Brazilian twins’ awesome mural at Houston and Bowery is no longer: Animal reports that Deitch Projects has buffed it to furnish a blank slate for Shepard Fairey.

Os Gêmeos were also featured on an episode of W+K’s D.I.Y. America:

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UPDATE (4/15): Blek Le Rat studio teaser. (Wooster Collective)

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A nice interview with Serbian photographer Boogie. (True Slant)

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Sten&Lex’s ‘destroyed’ stencils. (PSFK / UPDATE: Also on Wooster Collective)

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After Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath” in Venezuela. (NYT)

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Matzu’s got a book! (Reed Space; AM)

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Dolk & M-City at Brooklynite Gallery. (Animal)

Dolk & M-City
Eurotrash
Brooklynite Gallery
334 Malcolm X Blvd [map]
Brooklyn NY 11233
347 / 405-5976
April 30, 2010 – May 29, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, April 30, 7-10pm

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Bonus pic: the detritus of a hard days’ work—

Skhizein – Jérémy Clapin, 2008

A friend recently introduced me to this incredible short by Jérémy Clapin. Definitely worth 13 minutes of your time.

I have yet to see the other ten films, but some thoughts on “Plastic Bag”:

1. American Beauty reference duly noted: remember how that kid in American Beauty said that the plastic bag was the most beautiful thing he’d ever filmed? Bahrani destroys him artistically… completely, utterly, shamelessly destroys poor Ricky, thanks largely to Herzog’s narration. (Unfortunately, I could only find the Family Guy clip in Italian.)

2. The Plastic Beach / Garbage Island allusions are nicely folded into the plot.

3. “Where was I going? Who Was I?” = Gauguin reference? Probably not, but who knows?

4. I found “Plastic Bag” unique in that I was simultaneously able to suspend my disbelief and not believe a word of it. I guess Werner Herzog’s voice strikes me as very anthropomorphic.

5. I can only hope that the script is a close approximation, short of verbatim, of what Werner Herzog is thinking all the fucking time.

6. The film has a particular resonance for me because I’m all about reusable bags; I try not to use plastic bags at all, if I can help it.

7. It’s kind of intense, if you let it be. Then again, it’s just the intoxicating effects of Herzog’s goddamn voice, the apotheosis of the mellifluous matter-of-factness of German inflection…

via Kottke

Bonus pic:

I Lego NY by Christoph Niemann for the New York Times

Director & VFX artist Sam O’Hare has just completed a short film using time-lapse tilt-shift technology to create the illusion of a miniature New York City. The Sandpit is really quite amazing—I recommend viewing it in fullscreen HD.

I’m not quite clear on how the film was created, even after reading this brief interview on how the film was created, but, as with so many other Internet rabbitholes, Kottke simultaneously introduced me to Koyaanisqatsi, a landmark 1982 art film by Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke with an original score by Philip Glass (viewable in full on Hulu), as an obvious reference point for O’Hare.

Meanwhile, an unidentified student at Kyoto University of Art & Design has transformed several home appliances into tiny cities.

Spoon & Tamago via Swiss Miss

8-Bit NYC is perhaps the polar opposite of the beautiful works of video and sculpture above, but it’s pleasantly diverting nonetheless.

What the hell, I love this song: YACHT – Psychic City (5:09) – 9.8MB mp3 @ 262kbps

Like the rest of the blogosphere, I posted about OK Go’s latest viral effort “This Too Shall Pass” yesterday. I also posted a link to Nicholas Carr’s infamous essay on Google, which is bookended by a 2001 reference. Well, for a completely different take on what you can do with an empty warehouse in LA / an allusion to Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, Rodarte and Todd Cole present Aanteni.

Guinevere van Seenus stars in Aanteni, a high-fashion techno-thriller from CFDA award-winning design sisters Rodarte, shot by their friend and frequent collaborator, the photographer and video artist Todd Cole. Set in the deserted grounds of Paypal founder Elon Musk’s Space X jet lab in Hawthorne, California, the film was inspired by the pioneering spirit of the space race, which, according to Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, “has defined generations of artists in their desire to use new mediums and question the established rules they were taught to follow.” This cinematic collision between rocket science and visual daring is an apt match for Rodarte’s spring 2010 collection—a symphony of flesh-colored crochet knits, fluorescent fibres, leather bandages and distressed plaid.

I enjoyed Ryan McGinley & Tilda Swinton for Pringle of Scotland, Yang Fudong for Prada, and Lifetime Collective but, to be perfectly frank, I think Aanteni is just a bit too over-the-top. Maybe it’s just me, but I found the imagery captivating yet nauseatingly arty at times, while the film itself simply lacked a compelling narrative—honestly, I watched it mostly for No Age’s original soundtrack, which sounded like No Age playing incidental music for an art film. In sum: it’s more style than substance, and it shows.

But don’t let me deter you: Todd Cole for Rodarte – Aanteni / 2010: A Space Odyssey (NSFW)

Nowness also has a brief artist statement by Todd Cole.

2.

4.

6.

8.

KEY:

1. Liars – Scissor, by Andy Bruntel

2. Greg Huglin’s amazing photographs of ’surfing’ dolphins off the coast of South Africa; full slideshow via the Guardian

3. Octopus by Jolipunk.com. Whitezine.

4. The “Sign Out” series of digitally manipulated photos by Josef Schulz. Trend.Land

Josef Schulz
Sign Out
Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand
Mühlenstr. 31
D-76275 Ettlingen
January 2010 – March 2010

5. Faile & BAST Deluxx FLUXX Arcade 2010 at Lazarides.

Faile & BAST
Deluxx FLUXX Arcade 2010
Lazarides Rathbone
11 Rathbone Place
W1T 1HR
February 12, 2010–March 19, 2010

6. Like his subjects, Tommy Ton has a keen eye for men’s style. GQ

7. Nuit Blanche by Spyfilms, who brought you the Jodorowsky-inspired video for Yeasayer’s “Ambling Alp” (I like Odd Blood). The equally interesting  making-of will take four more minutes of your internets.

8. Old-school fixsters cruising Bedford c. 1896. Gothamist

But wait, there’s more (since too many embedded videos make browsers something-something):

• Amy Greenfeld vs YouTube. BoingBoing.
• The Copenhagen Wheel = Fixies × [Prius + Foursquare] = will save the world
• YFD killin’ it again. Designboom.
• Aaaaaaaand:

Munk One

The recent Upper Playground × Inglourious Basterds poster collaboration inspired me to finally watch Quentin Tarantino’s latest masterpiece (six months late is forever sooner than never).

All images via Arrested Motion (full-size images available, since my web-optimized crops don’t do the artwork justice).

L: David Choe; R: Estevan Oriol

Like most of my postmodern peers, I’m predisposed to like anything that Quentin Tarantino has a hand in (I actually genuinely like Jackie Brown) and it was largely a foregone conclusion that I would enjoy his fifth feature-length film. Even so, I would say that Basterds is somewhat unique, not just as Tarantino’s take on a war flick—homage-y, genre-agnostic and immanently quotable—but even within his oeuvre: the film relies heavily on the absolute moral compass dictated by historical hindsight, operating within a framework of unambiguous good guys and bad guys. This isn’t the clusterfuck of Reservoir Dogs or, say, Vietnam: the eponymous team of Americans is fighting goddamn Nazis, a.k.a. evil in its purest form.

NB: Spoilers ahead.

L: Alex Pardee; R: Rene Almanza

With history on his side, Tarantino can afford to instill the Basterds with a measured, weirdly heroic, sadism: the American boys sent to terrorize enemy forces in Nazi-occupied France can do no wrong. Scalping, clubbing, scarring, it’s all good—it’s nothing compared to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, Basterds is relatively tame for the auteur who made his name by transcending senseless violence by depicting it for what it is: nasty, brutish and short. Seasoned film viewers have certainly seen worse.

But Tarantino is (and arguably never was) going for shock value, and graphic violence is but one of his calling cards: he’s at his best when he’s spins tension out of talk, typically between arch-enemies (knowing or otherwise), over milk, strudel, whiskey or fashionable pumps (T has always had a bit of a foot fetish). Tarantino further demonstrates his mastery of dialogue with the clever but unforced play on language: if English is the lingua franca, America is the punchline—cheap shots, perhaps, but all in good fun.

L: Sam Flores; R: Grotesk

The majority of those jokes come at the expense of protagonist Brad Pitt Aldo Raine, a blue-blooded A-mur’can Lieutenant and leader of the Basterds, even as he pulls some punches of his own (apologies for the terrible pun). Raine is the good guy, simple but not stupid, earnest in a cartoonishly Middle American way, by far the most idealized and least human of the characters—in other words, it’s a good fit for Pitt. As always, he puts on an excellent, if a bit wooden, performance, but, as always, his familiar physiognomy—even behind a silly non-disguise of  a ’stache—precluded a full suspension of disbelief. (This, I suppose, is the double-edged sword of being a successful, talented actor.)

Straight-faced sidekick B.J. Novak was similarly problematic albeit for different reasons: Tarantino introduces the Basterds such that fans of The Office might literally pick him out of a lineup. Whereas Brad Pitt’s visage instantly conjures a film career that explores the full spectrum of confidence —from the infamous Tyler Durden to doofus Chad in Burn After Reading—it’s hard not to see Novak as douchey sidekick Ryan. Which is fine because he’s not all that important anyway.

L: Nate Van Dyke; R: Dora Drimalas

Of course, the sheer recognizability of the Americans only underscored the singular brilliance of Christoph Waltz’s turn as the perfect nemesis: I had no idea who he was before I saw Basterds and the film was better for it. SS Colonel Hans Landa was as compelling as any of Tarantino’s inimitable characters, except without the pretense of moral ambiguity: he’s a goddamn Nazi, and he’s delightfully despiccable for it.

Waltz imparts an uncanny charm to the villain whose cheerful plastic demeanor barely belies his motives, channeling a bare sarcasm that transcends the human emotion of contempt: he likes to play games, but he likes winning even more. Even as we hope that Landa—calculating but not quite cold, inscrutable yet oddly sympathetic for his delusions—gets his comeuppance, we’re not sure what he deserves until that final moment when he holds up his end of the deal, only to face justice à la Raine.

L: Mike Skinner; R: Jeremy Fish

Meanwhile, the relatively obscure (and absolutely lovely) Mélanie Laurent is on point as Shoshanna, Tarantino’s obligatory vengeful heroine. After losing her family at the hands of Landa, she never wavers in her animus towards the Third Reich, especially as it is embodied by fawning Nazi war hero Frederick Zoller. In fact, Landa meets his match not in Raine but in Shoshanna, whose tragedy is matched by her beauty and cunning: she is human in all the ways that Landa is not. It was too much to hope that Landa and Shoshanna would ultimately meet some kind of a Kill Bill-style showdown; instead, Tarantino sacrifices her in trademark martyrdom opposite Zoller, who deserves her neither in life nor in death.

L: Morning Breath; R: Patrick Martinez

But Shoshanna’s cause is just and her heart is pure, and Tarantino’s ego prevails when he transgresses historical fiction to consummate her revenge and, by extension, his own. If the theater is an easy symbol for the rejection of reality, where a film becomes a universe unto itself, Shoshanna is merely an instrument for the immolation of that sacred place. She need not know that her nemesis lives: Landa controls his own fate until the very end, and Lt. Raine is not as deserving as his cocksure smile might suggest when he delivers the überironic closing line, “I think this just might be my masterpiece.”

Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but all in all, I thought that Basterds was a thoroughly entertaining film with perfect pacing after a slow start, and I look forward to watching it again in the near future.

Of course, now I can’t help but see Christoph Waltz in his breakout role as Hans Landa: his face will forever bear the mark of unironic superciliousness that Tarantino takes pains to avoid.

Bonus pic:

Lt. Aldo Raine Action Figure via Hypebeast

]]> http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/02/the-lost-art-of-inglourious-basterds/feed/ 0 http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/02/yang-fudong-first-spring/ http://idolizeyourkillers.com/2010/02/yang-fudong-first-spring/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:18:59 +0000 Ray http://idolizeyourkillers.com/?p=1114 or, A New Direction in China’s Visual Communications

Once again, Designboom seems to have tapped into my subconscious, enriching my recent firsthand exposure to images created by Chinese artists.

Still from First Spring, 2009

Yang Fudong is today’s topic. I recently came across his work as a “new direction in Prada’s visual communications”: his latest work is a short film for the luxury brand (full video at the end of the post), which was picked up by Hypebeast, among other blogs. I watched it and didn’t give it a second thought.

Dawn Mist, Separation Faith, 2009

It wasn’t until I chanced upon his name in Designboom later that day that I realized that I had seen his work before, at UCCA’s “Breaking Forecast” exhibition (which runs through the end of February). Unfortunately, I somehow managed to miss the film ‘Dawn Mist, Separation Faith,’ a new full-length film that was screening at the UCCA.

Ms. Huang at M Last Night #2, 2006

In any case, the show included a couple of photos from his 2006 series ‘Ms. Huang at M Last Night,’ which suggest a mute narrative that is probably less intriguing than the stylistic content/composition implied by the noirish glamour of the stills.

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part I, 2003

‘Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest‘ is a five-part video piece that apparently found an audience at the 2007 Venice Biennale. I don’t really know enough about film or photography to legitimately critique his work, so I’ll just say that it looks pretty good to me.

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part V, 2007

Which brings us to Yang Fudong’s latest film, ‘First Spring,’ a period piece set in Shanghai during what the West knows as the Interbellum Period.

Inspired by the Chinese adage that, “the whole year’s work depends on a good start in spring,” this bold and beautiful film represents an exciting new direction for Prada’s visual communications at the start of this decade.

-Prada.com

Although I’ve only had nominal exposure to his work, I was impressed with his mastery of composition, as each shot is expertly framed to maintain a certain tautness, a broadly sexual tension that keeps the story from unraveling.

The mood is predominantly jaded—most notably when magic is made mundane—shifting from resigned to restless to complacent, and back again, with only a tacit suggestion of devious outright illicit behavior. Similarly, the characters seem to fall somewhere in the narrow space between pensive and aloof: their blank stares aren’t necessarily cold or empty but are simply opaque, inscrutable.

Rituals—not quite perfunctory, not quite clandestine—impart both a sense of historical setting and a sense of displacement.

Thematically, the short is marked by a vague yet undeniable sense of yearning or even sublimated desire, but Yang Fudong forgoes the resolution and leaves the viewer wondering whether there was any conflict in the first place.

For an entirely different experience of the clip:
1.) Go to Prada.com. The video for the F/W 2010 Menswear will start playing automatically (I hate autoplay too, but it works for this).
2.) Click on ‘First Spring’ by Yang Fudong on the menu at the left. It will open a video player overlay and ‘First Spring’ will start playing automatically.
3.) Mute the overlaid video player. Watch the short film with the music from the runway show. Crazy shit.