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(Click en la imagen para ver un video del hombre que tiene el récord mundial por usar el mayor número de camisetas al mismo tiempo.)
Posted in August 2008 …
TORMENTAS
“Y si llueve saldremos a la lluvia a lavar las minas que van acumulando mugre de palo de gallinero. Tanta mentira, tanto fingir, tanto desastre… Desnudos sobre el mascaron de proa. Lamiendo con la punta de la lengua, el tinte que desprende la máscara. Se arrecia el viento norte abajo telas, calzarse botas y escribir las archas sobre la superficie caminamos, que sobre la superficie nos salvamos.”
-m. garcÃa
THE ARCHIVE
Paul Mawhinney nació en Pittsburgh. Durante los últimos años ha logrado acumular lo que se ha convertido en la colección más grande de discos en el mundo. Por razones de salud y dificultades en el mercado de los discos, Paul ahora necesita vender su colección
(Click en la imagen para ver un documental de 8 minutos sobre Paul y sus discos. En inglés.)
SENTO. BAÑOS PÚBLICOS JAPONESES
Una entrevista con la artista alemana Julia Baier sobre su experiencia haciendo esta serie de fotografÃas en los baños públicos japoneses. Más fotos también, via PingMag
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS AND UNDISCLOSED ETIOLOGIES
As you might know already Tóxico´s name was born from a phrase of Nietzsche´s:
“For art to exist, for any aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.”
And intoxication, it would seem, is a type of intimacy. The most violent of intimacies to be exact: since something outside of us takes hold of something within us and squeezes until we have no other option but to unclench all that we jealously hold tightly inside and stand there (oh so) vulnerably, upturned, showing the whole world that which was once safely hidden deep down under the skin –be it bodily fluids, or emotions. There is no hiding it. Because to be intoxicated is to be beside oneself. Or above, beyond the head. Overcome. Displaced. Overwhelmed. Loosing control and all the organs in undeniable spasms one after the other after the other after.
It is joyous, like rapture. It is somewhat uncomfortable and can bring on all sorts of lamentable symptoms post factum; such as embarrassment or terrible diarrhea that stems from its “too-muchness”. (Like a couple of Fitzgerald characters that “slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”)
So. Yes. There are field-notes of intoxication, everywhere. And instructions. To be found. To be created. Written upon the world which becomes the body. Ideas, and a little word here, a little word there; a glance, a certain movement of the hand moving across the air, a drawing, an image, a game, a memory. An encounter. And a question. Yes, a question: what is it like to escape from one body to another affect-wise and through what channels and why does this come to be, please tell us. And how does intoxication travel distances, what is the capacity of certain things to take hold of the imagination and not let go.
Alas, the etiology is yet unknown.
But thank you for coming, do keep on joining us.
So much left yet to un-know and to un-discover together.
g
GARABATOS DE GEOFFREY TODD SMITH
Geoffrey Todd Smith es artista. Vive en Chicago. Y crea obras de arte con plumas de gel. Su estilo ha sido tachado de “decorativo” pero es un término que al propio Smith no le molesta “yo sólo quiero crear cosas hermosas”, dice. Y cosas hermosas son. Sus obras están ligadas al poco reconocido arte de garabatear cuadernos. Imágenes de una generación que se educó a través de videojuegos y TV para todos.
Via: fecalface.com
EXPO DE IKER VICENTE
El último dÃa del octavo mes
de 2008
celebraremos cualquier cosa
y habrá agua de chÃa
y frutas frescas en vasos de plástico
y con su ayuda -> amigoscon suerte -> sol radiante y capital despejada
torre mayor y el popo bien cerquita
por lo menos catedral y pino suárezsin suerte -> unos paraguas agujereados y txirimiri y cantos
12:00 MEDIO DIA 12:00
AZOTEA
museo de la ciudad de méxico
pino suárez # 30
esquina con república de el salvador
centro histórico—
(Iker Vicente tomó el Tóxico Workshop de los hermanos Quay; Cristina Faesler, directora del maravilloso Museo de la Ciudad de México, tomó el Tóxico Master-Class de Martin Parr y Chris Boot.)
AN UNRULY HISTORY OF THE READYMADE
An Unruly History of the Readymade es la sexta interpretación de La Colección Jumex. Esta exhibición parte de la aportación que hiciera Marcel Duchamp con el readymade y presenta una desalineada (desobediente, argumentativa y posiblemente contradictoria) historia de las consecuencias de dicho acto. Más de 100 piezas creadas por 80 artistas exploran este tema que se mantiene constante y que ha sido reenergizado, redescubierto y repensado hasta nuestros dÃas. La exhibición es curada por Jessica Morgan, Curadora de Arte Contemporáneo del Tate Modern, London.
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(La Colección/Fundación Jumex es uno de los principales patrocinadores de Tóxico, y tiene una importante colección de arte contemporáneo internacional.)
MIENTRAS TODOS APRENDEMOS ESPERANTO
(Imagen de Anne Hamilton.)
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Ayer en la mañana, desayunando junto a una ventana en Caracas, me preguntaron por qué el Tóxico-blog está en inglés. Hmm. Me dejaron pensando. Más que en un principio tenÃamos la idea de cambiar indiscriminadamente de idiomas dÃa tras dÃa–dependiendo del contenido–pero poco a poco se fue quedando atrás el español, por eso de los lectores internacionales. Pero regresamos ahora a eso: a lo indiscriminadamente varios idiomas switching wildly from one to another.
(Comentarios?)
Y YA QUE EN ESPAÑOL
Esta es la voz ronca y melódica de Antonio Porchia, poeta argentino, ese que dejaba caer frases como “se vive con la esperanza de llegar a ser un recuerdo.”
Y esta es la poesÃa vertical que le dedicó el gran poeta Juarroz, amigo suyo, también argentino, cuando murió:
(POESIA VERTICAL Iv-25)
Hemos amado juntos tantas cosas
que es difÃcil amarlas separados.
Parece que se hubieran alejado de pronto
o que el amor fuera una hormiga
escalando los declives del cielo.
Hemos vivido juntos tanto abismo
que sin ti todo parece superficie,
órbita de simulacros que resbalan,
tensión sin extensiones,
vigilancia de cuerpos sin presencia.
Hemos perdido juntos tanta nada
que el hábito persiste y se da vuelta
y ahora todo es ganancia de la nada.
El tiempo se convierte en antitiempo
porque ya no lo piensas.
Hemos callado y hablado tanto juntos
que hasta callar y hablar son dos traiciones,
dos sustancias sin justificación,
dos sustitutos.
Lo hemos buscado todo,
lo hemos hallado todo,
lo hemos dejado todo.
Únicamente no nos dieron tiempo
para encontrar el ojo de tu muerte,
aunque fuera también para dejarlo.
MEDITATING LYNCH
Read an interview with David Lynch on that his world which walks the fine line between delirium-darkness-cinema and mystics-light-meditation.
(In Spanish)
AFRICAN ALBINOS, BY PIETER HUGO
Hugo was born in South Africa, and has been taking portraits of the continent’s marginal people. Lately, he has been wining awards to the right and to the left, including the “Discovery Award” at Arles Photography Festival. He was also included on ReGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow, 2005-2025 (Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, and Aperture, New York), an exhibition identifying 50 young photographers who will be considered great by 2025, accompanied by a book published by Thames & Hudson. He won first prize in the Portraits section of the 2006 World Press Photo competition, and was selected as the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art 2007, with an exhibition touring South Africa until July 2008.
(He is also an ex-Fabricanti, though he was there a couple of years later than me so we never met.)
(Read an interview with Hugo here.)
MEMORIES NOT ENOUGH
“For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gestures which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars — and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead, in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our own blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves –only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke–
OPEN SHUTTER
(Two and three year-long exposures by Michael Wesely.)
Says MoMA:
For more than a decade, Michael Wesely (German, b. 1963) has been inventing and refining techniques for making photographs with unusually long exposures-some as long as three years. In 1997 he began using this unique approach to photography to explore major urban construction projects, such as the rebuilding of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Buildings that are demolished or constructed over the course of Wesely’s long exposures often appear ghostlike, evoking simultaneously a vanishing and emerging presence.
Open Shutter focuses on a major body of work created by Wesely at the invitation of The Museum of Modern Art. In the summer of 2001, he set up cameras at several locations in and around the Museum’s ambitious renovation and construction project. Completed in June 2004, at the conclusion of major construction, Wesely’s photographs provide an absorbing perspective on the historic transformation of the Museum’s home in the heart of a thriving city.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, which presents Open Shutter in full-page plates and enlarged details that enable readers to discover the rich complexity of each photograph.
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(Hola! We are writing from Mexico City–and regularly post extraordinarily interesting stuff, across disciplines. If you liked this post, check out the rest of our blog, and follow us on Twitter @toxicocultura)
FLYING SOUTH
(Officially: Giving two talks in Venezuela)
(Extra-officially & quoting Buber: All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.)
SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND
Tired of so much work and fun during the week? Got time to spare on Saturday and Sunday? Remember that weird Serbian movie you always wanted to see? The whole criterion collection too much for your pocket? Not anymore!
We’ve got a couple of good news for you. Click on the following links for a list of more than 500+ movies from all over the world.
Unless you have a rapidshare account downloads could take half a day. But after browsing both sites you’ll either want to buy one or will be willing to spend hours downloading all those movies you always wanted to see.
(Each movie is around 700Mb. It wont be DVD quality but I’m guessing most of you won’t have a problem with that)
You’ll need a player compatible with AVI files, you can download the quicktime codec but Toxico recommends VLC Media Player.
Happy downloading!
(UN)(REAL)
(Photos by Corine Smith, Detroit-based Dutch artist, who will soon be coming down again to Mexico City so we can go rooftop and cow hunting.)
(And a little text from many many years back that I did for a project of hers, dusted off.)
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(UN) (REAL)
At night my toes disappear, as if they were not mine. They are the first thing to go, and slowly the rest of the body follows, upward, until it dissolves and I am left floating in a place that floats also. At night one floats. At day one falls. It is a long stretch until home.
Across the ground it is too dark, spread deep in the shadows. Across the sky it is too bare, and a mind could sink upward, never to be found again. Across the heart it is both dark and bare: spread deep and red in some parts: shallow in others where the blood has run dry, with sounds still echoing of how moments squealed like pigs as they where shut in cells of forgetfulness. It is dried oblivion that has a quality like bone, like the bone of a human, or an avocado. It is this anatomy that they do not teach you, because they do not know: they do not know it is another. Anatomy is another. The world is another. You is another. Another to be pushed into your heart made red again.
But what if all is fiction? What if we have put too much trust in trees, and earth, and ocean. What if all is unreal…
I remember when I was about five years old, I would stand in the middle of the garden and look at the green, look at the blue, at the invisible movement of the wind, until reality would start to quiver softly, arrange itself in other densities, expand and deepen in color: reality so present, so heightened, it became absolutely unreal. And I would ask myself: what if this is a dream? Or is it that other? It was like drawing a door that I could suddenly walk into, and if maybe my reality is your unreality so what, let it be.
Because maybe it is this reality, this feeling of unreality, that we search for (yes, always the search: never no end; always the thirst), that we search for everywhere, in every place, and all the faces that we meet and suddenly start to care about. That moment where the world stands out and quivers, becoming what it hides, apparent, naked, strange: alive. So much more aware; the heart made red again, pumping strong, excited.
Yet what if all is only a fiction. Maybe the mistake then is of too-much-reality, of comfortable reality, of things forgotten or transformed into hollow symbols of what they are. Maybe the error is not including a dream in every production of the eye or the hand or the mouth or the brain. In a weird way, I feel at home in the dim light that reveals other structures, and the funny sound that two feet make walking down an empty street.
But there are two kinds of unrealities, and we have yet to invent a word to distinguish them—there is an unreality that deepens the body and the life it floats in, and then there is the unreality that kills it all and gives us only broken shells. Unreal = untrue. Unreal=too-true. One is timid and comfortable; the other is huge and dangerous and usually makes us feel tiny and awed, surrounded by a huge universe of revolving blackness and red suns. (But it is home anyway.)
So maybe we must trust in the trees, and the earth, and the ocean. And in us. In all our unreality. Maybe we should try not to hang on to anything; there is nothing to hang on to anyway.
Maybe we should fall willingly; falling forever.
I open my hands, and let myself be swept downward: suddenly.
Because to fall forever is to fly.
g
METROPOLIS FOUND
Long lost scenes from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis found in Argentina
By Kate Connolly for The Guardian.
The cinematic world is celebrating the rediscovery of missing scenes from German director Fritz Lang’s legendary silent film Metropolis, which turned up in the archive of a Buenos Aires museum after being thought lost for 80 years.
(Continue reading after the break.)
QUIRKY DARK LOVES. (AND GRIZZLY MAN REVISITED) (AND ON THE STRANGE INTIMACY OF CERTAIN MEALS)
Mister Timothy Treadwell loved wild bears. He loved them madly. He felt there was a special rapport between him and the big black friendly beasts. He would spend many weeks at a time living near them, getting closer and closer, filming it all, getting misty eyed while he talked about all the love in the air, the trust, the silent language. He probably got even more misty eyed when one of his bears ate him whole–and also ate his girlfriend.
Of course, this is the subject of Werner Herzog’s critcally acclaimed film, ‘Grizzly Man’. An now the producers of Herzog’s film have decided to “revisit Treadwell’s hundreds of hours of video footage, culling together an eight part special to be aired next month on Animal Planet.” Herzog is not part of this project, and it might be interesting to see how the story plays out without the beloved Herzog puppeteering hand behind it all.
Says the press release:
The series will draw upon the hundreds of hours of archived footage, private pages from his diaries and more than 10,000 still photographs, ultimately telling the story he truly wanted to before his untimely death from the very creatures he loved so deeply.
THERE IS NO WHY. OR, ON THE SENSELESSLY BRAVE AND ABSURDLY BEAUTIFUL
(Excerpts of text that follow from Design Observer blog. Post by Michael Beirut.)
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Man on Wire, a new documentary directed by James Marsh, tells the story of Philippe Petit’s 1974 high wire walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center. Petit was a teenager in Paris browsing magazines in a dentist’s office when he saw a rendering of the then-unbuilt World Trade Center. He was electrified. He was already an obsessed magician, juggler, and high wire artist. To an aspiring tightrope walker, the idea of two 110-story towers, side by side, suggested only one thing. Petit drew a line between the image of the two towers. All that remained now was the execution.
Making the walk happen took years of planning. Petit sums up his own attitude with characteristic aplomb: “It’s impossible, that’s for sure. So let’s start working.” He moved to New York and began visiting the construction site, at one point obtaining access to the top of the towers by posing as a French journalist. He made drawings and took photographs. Returning home, he built a full sized model of the WTC roofs in the French countryside to practice the walk. Getting all the necessary equipment up to the tops of the towers was not a one-man job. He recruited a group of confederates, a colorful multinational troupe who offer conflicting present-day memories throughout the film, and who each played a different role in what they privately called the coup. The plan was not just bold but actually rather insane: their solution for the hardest part of the whole scheme, for instance, getting the wire from one tower to the other, a span of nearly 200 feet, was to use a bow and arrow. It worked. Amazingly, it all worked.
Man on Wire’s biggest, most satisfying surprise is seeing what Petit actually did when the moment of truth finally arrived and he stepped out into the void. I have to admit, I’d always assumed that he simply edged his way inch by inch across the expanse between the towers, teeth gritted and knuckles white, finally making it with relief to the other side. Was this is what I expected from past exposure to “death defying” circus acts, where the danger is always exaggerated while the crowd holds its collective breath? Or, more likely, was I simply projecting how I — and, admit it, you — would have attacked the challenge?
What happened was quite different. Philippe Petit was out on the wire for more than 45 minutes, crossing back and forth between the towers eight times. One of my favorite characters in the film, Port Authority Police Department Sergeant Charles Daniels, a mustachioed New York 70s cop straight out of Dog Day Afternoon, later described to news cameras what he saw when he was sent up to persuade Petit to surrender:
I observed the tightrope “dancer” — because you couldn’t call him a “walker” — approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire. And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle. He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again. Unbelievable, really.
It had taken six years of work and planning to get to that moment, and Philippe Petit never wanted it to end. His greatest dream, unbelievably, had come true. He was 24 years old.
He finally surrendered to the police. In the film he remembers that the only moment he actually feared for his safety was when he was being hustled down the WTC stairs. Back on earth, he was mobbed by reporters, all with the same question: why?
“There is no why, ” he said. “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.
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Take a look at the trailer here.
CLINICA DE ARTE FUNDACION JUMEX
Fundación/Colección Jumex invita a la convocatoria para participar en:
ClÃnica de arte contemporáneo con Clayton Campbell
Te invitamos a participar en la clÃnica para jóvenes artistas visuales organizada por Fundación/Colección Jumex con el fin de promover la apertura de nuevos espacios y oportunidades para los artistas. En esta clÃnica Clayton Campbell, entrevistará de manera individual a 15 artistas mexicanos, quienes tendrán la oportunidad de compartirle sus ideas y proyectos, además de recibir una crÃtica especializada sobre su trabajo con el objetivo de encontrar alternativas de desarrollo y promoción.
Fecha: 8 de septiembre de 2008
Sede: Fundación/Colección Jumex
Horario de entrevistas: 11:00 – 17:00 horas
Cupo limitado a los participantes seleccionados
(Para leer las bases clickea en ‘continued’.)
ARCHITECTURE OF AUTHORITY
Photos by Richard Ross.
(Click to enlarge.)
“For the past several years-and with seemingly limitless access-photographer Richard Ross has been making unsettling and thought-provoking pictures of architectural spaces that exert power over the individuals within them. From a Montessori preschool to churches, mosques and diverse civic spaces including a Swedish courtroom, the Iraqi National Assembly hall and the United Nations, the images in Architecture of Authority build to ever harsher manifestations of power: an interrogation room at Guantánamo, segregation cells at Abu Ghraib, and finally, a capital punishment death chamber.”
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(And a bit of a text by Hakim Bey from his book “Temporal Autonomous Zones”, why not, to counter-set the mood:)
“Chaos never died. Primordial uncarved block, sole worshipful monster, inert & spontaneous, more ultraviolet than any mythology (like the shadows before Babylon), the original undifferentiated oneness-of-being still radiates serene as the black pennants of Assassins, random & perpetually intoxicated.
Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it’s neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds.
Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard.
No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.
There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you’re the monarch of your own skin–your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.
To shed all the illusory rights & hesitations of history demands the economy of some legendary Stone Age–shamans not priests, bards not lords, hunters not police, gatherers of paleolithic laziness, gentle as blood, going naked for a sign or painted as birds, poised on the wave of explicit presence, the clockless nowever.
Agents of chaos cast burning glances at anything or anyone capable of bearing witness to their condition, their fever of lux et voluptas. I am awake only in what I love & desire to the point of terror–everything else is just shrouded furniture, quotidian anaesthesia, shit-for-brains, sub-reptilian ennui of totalitarian regimes, banal censorship & useless pain.
Avatars of chaos act as spies, saboteurs, criminals of amour fou, neither selfless nor selfish, accessible as children, mannered as barbarians, chafed with obsessions, unemployed, sensually deranged, wolfangels, mirrors for contemplation, eyes like flowers, pirates of all signs & meanings.
Here we are crawling the cracks between walls of church state school & factory, all the paranoid monoliths. Cut off from the tribe by feral nostalgia we tunnel after lost words, imaginary bombs.
The last possible deed is that which defines perception itself, an invisible golden cord that connects us: illegal dancing in the courthouse corridors. If I were to kiss you here they’d call it an act of terrorism–so let’s take our pistols to bed & wake up the city at midnight like drunken bandits celebrating with a fusillade, the message of the taste of chaos.”
THE SECRET TO BIG BEAUTIFUL WATERY ANIME EYES
Want to go for that “wide-eyed innocent and watery look that men love so much”?
Slip into your Anime alter ego here. No surgery no batteries no TV set required.
(Thanks Boing Boing)
$360 PESOS FOR NEW ARMPITS
(Dove Clear Tone offers armpits for only $36 US with a receipt for any Dove deodorant)
You wont find a better offer anywhere. Buy a couple and a spare.
OBLIQUE STRATEGIES
The Oblique Strategies are a series of deck cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. Their origin and use are explained by Mr. Eno:
The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation – particularly in studios – tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you’re in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that’s going to yield the best results Of course, that often isn’t the case – it’s just the most obvious and – apparently – reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, “Don’t forget that you could adopt *this* attitude,” or “Don’t forget you could adopt *that* attitude.”
That been said, the tit for tat:
EL MOLINO: CONVOCATORIA FICCO
FICCO lanza un nuevo concurso para becas: el segundo taller de análisis de proyectos cinematográficos.
(FICCO fue patrocinador del Tóxico Workshop de Christoffer Boe.)
(Busca las bases de la beca después del quiebre, clickeando en ‘continued’.)
RANORUM NOSTRATIUM
“August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof (1705-1759) was a German descendent of Austrian nobility. After an apprenticeship and study, Rösel obtained an appointment at the royal court in Copenhagen painting portraits and miniatures.
Two years later, Rösel fell ill during the return trip to Nuremberg. He suspended his journey and spent a month recuperating in Hamburg. As chance would have it, a copy of Maria Sybilla Merian’s amazing natural science book, ‘Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium’ was given to Rösel during his convalescence and it had a profound influence over the direction of his career.
Rösel was so enchanted by Merian’s exquisite drawings that he began to study the insects, reptiles and amphibians of Germany in his spare time away from a successful portrait painting business. He collected specimens and observed the development of the organisms through the various stages of their life cycles and he made detailed notes accompanied by precise sketches of his observations.
With the release in 1740 of his renowned work on insects, ‘Insecten-Belustigung’, Rösel basically established himself as one of the founding patriarchs of German entomology.
Between 1753 and 1758, Rösel published his classic treatise on frogs in instalments. ‘Historia Naturalis Ranarum Nostratium’ documented the full egg-to-tadpole-to-frog developmental stages for the first time. It therefore occupies an esteemed position in the literature of batrachians (frogs and toads) and, indeed, in the history of science.
Sadly, Rösel suffered a stroke before he was able to publish a third work on lizards and salamanders, but his notes served as a source for a number of species descriptions by Linnaeus. Rösel has, therefore, an impeccable record in publishing, with both of his works considered artistic and scientific triumphs. He holds the further distinction, just by the by, for being the first person to observe and describe amoeba (Proteus animalcule as it was originally known), which he discovered late in his life.”
(Thanks Bibliodyssey.)
KEATS AND YEAST ARE ON YOUR SIDE
“Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.”
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr
PUSS IN BOOTS
Photos by Tomokazu Kosuga. If you are interested in knowing why exactly these little cats are dressed up in boots and hats and dresses and wigs, read an interview on the Vice Magazine website.
11,440 TOO MANY KILOMETRES & OTHER COMPELLING GEOGRAPHIES
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(Photo by Guillaume Dargoud, world explorer.)
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“¿Qué se siente cuando uno se aleja de la gente y ésta retrocede en el llano hasta que se convierte en motitas que se desvanecen? Es que el mundo que nos rodea es demasiado grande, y es el adiós. Pero nos lanzamos hacia adelante en busca de la próxima aventura disparatada bajo los cielos “
-Jack Kerouac-
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SUNDAY FIX
The following is a list of places where you can spend a nice, laidback sunday:
Give your ears a small vacation and relax with nice sound landscapes from around the world.
One of the best ways I could ever think of spending a Sunday.
The name says it all.
Hours of fun, tons of style.
Mark Harden’s Archive is an internet landmark and always a pleasure to visit.
KURT VONNEGUT READS BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
As of April 2007, Kurt Vonnegut was probably the best living writer in the american continent. Now he is one of the best writers that has ever lived. Follow the link to hear Vonnegut read a very early version of Breakfast of Champions.
Ta da!
COUGHS AND SNEEZES (1945)
How To Be Eccentric: The Films of Richard Massingham
“An unusual combination of comedy, social history, and surrealism, this British Film Institute collection of films consists of 15 archival shorts directed by and featuring the man many consider to be one of Britain’s best-kept cinematic secrets: Richard Massingham. Throughout the 1940s, Massingham appeared in a series of comic short films that instructed U.K. citizens on everything from how to cross roads to sneeze into a handkerchief to conserve water during wartime by taking shallow baths. In addition to his public-service themed shorts, this collection also includes cinema advertisements and training films featuring Massingham.”
(Richard Massingham trained for a medical career but ended up making these quirky little films.)
ABERRACIONES URBANAS: MEXICO CITY
Photos by Dante Busquets.
(Dante took the Tóxico Master-Class by Martin Parr and Chris Boot.)
—
(Lewis Mumford–famed urbanist of the 50s, the Rem Koolhaas of his times–once said that “the city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.”)
(Hmm. One wonders what forms and conditions, exactly, minds take on in this huge crazy city of ours: basking in the shadow of our almost impossible urban aberrations.)
EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS WILL HAPPEN TODAY
It all started with rumors of former collaborators Mr David Byrne and Mr Brian Eno performing Talking Heads songs in a few venues across the USA. Sadly, that won’t happen. But we were left with the news that a new record by Byrne and Eno will be coming out in a couple of days (AUGUST 18). The record is called “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today“.
Words and singing was done by David Byrne and most of the music by Brian Eno. They last worked together 17 years ago on the groundbreaking “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” and Mr Eno was head of production in three Talking Heads records.
Here’s the tracklist and a track from the forthcoming album:
01 “Home”
02 “My Big Nurse”
03 “I Feel My Stuff”
04 “Everything That Happens”
05 “Life Is Long”
06 “The River”
07 “Strange Overtones”
08 “Wanted For Life”
09 “One Fine Day”
10 “Poor Boy”
11 “The Lighthouse”
Like the grafic at the top? It is courtesy of Austrian designer and Toxico International Guest Stefan Sagmeister (our very first international guest ever, actually). Stefan previously worked with David Byrne on the beautiful Talking Heads compilation boxset Once in a Lifetime, and is also in charge to design the artwork and package for this record.
(And yes, all this Eno Byrne bonanza makes the Toxico staff very happy.)
CINE ABIERTO: ABIERTO DE NUEVO
Cine Abierto es un proyecto que empezaron Manuel Alcalá (T A BL OIDE Design) y Gabriella Gómez-Mont (Tóxico) hace un par de años; nació con proyecciones al aire libre de cine independiente en espacios públicos y museos. Poco después se unieron varios socios como Dante Busquets y Halim Matouk; entre Manuel y ellos crearon una videoteca con una gran selección de pelÃculas en venta y renta. Y ahora Cine Abierto acaba de reabrir en la Roma, por si viven cerca. (Hasta se pueden pedir las pelÃculas para llevar desde las mesas del restaurante Atrio.) (Mmm. Los documentales son una de sus especialidades.)
MR. LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
It may (or may not) create a black hole inside our planet and engulf us all, but the Large Hadron Collider being built in the border between Switzerland and France is almost ready to start working. And it is also really nice to look at.
Them pictures here. (via Boston.com)
AKROE
Akroe combines his early graffiti styles with graphic experiments, searching for disused walls: cheese factories and random corners suddenly become visual puns to unfold, 3-D or contextual effects to explore.
ABCs
(A great Roaring Press Book by french designer Marion Bataille.)
(3 Dimensional alphabet created from melted plastic army figures by Graphic Designer Oliver Munday.)
(Typeface made out of hair called Futura 001: created by Craig Ward.)
(Human skin alphabet created by Amsterdam artist Thijs Verbeek by clipping clothespins to the human body.)
(Nearly 40 years ago Kjell Sandved, from the Smithsonian Institution, was examining the collection of butterflies and moths when he saw an F, a tiny F, formed by the pattern of silvery scales on the wing of an orange sphinx moth. He photographed the letter. He framed it. He hung it in his office at the Simthsonian. And he then spent a quarter of a century peering at little wings, collecting his alphabet.)
UNHOLY MARRIAGE BY JOSHUA RAY
(Joshua Ray is a visual artist and illustrator living in Brooklyn. We met while we both had scholarships at Fabrica. He was also a tutor for La Incubadora, a pilot multidisciplinary program designed and directed by Tóxico for the ten most talented students of Centro University, 2007-2008.)
Click image to enlarge and see the details, like the tiny creatures upon her dress.
You can see more of Josh´s work here.
THE FUTURE IS WHERE THE HEAD POINTS TOWARDS
(“Twisted” is a series of photos by Patrick Madigan. Click to enlarge.)
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“I look forward, well… I must… my eyes are, for better or worse, situated on the front of my head. I walk forward, because my knees don’t bend the other way. I anticipate, because about the future I cannot reminisce. I wave hello, because it is more pleasurable than goodbye. Though when I am in the mood for poignancy hello won’t do, then it will be goodbye. But until the day I can pluck out my eyes and reposition them at will I am looking forward.”
(From a recent email from artist and personal muse Joshua Ray, with whom we hope to be inventing projects again soon.)
SOBRE LA COLECCION / FUNDACION JUMEX. Y CÓMO LLEGAR
Colección/Fundación Jumex
Dirección: VÃa Morelos 272
Zona: Santa MarÃa Tulpetlac. Ecatepec, Estado de México.
Para llegar a La Colección Jumex en Metro: Bajar en la estación Indios Verdes y en el paradero H, tomar el camión “San Cristobal”.
En coche: Tomar Insurgentes Norte hasta el final, tomar hacia Carretera Libre a Pachuca (VÃa Morleos), pasar gasolinera y McDonalds, luego pasar Cinemex, Vips y Mega; antes de la Costeña está La Colección Jumex. (Kilómetro 17.5)
Horario: Lunes a viernes de 10 a 17:30 hrs. Visita previa cita sin costo.
La Colección Jumex es uno de los acervos privados de arte contemporáneo más importantes de Latinoamérica. Actualmente cuenta con más de 1400 piezas de artistas mexicanos e internacionales. Dentro de esta colección se encuentran representados artÃstas contemporáneos como Douglas Gordon, Francis Alys, Gabriel Orozco, Eduardo Abaroa, Carlos Amorales, entre otros, cuyas obras han sido producidas desde los años 90 a la fecha.
Las exposiciones de este recionto se renuevan constantemente e incluyen también diversas actividades de formación artÃstica como conferencias, cursos, talleres y un programa de becas.
La galerÃa de Colección Jumex es un espacio de exposición de más de 1400 metros cuadrados dentro de una fábrica en la zona industrial de Ecatepec. Este espacio cuenta además con un archivo y una biblioteca con más de 6, 200 tÃtulos disponibles asà como 350 expedientes de artistas contemporáneos mexicanos y extranjeros
(Además Tóxico tiene el generoso apoyo de la Fundación Jumex.)
http://www.lacoleccionjumex.org
MODERN THOUGHT
MODERN THOUGHT are a series of animations that the darkly amusing DAVID SHRIGLEY made for the BBC.
(Click on animations when you get to the BBC page.)