Posted in April 2010

SUBURBAN SLOVAKIA

Images by Andrej Balco

“Built with the intention of providing affordable housing for everyone, this industrial mode of construction quickly became synonymous with a highly anonymous lifestyle, devoid of any individuality. This is the point of departure in this photo-essay by the Slovak photographer Andrej Balco. Who are these people in these prefab buildings? Is there a prevailing type, perhaps even a prefab person? These unavoidable questions, automatic reflexes, are a natural response to something as stereotypical as the prefab high-rises, providing a starting point from which Balco undertakes his photographic exploration of these stalls for everyday Slovakian life.  What he brings to light creates a sharp and varied contrast to the serial façades: dreariness has been replaced by individuals, who have rescued their palms, baroque fantasies and eroticism by bringing them into their apartment blocks. A bit of heaven on a flat roof, a hint of countryside in the garage, if only as a pig in the boot of a car.”
— Robert Haidinger, via Lens Culture

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HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMJ4thppCkk[/youtube]

A fragment of a lesser-known short documentary by Werner Herzog:

take a deep breath before pressing play.

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FELLINI DIXIT

“A whole film exists already in a sensation, in an intuition. It is all about availability; I put myself at the service of the fantasy I have,  I let it materialize. So I don’t create a system, nor a school. My method of working is to remain open. An artist is like a medium: a mind, nerves, body, hands, a vessel to be inhabited by a feeling, a fantasy, an idea, that later become characters, scenarios, that become story.”

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ANGRY BLACK SNAKE

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Michael Corridore Aperture Portfolio Prize Photography

Series by Michael Corridore

“Michael Corridore’s project, Angry Black Snake, is an exercise in minimalism. Each image has been pared down to the barest of elements—urgent gestures and barely traceable figures cloaked in smoke and dust. As Corridore describes it, the project began as part of a larger portrayal of spectators at various events, including auto races, but became increasingly focused on those few moments in which the event and the landscape in which it take place come into direct and violent contact, for all intents and purposes eliding the spectator from the scene almost entirely. Car race or apocalyptic collision, the true nature of these events is never fully disclosed.”

Via the Aperture blog

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NOT I, NOT I


Images by Jungjin Lee. From the series Wind.

Via American Suburb X

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D.H. LAWRENCE DIXIT

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Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me

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TÓXICO PROJECT RESEARCH No. 28: FILMMAKING AS THE ABILITY TO ARTICULATE DREAMS

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PAsYkrEwjM[/youtube]

From Burden of Dreams, a documentary by Les Blank on the making of Fitzcarraldo: a fiction film that Herzog calls his “best documentary”.

(Tóxico favorites, both of these films)

(Gracias Pancho)

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TITICUT FOLLIES

I have been looking for this Frederick Wiseman film for some time now.

This documentary was shot at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, in Massachusetts; it shows inmates inside the asylum, living a harsh reality behind the bars of their own–and the system’s–unreason.

“The movie was both a landmark piece of journalism and a landmark work of art. It made the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater one of the most infamous madhouses in the country, and it is now one of the most celebrated documentaries of the ’60s. It is also notable for two reasons that have nothing to do with its merits. It was the first picture to be directed by Frederick Wiseman, a former law professor who at age 37 was beginning a long series of rich and challenging films. And it is the only movie in U.S. history to be banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security.”

Read an interview with Wiseman here.

And see the movie here or here.

(Gracias Jannike)

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NON-LINEAR STATE No. 15: ART AND SEDUCTION

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“What is this fear of seduction? A fear that art may have power over us rather than we over it? A desire to reside in the rational space of the head, rather than to be drawn into the body by beauty, which speaks to the senses?”

-Rebecca Solnit-

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CERTAIN MOODS FROM A CITY IN APRIL

Images by Fernando Montiel Klint, Mexican photographer.

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LATAM PHOTOBOOK COMPETITION

Says The Little Brown Mushroom Blog:

Editorial RM has announced the first edition of their competition for The Best Photobook 2010 of Latin America. Registration is free and the limit for submissions is July 30th, 2010. The jurors are Martin Parr (past Tóxico International Guest), Lesley Martin, Álvaro Sotillo, Diran Sirinian, Ramón Reverté, Alexis Fabri and Juan Pablo Queiroz.

Editorial RM will publish and promote the winning book.

More information here

And gracias gracias to our dear Amy Stein for sending us the info.

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THEATRE OF WAR

Theatre of War, by Irish photographer Richard Mosse.

Says Lens Culture:

Set against the spectacular backdrop of the Tigris river in the background, a group of heavily armed and armored soldiers lounge around an empty swimming pool filled with rubble at one of Saddam Hussein’s formerly luxurious hilltop palaces. They could be extras on a film set waiting for the action to begin.

As the film’s credits read:

“Theatre of War is a slow, virtually static video piece redolent of classical history painting. Audio was recorded at the official US military hand-over ceremony at the nearby city of Saniya. A mullah’s prayer for unity among Arabs is spoken, after which the pan-Arab national anthem, Mawtini (My Homeland) is played, emphasizing Arab national solidarity and a pan-Arab territory. Made in Iraq in March 2009. Cinematography and Editing by Trevor Tweeten. Digital Color and Post Production by Jerome Thelia.”

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