Posted in May 2010

A HEAD HELD UNDERWATER

“Photographer Paul Schiek weaves a tale of glass, fabric, suffocation, flash bulbs and fragile human threads. The viewer’s head (and heart) are held underwater by force as a feeling of organic claustrophobia and a slight tinge of a smothering madness rush through. His use of a camera becomes unimportant, the aesthetic and the content, the vice grip on your senses are all that matter. If one tries to break down the scenes, analyze the pieces, all that is left is confusion and the realization that the reality is meaningless… all that truly matters is what is contained in Paul’s frenzied head.”

(Via the fantastic American Suburb X)

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NON-LINEAR STATE No. 018: DIGGING DEEPER

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“Dig into your sensation. Look at what there is within. Don’t analyze it with words. Translate it into sister images, into equivalent sounds. The clearer it is, the more your style affirms itself. Style: all that is not technique”

-Robert Bresson-

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LOST BOY MOUNTAIN

Images by Lester B. Morrison

Via Little Brown Mushroom Blog

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JEAN LUC AND WOODY

Click on image to see Meetin’ WA: Godard interviewing Allen in 1986.

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NON-LINEAR STATE No. 17: AND AGAIN

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All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

-S. Beckett-

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BUENOS AIRES DIARIES No. 004: THE JOY, THE TERROR

This here is like an ultrasound: a lil fetus film.

We have two weeks of editing to go. And then we shall see what we shall see…

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IF THE RIVER WAS DEEP. WHEN THE MOUNTAIN WAS HIGH

Tableau comparatif des principales montagnes, des principaux fleuves (Bulla) 1820-1829

Comparative Heights of the Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers (Darton + Gardner) 1823

Comparative lengths of the principal rivers throughout the World. Comparative view of mountains. (Cumming) 1829

A comparative view of the heights of the principal mountains of Scotland (Thomson) 1832

A comparative view of the lengths of the principal rivers of Scotland (Thomson) 1832

Distribution of Vegatables and Snow Line + Comparative Lengths of Rivers (Bradford) 1835 a

Heights Of The Principal Mountains In The World (Tanner) 1836

Comparative Heights of the Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers of The World, from the 1800s.

Oh, the poetry of graphic information, once upon a time.

(Read more here.)

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THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN IN THE WORLD

Click on image to see  a (beautifully shot) short film by British director Alicia Duffy.

She  is presenting her first feature-lenght film (entitled “All Good Children”) this year at Cannes.

(Take a look at the trailer here.)

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GRAY ROOM

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“Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl–
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you…
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating”

-Wallace Stevens-

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(gracias benjamín z.)

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FACE. HAIR.

From the series La Barbe, by Yann Gross.

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NON-LINEAR STATE No. 16: NOT THIS, THAT, THE OTHER, YES

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No se trata de encontrar una voz. Se trata, si se trata de algo, de producir una escritura ajena, otra, improbable

-Cristina Rivera Garza-

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IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT

Images by Mexican photographer Nadia Baram.

Mmm.

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TÓXICO AT POSTOPOLIS! MEXICO CITY

Happy to announce that Tóxico will be participating in Postópolis! DF, from the 8-12 June; very excited to see all that international blogging talent flying into DF, it promises to be a great event with an amazing line-up of talks:

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“Storefront for Art and Architecture, in partnership with Museo Experimental El Eco, Tomo and Domus Magazine, will host the third edition of Postopolis!, a public five-day session of near-continuous conversation curated by some of the worldʼs most prominent bloggers from the fields of architecture, art, urbanism, landscape, music and design. 10 world-renowned bloggers from Los Angeles, New York, Turin, Barcelona, London and elsewhere will convene in one location in Mexico City to host a series of discussions, interviews, slideshows, presentations, films and panels fusing the informal and interdisciplinary approach of the architecture blogosphere with rare face-to-face interaction.

Each day, the 10 participating bloggers will meet in the magnificent courtyard of Museo Experimental El Eco, designed by Matthias Goeritz, to conduct back-to-back interviews of some of Mexico Cityʼs most influential thinkers and practitioners – including architects, city planners, artists and urban theorists but also military historians, filmmakers, photographers, activists and musicians. The talks will be conducted in either Spanish or English, and translations will be available. Each day of talks will end with an after-party hosted by some of Mexico Cityʼs most influential music blogs.
The first Postopolis! took place in the gallery space at Storefront for Art and Architecture during the summer of 2007, and a second edition was held in Los Angeles in 2009.

Participating blogs:

Urban Omnibus (Cassim Shepard)

Intersections (Daniel Hernandez)

DPR Barcelona (Ethel Barona Pohl)

Toxico Cultura (Gabriella Gomez-Mont)

Tomo (Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa)

Mudd Up! (Jace Clayton aka DJ /rupture)

Edible Geography (Nicola Twilley)

We Make Money Not Art (Regine Debatty)

Strangeharvest (Sam Jacob)

Wayne & Wax (Wayne Marshall)

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More info on speakers and schedules here.

(See you there)

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Twitter: @postopolis, #postopolis

@toxicocultura

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Partners
Museo Experimental El Eco, TOMO, Domus Magazine

Organizers
Joseph Grima, Daniel Perlin, César Cotta, José Esparza

Sponsors

Mexicana,  British Embassy,  Urbi Vida Residencial,  UNAM Difusión Cultural,  UNAM Museo Experimental El Eco, Cityexpress, XXLager

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(Lots of news, soon, right here: deliriously paced blogging will begin come June.)


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BUENOS AIRES DIARIES No. 003: EL BUEN POEMA SE COME FRIO

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqxGBXolmw4[/youtube]

I arrived in Buenos Aires two weeks ago. I stay for a little over a month. I have been living close to a train track, 100 meters away from an old metal bridge where  one can lean against the railing with a cup of hot coffee to watch the trains pass by. I have been editing my first feature-length documentary with el dueño de la tijera y el péndulo, la barbarie doméstica, editor descalzo, Felipe Guerrero.

Watch a fragment of his experimental film “Paraíso” above. Directed by him and music by our friend Sebastián Escofet.

(10 am)

(Back to work)

(Mmm, film)

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ECHO

Echo, by Daniel Farah.

“A man is found in a timeless space; a void which is about to be filled by memories. Each time he imagines something, his thought comes out of his head and into his reality sharing the physical world. Simultaneously, he loses body mass with every thought as more objects share its existence. In the end, he becomes the thought itself and fades away leaving behind his imagination which has now become a recollection of tangible memories.”

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BUENOS AIRES DIARIES No. 002: FACES

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“Un hombre se propone la tarea de dibujar el mundo. A lo largo de los años puebla un espacio con imágenes de provincias, de reinos, de montañas, de bahías, de naves, de islas, de peces, de habitaciones, de instrumentos, de astros, de caballos y de personas. Poco antes de morir, descubre que ese paciente laberinto de líneas traza la imagen de su cara.”

-Jorge Luis Borges-

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THE GREAT UNREAL


In the book, “The Great Unreal”, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs have taken American Landscape and all of its vast array of interlinked details and massive wide open spaces and trompe l’oeil’ed them into a spider web of connected submission. They have turned the landscape inside out and let you see what-it-is-that-couldn’t-be. They have constructed a network of elements that lead you gently and forcefully down a path that leads to somewhere and nowhere, to everywhere and anywhere. This tale is like your dream… not every dream but the special dreams… vast and complex in your head, the storyline gets all jumbled up and the connecting fabric is much too complicated to remember.

(Says American Suburb X)

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FORTUNE 000

Fortune Magazine commissioned Chris Ware to do the cover for their annual Fortune 500* issue: as seen above. And  then they promptly rejected it of course.

(Via Amy Stein)

(*a yearly issue that ranks the largest American corporations)

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BUENOS AIRES DIARIES No. 001: EDITING 80 HOURS OF FILM

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

-T.S. Eliot

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