Posted in August 2010

MEXICAN VEDETTES, THEN AND NOW

Images by María José Cuevas, from her series Bellas de Noche — film stills from a documentary to come:

“Seven great and powerful vedettes, all of whom witnessed the low and dark world of  politics, society, and entertainment of Mexico during the 70s and 80s. Today, their reign has ended and their lives are marked by scandals and tragedies. Sasha Montenegro, Princess Yamal, Rossy Mendoza, Olga Breeskin, Lyn May and Wanda Seux define an important and peculiar period in the history of Mexico.”

This is Maria José’s first documentary, now in the final stages of filming; she is in Las Vegas as I write, staying with Olga Breeskin. I saw a 15 minute trailer a few weeks ago and I was very (!) impressed with her work. It will be a fantastic film: a wonderful mix of surreality and poignancy, with a good dose of both humor and sadness. The tale of Mexican politics and life-style through very strange and particular lenses.

Download a PDF and read more about her project here on the Tabloide website.

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NON LINEAR STATES No. 021: LA DISTORCIÓN Y LA REVELACIÓN

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“Uno está bastante condenado a una forma de percibir–por la educación, por la costumbre, la cultura–en fin, a una forma de percibir los hechos. El cine lo que te permite es distorcionar esa percepción un poco. Y en esa distorción, para mi, con suerte, entre quien hizo la película y los espectadores puede haber alguna revelación. Y entonces uno intenta ese juego. A veces la revelación se produce, a veces no… una pequeña revelación, no digo una gran verdad–no creo en la gran verdad– pero una pequeña iluminación entorno a  lo que nos rodea. Es un juego casi perceptual que uno propone al espectador”

-Lucrecia Martel-

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THE LANGUAGE OF THE MIND AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE EYE

Knowledge compression, living data, carbon neutral volcanoes; beautiful numbers can change your mind midstream.

Says TED:

“David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut “

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(Tóxico is part of the TED Senior Fellow program.)

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LOVE, AND OTHER THINGS THAT GO ON AT 22 METERS ABOVE GROUND; SOMETIMES BELOW

Chinese artist Li Wei. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography. He is an artist and also a stunt man: he doesn´t use photoshop to create his illusions of reality; he uses props such as metal wires, scaffolding, acrobatics and mirrors.

His performances look to convey his continual sense of lost gravity. He is fascinated by the unstable sides of art. By the sense of danger. He thinks of his artistic work as a continual balancing act between a striving for freedom and a concern for preserving the little emotional security still available. So he suspends himself above the Beijing skyline to illustrate this, and to feel, to feel again; to experiment.

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“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall against which we defend ourselves.”

–Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being–

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FACE BLINDNESS: STRANGERS IN THE MIRROR

Oliver Sacks, the famous neuroscientist and author, can’t recognize faces. Neither can Chuck Close, the great artist known for his enormous paintings of … that’s right, faces.

Oliver and Chuck–both born with the condition known as Face Blindness–have spent their lives decoding who is saying hello to them. You can sit down with either man, talk to him for an hour, and if he sees you again just fifteen minutes later, he will have no idea who you are.”

Listen to a fascinating WNYC Podcast where both Close and Sacks talk about their Face Blindness, and speak about how their work has been determined by their dissabilities; Close for example was driven to paint portraits to commit them to memory–since he has photographic remembrance for flat unmovable pictures.

Well worth the listen, so click click click.

(Gracias Maria Popova)

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REJECTED

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

Animation by Don Hertzfeldt

Don has received more than 150 awards for his work, and has been nominated for an Academy Award, and has a growing cult status.

(Absurdly great)

(Gracias Toñito)

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JULIANA BEASLEY: LAPDANCER



Juliana Beasley estudió foto en NYU. Al salir de la universidad se dió cuenta que no era tan fácil encontrar trabajo en el mundo del arte. Decidió volverse lapdancer profesional y así seguir tomando fotos. Ocho años y muchos movimientos de cadera después de haber comenzado: un libro que combina sus dos carreras. Y unos años después de eso: un taller en Tóxico Lab, la próxima semana, junto con Tema Stauffer.

Truth or Dare?

Un poco de ambos, probablemente.

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Juliana tells us:

“When I discovered lap dancing, I was delighted because my job description was cut and dry—no more conniving for tips. I provided a service and was paid upfront. I had the freedom of choice to interact with customers verbally if I cared to, but my income didn’t depend on me making conversation with men or developing regulars. If they were difficult, I always had the option of turning my back and walking away. Since alcohol is not served in nude clubs, I never felt the pressure to sit with a customer for drinks, which invariably left me with a hangover the next morning. I personally found it less emotionally taxing.

Besides doing the obligatory dance sets—either sharing the stage with other dancers or performing alone—I made the majority of my money walking up to customers and soliciting “private dances”—lap dances—and taking them into “private” areas of the club. Private dances are really not so private: they are often wedged between undulating couples biding for space. During peak hours on Fridays and Saturdays, customers and dancers wait their turn outside the lap dance room.

A lap dance has a beginning, a middle, and an end. First, I would systematically lay down a cloth on the customers’ laps, then grind against their crotches, either by straddling them frontally or by rubbing my buttocks against their groins. In nude lap dance clubs, many dancers carry around personal wraps or leave them in the lap dance room. They lay the material across customers’ laps to provide a hygienic barrier between themselves and rough or dirty pants and unwanted fluids.”

Read more here, on Juliana’s personal blog.

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THE WORDLESS STORY OF A GROWING, UNSTABLE, ROTATING ICICLE WITH MULTIPLE TIPS

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b_swz7Svd0&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

Time lapse movie of an icicle growing from a rotating support. The total growth time is about 10 hours and the support rotates once every 4 minutes. Tap water and still air were used.  The icicle shows the growth of multiple tips and a rippling instability.

(Experiments on the morphology of icicles)

(Gracias Carlitos Casas)

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TEMA STAUFFER

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Next week, at Tóxico Lab!

www.toxicocultura.com/lab

(Pics via American Suburb X)

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AN ATLAS OF ANATOMY

An atlas of Anatomy (FF Miller, 1879) e

An atlas of Anatomy (FF Miller, 1879) f

An atlas of Anatomy (FF Miller, 1879) a

An atlas of Anatomy (FF Miller, 1879) i

An atlas of Anatomy (FF Miller, 1879) c

Says Bibliodyssey:

‘An Atlas of Anatomy: or, Pictures of the Human Body in Twenty-Four Quartro Coloured Plates Comprising one Hundred Separate Figures, with Descriptive Letterpress’ by Mrs Florence Fenwick Miller, 1879.

The remarkable Florence Fenwick Miller (1854-1936) was a leading British vocal supporter of women’s rights, particularly in respect of education. She received her medical degree by the age of twenty and was a member of the London Board of Education. Her unpublished autobiography was shared by her family in the last decade and became the basis of a 2001 biography by Rosemary T. Vanarsdel: ‘Florence Fenwick Miller: Victorian Feminist, Journalist and Educator’

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consider O
this
my body
for it has
lain
with empty arms
upon the giddy hills
to dream of you

            -ee cummings

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DA VINCI DIXIT

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“Look into cracks in walls until you see whole worlds pouring out of them.”

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JULIANA BEASLEY/TEMA STAUFFER EN TÓXICO LAB!

Estamos muy contentos de tener a Juliana y Tema en la Ciudad de México dando un taller intensivo de foto en el marco de Tóxico Lab, una nueva plataforma de Tóxico creada para (y por) talentosos artistas emergentes.

Si eres artista visual o fotógrafo, haz click aquí para saber más.

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ON FIELDS AND FOOTBALLS

Images by Joachim Schmid.

“A series of photographs of football fields in brazilian cities. the images were taken via satellite and they show the rather oddly shaped football pitches that seem to be built wherever possible – the desire for playing the game has clearly surpassed and ignored the limitations of natural topography and FIFA’s laws of the game. however, the careers of many of the world’s best football players began on these very same fields despite their askew angles, odd proportions, mis-shapen border lines and pitch markings.”

See more of his work here.

Via I Heart Photograph blog

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THE PRINTER’S HANDBOOK

Schrift- und Polytypen-Proben BG Teubner, 1846 d

Schrift- und Polytypen-Proben BG Teubner, 1846 c

Schrift- und Polytypen-Proben BG Teubner, 1846

Schrift- und Polytypen-Proben BG Teubner, 1846 a

Says Bibliodyssey:

“In the first half of the 19th century, BG Teubner ran one of the most advanced printing houses in Germany. The Leipzig company was renowned for publishing the most comprehensive editions of classical literature in the original Latin and Greek.

In the production of their critical texts, a variety of Greek fonts were developed that became standards in printing for over a century. And although Teubner died in 1856, his name survived at the printing company through successive evolutions and ownership changes. In fact, a series of classical texts known as Bibliotheca Teubneriana is still published today.

The present work — ’Schrift- und Polytypen-Proben’ (1848) {Fonts and examples of different type} — appears to be a fairly comprehensive model-book or copy-book aimed at printers. It contains a wide variety of fonts and typographic elements, decorative borders, printer’s ornaments, page cornices, emblems, shields, trophies and pendants, as well as what look like Victorian clip-art motifs.”

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THE WORLD’S FIRST NON-VISUAL RESIDENCY PROGRAM FOR ARTISTS

Manifesta 8 will be holding the world’s first non-visual residency program for artists:

“For one week each, five artists will be selected to live and work in a dark, visually distorted exhibition space. To support them in their life and work for the week, the artist will collaborate with a local Murcian assistant who is blind. In cooperation with her/his assistant, the artist will use the one-week residency to create a guided tour of the non-visual space and experience in which s/he is living. The guided tour will take place on the last day of the residency and will be open to the biennial audience. The blind assistant will be the guide of this work in darkness.”

Yes. Darkness. Complete darkness, for 7 days. Sight deprivation escalating other senses, disorientation as method, and another type of collaboration that turns normal hierarchies on their head… how could all of this not result in different creative processes: confronting ‘the night of the world’. I do believe it will be an incredibly interesting experiment, challenging normal artistic processes, and also becoming a curious personal experience that possibly won’t ever be repeated in your life.

And then, yes, the minute the residency is over–the meeting again with the visible world.

(Applications close August 15th, so hurry up.)

(More info right here.)

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NON-LINEAR STATE No. 020: EL PACTO CON EL AZAR

José Luis Guerín–cineasta Catalán, quien dió una gran plática para Tóxico hace algunos años–también fue invitado al CCC, donde dió otra gran Master-Class que puedes escuchar haciendo click en el video de arriba.

Y más conferencias de cineastas aquí, en el marco de Escenarios ’09, un encuentro internacional en torno al cine documental.

(Gracias Interior 13)

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THINGS BEING DESTROYED VERY SLOWLY

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwS6dR9Hto&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

By Philip Heron.

Mesmerizing video of all things shattering–and in my opinion enjoyed even more with the music completely muted.

(Gracias Tania Z.)

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NON-LINEAR STATE No. 019: EXCESS AND SIGNIFICANCE

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“Let us put it like this: a spiritual–that is, significant–phenomenon is “significant” precisely because it exceeds its own limits, serves as expression and symbol of something wider and more universal, an entire world of feelings and thoughts, embodied within it with greater or less felicity–that is the measure of its significance.”

–Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain–

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FANTASMAGORIE (1906)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEAObel8yIE&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

The film above is considered the world’s first fully animated film, composed of 700 drawings, each with a double exposure.

By Émile Cohl, French caricaturist of the largely-forgotten “Incoherent Movement”.

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