Unintended Calculations

Nice new walls on the streets of Vancouver, BC from Remi Rough, Augustine Kofie, Jerry Inscoen and Scott Sueme. The murals, on the walls of the Moda Hotel, were the opening salvo in the foursome's group show Unintended Calculations at Becker Galleries. See it now, it's not up for long.

Two Today

Little Nico turns a beautiful two years old today. And while it may not be QUITE like this, there are certainly moments when this is EXACTLY what it feels like.

Lexier vs Bok

Smart and simple collaboration between Micah Lexier and poet Christian Bok. Found on the streets of San Francisco by Jacklyn Atlas.

Femme nu a Seattle

A lovely photo from French photographer Lucien Clergue, with 1980's era Seattle in the background. Discovered on the luscious photostream Melisaki. Also not to be missed, this photo of cartoonist Saul Steinberg, with himself as a Little Boy, on Long Island in 1978. "Pulse Pause Repeat."

Blödes Orchester

The Blödes Orchester (or "stupid orchestra) is comprised of more than 200 vacuum cleaners, blenders, washing machines and electric razors arranged like a symphony orchestra. You can't make this shit up. By the Hamburg-based composer and theater director Michael Petermann. You can see the full 35 minute-long performance every hour at the MKG Hamburg until April 30th.

Beware the Ides of March

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

— Cæs. The ides of March are come.
Sooth. Ay, Cæsar; but not gone. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Cycling In The Netherlands In The 1950s

At the same time that the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system was being built in the United States in 1956, sounding the death knell of all reasonable and human scaled forms of transportation in this country, nearly 85 percent of the population in the Netherlands were getting from point A to point B by bicycle. Today there are about 16 million bicycles in Holland, slightly more than one for every inhabitant. About 1.3 million new bicycles are sold every year.

This charming video, discovered on the ever useful youtube, is a great collection of images of Dutch cycling in the 1950s. Makes one yearn for civilization.

Hans Bellmer

Today is the birthday of Hans Bellmer, born March 13, 1902. Bellmer was born in Kattowitz, Germany and at his father's insistence worked in a steel factory and a coal mine until entering Berlin Polytechnic to study engineering. While in Berlin Bellmer met the artists John Heartfield, Rudolf Schlichter and George Grosz and their friendship and inspiration led him to drop out of college in 1924 to work as a book printer and then as a commercial illustrator.

In 1933, as the Nazi party assumed power, Bellmer resigned his position and refused to continue working as a sign of resistance. He began to construct deliberately provocative sculptures using girlish three-dimensional dolls, which he photographed in erotic poses. Some of these works were published by Bellmer at his own expense in 1934, and others appeared in the Surrealist journal "Le Minotaure," signaling a long association with the European surrealists. In 1938 Bellmer fled Germany for Paris and on the outbreak of the second world war was interned with Max Ernst in a camp near Aix-en-Provence. On being discharged from the camp in 1941, Bellmer renounced his German nationality and fled to Castres. In 1943 Bellmer had his first one-man show at the "Librairie Trentin", a bookshop in Toulouse. It was followed by numerous international Surrealist group shows.

Over the course of his career Bellmer continually explored the subconscious aspect of sexuality by creating hallucinatory sculptural objects, photographs, drawings, prints and paintings. Bellmer never stopped creating evocative and arguably obscene images with which he expressed a rebellion against society, conventional rationality and the dangerously conformist times and places in which he lived.

Hans Bellmer died in Paris in February 1975.

A show of his work is on display in Los Angeles at Galerie Anais through March 31.

Maybe Alone on My Bike

by William Stafford

I listen, and the mountain lakes
hear snowflakes come on those winter wings
only the owls are awake to see,
their radar gaze and furred ears
alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone
on my bike, quaintly on a cold
evening pedaling home), Think!--
the splendor of our life, its current unknown
as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:
we might have died. We live. Marvels
coast by, great veers and swoops of air
so bright the lamps waver in tears,
and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

Photograph by Josef Koudelka.

Os Gémeos & Blu in Lisbon

Absolutely extraordinary art from Blu and Os Gémeos in Lisbon. A five-story collaboration across three walls of an apartment building. And the eyes of the fat man are suspended from the roof so that they move in the wind. So good. Check out Unurth for closeups and details.

Motion

Nothing but busy. Where does the time go?

I can't pretend I have time to get out and see or do much that's social these days. So maybe I'll just post a few days worth of true distractions. As a case in point ... you've seen parkour. You've seen flip-books. But I'm guessing you still haven't seen this inventive painstakingly hand-made film by Singapore-based designer Serene Teh. Only 45 seconds! Watch it twice!