Scent of Geranium from Naghmeh Farzaneh on Vimeo.
Absolutely wonderful.
Immigration is a new chapter in one’s life, a chapter with unexpected events that can take one’s life down paths different from the one imagined. This film is an autobiographical account of the director’s experience with immigration.
‘Scent of Geranium’ is this week’s Staff Pick Premiere! Read more about it here: vimeo.com/blog/post/staff-pick-premiere-scent-of-geranium
Fleur de Pêcher (Peach Blossom). J.J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées.
John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, Ben Wright, “Frozen Words Hot Air” (2017) (courtesy the artists).
Many of us probably feel the urge, at least once each day, to smash the hateful things President Trump has said (or tweeted). On Friday, September 8, the artists John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, and Ben Wright will use those overblown and grammatically incoherent groups of words as the basis for a multidisciplinary, poetic, satiric performance at UrbanGlass titled “Frozen Words Hot Air.” Handpainted glass objects emblazoned with words from Trump’s speeches will be blown live by Wright and Liesl Schubel, then played by Chase and Moore, while audio snippets of those same speeches are remixed and manipulated by Keddie.
John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, Ben Wright, Frozen Words newspaper (2017) (courtesy the artists).
Inspired by the 16th-century French satirist François Rabelais’s The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel (ca 1532–64), the performance references a particular scene from that tome. In it, the heroic giant Pantagruel crosses a sea of thawing ice that, as it melts, releases the ghostly sounds of a gruesome battle that took place there during the winter. On Friday, all the hot air blown by President Trump will be symbolically frozen, manipulated, and smashed. An accompanying artists’ newspaper to be distributed at the performance, Frozen Words, will gather the jumbled and rearranged speeches for posterity.
When: Friday, September 8, 7–8pm
Where:UrbanGlass (647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn)
This sounds like a fabulous show, it’s certainly a well-inspired one, and I’d love to see this in person. If you have the opportunity, take it! Via Hyperallergic.
I realize that not everyone finds Medievalism to be as fascinating as I do, but this is really, um, fascinating!
Introduction: In the fictive landscape of the Northern Kingdoms, the character Geralt of Rivia rides on his chestnut mare clad in chainmail armour whilst sporting two-handed swords comparable to a zweihander or longsword of the late 15th century. As I encounter my second village through the third-person view of my protagonist, a short observation leaves me with the impression of a plausible society taken from the Middle Ages. Such a historically detailed environment within a fantasy game of the 21st century should be no surprise to the avid gamer, however, it raised the question of the representation of history within computer games.
[…]
This study seeks to investigate the medieval thematic in computer gaming and pursue what historical elements that persist through this relatively new medium. More distinctly, the many missions and quests experienced in the ‘The Witcher 3’ is the main object of study as they work in concert, providing both enhanced purpose for the player as well as constricting the freedom given in the open world of the Northern Kingdoms. Quests – a task or mission given by non-playable characters (NPCs) or during certain interaction with objects in the game – present a variety of impressions through participatory segments that the player encounters in the game. It is the potent meaning of said quests that this study seek to delve into in order to find, not only the historical features, but also the fascination that seems to propagate itself in games.
You can read Christer Lidén’s full thesis here. (.pdf)
Via Medievalists.net.
Hortensia, Couronne Impériale (Hydrangea, Crown Imperial). J.J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées.
Dahlia. 999miil]]]]9 (Vala decided to help me post this.) J.J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées.
Belle de Nuit (Mirabilis jalapa, Four o’clock). J.J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées.
Click for full size.
William T. Horton is an artist little know these days. His work is stark, yet full of expressiveness and intensity. The Public Domain has an excellent article up, with many images. Just a few more here. Click all for full size.
The publisher Leonard Smithers (1861–1907) launched, bankrolled or otherwise helped the careers of an impressive variety of names: Richard Burton, Aubrey Beardsley, Aleister Crowley, Ernest Dowson, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, and Max Beerbohm were all referred to as “Smithers People” at one time or another. He drew to his circle the most eccentric and interesting characters of the era and in 1896 launched the arts and literary magazine the Savoy to showcase many of them. Aubrey Beardsley was made art editor while Arthur Symons was placed at the editorial helm. While not entirely a “Decadent” outfit (it also published George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Conrad), the magazine became a lightning rod for the curious and in it, as Bernard Muddiman wrote, “the abnormal, the bizarre, found their true home”1. It also launched the career of an illustrator and mystic named William T. Horton. Arguably one of the most fascinating and most unusual of all the “Smithers People”, he published very little work and remains almost completely unknown today.
The Path to the Moon from Horton’s A Book of Images (1898). Click for full size.
Horton’s cover for Knut Hamsun’s Hunger (1899) — Source: private scan from book. Click for full size.
One of two Horton images featured in H. Rider Haggard’s The Mahatma and the Hare, a Dream Story (1911) — Source. Click for full size.
You can read and see much more at The Public Domain. Horton’s A Book of Images can be seen in its entirety here. W.B. Yeats’s introduction to A Book of Images is well worth reading, too.
Primevere, Perce-Neige (Primrose and Snow Drop). J.J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées.
Not really. :D This is one of the T-shirts I was using when doing Submerged, then the rats did their part. I’m sure if I was enough of a pretentious twit, framed it, stuck it in a gallery, and made up a buncha twaddle about its significance, I could make good change off it. That won’t happen though. It’s gone back to the rats. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Rose. J.J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées.
Okay, got the head done, mostly. I shouldn’t be painting today, my mood…it’s not suitable. Clickety for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Charles McGee, Unity. Photo by Sal Rodriguez. All images courtesy of Library Street Collective.
In 2014, when the City of Detroit threatened to sell many of the Detroit Institute of Art’s prized artworks to help the Motor City exit bankruptcy, the question of art’s role in the city’s future came front and center. Ultimately, the museum raised nearly a billion dollars to preserve the city’s cultural heritage—and its Picassos. Two years before, in what has become known as a “grand bargain,” local residents, husband and wife duo Anthony and JJ Curis, decided to open the Library Street Collective on a once-barren stretch of land. The Collective is a gallery with a traditional artist roster and a mission to revitalize the city by commissioning artists from the city and around the world to make public art in the streets of Detroit.
“Me or JJ don’t have an art background,” says Anthony Curis to Creators. “At the time, I was redeveloping a building in downtown Detroit that was meant to be a restaurant.” Back then, downtown Detroit’s state of near-total abandonment led him to open a gallery instead, at the suggestion of his wife. “The model wasn’t focused as much on the brick and mortar as it was on what kind of change we can make in the city.” He explains, “When we opened the gallery, we were really focused on public art and how could we change the landscape, making the community a little bit more vibrant and interesting. We are very interested in and keen on our mission to engage the public and reach people. That’s where the gallery was born.”
You can read much more, and see more about this project at The Creators Project.