“when we start a project, we study the general situation first: the country, the region, the city, the area, the site. it’s important for us to understand as much as possible about the conditions that surround the project …. these conditions can be political, cultural, economic or social, but they are also about issues such as climate, light, sound, planting, local fashion, music, traffic behaviour, architecture or language.”

marieke vanden heuvel, surging garden (2008)

inside outside’s curtain design for the de singel addition.

 

invisible presence

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title]     Blaisse, Petra. “Curtain as Architecture.” Inside Outside. Rotterdam: NAi, 2007. 18. Print.

[image]      comes from the de singel website.

[more blaisse]     for more of petra blaisse and inside outside’s work check out this old ayh post.

“the theoretical basis of stynen’s work is on the same line with the ideas of le corbusier. his apartment building in wilrijk (1932) was a modest, but well conceived residential unit, long before le corbusier built unité d’habitation in marseille. stynen’s proposal for urban development on the ‘linkeroever’ in antwerp (1932) – a competition that le corbusier also participated in – is totally in line with the ideas of c.i.a.m.”

gerrit op de beeck, trap (1990)

 

leon stynen’s de singel.  i should also note he worked closely on the project with his assistant paul de meyer.

 

share credit

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title]     comes from the kind folks at de singel.  for more on the history of the institution, the architect and the buildings (new and old) click here.

[image]      also from the de singel website.

“a distancing is employed to speak of something deeply personal in a universal way, placing a screen between the subject and the viewer as a psychological apparatus. these images are also largely about photography itself, an attempt at deconstructing abstraction in an art historical context and painterly manner via the camera.”

marisa baumgartner, visible city (facades II) (2005)

great works by maris baumgartner.  check out her site for more.

 

cities without nature

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title]     description of marisa’s show at domo gallery.

[image]     for more images by marisa…

“well, in any case you’ll agree that this ape skull is an artwork. not made by a human being, true, but still an art work, don’t you agree? yes, here we have reached a certain point. this is an artwork made by a human being and this is an artwork that’s not made by a human being. so who made this work of art?” – joseph beuys

mansilla y tunon, competition entry for cantabria musuem (2008)

 

i still can’t believe mansilla y tunon regularly use joseph bueys as there scale figure.

 

objects from nature

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title]     Beuys, Joseph, Volker Harlan, Matthew Barton, and Shelley Sacks. What Is Art?: Conversation with Joseph Beuys. London: Clairview, 2004. 70. Print.

[image]     comes from somewhere out there in the internet.

[more landform building]     this 2008 design by mansilla y tunon reminds me a lot of a museum proposal by stan allen in 2010.

“my work throws into question the relationship of memory faded by speed, resistance from it, and the relationship between human beings and nature inside the city. this rapidly changing environment erases our memories and we have to prepare ourselves to let go of the memories without making them.”

minouk lim, the weight of hands (film still) (2010)

 

playing on the popular experience of taking a sightseeing bus tour in so-called destination cities, ‘the weight of hands’ offers an alternative perspective on seoul’s urban landscape.  in this case, its usual heritage sites and tourist traps are shunned for a pilgrimage to secured construction zones.  this staged action, which commemorates the lss of place and memory, firmly channels funerary rituals through its haunting soundtrack of a lone drummer’s solemn beat set against a singer’s personal lament.

for lim, the work is a means to reclaim locations that have become privatized and ultimately inaccessible to the city’s inhabitants because of pervasive proprty development.  at the same time, it attempts to purposefully reinsert the body into these vacant spaces.  through the use of thermal imagery, captured with infrared technology that is often used in surveillance systems, lim maps the literal and immediate environmental shift that occurs as a consequence of human presence.  the heat emitted by the trespassers tangibly articulates the incompatibility of living, breathing subjects with a physcial void that waits to be filled by inanimate, “cold” and ahistorical buildings.

 

the heat of shadows

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title + text]     the above text and title are taken from the gallery pamphlet accompanying minouk lim’s exhibition at the walker.

 

“stills from any film give a very incomplete picture of what the actual viewing experience, and this is particularly true of brakhage films. the perceived imagery in brakhage’s work depends very much on movement and montage, to the extent that some things a viewer is convinced are contained in a single image are in fact only the product of movements within a shot, or/and of juxtapositions from shot to shot. still, i’ve attempted to select strips and individual frames that suggest the aesthetic of each film.” – fred camper

fred camper’s collage of stan brakhage filmstrips from the film mothlight (1963)

 

one of brakhage’s best-known films, mothlight was created without the use of a camera by simply pressing moth wings, leaves, and other organic objects between two strips of mylar tape and then rephotographing it by running it through an optical printer. 1963, 16mm, 4 minutes.

– via wac

 

strong impressions

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title]     the title comes from fred camper’s webpage full of stan brakhage film stills.

[image]     i originally came across the above image on the walker art center’s website announcing an evening of stan brakhage films.  though this morning i can attribute this beautiful image to the efforts of fred camper.  please visit his site for more information.

[more brakhage inspired work]     this morning’s post covered the work of cameron gainer, whose work has been influenced by stan brakhage.

“struggle can appear as a tension between representation and abstraction, and this can even said to describe the text of light, in which patterns of refracted light seen through a crystal ash-tray become metaphors for landscapes……the light we do see almost always seems to be set against darkness……..these momentary flickers that materialize tenuously out of emptiness.” – fred camper

cameron gainer, luna del mar test photos (2009)

 

it must have been halfway between chicago and austin when i put down my book and started to stare out the window at approaching flashes of light.  most of the other passengers were resting so the airplane’s main cabin was sparsely lit.  each strike of lightening came in through the window crystal clear.  the dark rural night sky rendered the ominous thunderhead entirely black and formless; the cells full form only appeared momentarily through lightening flashes.

i am really glad i had the time to see cameron gainer’s piece luna del mar at the walker before leaving town (thanks for the recommendation matt!).  olympic synchronized swimmer luna del mar’s sillohouette occasionally develops in the foreground of a mass of bio-luminous water found in mosquito bay, puerto rico.  at times it feels a bit like looking at a sonogram.  the entire film is set to a piece of music by alex waterman.  if you have the chance to see it, don’t miss out.

 

dead of night

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title update]     just came across this quote by fred camper (found at the art of memory), while searching information on stan brakhage.  it seems way more appropriate.  

[original title]     the original title “communication between bacteria (quorum sensing) plays a role in the regulation of luminesence in many bacterial species.  using small extracellularly secreted molecules, they are able to adapt their behavior to turn on genes for light production only when they are at high cell densities” comes from a wikipedia entry on bioluminescence.

[image]     cameron gainer’s test photo was found on alex waterman’s website.

[more imperceptible made perceptible]     ayh’s previous mention of jorge otero-pailos efforts seem appropriate.

“letting go of conceptual approaches, a series of abstract monochromatic images, shows the effect of a photochemical reaction of sunlight with hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides that has been released into the atmosphere mostly by automotive emissions and industrial plants. a paradoxical image as we find beauty in polluted skyscapes.”

jason mena, letting go of conceptual approaches (2003)

 

i wish i could see jason mena’s letting go of conceptual approaches in person.  haunting concept.

 

paradoxical images

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title + images]     not sure exactly where i first came across these images, but i found the title and some others from the series on triangulation blog.

[more invisible made visible]     this reminds me of an old ayh post on mario reis’ works which consist of dipping a canvas into a stream and allowing the minerals and flowing water to paint a picture.

“in his most recent series, transmission, holdsworth has created images of iconic western american landscapes — yosemite, the grand canyon, mount st. helens, etc. — using topographical data from the u.s. geological survey. in collaboration with geologist stuart dunning, holdsworth translated data from laser and radar scans of the earth’s surface into a virtual 3d model…”

dan holdsworth, salt lake city plan view (2012)

 

very excited to see what comes out of aaron rothman’s design observer series on landscape photography.  though maybe the name should be changed to landscape depictions, since the majority of the work shown in the first post are more mixed media pieces than photography.

 

virtually real

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title]     the title is an excerpt from aaron rothman’s article.  check it out in full here.

[image]     the above image comes from dan holdsworth’s website.  definitely page through his photography.   he has produced some truly haunting and beautiful work over the years.

“the sun had now detached itself from the horizon and day had dawned, with only a few clouds floating in the sky, let’s just hope it doesn’t get so hot that your muscles melt and you feel as if the sweat on your skin was about to come to the boil.” – jose saramago

bill arnold,  floating house (1977)

 

i’m moving.  in texas.  in the summer.  its hot.

 

be back soon

a young hare

 

 

notes:

[title]     Saramago, José, and Margaret Jull. Costa. The Elephant’s Journey. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Print.

[image]     today’s image is of a bill arnold piece originally found at  je suis perdu.