How to Find a Point

1) The Center of The Left Eye of the Fattest Pigeon in New York City.

- Mapquest

- Follow the bread crumbs

- Point to it

- Ask Jeeves

- Ask the hot dog man

- Look slightly to the right of its right eye

- Draw a diagram

- Find another pigeon and feed it until its obesity can not be matched

- Laser Pointer

- Pointer Finger

2) The Spot on the Ocean Surface Directly Above the Titanic

- Ask Leonardo Dicaprio

- Ask a cartographer

- Learn to Scuba Dive

- Float a beachball up from the wreckage

- Slightly to one side of an iceberg

- GSP

- Google Earth

- Erect a periscope from said wreckage

- Go back in time and buy a ticket - enjoy the ride - bring life raft

- Drain the ocean - locate - refill

- Drink the ocean - locate - vomit

3) An Invisible Friend

- Spray spray paint EVERYWHERE

- Start kicking and punching in the suspected general vicinity

- Take my word for it

- Look with magic goggles

- Drop money - wait

- Cover floor in dirt - look for footprints

- Tracking device

- "Marco polo"

- Wait for his/her phone to ring

- Wizardry

Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years

The first thought I had as I walked around the exhibition was the amount of variety that the artists showed. Then I realized it made total sense, because the works represented over 200 artists and a time period from about 1940 to now. MOCA holds the most important artworks from the postwar period to now. Nevertheless, from paintings to sculptures to sketches to musical art to poster art to mechanical design to video art, it was like tapping into an amazing resource of many ideas coming together, somehow under the pretense of being one coherent show. As Liz Larner said, "There is a whole tradition where volume and density and mass are almost the same thing..."

I chose to visit The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, showing the portion of the Collection dated from 1980 to current times. As I said, MOCA found it difficult to categorize the many different forms, concepts, and media that had arose during the last 30 years. They also chose to display artwork not only from Los Angeles and the United States, but also from international channels.

The artwork that caught my eye the most was a series of blurry pictures of a woman, taken from a suspicious angle and perspective, coupled with the minutes and description of her activities. I found it strange at first that the seeming work of a stalker, or possibly a detective, could be displayed to the world so easily. I read the diary of the lady, which was the underlying piece in her series, which explained that she had hired the detective man anonymously to follow her around one day. She bumped into him a couple times, and went about her day as normally as possible. However, her ultimate aim was to draw the attention of the man so that he may possibly be attracted to her. This artwork resulted in mixed feelings for me: at first I thought it was crazy the strange desperate measures she took in order to get noticed. Was it her loneliness that caused her to actually hire someone to violate her privacy? But then I realized she had given up her privacy on purpose, and therefore he was not invading it. She was conscious of it the entire time. Her call for love and attention seemed normal, as anyone would do because everyone experiences loneliness one time or another. It could also be an exciting factor to a normal, dull day--watching over your shoulder for a man who could perhaps end up being your lover.

Another art piece that caught my eye was a normal dining table featuring simple, everyday items that typically occupy that space: a plate, bowl, small plant, etc. What at first glance seemed nothing special was actually a piece of mechanical wonder. All the items on the table were rotating, upon deeper observation, at a very slow velocity. The various battery-powered machines hidden underneath the table showed proof of the artist's work. This took me by surprise because I understood that this was to show people that they should really take a second look at whatever seems normal, obvious, and on-the-surface. One could barely tell that these things were rotating, even upon close observation, but traces of movement could be detected, if just barely. This piece also encouraged me to view other artworks in the exhibition with extra careful eyes.

Overall, I enjoyed this gallery of collections from MOCA's First Thirty Years. I was amazed by many of the artworks and even the collection as a whole. The creativity and the new ways of demonstrating concepts were thrilling. It really showed me how even in the last thirty years, there has been so many different movements all over the world--and how we should look forward to more.

-Joyce Pak

MFA Lecture: Charles Long

Last Wednesday, I got to hear Charles Long speak about some of his recent works of art. Overall, it was a really great presentation. I was most interested in hearing about what drove him to produce his work. He spoke about how he would venture down to the LA river to find inspiration. Through his slideshow of photographs that he took there, I could see that it truly is a different world down by the river-it's an interesting mix of urban influences (the cement banks of the river, trash, shopping carts) and nature (there's tons of vegetation growing down there). Mr. Long spoke about how he would take various things from the river and drag them back up to his house. There, he would put them together into unexpected forms and paint them. I've include some samples of his compositions from the river. I'd advise anyone to look up some more of his work!

MOMA-San Francisco

Over spring break, I went to the anniversary show at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in San Francisco. It was pretty cool.







This was one of my favorite pieces at the show. What first caught my eye was its size. You can't really tell but it was about as tall as the room. Its texture was incredible as well. I could tell that the artist had packed on layers upon layers of thick paint which made for a really awesome composition with great movement.















I also really liked this piece by Andy Warhol because it was the first of his works that I've been able to see in person. Also, around the time I visited MOMA I'd been studying up on his work as research for our poster project. I really like how he takes such seemingly simple concepts and makes them into complex, colorful works of art.








This piece was really cool as well. It's a sharpie drawing of part of San Francisco. This reminded me of the sketches we had to do for some of our previous projects that were all inked in. I was really able to appreciate the artist's attention to detail and I think that understanding is really what drew me to the piece.

Jessica Snow

Earlier on during the poster design project, I have mentioned Jessica Snow because she is one of the artists who inspires me. I love her workpieces because they are all delicate, yet edgy and solid with their own bold colors. Her works are also collage-like which I have been into because I like how the piece is abstract, yet it flows all together as one piece. There are dimensions and a 3-d effect to Snow's work because of the use of layering and color that are evenly scattered across the canvas. Movement and arrangement are also very well spread throughout her pieces which brings attention to one specific area of her works. I enjoy looking at Snow's pieces because the colors work really well together and I really think that the way she spaces and arranges her works are essential. There are different shapes and movement going in all different directions which allows me to guide my eyes through and allows me to glance throughout the piece. I love all of her delicate pieces because of the rapid movement and the subtleness allows it to be free-flowing and soft. Jessica Snow is definitely one of my favorite artists.

Robert Rauschenburg

I had the opportunity to visit the MOCA museum a few weeks ago for one of my other classes Visual culture and Literacy. I was most interested in Rauschenburg's pieces because of the use of collage-like element and the different materials used caught my attention. I found his "Man in White Shoe" artwork very narrative to his personal life and the height and the use of proportions were visually pleasing. The use of pictures mounted on the top part of the shelf in his "Man with White Shoe" directed movement and a collage-like feeling because of the way it was overlain upon eachother. The use of open space between the three spaces are evened accordingly to the figure and height of the sculpture and the use of arrangement and organization allows the work to be effective because each represents a distinct part. Most of his works seem to be symbolic because the hen and the mirror reflecting the portrait of the man represents a story itself. His pieces are not collective as a whole because it does not directly provide the information to grasp on, but rather his pieces are mysterious and allows the audience to narrate their own story by perceiving the images and pictures placed inside the box.

MOPA

I had the pleasure of seeing “State of Mind: A California Invitational” a photography exhibit on display at the Museum of Photographic Arts located in Balboa Park in San Diego, in addition to their permanent collection. The show is a celebration of California photography in the 21^st century. Although the artists reside in a similar geographic location, the photographs varied vastly. From portraits of mini beauty queens, to the classic female nude; from landscapes to lynchings. Todd Hido created a series called A Road Divided, in which he took pictures of landscapes as he was traveling through a rainy car door window creating an eerie and hazy feel appropriate for the weather he was depicting. In the erased lynching series, Ken Gonzales Day took old photographs of lynchings and erased the victim. I speculated that the photos were meant to problematise the viewer by placing the viewer amongst the perpetrators. Susan Anderson created High Glitz, a series of portraits of young beauty queens, in full make up and dress. These photos are unedited and are meant to draw attention to how these young girls are made up to emulate more mature expectations for beauty. Overall, the show had great variety from photographs meant to capture unlikely moments of beauty to photos that confront social issues.

Getty Villa! Greeks Keepin' it Classy

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting the Getty Villa, the Getty Center’s sister museum. The Getty Villa’s collection focuses mostly on ancient works from Greece, Rome, and Etruria. The entire museum is modeled Roman architecture and features gorgeous fountains and gardens in addition to art works. My visit focused mainly in ancient Greek and Roman pottery. The museum organizes ceramics by themes including athletics, war, animals, gods and goddesses. Greek and Roman pottery was hand built, but with incredible precision and technique. This is also reflected in the detailed designs featured on the pots, which usually depict an event. The designs usually feature silhouettes of profiles and extremely intricate detail (some of these patterns could be great inspiration for Design I!). The pottery demonstrated a lot about ancient Greek culture, and they definitely went through a sexist party animal phase. Some of the larger pots were offered as a prize for the winners of athletic competitions, but it wasn’t the spectacularly crafted vase that was valuable…it was the wine contained inside. Also, much of the decorative pottery was meant for the males’ large debaucherous gatherings. The images depicted on cups and plates were meant to be entertaining and humorous for the men and often included themes such as: being really intoxicated, homo-eroticism, and having sex with everyone except for their wives (wives were meant to produce legitimate babies whereas prostitutes and young men were up for grabs). These pots feature a younger man holding a pot while his superior urinates into it and a young man having a sexual encounter with a prostitute…keep it classy Greeks, keep it classy.

Blum & Poe Presenting Carroll Dunham

Also found on the La Cienega Blvd. row was the art gallery Blum & Poe. It was currently presenting the artwork of Carroll Dunham on the first floor. Carroll Dunham is an artist working in New York and Connecticut whose artwork was the center of many one-person exhibitions. His work is even included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and many other venues. I found the contrast between Dunham and Natrop highly interesting.

Where Natrop mainly used cut pieces of paper to convey his intentions, Dunham uses paintings--in this particular exhibition--of mainly trees, and human-like characters to depict meaning. Dunham, unlike Natrop who chose to use soft muted colors, employs a vibrant, playful palette which adds to the strange quality of his paintings. At Blum & Poe, Dunham combined two of his most well-known type of paintings. One is the human-like characters, colored with pink, flesh tones, with full nudity and a discomfort to the perspective and to their poses. Another are his detailed, comic-like paintings of trees that have a hint of being dug up or a coming fall.

In view of the unrestricted naked bodies, one can see the underlying glimpse of the trees--behind, surrounding, inbetween, underneath the bodies. The connection between the nudes and the natural atmosphere. Dunham uses the effect of a subtle shifting foreground and background to unify his two ideas as a whole, balanced painting.

I was surprised to see how intimate yet blunt these images were. Unlike Natrop who used a more subtle, even ambiguous nature to his artwork to convey struggle and complexity, Dunham uses a more obvious tone--although his message may be hard to interpret. Although Dunham did have some sort of subtlety to his message, it was more of a louder medium compared to Natrop's which was much more ambiguous. Dunham also used a more wide, bright space to display his artworks, whereas Natrop used his enclosed gallery and the structure of the building to enhance his implications.

I really enjoyed the playful-like tendency that hid the conflict being depicted within the pictures. I think that is what attracted me to these colorful paintings. They seemed so lively and exciting but represented a more creepy meaning.

-Joyce Pak

Taylor De Cordoba presenting Chris Natrop

I recently visited the La Cienega Blvd. row of art galleries and shows. Out of the several of them I visited, Chris Natrop's show interested me the most. From the start I felt adventurous entering her gallery: the door was unmarked, there was no "open" sign to welcome visitors, and the windows were covered. Once I entered, I understood why it was necessary to block off the natural sources of light within the gallery. Natrop cleverly implemented colorful soft lighting, combined with the use of the actual gallery architecture to present hisartwork. The result was a beautiful ethereal effect that continued the atmosphere of mystery and complication. This installation was called myopic spring tangle, which featured hand-cut pieces of paper hanging from the ceiling in an inventive, tangled manner. These pieces of paper were also colored with watercolor. He also cut up mirrors to be displayed in a similar fashion; the mirrors themselves looked like threadwork.

I thought that these tangles of paper had resemblance to natural cities made of trees and flowers and water, much like one would expect in a fairy world. In reality, Natrop found inspiration in Los Angeles--mainly in the Los Angeles river, found in the narrow concrete channel, man-made and mainly used to control seasonal flooding. He wished to depict the relationship between man and nature: "Swaths of urban detritus carried by the runoff become ensnared in the tangle of wildlife. Frayed shopping bags, tangled nylon string, shredded clothing, strips of printed-matter festoon the leaf-stripped branches, jetsam flapping in the breeze like Tibetan prayer flags." I found it so interesting how Natrop chose to depict something most people would consider sewage channels as something so beautiful--then I remembered he had meant to make it ambiguous. The mirror he used was meant to reflect the viewer in an complex pattern, meant to keep the mind searching to understanding and decipher.

I found myself wondering not only the meaning and inspiration behind these pieces of artwork, but also the procedure it took to create them. At first glance they seem to be the result of mere x-acto knives and human concentration. However, in order to achieve the precision required to cut the pieces of paper and to structurally format them, Natrop wore powerful reading glasses to assist him. This lead him into a "myopic state", hence the name of his exhibition.

I really enjoyed the beauty and alluring yet unsettling nature of this exhibition. What at first glance looks attractive and mysterious becomes much more with deeper analysis of the art. One can really begin to see the struggle and psychological allusion underlaying his seemingly calm artwork.

-Joyce Pak

Friends with You

Friends with you is an artist collaborative founded by Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandovall III. FWY promotes the two artists’ common message of luck, magic and friendship through popular designer toy line, public installations, playgrounds, performances, and multimedia projects. Due to its image, FWY has helped world’s most prominent brands such as Nike, MTV, Red bull and etc. FWY works toward its message and open its community to globally known artists to create innovative works that will redefine its audience.

One of the installations I have seen was Rainbow Valley from Miami. It is specifically built in a mall, and it is a playground for children. This installation was designed with the artists from Playtime LLC. The general concept of this work was to deliver a new initiative that seeks to enrich and enlighten people’s experience at the mall. As you see, the installation brings out a very colorful scheme that makes shopping even more fun for families. Because shopping is not soothing for children, FWY created this so that shopping would be easier and entertaining.

Looking at the installation, I was able to see their message and theme. It looks very friendly and contains a magical presence that is child- friendly. I can see a close resemblance of Murakami’s work and FWY’s, because both artists aim for marketing and promoting. I think that these arts are very essential for the art world because it is able to promote contemporary art for the people who are not interested in art. Art not only being displayed on museums but being displayed in the public does bring friendliness to the society.

Takahashi Murakami

Takahashi Murakami was one of the many artists that I was able to relate to my life. My interests in Japanese pop culture led me to Murakami’s arts, as well as the singer Kanye West for using his artwork in one of his music video. Murakami brings the art that resembles Japan and its eccentric culture.

Takahashi Murakami is a contemporary artist who works in both fine art and digital art. He is famous for his themes from mass media and pop culture. When he was studying art, he pursued his art into anime and manga like style, and as a result, created his own personal style called “superflat.” Murakami made “superflat” to aim for creating a new culture in Japan. He believes that Japanese arts is too shallow and low to be worldly known, and thus has created this new personal style to market and promote overseas.

Like Andy Warhol, Murakami takes low culture and remakes it, and sells his work to the high-art market. His art is commercial, but indifferently, Murakami sells his work in high fashion stores like Louis Vuitton. The pattern that Murakami creates brings out a stylish aurora that everyone can carry around. Murakami wishes to change the perspective of art- almost like promoting music. Believing in branding his artworks, Murakami states, "I don’t think of it as straddling. I think of it as changing the line. What I’ve been talking about for years is how in Japan, that line is less defined. Both by the culture and by the post-War economic situation. Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of ‘high art.’ In the West, it certainly is dangerous to blend the two because people will throw all sorts of stones. But that's okay—I’m ready with my hard hat."

One example of popular Murakami painting is “Smooth Nightmare.” This piece is one of his superflat styles. The repetition of his comical mushrooms creates a connection with cultures, mainly scored for marketing. I did assume that his artworks mainly did not focus on messages; however, his works are very intriguing for people who do not really like art. It is very commercial and eye catching because it is so trendy and popular with pop culture. People notice his art right away because of the connection between what we see and hear in the television No wonder everyone desires to have his works!

Andy Warhol

I have seen Andy Warhol’s arts many times at the museum, but never came close to his messages through art. Warhol’s art to me is very simple and clean, yet I have learned that his art was the solution to expression during the 60s and on. Andy Warhol, famous for commercialized works, was the inspiration that helped me to begin myself in the world of art.

During the 1960s, Warhol’s art marked for commercializing products such as Campbell’s soup and Coca-Cola, and also painted celebrity portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Evis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and etc. While his works were becoming popular, Warhol founded his studio “the Factory” and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. The controversies of his artworks were his subjects to his pieces- brand names and celebrities. And he also used imageries from newspapers to comment on the hassle of civil rights.

His films, sexuality, and belief were also a great impact to the pop culture. Many people thought of Warhol as an eccentric man, but is now established that he was homosexual, which caused a create catastrophe. Because of his sexuality, Warhol’s work was influenced and it shaped his relationship to the art world. His homoerotic films brought a new sightseeing of complexity of desire, however were many times rejected for being too openly gay.

I think that the development of Andy Warhol’s creations are fascinating as well as his life living as a famous pop artist. His persona brings out his art, and I think that is why many people like Warhol’s art series. His unique, odd, avant garde style, and sexual ideas throw off the innocence, but it can be related to the reality of mature, adults’ lives.

Michael Leavitt

Michael Leavitt is a visual artist widely known for his “Art Army” series of hand-made action figures depicting artists, musicians, and entertainers. Leavitt is responsible for a wide variety of conceptual art projects and performance artworks.

As a young child, Leavitt was influenced by the Native American wood craft, and the industrial manufacturing in the Pacific Northwest. As he prospered as an artist, his artworks became very structural and ready-made like. His famous work, “Art Army” series is considered as a fine art works that relate to the people of the past and present. The action figures that he made are “not toys” but are sculptures which are only available through fine art galleries. Leavitt believes that stating his works as a toy would define his works as a “figures engineering” and would not have a particular meaning. Since he has made his “Art Army” in wood, Leavitt states that that is one other reason why his figurines are not toys.

The Art Army is conceptually a good natured joke pieces rather than a stern one. All of the figurines depict array of genres, and “perceives the potential for his figures to act as bridges between pop and art history.” He not only brings his tastes into the figures, but also takes other “low brow” and urban contemporary artists’ styles into his work. Many of the action figures take on non-human form, as the likeness of the artist is shaped with trademark visual elements in their work. Leavitt has said, "I wanted to pay respect to people's work I love, and give them a little taste of their own medicine.”

Leavitt’s artwork has a special social angle that can be juxtaposed. His interest in people’s individuality brings the special quality that makes his art unique. Many see his art as too normal and boring, but closely, his art results in extremeness of the social and pop culture.

QUEEDROPHONICS

Back when I was in high school, I came across a book called Queedrophonics, a book filled with the greatest arts in the twenty-first century. I have only looked at the sketches and the artworks and praised them for being so urban and pop. But as I looked at it closely, I realized that there were several famous artists who were involved in this book, and were contributing to show-off their styles and trends that signify them.

In my opinion, the artist that stood out the most was Shepard Fairey. Not because of his fame in the art industry, but because I adore his stencil, urban art that relates to the social, political issues of today. For the past few years, he has been noticed for his Obama Hope posters- in fact his simplicity in colors draws a lot of attention. Many of his works were criticized a lot for turning graffiti culture into a self promoting ad campaign. Yet, his art gives great balance to the messages he tries to portray as well as successfully creating it so visually.

Overall, this book shows how designs are now in the present- very urban, pop, and stylish. And thus, it covers how different each style can be. The book emphasizes that styles do create the artist and vice versa. From photographs to little, tiny sketches, all art in any form are considered to be very important and make an impact in the society.

The Technology of Power in the Digital Age

Tomorrow 8:30 PM at REDCAT!

A Conversation between Manuel Castells, Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at USC and Steven D. Lavine, President of CalArts

Do media frame politics? Are citizens empowered by the Internet? Can the revolution be twittered? How do our brains process emotions that shape our choices? Is cyberdemocracy a path to democracy? These are the kinds of questions that CalArts President Steven D. Lavine will pose to, and then explore with, Manuel Castells, author of Communication Power (Oxford University Press, 2009) and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California. From the Financial Times' review of his book: “[Castells] has shaped himself into the most prominent and influential theorist and analyst of the modern communications and network age. He is the Marshall McLuhan of our time.” Currently, Castells is University Professor at USC, after being a Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley for 24 years. He has authored 24 academic books, and his trilogy, The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture has been translated in 20 languages. The conversation between Lavine and Castells will also include the audience.

Handtmann Photography Lecture Series: Kelly Poe

I was interested in hearing about Kelly Poe's photographic practice because she is the wife of
Jeff Poe, the owner of one of the big galleries in Los Angeles (Blum & Poe) and I heard about
her interest in environmental activists involved with ELF. I wanted to see how she
reconciled the worlds of violent activism and the art market.

When I asked Kelly if she sees any parallels between creating a successful activist movement and
creating an art community, and if she thinks there is a way for galleries and art dealers to help support artists who are dedicated to using their skills for activism, she answered with pessimism. She said she did not see any parallels between activist movements and art communities and then followed with expressing her opinion that art galleries are just there to sell art that sells.

The photography project she is currently working on consists of landscape photographs taken at very specific locations in nature provided to her by imprisoned environmental activists. Through letters, phone calls, and sometimes meetings Kelly Poe has maintained many relationships with activists and asks them where they go in their mind's eye while in prison and so far away from nature. She then goes to the places described to her, photographs the landscape, and sends the participant the photograph (4x5 inches prison regulation).

There is a long history of artist activists and artist groups that compromise and innovate in order to bridge disparate allegiances or focuses (for example Group Material). Kelly's lecture
about the friendships she created with imprisoned environmental activist figures such as Rod
Coronado (whose story described in Dean Kuiper’s Operation Bite Back and clearly records the
imposition of post 9-11 laws, which have elevated crimes such as vandalism to terrorism) makes
me think about how one starts from an indifferent individual and becomes a social activist.

Activists who are no longer indifferent start with principle ideas, and through those ideas they create meaning through collective action. (This explains why there are so many large NGOs affiliated with religions such as Christianity. There are set principle ideas that are assumed off the bat, which creates unity and identity formation.) Identity formation is critical for the creation of the activist. It is crucial for the activist to know that there are others that share similar beliefs and views. Through NGOs and transnational networks, activists convince others to take their sides through persuasive communication. When a certain behavior is accepted by state or government actors it becomes an international norm. It is the goal of the activist to share expectations held by a community about appropriate behavior of actors within a given identity, and create high, public standards of behavior because international norms are precursors to international law and declarations.

An activist can be anyone with a principled belief, including government actors (as long as they are not acting in capacity as government actors.) Not all activists are the same, and not all NGOs are the same. There are NGOs that do not care about change and try to maintain the status quo and those that promote hatred such as the KKK. The Earth Liberation Front is an example of an organization that promotes change and rejects the status quo, but employs violent acts as a means of communication. Collective action is used to gain media attention and signal action. The process of framing a movement in a way that aligns with an organization’s claims and also with the nature of the relevant public requires good design.

The design of the movement is critical because it must relate the organization’s programs to the common sense of the target public. Activists are both consumers of existing cultural materials and producers of new ones. Speaking in a simple and understandable way is how activists try to frame their intentions and motivations to gain the attention of the public. It is a war of words, common sense, reason, images, cultural capital, and economy. Activists need to propose frames of understanding that are new and challenging, which resonate with cultural understanding. This is where I think artists are important. Artists study all kinds of constantly updated communication tools whether visual, aural, literary, performative, etc. and need to share expertise with NGOs and other activist groups in order to promote positive frames of understanding.

James Benning's Ruhr

I recently watched Benning's film Ruhr at Redcat. With this 121 minute HD video with only seven shots, the first six ranging in length from six to seventeen minutes and the last shot lasting for what seemed like an eternity, Benning records various views of Ruhr with encyclopaedic detail. The shots ranged from Muslims at prayer to the colors of the window shutters and houses on a typical working class street. It felt as if the whole room was being forced to pray or meditate about “cinema” all together. It required a crazy, ritualistic concentration to sit through the movie and enjoy it. Ruhr provided me with time to reflect on what I love about cinema, and think about the human act of creating meaning out of images. I recommend any of Benning's films to be given a patient chance.

Black Cat White Cat by Emir Kusturica

A Yugoslav director named Emir Kusturica influences and inspires me tremendously. I recently saw his 1998 film called Black Cat White Cat and loved it. It is a farce set in a Gypsy settlement (a real one) along the banks of the Danube. The real gypsy king of the settlement is in the film! It is a charming, confusing, and really chaotic story shot beautifully. Kusturica is known for his political activism as much as his filmmaking in Yugoslavia, which I admire greatly. He spoke out against the Serbian right/ultranationalist movement on many occasions. He challenged the leader of Serbia’s ultranationalist movement to a duel in the heart of Belgrade, but was denied because Vojislav Seselj said he “didn’t want to be accused of the murder of an artist.” Kusturica’s exercises freedom with the camera that evoked in my mind Maya Deren’s camera handling, and definitely knows how to capture the energy and insanity of the gypsy culture.

Environmental Art

painting

installation

street art, poster

installation

Posters

Environment Art is used to refer two different sense.

This term generally refers to art dealing with ecological issue/or the natural context.

In my opinion, environmental art helps improve our relationship with the naturalworld, by informing and interpreting nature and its processes, or educating us about environmental problems. also, it re-envision our relationship to nature, proposing new ways for us to co-exist with our environment. by working with the poster for polar bears, I come to have a interest in environmental art and enveronmental artist.