OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

« Pour moi, mes sculptures représentent le monde de la femme amplifié, la folie des grandeurs des femmes, la femme dans le monde d’aujourd’hui, la femme au pouvoir.  »

The life of the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle is as fascinating as her wonderful colorful pieces that you might have seen in various open spaces around the world. Probably you only know her most famous installation: the Stravinsky Fountain right next to the Pompidou Center that she created with Jean Tinguely, but her work was definitely as prolific as it was provocative, experimental and diverse.

Niki was a model who appeared on the cover of Vogue and Elle, a self-taught outsider, a passionate feminist, and a political activist, and in this beautifully curated exhibition at the Grand Palais you have a chance to get to know her in different stages of her life through large vibrant sculptures, photos, videos, interviews, installations, paintings and a lot of color, love, bullets, large powerful nanas and strong messages. I didn't know much about her and

If you are in Paris, hurry up, as the exhibition finishes the 2nd of February. Booking is extremely recommended. I had to queue for approximately an hour in the cold (the fountain was frozen, as you can see), but it was absolutely worth it. If you can't make it this next week, the expo will be traveling to the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao. Absolutely great spring procrastination.

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mondays.
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

Grand Palais
17 September - 02 February
Every day except Tuesdays from 10am to 10pm

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mond - See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Monday
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mondays.
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mondays.
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mond - See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

In November, photography month in France, we attended two nice photographic exhibitions: one of the complete work of Roman Vishniac in Paris, and another one of Martin Parr called Paris, in Lille. Both worth visiting and both ending in January, so you still have time and the free days to do it!

After New York (International Center of Photography, 2013) and Amsterdam (Joods Historisch Museum, April-August 2014), the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme is showing Roman Vishniac: from Berlin to New York, 1920-1975. Bringing together some 220 works, many never previously shown, it completely re-evaluates Vishniac’s photography from his beginnings in Berlin until the post-war years in the United States. The expo will be on until 25th January 2015.

Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme
71 Rue du Temple, 75003 Paris.

+33 1 53 01 86 53

Martin Parr's Paris shows us in his peculiar and always refreshing way, a selection of Parisian people, events, traditions, places and clichés. The Festival en plein air, Paris fashion Week, Paris plague, or a game of petanques they're all observed in detail to capture and reveal the absurd, the sublime or the ridicule.

The expo is on until the 21st December, Also, la Maison de la photographie of Lille is a great space that even though is not right next to the city center is well worth a visit!

Maison de la photographie.
18, rue Frémy - 59000 Lille
Tél. 03 20 33 00 22

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

This section's Estimated Time of Procrastination is: 5' 

If you're visiting on the week-end, be prepared to queue for around 15min.

Above: tape installation by Numen/For Use, made up only of transparent Scotch tape.

Mark Manden. Room with Unfired Clay Figure, 2014.

Dran, the French illustrator has taken over the big staircase connecting the two floors of the exhibition.

Andro Wekua. Untitled.

                                    Berdaguer & Péjus, C.28, 2014.This space must be amazing if you get to visit it with                         just few other people at the same time.

John Giorno's Poem Paintings.

Outside the Palais is also lovely.

Curated by Jean de Loisy, Daria de Beauvais, Katell Jaffrès, the new exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris is a great opportunity to immerse in several different "insides" created by more than 20 artists using all sorts of techniques. From quiet and calming, to darker, disgusting, sticky, disturbing, alarming, claustrophobic, naughty, surprising, if something characterizes Inside is its capacity of being very moving and emotional. It is definitely a "risky voyage" as described by its curators.

In the Palais the Tokyo website we can read: "Inside offers visitors a passage to the interior of the self, for which the exhibition space serves as a metaphor. This immense odyssey, both physical and psychological, invites us to walk through two floors of the Palais de Tokyo that have been transformed by artists in such a way that, from one installation to the next, we remain constantly immersed in the works, which lead us within ourselves – from our skin to our most intimate thoughts."

The participan artists are: Jean-Michel ALBEROLA, Dove ALLOUCHE, Yuri ANCARANI, Sookoon ANG, Christophe BERDAGUER & Marie PEJUS, Christian BOLTANSKI, Peter BUGGENHOUT, Marc COUTURIER, Nathalie DJURBERG & Hans BERG, dran, Marcius GALAN, Ryan GANDER, Ion GRIGORESCU, HU Xiaoyuan, Eva JOSPIN, Jesper JUST, Mikhail KARIKIS & Uriel ORLOW, Mark MANDERS, Bruce NAUMAN, Mike NELSON, NUMEN/FOR USE, Abraham POINCHEVAL Araya RASDJARMREARNSOOK, Reynold REYNOLDS & Patrick JOLLEY, Ataru SATO, Stéphane THIDET (we loved this little cabin!), TUNGA, Andra URSUTA, Andro WEKUA, Valia FETISOV, Artur ZMIJEWSKI

The exhibition will remain inside the Palais of Tokyo (excellent view of the Tour Eiffel, btw) until the 11th of January. It will probably hold a little longer in your mind though! If your planning a Christmas trip to Paris you should definitely check it out!  


Address: Palais de Tokyo, 13 Avenue du President Wilson, 75116 Paris 
Website: Palais de Tokyo Opening hour: 12 noon - 12 midnight. Closed on Tuesdays.
Admission: Regular 10 €; Reduced 8 €

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Screenshot from Episode 3: Jamie.

Screenshot from Episode 3: Jamie.

We have just discovered the mini web series called High Maintenance, created, written and directed by Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair. High Maintenance is the story of the brief encounters of a weed dealer with his clients in New York City. The short stories are funny, sweet, weird, moving, and the characters manage to get you engaged from the very first minute. I did a bit of research (meaning, I googled "High Maintenance Web Series") and I found that from the first season's 13 episodes (each between 5 and 15 minutes long which accounts to approximately 2 hours of procrastination) Katja and Ben got a funding deal with Vimeo to produce season two. Yay!

According to Vulture, the Vimeo deal was the company's first adventure into original programming "Vimeo had already established a service where filmmakers could set a viewing price and take 90 percent of the proceeds; Kerry Trainor, the company’s CEO, says it was just a natural step toward advancing some money to High Maintenance, a show he thinks “shows off everything we think Vimeo is in the world to do.” For Blichfeld and Sinclair, who glued together season one of High Maintenance with their own funds and through favors from friends, it represented an ideal way to keep a good thing going. Vimeo has been an extremely hands-off partner: “That’s the coolest thing about being here,” Sinclair says. “They haven’t even read a single script. They haven’t asked.” Vimeo sounds like the ideal executive producer, right? (Read full article in Vulture. E.T.P. 4)

The awaited second season is due to appear early November in Vimeo, this time it won't be free though, but they hope their fans will be willing to pay a small price to watch and keep a regular stream of income for them to be able to keep producing more episodes. In the meantime, go ahead and have a look at High Maintenance's first season, is meaningful procrastination for a lot of reasons; fresh and solid mini-stories from New York which are always nice to see, a great main character, and because it represents new ways of making stuff, "TV" entertainment being created in an organic way by new independent players. Estimated Time of Procrastination for the first season: 2 hours tops.

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Screenshots of Beijing Silvermine via Emiland Guillerme's Vimeo.

This week we came across Emiland Guillerme's Beijing Silvermine, a wonderful documentary about Thomas Sauvin and the work he performed in China, rescuing, scanning and classifying hundreds of thousands of photo negatives, to portrait the radical changes the country suffered during two very peculiar decades (from 1985 to 2005). The results of his experiment are not only visually beautiful, but very rich in an anthropological way as there are some really interesting insights about composition, favorite holiday places, clichés, fashion, family life, etc. and it is also a great approach to crowdsourcing. 

In Guillerme's vimeo you can read this description "Beijing Silvermine is a unique photographic portrait of the capital and the life of its inhabitants following the Cultural Revolution. It covers a period of 20 years, from 1985, namely when silver film started being used massively in China, to 2005, when digital photography started taking over. These 20 years are those of China's economic opening, when people started prospering, traveling, consuming, having fun."

Absolutely meaningful procrastination, in Emiland's Vimeo you have a look at Beijing Silvermine- Thomas Sauvin Part I (E.T.P. 12') and Part II (E.T.P. 5'20'') and to Silvermine (E.T.P. 15')

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Estimated Time of Procrastination (E.T.P.): 5' (without hyperlinking).

Our Weekly Procrastination this past week was absolutely meaningful as, thanks to our fellow procrastinator Marie, we went to the 8th Power to the Pixel: The Cross Media Forum. Power to the Pixel, as defined by themselves, is a company helping international filmmakers and the film industry make the transition to a cross-media digital age, and for what I witnessed in the forum, they are good at it!

The two days of the event that were open to the public, the Conference on the 7th and the Pixel Market on the 8th, were held at the BFI in the Southbank starting as early as 9am and until 5pm when the drinking/networking session started. The first day, the lovely view of a crispy sunny London was the preamble of a really inspiring day where lecturers like John S. Johnson, co-founder of Buzzfeed and the Harmony Institute for Advance Media Research, shared his vision of "a dystopian view on media measurement."

Photo. John S. Johnson, Descartes and Mary Shelley @ Power To The Pixel.

Johnson, encouraged us as media professionals to overcome the Enlightenment vs Romantic duality and to mix the strengths of the data-freaks with the emotion and the intuition of the artists, as real empathy can only be built when quantitative data meets great storytelling. "Embrace data and optimization" he said- "the train is leaving the station and you need to be on it, for all our sakes."

Photo. Lance Weiler @ Power To The Pixel.

Lance Weiler, co-founder of Connected Sparks and Reboot Stories, had me at "Story Driven Innovation", a notion/vision/practice very powerful and a very necessary in a world where as he said "those formerly know as 'the audience' are storytellers too." That was probably the reason why he started his intervention with a listening exercise (the 5x why?), something that we really are not very used to do anymore. Lance also mentioned some of the projects he is developing alongside the Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University like Sherlock Holmes and the Internet of Things. Again, the need of working at the intersection of arts, humanities and technology to create meaningful stories or objects or experiences in the 21st century became evident.

Photo: Alexa Clay @ Power to the Pixel 2014.

Alexa Clay, co-author of The Misfit Economy, blew my mind, not only because of her vision of misfits as innovators, a bridging species between the old and the new economy, that fight against institutional inertia, but for her capacity of having apparently endless cool side projects. Going beyond of the moral issues that divide the world into good and evil, in The Misfit Economy she documented the practices that were used by hackers, copycats or pirates to innovate. If we can see drug-smugglers as rapid prototypers, con-artists as outstanding storytellers and pitchers, and anonymous as a modern hierarchy with a decentralized leadership, we will be able to learn from the fringe and to find innovation in the fringe, and that my friends, that is really innovative.

Five practices comprise the main misfits' skill-set: copy, hack, hustle, provoke and pivot. These five calls to action made me remember Kenneth Goldsmith championing re-contextualization, copy-pasting, ready-made-ing, plagiarism and the even more delightful self-plagiarism in his book Uncreative Writing, a particular invitation to reflect on the act of writing in and for the digital era.

You can have a look at the trailer for the upcoming The Misfit Economy film here, and another look at Alexa's side projects: Wisdom Hackers, the League of Intrapreneurs, and her analogue nomad alter-ego Amish Futurist.

There were more great speakers like The Project Factory's Jennifer Wilson (best 'feedbacker' ever), Immersive Journalist Nonny de la Peña, and Rovio's Mikko Polla. Also very interesting cross-media projects like Fort McMoney, Netwars and the Seven Digital Sins, but I'll tell you all about those in the next edition. Stay tunned! (:

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Double Standard (1961), one of my favorite Hopper's photographs is part of the Lost Album.

Andy Warhol, Henry Geldzahler, David Hockney and David Goodman, 1963. Via Artsy.

Irving Blum and Peggy Moffitt, 1964. Via Artsy.

The Lost Album, a collection of more than 400 photographs, taken between 1961-67, when Hopper was blacklisted by Hollywood, are being exhibited at the Royal Academy until the 19 of October. The photographs are all originals, and so you can not only see but somehow feel the 50-something years that have passed since those moments, stories, and lives were captured by Hopper. Hell angels, poets, artists, Hollywood stars, civil rights fighters, hippies, Mexican landscapes, giant billboards, many subjects of the verge of changing forever, captured without pretensions but with a really instinctive eye by Hopper, a really fascinating character himself and one of Holloywood's enfants terribles.

According to Mark Brown in The Guardian, "Marin Hopper, who discovered the boxes after her father's death in 2010, knew about the 1970 show but had no idea he had kept all the photographs. "It was extraordinary," she said. 'I was surprised he kept them at home because he had art storage and also that he never really mentioned it to anyone.' "

"Hopper took around 18,000 pictures with his Nikon F; the ones in the show are both a personal visual diary and a document of the wild and freewheeling cultural life of 1960s America.
Marin said when she first went through them they seemed like movie storyboards. 'If you look at them from beginning to end, you feel like you've travelled in a time capsule of America.'"

The exhibition was curated by Petra Giloy-Hirtz, organised in co-operation with The Dennis Hopper Art Trust, and you can see it at the Royal Academy until the 19th of October. Absolutely meaningful procrastination.

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Dmitri Baltermants Stalin’s funeral, Moscow, 1953 © via The Photographers' Gallery

Primrose installation, 2014 © Kate Elliott via The Photographers' Gallery.

Boris Mikhailov's Suzi Et Cetera @ The Photographers' Gallery.

Every time we are around Soho we like to go into the Photographers' Gallery as usually they have really nice exhibitions and events, and so we did a week ago to find the wonderful Primrose: Early Colour Photography in Russia curated by Olga Sviblova, Director of Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow / Moscow House of Photography Museum.

"Primrose showcases the appearance and development of colour in Russian photography from the 1860s to the 1970s. It presents both the history of Russian photography and the history of Russia in photography, depicting life over the course of a century, as the country endured unprecedented upheaval."

Among the great documents, exhibited chronologically, depicting the evolution not only in color but in the Russian society in general (politically and culturally), we really loved discovering the work of Boris Mikhailov, one of the photographers that back in the 1970s had to exhibit his work underground using slideshows. The photographic series were only accessible to "a small circle of like-minded people for home viewing," and so in the gallery you have a mini dark-room to see Mikhailov slideshow titled Suzi Et Cetera from the late 1970s early 1980s.

Primrose: Early Colour Photography in Russia is on until the 19th October, along with other exhibitions, at The Photographers' Gallery, 16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW and the admission is free. Go and have a look!

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Narcissus, 2002

Line of Destiny, 2006

Shower Curtains, 1985-1986.

#MarchezSurCali

Photos: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Last week we checked some fantastic exhibitions in Paris, being one of the most amazing and together the one of the Colombian artist Óscar Muñoz at the Jeu de Paume Musée: Protographs, that spans nearly forty years of Muñoz career. Curated by José Roca and María Wills Londoño and co-produced by the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República de Bogotá.

Muñoz mainly explores the role of the photographic image, especially portraits and self-portraits in relationship with memory and ephemerality, and he do it exploring in very experimental, sometimes impossible supports and formats, from video and installations, to glass, mirrors, water and shower curtains. His work is both deeply social and truly innovative. I was moved, surprised and inspired throughout the whole exhibition.

Roca and Wills Londoño point out that if the ontology of photography lies in fixing a moving image for all time, extracting it from life, it can be said that Oscar Muñoz's work is located in the temporal space prior (or subsequent) to the true decisive moment when the image is fixed: that proto-moment when the image is finally about to become photography, hence the title of the exhibition.

One of my favorite pieces was the video/portrait Línea del destino [Line of Destiny, 2006], "in which Muñoz looks at his reflection on the surface of water held in the palms of his hands. The reflected image forms and dissolves constantly as the water flows through his fingers, revealing a fluid portrait doomed to be effaced," as explained in the exhibition catalogue.

At the Jeu de Paume Musée you can also see a very complete retrospective of Kati Horna's work, another great discovery (for me),  and Kapwani Kiwanga's Maji Maji exhibition. The museum is right next to Concorde (1, Place de la Concorde, Paris 8eme), a very convenient location if you are in a hyper-touristic trip, and if you live in Paris, seriously don't miss out on this, c'est de bonne procrastination pour la rentrée!

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Musée Royaux's Central Hall.

View from the Museum Café.

The Café.

René Magritte Les Mots Et Les Images (poster outside the exhibition).

Exhibition entry hall. You cannot take photos inside the exhibition. Photos via The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Last week we had the opportunity of visiting the the Musée Royaux des Beaux-arts de Bruxelles, and we spend some great hours there. The museum is composed of different museums like the Fin-du-siecle Museum, the Old Masters Museum, the Modern Museum, and the Magritte Museum, that was the one I was looking forward to visit the most.

The Magritte Museum holds the largest Magritte collection in the world, from some of his most iconic paints, to sculptures, painted objects, music scores, letters, manifestos, a lot of photographs, painters that influenced him, and his advertising posters, something really interesting to see, giving  you a thorough account of Magritte life, work and play, his thoughts on art, on surrealism, on language as a system of representation. 

The exhibition is organized chronologically, starting with his constructivist period and his work with the '7 Arts' group; explores his discovery of Chirico and the surrealists; his trip to Paris and the return to Brussels; his impressionist period; and finally the last part of the Museum is entitled The enchanted Domain and is dedicated to Magritte's research into repetition and to the large Magrittian images focused around The Dominion of Light and The Domain of Arnheim. Currently, the museum is hosting one of the most emblematic works by Magritte: Personal Values (1952). The painting has been lent by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

I recommend to use the audio-guides to accompany you through the visit, there is a little chronology in the entry of every room, but after that you're pretty much on your own, specially if you don't speak French or Flemish.

To finish, one of the great Magritte's quotes that I wrote down in my little notepad, and a couple more wonderful paintings that you can see in the museum (via The Internet ;) ).

"Je déteste mon passé et celui des autres. Je déteste la résignation, la patience, l’héroïsme professionnel et tous les beaux sentiments obligatoires.
 
Je déteste aussi les arts décoratifs, le folklore, la publicité, la voix des speakers, l’aérodynamisme, les boyscouts, l’odeur du naphte, l’actualité et les gens saouls.
 
J’aime l’humour subversif, les tâches de rousseur, les genoux, les longs cheveux des femmes, les rêves des jeunes enfants en liberté, une jeune fille courant dans la rue.
 
Je souhaite l’amour vivant, l’impossible et le chimérique. Je redoute de connaître exactement mes limites."

Je ne vois pas la [femme] cachée dans la forêt, in La Révolution surréaliste, Paris, no.12, December 15th 1929.                  Via Musée Magritte.

André Breton, Qu’est-ce que le surréalisme?, Brussels, René Henriquez Editeur, 1934. Via Musée Magritte.

Personal Values, 1952. Via Musée Magritte.

The lovers, 1928. Via The Internet.