Dancing with Putin and Bush
In the 80’s, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s video clip Two Tribes featured lookalikes of Cold War leaders Reagan and Chernenko giving each other a good thrashing.
Now, times has changed, the ice has been broken and the video Putin on the Ritz shows Wladimir Putin and George W. Bush wiggling in a musical comedy. The clip is inspired by the 1930’s movie Puttin’on the Ritz and utilizes the Star Imitations Systems Technology, a technique that allows amazing digital effects.
The entertaining Putin on the Ritz has been realized by Mini Movie Channel, a multi-platform new media company launched during the 2008 Festival De Cannes. The founder Dmitry Lesnevsky is a Russian tycoon who knows his stuff. As a matter of fact, he produced Andrey Zvyaginstev’s films The Return (Golden Lion/Venice 2003) and The Banishment (Best Actor/Cannes 2007). The site sets out to feature only high-quality works and to discover the best short film comedies from around the world. It will extend its brand with launches in Russia, France and Germany this summer. In my opinion, it’s a very interesting website and I advise you to see also the other hilarious videos.
Udronotto: When the Italian Genius Meets LEGO
This is Udronotto’s The Blues Brothers. Take a look at his LEGO masterpieces
French Artist Pays Tribute to Araki Bondage with a Chicken
Nobuyoshi Araki is one of the best living photographers. He has published over 350 books and is considered one of the most productive artists around the world. Most of his photos are erotic. He is best known for his pictures of bondage, with young women tied and often suspended and entangled in rope.
Now, a young French artist, Benjamin Deroche, has made a series of photos in honour of the master: Tribute to Araki. He has tried to reproduce with a dead chicken the pictures of bondage, with odd, but also disturbing, effects. In a interview given to Liberation’s blog Zoum Zoum, Deroche says Araki is one of his favourite photographers. Goodness knows what Araki thinks about it.
Art Work Killed at MoMA
One of the main works in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the MoMA of New York (until 12 May), Victimless Leather, a small jacket made of embryonic stem cells extracted from mice, has died. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work, that was nourished with nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and occluded its incubation system five weeks after the show opened. So, the poor, little jacket has been killed. It was one of the works created as part of their Tissue Culture & Art Project, promoted by the University of Western Australia in Perth, that unites art and scientific research.
This story reminds me of a scientist who considered himself all-powerful and created a modern Prometheus: both of them met a sticky end.
Photo by wallyg
Hedi Slimane’s Photo Diary
In parallel with his official site, the French fashion designer (Dior Homme) Hedi Slimane has a photo diary: Hedi Slimane Diary. The stylist is a rock fan, with many connections to British indie scene and these photos incarnate perfectly his rock temperament. The site collects more than 800 untitled and exclusively black-and-white works. It features photos of Slimane’s books about contemporary rock like the famous Stage, reportages on the New York musical scene and portraits of scandalous stars like Pete Doherty, Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse and Courtney Love. In short, it’s the cool, good, old triad: sex, drugs and rock and roll.
La Lutte Continue..
For celebrating the fortieth anniversary of May ‘68, the English fashion designer Paul Smith launches a book regrouping forty reproductions of the most representative posters of that mythic event. It’s a limited edition of 68 copies, which are not really cheap, indeed every copy costs £1392. The book comes out in parallel with the first UK exhibition of posters produced by students and workers in Paris during the risings of May 1968. You can see these iconographies at The Hayward Project Space in London throughout the current and unmythic May.
You can also buy some “revolutionary” May ‘68 gadget in Paul Smith boutiques, like candles, key cases, pocket notebooks, et cetera. According to me, this is the negation of the spirit of a season that, for better or worse, changed the world. But this is the spirit of our times, where often the rebels eat caviar and drink champagne.
Memento Mori
The German artist Gregor Schneider is seeking volunteers for his last performance-art piece, a work in which terminal patients will die as part of the exhibition. A private clinic in Düsseldorf has agreed to help him find volunteers for the project.
At the Wellcome Collection in London there is an exhibition of photos of ordinary people pictured before and after death by the German photographers Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta.
25 million people have seen Ghunter von Hagen’s Body World’s exhibition, in which real cadavers are conserved in various states of dissection.
Man, you must die, and art reminds you about it. Maybe von Hagen’s cadavers are interesting, maybe Schels and Lakotta’s portraits are touching, but I think Schneider is overstepping the line. Perhaps I’m wrong, I often don’t understand contemporary art. I’m only sure of one thing: Germans should enjoy life a little more.
Photo by Cayusa
A Monument for Che Guevara
If Ernesto Che Guevara was still alive, he would be an old man of eighty years, but he died young (in 1967) and has become immortal. He is even sanctified by some Bolivian campesinos as Saint Ernesto. Actually, he had the perfect physique du rôle of a martyr. In the famous Alberto Korda portrait, he has the proud expression of a modern Saint George fighting against the Dragon of Capitalism and Oppression. The photo of his corpse calls to mind a Renaissance deposition of Christ.
Now, the Argentine sculptor Andrés Zerneri is making a tangible statue of Guevara. The peculiarity of this work is that it is made of bronze objects sent by Che fans from the world over. It will be unveiled in Rosario, his birthplace, on the next June 14 th. I think it’s a very good idea. This statue is a collective work which has a symbolic and almost religious mean: the faithful offer their “possessions” to build the monument of their hero/divinity. Ok, maybe I’m overdoing it. Certainly, if an afterlife exists, there is a furious Guevara who is waiting for those who make big money with his face.
Photo by Fortimbras
John Holmes: A Pop Icon
John Holmes, the most famous male porn star of all time, died on 13 March 1988. The Spanish daily El Pais dedicated a commemorative article to the death of this pop icon. Why is John Holmes a pop icon? For a start, I take myself as an example: I have never seen a porn film, but I know John Holmes. He’s a pop icon because he has inspired books, songs (like John Holmes by the Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese) and movies like Boogie Nights and Wonderland. At last, a pop icon usually doesn’t have a long and quiet life. He died of Aids at age 44 and had a fairly full life : drug, alcool, prison and naturally much, much sex.
El Pais article tells a few little known anecdotes. He was noticed by a photographer standing next to him at a restroom urinal ( porn has its talent-scouts as well..) and in his career appeared in gay films too. He was a gigolò, a stripper, a stool pigeon. For his cocain addiction, that forced him to snort a line every 15 minutes, he started to keep the underworld and was involved in the Wonderland murders . The rest is story, or rather, is myth. Little wonder that our times have as a myth a man famous only for his penis. After all, the Greeks already venerated a certain Priapus.
