Topheadz, War Paint

A while back I wrote a blog on Aesthetics of Dust, inspired by the works of Filippo Minelli and Ujin Lee + Tom Edwards. Both projects played with the means of dust floating in mid-air. The short existence of a dust cloud captured in a series of photographs. The artist(s) purposefully played with the means of dust, one (Minelli’s Silence/Shapes) introducing brightly color bombs in nature, the other (Lee+Edwards I Came Across Dust) featuring a white smoky substance in empty urban landscapes. The way both projects have been documented suggest that they just happen to find the authentic moment in the world. This silent creature coming into existence for a mere moment before it becomes part of the invisible atmosphere again.

Now I would like to note an Aesthetics of Dust in another form, namely the Skateboard Video Art.

A medium that has been used to display the abilities of skaters taking on the play with dust.

Yesterday, I read a raving by Street Art Utopia on this Topheadz serie War Paint, Berlin. The event/piece/ [Continue] 

In the words of Katya Mandoki: “In due time, the theory of aesthetics will have to account not only for the delight in Kantian beauty and the sublime, but for the phenomena like aesthetic violence and the aestheticization of violence, of aesthetic abuse and intrusion, the blunting of sensibility, its perversion, and its poisoning.”*

And even in the particles of dust. Undetermined pieces of something just floating through the worldly abyss.

A midair collision of dust particles in space, either in florescent lighting in dreamy landscapes or a gaze of white dust in a deserted setting.

Silence/Shapes, Filippo Minelli

Silence/Shapes, Filippo Minelli

That is how I would describe Silence Shapes by Filippo Minelliand I came across Dust by Ujin Lee and Tom Edwards. Both, as far as I know unrelated, ongoing art projects present it’s viewer with an aesthetics of dust. It floats through the air. This mystic fog of sorts. Moving, turning, expanding, disseminating with the next gust.

Minelli’s colored smoke bombs are acts of interventionist art in the forests, lakes and mountains of Europe. They expose the forgotten landscape with the brutality of anoxidizer (probably potassium chlorate KClO₃), a fuel (probably sugar), a moderant (something like sodium bicarbonate Na HCO₃) and some powdered organic dye. Swarming through the forgotten view of nature and illuminating natures texture and beauty juxtaposed by the color scheme of raves.

Where Minelli chooses for bright colors and idyllic landscapes, Lee and Edwardsopt for derelict buildings, playgrounds by night and deserted museum spaces. Their dust really looks like dust. It explodes up high and has a less uniform movement. As if someone turned on the light and you see all the particles that float through what we signify as just air. It makes you aware that there is such a thing as air at all. The movement […continue reading http://ljkessels.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/the-aesthetics-of-dust/]