The summer when I was fourteen I spend camping on a field with a couple of Swiss hipsters, at night we would light candles and watch the wax melt while talking in a mixture of English, German and Swiss-German. I don’t remember what was discussed exactly, because it is more than ten years ago, but I do remember watching the candle melt.

Livia Marin | Broken Things / Cosas Rotas | 2009

Drawn in by letting something solid disintegrate. The destruction of a shape, resulting in half a stub and a pool of fluid. An image of ‘broken things / cosas rotas’, like that of Livia Marin’s work from 2009. In this Marin exhibited work that features everyday objects – cups, bowls,jars and plates – modeled with crevices and a puddle of melted ceramics. ‘the fractures represent fatality and loss’, but in repairing and keeping the object the Chilean artist ‘stresses the relationship of care and continuation.’

Orest Keywan | Melting Ice Cream Truck | 2006

Another work that lingers on a same image is that of Orest Keywan’s Melting Ice Cream Truck, the winner of Sculpture By the Sea in 2006. The irony of a vehicle made to give-out ice cream melting isn’t lost on me. What it has in common with Marin’s work is the pool of disintegrated [Continue Reading]

A moment of early nineties sentiment is making me revisit a favorite modern classic, the Tony Scott/Quentin Tarantino film ‘True Romance’ (1993) with Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Michael Rapaport, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and Val Kilmer. Although it is a love story it has the feel of an ensemble piece as all the characters, from Floyd (Brad Pitt) laying stoned on a couch all day to Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman) Alabama‘s (Patricia Arquette) drug dealing pimp and Virgil (James Gandolfini) the hitman, remain with you long after their scene. They are not subjugated characters that function as a backboard for some exposition or fillers of blank space in the frame.

A prime example for the ensemble aspect is in the pivotal “Sicilian Scene” doesn’t even feature the two main character’s. This exchange between modern cinema giants Christopher Walken (as Sadistic Mobster Kingpin Vincenzo Coccotti) en Dennis Hopper (as Clarence Worley - Christian Slater – ‘s ex-alcoholic, ex-cop father Clifford Worley) is a prime example [Read On]

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/]

There are no set laws on how long a short should be, although I set as my own guideline that a ‘Sunday Morning Short’ should be 7 minutes or less, I’m going to break that rule today with a 20 minute film.

‘Believe’ by Philip Night

Is a short documentary about a street art mural project in Rochester, NY in July 2011. Combining local artists and 4 artists from South Africa. The piece of street art is intended as a piece of visual interventionism inside this community. To change a place using art. To expose people to another way of living via form and expression on a wall.

It goes without saying – although I’m about to say it – that I’m completely obsessed with future shorts. A celebration of the short film and a pop-up film festival, what more does a girl need?

Maybe a guy who keeps on asking her to marry him? All so that she can reject him again and again?

This is the plot-line of ‘The Girl with the Yellow Stockings’ a German film by Grzegorz Muskala from 2008.

Seems almost horrific the constant rejection, the pulling and pushing fit in this 6+ minute film. The aesthetic of the violence done my the girl to the boy. The violence of the boy who keeps on asking the same question, knowing the answer. The almost sadomasochistic dynamics of this twosome locked in a room, exposed to the audience.

As I’ve been engulfed in Georges Bataille of late I seem to read an act of transgression in the actions of this Girl with the Yellow Stockings [let’s call her GYS voor short]. As she subverts the moment of the [read on]

Christian Mülhauser, ‘Sea of Fog‘.

Sea of Fog (Christian Mülhauser) from Imagineindia Film Festival on Vimeo.

Imagineidia Film Festival

Now close your eyes and smile.

Have a lovely day sweeties. [Originally published on http://ljkessels.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/sunday-morning-short-sea-of-fog/]

I don’t want to start with a hipster like [i.e. I-knew-this-band-before-they-where-known] statement , but first I would like to note that I already reported on Occupy when it was still called ‘Yes, We Camp’.  In the blog on Impakt.nl trying to boarder out the parameters of transparency and secrecy in the age of new media. Now that the hype has settled down and some major events have passed I would like to return to this subject and attempt some analyses.

Back in the 17th century a bunch of philosophers – Leibniz, Spinoza, Pufendorf, Hobbes, Locke – started to over-think the parameters of what would lead to modern society. A contract between the sovereign and his subjects, in which he would promise to ensure their safety and in exchange the subjects would gain a type of freedom based in service and the social. In the authentic moment in nature people would have freedom ‘to do what they want’ but this wouldn’t necessarily be a desired state because of the vulnerability these people would be in. Not only from others but also from themselves, as a singular existence would mean that you had to fend for any and all things one had. A social constellation would ensure a working together to expand what was, i.e. specialization would give society more safety and prosperity. The sum of it’s parts could achieve more then the singular part.*

After the French and American revolutions there was a demand for a legal basis to build these new societies. In the case of the US the sights where set on John Locke, who focused on property. From this a society was build where what one possessed became of the essence. If you had a piece of land or a house you where someone.**

Fast forward to the Subprime mortgage crises of 2008. 

Now what is left is a people in detriment, with no future, no jobs, no social security and the institutions who led them down this path of destruction still running their gambit on bailout money [see Zizek on OccupyWallStreet]. In light of this there was a quest of action. The answer was set on occupation. Not leaving until the sounds where heard. Change that was promised actually taking place. Not only financial but the whole social cultural complex needs to be refurnished. As the troubles of today are based on the ism’s of old, i.e. capitalism.

[continue on ljkessels.wordpress.com]