#I LOVE MEDIUMS EVOLVING I LOVE NARRATIVES INTERTWINED | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

endlessdoom · 4 years ago

Photo

Eviternity

32 Maps

by Dragonfly

2019

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Eviternity

MAP01: Inauguration

Eviternity starts off on the right foot with a fascinating map that perfectly demonstrates the importance of the first initial maps. With a closed snail-shaped system, this is a map with a layout that balances its complexity perfectly well with simplicity while offering satisfying combat, attractive visuals and fascinating presentation. A blast. 5/5

MAP02: Subterranean

We went into the depths. Here we will discover that Eviternity also stands out for having a consistent narrative, where the end of the previous map follows the beginning of the subsequent map. This is a darker map and full of mood as well as enemies, slightly increasing the difficulty. 4/5

MAP03: Drain

The encounters become more brutal and the map acquires more height. With a good combination of textures, dark colors and lots of water, this is a map that sets its priorities and difficulty level quite well. Fast, intense and with a winding path system. 3/5

MAP04: Regicide

by James Paddock (Jimmy) and Joshua O'Sullivan (Dragonfly)

With an attractive title, here we begin our adventure in what will characterize Eviternity. Maps that tell a story and manage to spread an excellent aroma of quality. This is a map with a more complex system, while delivering a solid and balanced difficulty in a lot of varied rooms, including an iconic miniature throne room. Fascinating. 4/5

MAP05: Demon

The end of the first episode is chaotic, explosive and quite challenging for first time players. This is also our first introduction to one of the new mosnters, the Nightmare Demon. With a square layout but full of detail, this is a map that would work as the breakdown of a metal song. Heavy and violent. 4/5

MAP06: Reconnect

Welcome to the second episode. A rusty tech-base with some natural landscapes around and a lovely orange tint in the sky. This is a great introduction and follows a deep layout that’s fun and fluid at all times. 4/5

MAP07: Facilitate

A more complext layout and some neat trick open up a fun and fast map. Challenging at times but always rewarding. 4/5

MAP08: Stench

I love the style of this map. A classic sewer-level but with a fascinating design and without the negatives that make sewers a bad name. With a compact style that influences the intense and frenetic combat, it's a fun map in its short duration. 4/5

MAP09: Decrepitude

by James Paddock (Jimmy)

Lovely map that combines some dark tech-base areas with deep caves and even sewers. Full of combat and also introduces some neat stuff. 4/5

MAP10: Creation

by Joshua O'Sullivan (Dragonfly) and Derek MacDonald (Afterglow)

The end of the second episode is a wonderful representation of what a perfect arena/circle style map looks like. With seamless and smooth visuals, the real click of this map is its constant combat awesomeness. Incredibly designed and entertaining. 5/5

MAP11: Wanderer

A fascinating adventure through a map with a perfect environment. More than action, this map stands out for its superb identity thanks to its amazing level design and perfect choice of MIDI. From beginning to end, it implores the player to admire the simplicity of a little snow. Fascinating, fun and unique. 5/5

MAP12: Brisk

What looks cold can get hot pretty fast. A tough challenge in a lovely map that follows a nice narrative of playthrough. 4/5

MAP13: Pathfinder by James Collins (an_mutt) and Joshua O'Sullivan (Dragonfly)

We delve into the dark corners of a fortress as we fight our way through excellent rooms in a tetric atmosphere. 4/5

MAP14: Frimaire by Seongbae Park (antares031)

An excellent map that combines caves with fortresses, as well as an exhaustive but compensating combat. Incredible and fun.

MAP15: Cryonology by AtroNx

A giant gothic castle on the edge of nowhere. Atmosphere, combat and visuals work together to deliver a fascinating work from start to finish. With a huge size and a great variety of encounters, this map features some of the best combat in all of Eviternity and two particularly famous areas. 5/5

MAP16: Neutralize

We enter the new chapter with a great tight map that reveals green colors with a unique style. Fast and with an evolving design. Great. 4/5

MAP17: Segregation

An installation with neon colors that takes us to deep and dark tech-base. The beginning is quite interesting and offers a duel of titans. With a fun combat and multiple encounters, this map presents a good example of difficulty in small places. 4/5

MAP18: Subterfuge by James Collins (an_mutt) and Joshua O'Sullivan (Dragonfly)

Deep, complex and with an excellent variation of scenarios. The map presents a system of intertwined paths quite entertaining and fast, with a well-designed strategy of progress and excellent combat. The secrets are quite useful in this one. Especially for the next map. 4/5

MAP19: Dehydration by StormCatcher.77

A huge beast with a certain reputation. This is a gigantic map that can take up to an hour to complete, however, it has an undeniable quality. Its only downside being the positioning in which it is located and how it often feels long just for the sake of being long. 4/5

MAP20: Convolute

The end of the episode is painted red. A compact medium map with good variety and depth. Entertaining and intense. 4/5

MAP21: Imperishable

Welcome to the new chapter and one of the highest challenges of Eviternity. From here on, pain awaits. This is a fantastic map that clearly states its goal: To teach you hell. 4/5

MAP22: Viscera

An interesting map with abstract dyes that takes us to unknown dimensions. With a multitude of arenas and a lethal variety of enemies, this is a challenging map that presents one of the best combat of all Eviternity. 4/5

MAP23: Tribulation

Compact and immersive, this map takes us on a purple adventure where multiple combat scenarios await. Quite fun and fast in its gameplay. 4/5

MAP24: Gossamer by Brett Harrell (Mechadon)

Fantastic map that works as a warm-up for the next massacre. With a distinctive identity and evolving development, this is a great map even on its own. 4/5

MAP25: Slave

A catastrophic ending. An absolute battle that will require all our skills to overcome. Violent and well staged. 4/5

MAP26: Transcendence by Xaser

A masterful work with a unique gameplay among the WAD. Xaser is known for its unique style, and this map is no different. What we have here is a fascinating piece of work that exudes identity and quality in abundance. 5/5

MAP27: Heliopolis

With excellent layout, attention to detail and an exquisite design that presents an incredible visual quality as well as complex and fascinating gameplay, this map is one that exudes atmosphere and is full of fantastic scenes under one constant flow. Perfect for me. 5/5

MAP28: Judgement

A three-stage combat arena, each one more difficult than the other. Somewhat challenging at times and frustrating from time to time, but with a good flow and plenty of well-placed items it manages to create a fun gameplay. 3/5

MAP29: Elysium by Tristan Clark (Eris Falling) and Joshua O'Sullivan (Dragonfly)

Another masterpiece that resonates among the Tops maps of all time. This is a massive map with a multitude of areas, scenarios, combat and variety that demonstrates absolute mastery, as well as a beautiful environment and fantastic level design. 5/5

MAP30: Eternity

The grand finale. Starting with an atmospheric introduction that reveals the famous final boss. Goodbye to the IoS, this is the new cool. With a level perfectly designed to release the boss and this one introducing new mechanics and a unique form of combat, Eternity is a solid ending to one of the best megawads in all of Doom's history. 4/5

MAP31: Imperator by Paul DeBruyne (skillsaw)

A lovely secret map that offers a high-altitude challenge and some really good progression. 4/5

MAP32: Anagnorisis by Ola Björling (ukiro)

Probably one of the most well-known maps in the entire megawad. Anagnorisis is not only hard to pronounce, but also to beat, yet on its core, it’s one of the most special maps ever made. 5/5

End.

Overall:

» Eviternity (2019)

By Dragonfly et al

The one and only. The megawad that broke the internet and also Doomworld in one way or another. A legendary title that bears the mark of greatness. When you hear the name Eviternity, you know you’re hearing a legend come to life. Doom map-making is, on its own way and form, art; an expression of sincere virtue and passion. Well, if WADs are art, then Eviternity is the Starry Night of Dragonfly.

Eviternity is, in all the sense of the word, a full 32 maps megawad created by the legendary Dragonfly alongside the help of some starring legends like @Jimmy, @Afterglow, @an_mutt, @antares031, @AtroNx, @StormCatcher.77, @Mechadon, @Xaser, @Eris Falling, @Skillsaw and @ukiro. Now that’s what a call a stellar cast full of fantastical mappers that deliver not only in their word but even more. While the majority of the maps were made by Dragonfly itself, there are a number of guest-made stellar maps that stand out for their incredible quality, as well as a few made in collaboration. From head to toe, just quality in every way. While community projects are quite common nowadays, and their overall quality is undoubtedly superior to what we used to find in the old days, Eviternity proved that one of the most natural and incredible ways to create 32 maps of absolute quality is through a team of passionate collaborators willing to give a small token of their power. Dragonfly led this project and created it brick by brick, in such a way that the final work stands as a monument to Doom, to the community and to the art of level design.

The title of this work is already a great example of excellent decisions in terms of presentation, because if we talk about presentation, well, Eviternity has it all and all a hundredfold. Dragonfly took care to create a work that not only possesses the expected quality of a modern work, but also possesses its own identity that will give it simplified identification within the community as well as an idealized visualization to new players. From the simple logo to the way the chapters are divided. The aesthetics of this megawad are through the roof and it is, in one way or another, a work of such quality that I'd like to think this is what Id would be able to deliver if they ever made WADs for Doom again. Just wishful thinking, but goddamn I’m glad that instead of that we have a full community absolutely nuts on quality. Eviternity is there, mate, among the best of the best, and let me tell you, there’s a lot of the best, so if that’s the case then, what exactly makes Eviternity so special? Glad you asked.

Eviternity brings with it a unique and massive visual quality that is as drastic in presentation as it is admirable. From the first level to the last. There is not a single map that disappoints us or makes us say ''meh, this isn't as cool as the last one.'' Each map has a distinctive and factorable quality within the great formula that is this megawad. Each one contributes a distinct point that offers a wonderful quality of variety and flavor. Thanks to the excellent decision to divide the megawad into 6 episodes of 5 maps each, we have 6 different themes that demonstrate an absolute boldness in daring to make a 25+ year old video game look like this. How dare they make such a masterpiece?

Well, they did it and they left a great impact, to such an extent that this megawad even had media repercussions in the world of videogame news. One of the rare honors that few WADs have had. Thanks to the fantastic use of varied episodes, we have a plethora of different flavors to try ranging from sweet joy to hellish nightmare. Starting with the first chapter that brings with it an excellent natural map design with gothic ambience and outdoor scenery. MAP01 encapsulates in an excellent way the kind of atmosphere that awaits us. Chapter 2 takes us to industrial settings with rusty colors and the smell of rot and smoke in the air. The maps are a mix between Tech-base with a clear industrialist influence in their rusty textures and brown colors, bringing with it a change in gameplay that reacts fantastically in synergy with the environment. Chapter 3 (one of my favorites) brings, in my opinion, the most ambient and stylized set of maps in the entire set. With a cold winter setting, ice and snow keep us company as we enter castles and hellish fortresses that stand out for their black rocks among the white background, as well as a few other extra surprises of monumental architecture. Chapter 4 brings with it a more traditional style but with a more advanced twist. Tech-base with neon colors and intense scenarios that are based on complex layouts that allow as much exploration as intense combat. MAP19: Dehydration, stands out for perfectly representing the style of this chapter, as well as for its extreme length. Chapter 5, the antepenultimate, is properly, a chapter set in the dark abstract corners of hell. Red is king (and purple) and violence is queen. A collection of 5 maps designed to punish you in this fantastic adventure. With one of the most brutal examples of gameplay as well as architecture in the entire megawad, chapter 5 leaves a long mark, but finally, we come to the last one. Chapter 6 is, without a doubt, Eviternity at its finest. Monumentalism, expressionism, brutalism and an obsession with color. Maps that perfectly combine a Greco-Roman architectural style with celestial landscapes that pay homage to paintings of the Elysium. The last chapter is among my favorites, and for good reason; it is practically perfect. MAP26 and MAP27 stand out for their incredibly atmospheric design, for offering unique gameplay and visuals; and of course, MAP29 is the cake. You have to play it. You have to taste it. Ah, and don’t forget the secret maps which are already special on their own, each one offering something that will probably stick with you long after finishing it.

I really want to emphasize how Eviternity manages to create an atmosphere that we rarely find in Doom, even over the years. What a select group of maps have is that they can create such a fascinating landscape that evokes an incredible sense of surrealism, inviting immersion. That's right, a video game from 1993 can still create such a powerful feeling when a group of mad lads decide to create some content for the game. Eviternity is one of the first WADs that managed to emphasize that idea, and one of the first that managed to capture me in such a way that I was invited into a concept that was new to me at the time, that of escapism through art. One way or another, Eviternity will immerse you in a unique adventure in all respects. Not only that, but also within the great panorama of its presentation is the fantastic use of its soundtrack. While a few songs are borrowed from other WADs, the vast majority are original works made by a variety of authors, among which stand out @Jimmy, @Alfonzo and @Eris Falling, both legendary authors and recognized within the community for their consistency in quality and superb creativity. Here they are no different, and each author managed to create songs that make excellent synergy together with their respective maps in absolute genius. Some tracks are as frenetic as they are fun, inciting the enraged gameplay, while other tracks create an atmosphere so palpable that it makes the air itself smell. Chapter 4 excels in this for me, offering some of the best ambient tracks in the entire megawad. But always, from beginning to end, each selected song is a work of art that deliberately makes this not only a visual, but an auditory experience. And a very pleasurable one at that.

But we all know that not everything is about being pink, but also about having flavor, and when I say flavor, I mean gameplay, how is Eviternity in that case? Well, to put it in a few words: Magnificent. Eviternity is a unique WAD not only because of the previous points, but also because it offers an adventure through its gameplay that goes from such simple variations to such impressive surprises. With a well-established curve based on its chapter system, each map brings with it a distinct sense of progress thanks to its excellent attention to enemy positioning, varied encounters and synergy between demons and level design. Fortunately, this adventure is quite acceptable for new players due to its excellent balance of different skill-levels, but on the other hand it also offers a considerable challenge even for veteran players who wish to jump into this gem in Ultra-Violence. Offering traditional evolutionary combat styles ranging from close encounter fights in corridors to typical monster closets, Eviternity also offers some of the best combat ever in a wide variety of maps, such as its final boss in MAP30, the massive adventure in MAP32, the violent final encounter in MAP25 or the iconic horde in MAP15. But of course, I can't leave behind the three new additions that Eviternity brings. The 5 new enemies: The Nightmare Demon, a version of Pinky on steroids. Former Captain, a projectile version of the Heavy, something like a mini Spiderdemon. The Astral Cacodemon, a fascinating fella with complex moves and a dangerous close-range attack. The Annihilator, a son of a bitch that fuses the one-hit-kill of the Cyberdemon with the toughness of the Baron (a little tougher) and a machine gun to ruin our day. And of course, the final boss, the unique Archangelus, a complex boss that brings with it a variety of new mechanics and attacks that make for a fascinating battle. Each of them brings something new to the table, presenting countless possibilities for new fights. Eviternity has a little something for everyone (as cliché as that sounds), as well as a wide variety of combat, it has a wide variety of difficulty scales that are made to satisfy a wide range of players from start to finish. Among them, as a passionate gamer, I can say that I am completely satisfied, yes sir.

For those of you who read me you probably know that in my review style I always try to highlight the strong factors and I tend to have an enthusiasm that can be a bit blinding at times, so you're probably wondering: Is he sugarcoating all this? It can't be that true. Well, I'm afraid not, I'm not sugarcoating any of it and I have to say that in the big picture of Eviternity, between all the contributions it brings, every map and every single encounter, Eviternity is practically, virtually perfect. While we may encounter some annoyances from time to time (certain maps feeling too long or some enemies feeling a bit brutal) there is no major problem that makes me scratch my head and regret playing this megawad. Not at all. On the contrary, Eviternity is that kind of adventure game that you don't want to stop playing even for a break. It grabs you. It captivates you. It enchants you.

This review marks my 50th review, and for that I wanted to do something special, something unique and that perfectly represents what I love about Doom. Eviternity is one of the first megawads that I finished completely, and it is also, without a doubt, an example that encapsulates everything good and beautiful that Doom can offer us in the 21st century. Breathing in the fresh air of this modern map making movement is like breathing in new life, and I'm glad to have been a part of it from the perspective of a healthy/unhealthy gamer. Dragonfly and team created something wonderful. Something metrically massive and astronomically beautiful. Eviternity is an eternally fantastic voyage that gives Doom a new coat of wonderfulness, and in my honest opinion, it is perfect.

#doom #wad #review #gaming #retro #screenshot #doomguy

4 notes · View notes

cinemavariety · 5 years ago

Text

The Director’s Series: Nicolas Winding Refn

The director series will consist of me concentrating on the filmography of all my favorite directors. I will rank each of their films according to my personal taste. I hope this project will provide everyone with quality recommendations and insight into films that they might not have known about. Today’s director in spotlight is Nicolas Winding Refn

#9 - Fear X (2003) Runtime: 1 hr 31 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

When his wife is killed in a seemingly random incident Harry, prompted by mysterious visions, journeys to discover the true circumstances surrounding her murder.

Verdict: Refn’s most forgotten about film, even I have a hard time remembering that this film is part of his oeuvre. Nevertheless, Fear X is a quiet and lingering exercise in style. It’s a surrealist film noir with heavy influences from David Lynch. It’s also the first time where Refn began experimenting with color and started to move away from shaky cam.

#8 - The Pusher Trilogy (1996/2004/2005) Runtime: 1 hr 45 min / 1 hr 40 min / 1 hr 30 min Aspect Ratio: 1.66 : 1 / 1.85 : 1 / 1.85 : 1 Film Format: 16mm / 35mm / 35mm

A drug pusher grows increasingly desperate after a botched deal leaves him with a large debt to a ruthless drug lord.

Verdict: I made the decision to categorize all three Pusher films as one entry for this post (otherwise it would just be too many). Nicolas Winding Refn started off his career with the strong crime tale of Pusher, and made the last two films to complete the trilogy after his English language debut Fear X ended up bombing. While I love the first and third entry more than I do the second, all three Pusher films are captivating and anxiety-ridden crime docudramas. It’s a great way to see how far Refn has evolved by starting with these films first.

#7 - Bleeder (1999) Runtime: 1 hr 38 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

Two stories for the price of one: Lenny works in a video shop and tries to get acquainted with the waitress Lea. Leo can't cope with the pressure of becoming a father, leading to trouble with his pregnant wife and especially her brother.

Verdict: While Bleeder might be Refn’s lowest budget film to date, and not all the violence comes off as extremely convincing, I enjoyed it more than all three Pusher films because of the emotional stakes within the story. Multiple characters lives intertwine and interconnect in oftentimes disastrous circumstances. I also loved how Mads Mikkelsen’s character is a huge film aficionado, all of the scenes he is featured in bring a much needed reprieve from the turmoil and abuse.

#6 - Too Old to Die Young (2019) Runtime: 15 hr Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Film Format: Arri Alexa Digital

The numb existences of Martin Jones, a police officer with secrets to hide, and Jesus, a traumatized avenging son, collide in a ghostly Los Angeles where several ruthless criminal gangs fight for their turf and dictate who lives and who dies. Verdict: Too Old To Die Young finds the celebrated auteur, Nicolas Winding Refn, sharing his view of humanity and society at its most despicable. All of his usual motifs and creative decisions are employed in full force with Too Old To Die Young, sometimes to an almost unbearable degree unless you are a truth Refn aficionado. His long takes, infinitesimal silences between lines, neon lighting, synth score and characters belonging to a criminal underworld are all utilized to great affect within the series. And while I believe that Refn’s sensibilities are best conveyed through a film medium, the limited series allows Refn to explore what he wants to convey like an artist adding layer upon layer of colors onto a blank palette.

#5 - Bronson (2008) Runtime: 1 hr 32 min Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

A young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson. Verdict: Bronson is quite possibly Tom Hardy’s most impressive performance, and that’s saying a lot. It exudes such a hypnotic quality that every time I watch it, it’s as if I am seeing the film for my very first time. It tells the true story of one of Britain’s most infamous criminals.Refn’s visual flair and unique filming style make it unlike any other prison film I’ve ever witnessed. This is the beginnings of Refn’s disinterest in traditional narrative structure.

#4 - Only God Forgives (2013) Runtime: 1 hr 30 min Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Film Format: Red Epic Digital

Julian, who runs a Thai boxing club as a front organization for his family’s drug smuggling operation, is forced by his mother Crystal to find and kill the individual responsible for his brother’s recent death.

Verdict: This is easily Refn’s most frustrating film. Whenever I watch it, I’m unsure whether I adore it or dislike it. But the fact that it’s the Refn film I have probably revisited the most is extremely telling of the ambience that Refn creates. Only God Forgives is arguably the most beautifully shot film from Nicolas. The neon drenched streets of Bangkok are presented to look like a netherworld. It’s a revenge fantasy thriller mixed with Oedipal undertones. Also, Gosling looks like a treat in every frame.

#3 - Valhalla Rising (2009) Runtime: 1 hr 33 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: Red One Digital

1000 AD, for years, One Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, has been held prisoner by the Norse chieftain Barde. Aided by Are, a boy slave, One Eye slays his captor and together he and Are escape, beginning a journey into the heart of darkness. On their flight, One Eye and Are board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that clears only as the crew sights an unknown land. As the new world reveals its secrets and the Vikings confront their terrible and bloody fate, One Eye discovers his true self.

Verdict: Valhalla Rising is Refn’s dirtiest and bloodiest work, and it certainly finds the director at his most surreal and existential. If anyone wants to know a film that epitomized what it means to be considered art house - this is it. It’s a film about a slave finding emancipation from his tyrannous slave owners, and finds himself on a doomed voyage to the New World with a group of fanatical Christian vikings. The story is told in separate chapters, with each section the audience finds itself traveling down a rabbit hole that resembles something of an acid try gone awry.

#2 - The Neon Demon (2016) Runtime: 1 hr 57 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: Arri Alexa XT Plus Digital

When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she has.

Verdict: The Neon Demon has grown to become my second favorite movie from Nicolas. The film succeeds in shedding light on the hedonistic lifestyle of deranged young women in a tongue-in-cheek, almost satirical fashion. It’s one of the best looking Refn films to date, with even banal or commonplace locations drenched in neon hues. Composer Cliff Martinez outdoes himself with the synth-heavy score which guides the audience along a fairytale of horrors. In Refn’s surreal vision of Los Angeles there is no such thing as going too far to reach fame, even if it means bloodshed. As one character says in the film: “Beauty isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” It would be nice to write off this statement as pure subjectivity, but what else has the media taught us but this ideal?

#1 - Drive (2011) Runtime: 1 hr 40 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: Arri Alexa & Cooke S4 Digital

A Hollywood stunt performer who moonlights as a wheelman for criminals discovers that a contract has been put on him after a heist gone wrong.

Verdict: Seeing Drive in theatres back in 2011, without even having seen a film from Refn and not knowing much of the plot in general, is hands down one of the most memorable and inspiring theatrical experiences I ever had. Drive, among many other films that came out around that time, acted as a catalyst for me to branch out and discover more independent and arthouse filmmakers. I believe that it is undoubtedly Refn’s best film, and I might dare say that might be credited to the fact that is one of the only Refn films in which he didn’t write. These characters, while quiet and mysterious, have more depth to them than any of his others. The quiet romance between Drive and Irene provide more emotional stakes than any of his other works as well. All the elements of Drive complement each other and build off of each other. As cheesy as it may sound, if any film could be considered cool - it’s this. It’s already gained a cult status and it will most definitely go down in history as one of the most beautiful crime noirs ever made.

46 notes · View notes

photodustorg · 6 years ago

Text

ILONA NELSON: THIS WILD SONG - MICHELLE HAMER

This Wild Song is a long term project by artist and curator Ilona Nelson which sees her creating photographic portraits of Australian female artists and transforming them to become a part of their work. Over the coming months, Photodust will feature portraits and interviews from Ilona Nelson’s ongoing project.

Michelle Hamer photographed by Ilona Nelson for This Wild Song

Michelle Hamer maps contemporary social beliefs, fears and aspirations through text, signage and urban environments. Her hand-stitched and drawn works sit being 2D and 3D objects and are based primarily on her own photographs, translated predominately by eye. Familiar and often ironic the works capture in-between moments that characterise everyday life. The boundaries and barriers that Hamer explores oscillate between fast and slow; past and present; personal and political and become markers of rarely captured but revealing moments in time.

Ilona Nelson: How do you describe your work to others?

Michelle Hamer: With images! As much as I love words with visual art they (or I?!) are limited.

IN: Do you have a preferred medium or use whatever is needed to express your ideas?

MH: The materials, ideas and my personal limitations all intertwine with my work. I fell into doing hand-stitching, specifically on perforated plastic because I had to spend most of my time lying down. The integral strength of the plastic and ready availability of wool matched my own physical limitations. More recently I’ve been using ink on paper and working with barrier tape and construction/debris mesh and I see my practice evolving as these other choices emerge.

IN: How do you begin new work?

MH: Sometimes I have a specific idea I want to research, like my recent interest in language around conflicted border zones, other times I’m reflecting on images I’ve taken and a series emerges. My work mostly begins with photographing something I glimpse on a journey. I carry a small camera with me everywhere. My phone is also full of notes. I collect lists of words, phrases and ideas surrounding the images and text I’m exploring.

IN: Do you tend to work in series or do you see your body of work as a continuation?

MH: Both. I work in series but each series is also a continuation. Recently other people have begun to re-curate works of mine from varying series and that in turn opens new ways for me to consider what I am exploring and emphasises for me just how much I am obsessed with the same ideas over time.

IN: What attracts you to your subjects?

MH: Usually there is both a strong personal resonance and a commentary on contemporary social beliefs, fears and aspirations.

IN: What processes do you use to bring your ideas to life?

MH: I go through my images many times, ordering and sorting and printing the ones I’m most drawn to. I then spend hours considering which may work as individual pieces and together. I returned from my last research trip with 5000 images. I had been sorting them into 5 broad themes but the more I go through them the more I find a particular line I need to follow. I have many ‘middle of the night’ notes on the issues I’m considering.

I broadly mark up the plastic with a Sharpie and then work with a colour A4 image beside me for reference. I usually start by stitching something reasonably large, simple or the text because it makes me feel anchored into the piece. The small details, which sometimes involve different wool for each stitch, are usually the last to be resolved.

IN: What do you use as reference material?

MH: My own photographs, screenshots, conversations, email subject lines - usually language or signage within my environment.

IN: Are you conscious of the meaning of the work initially or do you work intuitively?

MH: Often I’m literally moving (driving) when I see something to photograph so that’s a split second intuitive

decision but by the time I’m creating I’m conscious of the meaning, at least on some levels. More meaning may emerge during creation though.

IN: Do you aim to create the finished piece exactly as you envisioned or enjoy allowing it to develop organically?

MH: I’m usually working from a photograph so I have a fairly strong idea of the work but because of the limitations of working with grids and readily available yarns how I balance the colours and image resolution are decisions made through the process.

IN: What’s your favourite colour to work with?

MH: I sometimes have favourite wools but not necessarily colours. I do a lot of roads and I had a favourite ‘road wool’ which unfortunately is no longer produced.

IN: Where do you create?

MH: On the home/studio floor and couch.

IN: Do you have a studio ritual to start the session?

MH: I don’t.

IN: What’s your favourite music to work to?

MH: I used to listen to music when I worked in architecture but with my art, I have to watch TV series’ or listen to podcasts. The narrative seems important but I’m not sure why!

IN: Do you enjoy coming up with titles?

MH: For series I really do… less so for individual works.

IN: What’s your favourite part of creating?

MH: The moments when there is no pressing admin and nothing else exists except for the making.

IN: What advice would you give to your emerging self?

MH: I still feel like I’m emerging. I think that I increasingly believe it’s important to not be scared to keep digging to expose yourself and what you truly need to express.

IN: Have you ever worked with a mentor?

MH: I would love to have a mentor. I had some incredible tutors and peers in architecture who are the closest I’ve had to mentors, some still give me critical feedback which is invaluable to my practice.

IN: How do you alleviate the down times?

MH: Being in the ocean and remembering that it’s part of the process.

IN: What defining moments have you experienced within your practice?

MH: Realising that I had to create and then that it could be a marker of time. I didn’t set out to be an artist but it is a part of me.

There have been some exciting moments like having my work shown on a billboard in Times Square and being shown amongst artists I had long admired from afar at the NGV and at TarraWarra Museum of Art.

IN: What is the most memorable artwork you have seen and why?

MH: Way too hard to answer overall but most recently ‘The Enclave’ by Richard Mosse at the NGV, it is hauntingly beautiful and complex. It sits in the uncomfortable territory of the everydayness of war. It doesn’t shy away from either the joyful moments or the devastation.

IN: If you could ask any artist any question, what would it be?

MH: I would ask Mosse if he is exploring any personal trauma through his work and does he have, and if so how does he deal with survivor guilt?

IN: What’s next for you?

MH: My next body of works will reflect on my time spent in the Middle East and on the US/Mexican border. My show ‘There are no words’ continues to tour regional galleries.

Please visit This Wild Song to view more interviews with Australian women visual artists.

Please consider following PHOTODUST on Twitter and Instagram.

0 notes

rollinbrigittenv8 · 7 years ago

Text

The Coming Tech Backlash and What It Means for Travel

What kind of travel has the rise of social media fostered? Is the experiential travel trend really just about better bragging rights so we can share these artsy photographs on Instagram? Phil Roeder / Visualhunt

Skift Take: While the larger world is asking questions and turning on Silicon Valley, and the tools and culture it spawned, it is time for everyone — including us in travel — to pause to account for the society we are creating. The tech and social media backlash happening right now is a test for us in travel, as well.

— Rafat Ali

Exactly a year ago, as we sat down to write our flagship travel Megatrend for 2017, Humanity Returns to Travel, little did we realize the coming year would play out in such a way as to make the underlying message resonate even more today: The whole world IS crying out now for a return to humanity.

As we sit here at the start of 2018 and within touching distance of 2020, we are at a reckoning point, socially, culturally and politically, where social platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube and others are facing a backlash from various constituents, including the users, media, regulators, politicians, governments and, in some cases, even founders and early executives who built these platforms.

The ill-effects of a constant-dopamine-hit society that has been created over the last decade is now apparent worldwide, and we are all reeling from the effects of it. One of these effects is what we termed earlier this year as Permanxiety, this never-ending anxious state of the world.

We are all beginning to see and feel the extreme effects of digital-led life: the casual tyranny of pervasive connectedness, constant virtual stimuli, and hyper-distractedness has taken over our lives.

Losing Control and Getting Overpowered

Whether is it the cancerous nature of our current politics or the daily interactions we have with our fellow human beings, in the virtual medium and even in-situ, we can’t shake the feeling that we have lost control, and that companies, governments and organizations in so many ways mine our digital lives to program, overwhelm and overpower us. For the last decade, social platforms have positioned themselves as different kinds of companies that exist to make our lives better, but we’ve realized that they’re just like any other corporation, seeking more profits from their users. But in this case, the user is also the product.

As John Herrman wrote in a New York Times essay last month on what he called The Return of the Techno-Moral Panic: “We find ourselves aware of the power and unaccountability of the new marketplaces in which we socialize, communicate and do business. To cast our recurring panics as technophobic reruns is to misidentify what animates them most: Not fear, but helplessness.

Travel as a Sensory-Deprivation Bubble

So if this is the state of the world today, what does the coming tech backlash — on a personal and societal level — mean for the world of travel? The surface-level promise of travel has always been an escape from all of this, almost a sensory-deprivation bubble of sorts that helps us unwind and, at best, forget the world for awhile. The deeper promise of travel, outside of the buzzword du jour, “transformational travel,” has been to break the silos of our own minds as we go through this gloriously multicultural and eclectic world.

Over the last decade, the ease of “capturing and sharing memories,” as marketers euphemistically dubbed our phone-and-camera-led lives, has triggered a gigantic explosion of user media in travel, pushed out through the social feeds we are all now addicted to. This is happening while the meteoric parallel growth of global travelers has continued over the last decade, as China, India and other emerging countries are creating new travelers in the hundreds of millions.

If It Isn’t Shared on Instagram, Does It Exist?

There are many intertwined threads to unravel here about our role as travelers: Is our increasingly narcissistic society reflected in how we travel and share our memories in these digital platforms? Are we really enjoying travel and its deeper promise anymore now that we are constantly recording “memories” or sharing them through these platforms every place we find a data connection? Has the act of travel and “seeing” and “experiencing” things sped up as a result, if we have no time to take it in and ponder, just to record and move on?

What role has the explosion of social media played in the growth of travel? What kind of travel has the rise of social media fostered? Is the experiential travel trend really just about better bragging rights so we can share these artsy photographs on Instagram? Does everyone want insidery experiences only because they can show them off to the outside world? Surely travel reaped a huge boost with the rise of selfie culture, right?

Did a sunset really happen if we didn’t Instagram it?

Are Marketers Enablers?

If this is the question we’re asking even in half-jest, what kind of dynamic have we created? How reductive can the travel experience get, chopped up into status-update-size chunks?

On the other end of it, travel marketers have been drinking from the firehose while filling up the hose at the same time, so to speak. At first came what we termed early on as “user-generated media,” and marketers used and encouraged their guests and travelers to share as much as possible.

If you want to take a dimmer view of it, the marketers enabled the hyper-distracted and social-addicted travelers. Free Wi-Fi became a human right at hotels and resorts, airports, and destinations, and the travel industry complied. No one ever stopped to question the rationale for pervasive connectivity, not in the larger societal sense, certainly not in the travel ecosystem. The travel industry, especially destinations, first embraced travel bloggers and then latched onto Influencers, for whatever that was worth, all the while pushing the narrative: share, share, share!

Then the other side of the digitally empowered traveler is the over-entitled, complaining traveler: The pervasive always-on nature of social media feeds an outrage culture that is now a dominant element of the customer experience. The news outlets, driven by the easy clickbait nature of this outrage, pile onto it with stories and slideshows. Angry people on planes, entitled people at hotel check-in, fake influencers at restaurants. It feeds a culture of extremes where it’s either love or hate and, if it’s the latter, we’re going to scream about it forever.

Marketers also took hold of customer service and turned it into “customer experience” or CX, if you want to use hipper lingo. Somehow that all became about digital user experience, but that also meant putting digital as the wall between travelers and the travel companies. Tweet at us, said our airlines, we will respond within seconds with a pre-canned useless response! Everyone else jumped on board, and every small and large travel mishap, especially by airlines, became a trending topic on Twitter and Facebook. Did airline and hotel customer service really become worse or did the slip-ups get amplified because all of us had a megaphone to shout out of, every waking second of every day?

Digital Disintermediation tests the Travel Industry

With the rise of messaging services, chatbots and Artificial Intelligence, even more disintermediation of the human experience is coming. And while the larger world is asking questions and turning on Silicon Valley, and the tools and culture it spawned, it is time for everyone — including us in travel — to pause to account for the society we are creating. The tech and social media backlash happening right now is a test for us in travel, as well.

So what are the solutions and where do we even start? It is unfolding, with this backlash. No one is asking for these digital and social platforms to go away. They won’t, the world — our world — runs on these digital services.

In travel, in addition to all the benefits of the online booking revolution that evolved over the last two decades, in-destination travel is now a completely new experience. We have driving/walking/transit directions on our phones; we use maps to navigate our daily lives and travels; restaurant reviews and recommendations have changed how we eat and socialize, and the ability to connect with locals via social media who we might never have had a chance to meet in the pre-connected world, these are just a smattering of benefits we get from these digital platforms.

The travel industry needs to think beyond the cliched digital detox holidays, which admit it, never really took off for any of us. Maybe like the Amtrak “Quiet Cars,” the digital detox needs to be weaved into every aspect of our holidays, resorts and hotels. The travel industry also needs to rethink its chase of digital tools and services as a proxy to the human experience, and build real social experiences as part of the social spaces it incorporates: airports, airlines, hotels, resorts, destinations, tours and activities, and restaurants.

BUT, awareness that these platforms have us addicted is the first step. A couple of weeks ago, I posted the following — ironically — on my social feeds. “Just a thought: if Facebook/Twitter etc. are really serious about solving constant dopamine-hits society they are creating, could they consider killing likes, faves etc? And take lessons from how Netflix changed their ratings systems? What kind of product could they build if they took empty instant feedback loops out of their services? A very naive hope, I realize.” This provides a hint of the potential product rethink that these social platforms have to undertake, either by themselves or perhaps public pressure will force regulators to take action.

Craig Silverman of New York Magazine wrote something similar recently, on how to stop trolls from weaponizing social media: “What if we had social platforms that didn’t constantly measure, assess, and rate us? That did away with follower counts and numbers of likes and retweets, which only serve to remind us of where we rank? These tools of assessment are what motivate so much bad behavior, along with the corporate colonization of our social networks. By pushing back against them — by demanding not to be rated, liked, or watched — we can take away one of the tools of the right-wing troll while also working to reform our culture of rampant surveillance. And perhaps finally, we can regain some measure of the elusive internet freedom so often promised to us.”

Two years ago, I wrote this as part of our Skift Manifesto on the Future of Travel in 2020: “Travel is the global crucible for everything. It is where the largest consumer and tech trends are first tested, they all converge in travel.”

Travel’s role then becomes a forcing function for us to slow down our speed-up permanxious life. It is a role many of us in the travel industry — and travelers — have forgotten.

Slow down.

0 notes

touristguidebuzz · 7 years ago

Text

The Coming Tech Backlash and What It Means for Travel

— Rafat Ali

Losing Control and Getting Overpowered

Travel as a Sensory-Deprivation Bubble

If It Isn’t Shared on Instagram, Does It Exist?

Did a sunset really happen if we didn’t Instagram it?

Are Marketers Enablers?

If this is the question we’re asking even in half-jest, what kind of dynamic have we created? How reductive can the travel experience get, chopped up into status-update-size chunks?

Digital Disintermediation tests the Travel Industry

Travel’s role then becomes a forcing function for us to slow down our speed-up permanxious life. It is a role many of us in the travel industry — and travelers — have forgotten.

Slow down.

0 notes

topmixtrends · 7 years ago

Link

IN “Passage to India,” the quintessentially American poet Walt Whitman celebrated the networks of commerce that were linking the world together at the end of the 19th century:

The earth to be spann’d, connected by net-work, The people to become brothers and sisters, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together.

Aided by the invention of the steamship and the expansion of telegraphs and railways, the world economy entered a phase of globalization, celebrated here by Whitman in tones that prefigure the enthusiasm of today’s apostles of the information age. Maya Jasanoff quotes the poem at the beginning of her new book The Dawn Watch to illustrate the roots of globalization.

The races did not, however, live in the harmony envisioned by Whitman. During a period of relative peace within Europe and North America, the imperial powers extended their control of the rest of the world, and entered an age of empire that lasted until their competing desires for conquest exploded in World War I.

One novelist was in a unique position to chronicle 19th-century globalization and analyze the contradictions of imperialism. Born in what is today Ukraine, to Polish nationalists dedicated to the memory of a country that had been partitioned among three empires, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was welcomed into the world by a song from his patriot father:

Baby son, tell yourself, You are without land, without love, Without country, without people, While Poland — your Mother is in her grave.

More literally orphaned at the age of 11, and inspired by the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, Konrad Korzeniowski set out to sea before his 17th birthday. After personal disasters and (probably) a suicide attempt in Marseilles, he arrived in London when he was 20. There he joined the British Merchant Marine and sailed all over the world in service of British commerce.

Sixteen years later, as Joseph Conrad, he retired from the sea and began writing several of the greatest novels of modern English literature. In her brilliant book, Jasanoff explains how four of the best of these novels offer insights into globalization and imperialism that remain relevant today.

Jasanoff is an insightful and imaginative historian. Her earlier books told compelling stories of the lives of both powerful and obscure inhabitants of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, and won her many accolades (including the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize at Yale, where I teach). A genius of the archives, she brought together, in her award-winning Liberty’s Exiles, the stories of the losers of the American Revolution — the loyalists who left the newly founded United States and wound up in Canada, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, and throughout the empire. Likewise, her first book, Edge of Empire, introduces a rich cast of characters (British and French collectors of antiquities in India and Egypt), an empathetic understanding of how diverse communities interacted in the face of large historical forces, and a novelist’s skill at complex storytelling.

In The Dawn Watch, Jasanoff tells the life story of a novelist. The book comes in the form of a biography of Joseph Conrad, but in fact through Conrad she tells the story of a whole phase in world history. Conrad’s insights into his time have been recognized by earlier generations, notably by Hannah Arendt, who drew on his novels for her analysis of imperialism and racism in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Recent generations of students and scholars may have been put off reading Conrad by his deliberate use of racist language and some of his stereotypical assumptions, which were famously exposed by Chinua Achebe. In reply to Achebe, Jasanoff quotes a young Barack Obama, who said of Heart of Darkness, “the book teaches me things […] [a]bout white people, I mean. See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world.” And many postcolonial novelists, notably V. S. Naipaul, have admired Conrad for his mostly unsentimental analysis of race relations and his boundless curiosity about life at the edges of empire.

Boundless curiosity is also an attribute of Maya Jasanoff. In her earlier books, she pursued obscure characters through even more obscure archives. In The Dawn Watch, she travels in the footsteps of a famous writer. Other biographers have followed Conrad’s trail, notably Norman Sherry, who in the mid-20th century was able to interview many immediate relatives of people who had known the novelist. Sherry uncovered some of the “originals” of Conrad’s fictional characters. Nearly a century after his death, such pathways have closed, but Jasanoff found ways of reliving Conrad’s experiences, notably by traveling on a container ship from Hong Kong to Southampton, England, along routes followed by Conrad during his lifetime, and traveling by boat along the Congo River, the setting of Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s most famous and notorious work.

Jasanoff’s travels have given her an empathy and an understanding for Conrad, and also for the victims of imperialism, that breathe on every page of this magnificent book. She sees his plots in relation to the basic drama of his life, but sees that drama as itself reflective of broader historical events:

Conrad’s fiction usually turns on the rare moments when a person gets to make a critical choice. These are the moments when you can cheat fate — or seal it. You can stay on board a sinking ship or jump into a lifeboat. You can hurt someone with the truth or comfort them with a lie. You can protect a treasure or steal it. You can blow something up or turn the plotters in.

You could spend your whole life in the place where you were raised or you could leave and never come back.

Although written later, Conrad’s The Secret Agent tells the story of a terrorist plot in London in the 1880s, the decade when Conrad became a naturalized British subject. Jasanoff shows how the novel, a sort of rewriting of Dickens, reveals much about Conrad’s own life as a young man in London. She also suggests the relevance of Conrad’s analysis of 19th-century terrorism for our own day.

Conrad’s most technically adventurous novel, Lord Jim, tells the story of a young British sailor who does not live up to the code of the sea and who winds up traveling further and further east in an effort to escape from Western civilization. The story is related in a series of interviews and flashbacks that would later inspire Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Having spent so much time on shipboard, Jasanoff recognizes the storytelling technique (which goes all the way back to The Odyssey): this is “a narrative composed in sailor’s time.”

Citizen Kane was not the only major American film that retold a Conrad story in a different medium and setting. In the 1970s, when Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now, a film about the fate of US imperialism in Southeast Asia, he drew on Conrad’s African novel, Heart of Darkness, for his plot. Jasanoff shows that Conrad became a writer in Africa, where he worked on his first novel about Southeast Asia, Almayer’s Folly.

Conrad had spent most of his time as a sailor in Southeast Asia, and he later chronicled the intersection of a vast array of cultures in books like Almayer’s Folly and Lord Jim. Jasanoff retells the story of Conrad’s travels in the region, but she offers a new interpretation, pointing out that the ship he served on as first mate was active in the (illegal) slave trade, and tracing the presence of slavery in his portrayal of Malay society.

This interchange between the two regions forms part of the history of empire and suggests how racism and globalization intertwined. Jasanoff investigates the moral ambiguities of Heart of Darkness with great sensitivity and awareness both of Conrad’s biases and of the horrors he witnessed. She shows how Conrad exposed the horrors of the supposed Belgian civilizing mission in the Congo, but also analyzes his reluctance to get involved in political crusades, which she attributes to his reaction against the suffering caused by his parents’ idealism.

Perhaps Conrad’s greatest novel, and his most demanding, is about a region he never saw at first hand. Nostromo describes a revolution in a fictional Latin American country, Costaguana. By reconstructing Conrad’s process of writing the novel, and drawing on contemporary press accounts of the 1903 revolution in Panama, Jasanoff shows how Conrad evolved his critique of US power in Latin America; she sees him as a clear-sighted observer of the future of the Western hemisphere, despite the fact that he had only seen the Latin American coast briefly from onboard ship. Costaguana was therefore fictional, invented, in a way that the settings of his earlier novels were not, but Conrad was a sufficiently perspicacious reader of the newspapers and of human nature to offer a telling interpretation of current events, as well as a rich invented world of great depth and sympathy.

Most novelists tell us about an event and then describe its consequences. Conrad often reversed this chronology: in his best novels, he describes impressions and experiences and then spends pages analyzing their causes. The result is a kind of epistemological disorientation in which the reader continually gathers clues almost as in a mystery novel. Unlike in most mystery novels, however, the answer to Conrad’s riddles is not a simple “whodunnit.” Often, as in Lord Jim, he describes experiences precisely to show that the mystery is insoluble. As Jasanoff puts it in speaking of Conrad’s English alter ego, the narrator of both Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, “Marlow was constantly seeing things but only later managing to figure out what they meant.”

In what is probably the best book ever written on Conrad, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, the critic Ian Watt influentially described this method as “delayed decoding.” Maya Jasanoff has taken Conrad’s technique as her own. Frequently she tells us a wonderful story out of Conrad’s life, lovingly reconstructed from his memoirs and letters, only to explain a few pages later: “Yet almost none of what Conrad said lines up with other records.” A critic and historian with the virtuosity of a latter-day Sherlock Holmes, Jasanoff then goes on to retell the story based on her own findings. Through it all, she shows how Conrad’s story is part of a broader history — the history of globalization and empire — world history. This is the best book on Conrad since Watt’s. Maya Jasanoff has given us a Conrad for the 21st century.

Pericles Lewis, professor of Comparative Literature and vice president for Global Strategy at Yale University, is the author or editor of several books on literary modernism and 20th-century editor for the Norton Anthology of World Literature.

The post You Are Without Land, Without Love appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2kPRx3x

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

0 notes

caveartfair · 7 years ago

Text

We’re in the Golden Age of the Black Music Video

Untitled, Alabama, 1956. Gordon Parks Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Still from Kendrick Lamar, “Element.”

“I want to make black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of black music.” —Arthur Jafa

At the 38-second mark of Kendrick Lamar’s video for his single “Element,” something magical happens. The camera lingers on a small boy lying in a verdant field, while a junebug he holds from a string crawls on his forehead. With its muted colors and soft lighting, it is a serene, arresting image that stands apart from the rest of the video, which shows men either fighting or preparing to fight.

It is also a direct recreation of Gordon Parks’s classic 1963 photo, Boy With June Bug. Throughout the video, there are other homages to Parks’s work, including the photos Black Muslims Train in Self-Defense, Chicago Illinois, 1963; Ethel Sharrieff, Chicago, 1963; and Untitled, Alabama, 1956, the last of which comes from Parks’s series “A Segregation Story.”

Paired with Lamar’s searing lyrics, these images show the complexities and contradictions of black boyhood in America: the moments of quiet repose, innocence, and grace juxtaposed with shocking, disorienting bouts of violence.

And Lamar is not the only music artist who is pushing the music video form to new levels of self-expression. We’re currently in the midst of an upheaval in black cinema, where the kind of provocative and challenging images that director and cinematographer Arthur Jafa has tasked himself and his contemporaries with creating can be found in videos by artists such as Lamar, Solange, Beyoncé, and Kamasi Washington.

Each of these artists has been using the power of this medium to create imagery that reflects the multifaceted interior lives, as well as the sociopolitical lives, of black people. What makes these artists’ videos stand out is their experimentation with form; their commitment to weaving a visual narrative that doesn’t always directly correspond with the lyrics; and their invocation of images that draw from the rich history of black visual artists, including photographers, painters, and filmmakers.

In the meditative, expansive 14-minute short film for jazz musician Kamasi Washington’s “Truth” (2017), there is a segment that recreates the 1954 photo Ellington Session Break by Harlem artist Roy DeCarava, the first black photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. As the song proceeds, the camera pans deeper into the scene, so that we can see the musicians move and live within the frame in a way we couldn’t with a still photograph.

It’s thrilling and touching to see this modern jazz musician connect with one of the pioneers of jazz, Duke Ellington, while also paying tribute to one of Harlem’s greatest artists and documentarians.

When and Where I Enter - Mussolini's Rome, 2006. Carrie Mae Weems Jack Shainman Gallery

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Light Of The Lit Wick, 2017. Courtesy of the artist; Corvi- Mora, London; and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Beyoncé and Solange have also paid homage to the work and legacies of black artists and filmmakers in the visual components of their critically acclaimed albums Lemonade (2016) and A Seat at the Table (2016)—as well as collaborating with Arthur Jafa for their respective videos.

Four of the videos for Beyoncé’s Lemonade, “Pray You Catch Me,” “Love Drought,” “Forward,” and “Freedom,” contain several scenes inspired by Julie Dash’s 1991 classic film Daughters of the Dust, which traces the story of three generations of women in the Gullah community of coastal South Carolina who prepare to migrate to the mainland during the early 1900s. The film is a tone poem that celebrates the aspects of West African culture that the Gullah people fought to preserve, and the nuance that characterizes it can be seen throughout Lemonade.

The intro to the video for “Love Drought” also shows a lone woman dressed in a long, 19th-century-style dress, her back to the camera, her figure dwarfed as she faces the Superdome Stadium in New Orleans. This powerful image of alienation and longing bears a resemblance to the artist Carrie Mae Weems’s 2006 “Roaming” series, which features Weems’s figure with her back to the camera as she gazes at various landscapes and edifices throughout Rome.

Solange’s masterful video for “Cranes in the Sky” (2016), meanwhile, also references Daughters of the Dust, while her video for “Don’t Touch My Hair” (2016)—directed by the artist herself with her husband Alan Ferguson—features a group of men in matching green sweatshirts and wavy brown wigs, a recreation of the painting Complication (2013) by Ghanaian-British painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

These videos are tinged with a muted color palette and decidedly feminine aesthetic that flies in the face of generic music video tropes—including quick jump cuts, product placement, and overtly sexualized women.

The video for Jay-Z’s “4:44” (2017) also eschews these gimmicks in favor of truly surprising images and editing choices. Directed by Elissa Blount-Moorhead, Arthur Jafa, and Malik Sayeed of TNEG Studio, the eight-minute video cuts between two dancers, Storyboard P and Okwui Okpokwasili, and a collage of viral images of black life as Jay-Z confesses to his failings as a husband.

Film Still from Arthur Jafa, Love is The Message, The Message is Death, 2016. Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome.

We see a boy singing Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” (1965); disturbing footage of police brutality; the 2014 protests in Ferguson; footage of Eartha Kitt and Jean-Michel Basquiat; a rare live performance of Al Green; and Jay-Z and Beyoncé dancing on stage together while never touching or looking at each other directly. The work echoes Jafa’s approach to Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (2017), a video collage set to Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” (2016).

It distills the joy, pain, and beauty of blackness—and shows how intertwined black pain and black creativity can be.

When it comes to a diversity of thought and imagination, the film world has been relatively slow to evolve, even with great talents like Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, and Gina Prince-Bythewood helming big budget films for Disney and Sony Pictures.

But thanks to the insistence of these musical and moving image pioneers on honoring the legacies of artists who have come before them, the most evocative and challenging images of black life today can be found in another medium that’s being consumed by mass audiences: the music video.

—Danielle A. Scruggs

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

0 notes

micaramel · 8 years ago

Link

Innocently Damaged

In his captivating series, Understanding Human – Iceland, Philadelphia-based fine art photographer Kory Zuccarelli explores the essence of what it means to be human. Using atmospheric Iceland’s lush landscape as his backdrop, Zuccarelli tells visual stories inspired by his own personal experiences and the obstacles he has faced.

Each enchanting photograph features a model—sometimes, Zuccarelli himself—elegantly posing in wild nature. Characterized by a rocky coastline, mossy terrain, and everlasting twilight, the series’ scenery conveys a moodiness that aptly complements the serious and somber expressions of its subjects. Though each photographic is aesthetically enchanting, the existence of their back stories culminates in a more powerful and poignant study of the human condition.

We had the opportunity to to speak with Kory about his stunning series. Below, he shares a bit about the inspiration, intent, and process behind both the beautiful project and his practice in general.

A Simpler Life

What first prompted you to pursue photography?

When I was in high school, I was battling cancer and there wasn’t much that I could do. I was restricted from most public places because I had little to no immune system to fight off any of the most basic of colds. I was being homeschooled while living in a new town, so I sort of was living in this bubble, with few interactions outside of the people that surrounded me, consisting of my family and doctors. I had a lot of time on my hands, but the majority of this time was spent feeling the side effects of my medical treatment.

Photography was something that helped me get out of bed and exercise by walking in the backyard and along the trails we have in the back of the property. I didn’t know what exactly I was doing yet, but I knew I wanted to learn, so I would take pictures of everything I could in my short reach. I loved showing my photos to the doctors at the hospital and to anyone who was visiting the house. The recognition and praise really helped me in a low point of my life and having a passion that drew excitement for me was a powerful element to incorporate into my limited routine. Once I was able to return to high school, I looked to do anything photo related by working on photography projects in my art classes (our school didn’t have the resources for a photography class or club), working as the photographer for our school newspaper, and taking night classes for early college credit at a nearby community college.

Untamed Delusions of A Broken Heart

How would you describe your style, and what inspires it?

My style of photography is focused on storytelling, whether it’s derived from personal experiences or experiences I see the characters in my work reacting to in the painterly, colorful, and sometimes dark and surreal worlds I put them inside of. Before I wanted to be a photographer, I thought I was going to pursue a writing career. I loved creative writing assignments in school and would be consistently filling my notebook with scenes in my head, short stories, sketches, or poems as a way to express myself. After studying the medium and understanding more about the art of photography, I realized I could intertwine my passions for creative writing into the work I was creating.

Let Loss Reveal What Was Lost

Where did the idea for your series, Understanding Human – Iceland, originate?

For a few years, I’ve been shooting a series of fine art portraits called Understanding Human, and this body of work shot in Iceland is an extension of that. The idea around this series revolves around the aspects of what some like to call the human condition; yearning, hardships, seeking guidance, and self-reflection are some of the characteristics I portray in my work for this ongoing series. I believe Understanding Human started as a way for me to view the world beyond of my personal norm in a visual medium and as an opportunity to think outside of the box when it came to executing some of the concepts and ideas I wanted to express in my photographs.

Why did you choose Iceland as a setting for your work?

The idea to take this series abroad to Iceland started as a suggestion by a close group of friends of mine, we call ourselves “Le Fromagi’s” (meaning “The Cheesies”), and live all over the United States and Europe. We had all met on a photography retreat in France, hosted by Brooke Shaden. We all had great chemistry and instantly bonded. After our initial trip, we all knew we wanted to come together again for an epic photo adventure. One by one, we started teasing each other with beautiful locations from all around the world on where we might go next, and we all kept getting drawn in by the beauty and diversity of Iceland. So, on the anniversary of our France retreat, all 18 of us came together again and traveled across the countryside in four RVs like a little family. It was simply amazing.

A Crack in Reality

What are some of the stories being told throughout this series?

In Iceland, I came prepared with ideas I wanted to explore in my notebook, but the landscapes also provided bundles of inspiration for new stories that I wanted to tell.

We were on the shores of the Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon, where giant blue and white boulders of ice decorated the black sand beach for miles. Positioned between the crashing waves and the shoreline was an iceberg that caught my eye. I stared at it as the sky grew darker and pellets of ice and rain fell on me. To my right, some of my friends were walking over from shooting one of their concepts, and I noticed my friend Lieke dressed in one of the gowns we brought along with us, buried beneath the layers of coats and sweaters she was wearing. From that moment, this story of a long-lost love grew in my mind.

The heart of a young woman growing colder as she waits for her one true love to return home, making each passing moment harder for her to keep warm, enduring the elements as the water around her turns into a throne of ice for her to embrace and sit upon. After telling Lieke about the concept, she agreed to pose on the iceberg, but we had to move fast. Not only was the tide coming in, but the temperature was dropping and the sun had almost completely crawled beneath the horizon. Half an hour later, it was dark and the iceberg had been picked up by the tide and brought back out to sea. This was one of those instances where traveling has influenced inspiration that struck me as I explored a new part of the world I was unfamiliar with, helping me produce one of my favorite photographs.

There She Waits on Her Throne of Ice

Preparing for the trip, I remember sketching out the main idea for another photograph I was looking forward to shooting, Fracturing Conformity. This photograph was shot with the help of Jen Brook (the central model) and Marisa White (the hooded figures), at a point where we all had pulled over to do some shooting on our way to the Eldhraun lava fields. In this concept, I wanted to highlight how diversity is an important thing to have in a society and that we don’t need to be lead by a single point of view our entire lives; that there should be room in this world to grow and evolve.

Similar to this narrative, I shot The Mask is A Lie. This was a self-portrait inspired by a declaration I had written a year prior to myself, about being more honest with myself, stop worrying about the opinions of other people so much and so often, and to remove a facade I had built around myself for others to see.

Fracturing Conformity

The Mask is the Lie

What role does nature play in this project?

Iceland had been on my bucket list of places to visit for a long time and to have the opportunity to travel there with an amazing group of friends was just icing on the cake. As we explored the country, we would regularly glance at each other and ask if what we were seeing was real. The Icelandic environment is scattered with lava fields, waterfalls, glaciers, and volcanoes; features not commonly found here in the northeast of the United States.

As we drove through the windy countryside, passing by isolated farms and small villages, the nature of the country inspired my friends and myself to create and have fun. The relaxed schedule we had made for ourselves let us take in a deep breath and appreciate the beauty of the landscape surrounding us and the culture of Iceland. This allowed us to really soak in the environment and not stress out about what we were shooting or how much we were creating. Feeling the spongey moss beneath my feet and breathing in the fresh air while thick bulbous clouds rolled overhead helped me to connect with where we were and had a great influence on the work I produced on this trip.

Your photographs have a dreamy, almost surreal feel to them. Did you feel that Iceland’s landscape aptly facilitated this aesthetic?

Without a doubt. When I’m creating new images for Understanding Human, I aim to capture the natural beauty of the environment that the characters are interacting with. It’s a part of the story, and Iceland fit symbiotically with my aesthetic, providing some of the most beautiful and otherworldly landscapes I’ve ever seen. There’s an abundance of visual pleasures all over the country and I wish I could visit more often. I traveled there near the end of the spring and with the advantage of shooting almost any time of day I wanted. During that time of year, that part of the world only has about 3 dark-hours each day, which I found out also exaggerated the sunsets to last almost double their normal durations compared to back home.

The Prayer of Peace

Did you find shooting in such a rugged environment challenging?

Not particularly! It was a lot of fun and I felt like I was in my element. Most of my work is shot outdoors, so it’s more of my preferred environment to work in. We had planned our trip during the warmer season to be more accessible for us to travel around and navigate, though we missed the right time of year to see the northern lights and explore the ice caves. In our RVs, there were some steep hills we crossed and sharp, mountainside turns we had to make, so I do have admiration for my friends who drove. We hiked to waterfalls with photo props and equipment and climbed cliffs to eat birthday cake during the extended twilight hours. And I almost got rammed by a mother sheep while exploring a hillside!

If there was anything to worry about, though, it would be the surprise squalls that would frequently pass by, so having protection for our gear was really our main concern. We also learned that in frigid temperatures, camera/phone battery life is significantly reduced.

You cite your love of adventure as an artistic muse. How has travel influenced your work?

It’s always a good idea to come prepared with ideas while traveling, but I never want to let those ideas limit myself from what the environment can sometimes offer up to help tell and express the mood for a story I have in mind. When I’m not shooting personal work, I also work as a traveling photographer, shooting virtual tours for businesses that are integrated into the Google Maps app, through my company, LCP360. This job has allowed me to travel all over the country and I love visiting new areas of my own backyard.

Pause

We can’t wait to see more of your beautiful photographs in the future. Do you have any upcoming projects? Are you planning to travel anywhere soon?

Thank you. I’ve had a lot of time to plan new ideas and do some creative writing. Soon after my trip to Iceland, I was in a bad accident, involving a driver that was texting and driving. The driver ran me over while I was walking over a crosswalk during a short break I was taking from editing photographs from this trip, which resulted in severe injuries to my leg, ankle, and back that I’ve spent months now healing and rehabilitating from. This sidetrack has put me on hold more recently, but I’m finally getting back into a place where I can return to more normalcy in my creative process.

The Fromagi’s came together again and we traveled to Sedona, Arizona, where I shot a few new images for Understanding Human. I’ve taken a small step back from releasing new work, but I’m looking forward to working on and sharing new series and individual images later this year. In the meantime, I’ve been working to have a store on my website prepared to start selling limited edition and special edition prints from the Understanding Human series. There are currently no solid travel plans for me yet, but there is some chatter of an Ohio trip amongst other creative friends I know and some talk about a Portugal trip, too.

Shot of the group in Iceland

Kory Zuccarelli: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Behance

My Modern Met granted permission to use photos by Kory Zuccarelli.

The post Interview: Cancer Survivor Travels to Idyllic Iceland to Explore the Human Condition appeared first on My Modern Met.

from My Modern Met http://ift.tt/2mWNSEl

#micaramel

0 notes

nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

Text

Bad at Sports Sunday Comics with Matthew Thurber

By Max Morris

I was first made aware of Matt Thurber’s work when the first issue of 1-800-MICE showed up at Quimby’s bookstore in Chicago. The style of screwball antics conflated with surrealist political drama (one plot point features an immortal bluegrass-star vampire streaking through space, and his apocalyptic approach toward the earth) was of immediate interest, and I recall being surprised that the heady brew of strange plot devices actually moved toward a climax. Today we present some selection from Art Comic, Thurber’s ongoing serial, and I was pleased get a chance to ask him a few questions on his work.

Max Morris: Back in 2014, you wrote this article for The Comics Journal Website , “Letter to a Young Cartoonist”, that stirred some controversy at the time. A bulk of the article dealt with the ramifications of posting comics work on Tumblr and Social Media, among other issues of challengers to the new generation of comics artists. This was in a time when that felt like the primary way to see new work being made by current creators. A little under 3 years after you posted that article, a lot has changed. Looking back at this article, what words do you have to say to the young cartoonist today?

Matthew Thurber: I feel more than ever that printed media contains autonomous power that is almost magical. All internet publication is embedded in and framed by another corporation. With print, as soon as it flies off the press it belongs, like the land, to “you and me”. The disturbing thing about social media is they change the terms of publication from one of total freedom, to one where you are being allowed to express yourself. Because they grant it… they can take it away. Social media echo chambers are destructive: look at what they have helped to do in terms of ripping our country in half, replacing everything with a simulation of reality. Is that what you mean by “a lot is changed”? We’re opting into 1984 because it feels good. It’s so seductive to feel like you’ve done something in pseudo-reality. We need to learn to live without the internet, to distribute artifacts in physical space, to know how to talk to each other again. It is so much more meaningful and beautiful. And guess what??? I’m part of the problem because I’m on INSTAGRAM (@mtshelves)! What a miserable hypocritical worm!!!! And the worst part is….I LOVE it! I love the ego pampering attention and the immediacy despite my complete conviction that it sucks!

MM: In your current ongoing serial Art Comic (which we are previewing in this article) you satirize High Art and all of its follies- your earlier work 1-800-MICE and Infomaniacs could be seen a parody of culture at large, but Art Comic seems to have a specific focus on the world of fine arts- what inspired this move?

MT: I didn’t know what I wanted to say exactly at first. It’s taking shape. I’m interested in how the art world functions as an industry steered by wealth and not by philosophy or ideas, despite the mythology that it is an idealistic pursuit, and how no one talks about the meaning of money in art or how that is never seen as the subject matter or part of the content of art. You’re just supposed to go to these gallery shows and ignore the context. The myths are stronger than the reality.

People wouldn’t go to art school otherwise the definition of art as wealth dovetails with the acceptance of craft as being obsolete, or in an outsourcing of craft or technique to make objects for the artist-manager-boss. Technical skill is replaced by verbal or conceptual dexterity, or of a performance of self, or just by the existence of celebrity. So that, and what the role of schools are in this, and what the role of narrative art and illustration is in all this. And how changes in the art scene reflect the overall development and gentrification of New York, since I moved here in 1996.

So Cooper Union gave up on its mission of providing free tuition in 2014 and I started to make a story based on my own experiences mixed with these absurd paranoid premises. Like that there was actually a conspiracy of artists to repress their students and that Matthew Barney’s Cremaster was taken away from him and became a symbolic representation of a real estate transaction.

Additionally to working as a cartoonist, you have worked as a multimedia artist in theater, performance, and other mediums. Do you feel that affects your work as a cartoonist, and vice-versa?

Yes… in a way it’s all the same energy. Increasingly it seems impossible to think of just doing comics. I’m dying to make an animated film- I just have to get this comic done first. I like to experiment and learning different techniques is part of my process, I guess, maybe even more important than the subject in a way.

I just worked with a group of 8 volunteer non-professional actors, and such, to perform what was basically a dance piece called “Terpinwoe”. We had one rehearsal and that was it, and the performance was great. The theater stuff started as an idea to do a puppet show called Mrs. William Horsley. But the idea of puppetry evolved into a general idea of ‘modeled experience��. Now Mrs. William Horsley has turned into a human puppet show, with actors. It’s more fun than being in any band!

But I think for me, the narrative impulse is behind everything. It’s always a kind of illustration of a story or something resembling a story. The idea of depiction. I would love to make comics that were more abstract, like dance pieces, maybe that’s what Yokoyama does, or Milt Gross. And after something happens like this theater piece I ricochet back into wanting to read and draw quietly and maybe that’s good. But I don’t know why more “Artists” don’t work in comics and why cartoonists get so settled into their medium. I think that is changing a lot actually. Any form is for any artist. I believe in “Amateur Enthusiasm”.

Much of your work utilizes psychedelia, visionary imagery, and absurdity- you also seem to enjoy intertwining plots and complex character development. When structuring a narrative, how do you consider resolving these two seemingly opposing themes?

I don’t know if I consider these tendencies resolved and that’s OK. That’s why novels exist, to embrace contradictions. I like very unexplained and strong imagery, like in dreams. Also, I like beautiful and complicated structures and plots. My favorite artworks are when you get both at once, like how “Mulholland Drive” messed with the logical side of your brain, but through the use of really subconscious imagery. Or Harry Stephen Keeler, whose crime stories are logical to the point where it makes no sense at all. Or Daniel Pinkwater, who somehow balances absurdity and very warm and human characters, or Raymond Roussel whose writing is all an attempt to make connections with the totally random subconscious imagery generated by word-play.

I worry about my characters not having any psychological depth. I wonder about emotional manipulation to get across my ideas. Is it even ethical? Elaine May is good at it- see “A New Leaf”. But if you try to do that it usually looks disgusting in the way that Hollywood movies make you want to vomit with their stupid emotional manipulation. I love ridiculous melodrama, or silent films where stuff just happens and humans are reduced to sacks of flour to be thrown around.

I guess that I think making a graphic novel is one way of keeping many unresolved, inconsistent elements together in suspension as in a soup where there are chunks of this and that floating in different shapes and sizes.

To order Art Comic, head to http://ift.tt/1UbRQOz. You can also find Matthew’s site at http://ift.tt/WuN0Vf.

Episode 100: Mattress Factory/ Book Review

Chicago Art in Pictures: March-April 2013

FLAT’s EC Brown on Chicago’s Domestic/Apartment Gallery Spaces

Hot Topic Alert: Do Art Bloggers Deserve “More Love”?

Detroit Banksy Mural In Court Now Since Factory Landowner Claims Ownership

from Bad at Sports http://ift.tt/2l8DwyD via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Bad at Sports

0 notes