Tuscany on Polaroid

“I am separate enough as a formed adult to distance myself while at the same time very much caught up in the gravitational field of memory and sensation, the eerily persistent emotions of long ago.”

August Kleinzahler

I will allow these words by American poet August Kleinzahler to complement these photos from my incomplete family Easter gathering in Tuscany.

Synecdoche

“You never actually live there. The thing that you’re putting in perspective is always over, you know? And the truth is that it’s very hard to live where we really are, but that’s the only place we get to live.”

Charlie Kaufman

Charlie Kaufman, is known for writhing films like Human Nature, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
On the 15th of May his new film (in America it had it's premier in Oct 2008) Synecdoche comes to British cinemas.
“I was trying to present a life with its moments of nothig”, those words and the whole article in this Saturday’s Guardian magazine made me want to watch it.
The main character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a theater director struggles with his life, it’s personal and creative part. He attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play!
Reviews are good and bad some say about disappointment but just that story about artist’s impossible vision, his struggle, lack of understanding by others and Kaufman’s words of course make me want to watch it and judge this film for myself!
I recommend the mentioned Guardian interview, you can read it here.

One of my favorite fragments in the article was a story about a fictional diary he wrote in fourth grade. It was about all of history's greatest explorers in which, "for some reason, I'm essential to them in their explorations; so Columbus and Ponce de León and all these guys, they're always calling me...”
Well, that’s all for now, read and watch it for yourself :)

Bart Hess

Bart Hess explores several fields textile, fashion and animation, all in between the commercial design and art world.
With his project hunt for hightech he “did not try to mimic real animal kingdoms but create a fantasy world of his own” making fake furs that react to our touch, awake our instincts, create new animal archetypes and are in all this incredibly... erotic I would say.




LucyandBart, is a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess, “an instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body”. This project uses genetic manipulation, creating additive human shapes as fabric-like, low-tech ways of searching for human enhancement.
Amazing stuff! The work of this dutch artist is shown as a part of the 'dutch invertuals' exhibition during the milan design week 09.

Null Stern Hotel

The Zero Star Hotel concept is using a bunkers that have given up on waiting for emergency guests. As we can read on the project’s web site, the whole concept is an antithesis to the mundane megalomania and luxury of the hotel business. The Null Stern Hotel is the work of Swiss twin artists Frank and Patrick Riklin that proves that art can exist in the middle of life and not in the museum.
If you understand German, you can watch and fully enjoy this video here.

Pritzker for Zumthor!

(Museum in Bregenz, sketch by P. Zumthor)

“I believe that human effort can bring the work, a novel, a poem or string quartet to life. When it succeeds, this creates a specific world, a cosmos and this gives rise to a particular understanding, an emotion that forms whole.
I enter it when I feel like it. As wonderful film, I enter a specific world that bears the imprint of someone who invented it, fought and felt it for me.
That’s fine definition of architecture, it provides freedom.”

Peter Zumthor

I know I used this quote on my blog before but all the other ones I poses are in Polish so I won't dare to translate them. They are very personal to me as those words inspired me once to look deeper into what architecture really is and not fear to have a very personal approach to this discipline.
That is why I am really happy that Peter Zumthor became this year’s laureate of The Pritzker Architecture Prize!

I know I'm posting this late but I hope it will be forgiven as I was away...

Diller Scofidio + Renfro on Charlie Rose

It's always interesting to listen to these guys, here on Charlie Rose that interviewed one of the greatest architects in history.

Barcelona - Infraestructures de Llevant

First few images from my trip to Barcelona.

Here Infraestructures de Llevant by Torres & Lapena.

Rest will follow after Easter.