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xtruss · 11 months

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Love and Beauty: Ancient Rome Exhibition in Beijing Highlights China-Italy Exchanges

— By Li Yuche | June 13, 2023 | Global Times

Featuring rare finds like a second century marble statue depicting the "Leaning" Aphrodite - the Goddess of Love and Beauty - an exhibition of ancient Roman art organized by China and Italy opened on Monday at the Beijing World Art Museum of the China Millennium Monument.

The Light of Ancient Roman Civilization is the second stellar cultural event in the past three months to feature Italy's top-notch cultural legacies in Beijing.

Besides ancient Roman art from the collections at Italy's National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN), 50 self-portrait paintings from Florence's Uffizi Gallery collection are also on display at the National Museum of China.

This Italian art in Beijing creates great momentum for China-Italy exchanges in 2023. The Ambassador of Italy to China Massimo Ambrosetti told the Global Times that the two countries' cultural communication has already become a "tradition."

Beyond Space and Time

A total of 69 Italian works, including sculptures of mythical European figures like Aphrodite and the god of wine Dionysus, are on display at the exhibition hall with the accompaniment of a live performance of Bach's prelude by a violinist.

These artworks that carry the charm of Greco-Roman philosophy were created around the time of first and second centuries, a period of time that was pivotal to the Western art world since it was during this time that its principles and perceptions on aesthetics formed.

Sculptures, Pompeii frescos and mosaics of extreme artistic value are not the only Italian treasures on display at the exhibition. Deceptively modern-looking glass cups and bottles and other everyday objects provide a window to view Europeans' ancient lifestyles.

These relics are only a small portion of the more than 3 million items in the collection at MANN, the first public museum in Western history. At the time when these artifacts showing Mediterranean civilization were created, the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) ruled China.

Mario Grimaldi, the exhibition's Italian curator, said that the Beijing exhibition aims to relate "different but comparable aspects of Roman society" and "compare them with the Chinese one."

The exhibition's guide, MANN's director Paolo Giulierini, told the Global Times that while the show features only Italian relics, he is still able to imagine their counterparts in Chinese civilizations.

"The Roman empire and the Chinese empire are notable in history. When I see men and women depicted in Roman art, I can also feel the men and women in the Chinese context," Giulierini said, adding that the cultures of China and Italy met each other "beyond space and time."

Giulierini also introduced Italy's relic conservation strategy to the Global Times, noting that digital technology has become an essential part of archaeological exhibitions.

Giulierini said that, to provide a better visitor experience, MANN has developed a video game in Chinese that walks visitors through their collections and the museum's history. The game has been played by 2 million Chinese visitors.

Similar to China's creative attempts such as using 3D printing to create exhibits on the Mogao Caves and Yungang Grottoes, Giulierini said that Italy has also used digital technology to restore ancient art.

He said he looks forward to collaborating with China to recreate ancient buildings and sculptures in virtual reality.

"It is only through dialogue that we can break down the barriers that separate us and create a shared sense of humanity," Giulierini noted, adding that he believes museums are "not just a repository of objects," but a "non-political neutral space" to assist cultural exchanges.

Continued Tradition

Ambrosetti attended the Beijing exhibition's opening ceremony, during which he said he believes shows like this are not just for "presenting or restoring" works of art, but also for learning about the "civilizations that made the artworks."

In the mid-1990s, he was already familiar with Chinese culture as he studied the art of porcelain in Beijing.

An art lover, Ambrosetti noted that China-Italy cultural exchanges have long been a tradition, with notable figures like Italian voyager Marco Polo, who came to China along the ancient Silk Road, and Matteo Ricci, an Italian missionary who brought Western knowledge about subjects such as geometry and geography to China.

The current exhibition isn't the only event to carry on the tradition of China-Italy cultural exchanges in the contemporary age. Another art exhibition featuring 82 Italian Renaissance artworks was held to celebrate the China-Italy Year of Culture and Tourism in 2006.

This Culture and Tourism Year tradition has been continued for decades. Addressing China and Italy's shared "bilateral comprehensiveness," Ambrosetti said the cultural partnership between the two countries will continue.

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concerthopperblog · 1 year

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Beartooth & Trivium Co-Headlining Tour featuring Malevolence & Archetypes Collide

2023 is starting off strong with these amazing tour announcements, with Beartooth & Trivium topping the list of must-see shows this year! Both bands stem from two slightly different worlds and bring a different fan base to this tour. This musical diversity is exciting to see how the fan bases intermingle together. I love seeing different styles of artists performing together, especially with a band like Malevolence since they are a much heavier band and having Archetypes Collide’s support since they play rock too. Buffalo Riverworks was a great venue to watch these powerful artists perform, there was an area for you to go upstairs and watch the show from a new perspective. The Tour kicked off on May 1st, and they are going to keep rocking out all across the U.S. until June 15th.

Archetypes Collide is a rock band from Arizona. They started back in 2014, Archetypes Collide only has two EPs out currently and one self-titled album released this year. After a few years of releasing singles and touring, the band was noticed by Beartooth’s own Oshie Bichar, which led them down the road to eventually being signed to Fearless Records in 2022. I would absolutely love to know more about this band, and what inspired them to start their own band. During the show, the singer Kyle Pastor was very interactive with their fans. I saw online at other shows that he likes to jump in the crowd and dance with all of their fans! The whole band had a ton of energy when it came to performing. I can’t wait to see what their future holds.

Setlist:

“Parasite”

“Destiny”

“One Step Closer” (Linkin Park cover)

“My Own Device”

“Fade Away”

“What If I Fall”

“Your Misery”

Malevolence is an English heavy metal band from South Yorkshire. They started back in 2010, and guitarists Josh Baines and Konan Hall bonded over a mutual love for heavy metal. The boys started playing live when they were only Twelve years old. The band is described as a weird perfect mix of metal and hardcore music to be played. In 2013, they released their first album Reign of Suffering, and have released two more EPs and albums. The band has also been signed to multiple different record labels until they decided to open their own called MLVLTD Music. The band has played alongside many heavy bands such as Knocked Loose, Dying Fetus, Kublai Khan, Jinjer, and more. During their performance you could feel how passionate they are to be playing music, I loved watching them spin & jump around. They got the crowd to do a giant circle pit in the middle of the room, which was fun to watch. Can’t wait to catch them next time they come back to the U.S.

Setlist:

“Malicious Intent”

“Life Sentence”

“Still Waters Run Deep”

“Self Supremacy”

“Higher Place”

“Keep Your Distance”

“On Broken Glass”

Trivium is a heavy metal band from Florida that formed in 1999. Since their debut album Ember to Inferno, the band has released ten studio albums and over twenty singles. In 2019, the band was also nominated for a Grammy for best metal performance. The band has also gone through many lineup changes since they started playing, their lineup currently consists of Matt Heafy, Corey Beaulieu, Paolo Gregoletto, & Alex Bent. Matt Heafy has been the main lyricist since they started in 1999, he has been influenced by many bands such as; Metallica, Pantera, Ozzy Osbourne, and Machine Head. Before the band even came out on the stage, you could see the excitement from the fans, they had giant dragon statues on both sides of the stage and other decorations to set the scene. Their stage presence was amazing, Heafy was jumping around singing his heart out while Corey whipped his hair around.

“Rain”

“Like Light To Flies”

“Strife”

“Feast of Fire”

“Built to Fall”

“Down From the Sky”

“The Sin and the Sentence”

“Until the World Goes Cold”

“No Way Back Just Through”

“The Heart From Your Hate”

“In Waves”

“Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr”

Beartooth is a hardcore punk band from Ohio. They debuted their first EP Sick in 2013, they have four studio albums and at least ten singles out to date. They just released their single “Sunshine!” on April 19th, 2023. Beartooth has been described as Metalcore, but there has been a lot of influence from Caleb’s previous band Attack! Attack! The band has also been nominated for four different awards since they started playing music. During the show we got to go up on the balcony to watch the show from a different perspective, you could see the fans down below having the time of their lives, moshing their hearts out and singing like it’s nobody’s business. I love seeing Beartooth when they go on tour, the band is passionate about playing, and right out of the gate, Caleb Shomo was going hard singing meaningful lyrics.

Setlist:

“Devastation”

“Disease”

“Body Bag”

“Sunshine!”

“The Lines”

“Beaten in Lips”

“Bad Listener”

“In Between”

“You Never Know”

“Hated”

“Riptide”

“The Past Is Dead”

“The Last Riff”

#Beartooth #Trivium #metal #metalcore #metal tours #Concerthopper #concert photography #Concert #music #Live Show #Live Music #2023 #Review #concert review

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aubrinn · 5 years

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So I’ve decided that I’m going to go ahead and start posting my legacy family. I’ve actually realized that I don’t have as many pictures of them as I thought but it’s cool (besides the fact that the only picture I have from Gen 1 is the top picture in this post because I only thought about posting stuff around the time Gen 2 came around). First, a few informational tidbits that I think should be included, and then a story of how Gen 1 went (spoiler alert: it was a mess from the beginning). There’s a lot that I’m going to talk about, so if you don’t want to read so much, just skip down to the next to last paragraph titled “Summary,” but I really hope you’ll take the scenic read because I feel like that would give more insight and connection to the family. But without further ado, welcome to my Flores legacy!

1. This is my first ever legacy. My best friend and I decided to do a legacy challenge together. I think there are a bunch of rules and stuff - like certain traits, careers, and storyline stuff - but we aren’t following any of those. We just decided on no cheats for money, careers, and all that good stuff. The real challenge for me will be not getting bored. I don’t usually use cheats, so that part is easy for me.

2. I decided to start a legacy because the biggest family trees I’ve had span to 3 gens, and the 3rd gen is usually a baby or child before I get bored and make a new family. So I thought this would be an opportunity for me to feel a connection to a whole line of the same family and experience a full family tree where my sims actually have great-grandparents and cousins and uncles and all that.

3. When I started this legacy, I had an idea of the founder living more of a simple life, so in the picture she has just moved into a small, wooden house in that 20x20 lot on the Windenburg island. But that whole idea crumbled very quickly.

4. My editing skills are last to all (you know that phrase “second to none” which means you’re the best? well I suck so I’m last to all). I’m pretty new to editing and have only done simple stuff, so don’t expect much from my pictures because they will look pretty much like the original.

5. I’ve noticed that I tend to use a lot of parentheses.

6. Yes the family name is from one of xxxtentacion’s songs. Fight me.

Generation 1

Jocelyn Flores moved into her little shack house in Windenburg with the dream of becoming a famous artist. She preferred to paint outside because of the natural light and scenery (but it literally would not stop raining so painting rarely happened). I don’t remember where she met Marcus (after some thinking I think we joined the Partihaus club) but she met him and she thought he was really attractive. She flirted with him and asked him to woohoo and he said yes. Lo and behold, he had gotten her pregnant. She invited him over to tell him the news, and he seemed excited to become a father. Jocelyn liked Marcus and wanted to get to know him so they could possibly be together, but he turned down any non-flirtatious interactions from her (he literally only wanted her if she wanted to woohoo and we were not there for that). Then and there she decided she was done with him and that she would raise her baby alone. Jocelyn named her baby girl Beatrice (I’ve been told that’s an old lady name but I don’t care because I love that name), and she loved Beatrice more than anyone else.

One night, Eva invited Jocelyn to a party at the Ancient Ruins, and Jocelyn decided that she could use a night out (because I never take my sims out the house when there’s 2+ of them so I wanted to get out the house for once). The girls showed up to the party, and Marcus was there (I actually think I invited him but for storyline purposes, he was already there). His dashing good looks reminded Jocelyn why she wanted to be with him, so she bought him some drinks and chatted and flirted. (I thought maybe since he was being friendly it meant he would be open to getting to know Jocelyn and have a real relationship with her.) Convinced that his nice behavior meant Beatrice wouldn’t have to grow up without a father, Jocelyn hopped into the bushes with him and woohooed. And of course, she was pregnant again. And to my surprise (though I shouldn’t have been), after telling him the news, he again wanted nothing to do with her. Jocelyn (and I) then decided she was officially done with him. If you blow a second chance you’re not getting a chance to fool her a third time.

I then built Jocelyn a proper house on the 20x20 lot (it wasn’t cute, I’m not much a builder). Jocelyn gave lots of attention to Beatrice and her new son Sawyer. She fueled their imagination (skill) while also pursuing her dream. Marcus came over sometimes to see the kids, but he mostly just sat on the couch and watched tv. Not too long after Jocelyn gave birth, Eva became pregnant again. Curious as to who her babydaddy was, I used mccc on her to find out, and I was beyond shocked to find out that it was Marcus! Like how are we gonna share a babydaddy with our best friend?! Ridiculous. I didn’t want to see him after that. I was so done with him.

I decided to move the family into another house in Windenburg. I did it up and made it into a decent 3-bedroom house. Jocelyn, still wanting to find love, went on a couple of dates using the Simda dating app before going on a date with Diego Lobo. With him being an art critic, she felt like Diego understood the importance of fine art. They got along perfectly. After more dates and much more time together, Jocelyn proposed and he said yes. They celebrated their engagement with some woohoo back at his apartment, and the next day around the same time confetti burst into the air. Yep. Jocelyn was pregnant. Again.

(Then I took a break from sims - or maybe it was just this legacy - but when I came back I didn’t feel any connection between Jocelyn and Diego, so I made her break up with him. Bur for storyline purposes, we’ll say she realized that she only wanted to get married because she was scared of the idea of raising three kids alone, but then she realized she had gotten this far on her own and that she could continue being a strong, independent woman.)

Jocelyn then realized she didn’t want to get married to Diego. She was scared of the idea of raising all her kids on her own, but she realized that she had been doing just that all this time and that she didn’t need a man’s help if she didn’t truly love him. So she broke off the engagement.

Life went pretty smoothly after that. Jocelyn gave birth to her third child, a girl, and named her Ari. Diego wanted to be a part of Ari’s life, and he called her often. Marcus, on the other hand, stopped visiting and calling as if he didn’t know to where they moved (but I know he knew because that child support money still found its way to Jocelyn’s mailbox every week or so). The kids enjoyed the snow and sun and everything that the Seasons expansion pack had to offer in Windenburg. Jocelyn had many hookups (especially with Paolo Rocca) but she never settled. She was happy being a single mother (while Marcus ended up having 8 children total, by Jocelyn, Eva, Candy Behr, and I think one other woman).

Time went on. Birthday cakes were baked. Candles were blown. Beatrice, a teen, decided to get involved in school and join the drama club. After the first day, she knew she wanted to be an actress. A few days before becoming a young adult, she won a drama club accolade, and when she did age up, she moved to Del Sol Valley to achieve her newfound dream of becoming a famous actress. (The bottom picture is after she moved and Sawyer visited her.)

Summary: Jocelyn hooked up with Marcus and got pregnant, and he wanted nothing to do with her when she told him she wanted to have a serious relationship. She had her baby and named her Beatrice. She then saw Marcus at a party. He was friendly and non-flirty, so Jocelyn thought he would be open to having a real relationship. She bought him some drinks, and then they both slipped off into the bushes, resulting in a second pregnancy that turned out to be a boy who she named Sawyer. Marcus, again, wanted nothing to do with Jocelyn, so she decided that that was his last chance and she was now really done with him. She cared for Beatrice and Sawyer more than any mother could, and she met Diego Lobo. Jocelyn and Diego hit it off, so after some time she proposed, and he said yes. They celebrated with woohoo, which resulted in Jocelyn’s third pregnancy. She gave birth to a girl named Ari. Jocelyn broke off the engagement, realizing she only wanted to marry him because she was scared of raising three kids alone. Being in Ari’s life was important to Diego, so he called her often. Marcus couldn’t be bothered enough to do more than send child support checks. As time went on, everyone aged up, and Beatrice became a teen. She joined the school drama club which led her to aspire to be a famous actress. She won a club accolade and moved to Del Sol Valley once she was old enough to achieve her dreams (the bottom picture is after she moved and Sawyer visited her).

And that’s all, folks! Hope you enjoyed the read (whether it was long or short), and I hope you’ll come back for more on the Flores family.

#ts4 #ts4 gameplay #get famous #get famous gameplay #ts4 legacy #flores legacy #jocelyn flores #beatrice flores #sawyer flores #del sol valley

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sluttyshakespeare · 5 years

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Three Great Details About Apeshit By Beyonce & Jay-Z

“I can’t believe we made it,” sings Beyoncé in “Apeshit,” the first single from her surprise joint album with Jay-Z, Everything Is Love. And to prove that she and her husband have made it, in the song’s accompanying video, Beyoncé delivers this line from the Louvre. As the New York Times has pointed out, it is not actually that expensive to shoot a video in the Louvre (about $17,500 for a full day’s shoot). But music videos aren’t about numbers; they’re about how things feel — and there’s no place on earth that feels as lavish, as rich with accumulated cultural power and wealth and colonialism, as the Louvre. If you want to show that you have made it, that you are rich and powerful and one of the greatest artists of your generation, you go to the Louvre. And as an artistic choice, the Louvre is par for Beyoncé’s course. For the past few years, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has increasingly cribbed from the iconography of classical Western art in her own image-making. Her pregnancy announcement photo shoot and her birth announcement photo shoot both referenced Botticelli’s Venus and the Renaissance trope of the Madonna and child, and her 2017 Grammys performance drew on goddess imagery from multiple artistic traditions. So when Beyoncé shoots at the Louvre — taking on by turns the poses of Venus de Milo and Victory — she’s continuing an artistic project of recontextualizing classical Western art, of making herself the aesthetic object on which so much wealth and cultural capital has been spent. And coming from a black woman, that’s a radical statement. “In a way, Beyoncé is exploiting/marketing her blackness as creativity — as a kind of weapon — within and against the very Eurocentric system of culture and consumption from which she has benefited,” says James Smalls, a professor of art history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That’s an especially radical statement to make in the context of the Louvre, where little of the art features people of color in positions of strength and power. “From the Middle Ages up to the 19th century, works of art that showed black people usually represented them as servants or secondary figures,” explains Smalls. “They were not deemed worthy subjects of paintings, sculptures, or other kinds of cultural works.” One of the few exceptions to that trend is Marie Benoist’s “Portrait d’une négresse,” also displayed at the Louvre. “That painting is an anomaly because it presents a black person as the sole aestheticized subject and object of a work of art,” Smalls says. And it’s the painting that appears at the end of the “Apeshit - Beyonce & Jay-Z” video, after shot after shot of portraits of white people.

Benoist painted “Portrait” in 1800, during a brief period in which France had abolished colonial slavery. (In 1794, the French emancipation proclamation liberated the colonies; in 1802, Napoleon reinstated slavery.) In that six-year span, portraits of heroic black people became popular in France, and that created an opportunity for an image of a black woman who is not tending to or subordinate to a white person, who is instead considered worthy of being at the center of her own portrait. As Smalls has pointed out, in its full context, “Portrait” is not a wildly politically subversive image. It’s most likely that the unknown and unnamed subject was a servant with few legal rights who had little choice about how she posed or whether she was okay with her breast being exposed to the world for the next 200 years. Benoist the painter has much more agency here than the black woman at the center of the picture. But in the context of “Apeshit,” with its montages of painting after painting of white faces and white statues, “Portrait” feels both shocking and subversive. It’s a black face in the center of the frame, apparently in control of her domain. And it’s one of the only figures in the Louvre that we don’t see get reinterpreted by either the Carters or their dancers: The only figure in the Louvre that can withstand the unstoppable force that is Beyoncé, that does not need to be remade and reexamined. Part of Beyoncé’s project over the past few years has been to treat art as a form of power: It is a form of focused aesthetic attention, of social capital, and of wealth given solid form. Taking over the Louvre means taking all that power for herself and for the black bodies she brings in with her — except for the “Portrait.” In “Apeshit,” it can stand on its own. What do Beyoncé, The Smurfs 2, and you have in common? All three have the theoretical ability to rent out the Louvre. Though there was widespread awe that the Carters’ video for “Apeshit” took place inside the most famous museum in the world, turns out, it’s actually not all that uncommon. According to the New York Times, about 500 shoots take place at the Louvre each year, which have included films on opposite ends of the “is this a good movie” spectrum, from last year’s Wonder Woman to 2013’s The Smurfs 2, which even the Louvre couldn’t save from its 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating. Though the museum only allows photography in the galleries for private use, it makes exceptions for professionals through written authorization. As of 2015, the Louvre’s policy states that to shoot a short film or music video, the cost for both interior and exterior shots would be just €4,500, or about $5,200. It’s possible that if the Carters had a crew of more than 50 people, that number would have been closer to €18,000, but as the Times notes, “there are hotel rooms here that cost more than that.” Hosting private events, however, will cost you a bit more. A tour for under 50 guests will set you back €10,000, while renting out the reception hall beneath I.M. Pei’s pyramid will cost, at the very least, €28,000. Though, to reiterate, that isn’t an amount at which anyone would gasp, “Mon dieu!” Lorde, I have an idea for you about where to film your video for “The Louvre.” Call me! In the video for Beyoncé and Shawn Carter‘s “Apeshit,” the first visual from the pair’s surprise joint album Everything Is Love, the two stars romp through the Louvre in Paris, seizing center stage in a high-culture palace that – like most Western art museums – historically made little room for non-white artists. Some of their mission involves the strategic highlighting of non-white images already in the Louvre. Beyoncé and Jay-Z rap in front of an Egyptian sphinx, and in galleries filled mostly with neo-classical French paintings – white artists, white subjects – the camera singles out black faces. (The video is directed by Ricky Saiz, who also helmed the “Yonce” video from Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s eponymous 2013 album.) Viewers catch brief glimpses of a pair of black figures in Paolo Veronese’s painting “The Wedding at Cana,” where Jesus turned water into wine, as well as a quick look at Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait d’une Négresse,” a depiction of a black woman staring guilelessly back at the viewer. But the Where’s Waldo? moments highlighting black figures are fleeting – the possibilities for this in the Louvre, or any major Western art museum, are limited from the start. So Beyoncé and Jay-Z set about interjecting blackness into a space that has never placed much value on it, claiming one of the centerpieces of European culture with gleeful defiance. They frequently film themselves moving in opposition to the frozen stillness of paintings by Jacques-Louis David, a French neoclassical artist whose work – like “The Oath of the Horatii” and “Madame Récamier” – invokes the Greco-Roman tradition. Much of the potency of the “Apeshit” video comes from the contrasts drawn between the “white” art on the walls and the black women on the gallery floors. In front of David’s “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine,” a court scene of relentless white extravagance, Beyonc�� and eight black dancers hold hands and begin to dance. It takes just a few synchronized sashays to upstage David’s massive painting, replacing an ornate symbol of white authority with a celebration of black bodies in motion. The Louvre’s stature depends on people believing that “The Coronation of Empress Joséphine” is the art, but the eye tells a different story – hanging behind Beyoncé and her dancers, the painting is reduced to wallpaper. Throughout the “Apeshit - The Carters” video, Beyoncé and Jay-Z repeatedly upstage some of Western classical art’s most famous images in one of its central sacred spaces. Beyoncé holds a series of chopping micro-poses with her hands before Saiz cuts quickly to an image of a distressed character, hands held up to shield her head, taken from another David painting, “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” The placement of the hands connects the two frames, but Beyoncé’s is virile, aggressive and in charge, while David’s figure seems merely fearful.

Radical gestures roll in on a mightily slippery sliding scale these days, don’t they? We’re far past any cultural division between high and low or pop and art at this point, and artists on the charts are also sniffing out their next inspiration, album cycle, or comparison to their own personal affairs in the grander schemes of culture and history. You’d be hard pressed to find a more hallowed repository of the West than the Louvre, so of course that’s where Beyoncé and Jay-Z have rolled up to set their new music video for the track “Apeshit” from the fresh album they dropped like an anvil right on top of your weekend. Of course this isn’t the first time they’ve been there, nor the first time some Pop-ish upstarts made a Major Statement at the French museum, but it would seem to be a major escalation in the Carters x Louvre relationship, to say nothing of the pride re: their own marital ties that the album and video are so keen to showcase. When worlds (and genres) collide is still a strong trend across multiple spheres of art and culture—turning meaning and message into something of a competitive game of Russian nesting dolls or an arms race of spectacle-based oneupmanship—but what might we make of this night at the museum if considered in light of the 1960s Marxist avant-garde French Situationist International? Founded in 1957 by Guy “Barrel of Laughs” Debord and Asger “Beware the Palette Knife” Jorn, the Situationists were guys and gals, but mostly guys, who wanted to, as the name would indicate, create some situations and elevate to the level of philosophy the notion of taking a freaking walk outside. But they also had a strategy! And key among their techniques, to which you can probably attribute the rise of “culture jamming” and just whatever Banksy thinks he’s doing, was the détournement. Discussed in chapter 8 of Debord’s 1967 tract The Society of the Spectacle, the technique calls for taking advantage of existing cultural objects or canonized art, rerouting their message, and even advocates for theft: “Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one.” You would not have wanted this guy for your editor, but if you were looking to smash the state (of meaning), Debord was your man.

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So, if “détournement serves as a reminder that theory is nothing in itself, that it can realize itself only through historical action and through the historical correction that is its true allegiance,” then is the spectacle of “Apeshit” a glam, historical correction of the Western assumption that houses of European culture contain the highest achievements of man- and womynkind? Beyoncé and Jay-Z have more clout and pull at this point than a merely rich person or garden-variety aristocrat putzing around the Cotswolds or Monaco, and they built that for themselves. When they pull off a stunt like this, it feels like another chime in the prosperity gospel that Doreen St. Félix examined in the arc of Rihanna’s career, as well as further evidence that the ability to make a compelling spectacle of oneself, to write a personal narrative as large as that of the progress of a civilization, is success. The false idea here is white supremacy, and perhaps the correction then is that European colonialists may not have had the time or the means to make their masterpieces if it weren’t for the economic boon of slavery and historical pillaging of resources from southern and eastern continents for the benefit of countries like France. The Situationists didn’t really like spectacle much (“The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living”) but they recognized that it was inescapable in modern society (“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images”). Given this circumstance, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, god bless them, would appear to be doing their best to create a spectacle that people who look like them can see themselves in too, as opposed to the near uninterrupted stream of black death spectacle the media and world is awash in on a day to day basis. Look forward to hearing this jam blasting out of car speakers this summer—it’ll be a real situation. The surprise release of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Jay-Z’s new album, Everything Is Love, (credited as “The Carters” on the album to recognize they’re performing as a united duo, not as individuals) on Saturday, June 16 has left the music world reeling. Already, what fans have been carefully dissecting – and what we’re interested in unpacking, too – is the imagery from the music video for the album’s lead single, “APESHIT”. The six-minute video is likely going to be considered one of the best of 2018, with The Carters and a troupe of dancers taking over the Louvre. In case you couldn’t already tell, the fact that Bey and Jay Z even got unfettered access to the Louvre for their own use is a stunning power move – adding a glorious power to the “APESHIT” lyric “I can’t believe we made it/ This is why we’re thankful”. Let’s start with the primary location in “Apeshit”: the Louvre. Historically, it’s a predominately white space that primarily features white, male-created works of art. It’s a microcosm of history, which itself is mostly white, male, and heterosexual. Tradition and the Louvre go hand-in-hand, too, which means that Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s presence is a total disruption from the beginning. For modern audiences and fans of The Carters, the disruption is surely welcome. Not only can we expect to see (and do see) The Carters standing next to some of the most famous works of art, including the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory of Samothrace, but we see that they are aligning themselves with it right out of the gate. Their presence in a place that preserves what history has deemed the most important artworks, standing next to said art while themselves looking like art and using their body language to engage with this art, already implies they are as worthy of being there as the older work. It’s a middle finger to convention, a dare aimed at squarely at the gatekeepers of history and artistic tradition: You know we deserve to be here. The Carters begin positioning themselves as iconography from the moment we first see them, standing in front of the “Mona Lisa”. Sure, it’s a callback to the first time they took a photo with arguably the most famous painting in history back in 2014, but something is different this time around. Like the “Mona Lisa”, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dressed simply, but powerfully. Suits for both, in bright colours and styles specific to their tastes and representative of the times they live in; again, just like the “Mona Lisa”. But even more of an echo of the painting is their expressions: a strong stare straight ahead, lips pressed together, shoulders back. They are telegraphing to us that they are as iconic as the “Mona Lisa”, without even saying a word. By donning expressions very much in the same vein as the iconic painting, they’re telling the viewer that they’re basically in the presence of a peer. But even more than that, they’re commenting on the beguiling and enticing space they occupy in our own culture. Much like the “Mona Lisa”, they are telling us that they know we think about them in a way we don’t think about other music artists. They know that we’ll spend hours analysing them and their work, attempting to find meaning in their movements and lyrics, trying to work out the symbols and icons they’ve put forth, and hoping to crack the impenetrable fortress they’ve built around them (from which they only emerge to become vulnerable when they want to). Humans have spent centuries trying to unpack the enigma of the “Mona Lisa” and still continue to do so to this day; do you really think you can figure out The Carters in a day? Another immensely important moment from “APESHIT” comes in the repeated glimpses of Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait of a Black Woman (Negress)” from 1800. One of the few works of art painted by a woman in the Louvre, the painting is deeply important both as a feature in the Louvre and its place in art history, because it is the only painting of its time to depict a black woman who is not a slave or similarly subjugated person, but rather simply presented in all her glory.

The painting affirms that black women are worthy of being in artistic spaces, and in enduring imagery. The painting is shown a few times, and it’s the second to last painting we see before the video closes on Bey and Jay turning around to regard the “Mona Lisa” – further confirmation that Benoist’s painting and its subject deserve recognition. It’s also no accident that the “Winged Victory of Samothrace” statue is frequently seen in “APESHIT”. Implying triumph and power, the statue has endured over centuries, and The Carters imply just as much by once again standing in front of it, in perhaps a nod to their own triumph and the power they’ve achieved. According to the Louvre website for the piece, the statue depicts Nike, and was likely created to commemorate a naval victory by the Rhodians (who hail from Rhodes, part of the Dodecanese island group in Greece). The towering relic from the Hellenistic period is, as the Louvre’s description notes, intensely dramatic and glorifies the female body in connection with something traditionally masculine (victory in war). That endowment of power to a female body is then emulated in the female bodies that stand before it in present day, through Beyoncé and her troupe of female dancers. All of these women come together and move as one being, with Beyoncé presiding over them all. She is the modern image of victory over the warfare placed on her body, career, intellect, personal life; having succeeded, she can now dress like “Winged Victory” and, in a sense, pass along her victories to the women who dance on the steps in front of her. Twitter user Queen Curly Fry’s in-depth Twitter thread breaking down the art seen in “Apeshit” is thorough, and her comments on the incorporation of the “Venus de Milo” into the video is so neatly articulated that we couldn’t have said it better if we tried: “Here, Beyoncé once again models herself as a Greek statue, this time the Venus de Milo. However, in this shot she wears a nude bodysuit with wrapped hair, reframing both goddesses of beauty and victory as a black woman. This dismantles white-centric ideals of beauty.” Similarly, Twitter account Tabloid Art History nails why it’s so important and iconic for Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and her dancers to be dancing in front of “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine” by Jacques Louis David from 1804: “What I especially like about this part of the video is that the painting itself depicts a disruption, Napoleon taking the Pope’s role from him and crowning Josephine himself. Beyoncé further disrupts this by taking on Josephine’s role as the one being crowned.” If we consider Napoleon’s role as a major coloniser in the early 19th century, particularly in Northern Africa, then Beyoncé’s placement in the shot is extra symbolic. Beyoncé standing underneath the place where Napoleon is seen crowning his wife in the painting is a symbolic retrieval of stolen power. One of the other paintings we see in “APESHIT” is another Jacques-Louis David painting, “The Intervention of the Sabine Women.” Interestingly, we only see portions of the painting, never the entire artwork. This could be a sly comment on the dissection and appropriation of black bodies by white culture for their own aesthetic uses – or it could just be a deft use of quick cuts for dramatic effect for the video. Or maybe it’s both. Twitter user Queen Curly Fry notes here that the painting, for the puposes of “APESHIT”, depicts “(white) female fear evoked by (white) male violence is juxtaposed w/ (black) female empowerment (‘get off my dick’).” The painting’s use of white female tears –long criticised as a way for white women to shift any blame they deserve for racist behaviour, or to turn a blind eye to racial injustice – is in direct contrast with Beyoncé and her dancers’ freedom, calm, and enlightenment. In the end, “APESHIT” is a triumph because it is a statement that only The Carters could successfully make. The visual tells the powers that be to fuck off with their tradition, their preciously guarded history that has sought to erase non-white people from the history books, and their preconceived notions about how black bodies can be ornamental. They’ve used art to push back, to demand honour for the work they’ve contributed. “APESHIT” is a force to be reckoned with, and The Carters’ use of art to make a statement is an announcement to the world that they’ve shaped culture as much as anything hanging on a gallery wall.

#jayz #beyonce #shawncarter #carters #carter #thecarters #music #apeshit

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topweeklyupdate · 6 years

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TØP Weekly Update #54: COVER ME (7/13/2018)

Finally, after months of solid drought, the barren wasteland known as the TØP fanbase has finally been blessed with rain. And not just a gentle sprinkle; it’s been a consistent heavy downpour, a veritable flood. Even before new music, this week gave us new content from the group every single day. There will probably be something new out by the time you’re done reading this. So let’s not waste any time! Here’s your week in Twenty One Pilots news.

This Week’s TØPics:

Your Band Is Back: Trench Coming This October

“Jumpsuit” and “Nico” Released

New Logo/Theming/Everything

Josh Speaks

And SO. MUCH. MORE.

Major News and Announcements:

This time last week, I was certain that we would be getting new music on the 6th because it was my birthday. Turns out, myself and many others in the Clique read a little too deeply into Clancy’s promise that “everything would be different” by morning. We did not receive new music on that date, which, for the record, was way earlier than most reports had pegged. The fanbase wanted music ASAP and interpreted the letter to fit that, and anyone who said the band lied about when music was coming was just not being honest with themselves.

Things were different starting last Friday. On the one-year anniversary of their departure, Twenty One Pilots directly reached out to their fans for the first time, not through the wide platform of social media, but with an email message to their mailing list.

The message only consisted of the subject line “ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING?” and a gif of an opening yellow eye, with images fitting the iconography of the Dema site flashing under the eyelid. The Clique basically lost their minds at this direct contact, so much so that major publications like Billboard finally started to report on the long gestating speculation. Everyone was excited to see the eye open over the course of the day, bringing everything full circle and culminating (presumably) with new music.

That... didn’t happen. Rather, dmaorg.info was restored after being down for only a few hours, and this gif of torches was added onto the site. This indicated that Clancy had escaped Dema, and the Clique promptly set about assuming that the next day would mark the band’s full return. Further, the name of the gif, “they_ca_ntseeFCE300″, seemed to confirm what people would be speculating ever since Josh dyed his hair nearly two years ago: the next era’s color would be yellow (specifically, FCE300) to symbolize hope and light pushing back against the dark.

The next day brought with it another update from Clancy (and the general concession among the Clique to stop expecting new music every night and just go to bed). In one of my favorite bits of attention to detail so far, Clancy’s latest journal was messily handwritten on a scrap of paper, due to the fact that he had successfully escaped Dema and was now traveling through- big shock- a region called “Trench”. The writing itself is kinda rambly and generic (so I can relate), with Tyler Clancy marveling at how much he loves being in the trees being alone out in nature. That said, I do love that there is a definite story being presented, with Clancy experiencing changes, taking action, and going on a real journey through this world that Tyler’s created.

On the back of the paper, however, is something much more interesting: a blown-out image that, when reversed, revealed a dead body. That was creepy enough as is; far more creepy was the Clique’s CSI-level discovery that this ripped photo fit with several other dmaorg.info images in a giant puzzle. Who was this man? Was this a random poster that Clancy grabbed as he escaped, or are we supposed to take it as a metaphor? Was it a random citizen of Dema? A bishop? Clancy himself? Blurryface? So many questions.

Twenty One Pilots truly made their mainstream return on July 9th, when they posted a second video of a half-opened eye, not just for hardcore fans, but on all of their social media platforms. This return was accompanied by a total overhaul of the band’s general branding: a new yellow-and-black ||-// logo was revealed for the new era, while the old “silence” banners and even the website subscription box were covered up by bright yellow tape. Billboards featuring the logo on this yellow tape aesthetic sprang up in cities all around the world, from London to Toronto, Berlin to Melbourne, even an entire building in São Paolo. The boys were back.

On Tuesday, Twenty One Pilots again returned to social media to post a second video. The eye, now about 3/4 open, depicted even more of this medieval battle, now with the addition of the Watchers on the cliff throwing... something (rocks? rose petals?) into the air. Instead of generic white noise, this clip was scored by a muffled but still obviously crunchy bass line. As radio stations across the country began to tweet about a major alternative release coming Wednesday morning (with a few even mentioning they were from Columbus), we finally knew that we were going to be ok....

New Releases:

And then I was not okay.

Early Wednesday morning, Twenty One Pilots dropped two singles and announced the names and dates for the next album, Trench, and tour, Bandito. My prediction from last week was 100% correct, and you all may thank and validate me in the comments below like and subscribe. “Jumpsuit” is our main single with a full cinematic music video, while “Nico and the Niners” is the more lore-heavy low-key song for the fans. I’m going to pull back from fully going in on picking apart every sonic and thematic element of both songs and save that for (hopefully) a less busy week, but you know I gotta write about their first new music in two years. Cause that’s what I do: I write too much.

Guys, “Jumpsuit” is a straight-up banger. Featuring a killer driving bassline, some of Tyler’s most impassioned screams, and a truly devastating bridge, I have not tired of this song one bit in the last few days. It takes me on a complete emotional journey in just four minutes every time, and it does so mainly through its soundscape (there’s only the hook, three couplet verses, and that damn bridge). It’s so, so, so, so good, potentially (dare I say it) the best sonically arranged and produced song the band has ever released.

So... what’s “Jumpsuit” about? Well, a lot of things, but in a word: pressure. Again, the lyrics are super vague, I think deliberately so. Clearly the song is about the singer feeling pressured by others into taking a path that he does not want to travel down. That bridge, delivered in an eerie detached falsetto, shows Tyler pushing back even at his weakest point, stating that he will not submit to what others want him to do unless they “grab him by the throat, tie him down, and break his hands.” Certainly you can argue that this is about the music industry. The “breaking his hands” line is killer in that context, as it signifies that the industry can’t control him without taking away the things that makes him valuable to them in the first place, his artistic ability and freedom. You can also say that it’s just playing straight into the concept, with Clancy breaking away from the bishops’ control. But the deliberate vagueness of the lyrics means that the audience can apply the message- and the empowerment of that killer bassline- to whatever struggle they are facing. That’s pretty darn rad.

The music video, directed by “Heathens” and “Heavydirtysoul”’s Andrew Donoho, is sick. Tyler (looking extra fly in his new yellow hooded jumpsuit) attempts to flee from this creepy Red Riding Hood old dude on a white horse (Nico?) through what is certainly a Game of Thrones filming location while other figures in yellow duct tape jumpsuits look on from the cliffs above. Tyler is captured by the bishop, who “smears” him by putting the black Blurryface makeup on his neck. Tyler is freed briefly from the bishop’s control when the other yellow-clad figures throw yellow petals down on him, but he is chased down knocked out or killed. The others flee the scene, save for one very handsome looking drummer boy... Oh, and there’s a bunch of intercut clips of Tyler on the car from “Heavydirtysoul” for some reason.

Besides those “Heavydirtysoul” scenes, which truthfully don’t connect much to the story of the video beyond artificially welding it onto the end of the Blurryface Era, this is one of the band’s best videos yet. It totally fulfilled all of my expectations of a more epic scope for this era, from the gorgeous Iceland setting to the dope as hell costumes to the implication that the story might continue on from this point. And there are tons of little Easter eggs, from brief flashes of the nine bishops to possible cameos from the Josephs and Duns. We don’t really know for sure if Tyler is playing Clancy or if the red dude is Nico, but it will certainly be fun to continue to fill in the blanks as we move forward and (hopefully) hear more from Tyler directly.

“Nico and the Niners” is a weird track, but one that I still absolutely love. In some ways, it’s a more traditional tøp track, with some of the raggae elements found on Blurryface and a rap verse to fit all of Tyler’s lyrics in. But in other significant ways, it’s a totally different path for them. For starters, just look at that title: it’s very explicitly about this album’s concept from top to bottom, with Tyler singing about fleeing Dema and its bishops’ control and even heavily referencing “Jumpsuit”; there’s clearly going to be a great deal of thematic cohesion in this project. But there’s also just the general vibe of it: just as “Jumpsuit” was a heavier rock song than anything we’d yet seen from the band, "Nico” is way more laid back, its repeated references to being high and even its visualizer of assorted shrubbery making it a potential stoner anthem (whether that was Tyler’s intention or not). Regardless, the song is brimming with character and hooks, and it’s already grown on me significantly in just a few days.

Oh, and one more thing: this song lives up to its Dema-referencing title and content by being cryptic af. The track is littered with reversed audio in the instrumental bits, including the “we are banditos” snippet from dmaorg.info and another sample of someone who sounds a lot like Josh saying “We will leave Dema at true east, renounce Vialism [the bishops’ ruling philosophy, alluded to be Clancy in an earlier journal].” I swear, if all it takes for Tyler to make all this stuff is a year break, he should do this after every album.

With all that new music, the fact that we finally have a name for Album 5 almost got lost in the shuffle. Trench was a popular guess over the last few days thanks to dmaorg.info, but it’s good to finally know for sure. Graphic designer Brandon Rike from the Blurryface Era is back again, revealing a cover featuring a badass-looking vulture/falcon/whatever, some new logos (including the return of FPE!), and some more yellow tape that appears to be covering the names of the rest of the album’s songs. Not too much else to say at this point; we’ll just have to wait until some of that tape gets peeled off between now and October 5th.

Finally, let’s talk about the Bandito Tour. It bears mentioning that, amidst the otherwise overwhelmingly positive positive atmosphere of the band’s return, this tour name received the most general opposition from fans and non-fans alike. The fact that “bandito” was probably going to turn up in a lyric from two decidedly white dudes was already enough to put some folks on edge, but the idea of an entire tour of predominantly non-Hispanic tweens flooding arenas and calling themselves banditos was enough to turn a few people against the band. And look, I get it- I hear “bandito” and the first things I think of are John Wayne Westerns and Speedy Gonzalez, and I get why a lot of fans might feel uncomfortable with that. But, to be fair, the band hasn’t used any of those stereotypes and banditos is a word for outlaw used in a number of Romance languages. Perhaps most interestingly, there’s not yet any evidence that the word even appears in the album itself. So far, the only appearance of “bandito” is in a coded message on dmaorg.info and in reversed audio in “Nico”. If this does turn out to be a name meant to only make sense to the most hardcore of fans, it is almost redeemed (I mean, I still think the name is a little silly, but I’m already in presale).

So, with that out of the way, let’s actually talk about the tour itself. It will be an international arena tour- even if the band’s sound is not going in a pop direction, they still clearly feel confident that the Clique will show up wherever they go. The first show will be hosted in Nashville (their first arena concert in that market) on October 16, not even two weeks after the release of the full album. What a baller move, and much preferred to the Blurryface rollout where we didn’t hear most of the songs on the record until nearly two months after the album release and they didn’t play near me for even longer. The boys will tour the U.S. until November 21, even playing arenas in a few markets that they’ve never played large venues in before, and then hit up Australia and New Zealand in December.

The most objectively interesting leg will be in Europe from January through March. Not only will the band play their first arena shows in markets like Moscow, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Central Poland, and Manchester, they will return to markets like Dublin and Glasgow they’ve been absent from for years. Most exciting, Twenty One Pilots will play their first shows in Bologna and Stuttgart and venture into the countries of Ukraine, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal for the first time ever. Needless to say, the rabid fanbases of all of these regions are super excited, and I’m super excited for them!

Other Shenanigans:

While Tyler has continued to stay silent (much as he has since mid-Blurryface Era), Josh immediately jumped back on Twitter with a standard Josh joke and even resumed his morning workout Snapchats. On Thursday, Josh even called into BBC Radio One with Annie Mac to give a quick interview about the new era. He didn’t provide a ton of information, but it was just a delight to hear our kid’s voice again. A few tidbits of info:

Josh reported that he was calling from Trench, I hate him.

The sick bass riff on “Jumpsuit” was born from soundchecks toward the end of Emotional Roadshow. He says that, as a result, it sounds closest to the Blurryface sound, serving as a good transition into the new era. (If this is what he thinks is close to Blurryface on Trench, this album’s gonna be nutter butters.)

Both Josh and Tyler are really nervous about the elaborate rollout, both out of the usual fear that no one stuck around and out of wariness of severely disappointing people when they hear the actual music (so far, so good...)

Trench continues to have the “diverse” sound of the previous records and also was designed to be played live.

Josh also tuned into Apple Music’s Beats 1 for an interview with Hanuman Welch. This conversation was less about the new album and more about the “hiatus”. More tidbits:

The band views collaboration as a “sacred” thing, and while they’re not against it in the future, it has to be done in a context that makes sense and not merely for marketing purposes.

The band has never used the word hiatus because they’ve been working. They drew back from the spotlight to allow themselves some time to recharge, but also because they were worried of oversaturation (particularly after the Grammys pushed them into that next-level pop culture sphere). Rather than make a bunch of social media posts that didn’t mean anything just to stay relevant, the band decided to draw back, focus on music, and in the process “thin the weeds” of fans who weren’t the diehards.

For the last few albums, the music has come from a specific personal place the band was at while write, whether it be a spiritual journey with Vessel or tackling insecurities on Blurryface. Josh says the same remains true with Trench, but notes that there will be a little more fleshing out themes by working on a specific story with this one (he still says it’s not really a concept album, but ok).

Believe it or not, we are not done. While the boys were blazing a brave new path forward, another bit of content reminded us of where the band came from. Greg Wells, the producer who made Vessel the masterpiece it was, gave an hour-long interview to Billboard’s Pop Shop Podcast. He mainly speaks about getting started in the industry back in the 90s and working on the mega-blockbuster Greatest Showman soundtrack, but he does talk about Vessel for a bit approximately forty minutes into the interview. I won’t give the exact time-code, not because I’m lazy, but because the entire interview is worth listening to. Greg just seems like a rad dude. His laid-back nature and the seriousness he takes with his craft really shine through; he and Tyler must have gotten along just fine.

Community Spotlight:

The Clique took some heavy losses over the last year, as a great deal of old fans moved on to greener pastures. But that just left room for a whole host of new fans to rise to the occasion and help us get through that long drought. Today, I wanted to give a shout-out to GingerSheep and Stolen Potential, two Clique vloggers that have really kept the fanbase informed and uplifted and have been working their butts off reporting on the daily content. I know how long it takes me just to research and write one of these- I can’t imagine the work that then goes into filming and editing on top of that nearly every day. Hats off to you, good sirs. Make sure you all check out their channels if you haven’t already! But, you know, don’t stop reading these. I have bills to pay with all the Tumblr money I’m not making.

Well, that wasn’t too much, was it? If you made it all the way to the end, mad props. See you next week for a slightly tamer week (probably).

Power to the local dreamer.

|-/

#twenty one pilots #tyler joseph #josh dun #trench #jumpsuit #bandito tour #nico and the niners #hiatus #dema #top weekly update

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mybarricades · 6 years

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Illuminations from Pier Paolo Pasolini | Autonomies

The magazine Ballast regularly gathers together citations of authors under the generic designation of an abécédaire. We share below, in translation, their most recent “alphabet text”, from the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

His assassination in 1975 made the poet a myth; let us pass over this. What did Pasolini the man desire? “Throw your body into the fight,” he said a decade earlier. He who thought that “only communism was able to provide a new true culture”, capable of interpreting “the of whole existence”, bequeaths us a most dense literary, poetic and cinematographic work. Pasolini, a good client of the courts (for “obscenity” or “outrage to religion”), thus stepped forward as a fierce and melancholy critic of mercantile, productivist and capitalist modernity. Looking back, in twenty-six letters, on the thought of the Italian artist.

Abattre [to strike down]: “I have the nostalgia for the poor and true people who fight to bring down this boss, without becoming that boss. (Interview with Furio Colombo, La Stampa, November 8, 1975)

Bourgeoisie: “I harbor a visceral, deep, irreducible, hatred against the bourgeoisie, against its sufficiency, its vulgarity; a mythical hatred, or, if you prefer, religious.” (Interviews with Pier Paolo Pasolini, with Jean Duflot, Pierre Belfond Publishing, 1970)

Consolation: “When I was a child, the bourgeoisie, at the most delicate moment of my existence, excluded me: it put me on the list of reprobates,of other people [allusion to his homosexuality, ed]: and I can not forget it anymore. It left me with a feeling of offense, precisely, the perception of an evil: the same that a black man must have when he walks on Fifth Avenue. It is not a pure coincidence that, driven out of the center of the cities, I found consolation in their suburbs.”(Heretical Empiricism, Garzanti, 1972)

Division: “For: as long as man exploits man, as long as mankind is divided into masters and slaves, there will be neither normality nor peace. This is the reason for all the evil of our time. […] From this division comes tragedy and death. (The Rage, Nous, 2014)

Église [The Church]: “The Church can only be reactionary; the Church can only be on the side of power; the Church can only accept the authoritarian and formal rules of society; the Church can only accept hierarchical societies in which the ruling class guarantees order; the Church can only hate every form of thought that is even only timidly free; the Church can only be opposed to any anti-repressive innovation […]; the Church can only act completely outside the teachings of the Gospel; the Church can only make practical decisions by formally referring to the name of God, and sometimes even forgetting to do so; the Church can only impose hope verbally, because her own experience of human actions forbids her to nourish every kind of hope; the Church can only (to refer to current issues) consider as eternally valid and paradigmatic its concordat with fascism.” (Écrits corsaires, Flammarion, 1976/2009)

Fin [End]: “I love life fiercely, desperately. And I believe that this ferocity, this despair, will bring me to my end. I love the sun, the grass, youth. The love of life has become a vice in me more tenacious than cocaine. I devour my existence with an insatiable appetite. How will all of this end? I do not know. (“Tete-a-tete with Pier Paolo Pasolini”, Louis Valentin, Lui, April 1970)

Gigolos: “Upon my comrades of the underworld / upon my comrade gigolos / upon my unemployed comrades / upon my comrades of maneuvers / I write your name / freedom!” (The Rage, Nous, 2014)

Harlem: “In the United States, during my very brief stay, I lived for several hours in the clandestine climate of struggle, of revolutionary urgency, of hope that was that of Europe in 1944 and 1945. […] I followed a young black trade unionist who led me to the section of his movement, a small movement that only counts in Harlem a few hundred members – and who fights black unemployment; I followed him to one of his comrades, a mason who had had an accident at work and who welcomed us lying on his poor bed, with the smile of friend, accomplice and full of the love our resisters had and that we have forgotten. “(Heretical Empiricism, Garzanti, 1972)

Independence of Algeria: “Ah, France, / hatred! / Ah France, / the plague! / Ah, France, / cowardice! / The hatred, the plague, the cowardice / of the one who wants, who is master, who owns! […] People of color, / Algeria returns to its history! (The Rage, Nous, 2014)

Jeunesse [Youth]: “[…] At that time, young people, hardly freed from their uniforms and setting out on the road towards their country and their fields, that they became again the Italians of fifty or a hundred years ago, as before fascism. Fascism had in reality made them puppets, servants, perhaps partly convinced, but it had not really reached them in the depths of their souls, in their way of being. On the other hand, the new fascism, the consumer society, profoundly transformed young people; she touched them in their intimacy, she gave them other feelings, other ways of thinking, of living, other cultural models. It is no longer, as in Mussolini’s period, a superficial regimentation, scenography, but a real regimentation, that stole and changed their soul. Which means, ultimately, that this “consumer civilization” is a dictatorial civilization.”(Article published in L’Europeo, December 26, 1974)

Kibbutz: “These were gods, or the sons of gods,/ who mysteriously fired, /with a hatred that would have caused them to melt chalk mountains, like blood-thirsty husbands, on the invading Kibbutz, / on the other side of Jerusalem … / These beggars, who go away to sleep now, / without shelter, at the end of some suburban meadow. / With their older brothers, soldiers / armed with an old rifle and a pair of mustaches / mercenaries resigned to death forever. / These are the Jordanians, terror of Israel, / those who, in front of me, cry / the ancient pain of the proscribed.” (“The southern dawn”, Poesies, 1953-1964, Gallimard, 1980)

Lucioles [Fireflies]: “At the beginning of the sixties, because of the air pollution and, especially, in the countryside, because of the water pollution (blue rivers and limpid channels), the fireflies began to disappear. It was a violent and rapid phenomenon. After a few years, there were no more fireflies. (“The emptiness of power in Italy”, Corriere della Sera, February 1, 1975)

Monde [World]: “A new problem explodes in the world. Its name is Color. / It’s called Color, the new enlargement of the world. We must integrate the idea of thousands of black or brown children, children with with black eyes and curly hair. / […] Other voices, other looks, other loves, other dances: / everything will have to become familiar and enlarge the earth!” (The Rage, Nous, 2014)

No: “Refusal has always been essential. Saints, hermits, but also intellectuals. The small number of men who made History are those who said no, and not the courtiers and valets of the cardinals. To be effective, the refusal must be great, and not small, total, and not focus on one point or another, an absurd and contrary to common sense point. Eichmann, my dear, had a lot of good sense. What was he lacking? The ability to say no loudly, to the hierarchy, from the beginning, while performing a purely and ordinary administrative, bureaucratic task. Perhaps he told his friends that he did not fancy this Himmler very much. He murmured, as one murmurs in publishing houses, newspapers, in the homes of lower level political leaders and on television. Or he will have protested because this or that train stopped once a day to let the deportees fulfill their needs and take in a little bread and water, while it would have been more functional or economical to plan for two stops . He never stopped the machine.” (Interview with Furio Colombo, La Stampa, November 8, 1975)

Official: “However, I want to say that if I am a Marxist, this Marxism has always been extremely critical of official Communists, especially with regard to the PCI; I have always been a minority outside the Party since my first book of poetry, The Ashes of Gramsci.”(Interviews with Pier Paolo Pasolini, with Jean Duflot, Pierre Belfond Publishing, 1970)

Poetry: “In football, there are exclusively poetic moments: these are the moments when the action leads to the goal. Each goal is always an invention, it is always a disturbance of the code: it always has something of the inevitable, the dazzling, the stupefying, the irreversible. This is precisely what happens with the poetic word as well. The top scorer of a championship is always the best poet of the year.” (“Il calcio “è” in linguaggio coni suoi poeti e prosatori”, Il Giorno, 3 January 1971)

Quand [When]: “When there is nothing left of the classical world, when all of the peasants and craftsmen are dead, when industry has made the cycle of production and consumption turn relentlessly, then our story will be over.” (La Rabbia, 1963)

Reason: “I am not Catholic ideologically and I am not a believer, so I do not see why my rationalization of the irrational must be Catholic, my rationalization is Marxist.” (Cited by René de Ceccatty, Pasolini, Gallimard, 2005)

Société de consommation [Consumer Society]: “The fever of consumption is a fever of obedience to an unspoken order. Everyone, in Italy, feels the degrading anxiety of being like the others in the act of consummation, of being happy, of being free, because that is the order that each one has unconsciously received and to which he “must” obey if he feels different. Never has difference been such a frightful fault, as in this period of tolerance. Equality has not, in fact, been conquered, but is, on the contrary, a “false” equality received as a gift.” (Écrits corsaires, Flammarion, 1976/2009)

Television: “[…] The responsibility of television is enormous, not, of course, as a technical medium, but as an instrument of power and as power itself. Because it is not only a space through which messages circulate, but is also a message-processing center. It constitutes the space where a mentality is realised which, without it, would not know where to house itself. It is through the spirit of television that the spirit of the new power concretely manifests itself. There is no doubt (the results prove it) that television is authoritarian and repressive, as no other means of information in the world has ever been.” (“Challenge to Television Leaders”, Corriere della Sera, December 9, 1973)

Urban: “Without ceasing to live in Rome, I can say that I lived outside the city. Gradually, this attachment became ideology and I came to travel frequently and to love the countries of the Third World, an irreducible earthly love.” (Interviews with Pier Paolo Pasolini, with Jean Duflot, Pierre Belfond Publishing, 1970)

Vampire: “The bourgeois – let’s say it with wit – is a vampire, who is not at peace until he has bitten the neck of his victim for pure, natural and familiar pleasure, to see her become pale, sad, ugly, lifeless, twisted, corrupt, worried, guilty, calculating, aggressive, terrorizing, like him. […] The time has come to recognize that it is not enough to consider the bourgeoisie as a social class, but as a disease; henceforth, to regard it as a social class is even ideologically and politically an error (and that even through the purest and most intelligent instruments of Marxism-Leninism). In fact, the history of the bourgeoisie – by means of a technological civilization, which neither Marx nor Lenin could have foreseen – is about to concretely coincide with the totality of world history.” (“Against Terror”, Tempo, August 6, 1969)

Wagner: “Who gave us – both young and old – the official language of protest? Marxism, poetry and the memory of the Resistance, which revives the thoughts of Vietnam and Bolivia. Why do I regret the official language of protest that the working class, through its bourgeois ideology, has given me? Because it is a language that never forgets the idea of power and is therefore always practical and reasonable. But are not pragmatism and reason the same gods who have made our bourgeois fathers mad and idiots? Poor Wagner and Nietzsche!” (Letter to Allen Ginsberg, October 1967)

XXe siècle [20th century]: “from a horizon of our century, / the entire neighbourhood … It’s the city, / buried in a festive glow, / – it’s the world. What cries, is what / ends, and starts again. What was / field of grass, open space, and which becomes / a courtyard, white as wax.”(“The crying of the excavator “, Poésies, 1953-1964, Gallimard, 1980)

Yeux [Eyes]: “Do not delude yourself. And you, with your schools, with your television, with your quiet newspapers, you are the great conservatives of a horrible order based on possession and destruction. Be happy, you who are happy only when you can stick a label on a crime. To my eyes, this is but one of the many operations of mass culture: being unable to prevent certain events, we find peace by manufacturing custom made drawers, that once filled, are closed immediately.” (Contre la télévision, Les Solitaires intempestifs, 2003)

Zealots: “I have always been astonished and even, to tell the truth, deeply indignant at the clerical interpretation of Christ’s phrase: Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what belongs to God: an interpretation in which is concentrated all of the hypocrisy and the aberration that characterised the Church of the Counter-Reformation. It passed off – however monstrous it may seem – as moderate, cynical, and realistic a statement by Christ which was clearly radical, extremist, and perfectly religious. In fact, Christ could in no way mean to say: please everyone, do not worry about politics, reconcile the advantages of social life with the absolute character of religious life, care for the goat and the cabbage, etc. . […] By posing this extremist dichotomy, Christ pushes and invites an eternal opposition to Caesar, even if it must be non-violent (unlike that of the zealots).” (“Nouvelles perspectives historiques : l’Église est inutile au Pouvoir”, October 6, 1974)

from autonomies.org (Posted by Julius Gavroche)

#Pier Paolo Pasolini #abécédaire

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saieras · 6 years

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I was tagged by the newly-renamed @soybean-official

Rules: answer the questions about yourself and then tag people you wanna know better!

Name: My pen name is Areias which is incidentally a district in Sao Paolo but I didn’t know that when I made this up!

Nickname: P, or Pat

Age: Too damn old

Gender: Guy

Orientation: Gay

Height: 175cm sorry non-metric-users y’all on your own!

Favorite colors: Somewhere between blue and grey

Book Recommendations: Airborn trilogy by Kenneth Oppel; they are a steampunk swashbuckling Victorian/Edwardian era adventure novels with airships and lots of action. They remain my favorite YA books and highly recommended.

Other than that, the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik outlines the Napoleonic Wars but with each country fielding an air force of dragons and their riders. Badass, amazingly written, and with very believable periodic/historic dialogue! Also the dragons have cute personalities.

Movie Recommendations: sorry this turned out to be so long

Live action:

Contagion; a very realistic sci-fi thriller with an amazing cast, about a massive pandemic outbreak.

Notes on a Scandal; this is also a thriller about a very creepy and manipulative old teacher (played phenomenally by Judi Dench) and her friendship with a younger colleague (played by Cate Blanchett) who has a romantic relationship with one of her students.

Land of Mine; an unconventional war film told from the perspective of German prisoners of war after WWII, many of whom were boys, forced by the Allied government after the war to manually clear landmines from miles and miles of coast.

On a lighter note, if you’re on this blog, chances are you’re a fan of the MCU! Iron Man 1, CACW, and SMHC are my favorites :)

Animated:

Song of the Sea, an Irish animated movie that really has a unique and fable-like animation style.

Patema Inverted (Sakasama no Patema); it has an awesome premise and is gorgeously animated, and I like the characters!

Your Name (Kimi no Na Wa); this probably needs no explanation but I adore the premise and the animation as well. The voice acting is also on point!

Other than these, most things by Hayao Miyazaki or Pixar, and some by Disney are quite good.

TV Recommendations: Game of Thrones, A Handmaid’s Tale, and an old but fantastic X-files-like series Fringe! I always loved the opening sequence.

Music Recommendations: As a genre I love instrumental music so from that category Two Steps From Hell is at the top of the list.

For lyrical music, I tend to like a particular song instead of an artist, but One Republic, the Fray, and Green Day get shout outs.

Game Recommendations: A category I added because I love games! Anyway, The Long Dark, This War of Mine, The Banner Saga, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun.

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate? Tea, but my go-to drink is milk.

Cats or dogs? Dogs, but my own personality is like a cat so maybe I just need some extroverted animal to love me.

Favorite meme?

I I i

I I I _

Because it’s a super old meme but keeps coming back from time to time in the least expected way and it’s great

Goals for 2018: Pass the board exam, generally stay on top of my shit, finish 2 outstanding fanfics I left on hiatus.

I want to live long enough to witness: a supernova, interstellar travel, for NASA to explore Europa and Ganymede (and possibly find alien lifeforms!), organ cloning and targeted immune therapy with nanobots

Weird obsessions: I’m not sure what constitutes as weird tbh

How many sideblogs? None

Random fact about me: I am a faulty perfectionist; I want to do everything perfectly but that means 90% planning and 10% doing and in the end I run out of time so I end up with something I’m not satisfied with. I’m still learning to deal with it!

Thank you once again for the tag, this has been fun :)

Idk who to tag really because I’m kinda new to tumblr but uh, @the-claire-bitch-project and @my-babies-are-ash because I see you guys on my dash a lot and you both have great blogs!!! Also @lafayette1777 and @doctortwelfth because I love your angst fics like omg that is a level of written perfection I want to achieve

#this turned out to be way longer than I intended #random

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shemakesmusic-uk · 3 years

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This segment features artists who have submitted their tracks/videos to She Makes Music. If you would like to be featured here then please send an e-mail to [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!

Daneliya Tuleshova

Daneliya Tuleshova is from Kazakhstan, and she recently shared her debut single ‘Like You Used To.’ “I know most girls will be able to relate to the emotions in this song, the confusion and hurt when a seemingly romantic relationship takes a turn for the worst,” she explains. This is Daneliya’s first major release signed to a label and has been four years in the making. She started her musical journey at 8 years old, participating in vocal competitions including The Voice Kids Ukraine where all four chairs turned during the blind auditions and she became the youngest person to ever win. In 2020, at age 13, she became a Top 6 Finalist on America's Got Talent. “The other contestants were much older, so for me to be able to keep up vocally with artists who were far more seasoned really boosted my confidence,” she says. Listen to ‘Like You Used To’ below.

Mikayla Menzies

Mikayla Menzies is a dreamer who has been through her share of mental health struggles while growing up in the suburbs of Ottawa, Ontario. As tragedy stirred around in her childhood and teenage years, she found refuge in the sound of electric guitars and poetic lyricism, and started documenting her reality through music. She continues to write and speak on things that are relevant to mental health, grief and the dark twists of being a misfit. With glitter on her cheeks, she seeks to inspire others to see that amongst all the chaos, you can still see music in colour. She has just released her new single ‘Mess’. "Grief comes knocking on your door wearing many different costumes throughout your life. Sometimes you barely notice that you've lost yourself in it until you're truly a mess,” explains Mikayla. “There really is no pretty or elegant way to heal from losing someone you love deeply. I was engulfed by waves of grief after my mother's passing. My insides screamed silently, as I tried to swim through the isolating waters of losing a loved one. Just as you start to get your head above water, you find yourself drowning again. The presence of her absence is a permanent heartache I hold. I carry my mom with me, always; for she is half of my being. I picture ‘Mess’ to be a swirl of faded lavender and grey,” she continues. “Inside this vision, I'm a wallflower at a party trying to make conversation, as this reel of memories is spinning around my head. I can hear my mom's laugh, smell the daisies she's just planted and feel the summer sun on my face as she drives me to the mall. I hope this song can help you in those times you're hiding behind a mask." Listen below.

mikaylamenzies · Mess

Vera Di Lecce

Vera Di Lecce started her solo project in 2012. Her first experimental music was made essentially by loops, created live with her voice and an electric guitar. She's from south Italy and she used to sing in her native dialect, so she tried to bring a traditional atmosphere into her English melodies, along with echoes of northern European and Oriental music. After collaborating with different producers, she chose to record and work on her sound by herself, playing electronic instruments and VST, and finding a personal way to communicate through her art. Her main instrument has always been her voice. It can become a synth, a theremin, a choir or even a distorted wave, through her vocal pedals and loop station. Vera also performs with an electric guitar, that floats from evocative arpeggios to extreme e-bow themes. Recorded and produced by Vera, mixed and mastered by Paolo Panella at Altipiani Studio (Rome) and released on Manimal Vinyl, her new single ‘Shellbone’ tells of an encounter with a Kitsune God, through a dream. According to Japanese folklore "Kitsune" (Japanese word for fox) are intelligent foxes that possess paranormal abilities and can shapeshift into human form. The God challenges her with provocative questions, to see if she's ready to become extremely powerful, by turning her bones into magical ones made of shell. Vera answers with more questions, trying to identify the meaning of the whole experience by fusing with the fox spirit. Listen below.

MANIMAL VINYL RECORDS · VERA DI LECCE - "Shellbone"

Gaby Paul

Gaby Paul likes to infuse the Southwest into her music, while still having it firmly grounded in Soul. Gaby Paul is a professional vocalist and songwriter, continuing to use her creativity to explore different sounds. Behind the meaning and inspiration of her latest single ‘Untruly’ she says: “I wrote this song about my time with this man who was never truly mine and I was never truly his. It was clear we would never be together, but when we were together in person it felt like forever. Our chemistry was deceiving, misleading and untrue but in the most honest of ways. It was beautiful.” Listen below.

Gaby Paul · Untruly

Ali

Born in Italy to West-African parents, Ali’s musical upbringing was cross-cultural. She is the flower that grew from the concrete with a strong need to express what she feels about someone or something when it’s NEVER about it or them but ALWAYS about how and what she lives in that moment. Ali has just released her new single ‘Body vs Soul’. She had this to say about the song: "This song is a mess lol And no, I am not being dramatic. This song is a mess, I am a mess and this song is about me and maybe about you too. It came out from a deep look into myself. Admitting to myself that I am conflicted between two ME's. Two opposites, day and night, hot and cold, literally BODY and SOUL and believe me to this day I still don't know which side will rule the game. Do you?" Listen below.

Rayys

There are many songs out there that depict sisterly relationships and their various shades. Theres 'Martha' by Rufus Wainwright, 'Older Sister' by Carly Simon and of course 'We are Family' by Sister Sledge. And now there is 'Twiin' by Rayys. No one knows you better than a sibling, especially if that sibling is a twin. What is it like to have a mirror image, someone who completes you but also competes with you? ‘Twiin’ is an alternative psych-folk love song, an intimate portrayal of friendship and rivalry inspired by a painting of two sisters on Rayys' home studio wall. Recorded at home by the artist during the long, UK winter lockdown, the production is purposefully sparse with emphasis on the vocal, giving stronger credence to the eerie melodies, bittersweet lyrics and creating a close and intimate sound. The track, and entire EP, was mixed by her friend and old band mate, David Morris aka Boy 8 Bit of tech house fame. Rayys is the pseudonym of London and Lake District based singer songwriter, Laura Howard. Rayys' life changed at the age of 10 when her father unexpectedly inherited an 18th century Gothic folly situated on the lakeland shores that inspired Wordsworth's sonnets. She is inspired by these poetic surroundings and the big crumbling house, a former hunting lodge with dead beasts adorning the walls and family secrets hidden in dark corners. Listen to ‘Twiin’ below.

Rayys · Twiin

WREX

Brighton-based WREX is Mae Seaton (vocals) and George Donoghue (guitar, bass, vocals, drums, production). They formed in early 2020 after meeting eachother at a local show and have spent the last 18 months writing. “We started this project to write and release music we love, bringing some positivity back to the world - let’s face it we need it right now!” they say. They take inspiration from bands like Enter Shikari, You Me At Six and The Cardigans. The band has this to say on their latest single: “’Wide Eyes’ started as a bedroom rant about pressures and responsibilities, and became a playful pop-rock interpretation of the battle between living in the moment vs living up to expectations. Taking on the childlike state of being blissfully unaware to avoid nearing adulthood, ‘Wide Eyes’ encompasses the longing to never grow up.”

WREX · Wide Eyes

Close to Monday

European band Close to Monday have released INTERFERENCE – their latest album, in which the feeling of travel is intertwined with the search for the place in the world. ANY, the vocalist who has joined the group recently, takes on the role of a pilgrim whose image will accompany the listeners on their way to self-knowledge and the discovery of the unknown. According to the band’s founder, INTERFERENCE is “a change of state from blunt and careless mutual intrusion to harmony – with oneself and with people around.” The band create music in the genres of Electropop, Synthpop and Indietronica. Each of their tracks communicating a ‘photo of feelings’ – a ready-made image, a situation reflecting their perception of things happening in the surrounding world and inside themselves, emotional experiences that are familiar to everybody. One of the album tracks, “WAITING” can be streamed below. “Initially, we didn't want to include this track on the album,” said the band. “We wanted to release it as a dance single as a representative of such genres as Indie Dance and Nu Disco. But since the album turned out to be diverse, we decided to make the release of the track within the framework of the album release. Moreover, the lyrics of the song emphasize the meaning of the entire album. This energy song is a reminder that life is a great gift of the universe to every person! And a person can enjoy life right now, do something important for themselves and others, without wasting time waiting for something important. Because the important thing is happening right now! And this is something important - this is life itself!”

HUNT

HUNT ('wolf in Estonian') is a blend of cosmic soul and electro beats flirting with a deep house but also the post-romantic attitude in vocals and visuals. HUNT is a mix of Eastern European and South Caucasian, ie. Estonian and Armenian attitude, and one of the few electronic all-female bands in Estonia. In the last days of May, HUNT released its second EP, Station Luna. The title track, 'Station Luna', is probably the poppiest sounding song on the album. The vocals are recorded directly into the computer's microphone, and the sound production of the album is done with analogue technique. Listen below.

#submission saturday #daneliya tuleshova #mikayla menzie #vera di lecce #gaby paul #ali #rayys #wrex #close to monday #hunt

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italiasoloitalia · 6 years

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Days: I’ve lost count but: Roma

Driving on italian roads is really not a problem, it’s the dropping car rental back that is always a problem - the place is always a nightmare to find and Rome’s is no different - on the 7th floor of Termini’s parking station! Though arrival soon after at the beautiful Hotel D’Inghelterra soothes frayed nerves and we’re upgraded to an room with balcony overlooking the rooftops around Piazza di Spagna. A knock on the door reveals a surprise ice cream cake with candle for il Signore as they had noted his birthday on passport at checkin. Sweet.

We’re soon ensconced at a table on the terrazza (why break the habit?) of the Sunset Bar of La Rinascente on Via Tritone, a Caprese salad and glass of wine in hand, cin cin, buon compleanno! Rome is so busy but still glorious as sun hits terracotta toned palazzi and the air is embed with holiday atmosphere as tomorrow is San Pietro e Paolo, Rome’s patron saints.

Aperitivo is at the sidewalk cafe of the hotel where a singer performs and adds a celebratory note 😉. I’ve booked dinner at Armando al Pantheon, recommended by some of the Italofiles I follow on Instagram. Unpretentious and superb Roman food. My carbonara, G’s a la gricia tops, then I devour scottadito d’agnello (so much so that the chef, Claudio Gargioli, comes to kiss my hand in pleasure at the polished bones 😛) and G’s salsiccie con fagioli also a hit. We’re seated very closely next to a young American couple and can’t help but overhear their conversation and G clocks the bottle of wine they’ve ordered in awe $$$ - we later learn it’s JJ Reddick, Philadelphia’s nba star (earned $23mill last year 😳)

G declares a very happy day 🎂🥂

Per me, oggi, museum 😉 day whilst G goes to Circus Maximus and catacombs of Caracalla and we meet up for lunch and then head over Ponte Cavour and back via Piazza del Popolo and Via Barbuino. Dinner at Da Pietro (certo on this day) and my calamari alla griglia is perfect. The table next to us this time has indulged in pasta with truffles and we’ve never seen so much truffle shaved over and then the huge nugget and grater is left on the table. The perfume is all pervasive and we’re sitting outside! Grazie for sharing.

Our last day and we head to Caffe Sant’Eustachio for a perfect cappuccino and a couple of their fab cups to add to our collection. Before we are to meet Silvana Volpato, (a botanical artist Facebook friend and exhibitor at Floraviva who had also made contact) at Piazza Navona we duck into Santo Luigi dei Francesi to see the Caravaggio’s in the Chapel of St Matthew. Extraordinary.

The Piazza is humming, the sky cerulean blue, the bells begin to toll...sigh. I spy Silvana, we embrace and head off to ‘un posto piu tranquillo’ again, talking in Italian this time, ten to the dozen. Silvana wants to show us another church with Caravaggio’s on the way but it’s closed 😕 so we move on to a great spot for a lovely insalata (best tomato pasta for G) and a lively, fascinating discussion. Silvana and I had a failed attempt to meet on our last visit to Rome 4 yrs ago and she insists on forming a pact that on our next visit we are to dine at hers, esp after G insists on shouting lunch. 🇮🇹🌿🇦🇺. 👭

Time to pack as we have an early morning departure and then we head off to see Giudizia Universale, viewer immersive show about Michelangelo and The Secrets of the Sistine Chapel, with score by Sting. Amazing mixture of live performance and spectacular special effects of 270 deg 3D projections staged at the Auditorium della Conciliazione just down from St Peter’s. Excellent.

Walk back via Lungotrevere on another beautiful afternoon, final Negroni 😪 aperitivo and people watching before a perfect final dinner at Da Nino. You squeamish lot look away now for grilled wafer thin fegato di vitello and fried lamb’s brains and zucchini is not for you but couldn’t haven been a better finale for us. A wonderful Badia Di Passignano red is pitch perfect too.

The taxi ride in the very early morn is like Rome kissing us goodbye...deserted streets, domes bathed in palest pink and blue, the Vittorio Emmanuel iced pearly white, iconic trees startling in profile, ruins eerily still and unbothered by tourists. Arriverderci Roma veramento! italiasoloitalia has been un sogno d’oro in so many ways and we feel fortunate and blessed too in so many ways.

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driehausdesigninitiative · 4 years

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Designer Spotlight: 5 of the G.O.A.T. Fashion Designers

Who are the Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T.) fashion designers around the world? See if you agree with our designer alumni in this sampling of their favorites.

Alexander McQueen received the most votes, including from Kristen Banks, Que Shebley, Nico Camargo, and Laura Lanzerotte. His tragic passing still impacts the fashion world, but his legacy lives on- especially among emerging designers.

Thierry Mugler wins top choice from Edna St. Louis, our 2019 Neiman Marcus Distinguished Designer award winner. She also mentions that her recommended reading list includes Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty and John Galliano’s Unseen.

Both Molly Quinn and Dana Bitto selected visual artist extraordinaire Iris van Herpen. Dana comments that while Iris “takes the cake,” her other faves include Vera Wang, Marchesa, Elie Saab, and Paolo Sebastian.

Gareth Pugh takes the G.O.A.T. trophy from Mallory Fifer, who says the English designer appeals to her dark sensibilities. "I love what he’s done in the name of goth and high fashion,” she comments.

The cartwheeling queen of whimsy, Betsey Johnson, gets top prize from Bianca Sager. Bianca recently took on the project of hand sewing more than 450 masks featuring super fun designs, and donating them to healthcare workers. Betsey Johnson would be proud.

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evilblot · 7 years

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This took me like a week, no jokes.Also forgive the weird colours but tumblr is shit ™ when it comes to process big images 😒... ANYWAY.

Full analysis with artists’ names and such under the cut.

▪ ULTIMATE FAVE : from the Darkenblot saga, drawings by Lorenzo Pastrovicchio. It’s my canon reference when I draw him. The embodiment of literal perfection. Like y'all can have any other version but this one is mine and mine alone,believe me I’m gonna fight you for it.

▪ AESTHETIC : Lord of Deceits ( both Shadow & Human version ) from Wizards of Mickey, drawings by Lorenzo Pastrovicchio again. Love seeing the Blot with long hair and, as for the Shadow form, well… he t h i c c 👀

The version beneath is from a series called Goofy Reporter, drawings by Stefano Turconi. This version holds a special place in my heart, probably because of both his vivid and suggestive facial expressions and that he somehow manages to show certain sides of the Blot’s character that are usually hidden. Also my man looks dapper af in that suit.

▪ MOOD : speaking of showing personality aspects, I cannot forget these guys here. The bottom image is Giorgio Cavazzano’s interpretation of teh Blot which I adore because he’s able to portrait him as the cold criminal genius he is and yet he also paints him as some sort of cute dork. And all in the same page. Stunning ain’t it? Anyway.

Above you see him as General Nero, from an Italian parody called Topolinix inspired by the famous Asterix saga. The drawings are by Silvia Ziche, and man I love the expressions, they just crack me up anytime I see them. Also, in this case, I’m weak for the husbando wearing armors, especially if they show some skin too (´ヮ`)

▪ MAH HART MAH SOUL : Let’s face it, when I see my man in his early stages of his life I melt in a sugary puddle. I just can’t help it. Drawings by Stefano Turconi and Marco Gervasio.

▪ HONORABLE MENTIONS : First place obviously goes to the Blot by Romano Scarpa because it’s the first version I’ve laid my eyes upon and the one I basically grow up with. Great story, amazing drawings. And maybe also the reason I enjoy bondage a bit too much.

Then there’s the Gran-Khan-Gnar version, from a Star Trek parody named Star Top drawn by Alessandro Perina. Despite not liking the saga since I’m not a sci-fi enthusiast, seeing my man wearing a space battle armor with chiseled abs helped appreciate the reading none the less.

Speaking of fancy costumes, I cannot forget Stefano Zanchi’s version, heavily inspired by 1800’s South Italy dress code for a comic that portrait the Blot as sort of tomb raider, pass me the term. Love the hat. Also he can use that rifle against me whenever he likes to ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

▪ EXTRA : Dr. Blackfang from Metopolis, parody of the movie Metropolis, drawings by Paolo Mottura. First time I saw this version I literally burts into laughter until I couldn’t breathe no more. And it still happens. I mean, what kind of hair is that??! ? [ wheezes ]

Still, I would more than happily stick my hands in that messy mane and braid it with badly concealed enthusiasm.

So yeah, this is my classific. As you may notice it covers only the Italian comic production but understand this is the material I most know and appreciate.Don’t get me wrong, I literally came when I saw the animated version of the Blot in both Ducktales and House of Mouse series but I noticed that in both cases they reduced him to a caricature of himself and it’s a shame. Not to mention that thing they gave me in Epic Mickey. Ok he’s a big buff ink monster who wants to rule the world yet it has nothing of the original Blot so for me it was kinda disappointing.

Better than nothing, sure, but still ¯\_(:/)_/¯

Anyway, aqain a thousands thanks anon for your request, it made me immensely happy to have the opportunity for sharing my thoughts about one of the most influencing things in my life 😍😙

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sweetymutant · 4 years

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Since that's what we both seem to want, ma chère, let me ask you all the questions for the movie asks! :D

, -Thank you my dear!!!

1: Favourite movie(s) -I’ll do a top five, otherwise it’s gonna take ages.

-The Great Escape - John Sturges

-Kaos - Paolo & Vittorio Taviani

-Once Upon a Time in the West - Sergio Leone

-The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Jim Sharman

-My Own Private Idaho - Gus Van Sant

2: Favourite actor(s)

How can I answer this question? Honestly I love so many actors, ranging from well-known-still-alive stars dead-and-partially-forgotten actors. How? Who? What?

Okay, Dame Maggie Smith then. Cate Blanchett. Sigourney Weaver. Carrie Fisher. Brigitte Bardot. Hedy Lamarr. Marilyn Monroe.

3: Favourite genre(s)

Horror

Sci-Fi

Musicals

Film Noir

Drama

4: Favourite director(s)

I honestly don’t know. It’s difficult to pick a director or even a few to be my favourites. But I guess some safe names would be Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Roberto Rosselini, Pier Paolo Pasolini… and 100 others.

5: How often do you go see movies in theatres?

Before quarantine, once a week. It’s one of these things that walks the fine line between tradition and ritual for me.

6: Opinion on remakes

When they are useful, yes, Yes, YES (like for example, updating a story that would not cater to younger generation so they change the era, or adapting to a certain culture, or giving a new artistic take and point of view). But, for the reamkes that are just copies that bring nothing new at all OR when they take something that was interesting or in case of old movies, quite modern for its times and go backward and kind of retrograde it for the sake of money and cowardice, nope. Honestly nope. So it all depends on the remake.

7: Favourite era(s) of film

I cannot really answer, since I have come to love each and every era -not all the films of course- but each era has something interesting. Well, I guess studying cinema did ruin me a bit.

8: Spell your first, middle, and last name out in movie titles

Well, I’ll do my first name, and the first letter of my last name:

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Requiem for a Dream

One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Ring

El Topo

M– Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder

9: Favourite film series

The Lord of the Rings, of course :p Closely followed by the Indiana Jones trilogy. Yes, I said trilogy :p

10: Favourite remake(s)

I guess it’s a tie between The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) although I am stupidly biased towards The Magnificent Seven (1960) and I will never forgive how straight The Man from U.N.C.L.E. reboot/remake was.

11: Favourite film character(s)

Gimli -Lord of the Rings

MacDonald -The Great Escape

Ellen Ripley -Alien

Indiana Jones (And yes, I was raised by archeologists.)

12: Favourite movie(s) per genre

Per genre? How many genres are there? And what about movies that have more than one genre? What about movies that I like outside of their genre? I hope you have all the time in the world, because it’s going to be very long. Ok, for the five genres I picked earlier:

Horror: Jacob’s Ladder

Sci-Fi: H2G2

Musicals: Hair

Film Noir: Brighton Rock

Drama: Dead Poets Society

13: Movie(s) you remember as part of your childhood

On top of my head, The Lion King, Le Roi et L’Oiseau, L’Aventure c’est L’Aventure and The Princess Bride were a very important part of my childhood. The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter too. And Star Wars.

14: Movie character(s) you identify with

I should not be proud but: Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Also, Louis Sedgwick (The Great Escape), because you asked for it darling Amy.

15: Prizes of your movie collection

It’s not a prize as in it’s not worth much in term of actual money, but it’s a tie between my DVD of The Great Escape that I’ve owned since I was a teen and the Kaos DVD my grandfather gifted me.

16: Blu-Ray, DVD, or VHS?

All three. all three is good. Everything that allows me to keep a movie close to me in physical form is good.

17: Movie(s) you hate

Anaconda. Oh, I am sure there are worst movies, but it’s the first one that crossed my mind. Oh, Prometheus and Alien Covenant also.

Oh, yes, a movie actually hate with a passion and which deserves every bit of hate it gets (I will die on that hill): Gone With The Wind.

18: Actor(s) you hate

Steve McQueen. No, actually I love him. No I hate him. I love him more. I love to hate him.

More seriously, many actors from my country like Gérard Depardieu, Dany Boon, Fabrice Luchini, Frank Dubosc, Christian Clavier… do not spark joy in me. At all.

19: Director(s) you hate

For very very different reasons: Roman Polanski, Michael Bay & Luc Besson.

20: Your pet peeve(s) in movies

When a movie feels like there is a NEED for romance when it would actually not benefit from it. Even worse if it is straight.

21: Movie character(s) you have a crush on:

So, to avoid a 20 feet long list, I only pick one, and I have been crushing extra hard on Victoria ever since the movie came out:

22: Last movie you saw

23: Favourite film adaptation of something from another medium

For all its flaws, The Great Escape. Also, read the book folks. It’s a gem.

24: Movies you think you probably should’ve seen but haven’t for whatever reason.

The ultra-realistic remake of the Lion King.

25: Worst experience you’ve ever had in a movie theatre

People making out not discreetely at all on the row in front of me. Eeew.

26: People whose opinions on movies you value

People, as in critics and youtubers and stars? NAH XD The two people whose opinions really really matter to me are my friend Oscar and you my dear @amethystsworld. (Well, to be fair, @psychicwhisperywitch and my friends Salomé and Océane too.)

27: If you could make a movie, what would it be and why?

As stupid as it might sound, I would make movies about my original stories like “Our Last Day Off” and my Drame Romantique. It sounds so full of myself, to want to do that, but I envision them as movies more than as written stories. A little side effect of my studies I suppose. So yeah, I don’t know if they would be good movies (a teen drama/thriller and a historical romantic drama… with the stupidest characters on earth) but I wish I could make them.

28: If you could adapt something from another medium into film, what would it be and why?

As much as it would probably not make good films because the prerequisite are so different, I would love to adapt many larps I have been to into movies. (Walpurgis for example. Make it into a 5 hours long surrealistic movie with no plot but full of dance, music and magic and blood and love.)

29: If you could remake any movie to improve what you felt was wrong about it the first time around, what would it be and why?

As much as I want to scream The Great Escape, i do have the belief that this movie cannot be remade and SHOULD not be remade. It holds itself together as a movie by sheer luck, some thread, some glue, and something that is so 1960s that it would not work today. Adapting the book once again could be worth it and interesting, although i cannot say what is best, go for biographical-realist genre or go for fictional like Sturges did… but remaking the movie as in “let’s shoot it again, try to fix broken stuff and add today’s star” is not a good move. Anyway, now that this case is closed, I would remake The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) to make all the characters LGBTQ+

30: Movie character(s) you find attractive

#asks #cinema

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gigsoupmusic · 4 years

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Y△CHT (Colours Hoxton, London - 13 Feb 2020)

Last night we were absolutely privileged to see one of the most innovative bands of the day perform at the lovely Hoxton venue that is Colours. YACHT (or, to be more exact, Y△CHT) are a band hailing from Portland, Oregon, though now are based in Los Angeles. They have been going strong since 2002; the spelling of their name is not a typo (the A is stylised as a triangle, and evokes the sail of a yacht). The name itself comes from a rather strange science course (no longer in existence) that keyboardist Jona Bechtolt attended at age 16 called "Young Americans Challenging High Technology".

Comprised of Claire L. Evans on lead vocals, the aforementioned Jona on keyboards (and guitar), and Rob Kieswetter (aka Bobby Birdman) on bass and keyboards, Y△CHT have, according to Claire, finally found 'the holy trinity' following a number of permutations.

Y△CHT have been making headlines lately for all the right reasons: they have created a fantastic new album called Chain Tripping, for which both the music and the lyrics were composed via Artificial Intelligence. Last night was, mainly, about showcasing this new album. Yes, you heard that right. A variety of different AI processes were used to write not just the lyrics but the music as well. It should come as no surprise that Claire has a science background. Author of a recent book called Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, she has been very much at the forefront of science-tech, with her own blog Universe (hosted by National Geographic), as well as regular science columns in The Guardian, Wired and many other publications, plus Futures Editor of Vice's 'Motherland' science website. Y△CHT have, therefore, been pushing the boundaries of AI and musical composition to its limits.

The first thing we noticed was that the band decided, for reasons unexplained at the time, to perform the entire Chain Tripping album backwards. By backwards, we mean starting with track 10 ("Little Instant") and finishing with track 1 ("(Downtown) Dancing"), though we wouldn't put it past them to decide to play the actual music backwards one evening as an experiment! Claire has a tremendous amount of energy on stage. She is constantly throwing shapes (think: cover of David Bowie's Heroes album, and vogue it up a bit), so much so that half the photographs we took ended up having to be discarded, as she was a blurry mess. Even Jona and Rob failed to keep still for long, often interchanging mid-song two or three times with one another's keyboards, which were located at opposite ends of the stage.

So, the stage was pretty busy, and the crowd were soon screaming with pleasure. Although a band should of course mainly be about the music, there is nothing more boring than seeing static band-members. We enjoyed the first three songs (the last three on the album), in particular the very cheerful "Stick it to the Station". Our first stand-out song, however, had to be song 4, "Sad Money", which was quite different, and a lot more trancey. We asked Claire later which songs from the album were likely to remain in the repertoire when they perform a Greatest Hits concert rather than an album showcase like we heard last night. We were delighted to hear that "Sad Money" is one of their favourites and therefore likely to make the cut. Following that came a much slower song, called "Death" – which just so happened to be the first track that their software churned out when they started with this AI experiment. This was quite dark, and included some rather violent lyrics, including 'stab, stab, stab a cop' repeated a number of times. We asked Claire later about this, and whether the fact that software coming up with controversial lyrics means that the lyricist can be exonerated, therefore implying that self-censorship is no longer necessary in this future world. She agreed it was a good point, and there would certainly be some plausible deniability. However, at the end of the day, the band were still involved in the selection process of the lyrics from those that were generated. The actual lyrics, nonetheless, were not something they would have come up with themselves, but the band thought it rather delightful that the AI process should decide to suggest such strange phrases.

In between tracks, Claire would often address her audience. This again made the gig appear to be much more intimate (in spite of the fact that the venue was heaving with bodies). What was most obvious was how different each of these new songs actually are, from the very 80s sound of "Loud Light" to the quite bonkers track "SCATTERHEAD". On the latter, we loved the use of the cowbell and great guitar effects, which were also evident on "Hey Hey", another 80s-influenced uplifting track which includes quite a dirty deep-house synth on top of a Kim Dealesque bass-line. The strobes came on for "(Downtown) Dancing", the first track on the album. This was the longest song thus far, and included a funky dance bit that was evocative of the famous section in the middle of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Again, we loved the cowbell. Claire got the entire auditorium clapping at one point, adding to the party atmosphere.

Hearing the album back-to-front, it now made sense why it should be performed that way, as it meant there was a real build-up to that final moment. Of course, this was not the end of the gig. Even with albums as good as Chain Tripping, a lot of people would have felt short-changed had some of the older songs not been performed as well. Y△CHT went on to perform six non-AI songs in total, starting with two from their 2015 album, I Thought the Future Would be Cooler: firstly the track which shares the aforementioned album's name, and then "Hologram". This was followed by "Hard World" from their 2017 Strawberry Moon album, a song about animal rights which was accompanied by the projection of their trippy video featuring a happy foot and a sad foot. This was another song during which the two male components of the band were swapping sides and instruments throughout the song. We share the video in question below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D-Z9rUvlqM Following this came one of our favourite tracks, their cover of Brigitte Fontaine's 1969 utterly surreal French-language song, "Le Goudron". This cover appeared as an online single in 2012 and is well worth downloading. We actually first came across it while watching a superb Italian comedy directed by Paolo Sorrentino about Berlusconi called Loro, in a scene where a rich young scam-artist is trying to entice Berlusconi to an orgiastic party in a villa overlooking the politician's garden. This tune featured in the scene below, and it was a Shazam moment. Thanks to both technology and serendipity, we learnt of this fantastic track, which led us to the band's back catalogue and, ultimately, reviewing them for GIGsoup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJiiVWFozs0 "Le Goudron" really is a splendid tune, and is probably the most psychedelic of the ones they played last night. The irony is, when you translate the French lyrics into English, they are as bizarre as some of the ones that AI has thrown up for their new album! Following one of those pseudo-encores we wish weren't a thing (we can't remember the last time we heard a genuine encore that the band had not already orchestrated), Y△CHT returned with what was probably their loudest (and certainly most new-wave) track, "Dystopia (The Earth is on Fire)" from their 2011 album Shangri-La, and then ended with the pure pop funness of "Psychic City" from their 2009 album See Mystery Lights, which was coincidentally the first of their albums to feature Claire.

So, will Y△CHT use this process to make another AI album?, we ask Claire after the gig. 'Yeah, I think some variation upon it. But by the time we sit down to make another record the technology will probably have evolved by leaps and bounds. It already has. Since releasing the album, the tools that we used are obsolete. So, I'm excited to try to find some other cobbled-together mix of futuristic tools for the next record that challenges us in the same way that this one did. I don't want to get stuck in a rut.' We were interested to find out whether, by using AI, they felt that some of the creative process of songwriting was taken away from them, but Claire was adamant that she did not feel that way at all. The process allowed them to end up with tons of song lyrics, from which a small percentage was useful. These would then be rearranged (or 'cut up') following a method which has its origins in Dadaist poetry, was famously used by the author William S. Burroughs, and also employed by David Bowie on some of his greatest and most-loved albums.

These single lines of subsequently rearranged lyrics were generated by inputting into the software not just the lyrics from Y△CHT's entire back-catalogue (to give the process an identity closer to the band's original style), but also lyrics from some of their favourite artists, such as Patti Smith or Bowie himself. We asked Claire whether they had to remove some of the generated lyrics because they appeared to be too close to something Bowie or Smith would have themselves written. 'No, the amount of data that you need to train a machine-running algorithm is so significant. I mean, it's literally like seven-hundred thousand pages of text. So the nuances get lost. It's more like you're teaching a machine English based on only song lyrics.' Last night really was a fantastic show, and when Claire addressed the audience in her effervescent manner it seemed especially intimate. We referred earlier to how Y△CHT are now making headlines for all the right reasons. It wasn't always thus: in 2016 they suffered what amounted to a PR disaster when they pretended that they were trying to stop a sex tape they had made from being leaked on the adult website Pornhub, which generated a lot of negative publicity. We personally found the video to be quite innovative – it has a disturbing sci-fi ending – but the band are very remorseful about the stunt and acknowledge that it was in bad taste and should never have been done.

Now, however, it is all about the future, in more ways than one. Thanks to their scientific knowledge, we know that using AI is really just the start of it. It is marvellous to have innovative standard-bearers in modern music today. We have felt that in recent years, there has been nothing new any more. Previous generations had Kraftwerk, Frippertronics, Phil Spector's Wall of Sound... there seemed to be very little new to be coming out of the studios for the current generation. This is now changing. Thank you, Y△CHT, for making the future of music a little more exciting and a little more cute. Read the full article

#AI #BobbyBirdman #ChainTripping #ClaireL.Evans #ColoursHoxton #JonaBechtolt #musicinnovation #Y△CHT #YACHT

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