condon does it again

Zach Condon’s latest double release EP is a split of both minimal electronica and the classic Beirut sound.  During our show at Clementine last night, I discovered their existence and went to buy it this afternoon.  When I put the Realpeople disc into my stereo, the first song brought tears to my eyes.  Oh the sound.  Pitchfork does the release great justice in their latest interview with Condon, to be found here [though I didn't quite understand the photograph included with the article]: 

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/146890-beiruts-zach-condon-discusses-new-eps-time-off

Little Ocean Boy at Clementine

Philly Heart Design : Design Philadelphia 2008

 

 

A Sestina for Bosnia-Herzegovina

 

After the Megawords show, Tate and I were invited to enter pieces of work individually into the Philly Heart Design exhibition.  The show was a part of the week-long event called Design Philadelphia, which is a celebration of design that has become internationally recognized for its confluence of commercial and independent artists + designers in the city. It was a great honor that I was excited to have an opportunity to be a part of.  

 

I somehow finagled a way to make it up to Philly for this show this past weekend.  It was a whirlwind trip, but the city was as wonderful as ever and so were the friend ships.  I took the train up on Saturday and met up with Melissa, we had a picnic in the park of the most delicious tofu hoagie I never thought existed.  

As I was arriving at the space, Melissa introduced me to her friend Lorenzo and from then on, we were like peas in a pod.  For most of the opening, we were practically glued together.  His piece was filled with beautiful ingenuity, simplicity, and usefulness; it was a table-chair combination entitled FUNctional.  It was made with bamboo, like many other pieces throughout the exhibit.  MIO, a well-known design firm in the city, had several pieces in the show, all of which were the most refined.  I was so grateful for the selection of works in the show, some were mid-process and were presentations of mere prototypes, while others were final pieces, everything was executed well across the board. 

 

FUNctional by Lorenzo

Credit to come

Credit to come

Graphics

Lazy?

Credit to come

Sweet sweet sweet

Perhaps my favorite piece of the night

“]”]

...not war [Rocco Avallonea

My mash-up and a sweet bicycle prototype

Designer to be credited

aVoid Coaster + Trivets by Blair Buchanan

Philly Heart Design 2008!

For the show, I submitted a piece that came from some of my line drawings in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  The drawings were formally arranged to illustrate a graphic sestina.  In poetry, the sestina is a form that has a mysterious repetitious quality that often becomes addictive to the writer.  It is a series of 6 stanzas followed by a tercet.  Six words are repeated in the following pattern:

A     F     C     E     D     B

B     A     F     C     E     D

C     E     D     B     A     F

D     B     A     F     C     E

E     D     B     A     F     C

F     C     E     D     B     A

The final tercet compresses the words within three lines, so the lines have a composition like this:

AB

CD

EF

Sestina
by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She things that her equinoctical tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It’s time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string.  Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she things the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway.  Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

[Tiny disclaimer : Somehow, during the reprographic process, my piece got one inch shorter and was ill-treated in the mounting phase---if money grew on trees, it wouldn't have ended up looking like sh*t because I would have had it done over again, but since it doesn't, I had to concede to the fact that the concept was still there and the drawings did not suffer any ill effect to speak of.]

Current spin : Tangerine Dream Live at Coventry Cathedral
Current reads : The latest issues of ‘Metropolis,’ ‘Good,’ and ‘Dwell’  
Relevant links : http://www.designphiladelphia.org/ + http://www.phillyheartdesign.com/ + http://www.mioculture.com/ + http://phillycommunity.streettalkin.com/kickapps/_Philly-Heart-Design-Part-2/video/376596/47496.html

a short film by tate

John jennings : James Madison University [postdate : 9.18.08]

John Jennings spoke for an audience of around 60 people at JMU about his body of work as an illustrator.  The fabric of his work was very personal, at times playful, socio-political, and well-processed.  Though at times, gory and horrific, Jennings’ illustrations work to convey profound messages about broken aspects of American society.  The hyperbolic tone of the concepts he addresses often convey the sense of urgency of his expressed ideas.  Jennings explained that he works in close collaboration with Damian Duffy.

When we consider mythology, it seems that we first think of ancient Greeks and Romans.  But where is there evidence of a modern-day construct of a myth?  And what is the value of such a recognition?  How can the ever evolving world place equal importance upon myths both old and new?

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Image from ‘Circut Breaker,’ by John Jennings.

Umbau + Megawords + PIFAS [postdate : 9.23.08]

This past weekend, Tate and I had the opportunity to travel to Philly for a weekend of Umbau in Philadelphia.  Melissa Frost, a former student of our Vienna studio, and student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Pre-Architecture program, organized a lecture and exhibition for our school.  Although there were some significant setbacks in our preparations for the weekend, the events were all-in-all successful.

On Saturday night, we had a full house at PIFAS [the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Studies] where Tate gave a lecture about the current happenings of Umbau.  Although the lecture was uncharacteristically dense and lengthy for Tate, it served as a preface for the following night’s exhibition at the Megawords Storefront in Downtown Philly.  Tate spoke about Umbau’s involvement in + with Rwanda [+ the Sudan], Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libera, and Vienna and also about the rich network of individuals supporting the school.

The Megawords Storefront project was a progressive in its continuum of incoming work that stayed in the space.  Therefore, installing new work was about dancing with existing work and allowing layers to exist that could create diversions throughout the space.  There were great zines, collages, graphics, and photos throughout the room.

In our exhibit on Sunday evening a series of plaster models were on display along a 40-foot walkway.  The models were simple but elegant studies on the designs of Peter Eisenman created by a collection of his first-year interior students from James Madison University.  Also along the walkway were photographs and illustrations by students who had been to Vienna for the summer studio in past years.  My main contribution to the exhibit was a series of about 50 textual posters of the Umbau manifesto designed line for line along a long wall in the back of the space.  The graphic posters were interspersed with other students’ Piranesian study drawings.  Photographs from the cultural + urban identity project in Bosnia-Herzegovina were being projected along another wall in that same space.

The exhibit also included an interactive element, simply, a table with a pair of questions about higher education in this century and an open opportunity to praise or criticize our school’s endeavors.  A tape recorder was on the table alongside the questions for individuals to leave their thoughts and criticisms behind.   

Tate and I had the opportunity to have some conversations at length with Brandon Joyce [one PIFAS founder] and with Anthony Smyrski [one founder of Megawords Magazine].  Both individuals offered some original perspectives on new concepts for higher education, collectives, and new media.  PIFAS + Megawords are both rich environments, teeming with experimental postulations and independent works.  To be around the individuals involved in these endeavors offered us some new insights and ideas we might have never considered without them.

Cover for current issue of Megawords Magazine

another show

for philadelphia

Later this month, Umbau will have the opportunity to exhibit work in the Megawords Storefront space.  

Megawords is an excellent Philadelphia-based publication graciously brought to our attention by Melissa Frost.  [Our first copy was a life-changing arrival in the mail, for me]. Recently, the magazine received a grant and decided to take their ideas into the third dimension by leasing a space for a month-long exhibition of a wide array of artists and events.  The show promises to be rich and engaging, and a great moment in the history of both Megawords and our school.  Refer to megawordsmagazine.com for more a full press release, a complete schedule, and links to Mega-relatives.

the megawords storefront

Additionally, Tate will be giving a lecture at PIFAS [Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Studies].

in response

I recently received the following comment on the entry, “on identity” :

“I’m curious as to why you wrote about cultural identity. Is this something that you’re interested in or do you confront it? I realize “confront” sounds negative, but I’ve been facing it pretty much throughout life. Now I have 2 small girls and am protective about how they are exposed and will be exposed. Thanks.”

In response…

My interest in cultural identity has been sparked by my work with a Bosnian named Nazif Hasanbegovic.  He has been pushing the concept of a reconstruction or establishment of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian identity since the ethnic cleansing in BiH in the 90s.  His approach to defining such an ideological framework is very pragmatic and can be experienced through tangible media and design.  He creates advertising campaigns aiming to break down various barriers that exist between people throughout the country.  He works to shift the unhealthy paradigms that still exist within BiH.

My interest and subsequent confrontation of the concept of cultural identity has been spurned on by a project that we did together in the small town of Travnik.  The city is in the countryside of Bosnia, and while it possessess many rich attributes, it has found itself sustaining progressively self-destructive habits.  This can be seen in the neglect of its historic landmarks, the patterns of movement within the urban environment, and within the mentalities of the citizens of its community. 

There, we found that many people consider particular places and things to represent the city, but that few individuals spend significant quantities of time in those places.  Instead, their patterns of movement and daily habits convey that they are living and working in ‘new’ parts of the city, the very parts that they often indicated held little intrigue for them. 

For example, the Konzum [a mixed-use shopping center] and those businesses within proximity to it were attracting people consistently.  And the housing that a great majority of citizens were living in was a relatively non-descript apartment complex that was gradually beginning to obscure the view of the mountain range behind it.  All of this is leading up to a great decay of a what once was a coherent urban cultural identity.  The very things that give the city of Travnik its unique qualities are the very things being precluded by ‘big business’ and consumers have cast their votes [dollars] at the homogenous Wal-Mart equivalent in the city to the point that its best landmarks and attractions are fading from importance.

This can translate into the United States, but not directly.  Because that we are such a melting pot, it is difficult to establish what specifically our cultural identity is.  We must apply the concept to our local communities because who we are as a nation is an amalgam of many cultures.  On a small scale, claiming and defining a ‘concrete’ identity is manageable and eventually nationally influential. 

What makes our locale unique?  How do we capitalize (in spirit and in dollars) on the qualities and places within our communities that comprise our cultural identity?  How do we refuse to vote our dollars toward businesses that destroy opportunities for original thinking and healthy action?

If we can start thinking locally, in a holistic manner, we can help to define our cultural identities.  This means, in agriculture, economy, politics, architecture, etc.  Individuality within our scope can be embraced, destructive mental and actual borders can be broken down, and we can move toward a better future.  This could all seem incoherent, but if this hasn’t answered the query…perhaps, I can further expound or articulate.

takeoff!

The first big Staunton show of the season will be at our place on Friday night. I’ll have a full band playing with me. Perkasie, from Pennsylvania will be coming to play as well. Come party with us!  Film, music, friends.