I went to the Serpentine Gallery today to see Lygia Pape’s Magnetized Space. There I found hundreds of perfect, diagonal golden threads coming down from above, like beautiful rays of sunshine emerging from the sky. Apparently the installation is made from one continuous spool which, if true, is an amazing feat. I wanted to take some photos but it wasn’t permitted. I also desperately wanted to touch those threads!
Lygia Pape - Ttéia 1, C (Web) 2011 / Photo © 2011 Jerry Hardman-Jones
In the shop, I found a beautifully designed book. Every page I turned, I fell in love further. It is Sophie Calle’s Blind. In this work, Calle asks people blind from birth what their image of beauty is. She takes simple black and white portraits of her subjects and follows these with her interpretation of their description of beauty. As well as having normal text, the whole book is also typed in braille. It’s stunning. One of her subject’s comments made me feel sad - “I don’t need beautiful images in my brain. Since I can’t appreciate beauty, I’ve always run from it.”
Now to find justification for spending £75 on a book…
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Song for the new year
Beirut - The Rip Tide
This made me happy - I made it into the quarter finals for Pictorial Category for CPOY (College Photographer of the Year). This category is for ‘a graphic image that expresses beauty, tension, harmony, chaos and other abstract concepts through composition, tonal and color relationships more than through human interaction’. I got voted out at this stage however you can see my photo as number 9 out of 18 on the online podcast.
http://www.cpoy.org/index.php?s=Podcast&yr=66&id=194
Introducing a new online project by my talented friends Louise O’Kelly and Xica Aires, putting together in one place inspiring words, music and photos. Innovative and beautiful to look at!
http://www.xlwave.com/
Photo from http://julienstrangler.blogspot.com/
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sonnymoonmusic:
A lil acoustic ditty to sooth your high soul.
At the bottom of the valley in Málaga, Spain, in a makeshift shack built from an assortment of materials, eight people are sleeping on a mixture of mattresses, sofas and beds. It’s very late and the door is open to allow a cool breeze to come into the room. Various sounds can be heard – crickets, wild dogs, the flapping of the tarpaulin roof, snoring, and the continual blast of the TV that was never switched off. Clearest of all is the disturbing repetition of Santiago tossing and turning in his bed, pacing the room, getting up to go outside, wrapping himself in his blanket, while muttering over and over again, “No lo aguanto más” - I can’t take it anymore.
Santiago, 24, is a young man from Maracaibo, the second largest city in Venezuela. At the age of 14 he moved to Orlando, Florida in the United States with his mother and stayed there for ten years before coming to Spain. Stories of drug trafficking, fast money and guns are mentioned in his tale, as is the deep regret of things he witnessed during that time. Tanned and with a trim physique, there is a childlike quality about him – charming and playful, yet stubborn and manipulative. His story is one of internal struggle and isolation, battling with his demons for the past few months in an unconventional rehab in the hills of La Palmilla, Málaga.
I have spent the last two weeks following a young drug addict living in an unconventional rehab in the hills of La Palmilla, Málaga in Spain. Tales of a strong community and its internal struggles to follow.
I think summer has arrived…
With over 28,000 fans on Facebook and a staggering 4 million views on YouTube, Nikoline Nielsen with her outspoken beliefs is allegedly the most-viewed Dane within Denmark.
“You can have your own culture at home,” she says. “But when you go out in society, you need to be part of the group, learn to speak Danish — if you want to have a job, you need to take that headscarf off.”
However, it is not Nikoline’s Danish People’s Party membership that made her famous ― it was a bet…
For the full article and the rest of our magazine, ‘Europe’s New Challenges’, click here.
As the class of Spring 2011, we are proud to share that our teachers declared our magazine the best magazine ever produced at the Danish School of Media & Journalism!
