socks-studio

As a complement to today’s Funambulist post on Rebel Cities, the last essay by marxism historian David Harvey, (that you can integrate with Owen Hatherley’s review, or, if you understand french, with Urbain trop Urbain‘s) here’s a direct link to the complete book Megacities (Possible urban worlds), by the same author.

The book was published by the Megacities foundation in the occasion of the lecture given by Mr.Harvey on Nov 16th, 2000 as the fourth of a session of nine on the future of Megacities.

The work addresses the need for an utopianism which is “different from the traditional, static utopianism where space dominates time”. Our revitalized, dialectical utopianism should consist of space and time simultaneously. It should be space oriented as well as process oriented. So to Mr. Harvey it is not an utopianism where everything is fixed; history has shown that Utopia can also be dynamic.”
(Full text from the keynote’s review here)

Further read:
The right to the city

This exhibition at the Betonsalon Art Center in Paris tries to address the socio-economic, cultural and political implications behind the worldwide circulation of tropical plants since the 16th century.

Through anthropologists Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff’s concepts of “social life” of things or “cultural biography” of objects, Tropicomania shows the implications of the expansions of tropical products from the local to the global scale.

Artworks, scientific illustrations, maps, films are showed to address “the interrelation between science, exoticism and commerce, and the power relations engendered by this very alliance.”

Read more.
Commodity Pathway Diversion

Colonial garden, 1910s – expedition of plantation in “Wardian cases”, intended for the gardens of experimentation of Bingerville (Ivory Coast), Sor (Senegal), Papetee (Tahiti). © Historical library of the Cirad

Mark Dion, “Iceberg and Palm Trees”, 2007, teddy bear, tar, plastic plant, straps, aluminium box, wooden crate, 330 x 170 x 100 cm, unique piece. Courtesy : In Situ Fabienne Leclerc gallery, Paris, photograph : Rebecca Fanuele

Otobong Nkanga, “Contained Measures of land”, 2008, volcanic sand, cactus, grass, wood and metal plaques, 500cm x 230 x 50 cm, Courtesy : Otobong Nkanga

Lois Weinberger, “Prayer Book”, 1976, folded tobacco leaves from my grandfather, Courtesy : Lois Weinberger

Lois Weinberger, “Untitled”, 2003, Ventilator, wire, wood, metal, bean husk 123 x 45 x 32 cm, Courtesy : Lois Weinberger

Marie Preston, “Table servie” , 2009-2010, Enamelled terra-cotta, brioche, fruits, vegetables and wood, Courtesy : Marie Preston

Claire Pentecost, “Intensive farming with plastic greenhouse effect near the sea”, Almeria, Spain, 2005, photograph. Courtesy : Claire Pentecost

Yo-Yo Gonthier, “extract of carnet leporello”, 2012, Courtesy : Yo-Yo Gonthier

Dream Diary is a series of surreal illustrations depicting house comfort situation with a morbid twist.

From trendhunter:
“Dreams have a tendency to use imagery and emotions that are kept buried within the subconscious, and these illustrations are a great example of that blur between the alert and reverie.”

vakavalo.com

Back to Socks from Rome and the lecture!

We remember, from our time as students at the architecture school, a typical lecture in “Descriptive Geometry”, on the perspective restitution of Velazquez’s “Las Meniñas“.  From the supposed, (historically established), height of a single stair’s step we were able to derive a whole plan and section with the proper positions of the characters and the real point of view of the scene. The science of representation was in a mutual dialogue with artistic historiography.

Lately a lot of collective effort has been focused on the reconstruction of the scenario of Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window, bringing to light the architecture behind the hidden secrets of a demanding plot.

Marialuisa Pacini was able to build a set model for a an adaptation of the drama in modern London.

Jeff Desom used modern video editing tools for dissecting the film and stitching back together. What he obtained was a single panoramic view of the entire backyard.

Here’s the video and some scene of his READ WINDOW Loop 2011 installation:

The “Wrong House, The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock” provides a plan and section of the Jeffries apartment complex:

Things Magazine, from which this post is inspired, informs us that this movie features “diegetic cinematography”. This is the case of movies whose denotative narrative material does not include only the narration itself , but also the fictional space and time dimension implied by the narrative. See Wikipedia.

Rhizome.org voice on “diegetic cinematography” features an analisys of the recent movie Chronicle and opens the speculation to uncharted territories, questioning the relationship between truth and representation, violence and entertainment : “Unlike Carrie, which was made for a generation that grew up watching the Vietnam War unfold in one hour nightly episodes,  Chronicle was made by, and for, the generation who was sitting in home room when the World Trade Center was attacked. And more than the content, the way Chronicle was filmed reflects psycho-social terror of that experience.”

From Things Magazine:  ”The complete archive of Synapse Magazine , a 1970s publication about the nascent electronic music scene”.

Download and enjoy.