socks-studio

Google terrifying vision for our future.
From Xkcd. Via Entschwindet & Vergeht.

This is the beatiful cover for the upcoming french translation edition of a novel by John D’Agata (originally titled: About a Mountain): a skillful conversion of famous Munch’s The Scream into a topographical map. (Sorry, I don’t know who’s the author)

I still haven’t read it, but the themes (an exploration of Las Vegas, the suicide rate of the city, man corruption and the danger of a future nuclear waste disposal site near the city…) are inviting, to say the least.

Belgian edition on Zones Sensibles.
Here’s a review

*Update*:

Zones Sensibles is also the french language editor of Tim Ingold’s “Lines, a brief history” (another great book / cover)

“The State of the World Atlas”, Michael Kidron and Ronald Segal. A Pluto Press Project. Heinemann, London, 1981.

Hardcover, 250 x 180mm, full colour, 66 maps.

Frontispiece description:

“The State of the World Atlas is revolutionary both in content and form, using creative cartography and innovatory graphics to portray the many forces that will shape world history in the eighties.

The State of the World Atlas provides a startling perspective on the cost of pursuing state interests, not least in the destruction of the environment and the erosion of human rights. It illustrates some of the challenges to the prevailing world system, hopefully emphasising in its closing pages the more positive of human values.”

Related: Paul Beige’s Cartography Collection on Flickr

While on la Periferia Domestica (a constant and very recommended reading) we stumbled upon a post about a miniature satire by Dimitris Polychroniadis.

“The Miracle of Fluo-colours” investigates religions’ language through the decontextualisation of slogans.

“Religion often serves as an emotional ‘lender of last resort’ in times of crisis. The idea for this series of maquette sculptures, comes from Christian church signs and billboards from the US. By stripping these religious quotes away from their physical and emotive context, the ‘message’ becomes more absolute, almost surreal. To emphasize this further, the text size has been exagerated in scale (compared to the figurines) and colour. The project is somewhat ‘street’ influenced by large scale advertising and slogan graffiti. The title of the series generates a contrast: The notion of God-sent miracles as an integral part of religious faith, against the marvels of man-made, modern age, industrial technology and it’s products such as fluoerscent materials and colours. Materials used: cardboard, foamboard, blue foam insulation material, sand, wood, maquette fugirines and trees, MDF, acrylic and spray paint, found minature of the Parthenon (plaster-made). Photography by Michalis Dalanikas & Dimitris Polychroniadis.”

This use of miniature dioramas is becoming almost an artistic subgenre: related, already blogged on Socks:

THOMAS DOYLE’S DISTILLATION, RECLAMATION AND BEARINGS SERIES

ISLANDS, BY RAINBOWMONKEY

MICRO FANTASY, BY WHITEVINYL

Our friend and school colleague Simone de Iacobis lives and works in Poland as an architect and photographer.

Miracle at the Vistula is his recent photographic series illustrating an interesting theory by architectural historian Tomasz Markiewicz: namely that the city of Warsaw (with most of former soviet communism capitals) was built according to precise strategical military purposes hidden behind the official propaganda.

A similar historiographical point of view was recently expressed by Eyal Weizman, (an architect, founder of the Decolonizing Architecture Institute, based in Tel-Aviv and London, who has conducted research on behalf of the human rights organization B’tselem on the planning aspects of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank) in the Cabinet article ‘The Wall and the Eye: An Interview with Eyal Weizman‘.

In that text the architect pinpoints the political and strategic forces that stretch the forms of the settlements one way or another and how they are embedded and hidden behind ideological and religious issues.

Also related: the on-going research Léopold Lambert is conducting about Weaponized Architecture.

Coming back to De Iacobis’ work, at one points it is asserted that “Warsaw is the only european capital which is not taking advantages from the riverside.” In fact this is also the case of Croatia’s capital Zagreb. Wouldn’t it be interesting, about this point, to undertake a comparative analysis between the two former communist cities? Let’s ask to our Croatian friends there.

In the meanwhile: these are the images and the descriptive text of “Miracle at the Vistula” (*):

“Warsaw is often considered chaotic. The downtown is made of urban scale elements which are not sufficiently present in the collective consciousness. The massive scale of the Second World War’s destruction largely removed the city’s fabric and gave to the postwar planners a huge freedom to rebuild the city as a mixture of reconstruction and newly created urban parts, in socialist-realist and modernist manner.
The architectural historian Tomasz Markiewicz recently prepared the exhibition: “Let’s Build a New Home. The Reconstruction of Warsaw in the period 1945-1952″ held by the “History Meeting House” in Warsaw.
Contextually he released an interview on this very same topic where he points out powerful assertion concerning precise strategical military purposes behind the official propaganda. Those thesis are most likely a truth which involves all the so called post-communistic countries, something what will affect the way of approaching the urban development debate.”

(*): Miracle at the Vistula appeared on Cityvision Magazine #5