The Paris-based, young Greek artist to watch Iris Touliatou has a Palais de Tokyo Modules solo show opening on Thursday 9 September. Her fascinating practice crosshatches a physical urban construct over an architectural landscape yet to be realised; a hanging state of cognitive dissonance in which fiction and reality exist simultaneously. Iris’s work across various media displays a unique and specialised depth of research making it equal parts visually stunning and highly sophisticated.

From the exhibition text: The Xenia hotel chain, built in the 1960s, was central to a plan to modernize the Greek tourist infrastructure to convey a new image of the country. These holiday resorts built in idyllic landscapes by Greek architects influenced by Le Corbusier were the symbol of the postwar era at the time. The
architecture was then seen as a real marketing tool, passed on by the film industry that chose these new leisure places as shooting locations, as in the film “Apollo Goes on Holiday”. Filmed in 1968, partly at the Xenia Hotel in Nafplio, this musical comedy playfully conveys a new way of living.

Basing her ideas on this evidence, Iris Touliatou embarks on a dialogue between different historical facts. While the American Marshall Plan was supporting the recovery of postwar Europe, NASA was developing the Apollo moon program.
The exhibition, its title alluding to the aforementioned film, presents two new works. A replica of the shade screens that were present on the façades of the Xenia hotels, “ECLIPSE II (Parasol Set)”, at the center of the space looks like the setting for a scene to be acted out: the metaphor of the human dream. The artist weaves a mesh of references. Thus the collage series “ECLIPSE I” associates the official photographs of the Xenia hotels with cuttings from 1960s architecture magazines, advertisements for new materials such as concrete, and publications recounting celestial phenomena. Through a work involving collage, cutting-out, associations or overlaying, new images appear, operating along the lines of an unconscious language, and laden with mysticism.

With the support of the Onassis Foundation

Palais de Tokyo / Module 1 / Iris Touliatou / Apollo Goes On Holiday

His back will arch, his knees will bend, his fingers will find your neck and your hair. You probably never payed attention before. Though the rules of engagement are not clearly delineated, your role is a passive one. There will be no kissing, of course, and the more sensitive spots are off limits to your hands. Nevertheless, Summer was bold enough, while sitting on your lap and facing away, to take his hands in yours and place them on your bare hips.

- May I go now?

- Yes, you may go.

(silence)
(sudden change of heart)

- No, stay a little longer.

- May I come tomorrow?

- Yes, you may come.

- What shall I wear?

- Nothing.

(silence)
(sudden change of heart)

- No, only roller blades.

- At what time shall I come?

- Come at 4pm. When the clown will be trussed up.

- May I meet the clown first?

- No, you may not.

(silence)
(sudden change of heart)

- Yes, but you need special permission.

- Where can I get permission?

- You may obtain it from the roller-coaster office.

- Ok.

As possibly the first, and certainly the most obvious, canvas upon which human differences can be written and read, skin has been a topic of continuous interest in anthropology and related disciplines from the earliest descriptions of exotic people to postmodern theorizing about the body in contemporary society.
Skin, as a visible way of defining individual identity and cultural difference, is not only a highly elaborated preoccupation in many cultures; it is also the subject of wide ranging and evolving scholarly discourse in the humanities and social sciences.
Although my focus is mainly on the anthropological literature, it is impossible to ignore work in other fields. Today, archaeologists and historians are rewriting the history of the body using evidence from newly discovered ancient bodies, artworks, and texts.
Discussions of contemporary “body work” merge the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, philosophy, and gender studies… each discipline mapping onto the body its shifting theoretical preoccupations.

Check out this silent film from 1926 that takes us “through the basic physiology of the human skin, combining anatomical education and basic healthcare advice. We see the epidermis and its replacement, the structure of the underlying dermis, nails, sweat glands and hair follicles.”

The ‘Skin’ exhibition was discovered by our editor Adeena Mey.

Watching MESRINE a few months ago in Switzerland, I intuitively thought: This film is indisputably driving from the French cinema, however its core is definitely built with American tools. Pretty bad movie, but entertaining and featuring a great cast of actors. For those who are tired of the French “Nouvelle Vague” legacy, go for the French “Nouvelle Hollywood”! Opening on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by Jean-François Richet; written by Abdel Raouf Dafri, based on the novel “L’Instinct de Mort” by Jacques Mesrine; director of photography, Robert Gantz; edited by Bill Pankow; music by Marco Beltrami; production designer, Émile Ghigo; costumes by Virginie Montel; produced by Thomas Langmann; released by Music Box Films.

a very interesting article which only requires rudimentary knowledge of the theoretical principles of quantum physics.

“… They say an infinite number of doppelgängers, or copies, performing the experiment is equivalent to one observer doing the experiment an infinite number of times. This picture ties the abstract Born rule to something concrete – the existence of multiple, identical observers; a possibility that could arise if our universe is large.

In their scheme, some of these copies would get one outcome in a quantum experiment and others another outcome, with the relative numbers agreeing with the Born rule. So instead of a single observer who doesn’t know the outcome of an experiment ahead of time, in this picture multiple observers get different outcomes, and quantum uncertainty “comes from the fact that you don’t know which observer you are”, Aguirre says.“

Violence can be disapproved from a moral point of view, but let’s face it, the real, ultimate truth about violence was revealed once for all in Starship Troopers.

Dizzy: My mother always told me that violence doesn’t solve anything.
Jean Rasczak: Really? I wonder what the city founders of Hiroshima would have to say about that. [to Carmen] You.
Carmen: They wouldn’t say anything. Hiroshima was destroyed.
Jean Rasczak: Correct. Violence has resolved more conflicts than anything else. The contrary opinion that violence doesn’t solve anything is merely wishful thinking at its worst.