Last summer we had a conversation with my friend Julien about America’s fascination for chrome plating. Chrome trains, subways, trailers, cars, appliances, guns or even web browser.

Etymologically, chrome comes from the Greek word chroma, meaning color. However, chrome itself doesn’t have a proper color besides the one it reflects.

I thought about a license plate I had seen on a car earlier that day that was depicting an American flag accompanied by the watchword these colors never run.

We positively agreed on the fact that the United Stated should replace the Stars and Stripes by a flat chrome flag.

Seriously?

ONLY FOUR DAYS LEFT !!

Exhibition space of the Royal Institute of Art on the 4th floor of the Konstakademien building. Entrance Jakobsgatan 27, STOCKHOLM.

A number of exhibitions with and about books have been realized in the field of contemporary art and design in the last few years. Most of these exhibitions have focused on the structural aspect of the book as object or the book as reference material. Travelogue as Allegory takes this as given and sharpens the perspective with regards to form and content.

Similar to the unstable modes of projections and desire, the reasons for travel can be understood in different ways. The desire to travel can be thought as a curiosity for the unknown, a spirit of exploration, a lust for adventure or as an aim for education, for the impulse to find and locate oneself. Travelling can also be touristically motivated and as such follow the reports of predecessors. In order to achieve a temporal, as well as an economical advantage, travelling functions as part of an expansion of territory or the dimension of one’s responsibility: Travels may be motivated by the reason to possess.

Artists’ books, publications and printed matter, which have emerged from and through travels are at the core of the exhibition Travelogue as Allegory. The two-dimensional space of book pages, choreographed by the user’s logic of turning them is especially suitable to retrace three-dimensional realities and temporarily structured events. As travelogues, photo essays, adventure stories, sci-fi novels etc. they represent and reproduce personally experienced or fictional journeys, which become articulated through the publication.

Travelogue as Allegory reflects upon the connection between travelling and the artistic impulse of publishing and showing in the form of an exhibition. The choice of display is adressing both the issue of the freely circulating, ’travelling’ medium of the book, as well as its potential for use. Furthermore the connecting lines between the different publicly accessible, physical locations of books will be made visible: Two bookshops and two specialized libraries in Stockholm will display their book selections on the topic as an integral part of the exhibition.

With works by:
Ansel Adams, Lothar Baumgarten, Ulla von Brandenburg, Hussein Chalayan, Mariolijn Dijkman, Marie-Louise Ekman, Love Enqvist, Katja Eydel, Hamish Fulton, Goldin+Senneby, Martin Jacobsen, Gerry Johansson, Aglaia Konrad, Selma Lagerlöf, Carl von Linné, Rita McBride, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Shahrzad, Stephen Shore, Simon Starling, Jonathan Swift, Aby Warburg, Christopher Williams.

April 2nd, from 9 to 11.30pm

The British film director Peter Greenaway has been arguing for some 20 years now that cinema is dead and we are simply waiting for the dinosaur to roll over. In retaliation to this impending crisis Hollywood pumps more and more money into their productions in the vain hope that they can survive with their old fashioned formulas which are clearly biting the dust. Peter Gr…eenaway, lucid as ever, has a new vision of what cinema could become, which he calls ZINEMA. On Saturday March 2nd at the Kriterion he will give a live two hour illustrated lecture about this new approach of re-creating cinema. This event is being curated by Jeffrey Babcock under the theme of Cinema Degree Zero, a series of lectures/performances that pronounce the death of cinema in order to make space for new possibilities of filmmaking. This specific event is being realized in collaboration with cinema Kriterion.

Painter, novelist, critic, VJ, curator and one of the most daring and innovative filmmakers alive, Peter Greenaway is internationally famous for an oeuvre of films such as A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), Drowning by Numbers (1988) and The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989). His visionary fusion of art and film is incomparable to any other filmmaker today. More recently he has completed the ambitious three-part multimedia installation “The Tulse Luper Suitcases”. Ceaselessly creative, Peter Greenway is always pushing film forward as a progressive and provocative art, in both form and content. He is currently a professor of cinema studies at the European Graduate School in Switzerland.

Text by EGS.

Reservations: +31 206231708

Location: Kriterion Cinema, Roetersstraat 170, Amsterdam, Netherlands

“The Pillow Book”, 1997 (quoted in details by Mireille Berton’s article for Sang Bleu 3&4)

Today someone pointed out I stole his book several years after I stole it. He asked me where the book was. If I do not know where it is, I do not know where it is, and if it is with me, it is with me, I said. I mean, we are all transitioning to disembodied states. We are mostly no longer located where our bodies can be found. I heard someone saying he had heard that an essay question they ask on the undergraduate application to Yale is Are you your body?
I describe books as creatures, with joy. I am a creature, says the book in my head, stretching, and then i say God damn that was some creaturely motion you had going. Seriously, when i take it, it curls into me and closes its eyes and makes a sound like the barest sound of wind over the top of a glass bottle. The book never buys anything plastic, indeed. For instance, it buys only glass bottles and it keeps them, all in the drawer.
I know where the bottles are if I know where the bottles are, and i know they are not with me, cause they are in the drawer.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Le-Sante-Peccatrici/161972293846219

http://www.mondobizzarrogallery.com/exhibitions.asp?ID=36

http://www.bangart.it/sante-peccatrici/

http://www.rollingstonemagazine.it/cultura/gallerie/sante-tatuatrici-pregate-per-noi/32973/pagina/5

INTERVIEW WITH CURATOR VIOLA FROM HELL BETWEEN, BY MAXIME BUCHI, EDITED BY BEN PERDUE

Q. Who are you, what is your background?

Hello Maxime, my name is viola von hell, I’m a tattoo artist from Rome, working with several Italian studios from northern to central Italy. I come from a graphics and special effects background. Five years ago I decided to take a turn in my life and started tattooing. I felt the urge to experience something permanent and meaningful, especially in a society where everything is disposable. I was trying to become an independent and free woman, like the ones who worked in circuses during the Depression era. They showed their tattoos in order to express themselves and gain independence.

Q. How did you come up with such an idea?

It has always been clear to me that in Italy there are many female tattooers. I have also noticed how much effort it takes to be a tattooer, with lots of travel and continous research. So I said to myself: “why don’t we combine the efforts of each one in a project that can make our artistic skills known?”

I was thinking about this for months, I was very undecided, then I began looking for interested participants. At the same time I asked my colleagues what they thought about the idea of a group of female tattooers that constitutes an art exhibition. Everyone answered, a bit surprised, that nobody had ever made a show like this in Italy. So I contacted Margherita Baleni, editor of Tattoo Life and Tattoo Italia, and she immediately supported the project and also offered to write a piece about this venture.

We had to find a theme that had not yet been used and that would be exciting to every artist. So I decided to combine the sacred and the profane and create the project The Holy Sinners, to join the devil and holy water.

Who were the Saints? They were women who sacrificed themselves for their beliefs, who suffered tortures and torments in order not to give up that belief. Like us, like female tattooers today, struggling for our dreams and goals. Tattooers perhaps are a mix of effort and sin, so the theme of this art exibition was born. I have also had the pleasure of involving Luisa Gnecchi Rusconi, the famous Italian anthropologist – and wife of famous tattoo artist Gian Maurizio Fercioni – who has written books about tattoo culture.

Q. How do you perceive the evolution of women’s status in the world of tattooing?

I think that women represent an important part of the tattoo world. It is only a matter of time for our future affirmation. We belong to a group that is growing steadily, and we have more and more courage to claim our piece of the pie. We should keep in mind that women work in a different way than men and that this is very interesting. We have a different approach to tattoos and tattooing.

Q. Who are the people you choose?

I choose Italian artists who live in Italy and abroad, and who are active at international conventions, like Miss Arianna, Claudia de Sabe, Genziana, and young newcomers who have fresh perspectives.

Q. How did you select them?

Creating a list of Italian artists was not an easy task because I had to end up with a small number of women and girls, and I hade to take into account experience, skills and developmental ability. But I ended up with a number of interesting tattooers. I wanted to create a group of artists that together represents all the styles of the tattoo industry. Artists who use methods of expression like Realistic, Japanese traditional, Chicano and American traditional.

Q. What is the concept of the show, what will we see there?

The concept of the exhibition is to claim the specificity of female tattooing, the Italian scene, and create cohesion, exchange and collaboration between the artists.

The exhibition will open in Milan on February 28th and run until March 4th – with an event during Fashion Week -before moving to the Mondo Bizzarro art gallery from March 26th to April 14th. After that it will be travelling to other Italian cities.

Q. What is your personal opinion on contemporary tattoo culture?

The tattoo world today has lost some of the values from a time past. There are many people amongst us who tattoo only to achieve fame and fortune. But I trust in the fact that there are still those – even if they are modern tattooers – who firmly believe in values inherited from old school tattooers; values such as respect, devotion and loyalty for what you love and for tattoos.

In 1990-something, I inherited of a Nintendo Entertainment System form my one of my older cousins for Christmas. This was, unequivocally, the happiest moment of my entire childhood. This is not an uncommon story; the NES sold more than 61 million copies. But what’s always stayed with me is the durability of that memory. I can picture opening that Nintendo for the first time so vividly, and I’ll never forget the contours of the NES controller or the orange and gray gun that came with the system.

I played with the system hysterically for one week, then it broke. Or maybe someone around me broke it, so as to make my passion stop (frequently situation at the time, but bref). Drama.

Today, even as I’m beginning to forget the voices of dead relatives or friends, I can still hear the laughing dog in Duck Hunt. I can still hear the Moon level theme in Ducktales or the one-up sound effect in Super Mario Bros.

Hey, MeMo!

And this kid reminds me of someone.

“National Conference: Youth, Students and Education Workshop”
(Coalition of Resistance, UK)