Looking for Eric

I was looking forward to see the last film of Ken Loach which was nominated for the Palme d'Or prize at Cannes. And finally I saw it last Sunday in Paris!

It tells the story of a postman who searches for resolution after a string of failed relationships, and finds it comes in the form of visitations from his Manchester United football legend Eric Cantona.

The film is simply clever, exhilarating, sad and tense! I post the trailer to have an idea...

http://www.lookingforericmovie.co.uk/

Monumenta series in Grand Palais

Anselm Kiefer, Monumenta 2007

Richard Serra, Monumenta 2008

Richard Serra, Monumenta 2008

The recently renovated Grand Palais is one of the great historic buildings of Paris, and the world. Created for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, this monumental exhibition space features a glass roof rising to a height of 45 metres beneath its central dome. The vast 'nave' extends for 200 metres at ground level, covering some 13,500 square metres in a single span.

In this majestic building from two years has taken place Monumenta an annual event which featured some of today's greatest living artists as Anselm Kiefer for the first edition in 2007 and Richard Serra in 2008. Any artist is invited to create a series of new installations especially for the huge volumes of the Palais.

Next guests will be Christian Boltanski ( January- February 2010), Anish Kapoor(2011) and Daniel Buren (2012).

http://www.grandpalais.fr

Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance

Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s film HOME was aired on international television-channels last week. We like to consider this film as a missing part to the Quatsi trilogy.

Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is the first and most famous motionpicture in the trilogy. The film is directed by Godfrey Reggio and features music composed by Philip Glass. It is followed by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoiqatsi (2002).

HOME shows clearly in what (miss-) understanding we live with our placet earth. The Quatsi trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature, and technology.

The film consists primarily of slow motion and time lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music.

In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.

http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/

http://www.home-2009.com

Astrup Fearnley Museum and Operahuset in Oslo

Oslo has a rich and varied cultural life. Although it is an expensive city if you compare it to Paris or London, you can find lots of contemporary art collections and exhibitions mostly free. 

Two of the several attractions I saw in my last journey were the Astrup Fearnley Museum and the Opera house.

   

Olafur Eliasson, Your Colour Memory, 2004

Anselm Kiefer, Zweistormland/The High Priestess, 1986-89

Cai Guo-Chiang, The Eagle has arrived, 2001

The Astrup Fernley Museum of modern Art is a privately owned institution opened in 1993 which has a large holding collection of Norvegian and International art and presents temporary exhibitions from the post-war period to our days. The collection include names such as Matthew Barney, Cindy Sherman, Gehrard Richter, Damien Hirst to name a few.

Current  and future exhibitions are Indian Highway, an exhibition in progress in collaboration with Serpentine Gallery from the 02 April to the 06 September 2009 and Bjarne Melgaard "mid work" retrospective from 23 September 2009 to 02 January 2010.

On 15th June 1999 the National Assembly (Stortinget) approved the building of a new opera house in Oslo. In 2000, Norwegian architect firm Snøhetta was chosen as winner of the anonymous architectural competition. Groundworks began in 2003, and the Opera house has re-opened since April 2008. 

The structure provides a total area of 38,500 m² and includes 1,100 rooms, one of which has 1,350 seats and another has up to 400 seats. 

The materials, with their specific weight, colour, texture and temperature, have been vital to the design of the building. Snøhettas architecture is narative. It is the materials which form the defining elements of the spaces. It is the meeting of the materials which articulates the architecture through varied detail and precision.

In the operahouse, three main materials were specified as early as the competition entry: White stone for the ‘carpet’, timber for the ‘wave wall’, and metal for the ‘factory’. During the continued work on the project, a fourth material, glass, which allows for the exposure of the underside of the ‘carpet’, has been given specific attention.

http://afmuseet.no/

http://www.operaen.no/

Cabaret Voltaire

The Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich was founded in February 1916, during World War 1 by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings. Their purpose was to create a centre for artistic entertainment where guest artists could experiment new ways of perfomances.

The Dadaism movement sprouted from this scenario, and in 1917 the first exhibition comprised works from Arp, Man Ray, Duchamp, Marcel Janco, Hans Richter, Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Modigliani.

Today the Cabaret Voltaire is still a spot for well known contemporary artists and their performances (such as Jonathan Meese) or an exhibition space for newcomers of the blooming swiss art scene.

Cabaret Voltaire

Spiegelgasse 1

8801 Zurich

Switzerland

00 41 43 268 57 20

www.cabaretvoltaire.ch

Chourouk Hriech

"Water is captive to the well" #2, 2009 

25,4 cm/ 25,4 cm

Rotring and indian ink on water-colour paper

Copyright © Chourouk Hriech

"Water is captive to the well" #3, 2009 

25,4 cm/ 25,4 cm

Rotring and indian ink on water-colour paper

Copyright © Chourouk Hriech

"Water is captive to the well" #4, 2009 

25,4 cm/ 25,4 cm

Rotring and indian ink on water-colour paper

Copyright © Chourouk Hriech

Chourouk Hriech is a young artist who was born in Bourg en Bresse, France and is of Moroccan decent. She has never totally settled and lives a nomadic life-style dividing her time between Morocco, France and wherever her travels take her.

Hriech's drawings reflect this confluence of inspirations and experiences, also incorporating the mythological and imaginary. 

In this series the lines symbolize a beautiful travel, full of beasts and adventures, where the bodies are rewrote in the landscapes. 

In the # 2 an elephant meets an armed girl without her body. The architectures become part of the savannah in a mimetic way and the eye can't anymore distinguish between the modernism and archaism.

A warrior girl on a ship in the #3, who is cruising in the sea of life, bringing with herself pieces of her past.

Hriech plays with her pen in a self-styled black and white geometrical zone between cultures, dreams and geographies taken for example from the Morocco mountains or the French building blocks depicted on the # 4 drawing.

She will exhibit her works in "Printemps de Septembre" Festival of contemporary images in Toulouse, September 2009; in

" Biennale de Marrakech" in November 2009 and in "Project Room" at the CRAC of Sète.  

 

http://chourouk.hriech.free.fr/

http://www.marrakechnews.net/Biennale

www.printempsdeseptembre.com/

http://crac.lr.free.fr/

Smoked salmon macaroni

This is one of our best recipes, with a mix of nordic and mediterranean flavours!

Those are the ingredients for you and your loved: get 100 g of Norvegian atlantic salmon, a little garlic, some parsley, 3 soup-spoons of Tuscan olive oil and a small quantity of red pepper: put all together in a mixer to make a sauce.

While you are cooking 150g of De Cecco mezze penne put the sauce in a little pan just to sauté it for 3 minutes. 

Dress the pasta and serve hot with a frozen Alsacian wine.

The result? Why don't you tell us?