Footnotes to Jan's room
Oct. 6th, 2008 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusA trip to a friend's flat is a chance to absorb and exchange information -- what they're into, where they've been, where they're going. You get onto the same page with someone by entering their space. You synchronize watches, you do "signature specification". It's field work in a flat.
At the weekend my friend Jan Lindenberg -- an art student when I met him, Jan now works in sustainability design research for a telecoms company -- invited about four of us to his place (he just lives round the corner in Neukolln) so that we could tell him about stuff he could do on his upcoming trip to Japan. Jeweller Naoko Ogawa also wanted me to advise her on places to go in Vienna during her upcoming trip there. And Hisae needed her clunky, broken printer tested.
As usual -- and with Jan's permission -- I snapped the stuff on his tables and shelves, if only so I could google it later. Someone's room is like an appendix of footnotes. Or do I mean that a blog entry about someone's room is like a footnoted appendix to the room? In the photo above, for instance, there's an URL: CAC Bretigny turns out to be a contemporary art space in Brétigny, France, currently showing two artists exhibited in this year's Berlin Biennial, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. Their 2006 work Flash in the Metropolitan saw them lighting various ethnographic pieces in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art with strobe lights, highlighting a question I raised in my Museums are better than clubs piece: "What if Dionysus lived in a museum?"
Jan's flat is chilly compared with ours, but the lack of heat just shows his commitment to sustainability, and -- being as big a Japan fan as I am -- he supplies Japanese-style blankets (recycled ones!) that you can either fold on the floor and sit on or drape around yourself. I'm very jealous of his Technics SL1200 turntable, which on Saturday was playing New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies -- a record I bought when it first came out in 1983, and which produced all sorts of weird juxtapositions in my head (when I was listening to it I was working a data entry job at Lloyds Bowmaker in Edinburgh, living in a mezzanine room overlooking the Firth of Forth). The CD is Kalk Seeds, a Karaoke Kalk compilation which includes a Toog track.
Flexibility -- Design in a fast-changing society is an exhibition Jan recently saw in Turin (currently Design World Capital for 2008). It's held in an old prison (the Designboom coverage is excellent, and the location looks amazing), and continues for another week. The exhibition "explores the diverse ways of designing the world and society starting from a concept of adaptability, from the perspective of transforming town and city environments into more elastic places, durable but also welcoming and changeable spaces". Fernando Brizio's Renewable Clothing (in which ink seeps out of open felt pens speared into a white dress) is strangely sexy:
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I also liked New York design duo Antenna's pretty sandbag installation, an aestheticization of a flexible element associated with emergencies, wars, disasters. There's nothing like a crisis to make you focus on flexibility, impermanence and improvisation.
Jan has a framed picture on his wall of Yama-Sama from Tokyo Bopper, who's a bit of an icon at our house too. Above the record player is a poster for a Berlin photography show (now over) called PUNKTUM. You can see a Flickr slideshow of images from it here.
Designers, Visionaries and other Stories is a collection of essays on sustainable design. This is very much the theme of my Post-Materialist column: John Wood’s essay, Relative Abundance: Fuller’s Discovery that the Glass is Always Half Full, for instance, is about the "hedonic treadmill", and calls for a new dream to replace the never-satisfied dream of American consumerism. In the new dream -- the replacement -- we'd learn to “accept rewards that place less emphasis on income, and more on an enhanced quality of life”.
I turned immediately to the essay entitled "Why design anything at all?" which says: "Asking people to stop consuming is a pointless endeavour, when what we should be pursuing is redirective behaviour which steers consumers towards greener and more sustainable alternatives". By the way, Naoko is playing a new iPod app in the picture above which turns the screen into a tactile, playable guitar keyboard surprisingly like a real guitar. Does this make us consume fewer guitars (saving wood, nylon and metal) or more iPods?
The flyer is for a show (now ended) called Sex Brennt, about how the Nazis in 1933 burned the books in the library of Magnus Hirschfeld's pioneering sexual research institute, the Institute for Sexual Science. Freud's books were also burned. "Down with the destruction of souls through the overvaluation of sexual drive!" the Nazis shouted.
Suicidal Textiles is a piece shown at Nobel Textiles, a show at the ICA which showcased a collaboration between art students from St Martins and Nobel-winning scientists. The Suicidal Textiles project saw designer Carole Collet paired with biologist Sir John Sulston. The idea is that decay -- in the form of programmed cell death and bacterial breakdown -- becomes included in the design process:
"The design concept is inspired by the process of programmed cell death; deliberate cell suicide, which enables organs and limbs to develop. This process is crucial to the shape and function of every organism. Carole chose to echo this principle in her collection of garden furniture and textiles that will evolve with time; the final forms only to be revealed at the end of the ‘apoptosis’ process. Using biodegradable (natural) and durable (synthetic) materials. Portions of the furniture and textiles will slowly biodegrade to reveal different final forms. The process of biodegradation will also support C. elegans, which feeds on the bacteria that live in soil and compost."
Hisae is always telling me to throw out the old copies of Relax magazine we have lying around the house -- the magazine ceased publication in 2006 -- but Jan has them too, probably for the same reason I do: ProQM had a fire-sale on all its unsold copies when they moved. The battleship-like forms are actually the silhouettes of buildings, from some exhibition or other, but I'm not sure where or what. Jan, care to give us a footnote?
At the weekend my friend Jan Lindenberg -- an art student when I met him, Jan now works in sustainability design research for a telecoms company -- invited about four of us to his place (he just lives round the corner in Neukolln) so that we could tell him about stuff he could do on his upcoming trip to Japan. Jeweller Naoko Ogawa also wanted me to advise her on places to go in Vienna during her upcoming trip there. And Hisae needed her clunky, broken printer tested.
As usual -- and with Jan's permission -- I snapped the stuff on his tables and shelves, if only so I could google it later. Someone's room is like an appendix of footnotes. Or do I mean that a blog entry about someone's room is like a footnoted appendix to the room? In the photo above, for instance, there's an URL: CAC Bretigny turns out to be a contemporary art space in Brétigny, France, currently showing two artists exhibited in this year's Berlin Biennial, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. Their 2006 work Flash in the Metropolitan saw them lighting various ethnographic pieces in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art with strobe lights, highlighting a question I raised in my Museums are better than clubs piece: "What if Dionysus lived in a museum?"
Jan's flat is chilly compared with ours, but the lack of heat just shows his commitment to sustainability, and -- being as big a Japan fan as I am -- he supplies Japanese-style blankets (recycled ones!) that you can either fold on the floor and sit on or drape around yourself. I'm very jealous of his Technics SL1200 turntable, which on Saturday was playing New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies -- a record I bought when it first came out in 1983, and which produced all sorts of weird juxtapositions in my head (when I was listening to it I was working a data entry job at Lloyds Bowmaker in Edinburgh, living in a mezzanine room overlooking the Firth of Forth). The CD is Kalk Seeds, a Karaoke Kalk compilation which includes a Toog track.
Flexibility -- Design in a fast-changing society is an exhibition Jan recently saw in Turin (currently Design World Capital for 2008). It's held in an old prison (the Designboom coverage is excellent, and the location looks amazing), and continues for another week. The exhibition "explores the diverse ways of designing the world and society starting from a concept of adaptability, from the perspective of transforming town and city environments into more elastic places, durable but also welcoming and changeable spaces". Fernando Brizio's Renewable Clothing (in which ink seeps out of open felt pens speared into a white dress) is strangely sexy:
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I also liked New York design duo Antenna's pretty sandbag installation, an aestheticization of a flexible element associated with emergencies, wars, disasters. There's nothing like a crisis to make you focus on flexibility, impermanence and improvisation.
Jan has a framed picture on his wall of Yama-Sama from Tokyo Bopper, who's a bit of an icon at our house too. Above the record player is a poster for a Berlin photography show (now over) called PUNKTUM. You can see a Flickr slideshow of images from it here.
Designers, Visionaries and other Stories is a collection of essays on sustainable design. This is very much the theme of my Post-Materialist column: John Wood’s essay, Relative Abundance: Fuller’s Discovery that the Glass is Always Half Full, for instance, is about the "hedonic treadmill", and calls for a new dream to replace the never-satisfied dream of American consumerism. In the new dream -- the replacement -- we'd learn to “accept rewards that place less emphasis on income, and more on an enhanced quality of life”.
I turned immediately to the essay entitled "Why design anything at all?" which says: "Asking people to stop consuming is a pointless endeavour, when what we should be pursuing is redirective behaviour which steers consumers towards greener and more sustainable alternatives". By the way, Naoko is playing a new iPod app in the picture above which turns the screen into a tactile, playable guitar keyboard surprisingly like a real guitar. Does this make us consume fewer guitars (saving wood, nylon and metal) or more iPods?
The flyer is for a show (now ended) called Sex Brennt, about how the Nazis in 1933 burned the books in the library of Magnus Hirschfeld's pioneering sexual research institute, the Institute for Sexual Science. Freud's books were also burned. "Down with the destruction of souls through the overvaluation of sexual drive!" the Nazis shouted.
Suicidal Textiles is a piece shown at Nobel Textiles, a show at the ICA which showcased a collaboration between art students from St Martins and Nobel-winning scientists. The Suicidal Textiles project saw designer Carole Collet paired with biologist Sir John Sulston. The idea is that decay -- in the form of programmed cell death and bacterial breakdown -- becomes included in the design process:
"The design concept is inspired by the process of programmed cell death; deliberate cell suicide, which enables organs and limbs to develop. This process is crucial to the shape and function of every organism. Carole chose to echo this principle in her collection of garden furniture and textiles that will evolve with time; the final forms only to be revealed at the end of the ‘apoptosis’ process. Using biodegradable (natural) and durable (synthetic) materials. Portions of the furniture and textiles will slowly biodegrade to reveal different final forms. The process of biodegradation will also support C. elegans, which feeds on the bacteria that live in soil and compost."
Hisae is always telling me to throw out the old copies of Relax magazine we have lying around the house -- the magazine ceased publication in 2006 -- but Jan has them too, probably for the same reason I do: ProQM had a fire-sale on all its unsold copies when they moved. The battleship-like forms are actually the silhouettes of buildings, from some exhibition or other, but I'm not sure where or what. Jan, care to give us a footnote?
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 10:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 11:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 11:23 am (UTC)I saw them live at the chandeliered Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh at about this time, bathed in blue light. It was the perfect setting for that fantastic juxtaposition at the heart of New Order: the monumentality of the music and the scrappy directness of Bernard's lyrics: "You've caught me at a bad time, so why don't you... piss off?"
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I'll never forget Tony Wilson showing the video for my Hairstyle of the Devil on his TV show "The Other Side of Midnight" and remarking "It sounds like a certain band from Salford". And it did.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 12:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 03:03 pm (UTC)-r
Hmmmm.....
Date: 2008-10-06 07:19 pm (UTC)When white people go away to college, they tend to study what are knowns as the Arts. This includes actual Art, English, History, Classics, and Philosophy. These can of course be broken down further into Film, Womyn’s Studies (yes the spelling is correct), Communications, Gender Studies, and so forth. It is important to note that a high percentage of white people also get degrees in Political Science, which is pretty much like arts, and only seems to have the word “science” in it to make white people feel better about themselves.
and -- being as big a Japan fan as I am -- he supplies Japanese-style blankets
Though there is full white consensus on a number of white things, there is perhaps nothing that draws more universal white acclaim than the island nation of Japan. It should be noted, that some white people harbor SOME ill will toward Japan because of whaling, killing dolphins or Nanking. But those are generally considered isolated incidents that do not indict the entire nation.
so that we could tell him about stuff he could do on his upcoming trip to Japan. Jeweller Naoko Ogawa also wanted me to advise her on places to go in Vienna during her upcoming trip there.
White person travelling can be broken into two categories - First World and Third World. First world is Europe and Japan, and man, this travel is not only beloved but absolutely essential in their development as white people.
I turned immediately to the essay entitled "Why design anything at all?" which says: "Asking people to stop consuming is a pointless endeavour, when what we should be pursuing is redirective behaviour which steers consumers towards greener and more sustainable alternatives".
Recycling is a part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much. Recycling is fantastic! You can still buy all the stuff you like (bottled water, beer, wine, organic iced tea, and cans of all varieties) and then when you’re done you just put it in a DIFFERENT bin than where you would throw your other garbage. And boom! Environment saved! Everyone feels great, it’s so easy! (...)
Hey, this works, let's expand on it...
As a complement to the Wired article that just went up, Why Apple Makes Me Cry, I thought I'd make a pictorial history of all the Apple computers I've owned.
Plain and simple, white people don’t just like Apple, they love and need Apple to operate. On the surface, you would ask yourself, how is that white people love a multi-billion dollar company with manufacturing plants in China, mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices?
Simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.
I drink it in the morning and it has a good effect
It's hidden in a cardboard box that no-one can detect
It's made by careful labourers in lands of poverty
And shipped around the ocean for c-connoisseurs like me
It is a known fact that white people consume, on average 25 different teas in a given year. Back in the old days, white people would go all over the world to get teas from places like India and Sri Lanka. They were pretty into it and all of a sudden white people are into tea. But as we moved forward, white people were like “man, one kind of tea is not enough, we need more.”
Re: Hmmmm.....
Date: 2008-10-06 07:23 pm (UTC)95% of white males have at one point in their lives, experienced yellow fever. Many factors have contributed to this phenomenon such as guilt from head taxes, internment camps, dropping the Nuclear bomb and the Viet Nam War.
The Architectural Association is one of the places I feel at home in these days when I go back to Britain. (...) When I was there in October my friends from Abake -- and James Goggin, who made my last two sleeves -- were showing in the ground floor exhibition space. Anyone attacking the spirit of the AA is basically not a friend of mine, just as anyone attacking egalitarian idealism or the Bauhaus is basically on the other side of the political divide.
If you ask white people what they love about cities they don’t live in, they will say “restaurants,” “culture,” and “architecture.”. They just can’t get enough of old buildings or ultramodern buildings next to old buildings. If you want to fit in with white people you need to learn about IM Pei, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry, and a whole swath of others. Also, be prepared to say “Bauhaus” a lot.
I thought something I've often thought recently: that Modernism, like the Situationists' hacienda, is yet to be built. People may have "modern" houses -- in the sense that they have garages, aircon and flushing toilets -- but they don't generally have Modernist houses, houses that fit Le Corbusier's Five Points of Modern Architecture. (...) I noticed quirky details you don't see in the magazine pictures. (...) -- a barbecue grill, a Le Corbusier chair up on the terrace
When white people envision their dream home, a key part of the fantasy involves a least one piece of furniture designed by a famous architect from the 1930s.
After seeing the biennial I went flathunting, ending up in Neukoln -- the only area where I could find decor shabby enough to satisfy my craving for patina, which is, finally, character, personality, history, texture.
The love affair between white people and old stuff literally goes back for hundreds of years. In the older days, it was almost exclusively contained within the realm of furniture.
My new post to The Post-Materialist is about fixie bikes: the fixed gear cycling craze which is currently putting hipsters in Tokyo, Berlin, London (...)
A good place to find white people on a Saturday is at a Bike Shop. Bike shops are almost entirely staffed and patronized by white people! But not all white people love bicycles in the same way, there is much diversity. First up, we have the younger urban white folks who absolutely love their fixed gear bicycles.
Christ aside, and they're stale in stinky winding sheets -- revitalisation just isn't celebrated in Christianity in this way. Possibly because Christianity was battling to displace exactly the sort of fertility religions we see in Shinto -- the world's most active agrarian cult, and the only one seriously to have marked an advanced industrial nation.
White people will often say they are “spiritual” but not religious. Which usually means that they will believe any religion that doesn’t involve Jesus.
It's one hell of a "fashion shoot" -- a grotesque collision of the trivial and the tragic -- but I happened to be wearing Graniph t-shirts before and during 9/11. If you buy two, you see, you get a reduction. Just before leaving Japan to return to my apartment in New York, in early September 2001, I'd bought two shirts at Graniph's store in Shimokitazawa.
Many people and cultures view t-shirts as a simple piece of apparel that can be acquired cheaply and worn in casual situations. For white people, it’s never that easy. The t-shirt is one of the most complex and expressive items in their entire wardrobe. Your choice of casualwear says a lot about you, and there are stringent rules and hierarchies associated with T-shirts that you must know before venturing into any white-dominated social situations.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 07:32 pm (UTC)Cornelius Videos
Date: 2008-10-06 07:36 pm (UTC)Enjoy.
http://videos.antville.org/stories/1842303/#comments
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 07:39 pm (UTC)Re: Hmmmm.....
Date: 2008-10-06 07:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 07:51 pm (UTC)Re: Hmmmm.....
Date: 2008-10-06 08:03 pm (UTC)It takes one to know one (hey, I rank high up there myself -posting from my MacBook on my IKEA desk, wearing a designer t-shirt).
-- is so pre-crash
Yes it is.
It will be interesting to see what will happen to the hipster "culture" when the merde hits the fan...
Re: Hmmmm.....
Date: 2008-10-06 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 09:51 pm (UTC)Data Entry is a real mindnumber and can lead to really aberrant behaviour.
Dreams become nightmares.
As I am still in a sense a media librarian you I suppose are still entering data!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-06 10:22 pm (UTC)God, what a depressing thought!
Footnote on the Footnotes
Date: 2008-10-06 11:23 pm (UTC)Re: Footnote on the Footnotes
Date: 2008-10-06 11:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-07 10:10 am (UTC)TJAQ
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-07 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-07 11:20 am (UTC)Is that a bank?
The Benny Hill of avant garde pop
Date: 2008-10-07 01:11 pm (UTC)http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/100208/music1.html
Re: The Benny Hill of avant garde pop
Date: 2008-10-08 11:16 am (UTC)