what do we do with paradise? - the story of stuff

just watch the 20-minute video, it will speak for itself...



if the video should be unavailable by now, you can try the original website, where you can also see it with subtitles in many majority languages
http://www.storyofstuff.com/international/index.html

Daniela Swarowsky & Samuli Schielke - Messages from Paradise

a trailer for the first part of a trilogy about migration - the longing for paradise in ... Europe & "The West" more information at http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=WlIjE1HsiPo

COBRA

Recently I reviewed untitled/. {COBRA voor bij de koffie} (COBRA for the coffie-table) a conceptual piece that I started in 2003 (for more info, click here)

It's main and central element is that of play. I wanted to create an experience of spontaneous and creative people at play, in whatever way their inspiration takes them. How could this be made possible? How would it be a healthy balance between construction and destruction, and how to make sure that it remains a collaborative effort, where every one gets a maximum range of expressing and action?

I realise these days that is was also a pre-lude and a preparation that lead me to »les enfants du paradis« A successful realisation of COBRA is a state of Paradise, and that this is something I want, as an individual, also as a creator and an artist.

When I re-read the statements of those artists that created the original CoBrA art-movement in 1948, many of them are at the heart of what I think is possible now, it only takes a more thorough and wide-spread change of mind from insight, not force.

That yes, we can live in paradise, all that was originally needed was there. This is in sharp contrast to the state of the planet's human population today (as of 2007) Too many of us live in poverty and terribly hostile life-conditions, without having chosen to do so, which is completely unnecessary and could very easily be helped.
(see for example the section did-you-know? at www.whiteband.org)

first video of 2006 performance in tüzraktér: walking con.sens.us

performed with members of the audience, somewhere in the middle of the evening. this was the first large-scale performance of the score. all was filmed in near darkness - due to post-processing it is now possible to see more, even though the quality is still very grainy...

more celebration: Dimitri From Paris @ The Mansion, Mexico City

this is a bootleg video of Dimitri from Paris as he is playing Outwork feat. Mr. Gee's "Elektro" (Joey Negro Remix) at The Mansion in Mexico City.

i find the combination of repetitive hard and syncopated rhythms and spheric chords / organs very attractive. something i would like for a new realization of 'les enfants du paradis' - somewhere in the second half of the evening, approaching trances... liberation of physicality from ordinary restraints. (the question for me is always: what then? and what about the equally liberated aggression, when the physical energy is still meeting obstacles through remaining, yet unresolved energetic blocks?)

another look on celebration

click here to read an article on celebration and carnival by Barbara Ehrenreich titled "Reclaiming What Makes Us Human" and published online at In These Times.

thanks to Daniela Swarowsky for this tip!
(her friend Samuli Schielke does research on popular Egyptian Sufi celebrations of Mawlids which I understand are not received very favorably by the Salafi Egyptian elites either ... for a gallery of his photos please click here)

Jugendstil - art noveau ( & Co. ...)

more understandings about paradise and the expression of the human mind/being: i've just returned from Brussels and read more about Art Nouveau (also known as 'Secession' or 'Jugendstil' in German speaking countries) see photo to the left: entry door to the Hôtel Solvay, Brussels, built by Victor Horta

in that book, the contrast between organic forms and technological mass production was presented as a major problem of its esthetic, also that while it sought to appear light and moving (in parallel development to what was presented as a 19th century experience of movement due to increase in level of technology) it remained on a decorative level and didn't yet intervene in dealing with the underlying technology itself.

i realise that i treasure this style as another attempt of the human mind to express itself lightly and with freedom (see the blog-entry on flying).

however, there was a price to pay, as also this art movement was brought forward by the advantage of wealthy over less-privileged who could not afford such a development as easily. (an even more extreme example would be the Rococo or the splendor of Gothic cathedrals compared to the shanty towns that were then making up villages in Europe, or even further back into antiquity...)


in its own right I get to think of the COBRA movement in the Benelux and Denmark, however this was after the more accepting embrace of technological possibilities unhindered by traditional esthetics and the more developed acceptance of corporeality and matter realized in the period erupting after the early 1900's. also, in intention CoBrA was more directly aimed at everybody, not just the elite.


anyway, the theme of flight, or being in between two more consolidated states, continues to interest me, as it makes opening up to possibly new solutions possible, which then can come to appear in the relatively more empty space...