31/07/2012

London 2012: Olympics Through Design

London 2012: Olympics Through Design

Every four years we are being overwhelmed by the most important and prestigious sports events. This year’s Olympics held in London, have been at the centre of our attention for quite a while now, due to many controversies, security and economic scandals. Despite of all this, when the games were inaugurated with the praised ceremony directed by Danny Boyle, we couldn’t but forget almost all of it. But besides being one of the greatest sport events, every Olympics also inevitably touch design and architecture.



Since the London 2012 trademark, designed by the British super-force in advertising world Wolff Olins, was first presented in 2007, criticism was raised and with it (at least among the design community) skepticism towards the London Olympics. For this logo, the International Olympics committee had commissioned for the first time in history an actual branding strategy for an Olympic trademark, which was then interpreted by Wolff Olins as “bringing the Games back to the normal people”. Aside from the trademark, the Olympics have required a massive amount of work from graphic designers of various firms and studios who designed the signage system, advertising, pictograms, tickets and other printed matter, and a specially designed typeface.

As far as product design is concerned, besides the Olympic Torch, whose incredible design (80 cm long and weighing only 800-850 grams) has already been celebrated with “Design of the Year” award, we have to mention Thomas Heatherwick‘s Olympic Cauldron. The cauldron is made of 204 copper petals representing the competing nations which were brought by each team and lit during the opening ceremony.

The creative work done for London 2012, from architecture, urban planning, set design, photography, product design and fashion (think only about the GB team who’s kit was designed by Stella McCartney) was really impressive. So, even if these Games can have some hard time competing with the ones held in Beijing four years ago in terms of impressiveness and scale, we can’t but say – hats off to London.


Rujana Rebernjak

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30/07/2012

Christopher Shannon in an Olympic Dance

Christopher Shannon in an Olympic Dance

Watching the Olympic Games 2012 Opening Ceremony in London on Friday evening was like watching an enormous fashion parade. The national teams, flag bearers, performers and dancers were marching out in a delicate designer mix. Seen by over a billion people worldwide, it is hard to imagine a better spotlight than the Opening Ceremony to showcase the UK’s creative talent even though the name Christopher Shannon should be a drawing card in itself.


Shannon, together with designers Michael van der Ham and Nasir Mazhar created 350 of the 1200 dancers costumes, putting London’s East End in the limelight.

Christopher Shannon is a Liverpool born designer using “just the right amount of drama”, according to his own words, and after graduating with an MA from Central Saint Martins, the designer is now based in East End-London. His prominent work is since before known by The Blogazine and it wasn’t a surprise to us that he was one of the chosen three to represent the British fashion in such an important event.

In the crescendo of the ceremony, Shannon’s eye for clean silhouettes and high-end sport references came to its right. Together with Michael van der Ham’s, another Blogazine acquaintance, sense for contrast in colours and fabrics and Nasir Mazhar’s headgears designs – the show was on. The Opening Ceremony, which has been compared with large-scaled runway shows, has created a fashion discussion all around the world and put these three London designer’s under the public’s eye, for a very good reason.


Lisa Olsson Hjerpe – Images from Quinn Rooney, Michael Regan, Ronald Martinez, Andrew Lamb.

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27/07/2012

Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity

Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity

Skyscrapers have always been so much more than pieces of architecture. In the modernist culture skyscrapers have stood for belief in prosperity, innovation and a better future as the symbols of power and enormous possibilities the world shaped by man could achieve. These incredible building structures that have for almost two centuries involved the most illuminated minds in architecture, engineering, art and design are being celebrated with an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

The exhibition titled “Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity” tries to show the impact this iconic artefact has had in our contemporary society. The myth of the sky and the possibilities of men to reach it through artificial means have inspired not only the imagination and poetics of architects, but also artist from all over the world. These artists have taken as subject the form, technology, message, symbology and image of the skyscrapers as the central idea and subject of their work. Even though years have passed since the first concrete structures have reached meters and meters above ground, the skyscrapers, highly mechanical but also extremely elusive structures, still continue to play with our imagination.

The artist showcased in the exhibition are Fikret Atay, Jennifer Bolande, Roger Brown, Jeff Carter, Roe Ethridge, Jonathan Horowitz, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Claes Oldenburg, Gabriel Orozco, Thomas Struth, Jan Tichy, Andy Warhol, Peter Wegner, Wesley Willis and Shizuka Yokomizo, among others.

While currently many Western and Eastern cities continue to fight over who will build the next ’world’s highest building’ in search for technological domination and cultural glory, Chicago still remains one of the most important sights on the skyscrapers map. Hence, this exhibition, in some way, certainly plays homage both to this incredible piece of architecture, as well as the city of Chicago where it is being hosted.

Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity runs until the 23rd of September at Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Rujana Rebernjak – Images courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

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25/07/2012

We Are What We Repeatedly Do

We Are What We Repeatedly Do

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live the world
they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an
opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

Muhammad Ali

Olympic games are at the gate, and once again, as almost every four years since long time ago – the games are currently held biennially, with alternating summer and winter editions – thousands of athletes representing their nations compete in sports to prove their mental and physical superiority to other people and above all to themselves.


It’s interesting to stop and think about the fact that, in everyday life as in sports, we all have always been aiming at strengthening our personal knowledge and skills as well as our neurosis, thanks to training through the repetition of the same gestures. Most of the time we link iterative actions to stagnation and boredom, while our lives are beating by rituals where the repetition represents, for once, a positive meaning and a crucial role in the challenge of autotransformation.

You must change your life! says the title of a book by one of the most important philosopher at work today, Peter Sloterdijk, and it sounds like a call for playing fair, which actually means trying to cross our intimate guilt of being insufficient to aim to a vertical tension. All shortcuts are illusions; human beings’ urge of standing out passes through daily exercise, which is nothing but the sum of actions made to improve the same following actions. The yearning to go beyond is typical of art and sport, as the will of getting to a superterrestrial reality is typical of religious ambitions. Reaching perfection is not enough, and making possible what is supposed to be impossible is the modern mantra.


More than anything else, sport involves the one-to-one relationship with divinity – how many times have you seen the name of a famous sportsperson compared to gods? –, but the message that tries to convince you that everybody can do everything through the strength of will has never been so abused; will is the mean by which we measure our possibilities; what moves a pizza maker and a yogi, a priest and a model, a biologist and an economist is the continuous physical exercise meant to improve our own performances. Being virtuous or even ascetic is definitely not for all, but it is a common belief that training for competition and the pursuit of success should ennoble people. As Aristotle said: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

The other side of the coin? The art of Living by Chad Harbach and the compulsiveness of performances that stresses the physical dimension of the contemporary youth, which forces its body with an unnatural and obsessive exercise to defeat or, at least, survive!

Monica Lombardi 

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23/07/2012

Reading Ed Ruscha at Kunsthaus Bregenz

Reading Ed Ruscha at Kunsthaus Bregenz

Ed Ruscha is surely one of those super-star art names you may hear quite often even outside the highly selective art world. Born in 1937 and living in California, Ruscha is one of the most elusive contemporary artists. Even though he is commonly associated with the pop-art movement, his work doesn’t actually fit any precise category. Perhaps that is precisely why we were instantly attracted by the equivocal title of his latest exhibition.

Entitled Reading Ed Ruscha the exhibition was specially conceived by the artist for Kunsthaus Bregenz. The show’s main interest is to give an interpretation of Ed Ruscha’s work in ‘generating meaning’ through writing and language. Even though speaking about writing and Ruscha may immediately lead you to think about his book-works, namely the notorious “Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations” or “Every Building on Sunsent Strip”, these are actually not the most significant ones as far as words and language are concerned. Reading Ed Ruscha tries to explore the significance of writing in Ruscha’s work through a vast array of media – drawing, photo-gravure, book, film, photography and painting, with the obvious attention to the book through the act of “reading”.

Among these media, a special attention has been given to his book-objects, which play with the idea of the book as a picture, while still retaining its status as an object and thus creating a tension and play between the content itself and the artwork on the cover. Some of the works displayed are “The End”, “O Books”, “Oh No” and “Pep” books. Reading Ed Ruscha tries to show how the artist cleverly ‘dramatizes the relation of text and image, signifier and signified’.

Reading Ed Ruscha, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in Austria is running until the 24th of October at Kunsthaus Bregenz.

Rujana Rebernjak

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13/07/2012

The Lords of Dancalia Valley

The Lords of Dancalia Valley

There are many destinations appealing voyagers in Africa, even if they are considered too dangerous and inconvenient to get to. The volcano Erta Ale is among them, with its lava lake and the spectacular saltpans of Dallol, along with the legendary hostility of the Afar, the lords of Dancalia valley.

Forget everything you already know and prepare yourself to discover a desert made of lava, stone, salt and rock. We are about to enter an area that seems to belong on the moon, inhabited by thin people – the Afar – , who scamper and smuggle between Ethiopia and Eritrea, taking aim with their Kalasnikovs, the symbolic gift received as a proof of their passage into adulthood, at around 13 years of age. Dancalia, largely belonging to Ethiopia, is divided by a line like a slash of a scalpel, made by European minds intentionally blind to the separation of clans and villages, ignoring freedom, ripping apart families and tribes, and destroying the invisible but valuable bonds between the people.


These malnurished people listen in silence to soldiers of Addis Abeba, who shout them orders with thundering voices and sharp words; to not cross the boundaries and to not smuggle weapons, ammunition and oilcans on their full-packed camels milling around. When the sun goes down, people who are not tied in the salt business take small paths that the Ethiopian army trucks can’t drive.

The Afar people tend to sharpen their teeth to relish the raw flesh of freshly killed prey. Their favorite and legendary motto is “better die than not to kill”. They know perfectly that it’s hard to resist the hell of Dancalia, where the burning sun hits the eyes and melts time, and where there are always soldiers lying in ambush somewhere. Abdo Yahia – a Yemenite moved to Ethiopia at the age of two – and I decided to take the prudent road, and instead of militaries, to take two Afar scouts with us to go up to Erta Ale.

We enter Dancalia from South, following the mythical path of Italian explorers. After three days of traveling, we get to the base camp of Erta Ale. A five-hour nightly climb awaits us. No one ventures the volcano’s side during the day; the temperature of 45° at 10am discourages whoever. The sultriness doesn’t give a respite, not even in the dark. The night finds us leaving at 3am, silent and in an organized line, hearing some gigantic frightened animals far away tremble the terrain. Camels in front of us carry the water while armed Afar people protect us from the threat of the Eritrean raids.


When we get to a huge caldera the sun peeps out and the hollow sound of the mountain scares us. Not far from here, among the coagulated lava sparkling at sunrise, we finally see the incandescent eye of Dancalia. We wait until the afternoon, when the guides finally take us pass hot gas eruptions, molten lava and sharp edges, all the way to the shore of the lake. Liquid stone of 1250 degrees and a drop of sixty meters, a roaring column of lava rises from the belly of the earth.

The temperature is unbelievably high, but the lava lake with its roars, squirts and fumaroles attracts us as the light attracts moths. We stay there until the late night, unable to take our attention away from the “monster” and its hypnotic, dominating eye.

“You should go away now, you are running out of water and you have been too exposed to him” says my scout pointing at the gigantic red mass under us. “It’s too hot,” he urges on, “too hot, and tomorrow we have to go back. Erta Ale does not spare anyone, you know. Last year it ate my cousin, lava surrounded him and started rising… Now we have to go”. Reluctantly, dazed by the exhalations and the heat, I leave that huge energy, but immediately I know I want to return here.


Vittore Buzzi

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05/07/2012

Summer Shop at Karma

Summer Shop at Karma

Karma is a West Village shop founded by Brendan Dugan. If you are not familiar with the name, Brendan runs a graphic design studio and a publishing practice called “An Art Service”. An Art Service creates beautifully designed books and printed matter in collaboration with artists like Dan Colen, Paul McCarthy, Bjarne Melgaard, Ryan McGinley or Rob Pruitt. To take the control of the whole process of the book conception, production and distribution, Brendan has dedicated the storefront of his office/gallery/publishing house space to a bookshop, Karma.


Karma is often hosting pop-up shop and events, and it’s currently the home of a theme project shop named “Summer“. Curated by Aaron Aujla and Dylan Bailey, the shop might make you raise an eyebrow when seen in the New York context of it, if you don’t look into their real intent. Aujla and Bailey, respectively artists and assistants to Nate Lowman and Dan Colen, have collected a series of objects that try to replicate those found from homes along the coast. Hence, the collection of object includes white cotton towels and linens, buckets meticulously hand painted to resemble enameled metal, large dining table made from found drift wood, shell vases, white plates and tanning lotions.

Through this collection of objects, the authors have transformed the West Village book-shop in a place that resembles any kind of beach resort goodie market. By recreating this particular mood and ambient Aujla and Bailey thus reveal ‘the culture of beach side artistry and its inner-workings’.
 Even though the artists have long debated about the concept, completing a thorough analysis of home décor stores, maybe the best thing about the whole operation is that the potential artistic pretension leaves room for an appealing and cosy everyday shop.

Rujana Rebernjak – Images courtesy of Karma

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28/06/2012

The Smiling Eyes – A Portrait of Malick Sidibé

The Smiling Eyes – A Portrait of Malick Sidibé

“Venice is beautiful, but it misses energy, while here in Africa you could still feel it. Maybe less than in the past since young people are more lonely today, but they are finding themselves again. My pictures are made of these feelings; joy and youth.”

Malik Sidibé puts off his black glasses, his face lights up and a broad smile full of life rises on it.

I’ve tried to get in contact with him four years ago, when I was in Bamako for work. I would have liked to interview him, but he wasn’t in Mali at that time and afterwards we lost sight of each other. I needed a pretext to go back and to be able to spend some hours with one of the greatest African photographers at work today; the first photographer awarded by Golden Lion at Venice Biennale (2007) with a curriculum vitae full of awards and important exhibitions such as the Hasselblad Award, the solo show at Pinacoteca Gianni and Marella Agnelli in Turin and the one at Cartier Foundation in Paris.

“You see…” he pointed at the shelf with all his cameras aligned in a row, in his small studio located in a dusty street in Bamako. “You see, those are cameras that people brought to me to repair, and then left here because they didn’t have money to pay me or because they got lost.” He disappears for a while and reappears with some stuffed but tidy books of contacts from the 60’s. “What a wonderful period… you danced, and clubs were full of people who wanted to stay together. I went round the clubs and took pictures, which I sold the day after. I put posters outside my studio, people of my city knew me. Film was seen as a serious thing and there were a lot of young Casanovas, who waited in a queue for being shot with girls while dancing”.

André Magnin, Sidibé’s dealer, laughs and says to me “Vittore, that’s the way Malik is, he remains genuine, he never forgot his background and he still has the wonder of childhood, which leads him despite his age.”


Malik answers my questions composedly. I’m amazed of his total lack of influences and his spontaneity, even when he confesses not being interested in some photography that depicts the clichéd Africa, which is used by magazines and foreign photographers. Suddenly he stops talking and says: “That’s enough! Stop talking, it’s time to take pictures”. He asks me my digital camera and he starts shooting. Then he turns on the lights of his studio – made from white painted cans – and among the reflective tools made of old umbrellas, I see a tripod and his Hasselblad.

“I wanted a unique light, soft and diffused, and I change the backcloths once every two or three years. I’m very demanding, so it’s hard to find something that is perfectly suitable for my way of working.”

The sun goes down. A continuous flow of young European photographers drop by looking for a boost from the master and it interrupts our chat. Malik lavishes smiles and good words to everybody, while people point hastily their iPads bombarding him with a lot of images, all too similar to each other.

Then we look at the big black and white prints, his most well known portraits. While turning over the pictures, Malik tells me a story of each subject, person or small village in the middle of nowhere. It would take at least a month to go through them all, but my flight back is the day after. I walk away in the dark of the night, which here at the equator takes you unaware. A touch of melancholy creeps into my chest.

Vittore Buzzi

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27/06/2012

The God Father Of Sushi

The God Father Of Sushi

Mr. Abe, 40, the owner and the founder of one of the most vigorous Sushi restaurants in Tokyo, has opened a brand new venue in Roppongi, which has spurred his growth to form a bright triangle of restaurants in the central mid-night city.

“I’ve reached all my goals so far.” His ambitious endeavor never ends.

While he mentioned that his next goal is to achieve 10 billion yen – indeed a high goal to reach in the field -, his adoring eyes spoke well about his will to be the God Father of the devoted followers hoping to learn from him. The family of this benevolent guardian with tender toughness and hospitality has grown to over 40 actual workers plus the graduates, since he started with only 3 people including himself.

Born in Niigata, the northwestern part of Japan known as the most prestigious area for rice production, the ambitious young boy used all his knowledge to figure out how he could unite his love for fish to a profession. After 10 years of training at a notable old Sushi maison at Tsukiji Fish Market, his mother served as one of the catalysts for changing his life by motivating him to open his own place.

“One day, she got depressed. It flapped me. She was a strong-minded worker in the rice field, from 2AM till 7PM non-stop, everyday. I decided that I’d need to create some motivation for her.” Since then, special appetizers with mountain vegetables picked by his mother have been on the menu of his restaurant, so as the rice from his father’s fields.

“People are the utmost gift in life. I could never reject any customer’s request. If they call for catering even in the most busiest moment, we will complete it on time. Also, I don’t like to reject new  apprentices.” Naturally, his place got busier, and as a consequence, the opening hours were widened till 5 AM all year long. New restaurants were opened to provide jobs for all the willing apprentices.

As Mr. Abe says, each encounter is meant to be. He told us a very symbolic example, where on one sunny morning in Niigata, two mothers met in a town clinic and started chatting about their sons, finding out that both were by chance living in the same area in Tokyo. Feeling the destiny, Mr. Abe couldn’t help but to invite this young boy to work for him.

Ten years later, the young boy took charge of Mr. Abe’s flagship restaurant. “Today, I am here owing everything to Mr. Abe. Being an actual relative was not that important. As a professional, he has been quite tough with me, but now I understand how bitter it is to punish someone. Also, he always said that if you want to be at the top of a team, ‘be the first one to do the toughest jobs that everyone else hates to do.’ I learned it through his attitude” the apprentice grown to a manager told us.

Even in our time when things tend to get like decaffeinated instant coffee, there is still something we appreciate within the life-long sincere relationships. Through the deep Japanese tradition of Sushi, not only the art of the profession, but also the Abe-ism thrives among his family members and restaurants. One client even described Mr. Abe’s restaurant as his second home.

Ai Mitsuda

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26/06/2012

I Never Read Book Fair

I Never Read Book Fair

When it comes to annual long-awaited art events, if you are an un-experienced visitor, chances are you are getting exhausted and overwhelmed easily. Every art or design fair is exactly like that, and the trick to survive through it is mixing the fancy ones with the relaxed ones. Like that was with Art Basel we visited last week.

On the occasion of Art Basel, “I Never Read”, an independent publishing book fair and new art magazine was launched. The event, lasting three days and gathering a list of more than twenty publishers, was the ideal place for everyone interested in printed matter and independent publishing.

Situated in a fruit warehouse, I Never Read was for many reasons different from the usual ‘independent publishing’ fairs. First of all, the publishers presenting their work varied from small international editors to artists presenting their print work or magazines, classy international bi-annual publications, famous art and design publishers and also a well-known shop-art space from New York.

This mix of works presented gave the fair a positive breeze, allowing anyone visiting the fair to be surprised by the high-quality selection. The warehouse was equipped with beautiful wooden tables and benches made exclusively for the event, with a special wall installation by the most famous of the independent publishers – Zurich based Nieves. The roof-top bar offered a perfect retreat from the hectic main fair.


Among the beautifully produced books, we had to pick out only a few, even though many of them would surely have been a good buy. Among the ones that we couldn’t get, “Mortadella” by Christoph Hänsli published by one of our favourite editors – Edition Patrick Frey and Tauba Auerbach’s pop-up book “2,3” co-published with Printed Matter, surely have a special place in our hearts.

“I Never Read” has offered us a nice experience where high and low profile art were happily sharing a table, not worrying about any pretentious etiquette an event like Art Basel can often impose.

Rujana Rebernjak

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