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Kelston Boys’ High School perform a massive haka in honour of the new Maori carving on campus
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I live for this
This is the first recording of a Haka I’ve seen that manages to capture even a fraction of the true energy of it. And it’s because there’s so many of them that those boys would have been shaking the ground.
Seeing these boys in their modern uniforms and jackets and backpacks that say NIKE, participating in this ancient ritual, really just drives home what people mean when they say “I am not a costume.” The clothes here are not important. The energy and participation are important.
CULTURE
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DEVO playing “Jocko Homo” on Saturday Night Live, 1978
Valerie Hegarty (USA)
Valerie Hegarty’s installations create dream-like transitional spaces and objects that expand and fracture the austerity of an exhibition space while dismantling the constructs of image- and object-making. Informed by the current turbulent state of our country while also excavating from America’s past, Hegarty’s work often turns the gallery into a dramatic place of change. Working with fragile materials such as foamcore, paper, paint and glue, she exploits a scrupulous mimicry of objects only to demolish them by devices often associated with their historical significance. On one level the viewer can become overwhelmed with an inquisitive desire to determine what is real and what is constructed and on another, can decide to revel in the make-believe. Hegarty’s ruins suggest a path of destruction and chaos that can be traced from early colonialism to the most recent effects of globalization. Her work portrays a pivotal moment in our narrative – one that is full of pathos yet buoyed by the hope that comes with change. (source: Fountainhead Residency) Our sincere thanks to arpeggia for this Curator’s Monday.
[more Valerie Hegarty | Curator’s Monday with arpeggia]
Émile Bayard
illustrations to Histoire de la magie (History of magic), by Paul Christian, Paris, 1870.
“Karl Friedrich Schinkel-Scenography for the Queen of the Night aria of the from Die Zauberflöte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1816” .
Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto
Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto constructs intricate labyrinths, entire mountains made of salt.
Salt has always held special significance in the death rituals of Japan, and following the sudden death of his younger sister, Yamamoto channelled his grief into his maze-like installations. His works are largely improvised, yet meticulously poured, and at the end of each work, the public is invited in to destroy the work, collect the salt and return it, to the sea.
Source: emptykingdom
Source: asylum-art-2
Here’s my page on the 23rd issue of the amazing Pareidolia zine – check it out at http://sternstundendeskapitalismus.de/pareidoliae/
Ai Weiwei (1995) Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn
An astonishingly irreverent piece of work. This triptych features the artist dropping a Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) in three photographs.
When questioned about the work, he suggested that the piece was about industry: “[The urn] was industry then and is industry now.” His statement, therefore, was that the urn was just a cheap pot two thousand years ago, and the reverence we feel toward it is artificial. One critic wrote: “In other words, for all the aura of preciousness acquired by the accretion of time (and skillful marketing), this vessel is the Iron Age equivalent of a flower pot from K-Mart and if one were to smash the latter a few millennia from now, would it be an occasion for tears?”
However, the not-so-subtle political undertone is clear. This piece was about destroying the notion that everything that is old is good… including the traditions and cultures of China. For Ai Weiwei, this triptych represents a moment in which culture suddenly shifts (sometimes violently), shattering the old and outdated to make room for the new.