Students' protest: Britain turns Nazi in Whitehall

In the heat of the moment - way of saying: I was frozen down to the bones - I thought I could write a lot of harsh things about what happened last Wednesday to us who were protesting in Whitehall, so I decided to take a little time to think. Nevertheless, what I came out with some days later is surprisingly identical to what I thought while I was still there: the only difference between us, some 5.000 students aged between 11 and 40, and thousands of jews in Warsaw in the early 1940s was that we were not wearing a yellow six-point star on our chests. A sickly well organized Nazi police just took human rights away from us in Central London, just few yards off Parliament Square and in sight of the Winston Churchill monument. How ironical. In the last 70 years Britain pestered the whole World telling how they alone stood against Nazism at the darkest time, to end up using the same methods and philosophy. I guess this is what happens to peoples that never experienced a revolution in their history, they become as docile as cattle, so they do not see what is wrong in kettling them...

GDF project: I am not dead!

Wow! I can not believe it is weeks I did not write anything. Problem is: it has been a very busy period, many events, quite a good amount of work to carry on, plain laziness as usual... No, not really this time. On top of it, I have barely took a couple of pictures in the last three weeks, which is not helpful to illustrate what happened around me.

To make a long story short, let's talk about the GDF project, that is where I left the blog last time. I was not happy at first, but not in despair though: the variables I got were not the best possible ones, but once it is done, there is no point in complaining, better facing the issue and go head-down to work.

Luck has been on my side, my groupmates are great, each of them in his own way helped me to get the best out of this assignment so far. Their positiveness is contagious, we get along very well and we have fun, boosting productivity continuously. Group tutorials with Karl are running smoothly, I enjoy them and they are extremely useful, keeping me on track week after week. Friday's workshops with Darren and David pushed us that necessary step forward every week, thanks to the confrontation with other groups' works. Jo and David in their own workshops add valid technical details and give some hints that should be taken in better consideration by a lot of people I see around...

Last but not least: the support I get everyday from my partner is priceless.

My whole environment right now is just perfectly fitted for the purpose of studying productively. So any possible failure is just my own guilty fault, I guess. Great, this is the way I like it to be, no excuses whatsoever.

Overall evaluation of the course so far: I love it!

This is page 16 of my presentation, a little worthy trick.

FdA works: Feeling like in a tailored suit

I remember a Mastercard TV advert of the "priceless" series which was going more or less like this:

at 25 a man (a bourgeois/middle class man) desires a good suit;

at 40, he (the bourgeois again/upper middle class man now) grows to desire a tailored suit;

at 50, to not wear any suit anymore (really top class, eventually).

Apart from carrying a lot of meaning, in my personal idea, it makes me think about tailored suits, which, by the way, I would love to wear. The closest thing to them as feelings it can give to me that I came across recently is the first assignment of this term: an advertisement for a global corporation targeting 5-10 years old children through the message "Be more confident". To be concise:

global corporations make me shiver in disgust;

in my opinion, advertising that targets/uses children is simply immoral and, just to say, I find children really annoying;

the message itself sounds terribly empty to me, kind of a deep void.

I am confident this is going to be amazing!

The research workshop to introduce the assignment was actually pretty good fun. I liked the group I will work with for the next weeks and we enjoyed our time and did quite well along the day. The hints given us by the workshop itself were definitely useful, first of all making completely clear what we have to deal with from now on.

Outcome of the first week in the job: ...! It will get better, I am sure it will... soon...

How to disappoint myself, the easy way

"Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life: for there is in London all that life can afford."
Samuel Johnson

Easy to guess, what you dear readers can see just above is the application of a huge step in technology that makes everyone's life better and way easier and most of my precious Photoshop skills utterly useless and consequentially worthless, nevertheless I love it. Lazy people of the World, stand up and clap your hands to the Photomerge function!

What you can also see right above is part of the result of a two hours session of photography I generously granted myself today in the surroundings of my beloved home. Having blamed myself - and of course mostly my sweet partner - in the last two weeks, at least, for owning an apparently great digital camera and leaving it to collect dust in some remote corner of our room, I eventually remembered to take it with me today when I stepped out for a walk. Predictably enough, the weather was not any good as it was instead in several recent days, in which I forgot the camera home ending up swearing consistently against my outstanding stupidity.

Fair enough, I could still cope with the seriously awful natural light of a shady day, not bright, not dark, just bad. Basically that kind of light that would piss off every even slightly experienced photographer. Not to mention my lack of knowledge of the set-ups of the camera itself, having used it probably just twice before and got away both times out of plain luck. On top of those tiny details, I should probably say I was not in the mood at all to take pictures, not properly concentrated on the task and annoyed already by the look of my designated subjects, mostly trees, which were gloriously showing their best autumn colour variations just few days ago, and today were almost bare, being so late in the season.

None of the previous issues discouraged me anyway and I went on with the plan.
I have even been quite lucky about the location, noticed some very interesting spot and had plenty of time. And I even found the one an only not hyperactive and overanxious squirrel in the UK, I guess, which allowed me to take around 15 close ups of it!

Final result: 162 pictures of which barely ten are decent...

Just to take a look a little closer

Three in one is what I need

Being so unbearably slow in writing this blog, the best solution I found to get back on track is to compress the last three workshops (and I still miss a couple, to be honest) in this post and make myself free again to talk about whatever comes to my mind. Pretty unfair tough, considering they were all extremely interesting, but perhaps it will ended up in something better than a bare report.

So, three workshops, I said, and three different tutors too: Typography/Paul, Ideas/Catherine (for Darren) and Sketch books/Karl.

Just above three samples of my personal outcomes, that quite resemble the way the workshops went:

1 - Amazing subject, I just love typography and I tried my best.

2 - The great failure! One of the most disappointing day ever - in my whole life, I mean, not just in uni.

3 - Cool, better than expected.

First of all, the tutors: they just make me happy, not the slightest issue with them, different approaches to the subjects, but no complaints to make. It is not a real news, all the people I met in LCC - tutors/technicians - since 2008 are just great to work with (to be honest there have been just a couple of exceptions in the past, but nothing relevant, at least they gave me something to make fun of...). Someone could think I am trying to please them, but if any of you, dear readers, ever studied in Italy at any possible level of education, you would understand where my present appreciation comes from, trust me.

Let's try to analyze what happened in details then, it could be useful.

Typography is one of my favourite subjects, even though my knowledge of it is nowhere near I would love it to be. The day itself, apart for the unbearable heat of the room as usual, went on very smoothly and productively. It just was so positive I have not much to say about it...

The Ideas workshop was instead the complete opposite: nothing went right from the beginning to the end, actually it kept getting worse, I left uni in such a state of stress, disappointment, even anger at some point. I am a slow thinker, that is the point of it, and I hardly fit in a group when it comes to produce something. I am not shy of suggesting my ideas to other people, but perhaps I am not really sure of them myself and just too lazy to fight to impose them to others. Creativity has always been an issue to me, not that I do not have any, however it takes time to me to have an idea I consider worthy. Quite an issue in such a fast paced business, I reckon. To sum up the day, we worked in groups on three projects: the first one, a poster, was just a bit dull and lacked originality, but was not a total failure, the worst part being a poor organization in the group itself; the second one, a website, was actually quite fine, certainly not awesome, but still a good try; the third one, a much more open assignment on how to deliver a given message to a target audience, was utterly disastrous and made me ashamed of myself. The group was not working at all, in sheer anarchy, not concerned by the time management, not able to carry out an idea/project/brief, lacking technical skills... And personally I added up my own uselessness giving up on it pretty soon, not being able to see since the very beginning any potential in it. Indefensible behaviour.

Finally, the Sketch books workshop. If there has ever been something I am hopeless at doing is researches. I could easily blame my previous education for it, and plain laziness on my personal share, and I would be safe enough, but it would be too easy. It is just something I do not get along with, like collages, I guess because collecting loads of stuff of any kind means getting quickly untidy at the end of the day, then it will mean tidying up and definitely occupying some of my living space... It just makes me nuts! Ah, on top of it, after all these years working and studying I still do not really understand the concept itself of a sketch book. What I mean by this is: not everyone's mind works in the same way as other ones, so if it is useful for someone to physically collect and file stuff, it is not necessarily good for each one of us. Of course I find useful to study things/images/texts, taking pictures, drawing, sketching and whatsoever is part of a more or less conventional research, I just do not find of any use to collect and file them, because I never go through them a second time, seriously.

Considering this nice statement, I was happily surprised by the outcome of the workshop: as a group - and this is even more cheering - we created a quite comprehensive and pleasantly looking sketch book, it took us less than the hour given to make it and it was pretty effortless too. Piece of cake!

Smashing, smiting, screaming, throwing, crashing and making poetry

Backwards, backwards, more and more backwards! At least this is the last post about the weekend before the last one. That is a lot of "last/least" to be written, I know, but please be patient, you would understand my state of mind if you were reading the book I am through right now.

Having planned a totally relaxing weekend, as you have read in the most recent posts, my lovely all-sweet partner added to it a two nights gig by her most beloved band, the Einsturzende Neubauten!

If you find the name sounding a bit harsh - strikingly enough being German a generally considered very smooth language, of course - I can assure you that it gives just a pale representation of their music. As it is easy to guess, I am not an industrial music enthusiast, even though I have to admit last year Nine Inch Nails' gig was one of the funniest and most dangerous I have been to in years - I know, NIN are not really industrial, according to purist like my beloved girlfriend, but still... - so I was quite sceptical about the possibility of enjoyment of the nights. I was badly wrong.

 

 

The band was amazing to listen to in a live performance, entertaining at any level - great performers, strong stage presence, unexpected sense of humour - and their instruments were real works of art.

Truly inspirational. The ability of creating such an appealing contrast between the painful noises of astounding percussion instruments, the harshness of the language driven to its extremes at times and the poetry of the lyrics is a non-common quality. I love contrasts, being able to manage them gives the opportunity of creating something with a soul, not just a nice/cute/vacuum looking whatever-it-is-I-erase-it-from-my-brains-the-moment-I-cast-my-eyes-anywhere-else.

So I believe I have to sincerely thank my lady for my newly gained hearing impairment and this glimpse over a previously unknown world of creativity.

The galleries' idea of Arts

It would look great in my living room

Being one week late is not that bad - unless you are a girl and had unsafe sex recently - it is like I am talking about something not exactly new, on the spot, but not completely faded away yet. In some way a reminder of an happening that needed to be understood more deeply, not just judged and discarded.

Unluckily enough though, my present subject, the Frieze Art Fair, was by many means something to store away in a dusty corner of one's mind and move on.

I know I sound too extreme and I am not an expert in any way, but certain aspects of the Fair were pretty disappointing. Obviously there were a lot of great works all over the place, it was difficult not to find at least an interesting one in each gallery, but the overall quality of them was incomprehensible. Unless one is an art dealer, of course. This is really the only valuable point of view on contemporary art, sadly. If a gallery manager decides to show an artist's piece, no matter what junk it is, job done, the guy has probably made is fortune. Otherwise whatever amazing, breathtaking, Stendhal syndrome causing object one can produce, it is just worthless rubbish if no gallery wants to sell it. Visual Arts nowadays are hostages of wannabe-posh people who can not go out without their bloody iPads! At least Londoners and New Yorkers, all the other ones will follow soon on their path.

Did I sound too harsh? I can do better than this, just try to bring me to a crowded, warm, dry-to-the-point-of-eye-burning place stuffed with multicoloured eclectic things and listen to me right there...

Kind of a living hell, I have to admit, until I turned a corner, got inside Paul Kasmin Gallery area and had a true epiphany...

 

Mark Ryden - Awakening the Moon

End of the epiphany...