Mexican Literary Giant Carlos Fuentes Died This Week

Mike Springer | Book reviews and essays | 60 mins ago

In 1981 writer Carlos Fuentes said in a Paris Review interview;

When your life is half over, I think you have to see the face of death in order to start writing seriously. There are people who see the end quickly, like Rimbaud. When you start seeing it, you feel you have to rescue these things. Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.

Fuentes died last Tuesday. He was 83 years old and wrote right up til the very end. In his lifetime he published over 50 books including, ‘Where the Air is Clear’, ‘The Death of Artemio Cruz’ and ‘Terra Nostra’. He was one of Latin America’s leading voices of the past half century and Mexico’s most renowned novelist. Although he had a deep attachement to Mexico he spent much of his life abroad all of which he believed helped him as a writer:

I am grateful for my sense of detachment because I can say things about my country other people don’t say. I offer Mexicans a mirror in which they can see how they look, how they talk, how they act, in a country which is a masked country. Of course, I realize that my writings are my masks as well, verbal masks I offer my country as mirrors. Mexico is defined in the legend of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, the god who creates man and is destroyed by a demon who offers him a mirror. The demon shows him he has a face when he thought he had no face. This is the essense of Mexico: to discover you have a face when you thought you only had a mask.

If you don’t know much about this great writer check out the two videos above. The first is in Spanish with English subtitles and the second is an American interview. Both were recorded last year.

To finish; in 1981 when the Paris Review interviewer asked Fuentes what made him want to begin writing, he said:

That wonderful thing Hamlet says about ‘a fiction, a dream of passion.’ My fiction is a dream of passion, born of a cry that says ‘I am incomplete.’ I want to be complete, to be enclosed. I want to add something.

RIP.

Via Open Culture 

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Trash Culture Revue Line Up For Friday 18th May

admin | All about mutantspace | 3 hours ago

So tomorrows line up for our DIY Arts Festival is a really full programme of events with everything from circus to comedy, spoken word to theatre and film to music.

Kicking off at 6m at The Triskel Arts Centre are the Lords Of Strut, Ireland’s hardest working Man – Band . They’re premiering their new show, ‘Sell Out Tour’, which I’m assured will blow your minds and bring you to your knees laughing.
So who are these kings of comedy, these clowns of manlihood? Well they’re a two man band; Famous Seamus and his bumbling younger brother Seantastic who seems to be – in the eyes of Seamus – the only reason they’ve not reached the heights of fame which Seamus expects of his untouchable talents.Expect satire, surrealism and silly comedy with flashes of surprising acrobatic skill and dance routines.

At 7pm we have our seventh Mutant Shorts Film Competition at The Roundy. This time round we decided on the theme of ‘Lego’ so it’ll be interesting to see what the filmmakers have come up with. And as always a big thanks must go out to the Cork Film Centre who have donated a prize of three days free film equipment rental.

At 8pm Terry Dineen will be performing her one woman show, ‘The Birth Day’ at The Camden Palace Hotel. It tells the story of a woman who plunges herself into an emotional journey through life. On the way significant scenes are depicted from her birth, through her youth, to middle age. We follow her life as she discovers the joys and pains of sex, love and work in her struggle to come to terms with herself and the world she lives in.
This is a text based work explored through visual images, music, movement, puppetry and clown.

At 9pm is our Mutant Cabaret – the chance for all mutants to perform at The Roundy. We have a great line up all MCed by the fantastic Tina Pisco. On the bill are:
Dave Rock, a poet and performer based in Galway whose stage poetry comes in many flavours but is sure to involve high-energy joyous physical works and works of raw emotion and possibly some freestyling.
Aidan Killian, a banker turned comedian…nothing apparently funny about that but it is. Very funny.
Kathy D’Arcy a young writer whose first poetry collection, Encounter, was published by Lapwing in 2010. She has worked as a doctor and a teacher and is currently involved in youth work with homeless teenagers in Cork. She is also a playwright and part of a performance group of four women, Catch the Moon, who have appeared in Cork and at the Durrow and Flatlake Literary Festivals.
Deirdre Tunney is a young performer who loves to sing and is going to join in wherever possible.
Horsemen Pass By (formerly known as Beastmen B-Side Sessions) are a two – piece band playing original soundtracks to recut forgotten films. Using guitars, electronic beats, sampled horns, strings and the occasional choir their show promises weird visuals set against spaghetti western, Soviet sci-fi, 50s documentary and zombie horror sounds.
Anja Bakker is a recorder player, harper, singer and conductor who lives in West Cork and will be performing with Tina Pisco who asides from being the MC is also a published writer and poet.

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Photographic Portraits Called Blow Job Shows People Getting Hit In The Face By 100mph Winds

Christopher Jobson | Life in a cultural petri dish | 5 hours ago

Photographer Tadao Cern, from Lithuania, has been working on this series of amusing portraits provocatively entitled, ‘Blow Job’. The images show individuals getting hit with full frontal gale – force winds.

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Foxglove Launch Their Debut Album, ‘Crazy at the Helm’, At The Triskel Arts Centre In Cork

admin | Everything about music | 7 hours ago

Cork Band, Foxglove, are launching their debut album, ‘Crazy At The Helm’, at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork on Friday 25th May. Our skills exchange is delighted to be supporting them and here’s what leader singer Niamh Murphy has to say about their new departure:

So I heard it said that a great idea is a great idea until it gets close to the time of fruition (hate this word!) In the midst of all the hard work and endless list of ‘things to do’ you find yourself thinking “what was I thinking!?”

Well here I am about to launch ‘Crazy at the Helm’ on the 25th May in the beautiful Triskel Christchurch venue with my band, a brass section, four part harmonies and a grand piano! Oh and also record, properly, audio and visuals which will hopefully be wonderful fodder that will yield an exciting debut album and video footage which will be released in the autumn. We will make it so Jean Luc!!

To soundtrack a beautiful and scary world please welcome Niamh Murphy aka Foxglove. Murphy officially presents debut EP Crazy at the Helm. Two of the featured songs have already enjoyed success with Land’s End recently being shortlisted by Hotpress Magazine and Winter featuring on the nationally acclaimed Irish female compilation album Cafe Irlandaise. As Crazy at the Helm is let loose, so is Foxglove set to perform with dates booked all over Ireland in the coming months. Joining Foxglove on this musical journey is a host of wonderful and accomplished musicians: Kate Curran on vocals/trumpet, Rob Dunne on guitars, John McAleer on bass and Dan Walsh on drums

With an album in the making Foxglove is prolific, expresses emotionally and is drawn in to observing, interpreting and reflecting over an all too often cruel, off kilter society. Foxglove songs embrace and encompass beauty found everywhere, every day. The real magic is in the live shows. Foxglove is due to play dates in Cork, Dublin, Wexford, Galway, Kerry, Waterford over the coming months. Guesting on this night will be the very talented Jack O’Rourke and Ger Meagan.

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Beautiful Digital Lace Illustrations By Brazilian Artist

The Creators Project | Life in a cultural petri dish | 9 hours ago

Artist Cristina Suzuki has created this beautiful series of digital illustrations called ‘Digital Lace’.

The first step was to draw my own patterns and engrave them on wood—like Indian wedges. As I wanted to improve pattern construction, I started to draw them on the computer, and then I realized there were infinite possibilities. First, I draw with a pencil. That drawing is a model that I scan and remake using CorelDRAW. And then I start to build other shapes, mirroring, rotating, and superimposing that figure.

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Sufi Plugin For Ableton Live Gives You Sounds Of North Africa

The Creators Project | Everything about music | May 16, 2012

I don’t know much about sufi music, DJs or even what Ableton Live is. But even to me this Sufi Plug Ins project is fascinating. The project is dedicated to exploring non – western and poetic notions of sound in interaction with alternative interfaces. To create a space where software design, music tools, encoded spirituality, digital art and indigenous knowledge systems overlap.

The first plugin was released on the 8th May and is a free suite of seven audio software tools for Ableton Live. They include four software synthesizers hardwired to North African maqam scales with quartertone tuning built-in, a device called DEVOTION which lowers your computer’s volume five times a day during call to prayer (presets include Agnostic, Fervent, Devout) and a drone machine.

This interdisciplinary project was kicked off by experimental turntablist and producer DJ Rupture who decided to research the music of North Africa while travelling through Morocco. What he came back with are Sufi Plugins that open the Ableton Live software’s versatility up to North African melodies. The virtual module is a colourful device with minimal design and the parameters are all written in Berber.

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Trash Culture Revue Kicks Of With Film And Music Tomorrow

admin | All about mutantspace | May 16, 2012

So tomorrow our DIY Arts Festival, The Trash Culture Revue,  kicks off. At last. We’re here. In the flesh. The real world. Our online arts skills exchange is physically present and tomorrow evening, in Cork City, we’ll be hosting a number of film and music events.

First on up is the Moving Image Mini Film Festival that’s being held in The Camden Palace Hotel on Camden Quay at 6pm. It’s free and should be good fun.

At 8pm we have two documentaries screening at Solidarity Books on Douglas Street. The first is ‘Jana Sanskriti – A theatre on the field’, the second ‘D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist‘. I wrote up on these two films on my post earlier on today so you can read up about them there. The screenings are free and a great opportunity to see two films you’d rarely get the opportunity to see.

At 9pm doors open at The Roundy on Castle Street for our only gig of the night, Cormac O’Caoimh and Ants On Glass.
Cormac is a singer-songwriter, classical guitarist and former member of ‘The Citadels’ who received critical acclaim on various releases over the last 10 years. His debut solo cd “Stark a spark” was released in 2007 and received glowing reviews. For his new album “A New Season For Love” he re-united with ex-bandmates Art O Laoire and Eoghan Regan, who also were in The Citadels.

He is an admirable songsmith and each track from his forthcoming album “A New Season For Love” contains a catchiness and accessibility at their core that outweigh any stylistic definition. Though he may be likened to the hypnotic Nick Drake, or the inverse Elliot Smith, it is his slow and gradual soft low – key vocal delivery that inspires repeat listens. Here’s what people have had to say about his music:

There is a lot of good stuff coming out of Ireland …people like Damien Rice and David Kitt and I got a cd recently from Cork which I really like.
Ron Sexsmith

More than your typical singer-songwriter, O’Caoimh mixes pop sensibility with finely tuned song writing wrapping it all up in his soft melodic confidence and sharp lyrical commentary
Hot Press

the fresh confident songwriting of Cormac O’Caoimh suggests a promising future
Tom Robinson, BBC

Ants On Glass on the other hand are a recently formed string – duo incorporating rhythms and melodies from different parts of the world into their own original compositions. They’ll bring you on a musical journey from India to Africa via Brazil and the mountains of Austria. They’ll be offering you rare, exotic and catchy melodies in combination with intricate grooves, exploring the violin’s potential to act as a percussion instrument in combination with loops and effects. Modal improvisation, vocal harmonies and yodelling offer a truthful expression of the violinist’s passion for traveling, connecting with people and their music. The duo’s unique merging of cultures reflects the musician’s search for their own authentic transcultural identity.

This gig is for a very reasonable €5 so you have no excuse to miss it and you’ll regret it if you don’t.

I’ll have more info for you on Fridays events tomorrow.
Oh and by the way every day there are two art exhibitions on. The first is by Pretty Handsome Studios who are exhibiting their screen prints in The Roundy and the second is an exhibition of illustrations by Anna Giersz and Estera Mianowska in The Woodford on Paul Street.

Remember, if you want more info just go to our skills exchange website.
You might even decide to join up. It’s free.

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Photographs of Ships Sailing Across A Sea Of Crumpled Sheets

admin | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 16, 2012

Photographer Luis Gonzalez Palmas has created these magical images of ships sailing across a sea of crumpled bed sheets in this series called ‘Ara Solis’.

His work usually deals with his mixed Latin and Mayan heritage, focusing on portraits of the indigenous people of Guatemala and although these photographs seem to have nothing to do with his cultural history you only have to think of the conquests of the Americas, the mass rush for a new life, new riches to see the relationship between the two. Even the title of the series hints at his heritage, ‘Ara Solis’ refers to the ritual practices of his ancestors at the “altar to the sun” where sacrifices were made to the gods.

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The Trash Culture Revue Is Finally Addressing The Political

admin | All about mutantspace | May 16, 2012

One day to go until our DIY Arts festival kicks off. We’re all set. What’s most interesting about this edition of The Trash Culture Revue is the number of events focussed on political and social commentary. Something that is central to what our skills exchange is all about. We don’t live in a vacuum and it seems that finally, finally, people are starting to engage, get involved in what’s going on around them, in the larger scheme of things, how politics, the way we live, our social relations, are at the core of our being, our relevant to us, all of us, in life, how we live, work and play. So I thought I’d give you a run down on some of our events that look to provoke, enlighten, question.

On Thursday night at 8pm we’re screening the two documentaries at Solidarity Books on Douglas Street; ’Jana Sanskriti – A theatre on the field’, a film by Jeanne Dosse (2007) and ‘D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist‘, a film by Michael W. Dean (2004)

Jana Sanskriti is centred on the fight by over 1000 peasants in India to overcome numerous social issues including; patriarchy, corruption, and worst of all, indifference. For this fight, they chose an unexpected instrument, theatre.
Through brave testimonies and parts of their forum – theatre plays, members of Jana Sanskriti (‘The People’s Culture’) reveal a solidarity in India. The group, based in West Bengal, is part of a large movement spread throughout ten different states in India utilising the methods of Theatre of the Oppressed.

Theatre of the Oppressed is a form of social theatre devised by Augusto Boal, in Brazil, in the 1960s in which theatre is used as a means of knowledge and transformation of reality in the social and relational field – the audience becoming active, ‘spect-actors’, exploring, showing, analyzing and transforming the reality in which they are living. In tandem with that documentary we will be hosting a one day introduction in Theatre of the Oppressed techniques on Saturday 19th in the Cork Circus Space on Albert Quay (check out our programme for details).

The other film, ‘D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist’ is a low-budget documentary, a ‘celebration of the underdog’ that deals with why some artists do what they do, regardless of the lack of a continuous paycheck. They may be painters, writers or musicians, they may be rich, poor or starving, but they all have one thing in common – they all create for the sake of creating something and for the need to express themselves. In the spirit of the D.I.Y. culture it portrays the DVD was released under the title, ‘D.I.Y. or Die: Burn this DVD’, with no region restrictions or copy protection, urging people to make and distribute copies for non-commercial use.

So I hope you can make it to those documentaries and if not then at least look them up, download them, buy them, get a loan of them.

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A Beached Whale Found In A Forest In Argentinia

Christopher Jobson | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 16, 2012

This beached whale sculpture by Argentinian Artist Adrián Villar Rojas is quite incredible. He creates enormous sculptural works, installations, that look like they’ve arrived out of a dream, a nightmare or even outer space.

This piece, called ‘My Family Dead’, was made in 2009 in a forest outside Ushuaia, Argentina. The whale seems pockmarked with tree stumps making you wonder whether it has been there for eons or simply fallen from the sky. An alien creature, who knows.

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Under The Sea Is A Film About Stop – Motion Animator Hayley Morris

admin | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 15, 2012

‘Under The Sea’, is a film about award winning stop-motion animator Hayley Morris and captures her creative process as she makes drawings for her latest film ‘Bounce Bounce’ which you can see below.

Here’s what the filmmaker had to say about Morris and her process:

Despite her scratchy line, Hayley puts down each stroke with confidence and vigor. Her drawing seems to pulse and vibrate. She layers her watercolor quickly, wet-on-wet, creating more vibration and vitality. I like the ease and spontaneity of the way she makes art — you’d think a stop-motion animator would be enormously controlled in her work but Hayley leaves room for reaction and response as she makes her art. In an era of CGI and digital processes, her work harkens back to stop-motion puppeteers like the Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay. It’s beautiful and emotional.

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Four Rare Films And Performances From French Filmmaker Jacques Tati

Mike Springer | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 15, 2012

Jacques Tati is regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and is one of Frances most renowned directors, actors and writers. His two most famous comedies, ‘Mon Oncle’ and ‘Mr. Hulot’s Holiday’, have themes running through them that are common in all his work; Western society’s obsession with material goods, particularly American-style consumerism, the pressure-cooker environment of modern society, the superficiality of relationships among France’s various social classes and the cold and often impractical nature of space-age technology and design.

He only made six films all of which are essentially silent films in the age of talking pictures. Sound and dialogue are secondary. Tati’s protagonists tend to mumble while communicating through mime.

The following short films have been rarely seen and all feature Tati as a performer.

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This Architectural Design Project Using Recycled Bottles Is Simple, Smart And Cheap

Christopher Jobson | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 14, 2012

This architectural design project by Garth Britzman was made using recycled drink bottles partially filled with coloured water to create a canopy under which you can park your car. It’s amazing how the simplest, cheapest objects can be used to create beautiful work. Simple, clean, smart.

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Standard Time Is a Living Clock That Constructs Each Minute As It Happens On Your Computer

The Creators Project | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 14, 2012

This art installation called ‘Standard Time‘ by Artist Mark Formanek is a living clock that was constructed in real time over a 24 hour period by 70 workers, taking 30 boards and 1611 changes to complete. The video of the process is synchronized with the time at which your computer is configured. So if you want it on your desktop, iphone or android then you can download it off his website.

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29 total views, 2 today

Type City By Artist Hong Seon Jang Is Made Using Moveable Type

Christopher Jobson | Life in a cultural petri dish | May 14, 2012

‘Type City’ by artist Hong Seon Jang is created using pieces of movable type from a printing press. This minature cityscape is another great example of artists using materials out of context whether they be recycled, reclaimed, reappropriated. We may not be buying as many books anymore but as Jang has shown in this work there are still many things that moveable type can be used for.

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