dreamscape.

i am absolutely in love with these videos. kinfolk are a group of artists who have combined their talent to produce work inspired by their love of small gatherings.

sure, they are a little too dreamy and perfect and at the wrong moments aggravate more than soothe. sometimes – ok sure, much of the time – life seems to consist of just managing between piles of laundry, dirty dishes, dustballs, hurry and short, snappy words to those around us.

but at most times, the serenity in these little clips draws me close and reminds me of the really important things: food, friends, and the details that make the moments we share so precious.

sit back, relax and enjoy. and if you feel the urge to write thank you notes by hand or quit your job to bake bread, do not blame me...



and there are more on their vimeo page. but remember i warned you.

have a beautiful weekend.

monday doc.

a great little piece of film about flow festival history and present by nokia. for english subtitles, click to youtube and press cc.

there's a short duck hat presence at around 4.30 mins from the beginning...

studs of circumstance.

stretching the limits of what it means to be a photographer, the project of cosmin bumbuț brings forward intimate moments of life into which a male photographer could not otherwise have access.

he gave cameras to the inmates at tîrgșor women's penitentiary in romania and received a collection of content from life within forced borders. he then created a video (i cannot embed, but urge you to go and watch it) with the following description:

girlboys are women who, during prison detention, assume a male identity. they have “wives” who tidy up, do the laundry and wash the dishes. girlboys protect them, fulfill their emotional need and offer them sexual pleasure. they have men nicknames, cut their hair short and wear masculine clothes, clench their fists and demand respect. some of them have children at home and they do this only while they are imprisoned. other, continue their relationships after they are released. most of them are old offenders. almost all have suffered sexual abuse.

the selected set of photographs shot by the women themselves portray a world where elaborate gender systems flourish, but is in no way a stereotypical portrayal of prison life turning women into lesbian predators and victims. the longing for everyday aesthetics – frilly sheets, flowers –, privacy and close relationships is so evident, alive and yet constantly at peril.

from degetoaice 2011 © cosmin bumbuț

hope in pink.

the imagery of japanese born new yorker fumi nagasaka so completely captures the visual world that i have grown into from my teen years that i sometimes find the photos and videos almost too familiar.

this is not to say that i consider her images alike the reality i live in, but rather that they embody everything i find beautiful and aesthetically pleasing in the world. her romantic colors suggest a softness that surrounds her consideration for awkward beings. beauty is not about symmetry, or when it is, there's a suggestion of frailty and impermanence.

a contributor at dazed, she created a short film with model du jour, andrej pejic, about her experience in japan when the earthquake hit and how people kept expecting good news in the midst of all the pain and suffering. and then the cherry blossom season begun...

 

flip through her website and blog for photos and film.

exquisite.

nature comes alive.

about a month ago i was in berlin for a week. almost purely on business, i enjoyed the atmosphere at tempelhof airport.

after my sweetie joined me for the weekend, we slowly inhaled the urban landscape, the trippy decor of our psychedelic hotel nhow and devoured the amazing food available everywhere in the city.

although i'll return to the highlights of the trip later, i wanted to tell you about a little gem of a restaurant we enjoyed our saturday dinner at.

little otik is located rather deep in kreuzberg. the place is a casual locavore haven with a daily changing list of seasonal, organic and, needless to say, local ingredients.

our dinner tasted fresh and felt lavish, and we were recommended an excellent grüner veltliner to accompany it.

the owners are a couple from the states and the service – i'm guessing since none of us spoke german – mostly in english. the place stemmed from a monthly pop-up restaurant of a sort the guys organized at their apartment for strangers. because of the success, they decided to invest in their own place.

the interior was created using recycled elements and scavenged items from the streets. the result is a rustic, minimalistic space with welcoming warmth.

and the strange name? little otik is a film based on a czech folk tale about a childless couple who take a root of a tree resembling a baby as their child. the wooden creature gains life from their love, but shows unfortunate appetite, carnivorous and insatiable, which leads to neighbors being led to the basement for a murderous feast.



now doesn't that sound appetizing?

now, why does the light seem rather eerie now...

it gets better.

very late this october a surprising (to me, that is) group in finland decided to take action. they were not people who were unrelated to the topic at hand nor people who had not taken action before – there were think-tankers, digital marketing professionals, celebrities, corporate leaders, politicians, etc – but many of the members of the group had hardly taken a personal is political stance previously.

in a couple of days they put together a video that premiered at the TEDx helsinki conference on one of the first days of november.

i had read about my friends' facebook statuses that "great things were on the way", but nothing prepared me for the actual viral. i cried, and i wasn't the only one.


(if you cannot see the english subtitles, click on cc.)

the past year in finland has felt abrasive. last summer the pride march was attacked. people interviewed on tv, columnists and bloggers have taken their liberties seriously and uttered hurtful words using both their impressions about religion and their right to free speech as excuses. yesterday a "style consultant" asked the gay couples who dared to dance at the president's independence day reception to "show some respect" and refrain from dancing.

just like everywhere around the world, gay kids are more likely to take their own lives than straight ones – the bullying and marginalization is a reality as much here as it is in where the "it gets better" campaign was started, the us.

curiously all of these people claim to know plenty of lgbti-people and that they have close friends from sexual minorities. i am sure they find nothing religiously, stylistically or veraciously problematic about hurting (intentionally?) their other friends, either.

some even ask why gays are above criticism... although none of them can give any other "critical" argument but that they're grossed out about gays (that is, imagining sex between gay men, let's be honest here) and seeing gay people being treated just like others feels like an insult on normality (i.e. forces them to imagine sex between men).

the video above was shown at schools and on all national tv stations and it created such a wave of applause that the force behind it quickly gathered people to write their stories. today, they are launched as a book. it will be available in bookstores nationwide and online (for example here).

all the proceeds go to the youth help line funded by the mannerheim league for child welfare – about which i have distressed views because of their psychiatrist's inexplicable views about gay parenting. nonetheless, the helpline is the only viable one nationally and their work is without hesitation thoroughly admirable.

the book launch is tonight at jenny woo from 7.30pm onwards. there will be a couple of short speeches, some live music, excerpts read from the book and djs, myself included.

welcome.

their opinions are meaningless to me. i really like skating and i won't stop.

the imagery of war and upheaval feels so banal these days that newscasts hardly reach me with their clips. distancing oneself from political turmoil has become such a survival tendency that it's sometimes shocking to one's core to realize how elusive human struggles can be even in an age where global messages move at the speed of light.

projects like diesel's new voices in collaboration with dazed digital offer glimpses that remind us of persons carrying on with their lives in areas of which we are usually offered a flattened view of disintegration. to watch skateistan is to enter a microlevel of survival in a hostile environment that no-one wants to preserve.

make it to greenpoint.

although many people who take pride in their credibility – that elusive definition that vaporizes every time you try to grasp it – like to complain about gentrification, the truth is that when neighborhoods become cleaner, services better and entrepreneurship seems attractive as an option, they are more tolerable to live in.

the only downside to the sudden elevation of a neighborhood is that rents are hoisted forcing some people to move out. nevertheless, according to many studies, the amount of people who need to move is rather small and most original residents of any given neighborhood greet gentrification with appreciation.

thus, those who want to move because the area is too gentrified, is extremely small and usually a privileged lot who like slumming it just for the sake of, well, keeping it real... the paradox of hipsterdom.

during our trip to nyc, i witnessed what had happened to my old hood and most of it felt great: my home street, grand, had turned into a bonafide boutique and bar row. nothing wrong with losing, for example, the maquiladora next door to our place, i say.

after williamsburg has definitely become more desirable and expensive to live in, the area has spread out to other neighborhoods. part of the same rezoning plan that is affecting willyburg and raising serious objections from locals living in the area, northern greenpoint, an old polish hood, still waits for better public transportation in order to fully make it as a worthy location – now that the l runs pretty reliably (what it did not when i lived in wburg), the g train is still a mess –, but there are plenty of cool happenings and venues to be enjoyed.

and who needs to ride a train anyway, right? just hop on yer bike...

one night we took a stroll towards the water, to a small bar called coco 66, where friends of a friend were hosting a comedy night. the crappy cinema council is a night of movie clips from the worst films the hosts have stumbled upon accompanied with their often fabulously hilarious commentary together with standup of variable quality. some was funny, some poor and demeaning. all in all, if you’re around, a great two hours for some laughs.

with new restaurants popping up every week, there are always new ones worth checking out. a great place for fish tacos in greenpoint is papacitos where the yucca fries are chevy and the burritos almost as big as in cali. a big bonus is the unostentatious presence of vegan alternatives next to basic carnivorous choices – why can't we have that here, may i ask?

papacitos, in the dark.

the bonafide hangout of greenpointers is still enid's, a bar and restaurant with the best bloody mary we had the pleasure to enjoy during our stay. my sweetie still refers to the us as “the land of crappy bloody marys” but the enid's version was quite alright. it is also one of the brunch places i’d recommend, if you’re in the neighborhood.

enid's bloody mary, darker.

as a long overdue report of our last trip to nyc, i'll try to return with some other tips and suggestions. anything in particular you might want to hear about?

pop negro.

i am lowsy at following picture blogs that feed only photos after photos without text or other content. sure, i browse through them from time to time, but they don't inspire me enough to hook.

nonetheless, i am a sucker for beautiful images. i guess i need air (or text?) around mine.

this video below is full of great little creations. i had to watch it twice to get into the mood of picking individual gems, but now that i have adjusted my visual input, i could just devour still image after still image.

the song, a caribbean influenced synth dance tune by el guincho from the album pop negro, ain't bad either. enjoy in a safe place – this is strictly nsfw.

makia online.

this is the way finnish traditional imagery should be exploited. greatness!



and the clothes are more than ok, too. go shop!

move me.

for us working within digital media, it's been ever so subtly an underlying insinuation in the world of marketing that online video is taking over slowly but surely what print is failing to do. although digital newspapers and journals are still trying to find a form that was most efficient and usable, the addition of film clips seems an inevitable and natural part of the future of online journalism and ads.

i am not talking about taking television programs or commercials online, but actually rethinking online media advertising via moving images. flash is gasping its last breaths but movement itself – that so infatuated us with the appearance of flash code as an addition to basic html – is far from over.

video banners and blog posts are already a reality, but still rather rare. the use of video in marketing is terribly underused, but with the already existing entanglement of music and fashion, videos that serve the primary and explicit marketing purposes of fashion houses seem to be taking the first leap.

these works play with the borderlines of television adverts, movie trailers and music videos, but are without exception (as far as i have noted) dubbed 'short films' rather than advertisements. moreover, they are intended for online use, for virtual communities and many seem shot as part of regular advertising campaigns.

it's clear that moving images provide an idea of clothing and lifestyle that is more nuanced than a print campaign, which nevertheless, at best, can be incredibly strong as still images feed the imagination differently. with the addition of sound these clips suggest a space of immersion, just like movies.

here's one from last summer:

director zoé cassavetes for louis vuitton:


moreover, here are two great examples of this fall:

craig mcdean for alexander wang.


ruth hogben for gareth pugh:


what do you think: do you click on videos or skip them?

the radiant child.

for all jean-michel aficionados out there, there was one particular premiere at this year's sundance festival that was more than eagerly anticipated. composed of rare footage from over twenty years ago, the documentary radiant child offers an insight into the life of 25-year-old basquiat at the height of his career, just 2 years prior to his death.

although probably not shown anywhere close to helsinki, i have preordered the dvd, due out 16 october 2010.



cannot wait.