Mabuse

Last thursday was the premiere of Bock & Vincenzi's performance "The infinte pleasure of the great unknown" introducing Troupe Mabuse at Toynbee Studios (Arts Admin).
"THE INFINITE PLEASURES OF THE GREAT UNKNOWN is a stage show presented within the form of a film. Behind a black cinema screen Troupe Mabuse play a cast of thousands, in a never-ending state of emergency; a storm in which the fear of the unknown conceals its own controlling force. Into this play of possession, King Lear also appears. Having missed his cue to die he wanders eternally in a landscape of his own making, searching for meaning within a scrambled version of Shakespeare’s original storm scene."

The performance is well thought and the attention to details in order to create such a peculiar Lynch-esque atmosphere was brilliant. Maybe a little long if you ask me but the experment was definitely worth it.

Link Here.

SDL

Nice notebook design by SDL - Stockholm Design Lab -

URTD

I'm liking the work of slovak designer Ondrej Job.
Link here.

Kiwi

Some nice piece of design at kiwi studio InHouse design.
Link Here.

Opt

While i was in Paris, i took the opportunity to go and see Bridget Riley's retrospective show at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris.
As i'm usually pretty keen on the Opt art aesthetics, i got absolutely amazed by Riley's work that i only knew in surface. The show presents her work in a chronological order and following each step of her art through various explanations about her choices is a real bliss. Even though my favorite bit would be the early black and white period, the entire path through her graphic and intelectual research is remarkable.

Link here.

Back

Finally back in town after a short break in Paris.
Some catching up to do blog wise.
Here we go.
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The night before i left for France, i went to see an amazing show
at the Sadler's Well.The performance was Akram Kahn's latest
show in collaboration with the National Ballet of china called Bahok.

Here's the pitch:
"Bahok, named after a Bengali word meaning ‘carrier’ explores the ways
in which the body carries national identity and a sense of belonging.
Khan’s dancers come from diverse cultures, traditions and dance backgrounds –
Chinese, Korean, Indian, South-African and Spanish – and this rich mix of both
spoken and dance language pushes the boundaries of movement vocabulary."

As usual, Khan managed to create an incredibly intimist and moving performance
filled with a mixture of humour, poetry and philosophy. A must see.

Synth Eastwood

Here's my submission for Synth Eastwood exhibition on friday 13th June!
The theme is Flags and anthems. You can't really see it on a saved for
web lowres jpg but basically the poster (A2) is made of 126 anthems.
A globalised flag in a way :)
Check the event details here.

Boom Chack!

Very cool installation by David Byrne in NYC (liking the website design too).
Here's the pitch: " Playing the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument."

Via today and tomorrow.

CellarDoor

This week end i went to the Institute for Contemporary Arts to see
Loris Greaud's installation. Really nice piece, some weird dark vibes coming out of these Kubrick-esque rooms but a really interesting concept (quite hard to sum-up though so here's an excerpt form the ICA website) :
"Gréaud's installation at the ICA, with its three almost identical rooms, reveals another of the artist's key preoccupations - the notion of doubling and repetition. The repeating elements within the rooms include: high-speed automatic doors which open like shutters; special light-emitting speakers designed by the artist; and a carpet with a pattern derived in part in part from architect Buckminster Fuller's experiments with the geodesic dome. Finally, Greaud's installation at the ICA will be subject to a number of periodic interruptions, one of which is the arrival of three identical figures serving black champagne."
At the ICA, until the 22nd June, info here.

New Work

Veeery nice design for this large format newspaper publication.
Have a look at New Work here.

Via FormFiftyFive.

Gigs

Late double post, the talented Battles were on stage last wed
in London and it was one good gig! http://www.bttls.com/



Also, another recent gig i went too, the southern frenchies
from Marvin (instrumental rock trio) are worth listening to
(especially if you're into the whole math rock thingy).
Very impressed by the performance.
They definitely rock. website or myspace

Scottish Touch

Some nice piece of work by the Edinburgh based Touch design studio.

Julian Red

I don't post a lot of web design stuff usually but i really like this one:
beautiful design, clever navigation and it's always nice to stumble upon a
website without a "big-logo-at-the-top-left-corner" architecture. Nice.

Zhong Guo

Last week end i went to see V&A's exhibition "China Design Now".
Loads of good stuff in it and very well thought exhibition space.
Amongst all the good works displayed (the first Shenzen room is
filled with breath taking posters) i really liked the atmospherical
and sometimes funny photographs by chinese photographer Maleon.
Check his website here.
Info about the exhibition here.

1968-2008

Yesterday was the opening of a little exhibition at the 1st floor
of the Hayward Gallery called "May 68: Street Posters from the Paris Rebellion".
Very interesting to see the original versions of these well-known posters.
It is free and it's definitely worth checking out. Info here, gallery here.

Grain

Grain Edit's Flickr set is filled with graphic goodness.

Airside

The new Airside website is now live (with a new branding too)!
Nice work. Check it out here.

Feltron for Penguin

I'm always very found of Nicholas Feltron's design.
Here a collaboration with author Matt Mason for Penguin Books. Link here.

via Swissmiss.

Birthday

Twenty years ago, the wittiest of all the french humorist passed away.
Pierre Desproges was one of the most satirical, unpolitically correct
entertainer i've ever heard.
For me he's still one of the funniest and definitely my favorite one.

Popp

Julius Popp talks about his work and presents his Bit.fall piece. Very nice.

Via Design & typo.