Photographer Roger Ballen is known for his stark, artful montages of South African life: the dirt-poor of rural townships, the beatific scallywags and sooty lowlifes living on skid-row mixed in with the detritus washed up from the slums and shanties. His new music video with Cape Town band Die Antwoord “I Fink U Freeky,” meshes hip hop beats with his signature style of photography, animating his still images.

The slang used by Die Antwoord is Zef, an Afrikaans term that roughly translates to “common or trashy,” referencing a white trash culture, cheap, tin Ford Zephyrs (zef), trailer park kitsch, cool tough guys with style.

"I Fink U Freeky" - Die Antwoord - Photograph by Roger Ballen

Ballen’s work is a blend of photography and art, combining still life compositions and live portraiture. The artist has been shooting black and white film for nearly fifty years. Having grown up in the era of b&w photography Ballen continues to be one of the last few experimenting exclusively in this media. Explaining his passion for black and white and the constraints it implies, Ballen says, “Black and White is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive. Black and White is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality.”

"I Fink U Freeky" - Die Antwoord - Photograph by Roger Ballen

Ballen’s video with Die Antwoord began with still images he took of the band for their album three years ago that were made popular through youtube circulation. Eventually the growing interest in those images led him to collaborate on a full-length video project with the band. Ballen’s visual aesthetic is unique but compare this also to the musical interpretation and approach to local rhythms by another South African photographer, Pieter Hugo’s cover of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control, a video he did for DJ Spoek Mathambo

From Roger Ballen's book, Shadow Chamber 'Twirling Wires' 2001 © Roger Ballen

More information: Roger Ballen

Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson

The writer, Alain De Botton, famous for his musings on Proust and the nature of happiness, has always had an interest in the way humans are impacted by architectural spaces. De Botton has explored transitional places and the way they affect human emotions – and he has lived in an airport continuously for a week for research on his book A Week At the Airport. But, for his latest project, De Botton has been inspired to create an edifice for atheists to counter the millions of monuments that exist for gods.

For the scores of glorious cathedrals and mosques built by architects there appears to be none that had been built for atheists. Places of worship have been built for Jesus, Mary and for the Buddha, but temples can also be built for love, friendship and calmness…

Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson

De Botton intends to build his tower in London at a symbolic height that reflects a scale of 300 million years of life on earth. He explained in the Guardian, “Each centimeter of the tapering tower’s interior has been designed to represent a million years and a narrow band of gold will illustrate the relatively tiny amount of time humans have walked the planet.” De Botton’s idea is to encourage contemplation. He also added, “the exterior would be inscribed with a binary code denoting the human genome sequence.”

Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists - Image courtesy of Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson

The Secular Retreat designed by Peter Zumthor, in South Devon for Living Architecture concept for 2012

De Botton has said that he finds Richard Dawkins‘ and Christopher Hitchens’ approach to atheism too aggressive and destructive, and not positively persuasive to people who are just not that interested in religion but not aggressively opposed to it.

He believes that a temple for atheists fits into a tradition of secular places such as Rothko’s chapel. De Botton also manages Living Architecture, which is an organization that invites people to rent and holiday at some of the most innovative spaces designed by contemporary architects, and recently Peter Zumthor has designed a new building for Living Architecture, “Secular Retreat” which will be available to renters later in 2012

Alain de Botton - researching airports

The Balancing Barn, Alain De Botton, Living Architecture

Alain De Botton has a new book out, Religion for Atheists, which poses the idea of whether religions are neither all true or all nonsense – http://www.alaindebotton.com/religion.asp

A still from the short film - Fishing Without Nets, Directed by Cutter Hodierne Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival -

Filmed in Kenya, East Africa, Cutter Hodierne’s 17 minute short ‘Fishing Without Nets’ is a story about Somali pirates.  After being noticed for his self-made short videos Cutter Hodierne dropped out of college in Boston and decided to take a plunge into film-making. With a bit of luck at the age of 22 he was touring the world with U2 as their filmmaker.

With a savvy sense for cultivating his own persona, the director claims his parents sold their possessions just before he was born, quit their jobs and bought a 32‐foot cutter-rigged sailboat from which he was christened Cutter. It was smooth sailing for the next three years of his life at least, around the South Pacific, which might have given him a pirate’s eye for roving and adventure.

A still from the short film - Fishing Without Nets, Directed by Cutter Hodierne

Though not all his upbringing was as exotic, having been raised in Virginia with a mother at NPR, he had enough of a regular education to get a good feel for digital video editing at an early age. Recently his efforts have paid off, and now at 25 years of age, he’s been fortunate to have his short film accepted into Sundance. His film ‘Fishing Without Nets’ is the story of pirates in Somalia, told from the perspective of the pirates. Though the script is fiction, the film has the feel of a documentary, and ripe for the recent interest in renegade pirates of the high seas.

Hodierne along with some of his school-mates took a gambit and flew to Kenya to shoot the film on a shoestring, recruiting his actors from the streets of Mombasa. Shooting the film in Kenya had been tough and the crew even had a run in with the law due to the stringent gun permit laws. With a bit more pirate charm, Hodierne hopes to finish his short in South Africa and turn it eventually into a feature film.

Native - Courtesy of Cutter Hodierne - http://www.mynameiscutter.com

View the Trailer: somalipiratemovie.com
Filmed in Kenya, East Africa, the 17 minute short ‘Fishing Without Nets’ is playing at Sundance Film Festival 2012
DIRECTOR Cutter Hodierne
SCREENWRITER Cutter Hodierne, John Hibey
Kenya, 2011, 17 min, color,
Somalian with English subtitles

http://www.mynameiscutter.com/

© Francesco Vezzoli, Natalie, with Vezzoli's mother's eyes Courtesy of Prada's 24 Hour Museum

Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli’s latest media ploy has been to design a pop-up museum, open for 24 hours, in collaboration with Prada and AMO, Rem Koolhaas’ think tank in Paris’ Palais d’Iéna. The temporary event will welcome the public in to the traditionally historic building for a night of magic, like a Cinderella’s ball, before it is dismantled the next day.

The theatrical premiere is organized into three event spaces, historic, contemporary and the forgotten, the first being a showcase of Vezzoli’s works enclosed in neon-lit metal cages on the ground floor of the building. Vezzoli poses his portraits of Hollywood divas in the style of classical Greco-Roman sculptures on marble pedestals – the sculptures wear masks with Vezzoli’s mother’s eyes. With these works, Vezzoli continues his exploration of red-carpet rituals of celebrity and stardom that will be further exploited with a party staged in conjunction with the event, and which will be live streamed on the internet. Also, on Facebook, the artist intends to have an interactive game in which he frames people’s faces in classical composites.

© Francesco Vezzoli, Cate Courtesy of Prada's 24 Hour Museum

© Francesco Vezzoli, Eva with Vezzoli's mother's eyes for Prada's 24 Hour Museum,

Vezzoli’s previous performance-events included a live tribute to Diaghilev he did with Lady Gaga and Frank Gehry at LA’s MOCA entitled Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again) 2009, and the Democrazy video with Sharon Stone and Bernard-Henri Lévy playing characters in a ficitional political campaign for Venice Biennale in 2007. Prada has also previously collaborated with artist Carsten Holler for the The Double Club, a pop up club in London in 2009.

More information:
24 h Museum – 24 – 25 January 2012
Palais d’Iéna, ADDRESS: 9, PLACE D’IÉNA, 75016 PARIS
TUESDAY 24 JANUARY 2012- WEDNESDAY 25 JANUARY 2012, 7.00 am – 8.30 pm
www.24hoursmuseum.com

Detropia, DIRECTOR Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady U.S.A., 2011, 90 min, color

From the scores of films shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (January 19-29, 2012 in Park City, Utah), only a few end up getting wider distribution; the rest recede into obscurity in Indie film houses. A few of the interesting art films worth looking out for are singled out here:

Directed by New York-based documentary filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Detropia – describes Detroit’s boom and bust history; the hemorrhaging decay and eventual collapse of its auto industry. “With its vivid, painterly palette and haunting score, DETROPIA sculpts a dreamlike collage of a grand city teetering on the brink of dissolution.” The film documents buildings being demolished as Detroit’s economic prospects fade, wages plummet and tourists ogle at the “charming decay.”

THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING, DIRECTOR Ho Tzu Nyen Singapore, 30 min, color

Ho Tzu Nyen’s, The Cloud of Unknowing is an art installation and film, originally shown at the 54th Venice Biennale as part of the Singapore pavillion. The video and sound installation examines clouds as symbolizing transience and emptiness. “On a screen, a narrative unfolds, set in a public housing complex in Singapore, where eight characters in eight apartments individually encounter a cloud, embodied both as a figure and a vaporous mist.”

Excision, DIRECTOR Richard Bates Jr. SCREENWRITER Richard Bates Jr. U.S.A., 2011, 81 min, color

Excision, DIRECTOR Richard Bates Jr. SCREENWRITER Richard Bates Jr. U.S.A., 2011, 81 min, color

Denis Côté's Bestiaire DIRECTOR Denis Côté Canada/France, 2011, 72 min, color

Bestiaries were compendiums of exotic beasts that were popular in medieval times. Denis Côté’s Bestiaire depicts buffalo, hyenas, zookeepers, zebras, taxidermists, rhinos, and ostriches within beautifully composed frames of a locked-off camera. “Whether we anthropomorphize, poeticize, abstract, or judge them is up to us. Côté invites his audience to reflect on control and power as lions rattle cages, a taxidermist recreates a duck, and artists copy a stuffed deer. Using the film form to challenge the very notion of representation, Bestiaire is an elegant, bewitching meditation on the nature of sentience and the boundaries between nature and civilization.”

Other notable films include, Slow Derek, directed by Dan Ojari “The tale of Derek, an office worker, as he struggles with the true speed of planet Earth;” Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present, and Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s Shut Up and Play the Hits, a concert film on LCD Soundsystem.

Click here for more details:
DETROPIA
CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
EXCISION

Book of Sanskrit Animal Fables (Panchatantra) India, Rajasthan Dated Samvat 1811/1754-5 AD Sanskrit manuscript on paper

There is a vast history of animal folklore in literature, and the Pancha Tantra is one of the most ancient. Here are some images from the original book, and Walton Ford’s anecdotal stories that relate to some of his drawings from his collection that takes after the ancient tome of the same name.

Walton Ford, Atma, from Pancha Tantra, © Walton Ford.

In the first place, the story of the external soul is told, in various forms, by all the Aryan peoples of Hindoostan to the Hebrides…In another Hindoo tale an ogre is asked by his daughter, “Papa, where do you keep your soul?”
“Sixteen miles from this place” he said, “is a tree. Round the tree are tigers, and bears and scorpions, and snakes; on top of the tree is a very great fat snake; on his head is a little cage; in the cage is a bird; and my soul is in that bird.” From Sir James George Frazer “The external Soul in Folk Tales” from The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion, 1890. MacMilan. [Taken from WF:Pancha Tantra: Published by Taschen]

Bula Matari by Walton Ford, © Walton Ford

Soon after reaching the Uganda Protectorate at the end of 1899, I came in contact with a large party of dwarfs who had been kidnapped by a too enterprising German impressario, who had decided to show them at the Paris exhibition. As the Belgians objected to this procedure, I released the dwarfs from their kidnapper, and retained them with me for some months in Uganda, until I was able personally to escort them back to their homes in the Congo forest….As son as I could make the dwarfs understand me by way of an interpreter, I questioned them regarding the existence of this horse-like creature i their forests. They at once understood what I meant, and pointing to a zebra-skin and a live mule, they informed me that the creature in question, which was called OKAPI…” British explorer Sir Harry Johnston (1858 – 1927). [Taken from WF:Pancha Tantra: Published by Taschen]

Though Johnston was credited with introducing the Okapi to the western world, the creature is now in danger of extinction from the war-faring tribes of the Congo, who from starvation and strife, are killing these animals out of hunger, desperation and profiteering. The Wild Oak conservation group in Florida run an Okapi Conservation Program in the Congo to save these beautiful creatures.

Serpent Eaters © Walton Ford

“There was a road, and everyone who traveled on it died. Some people said they were killed by a snake, others said by a scorpion, but somehow they all died.
Once a very old man was traveling long the road. When he got tired, he sat down on a stone, and suddenly he saw in front of him a huge scorpion. It was as big as a rooster and even as he was looking at it, it changed into a snake and glided away. Wonderstruck, he decided to follow it at a little distance and find out what it really was. The snake glided here and there, day and night, and behind it followed the old man like a shadow. Once it went into an inn and killed several travelers; another time it slid into a palace and killed the king himself. It crept up the waterspout to the queen’s quarters and killed her youngest daughters. So it passed on, and wherever it went there was soon the sound of weeping, and the old man followed it, silent as a shadow.” Folktales From India by A.K.Rmanujan, Pantehon Books [Taken from WF:Pancha Tantra: Published by Taschen]

Jack on His Deathbed © Walton Ford - 'The battles between him and my Boy Gaetano when he is naked and going into the Sea with me in the morning are really curious. He never bites him but plays him all sorts of trick, his favourite one is to pull him by his (testicles) and then he always smells his fingers;' Excerpted from Fields of Fire: A life of Sire William Hamilton

Book of Sanskrit Animal Fables (Panchatantra) India, Rajasthan Dated Samvat 1811/1754-5 AD 49 miniatures, 114 folios 24.2 x 17cm; Sanskrit manuscript on paper

Jaguar and Zebu's Death Caress: 'Chingado' by Walton Ford © Walton Ford

Artist Mariko Mori’s Journey to Seven Light Bay is a digital project that transports visitors to Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan, where Mori has installed the first part of her monumental earthwork ‘Primal Rhythm’. The installation consists of a sun pillar and the egg-shaped ‘Tida Dome’ that changes colour with tidal movements.

Inspired by the caves of Okinawa in Japan, the digitally rendered ‘Tida Dome’ is a hollow shell through which light enters as it floats in the bay, shifting colour from red at low tide to blue at high tide, with many gradations in between. Mori has chosen exact coordinates such that at the moment of winter solstice, the lengthening shadow of the ‘sun pillar’ will penetrate the actual moonstone, once it is physically installed in the bay, uniting the celestial with the terrestrial, the masculine with the feminine.

Sun Pillar Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan © Mariko Mori

Mariko Mori - Tida Dome, Courtesy of Adobe Museum of Digital Media

Construction of the Sun Pillar Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan © Mariko Mori

Mori intends the site of this symbolic work to be a place for future performances that will engage viewers to participate in the surrounding environment. This installation, like many of her earlier works, integrates art, technology and Buddhism, engages circadian patterns, and celebrates the primary rhythms of the universe, which urban life largely erases from our consciousness.

Mariko Mori, Série "Present" (détail), Times Square, New York, 1997

The art world often sidelines humanist works for their accessibility and for their campaigns of universal mantras, but Mori has a history of meshing modern technology with ancient practices in a way that engenders contemplation for our place in the natural world. Predating Lady Gaga by many years, her pod performances in Times Square and other landscapes around the world, engaged public awareness using grand spectacles. Her Lucite stone circles were inspired by earthworks of the Jomon period in Japan, drawing on the astronomical wisdoms of the ancients to create connections that transcend time and cultural differences.

The Japanese born artist, commutes between her homes in Tokyo and New York for her projects, and also heads a non-profit organization, the Faou Foundation with a mandate to create a series of site-specific earthworks across six continents to engage local communities and enhance public interactions with the natural environment.

Mariko Mori, Wave UFO, 1999-2002, Courtesy of Adobe Museum of Digital Media

Mariko Mori - Oneness, Courtesy of Adobe Museum of Digital Media

A virtual demo of the installation of the Tida Dome, entitled ‘Journey to Seven Light Bay’ can be viewed at Adobe Museum of Digital Media site.

Faou Foundation

Video Courtesy of Ministry of Culture

Doug Aitken, Black Mirror 2011, © Doug Aitken

Last year the Deste Foundation commissioned multimedia artist Doug Aitken to do a project for their summer annual event at the old ‘Slaughterhouse’ in the island of Hydra in Greece. Aitken’s site-specific performance and film entitled ‘Black Mirror’ is based on his ongoing series exploring ideas on migration.

It features Chloe Sevigny in a breathlessly paced journey across a montage of foreign lands traversed by planes, trains and vehicles through which her character remains mentally stationary, caught in the process of transitioning, but never completing the journey.

Rendering - Doug Aitken, Black Mirror, 2011, Artist Renderings. Copyright: Doug Aitken Inc.

Doug Aitken, Black Mirror 2011, © Doug Aitken

The film captures the displacement of the traveller in contemporary life where methods of transport can physically alter our location at ever accelerating speeds but leave within us a psychic and emotional lag difficult to process. In this way the modern nomad is different from his ancient counterpart of the desert traveller whose speed of locomotion was limited and his lack of possessions created space. Here the modern nomad’s physical space and momentum seems infinite but his internal space is foreshortened, stagnant and congested.

For Video Link to Black Mirror: http://vimeo.com/26744838
View more information at: Black Mirror

Tomás Saraceno Observatory/Air-Port-City Hayward Gallery,London, 2008. Gesamthöhe: 9,6 m Courtesy: The artist and Andersen's Contemporary,Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pinksummer contemporary art. Foto: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno’s visionary exhibition Cloud Cities at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin is a hall of floating spheres and webs inspired by utopic visions of hanging settlements or cloud cities that can migrate across the globe.

Saraceno builds on his knowledge of architecture and astronomy to create artwork inspired by soap bubbles and the tensile configurations of spider webs.  Viewers at the museum can interact and enter the bubbles to experience their translucent, trans-dimensional qualities. The Mother Bubble, features an undulating plastic base for visitors to lounge on.

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno Observatory/Air-Port-City Hayward Gallery,London, 2008. Gesamthöhe: 9,6 m Courtesy: The artist and Andersen's Contemporary,Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pinksummer contemporary art. Foto: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno Biosphere, Installationsansicht Statens Museum for Kunst, Kopenhagen, Dänemark, 2009 Foto: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno, Produced by National Gallery of Denmark 2009

In an interview, Saraceno explained his project of creating cities like mobile platforms or habitable cels that float in the air. “These change form and join together like clouds.” His ideas of nomadic architecture are inspired in part by Buckminster Fuller. The artist explained his vision, “Up in the sky there will be this cloud, a habitable platform that floats in the air, changing form and merging with other platforms just as clouds do. It will fly through the atmosphere pushed by the winds, both local and global, in an attempt to equalise the (social) temperature and differences in pressure. It will be a sustainable and mobile migration. These aerial cities will be in a permanent state of transformation, similar to nomadic cities. After all, gypsies never go back to the same place simply because the place is constantly changing.”

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Cloud Cities runs until February 9 2012.

© Shane Vincent, Stay Connected, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, All Directions, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

Nineteen year old street photographer Shane Vincent has an eye for capturing those ephemeral moments when the changing light transforms the mundane into the sublime.

The project, Stand in Line, came about when Vincent began photographing utility poles in the streets of North London where he lives: “The series started at a time where the sky looked pretty cool,” he says. “It was autumn so it would change constantly. It caused me to look up a lot.” The outcome of his first photograph, Stay connected of a utility pole “with wires coming out at all directions,” was captivating enough, recollects the young photographer, that it caused him to pay more regard to the perpendicular poles and lampposts which most take for granted and which habitually punctuate the urban horizon. By isolating them against the vivid autumnal sky, and shooting them from an anamorphic perspective, Vincent enhanced their geometric abstractions.

© Shane Vincent, Change Direction, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, IPhone, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, 25th Hour, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

Never having been formally trained in the field, Vincent fell into photography as a hobby. Soon, his spontaneous street images brought him enough attention as a photographer to develop his dabbling to a more serious professional level. Initially, he says, he began by experimenting with 35mm because he liked the grain and quality of the images, but because of the expenses of printing, he later gave way to digital, whose more crisp, modern feel led him towards a contemporary vision.

“Visually, film has had the greatest influence,” the photographer tells me, remarking on his inspirations, “mainly those that show futuristic visions.”

“The interest in the future, dystopian and utopian sides is shown in the series, in the colours and moods particularly,” Vincent elaborates. “I decided to shoot them from a similar angle, straight up through the centre, fading and distorting towards the peak. It struck me as a most intimidating perspective.”

© Shane Vincent, Diagonal, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, Heavy Support, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, Stab Wounds, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, Straight Up, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

For more information on Shane Vincent’s photography: www.shaneellisvincent.com