J'aime la discoteque
Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Wasted Heroes
Monday, April 26th, 2010A Week In The Life, Spring Ibiza – Andrew Livesey #5
Monday, April 19th, 2010From a man whose appetite knows ever increasing bounds. Be unsurprised that this consumption occurred over the course of just seven days. He is eating for two now after all, with Stella on the way. Regards to La Bodega, Forno Antico, Cafe Sidney, La Vinera and Croissant Show.
A pizza de action
I scream
Cake club
A lily bit too much to drink
Never meagre in Bodega
Cheese meats bread
Birthday buns
Shelly and Ice Cream
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Choco-late than never
Food is a blessing and a curse. It comforts, it coaxes but it bites and after the childhood years of eating food for fun we use food as a crutch and it’s payback…or a fat back. Equally depressing. Thing is diets are dumb and there are few things more soul destroying than calorie counting, low fat dairy or ‘portion control’. If you can’t eat for pleasure, what is the point of living?
I couldn’t have put it better myself. Shelly Preston’s fledgling Shelly and Ice Cream blog talks about food and cooking in a way which resonates with my own deep love for all things gastronomical. Her recipes are clear, concise and personable and along with the tempting introductions are sure to get even the novice chef in the mood for cooking. Take, for example, her Peas Louise version of the English classic:
God I love pea soup but it’s a real divider, especially when it’s made with ham hock. It’s a love hate soup for sure. I mostly associate pea soup with summer which is daft because we don’t have to wait until then. Frozen peas are a dream in soups; much better in fact that pod-fresh. Peas contain a high level of complex carbohydrates and bags of fibre. It’s the carbohydrates that make them naturally sweet which is why babies will happily have them introduced to their plate before any other green vegetable. I used to make this for my husband all the time before we got married…I think it sealed the deal and admittedly, it’s lifted directly from my friend Jane’s book. It’s an all-round nutritional and winter winner because it’s made with fresh fennel bulb. The aromatic, anise like flavour of fennel just clicks with peas and not unlike celery it has a warming effect on the body. When I eat this soup I end up with cheeks like belisha beacons as the embers of the fennel glow, rest and digest in my stomach. Packed with vitamin C and phytonutrients, it’s a bumper boost for your immune system too. Glow make it, it’s dead easy.…continue reading.
easy peasy
Along side her savoury selections Shelly is also a master chocolatier. Founder of Boutique Aromatique, her fine fragrant chocolates are now available at Nottingham’s Speciality & Gourmet Food Market. They are delicate and light but with the deep and heady flavours required for any truly good chocolate. Gizzi Erskine says about them:
Boutique Aromatique are masters of artisan chocolates. You can taste the best ingredients and Shelly has her finger on the pulse with inventive and well thought out flavours. The chocolate of the future.
Having previously worked with world class aromatherapists and perfumers, Shelly has transposed many of the same techniques and subtleties into her chocolate making; garnering praise, and orders, from connoisseurs and sweet toothed celebrities alike.
When I left music 8 years ago I went on an exploratory mind/body odyssey, taking all kinds of classes from anatomy & physiology to herbalism, reading everything in sight and became a bit of a yoga and whole foods obsessive. I started a new career as Product Developer in the holistic/wellbeing industry conceptualising/developing/researching and sourcing everything from green tea and incense to vitamins and essential oils. I was concerned for a long time about the provenance, grade and ethics of the ingredients and materials I was using and it was through meeting and collaborating with some of the real authorities in aromatherapy and essential oils, herbs and natural perfumery that I developed my own affinity for top drawer aromatics – it became a case of, only the best will do. Alongside my work I was also becoming aware of the (then) underground fine chocolate movement and ‘real’ chocolate became my all-consuming passion. I researched cocoa like a demon, trained to be a chocolatier, built a lab in my house and three years ago decided to move in to chocolate full-time and founded Boutique Aromatique – fine fragrant chocolate – which fuses my love of aromatics and chocolate. I work only with the finest, ethical chocolate and the most flavoursome and complex, single origin beans and the finest, top drawer aromatics (that are blended to scale as in perfumery) herbs, fruits and spices. The result is an aromatic encapsulation of the two things I love the most and thank goodness people seem to like what I’m doing…so far! – Shelly Preston
Invisible City
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
Invisible City Issues 1 - 6
Invisible City is an online magazine in the vein of Cuemix and Romka which we have featured previously. It’s an online magazine in .pdf format showcasing contemporary art and writing by emerging artists from Australia and around the world. Each issue explores a contemporary theoretical idea through images, poetry, creative and critical writing. It’s curated and run by Marlaina Read, an emerging artist from Sydney. You can read her honours paper here. It’s a good read if you are interested in the super-modernity of post-industrial non-places such as airports and how to travel and take photographs which convey a personal, reflective intimacy for distances travelled and places seen. She’s also got a blog, so you can check out her more personal and rarefied musings there.
Each issue covers a different topic, such as blindness, mapping or bodies (in issues 3, 5 and 4 respectively). It’s free to download and definitely worth a look so we’ve compiled the first six issues for you to download here.
Download – Invisible City Issues 1 to 6
BLDGBLOG
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010In other words, forget academic rigor. Never take the appropriate next step. Talk about Chinese urban design, the European space program, the landscape in the films of Alfred Hitchcock in the span of three sentences – because it’s fun, and the juxtapositions might take you somewhere. Most importantly, follow your lines of interest. Finally, I want to reiterate that BLDGBLOG is fundamentally about following, and not being ashamed by, your own enthusiasms, whether or not they are rigorous and appropriate for the academic mores of the day, or even interesting for your family and friends. – Geoff Manaugh
High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995.
BLDGBLOG (pronounced “building blog”… maybe) is written by Geoff Manaugh, it’s subject matter is “architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures.” Read by millions since its launch in 2004, BLDGBLOG is a leading voice and uniquely futuristic vision, offering and enthusiastic, idea-filled guide to what lies ahead in our built and technological environments. With stunning images and original content, BLDGBLOG is part conceptual travelogue, part manifesto and part sci-fi novel. Under the guise of writing his blog about architecture, Manaugh has crafted a tribute to the world-transforming power of the imagination itself. Along the way, he incorporates some of the most ambitious minds of our time involving everything from urban design to climatology, music, astronomy and pop culture. On reading the blog you start to interrogate everything you take for granted about the environments we create for ourselves.
Arctic glacial core samples
Geoff Manaugh has provided the reader with an excursion into a new world – part digital fantasy, part reality at the intersection of art, technology, design and pure ideas. The blog is personal, idiosyncratic and, best of all, incredibly interesting. It uses architecture as a lens for delving into related aspects of society and takes enjoyable turns into the stretches of imagination. It’s an urban fantasy made from the remainders of a very large equation. The modus operandi of his work – the fervid linking between seemingly disparate realms of emotion, experience and academic discipline feels appropriate for our densely networked, accelerating, neurotically twittering era…
Torture
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
No need for a pachyderm
Torture – any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him information, exacting revenge, deterring others from doing certain things and in some cases just for the hell of it. Throughout history civilisations have come up with more and more elaborate and grotesque ways of torturing people, often implemented by the people in power as a form of policing. Old classics come to mind like the thumb screw and the rack, but some techniques long since disregarded offer a glimpse at how abhorrent law enforcement would have been. Even in today’s societies certain inhumane techniques, such as sleep deprivation and solitary confinement, are used on people who are, by law, innocent until proven guilty. Although of course the law stipulates that when techniques like this are used to ensure justice they are not forms of torture.
Some of our favourites ‘golden oldies’ are:
Death of a thousand cuts
Slow slicing – Slow slicing also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts, was a form of execution used in China from roughly AD 900 until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. A particularly painful method of torture the victims would be kept alive for as long as possible whilst still having body parts removed.
Peine forte et dure – Death by crushing or pressing is a method of execution that has a history during which the techniques used varied greatly from place to place. This form of execution is no longer sanctioned by any governing body. A common method of death throughout South and South-East Asia for over 4,000 years was crushing by elephants. European countries will often swap the use of a pachyderm for a large rock or tree.
Dumbo's Revenge
Rat Torture – Rats may be used to torture a victim by encouraging them to attack and eat him alive. This is supposed to be a traditional form of Chinese punishment. The “Rats’ Dungeon” was a feature of the Tower of London alleged by Roman Catholic writers from the Elizabethan era. A cell below high-water mark and totally dark would draw in rats from the River Thames as the tide flowed in. The prisoner would in some instances have flesh torn from the arms and legs to encourage the rats to eat. Another method uses a pottery bowl filled with rats placed open side down on the naked body of a prisoner. When hot charcoal is piled on the bowl, the rats attempt to escape by gnawing into the very bowels of the victim.
Foot Roasting – Pretty self explanatory really, the prisoner is immobilised on his back and his bare feet are imprisoned in a stocks of wood or iron. The soles of his feet are smeared with lard — occasionally butter, and more recently even margarine and olive oil spread — and slowly barbecued over red-hot coals. A bellows is used to control the intensity of the heat, while a screen is interposed between the feet and the coals as questions are put; if the questions are not answered satisfactorily, the screen is withdrawn and the naked soles were exposed to the flames for an ever increasing period of time.
Rack 'em up
Water Torture – What is called the “Chinese water torture” was a torture described by Hippolytus de Marsiliis in the 16th century that was supposed to drive its victim insane with the stress of water dripping on a part of the forehead for a very long time. It may also be characterized by the inconsistent pattern of water drips. Supposedly, the desire for the human brain to make a pattern of the timing between the drops will also eventually cause insanity to set in.
Pharmalogical torture – Pharmalogical torture uses psychotropic and/or other chemicals to induce pain and cause compliance with a torturer’s goals. Another form is when the victim is forcibly injected with addictive drugs to have them become dependent, and then they’re denied the drug and forced to go through withdrawal unless they provide what the torturer wants.
Dark Tourism
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010They take planes and fly around, like the great soaring birds who endlessly cross and recross the ocean. Like the albatross, we are looking for our soul. Tourism is a rehearsal for death. – J.G. Ballard
Siteseeing
The arrival of a cruise ship and it’s pampered passengers to the shores of Haiti invokes instinctive revulsion after an earthquake that has killed more Haitians than the survivors can find the space to bury. The private beach where guests can ride jetskis and sip cocktails provides a look at modernised global inequality. Royal Carribean the ship’s operator is staffed by people from some of the poorest countries in the world. The cheap labour and land allow holiday makers to relax in style for less and there is nowhere these harsh economics are more obvious, yet magically suppressed than on a cruise ship.
It is almost a cliché now that dream holidays in the developing world are taken with extreme care to shield the customer from local, depressing reality. The gulf between the lives of those in Haiti and those paying the privilege to float on the colossus currently at anchor at it’s shore is not a new thing, but the outrage did not seem to exist before the earthquake. Also, the conditions under which cruise workers toil to provide for passengers luxurious comforts can easily be found and applied for our own everyday comforts in sweatshops and factories from Central America to South East Asia (unless your lifestyle does not include coffee, imported clothes, petrol, plastics and any form of computer technology – we are all beneficiaries of global inequality). It’s just that, on a cruise ship the labour is just a few decks below.
Arlington Cemetry
Perhaps Royal Carribean as an example of dark tourism is not the best, after all, their presence in Haiti is due to a refusal to change their normal route, rather than actively seeking out death and suffering which is the conventional definition of the phenomenon. The usual examples are battlefields such as Culloden in Scotland, cemeteries such as Arlington in America, concentration camps such as Auschwitz in Poland and sites of disaster either natural or man-made such as Ground Zero in New York or Chernobyl in Ukraine. There are also more esoteric examples such as the Hacienda Napoles in Colombia where you can visit the luxury estate of Pablo Escobar, one of recent history’s most vicious and successful criminal masterminds. Estimates are difficult, but it is thought he was responsible for more than 4,000 deaths. The site of many of murders, it has now been semi-restored as a sort of theme park. Visitors can imagine how the estate once was – by checking out Escobar’s now burnt out collection of vintage cars, admiring huge statues of dinosaurs or the remains of his collection of exotic animals from all over the world. Incidentally you can have a look at some fine photo’s of Escobar by his personal photographer here.
Skullduggery
Dark tourism sites present governments and other authorities with some moral and ethical dilemmas. Complex issues are raised surrounding the extent and nature of the interpretation of sites associated with war, genocide, assassination and other tragic events. The questions revolve around the motivational drive behind “dark tourists” as well as the commercial development and exploitation of loss and grief. As a relatively new global phenomenon, it is hard to define an appropriate response to the nature of experience perceived by visitors, local residents, victims and their relatives. Not every persons gaze on a particular attraction is the same, this will differ not only between their context i.e. tourist or victim, but also between individuals of the same group. Tourism itself is constructed on the basis of difference, seeking experience which is in some way different from everyday life and work. Tourism results from a distinction between the ordinary and extraordinary. The way in which tourists encounter this difference has diversified considerably with the emergence of this sort of post-modern tourism. The new middle-class and independent travelers are increasingly rejecting the mainstream mass tourism in favour of a more specialised experience. These post-modern tourists seek not only minority and non-Western culture, but also to intellectualise and link their journey with learning and discovery.
The proprietors of dark tourist sites are often keen to adopt a perspective of rationality, of both progress and historicism. However, the educative elements of their offerings are often tempered by an orientation toward income generation and commodification. Some sites may seem weird or perverted, but dark tourism allows travellers to mix history with a sort of psychological adventure, combining sentimental emotion with physical activity. Pilgrimage to sites such as Auschwitz, Lockerbie or Ground Zero is associated with the untimely death of many individuals . Our motivations are murky and difficult to unravel: a combination of reverence, voyeurism and the thrill of coming to close proximity with death. Often, the difference between the acceptable and unacceptable as a tourist attraction is only chronological distance; tours of Jack the Ripper’s London are very popular, however, a Yorkshire Ripper trail would be seen as highly inappropriate by most people. Over half a million people pass under the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign Auschwitz every year, the audience is given a two-and-a-half hour tour of the vast site. What a tourist can comprehend during such a brief visit is questionable. The operators of these sites are custodians of history and decide which parts of history to interpret and commemorate. It should be noted that the barbed wire and fences of the camp have been replaced many times due to corrosion, and human hair and other artifacts have been moved to Auschwitz from other concentration camps in order to provide a “better visitor experience”. Although abhorrent in their foundation, it is our own culture which decides what we will commemorate. Where, for example are the monuments and visitor centres to the genocide of American Indians or the first world peoples of Australia?
‘Dark tourism’ sites are important testaments to the consistent failure of humanity to temper our worst excesses and, managed well, they can help us to learn from the darkest elements of our past. But we have to guard against the voyeuristic and exploitative streak that is evident at so many of them.
Cradle Is Rocking – New Orleans Jazz
Friday, January 15th, 2010“Men working on the river would move in time to the beat of the music. It was everywhere: on the street, in the church. In the tonks and barrel-houses where people went to be together. Like the beating of a big heart. It gave everyone a good feeling.”
The Cradle is Rocking is a delightful 12-minute film that, though somewhat damaged (Folkstreams has found what may be the only surviving print), is highly recommended viewing for anyone interested in American roots music: in this case, New Orleans jazz. The film’s thoughtful and affable narrator is trumpeter George “Kid Sheik” Cola. This full length version of the 12 minute film shows the damage on the only print available. The film was directed by Frank DeCola who died in the early 1970s. Frank was a talented filmmaker and composer and was enlisted in a program run by George Stevens Jr. during the Kennedy years. That program sponsored young filmmakers to make films for the United States Information Service, for showing abroad in USIA libraries. Tom Davenport was the cameraman on the project and it was shot in B&W 35mm film. Anthony Loeb was the producer. This print is from Tom Davenport’s collection and as you see, it is in bad shape.
Folkstreams is a national preserve of documentary films about American roots cultures streamed with essays about the traditions and filmmaking. The site includes transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites.
On This Day – The Human Be-In
Thursday, January 14th, 2010“Well,” said Alpert, “it’s a hell of a gathering. It’s just being. Humans being. Being together.”
“Yeah,” said Allen “It’s a Human Be-In.”
Human Be-In Flyer, 1967
The above is a rare piece of cultural ephemera and evocative of a certain era. Designed by Michael Bowen and Stanley Mouse it is a flyer announcing “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In”. This watershed event catapulted the hippie scene to national prominence. Participants were asked to “Bring food to share, bring flowers, beads, costumes, feathers, bells, cymbals and flags.”
As a prelude to the first Summer Of Love which made the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco a symbol of the American counterculture and introduced a suburban generation to the word “psychedelic”, the first Human Be-In in 1967 focused key ideas of liberation against the prevailing social norms of conventional middle-class commonality. Organiser Allen Cohen invited speakers on the day including Timothy Leary who set the tone with his famous phrase – “Turn on, tune in, drop out” and Allen Ginsburg who chanted his poetry. Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead provided the soundtrack to gathered masses who participated in the consumption of “White Lightning LSD” provided by underground chemist Owsley Stanley. Incidentally Stanley designed some of the first high-fidelity sound systems, culminating in the massive and infamous amplification rig used by the Grateful Dead in their live shows.
Ginsburg chanting mantras
It’s estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 people showed up. The event was seen by many as a meld between philosophically opposed factions of the San Francisco counterculture. One on side were the Berkeley radicals, who were tending towards increased militancy in response the the U.S. government’s Vietnam War. While on the other side were the non-partisan hippies who urged peaceful protest. Although their means were drastically different, they held many of the same goals – personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralisation, communal living, ecological awareness, higher states of consciousness and liberal political consciousness. The happening was more than a war-protest. Authority was questioned on civil rights, women’s rights and spawned it’s own alternative media in the form of newspapers and radio stations as well as new directions in music, art and technology. The dynamic milieu of San Fransisco in the 1970s gave birth to the ultimate gesture of modern personal power – the personal computer, countering the prevailing main frame computer paradigm which implied centralised authority.
Humans being-in
“The predominant feeling among the Hippies from about 1965 through the summer of ’67 was that they were agents and witnesses of a dawning of a new age. An age in which the warrior spirit, that had vaulted western man to the domination and potential destruction of creation, would be dissolved in the spiritual transcendence of the saint. Ghandi and Martin Luther King were our heroes and we had turned to the rich heritage of Asian mysticism and metaphysics for our inspiration and our practice. We leaped across oceans and through time to pre-Christian mythologies like the American Indian, the Egyptian and the occult and pagan philosophies of Europe. We studied with Buddhists and Indian gurus, native shamans, witches and yogis. We turned from Aristotelian and Christian dualism to the four pronged logic of Vedanta philosophy. We studied the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, Alan Watt’s books on Zen Buddhism, and Hermann Hesse’s novels, especially Siddhartha. We wouldn’t leave the house without consulting the I Ching, or our Tarot cards or our astrological charts.”
“Were we being naive or superstitious? No, I think this was the most important and long lasting aspect of the 60s despite the backlash of the 80s. It was the beginning of a renaissance in thought and culture similar to the Renaissance that brought Greek and Roman images and ideas back to Europe in the middle ages. Ideas that eventually led to the end of the domination of the Catholic Church, the rise of the nation state, the rebirth of democracy and the development of science.”
– Allen CohenNike Trainers by DJ AM & DJ Premier
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
DJ AM Dunk High
Last week saw the release of two of the most anticipated trainer collaborations in a long time. Nike Sportswear have teamed up with two true legends of the DJ community. The DJ AM dunk and the DJ Premier Air Force 1 went on general release on January 9th. A lucky few however were able to get their hands on a special edition package containing both shoes and specially designed Serato control vinyls a few days earlier. The event was attended by sneaker freaks and DJ AM and Premier fans alike with all proceeds going to the DJ AM memorial fund. Premier autographed each of the customised boxes and also pleased the crowd with an impromptu DJ set.
Custom Serato control vinyl
This isn’t the first time nike has collaborated with the music world with special editions from the likes of Dizzee rascal and Guns n Roses. One of my personal favourites however is the Dunk U.N.K.L.E or dunkle as its more popularly known. They are a collaboration with the James Lavelle, Tim Goldsworthy and DJ Shadow outfit. These Dunks, sb dunk hi, feature artwork from U.N.K.L.E album covers ‘Psyence Fiction’ and ‘Never, Never Land” and have become collectors items as, no doubt, the DJ AM and DJ Premier editions will do too.
D.U.N.K.L.E
Check out Sneaker Blogger for more specialist trainer related paraphernalia.
