To develop a unique identity for the Sound House Noise, Noise International first explored what noise looks like…
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Category Archives: Film, performing arts & music
David Bowie – the story of Ziggy Stardust
BBC 4 documentary
Staccato and energy
When in Spain’s Andalusia, seeing a flamenco show is a ‘must do’. Unfortunately and fortunately, when intended to go when in Seville, the Semana Santa festivities began. The day after I was about to leave back to The Netherlands from Madrid and… with some bad and good luck, I got some extra time due to French air traffic strikes and ended up enjoying the staccato and the energy of a Flamenco show there.
From its roots in eighteenth century popular theatre, most flamenco performers were professionals. Originally they learned from other performers in the manner of an apprenticeship. Today, most guitarists undergo rigorous professional training and often can read and play music in other styles like classical guitar or jazz and many dancers take courses in ballet and contemporary dance as well as flamenco.
Photos by Nathalie Graafland – http://www.nathaliegraafland.com
Semana Santa de Sevilla
It was a very pleasant coincidence to be in Sevilla exactly at the start of the Holy Week, the week before Easter (on Domingo de Ramos). I’m not religious, but – as stated before – do enjoy the theatrical look of catholic relics and (even more so) their festive spectacles involving late nights filled with food and wine.
“Semana Santa de Sevilla” is one of the most important traditional events of the city. It is celebrated in the week leading up to Easter and is one of the better known religious events within Spain. This week features the procession of pasos, floats of lifelike woodensculptures of individual scenes of the events of the Passion, or images of the Virgin Mary showing restrained grief for the torture and killing of her Son. Some of the sculptures are of great antiquity and are considered artistic masterpieces.
The processions are organised by hermandades and cofradías, religious brotherhoods. During the processions, members precede the pasos dressed in penitential robes and hoods. They may also be accompanied by brass bands.
The processions work along a designated route from their home churches and chapels to the Cathedral, usually via a central viewing area and back. The processions from the suburban barrios may take 14 hours to return to their home churches.
Source: Wikipedia > more information
Photos Semana Santa in Seville 2012, by Nathalie Graafland – http://www.nathaliegraafland.com
Melancholia stills
Melancholia, Lars von Trier’s latest, might have been a sequence of stills taken from the movie and would have made for a gobsmacking beautiful exhibition that pretty much tells the story as well, albeit slightly differently. I’m truly, utterly jealous.
All images from Melancholia, a movie by Lars from Trier
The most beautiful and becoming song about life
Cinematic Orchestra – To build a home
We all shine like stars, then we fade away
Cause there’s a monster living under my bed, whispering in my ear
There’s an angel, with a hand on my head, she says I’ve got nothing to fear
Erik Francis Schrody (Everlast) wrote this personal song while recovering from a major heart attack and describes it as “kind of all about hope, but coming from a really dark place”.
Christine Sun Kim is reclaiming sound
Photographer and filmmaker Todd Selby’s latest short is a revealing portrait of performance artist Christine Sun Kim. Deaf from birth, Kim turned to using sound as a medium and has developed a practice of lo-fi experimentation that aims to re-appropriate sound by translating it into movement and vision.
“It’s a lot more interesting to explore a medium that I don’t have direct access to and yet has the most direct connection to society at large,” says the artist. “Social norms surrounding sound are so deeply ingrained that, in a sense, our identities cannot be complete without it.”
Sources: www.theselby.com and www.nowness.com
Animals in the womb
A few years back (how could I have missed this!?), these stunningly exotic photos of animal embryos were taken for a National Geographic documentary called “Extraordinary Animals in the Womb”. Using a combination of 4D ultrasound scans and computer-generated imagery, producer Peter Chinn crafted some amazing results; it’s impossible to tell what is real and what has been composed.
“There is no intention to deceive, and we are clear about just how far our cameras can go,” said the show’s producer Peter Chinn. “But the picture we’ve been able to build up goes further than my wildest dreams.”
> More photos
> “Extraordinary Animals in the Womb” documentary trailer
All photos by Peter Chinn
Amnesty International on International Women’s Day
For all women, but especially those still dominated by severe oppression…
Golan Levin’s empowerment through interactivity
Golan Levin is an American artist and engineer interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression. His artwork focuses on the design of systems as part of a more general inquiry into formal languages of interactivity and of nonverbal communication. Through performances, digital artifacts, and virtual environments, often created with a variety of collaborators, Levin applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines, making visible our ways of interacting with each other, and exploring the intersection of abstract communication and interactivity. Source: Wikipedia
TED 2009: Golin Levin makes art that looks back at you
> See all projects from Golan Levin and collaborators
Stunning footage of amazing creatures
“Oceans” is an impressive 2009 French nature documentary by Jacques Perrin. Exploring Earth’s five oceans, it was filmed in over 50 different places and took four years to complete.
Try to see the original French version instead of the Disneynature version (US and Canada distributer) as it lasts 20 minutes longer.
More film snippets can be found here.
Immortality captured
When in Paris, I always try to visit Pere Lachaise. It is in fact the only cemetery I visit regularly, even though no one I personally knew rests there. And I am not alone. Why are people drawn to Pere Lachaise if not dead or related to those who are?
Heddy Honigmann’s intriguing and award-winning documentary “Forever” explores the answer in a series of conversations with visitors, each musing on gravestones. Honigmann goes well beyond the triumph of life over death; she examines the importance of art in our existence.
Photos by Nathalie Graafland
Bella Figura
Sticking to the black and red colour scheme; the first time I saw Jiri Kylan’s “Bella Figura” live was in 1995 and it has remained my favourite (modern) ballet ever since. This ballet is not only an utterly captivating piece of work to watch (accompanied by Giuseppe Torelli’s enchanting Concerto Grosso, opus 8 nr. 6), Bella Figura deals with a topic close to my heart. It’s about that very thin line between reality and imagination; where does one begin and the other end?
And a few snippets of Bella Figura on the NDT website
To view the full ballet, purchase the “Nederlands Dans Theater celebrates Jiri Kylian 1998″ DVD (Bella Figura is on of three ballets featured) on Amazon.
A backfire in the belly
A thank you to the conservative republicans and catholic groups who protested against David Wojnarowicz’s AIDS related film “A Fire in my Belly”, which as a result was removed from the Hide & Seek show at the National Portrait Gallery. Without your efforts, this film would have not gotten the attention it deserves.
And much praise for Mike Blasenstein & Mike Iacovone for defending our freedom of speech/expression. Glad you have been released and hope you’re not too disappointed to never be allowed into the Smithsonian Institution facilities again.
This is the text of the flyer that was handed out by Blasenstein:
I am standing here with this iPad around my neck…
…because politicians and pressure groups don’t want you to see this work of art
…because this work’s detractors have every right to interpret it any way they want
…because so do you
…because I’m tired of people who know better caving in to the hysterics of the misinformed
…because the time our politicians waste vilifying a dead man is time they should be seizing to fix the problems of the living
…because I never believed that the same forces that marginalized this artist twenty years ago would try to silence him today
…because I was wrong
…because by marginalizing the work of the marginalized from an exhibition about marginalization, the censors themselves have provided the ultimate validation of the artist’s work
…because too many gay people—myself included—too often forget that any acceptance we enjoy today was paid for in blood, bruises, and unimaginable suffering by those who came before us
…because suffering is human
…because we are human
…because there are those who will stop at nothing to suppress that truth
…because I refuse to let them
…because silence still equals death.
[on other side]
A Fire In My Belly, 1987 (excerpt). David Wojnarowicz. Music by Diamanda Galás.
David Wojnarowicz created this video in 1987 as a tribute to his colleague and lover, Peter Hujar, who died of AIDS that same year. The video contains some grisly images: Mummified bodies, bloody icons, lips being sewn shut, and 11 seconds of ants crawling on a crucifix. These images represent Wojnarowicz’s feelings of isolation and marginalization as an openly gay man living with AIDS in the 80s — an era in which carriers of the virus were demonized. They are a memento mori, or a reminder of our mortality.
And this is what it is all about…
