Earlier this week, we saw these great photos of a steel mill converted into a park over at Colossal, and felt a rush of warm feeling. After all, it seems that all anyone can talk about these days is how the world is spiraling downward, how the environment is crumbling, and basically how the seas will soon rise up to claim us. But there is still hope, it seems, as cities and organizations are managing to turn eyesores like industrial ruins, trash heaps, and abandoned military camps into beautiful, green parks for the public to enjoy. At any rate, we think it’s a step in the right direction. Click through to see a few great green spaces — both existing and in the works — that are or will be built on the most un-green of spots, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorite natural hideaways in the comments!
Ross Ching’s newly refurbished ‘Running on Empty’ video, a time-lapse fabrication of an LA with no cars, has gotten a lot of hype in the past few days in conjunction with the whole ’Carmageddon’ fiasco in LA. Even though Carmageddon turned out to be a dud, Ching’s video is a beautiful ode to Los Angeles, worth watching no matter where you live. To our minds, the time-lapse video is something akin to watching a city fly by in a cab — it can feel removed and relaxing, touching and surprising, and is a pretty, easy way to experience something huge. To that end, ‘Running on Empty’ inspired us to gather a collection of other lovely time-lapse-based odes to the world’s most fascinating cities, from Berlin to Seoul to Abu Dhabi to New York. Sit back, relax and immerse yourself in somewhere else.
Last January workers in Berlin were digging a tunnel for a new subway when they found a bronze bust in the shovel of a front loader. It turns out that the bust was made by German sculptor Edwin Scharff, with an actress named Anni Mewes as its subject. The work was one of thousands labeled as “degenerate” art by Hitler’s regime and paraded around the country in 1937 and featured in a 1941 anti-Semitic propaganda film in an attempt to ridicule modern art. Several finds and ten months later, 11 terracotta and bronze works are now on display at Berlin’s Neues Museum. Click through for photos of the sculptures and the exhibit.
Recently named Artist of the Year by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, Wangechi Mutu creates regal, talismanic depictions of the female body that take cultural anthropology to a new level.
Mutu came to the US from her native Kenya to study anthropology in addition to fine art, and her shimmering mixed-media collages, paintings, and drawings show both influences. Their richly sensual, organic power and jaunty, jazzy grace posit the literal layering of commercial, private, and collective symbolic imagery as a stand-in for the creation of identity.
More than just a coffee-table tome, Otto Dix — published by the Neue Galerie to coincide with its major exhibition of the artist’s work — captures Berlin’s debauchery-filled Weimar Republic through the life of its greatest visual chronicler.
Best known for his portraits of prominent thinkers, artists, self-styled provocateurs, and anonymous passersby, Dix helped define popular notions of the era’s contradictory idealism and internal decay. The exhibition catalog features stunning reprints of his most famous pieces, as well as his depictions of life in the WWI trenches and allegorical paintings made during the Third Reich.
Designer-in-training Sergej Hein animated this entertaining parody of Soviet Bloc architecture, filtered through the early ’90s pop culture touchstone Tetris. Hein, who grew up in Riga and later East Berlin, explains, “They used to build cheap housing for workers…. These ‘blocks’ were so similar that in Soviet times, you could easily wake up at a friend’s place in another city and still feel like you are in your flat. Even the furniture was the same.”
True to its name, Brandon Bethancourt’s Alaska in Winter began in America’s most remote region. The recordings he produced under the aurora borealis became seedlings for his debut album, Dance Party in the Balkans. With tracks embracing hybrid, multi-layered sounds that range from downtempo electro beats to intense strings and lullaby vocals, some have classified the work as Folktronica. We’d call it tweeish winterland trance. Read More »
Today at Flavorpill when we were supposed to be busy working… we were dazzled by the fact that Mark Twain used the term “googling” in Huck Finn; we checked out some sexy pole dancing robots; we wondered how Jack Kerouac would feel about writing in Word; we considered buying one of these rad music t-shirts; we fell in love with these smoking mittens (even though we don’t smoke); we felt sad for this man who wrote a “Mario Kart Love Song”; we were wowed by the vigilante approach of Miami’s Take Back the Land; and finally, we were bowled over by new work from the incredibly talented street artist Blu in Berlin.
Two men play everything from bossa nova to Mozart using an old car as their instrument of destruction in new stage production in Berlin. This has us wondering what would happen if you took a sledgehammer to KITT.[Spiegel]
A popular new art museum in Munich that specializes in political graffiti was formerly a public outhouse. We doubt it can compare to CBGB’s bathroom. [CBC]
A Russian musician out on bail after being arrested for peddling hundreds of fake antique violins hung himself after police raided his apartment. He made an estimated £750,000 thanks to the scam. [Scotsman]
A controversial new art show featuring paintings of Muslim women in provocative poses has required the West London gallery hosting the exhibit to seek round the clock police surveillance. The show’s cheeky title? “This Artist Blows.” [The Independent]
The developers behind Capital Gate, a new 35-story tower in Dubai that leans four times more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, have submitted an application to the GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS to secure the enviable position of the “most inclined building in the world.” [World Architecture News]
