One must taste the local beer. For me Chang beer is the best one, it kind of makes it difficult to try the other ones, which I will. So this definitely marks the beginning of the holiday, sitting on dark wood chairs meters away from the green waters with white sand under my feet and a spectacular lush view.
The trip was long. I was afraid to miss on another night of sleep when I boarded the train in Bangkok. The young employee of Thai railways smiled at my worried look that there were no beds or that I would be too tall for them. Some time later they came to build the beds and yes, they had to wake me up in Surat Thani. So you can't imagine the relief once I was sitting enjoying my first beer.
I'm posting pictures in almost real time on Instagram. I just love their filters, square formats and hashtags. Here is one of them.
Today I start my holidays. The clock is ticking. In 48 hours I will be on the plane to Thailand. I am really excited. This is my first trip to Asia. I have read extensively on my destination but nothing will beat physically visiting the country and the islands. Below you see my starting point. I will be back here in 3 weeks, with eyes full of memories.
It also shows that the Dutch love doing stuff even whilst they are on holiday. The average Italian going on the average vacation in the country do a maximum of 4 trips of no more than 2 km in total in one day.
From the house to the beach
From the beach to the kitchen
From the kitchen to the beach with a dip after strictly 2 hours
Back from the beach to the dinner table and an after dinner stroll to the same street where everybody goes.*
There is whiskey in the water
And there is death upon the vine
And there is grace within forgiveness
But it's so hard for me to find
How could something so fair
Be so cruel
When this black sun revolved
Around you
How could something so fair
Be so cruel
When this black sun revolved
Around you
#NewMusicSunday: associating a lazy Sunday to that that great feeling of discovering a new song. That's what this hashtag wants to be about. A song with lyrics that stick in your head. A song that brings with it a mood. A song that can connect some inner dots of a particular feeling. I find the band has a great name and they have a new album out on 31 March 2015, of which Black Sun is the first single.
A Glass Music Hall in the Beurs van Berlage building in Amsterdam will be given away for free or destroyed. The centrally located building needs more conference space and therefore took the decision to dismantle the structure that was built 25 years ago and that was used a rehearsal space by the Dutch Philarmonic Orchestra.
I perceived Io Sono Li, a film by documentary maker Andrea Segre, like a piece of conceptual art. That type of conceptual art that twists an ordinary object into something different, showing you a new angle, maybe a more poetic side, or a deeper meaning. Italy in the last two decades has been a point of arrival for many low skilled foreign workers, including Chinese. Shun Li is one of them, sent first to Rome, and then moved to Chioggia (La Petite Venise), by an undefined Chinese organisation. She starts working in an "osteria" in the dock area where local fishermen and pensioners meet for a drink, a game of cards, a celebration for the end of one's working life. One of them, himself an immigrant from Yugoslavia who arrived 30 years earlier, feels a connection with the new barista who speaks few words of Italian, let alone the local dialect. Bepi, who calls his real home a shack on the water of the laguna, is locally known as "the poet" and is the type of man that sees things with eyes wide open, a cut above the rest of the group, a simple wise man that is curious and understanding. The two characters break walls and boundaries that are normally very high in the everyday experiences of Europeans rubbing shoulders with Chinese. And this is what is most interesting about this film for me, learning that no matter what differences and hardships people experience they can learn to connect. This is what makes popular culture alive (and in fact Chinese and Italian cultural references feature in the background, becoming universal). We can be affected by macro economic theories, social policies, geopolitics, criminal organisations activities and all of that, but in the end it's up to us to find ways to learn about each other and see things from a perspective which is closer to us than we think.
This film is a true gem that can hardly be seen in the mainstream. Hopefully, having won the European Parliament Lux Prize, it will be distributed at a cinema near you. Do not miss its bittersweet taste.
The recent Wiki Loves Monuments contest across Europe was a very interesting example of how you can mobilise citizens to donate time and free images, for other people to use using the Creative Commons licenses. More than 170.000 uploads and a final selection of beautiful pictures that were rewarded with a prize. Now it is up to local communities to start using that material to show their local treasures to the world. The video above is such an example on the positive impact of such a contest.
Using a subtitling collaborative platform the video above is also available with subtitles in many languages including English and Italian.
Choosing what to watch online requires commitment. You can't just sit there and zap with your remote. You have to actually choose what to watch and you have so much to choose from. But I am slowly making more rational choices and finding out where the good content is. I've always loved documentaries and the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam is certainly a place I recommend. I was there once to watch Falluja by Nick Broomfield.
Anyway I've come across IDFA TV and you can actually watch documetaries online. It's a Vimeo channel embedded in the page
This was an exhibition on Picasso as an artist moving to Paris in 1900 when he was 19. He lived on top of a laundry shop in Montmartre, le bateau lavoir. From the paintings of that period that I saw at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam I felt like being transported to Paris.
I could see he had a really broad eye for what was happening around him, from the upper class party goers of the Exposition universelle crowd type to subjects of despair. He was then so emotionally touched from the suicide death of his fellow Spaniard Casagemas, and you can see that in his blue period paintings. They guy, a writer, broke up with his French girlfriend apparently. You can just imagine the mixing of people and a stool of chancers observing life. There he saw the work of Gaugain, Toulouse-Lautrec, Swiss painters and what the critics will tell you.
The cosmopolitanism of Europe was there already as the art world always anticipates trends.If you had to choose now where to go it would be much harder. That's because artists embark on global tours, people can follow developments on twitter as revolution unfolds in whatever part of the world and the feeling of satisfaction to be in one place is often transient, as something else more interesting could be happening somewhere else, literally as we speak.
I'm making a bold statement here but Melancholia could be the film of the decade. Stunning photography to such a level that it almost resembles a Dali painting, for its composition and surreality. You are really drawn into the story and the trailer was pretty clever in not giving away too many details, and I don't want to do that either. A depressed woman is getting married and an extremely expensive party is thrown at this breathtaking mansion immersed in nature. Family ties come to the fore and your attention span moves from depressed Justine, interpreted by Kirsten Dunst, to scared Claire, interpreted by Charlotte Gainsbourg as the film is divided into two parts, introduced by a bizarre prologue. Claire's husband, a scientist epitomising rationality, is busy calculating the advancement of planet Melancholia towards the earth. Characters are well portrayed by good acting, and that's quite important when you have an existentialist epic drama like this one.
Kirsten won best actress in Cannes for her role and let me mention two taglines from her dialogues: "I know things" and "the earth is evil". Certainly Lars speaks his mind, but we already know this from his awful Cannes gaffe. Or did he just do that to draw attention to his film?
Here are a few links to videos I've been watching online. First of all, the London riots. The first link is a sound byte whilst the second is a more organic documentary claiming that severe government cuts brought chaos to the streets of London.
After you have watched the above go check out the Flickr set the Metropolitian Police has uploaded with photos and footage from CCTV cameras. You can see a passer by trying to stop looting, a gang stealing a bike pushing the cyclist to the floor, another group entering an arcade and stealing from the employees' bags, cops getting run over by a car.
To finish off Zizek gets bombarded with images and comments upon them, ending his reasoning with the bleak prospect of the spread of Berlusconi like regimes. He argues for a radicalisation of the left for liberalism to be saved by the growth of a populist right wing
Well, enough food for thought. I need a video of a runnig cat, maybe with a Coldplay song, oh I have found one. I won't embed it so you can get lost in the world of You Tube. Kittens running on cat exercise wheel part 1
Quite an amazing project this one. It's a very professional way to deal with art and I wish it will extend to other European countries as well. My thought goes to Italy and its rich collection. It's great that the BBC is doing this, that's what I call public service. Here is the link to start exploring all the paintings the UK has to offer.
Spectacural visual fields were constructed, jointly progressing with sound, vocals used as an instrument and light guiding the intake of this empowering experience.
We were left begging for more: watching another band will never be the same again, as the visual part is so strong you wonder why it has played a relatively minor role in the presentation of music so far.
Having sound and music presented in such a way really helps to focus your attention on trying to decode such an abstract body of work. This isn't just music, it's art.
I really enjoyed it.
P.S. I made some videos but the quality of the sound it's so bad I feel a bit sorry to upload it, but it's just to give you an idea.
If you are new to Animal Collective maybe start with My Girls (2009)
A mash up video of films from the 1980's with Phoenix's song Litzsomania spurred a number of incredibly fresh videos from across the world. The original was taken down for copyright reasons, but you can still find it on You Tube with embedding disabled. (watch now) Brat Pack is a slang term, it refers to a group of actors from the 1980's making a number of films with at least two of the original Brat Packers. Some of these films from the 1980's are The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Outsiders, Class, Sixteeen Candles, Oxford Blues, etc. But in general brat pack refers to a group of successful people working in the same professional field.
Now a fresh contemporary take on this concept can be found in these videos. A group of friends having genuine fun.
Let's start with Brooklyin, New York.
Then follows San Francisco
Let's go to Europe now and see Amsterdam
The band Phoenix comes from Versailles, Paris. I like the span of generations in this one
The one from Riga is introducing us to another corner of Europe
But let's go Brasil now, Rio de Janeiro has some amazing views. It's so colourful and warm
And let's finish with Boston, hoping to find some more mash ups from different parts of the world. London, Barcelona, Turin...
And let me end by thanking Lawrence Lessig for letting me know about this. Let's keep the internet free and let copyright control understand this. Share culture.
I'm an eager online reader and I just want to share with you the story of officer "Bubbles", someone who is afraid of 'dangerous detergent' who not only arrested the girl, but is also now suing You Tube and is asking the big G to release details of those who posted the video and made comments. I mean, that is absurd, and please watch the video and spare a thought.
This exhibition is about to start. An interesting development is the way the Van Gogh Museum is using Flickr to give an exclusive insight into the preparation process.
This is a simple recipe, it will not take too much of your time and is also well-explained. There are of course variations, but this is pretty good. Put more sauce and you can also serve spaghetti with them. Do try this at home, it's lekker!
Watch and Share This Please. It's about a Greenpeace campaign to remind Luca Zaia (Northern League) about his promises when he was running for President of the Veneto Region in Italy
