Metahaven: Digital Tarkovsky
Emotional Art MagazineBook review
Emotional Art Magazine
Book review
2019
Andrei Tarkovsky may seem far removed from the modern day experience of smartphones, Instagram, and the near constant proclamations of diminishing attention spans. But in a new book from Dutch design duo Metahaven, Digital Tarkovsky, they want to make the case that our modern tech experience is in fact deeply Tarkovskyen, and is a new form of interface-based cinema. Metahaven’s opening gambit for such a claim is simple: in the US, the average time an adult spends on their mobile is two hours 51 minutes, just 8 minutes longer than Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). In China, the average time spent on a mobile is 4 minutes less than the film. They suggest you may even be reading Digital Tarkovsky on your mobile. I could only get hold of the e-book. (...)
You can hear James N. Kienitz Wilkins’ new solo show at Spike Island before you can see it. Audible from outside the gallery space is the booming, frenetic monologue delivered by Kienitz Wilkins over his film This Action Lies (2018). The film itself consists of three ten-minute shots of a Styrofoam coffee cup, which are spliced together to form a mostly static visual experience that occasionally changes lighting the cup from different perspectives. (...)
Jean Baptiste Del Amo: Animalia
Review 31Book review
Review 31
Book review
2019
At her father’s funeral, a young girl watches on as the villagers discuss what to do about a toad that has made its way into the open grave overnight and has been swimming back and forward in the mud. As the toad sits on top of the lowered coffin, the crowd agree it is a bad omen and the man cannot be buried with it there. The toad, one protests, is the devil. It is decided that the young girl is the only person small enough and in a bad enough state, in her scraggy, unwashed clothes, to be lowered down into the pit to pull the toad out. (...)
In January this year, Rapha revealed the new kit collection for EF Education First Pro Cycling, a team atop the pile of the cycling world’s pros. For those who wait patiently for the release of a cycling team’s new kit for the upcoming season, there was, for once, a reward. In pink and blue acid-wash psychedelia the kit stands out against the drab, conformist blacks and clumsily placed sponsors’ logos of other pro teams’ kits. There was, of course, the usual attire, the shorts and the jerseys, but one item stood out. A bucket hat. (...)