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The Clock by Crisitan Marclay

Finally I got a chance to see widely-discussed artwork The Clock.
24-hours screening was at Southbank Centre on the last weekend.
"The Clock is a montage of clips from several thousand films, showing scenes featuring clocks and watches, or situations indicating a particular time of day."
My notes:
1. After half a hour you do really feel like sitting and watching it as you know it runs non-stop
2. But, unfortunately, I didn't have longer time to watch it, but I was wondering if to spend there several hours or even 24 hours - it might create some other levels of understanding this work
3. It's a weird to sit some time and watch and, as typical happens in cinema, trying to check the time on your hand but realize that actually it shows you on the screen.
4. I found interesting the the artist tried to make a story, not just cuts with watches and clocks.
5. It's interesting as well as most of scenes from the films have some drama in them. I mean if the time becomes matter in the plot of the movie, there must be some drama about it (someone is late, too early, killed, waiting, threathen etc)

E.O. Hoppé - a history of photography in one person

I went to National Portrait Gallery to see the works of E.O. Hoppé (1878-1972):

http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/hoppe/index.html

I have just come back from Berlin, where his works were shown as well in Berlinische Galerie:

http://www.berlinischegalerie.de/index.php?id=1045&L=1

Coinsidence? I don't think so.

The sekections of works were very different in both galleries. Berlin presents more of his type portraits and city landscapes. London shows his work with ballet dancers, portraits of famous people and women and late street photographs.
So, what I found intersting for myself (and that's the reason I have decided to make this post here):

1. What a great photographer he was and how forgotten he is.

2. I never heard of him in context of Djagilev's ballet seasons. He used to work a lot with them and keep taking portraits of leading dancers:

(he even hand-painted some photos!!! - another click with my interests)

2. I loved his not-sharp portraits made in 1900-1920s with large format. You usually expect some certain sharpness from these cameras and even the chemical processes were developed already to achieve stable results. But his photographs somehow look different for me, including series 'fair women':


3. I like the curatorial work on this show - the selection which was made and how it is presented goes through the history or technical progress of photography in 20th century. His early works are all on large format, after you can see he was using medium format and his subjects are now live/work/perform outside of the studio space:


And after 1940s, when 35mm cameras were invented, his angle and subject was radically changed and most of photos started to have a snapshot aesthtics which was inaccessible earlier.

A bit music for today

Old school:
Bill Evans - American jazz pianist (1929-1980)


and New school:
Tigran Hamasyan - Armenian pianist, born in 1987.

his website:
http://www.tigranhamasyan.com/

I hope he will come to UK one day with a concert.

'Lowlands' - Susan Philipsz Turner Art Prize Winner 2010

William E. Jones: The fall of Communism as seen in gay pornography

My new discovery for today: William E Jones: filmmaker, artist

THE FALL OF COMMUNISM AS SEEN IN GAY PORNOGRAPHY (1998)

Every image in The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography comes from gay erotic videos produced in Eastern Europe since the introduction of capitalism. The video provides a glimpse of young men responding to the pressures of an unfamiliar world, one in which money, power and sex are now connected.








Watch the film online here:
http://www.williamejones.com/collections/view/6/
video, color, 19 minutes

There are lots of other interesting works on the website

Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm

Being in Berlin, I visited a studio of photographer Jan von Holleben.
He showed a one book on one page of which my brains blew up.
That's the image on the page how it supposed to be seen:



But what is good thing about books: despite of some very heavy and huge sizes, books are easy to turn around and look at content as you want. So, of course, this page provokes you to turn it up side down:



So, let me introduce Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm who work together and produce such kind of blow-up-minds-images:


(common, turn ur laptop or head!)

They are commercila photographers working on commissions. But I like how they are doing it. So, I am checking some other their works on the web:
http://www.blommers-schumm.com/polaroids.php