30/04/2012

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Kurdish Stockholm Electro by Zhala

Zhala Rifat is the most recent act to emerge from the Stockholm electro-scene. After having been the back-up girl to Lykke Li during her American and European tour, she’s about to drop her first album during the year. But Zhala isn’t a newcomer in the industry. Already In 1998, at the age of 11, she was nominated for a Swedish Grammis Award along with composer Klas Widén. However, the release date of her album debut is still, after 1,5 years of production, yet to be set.

“I already have many songs recorded, but I’m not sure how I want to put together the album, I’ll take my time. Since you only get to make one debut album I have to make sure I spend enough time on it. Lately, I’ve just been trying to get all the melodies and sounds in my head into songs.”

The Rifat family is of Kurdish-descent, thus; Zhala was raised to the sounds of Kurdistan, a heritage that is very much present in her own tunes.

“Kurdish music has a very repetitive rhythm. I grew up with kurdish music so its a very natural part of me now. I love the feeling kurdish music brings, and the melodies, more than the texture, it feels like techno!”

The other week, her first video was released – “Slippin’ around”. Any efforts of trying to refer the visuals to anything else in popular culture would be somewhat redundant, unless you go for the “Björk circa Volta”-card. The video features Zhala herself as a mix between a surrealistic Middle Eastern-geisha and a Hindu-goddess, and was directed by Makode Linde, the artist which stirred quite a scandal with his anti-racist “Painful cake”-exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm last week during World Art Day.

“I love cake! Makode really understands me and my music, he can express it visually. I try to mirror my experiences with sound, and my experiences are unique. And there’s a reason why he’s the world’s most talked about artist at the moment…”

At the moment, Zhala is busy performing, recording and booking gigs for the summer festivals, and still makes time to organize the lesbian club Donna Scam once in a while. Rumour has it that we haven’t seen the last of this woman.

“The greatest memory I have of performing is at Gagnef-festival in Sweden, performing with my friend Shamoun a couple of years ago. We had a big loving party on stage and I think everyone was peaking at that point. I’ve been practicing music in different ways since forever. The music always takes different forms, that’s just a natural part of my development.”

Petsy von Köhler – photo courtesy of Zhala Zhino Rifat

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30/04/2012

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Ryan Mrozowski at Pierogi Gallery

“A Mouth That Might Sing,” Ryan Mrozowski’s third Pierogi exhibit in three years, kicked off at the popular Williamsburg gallery last Friday (April 27th) and runs until the last weekend of May. The title is a fitting one: Quite a bit of Mrozowski’s work features spectators sitting in a theater, waiting in anticipation for some sort of spectacle. Much of the room in his paintings are devoted to the back of people’s heads. Inside they appear to be asking the same question we ask ourselves every day: What is going to happen next?

Mrozowski, a Philadelphia native who has been living in Brooklyn since earning his MFA from Pratt in 2005, repeatedly takes familiar objects—baseball cards, book pages, advertisements—and removes the main focal point, leaving a mere shadow of an outline in its place. The viewer can’t help but see themselves somewhere in the void. This makes me anxious for two reasons: (1) Something is happening to me; (2) I don’t know what it is.

Paintings like “Skirmish” and “Enthusiasts” focus on the audience, not the stage, turning the regular paying folks into the real spectacle in the process. (Isn’t the audience always the real spectacle? Experiment: Try going to the movies in Union Square on a Friday night.) Another, “Molecule”, features a dog with no neck, his head floating aimlessly above his body. Part Helmut Koller, part Francis Bacon, “Molecule” manages to be clean and violent (the dog is alive, but he has no neck) without being over the top or kitschy (the dog looks proud). Like most of the work on display here, it’s simultaneously disturbing and familiar, like a herd of cows floating above their grazing grounds.

A notable addition to Mrozowski’s oeuvre is his recent “Book Page” series, in which double-sided found book pages are floated over a single light bulb to create a hybrid image (a third image, to be exact, or as the PR people like to call it, a “hidden collage”) that distorts the viewers’ depth perception. Likewise, the short film “Palimpsest” shows a girl lost wandering an apartment doing ordinary things—going to the fridge, navigating furniture, slamming a door in sheer terror—while falling in and out of her own shadow. We may not physically fall out of our own shadows, per se, but we’ve all been here before: confused, rattled, and in the midst of a late-night existential crisis when all we wanted was a drink of warm milk to help us back to sleep.

Ryan Mrozowski at Pierogi Gallery, 177 N. 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY, April 27th—May 27th.

Lane Koivu – Images courtesy of Pierogi Gallery

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29/04/2012

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Sunday Breakfast by Love For Breakfast

Purity and simplicity are the words I love the most. A white dish goes perfectly with flaky biscuits, while the bright colors of a decorated porcelain plate embrace the tones of fresh fruits.

Alessia Bossi from Love For Breakfast

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27/04/2012

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Magnum Forma

Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia, a foundation hosted inside a former and completely renovated historical tram depot in the Ticinese district, is without any doubts one of the most important places dedicated to photography in Milan. This art space – focusing on three main themes: History of photography, Masters of photography and Masters of fashion photography and portraits – combines educational purposes with the aim of furthering people’s comprehension of photography through the exhibitions, which shows the works of the leading authors from the past to the present.

Magnum. La scelta della foto (Magnum. The choice of the picture) is a selection of contact sheets displayed along with the final images chosen for the print. The project prints are coming from Magnum Photo, the glorious agency characterized by the freedom of its members shooting according to their ideas and initiative. They are presented as a crucial tool of analysis and an irreplaceable teaching method; a way of laying bare the photographers, providing people the opportunity to see the gap between the act of shooting and the results of the camera shutter timing. As many great artists admit, looking at the contact sheets of other photographers allows us to understand better their working methods; their way of thinking and capturing the moment. Through the selection of these fascinating objects with notes and signs made by the artists while choosing the finals, the exhibition shows the ‘documentaristic’ power of images able to go beyond the reportage.

From the contact sheets by Ferdinando Scianna, which remind his first encounter with fashion photography – depicting the magnetic model Marpessa for a young duo of Italian fashion designers destined for a great future. It was 1987 and the designers were Dolce & Gabbana –, to the hypnotic portraits of the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher and Muhammad Ali by Peter Marlow and Thomas Hoepker, the show let us running down the memory of historical periods, with their atmosphere and icons.

The exhibition will run until June 17 along with the solo shows by the Magnum photographer Alex Webb (b. 1952, San Francisco) and the young Italian photographer Massimo Berruti (b. 1979, Rome), member of the French agency VU’.

Monica Lombardi

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27/04/2012

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Bas Princen at the Architectural Association

This Wednesday, renowned Dutch photographer Bas Princen gave a stirring lecture at London’s Architectural Association, in which he discussed technique, the informal maquettes he uses for visual study and the strange informal relationship growing cities in the developing have to the landscapes they quickly overtake. The image that has perhaps come to embody his work is an iconic shot of a squat office tower in Texas, its garish mirrored gold façade somehow serving to make it entirely invisible within its innocuous American surroundings, and it is in this tenuous play of landscape against/among/without/within the built environment that the magic of Princen’s photos lies.


Unlike most photographers, whose subject focus comes perhaps through long processes of elimination, Princen was first trained as an architect and so has a keen sense for the built environment. That he shoots architecture was written in the stars, it seems. It’s been said that his sweeping, dramatic photographs slice through buildings and somehow omnipotently display and expose them from within. He chalks this up to the all-knowing eyes of the camera and admitted that he often discovers new things about a place he’s been through his images. And also unlike other, perhaps more romantic photographers, he doesn’t place much importance on an interesting story behind a bland image, saying instead that what is most important in a good image is that it be capable in itself of telling a powerful story.

The dramatic interplay of landscape and architecture (both formal and informal) in Princen’s work has culminated in book called Reservoirs which eloquently, forcefully highlights an uncomfortable and tenuous relationship of the built with the natural. From massive public works projects in the desert outside Los Angeles to Chinese landscapes being subsumed by buildings, these images beg massive questions about 21st century urbanism and make reference the terrifying majesty of architecture itself.


Interestingly, although his exhibited images have always been on shot on large format film with stationary view cameras, he has recently made a shift to high-end digital. The choice, he imagines, could change his work tangibly and will almost certainly result in more abstract images. And although we’re never really keen on an artist’s abandonment of analog (and many, including Cindy Sherman, have made sweeping total shifts in the past couple of years), we’re nonetheless interested in seeing his work pushed towards new frontiers.

Princen’s exhibition opens tonight, Friday 27 April, starting at 6:30pm in London’s Bedford Square and will run until the 26th of May.

Tag Christof – Images courtesy Van Kranendonk Gallery and Architectural Association

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26/04/2012

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Tie-Dye Tribal by Petrou\Man

A few seasons ago, Nicolas Petrou caused quite a stir during a New York fashion week with his avant garde runway performance featuring checker headed nomad boys, but Petrou isn’t a newly-born fashion star. Quite the opposite, the Cypriot designer who graduated from St. Martins back in 1993 has for many years worked for various brands including his own women’s line Petrou, before creating the new high end men’s wear line back in 2009.

“Petrou\Man is all about wearable clothes. Yet, at the same time, I always feel the need to present them in more artistic ways. Considering the destruction that surrounds us all, it’s nice to be able to present a fashion collection by escaping to a more abstract and not so conventional place.”

After some years of runway shows in New York, supported by PR powerhouse Kelly Cutrone, Petrou decided to move his presentation to southern latitudes. The Nigerian city of Laos has since 2011 been the host for the Arise Magazine Fashion Week, and during the last edition, the Petrou circus was invited, and the collection was coincidentally, or strategically enough – African inspired.


The presentation was a low key installation in comparison to the usual Petrou standard, but perhaps not when it comes to colours, or more specifically speaking – patterns; the collection was heavily tainted by tie-dye patterns in blue and grey nuances. The silhouette for the fall and winter was of a slim, relaxed, and highly wearable kind, except for an intermission by a low-necked number with an accentuated waistline. On a more interesting note, the greater part of the collection had advanced detailing such as appliqued braided tulle on the shoulders. Multi coloured mosaic-looking pieces had been sewn on to on blazers and shirts, which somewhat resembled the flags of the African continent, and the shoes made for a nice Do It Yourself-moment with its hand painted tribal markings and skulls.

“My objective is to sell of course. I create fashion for people to wear, so I need to make the work wearable if I want to continue creating. But I always like to have some editorial pieces that are more out there because those are the pieces that attract attention”, Petrou acknowledges.


Petsy von Köhler – Images courtesy of One Nigerian Boy 

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26/04/2012

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Dick Clark: 1929–2012

America’s Oldest Teenager is dead. Dick Clark—both the man and the brand—played a large role in defining American popular culture over the past half century. His star had steadily been fading since he suffered a stroke in the early 2000s, but few were on Clark’s level, and his fingerprints retain a tight grip on American media. American Bandstand, the show he turned into a national sensation, ran from 1957 until the late 80s and was the longest-running music show in American history. He cast a long shadow in the television and music industries; there’d be no American Idol, no Punk’d or Ryan Seacrest without him. I hate to say this, but there might not even be a Snooki.

Clark never courted controversy or sensationalism, and instead fashioned himself as something like the friendly neighbor next door: innocent, wholesome and familiar as vanilla ice-cream. He was an astute salesman, not a cultural icon. I don’t think he was ever a teenager. “If he had a public personality,” the NY Times wrote in their obituary, “it was the genial but sexually non-threatening affability of an efficient executive determined to get the job done and to get rich doing it.” He embodied the simple values of middle-class America, calming millions of nervous parents for thirty minutes each night. You could leave your kid alone with good ol’ Dick. He bottled up youth, shook out the blemishes, and sold it back to us wholesale.


He did get rich doing it. Very rich. Dick Clark Productions, the company he built on the shoulders of American Bandstand, would quickly expand into movies, game shows, award shows, comedy specials, talk shows, children’s programming, and reality programming, accumulating over 7,500 hours of programming in the process. In addition to Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which started in 1974 and is currently hosted by—I can’t believe I’m saying this—Ryan Seacrest, and “$10,000 Pyramid,” a popular game show that competed with Jeopardy! and The Price Is Right and helped lay the groundwork for future game shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

Clark was never shy about making money, and like any good producer, his influence was hard to miss even when you couldn’t see him. “My greatest asset in life,” he once quipped, “was I never lost touch with hot dogs, hamburgers, going to the fair and hanging out at the mall.” No, he didn’t. The wholesome values he pushed have become antiquated and kitsch, but a good deal of the hubbub surrounding his death owes a lot to the fact that Dick never lost touch with American viewers; most of the broadcasting platforms he established remain as bankable as they were in his heyday.

Just ask, well, you know his name.

Lane Koivu

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25/04/2012

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The First Note On The Horn – Tokyo Burning

At Eleven, formerly known as Yellow, the pioneering and revered night club in the heart of Tokyo, the squared box in the second basement was already trembling in a blast.

Around midnight, when the Sly Mongoose appeared on the stage, we heard the rumble of distant thunder, then the first note on the horn boosted the fervor of the audience. You would easily get caught by this Sly Mongoose, a Japanese instrumental group with an intriguing mix of percussive and electric eccentric groove. Listen to one of their tracks Snakes and Ladder for example, which became international DJs’ favourite in 2006 and arose a vogue worldwide.

We heard our ears pop from the roar, the audience was roaring for more. At the backstage we met Kuni the trumpetist. With his lady horn Monette, he spoke with a warm smile on his face. “After the March 11th 2011, it’s true, some moved out of Tokyo, some moved out of the music scene, some moved out of their lives themselves… Simply, what I can say now is, I’m thankful to be able to play and see those people gathering again, here, right now.”

This night, Kuni was back to his old club, where he once had blazed a trail in developing a fusion of DJ and musical instruments in the late 90s, leading a legendary DnB party Earth People. Born and raised in the very center of Tokyo, the little boy was fascinated by the first visit show of The Commodores in early 70s, at his home, stimulated by the pervasive aroma of indian incense arranged by his mother with her arms loaded down with bracelets.

“Jazz seeping through an Altec, Soul Train on TV… My father himself was a singer and a trumpeter too, always with a pipe in his mouth. He allowed me to play his horn once in a while. I would say, my home atmosphere was rather unique, definitely not a typical Japanese one.”

He experienced his own first horn at his age of 12, which was the year 1982 when Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers came to Tokyo. It was really natural for him to step in the world of music. Yet when he received the scholarship to enter the Barklee College of Music with a great enthusiasm to further his study, one question emerged as a major preoccupation in his mind: What does it mean to do Jazz as a Japanese?

One August night in New York in 1988, he was there to explore the dreamt local music scene before entering his college. Wynton Marsalis was on the stage at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center for Performing Arts. “That night, after the show, I went to see Wynton at the backstage, just like in Tokyo. He welcomed me and said, ‘Bring your horn and just stop by.’ He handed me a note with his home address and phone number.” Then he smiled softly, “Wynton was there one day when I called him. So, I went to see him. At the time when I left his house, a hint was dropped to that question smoldering in my mind…” (…to be continued)

Ai Mitsuda

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25/04/2012

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The Editorial: Print Your Gastronomy

This month Freakonomics Radio rehashed an old episode in which it pitted Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame against polymath physicist/inventor Nathan Myrhvold. (And if you don’t already listen to Freakonomics, subscribe to their podcast. Really. It’s not an option.) Alice Waters is the world’s foremost Slow Food crusader: her impossible-to-book-a-table-at restaurant in Berkeley, CA is synonymous with the movement and she herself has worked tirelessly to advance the cause of organic, fresh-from-the-earth fare. Myrhvold, on the other hand, is one of a number of visionary types working at the edge of molecular gastronomy to imagine food’s far-out future on the fringe of technology. Both are chefs. And they despise one another’s ideas.

On the show, Waters’ trembling, benevolent-sounding voice barely hides clear acrimony and dismay at the prospect of contrived and fake food, while Myhrvold’s confidence belies sarcasm at what he believes is Waters’ anachronistic dogmatism. But why are these two, despite their radically different philosophies, really so antagonistic and deeply resentful of one another? Both are reactions to a broken food system that continually pose important social questions about what food should be.


As fate would have it, also this month, the world’s first food printer has been made commercially available. Long the pipe dream of technologists and sci-fi fanatics alike, this printer, unimaginatively billed Choc Creator, is an outgrowth of research from the University of Exeter. Since it’s so far only for making additive designs in tasty chocolate, it is in and of itself pretty innocuous. But while not quite the dot-matrix full meal maker imagined by Philips and other firms with an interest in the sector, it is nonetheless an unequivocal first step towards what could prove to be a drastic change for food. Its trajectory could end at pretty patterns and ooh-aah 3D treats, but the massive rise in sophistication of rapid prototyping machines used by industrial designers is a clear signal that this is just the beginning.

For acolytes of Waters, it’s easy to imagine a dystopian future in which this type of technology, as well as that being pioneered by the likes of Myhrvold, will be appropriated by ruthless food conglomerates to consolidate society’s march away from the real, the good, the natural. And they make a solid point that resonates with every foodie today dismayed at western food wastelands that are directly responsible for a mountain of societal ills. For this reason, Waters’ driving ethos simply isn’t up for debate (just imagine arguing that Edible Communities or Slow Food are bad things!). Still, Myhrvold’s isn’t a crusade against natural food, but rather an exploration into unforetold possibilities and an impetus for innovation. It is for that reason that I’d like to believe that the the contrived fakes Waters has traditionally rallied against (GMOs, pesticides, processing) are quite separate from the thoughtful gastro-innovations Myhrvold envisions. In a world of more than 7 billion people – with alarming numbers of us either obese or undernourished – nobody can deny that drastic innovation in our food system is necessary. High technology, sensitively and responsibly applied (as opposed to a wholesale return to the earth), is likely the best path forward.


As a disclaimer we should probably admit that we are and generally have always sat squarely inside the Waters camp. Not simply as a matter of philosophy, but also as a matter of being in Italy. This country is one of the last western countries to have truly held onto a proper local food culture (though it is slowly being eroded), and it’s no secret that passionate Italians have long been at the epicenter of the Slow Food movement. I myself have a deeply personal connection to homegrown food, and herbs and vegetables grown on 2DM’s rooftop terrace in Milan go into our lunches on a regular basis. But we’re relatively privileged. With problems of urbanism, access and economics, the prospect of new food frontiers that might give better means and better food experiences to more people is almost irresistible.

So, somewhere in the not-too-distant future, we hope the two warring ideologies can somehow reconcile. But until then, we’re happy the debate is taking place at all. There is, after all, a profound value in a deep intellectual and philosophical interest in food. For now, support your local farms and stick to stuff sprouted from healthy, chemical free soil, but keep in mind that Luddites almost always end up on the wrong side of history. Try some printed chocolate if you get the chance. For now we’re pretty sure it’ll make you like imperfect, handmade treats even more.

Tag Christof – Images courtesy Jennifer Rubell

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24/04/2012

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Kristina Gill: Egg and Bacon Roll

This is my greatest take away from the last two weeks I spent in Australia for work. Of course there was fantastic Vietnamese food, great Thai, beautiful carrot cake from Bourke Street Bakery, and filling flat whites, but nothing left an impression this time quite like the egg and bacon roll. I didn’t remember how good bacon was because I never eat it for health reasons.

But on Good Friday when I sat down to breakfast with friends, and one of them was eating a sandwich that he couldn’t put down, the juices running through his fingers, I said, “I’ll have one of those too!” The eggs were fried with the yolk still a bit runny so that when you pressed the sandwich together, it ran and filled the crumb of the bread and mixed with the roast tomato chutney to make a moist sandwich with the right dose of saltiness from the soft but crispy bacon. The bread was soft inside but crusty outside. It was perfect. At home I made mine with sriracha and ketchup. Still amazing. Now I’ve reached my quota for the next 3 years though.

Kristina Gill

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