Weekend WTF

WTF?

Mangelos

And manifesto of the day


Mangelos, a great but for some reason not really well-known artist and art historian inspired me a lot when I started turning to a more conceptual direction with my art.
His work is both, conceptual and very sensual at the same time playing with material and thoughts (represented by texts in different languages).

Born as Dimitrije Basicevic, 1921 in Sid, Serbia (died in Zagreb, 1987), he made art under the pseudonym Mangelos. The name is taken from a village close to his hometown Sid.
He divided his life in different "Mangelos", each Mangelos lasting 7 years (the period for all body cells to reniew). As he predicted, his life took 9 1/2 Mangelos.

His work contains different technics and media, such as drawings, collages, watercolors, paintings, altered books and especially his "globes", ordinary globes that he used for his drawings and collages. They are often inscribed with his manifestos and "no-manifestos" concerning philosophy and art.

A manifesto was for him a kind of a vehicle transporting a thought concept without any metaphorical meaning.
The postwar thinking was to him represented by a functional, direct thinking, the manifesto per se.
A manifesto to him is this functional thinking, including systems like alphabets, mathematical proofs, scientific theories and perceptual schemas.

He was against all kind of metaphorical thinking and emphasises at the same time the rational side of the art. He tried to bring the information to its most laconic form, to a clear and prezise thought (that he called "Super-Wittgenstein-Thought").

His work can be seen in the context of the absurd feeling in the existentialist Nihilism. It's marked by a freedom of expression and a transzendence of media as found in the fluxus movement, as well.
He turned against all what seemed to be exhausted und senile and created in his art his own point of view, called No-Art.

As mentioned before he was also art historien, critic, curator and part of the "Gorgona"-artgroup, organising exhibitions, creating concepts, projects and new forms of artistic communication and publishing the Anti-Magazine "Gogona".

Matthew Smith

British computer game programmer Matthew Smith was 17 years old when he programmed the legendary early platform game Manic Miner, back in 1983. I spent a lot of time playing Manic Miner and its sequel, Jet Set Willy, as a kid way back in the 1980's, and it's been a huge and direct influence on my Odboy & Erordog series.


I just recently found this wonderful fairly recent video interview with the guy, who seems like a fantastically likeable guy with a mildly autistic-seeming manner. It just makes me very happy to watch. :) The interview starts at 3 minutes in.

Computer Beat -- Ja

Black Sunrise

Master animator Nick Cross, I mentioned him before in this post, is working on a feature length animation; Black Sunrise. Looks like his usual theme, oppression of the working class, world disorder, government violence etc. Can't wait to see it.

Black Sunrise - Trailer from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

April Fools

My favourite April Fools gag of the day. Ties in with my previous post on Comic Sans. Also, google "Helvetica" today and see what happens. :)

UPDATE: Apparently David Firth (or someone posing as him) is also in a jocular mood today.

Upcoming project...

Since David Firth has now publicly announced this on his Twitter, I guess I won't have to be secretive about it any more; I'm composing the soundtrack for the next episode of his popular and creepy "Salad Fingers" cartoon series, the first new episode in four years. This'll be my first collaboration with Mr. Firth since 2008's stop motion "Crooked Rot", which I wrote about earlier on this blog.

Not familiar with Salad Fingers? Familiarize yourself with this, a representative early episode from 2004.

balance

Balance Study, Heel-Toe from Jacob Tonski on Vimeo.

This balance study by Jacob Tonski looks amazingly strange.

punchy art

This is a nice art installation that is bound to interact with the audience. It might be more of a technical gimmick than a deeply thoughtfull work of art that works well at a festival, but it would be awesome in a museum too I think, stir things up a little. The only thing is that you are not likely to get the hilarious drunk polish badass guy of the last round in a museum. Or... you never know!



The work is by Stefan Gross, whose other works are fun as well:

Blödes Orkester

Blödes Orchester from white tube on Vimeo.

“Angeordnet wie ein Sinfonieorchester verwandeln sich rund 200 historische Staubsauger, Mixer und Waschmaschinen in Musikinstrumente. Sie bilden ein Ensemble, das der Dirigent, Cembalist und Komponist Michael Petermann alias Weisser Rausch nach acht Jahren Vorarbeit nunmehr vollendet hat: Das Blöde Orchester.”

This might be interersting for you experimental musicians out there. I think the idea is cool, although the music is not so much my cup of tea. But funny anyway!

Midnight Films at MaerzMusik

This week, as part of the MaerzMusik festival for experimental music, Babylon Mitte are screening interesting films at midnight each night. Tonight they'll screen Greenaway's amazing ZOO (A Zed and Two Noughts), tomorrow Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, and on wednesday one of my all time favourites, David Lynch's Eraserhead. I haven't seen it in a theatre before so I'll be all over it.

If you're in Berlin, be sure to check out the program! Tickets are 6.50 EUR.

Francoise Gamma

This is some wonderfully strange, mysterious and beautiful stuff. I love it.

UPDATE: More (colourful) work here!