FRIEKE JANSSENS:

FRIEKE JANSSENS /// SMOKING KIDS

“A YouTube video of a chainsmoking Indonesian toddler inspired me to create this series, “Smoking Kids”. The video highlighted the cultural differences between the east and west, and questioned notions of smoking being a mainly adult activity. Adult smokers are the societal norm, so I wanted to isolate the viewer’s focus upon the issue of smoking itself. I felt that children smoking would have a surreal impact upon the viewer and compel them to truly see the acts of smoking rather than making assumptions about the person doing the act. Coincidentally around the time of the “Smoking Kids” gallery opening, a law was passed, and smoking has been banned from Belgian bars. There was an outcry from the public about government intervention, feelings that freedom was being oppressed, and that adults were being treated like children. With health reasons driving many cities to ban smoking, the culture around smoking has a retro feel, like the time period of “Mad Men,” when smoking on a plane or in a restaurant was not unusual. The aesthetics of smoke and the particular way smokers gesticulate with their hands and posture cannot be denied, but among the different tribes of “Smoking Kids,” – Glamour, Jazz, and The Marginal – there is a nod to less attractive aspects, on the line between the beauty and ugliness of smoking. To assure you of the safety of the children, there were no real cigarettes on set. Instead, chalk and sticks of cheese were the prop stand ins, while candles and incense provided the wisps of smoke.”

☁ FRIEKE JANSSENS
☁ FOUND HERE

Dead Sea Salt Formations:

The Dead Sea’s salinity of 33.7 percent makes it 8.6 times saltier than the ocean. Bordering Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, it is 423m below sea level, making it the lowest place on land on Earth. A tourist hotspot for millennia, more than 1m visitors a year visit on the Israeli & Palestinian side alone. The view from the shore is one thing, but from the air, the sheer strangeness of the salt formations in and around the lake become readily apparent. Photos by Baz Ratner, of Reuters, and others.

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters

Photo: Meredith Nutting, CC BY-SA 2.0

Photo: Iman Mosaad

Photo Karen Wilson

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters

Photo: Meredith Nutting, CC BY-SA 2.0

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters (detail)

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters (detail)

Photo: Baz Ratner, Reuters (detail)

[Yum. -egg]

CLAIRE MORGAN:

Claire Morgan: About Time from Electric Egg on Vimeo.

New works by CLAIRE MORGAN
Shown up here is HERE IS THE END OF ALL THINGS and PEDESTAL.

CLAIRE MORGAN /// STATEMENT

“My work is about our relationship with the rest of nature, explored through notions of change, the passing of time, and the transience of everything around us. For me, creating seemingly solid structures or forms from thousands of individually suspended elements has a direct relation with my experience of these forces. There is a sense of fragility and a lack of solidity that carries through all the sculptures. I feel as if they are somewhere between movement and stillness, and thus in possession of a certain energy.

Animals, birds and insects have been present in my recent sculptures, and I use suspense to create something akin to freeze frames. In some works, animals might appear to rest, fly or fall through other seemingly solid suspended forms. In other works, insects appear to fly in static formations. The evidence of gravity – or lack of it – inherent in these scenarios is what brings them to life, or death.

I feel a close connection with the natural world which I hope is evident in my work, but our clumsy, often destructive relationship with nature, and the ‘artificial’ world we have contrived for ourselves are of equal significance. Ultimately I find myself focussing on areas where the boundaries cannot be clearly defined.

The titles of the works are very important, and often make reference to historical or contemporary popular culture, words being appropriated from the titles of films or books, or phrases being manipulated through combination with the artwork. These connections often add a comedic element to the works, a sense of irony or bluntness that keeps them firmly rooted in my experience of the world that we humans inhabit. Though the phrases have a specific history, the jarring between the title and the form can bring a desirable ambiguity through intentionally creating confusion.

The processes involved in the work are laborious and there are thousands of individual elements involved, but clarity of form is of high importance. I do not wish the animals to provide a narrative, but rather to introduce an element of movement, or energy, or some sort of reality; animating or interacting with the larger architectural forms.

Drawing is important, and allows me to explore a different side of each idea. The processes involved in my blood drawings bring a growing degree of understanding of material and form. “

Claire Morgan was born in Belfast in 1980. She currently lives and works in London.
She graduated in 2003 with a first class degree in Sculpture and has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions in the UK and Europe, and museum shows in US and Australia.

☁ CLAIRE MORGAN
☁ CLAIRE MORGAN PREVIOUSLY ON LE ZÈBRE

(this is something that’s been having an impact at my work for sure. -egg)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/science/earth/climate-scientists-hampered-in-study-of-2011-extremes.html?_r=1&hp

[Merry Xmas <3 -egg]

Walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier:

Vanity Fair’s Charles C. Mann walked through Reagan International Airport with Bruce Schneier, noting all the ways in which “security” adds expense and inconvenience without making us safer. By the end of the trip, he concluded:

To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost. And directed against a threat that, by any objective standard, is quite modest. Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have killed just 17 people on American soil, all but four of them victims of an army major turned fanatic who shot fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood. (The other four were killed by lone-wolf assassins.) During that same period, 200 times as many Americans drowned in their bathtubs. Still more were killed by driving their cars into deer. The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”

Smoke Screening

(via Kottke)