Milindo Taid - Part 10

PhD scholarship in Cultural Communication: University of Copenhagen, Denmark. 2013

Aug 08

The Royal School of Library and Information Science (RSLIS), Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, invites applications for a three-year scholarship from candidates who hold a Master degree in a field relevant to the study of information. The successful applicant may either be employed in RSLIS’s division in Aalborg or Copenhagen.

The main objective of the project of this scholarship shall be to explore digitization of modern society and/or humanistic and cultural studies. RSLIS particularly encourages project proposals which also have the potential of contributing to the general objectives stated above. The basis for this scholarship shall be in one or more of the following areas:

Ghana: VCR Theater Posters from the 1980s.

Jul 26

Mirroring the VCR days in India, the first VCRs reached Ghana in the 1980s to give rise to a rental structure and exhibition of video cassette movies, particularly in the urban centers of Accra and Kumasi. Quite like India again, a host of fixed and mobile VCR movie theaters rolled into business. Itinerant VCR businessmen would travel the country hooking up TVs and VCRs to portable generators even, in case of non availability of power, to create impromptu theaters of entertainment. A table and a couple of chairs were good enough. These VCR movie screenings were promoted via a large variety of colorful and exaggerated hand drawn and hand painted posters by self taught artists who often used discarded flour sacks as the canvas. In the idiom of popular street art, these posters exude a charming lack of sophistication, and therefore, is typically in opposition to high brow gallery art. This liberty of interpreting American and Hong Kong movies in a single frame for promotional purposes on the streets of sub-Saharan Africa, had given voice to a rather unique visual idiom – marked by childlike exaggerations, disregard for fidelity to content, emphasis on shock and gore, and a wicked touch of humor. Take a look.

Werner Herzog: Stroszek. 1977. (Germany)

Jul 10

The inimitable Werner Herzog is generally known to take on film projects that are more than challenging, both in terms of production and realization, and that also involves working with actors who are ‘difficult’ to say the least. Herzog’s ‘Stroszek‘ from 1977 is a meditative cinematic triumph and remains a prominent film moment from the last century. Putting together an accomplished actor (Eva Mattes) with a non actor (the unforgettable Bruno S.), Herzog weaves a tale in the mode of a grand existential tragedy, pitching in moments of raw pathos along with reflective soul searching for the truth. In telling the story of characters in the fringes of human society – an alcoholic, a prostitute, an elderly eccentric, and their earnest quest for a more respectable, happy life via the american dream, Herzog paints a USA, and a human condition we would rather not acknowledge. Therein lies his directorial brilliance. Watch.

Julian Adderley Quartet: I Remember You. 1959

Jun 27

Julian "Cannonball" Adderley Quartet 1959 - I Remember You

Watch this video on YouTube

1959 | Julian “Cannonball” Adderley: Alto Sax | Wynton Kelly: Piano | Percy Heath: Bass | Albert “Tootie” Heath: Drums

Jeremy Mayer: Typewriter assemblage sculpture

Jun 21

Oakland, USA, based Jeremy Mayer is a typewriter freak, and not in the expected manner of collecting vintage typewriters and restoring them to functionality, polishing and burnishing them to be stored in a personal museum of sorts. He does the opposite. He takes them apart – but with the sole intention of putting them back together in staggeringly imaginative sculptural articulations. I have a distinct affinity towards acts of purposeful and creative recycling, or in this case, re-assemblage, via which industrial produce that has lived its perceived utility and is discarded (considered ‘junk’) is put to use again in creative and imaginative ways. Mayer is an exceptional talent, for he uses no solders and welds, but works entirely with manual, and some might say, old fashioned tools, like the screwdriver and the pliers. If you have ever used typewriters, here is an opportunity to appreciate them, from a different perspective. Take a look.

Edmund Husserl: Cogitations on First Philosophy

Jun 17

Moravia born philosopher Edmund Husserl spent his life teaching in German universities, and during the course of his intellectual life, he came to be regarded as the leading and influential ﬁgure in phenomenology (which took two successive forms in his own work, descriptive and transcendental). In this Husserl Memorial Lecture from 2009, Prof. Robert Sokolowski speaks on “Husserl on First Philosophy”, where, he argues that in this day and age, Husserl offers the possibility of a return to first philosophy. In Aristotle, first philosophy is defined as the theorizing of being as being. It is also called metaphysics, even though it was not given that name by Aristotle himself. The book in which Aristotle carries out this first philosophy was was entitled ‘ta meta ta physika’ by its editors. They called it the study of issues that are “beyond’the physical things. The study of separate entities comprises only a small part of Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’. His first philosophy spends most of its time examining things like prediction, truth, falsity, contradiction, substances and accidents, definition, form and substrate, and the potential and the actual. Metaphysics theorizes truth. Beyond the physicals – “meta ta physika”. Logic, truth, contradiction and predication, belong to being as being, and not being as material. Aristotle turns to the examination of being as being, which is also what Husserl does. Husserl’s phenomenology can be defined as the study of intellect as intellect, mind as mind, reason as reason.

Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral: Fellowships for Painting. 2014

Jun 12

Offering residential fellowships for international visual artists, the Künstlerhaus in Bad Ems, Germany, was founded in 1995 as a place of reflection, artistic production, discussion and meeting. It supports visual artists from all over the world by awarding a total of six artists-in-residence fellowships. For 2014, the residence fellowships will be awarded exclusively for painting. In future, each fellowship will be awarded for a different artistic genre. This offering, which is unique in Germany, is intended to enable deeper mutual creative cross-fertilisation among the resident artists. It will also lead to a more intensive specialist exchange of ideas with external artists, speakers, teachers, curators, etc.

Eligibility
Eligible to apply for a Balmoral fellowship are visual artists of any age from Germany and around the world. The focus of artistic work for the residential fellowships for 2014 must be on the medium of painting, whereby painting does not necessarily mean just ‘paint on canvas’. Formal and conceptual exploration of the limits and possibilities of the genre are also welcome.

The preconditions for applicants for the residential fellowships for visual artists are a completed course of study in art (M.F.A. or comparable) and three years of continuous artistic work after the conclusion of studies until the beginning of the fellowship. Applications are also possible for autodidacts distinguished by special artistic achievements, as documented by exhibitions and prizes. Knowledge of German or English is expected.

Teratology in the 18th C: Monsters and Artists

May 18

In 1775, French artists Nicolas-François and Geneviève Regnault published the influential ‘Les Ecarts de la nature ou recueil des principales monstruosités‘ (The Deviations of Nature or a Collection of the Main Monstrosities). Tapping into centuries old scientific, ethnographic, and cosmographic interpretive traditions of “the monstrous”, François and Regnault were guided by poet Boileau’s idea that “no monster exists that cannot be made pleasing through art”. This marks an important moment in teratology i.e the study of perceived abnormalities in the natural world, both real and imagined. Perceptions, whether individual or societal, of deviations from the norm hold a place of academic interest for me, for they are often lensed with an entire arsenal of valuations of what is acceptable and what is not. The term “monster”, which is derived from the Latin verb “monstrare” meaning “to show”, was used to describe a visually unusual creature from about the 1st century B.C. onward. Classical interpretations of “the monstrous” were to remain influential until the end of the 17th century. Then came the ‘aesthetization’ of the monstrous along with the coming of Christianity, when authors began interpreting such phenomena as having been brought forth by God to communicate divine judgments. By the end of the Middle Ages, unusual natural occurrences were increasingly perceived as “wonders,” or “prodigies”, terms which all focused on their strange and exceptional character. Wonders were seen as signs of God’s anger, or a sign of the power of nature, inspiring fear or admiration depending on the religious and political context.

Jan Švankmajer: Lekce Faust. 1994

May 11

Czech animator Jan Švankmajer remains a rare and remarkable creative force in the motion pictures. For Lekce Faust (‘Faust’) his second feature length film, Švankmajer drew on his personal experience and familiarity with the Faust legend through his work on Czech director Emil Radok’s film ‘Doktor Faust’ in 1958. But, over and above that formative influence, his academic training in puppetry in the Academy of Performing Arts (Prague), coupled with his commitment to surrealist performing art via the Czech Surrealist Group, led him to craft one of the most intriguing films of the 20th century. Marrying his mastery of stop-motion cinematography to a volatile mix of puppetry, human theatre, German opera, Czech folk performance, and dark irreverence Švankmajer’s ‘Lekce Faust’ is an absolute original. Of particular interest is the fact that he manages to loosely weave into the narrative two rather well known tragic plays – Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus‘ (1604) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ‘Faust‘ (1806), in a spirit of imagination and creative interpretation. In the end, one is left with the feeling, that in all of this, Švankmajer remains the original conjurer, the ‘black magician’. Watch.