Milindo Taid - Part 11

Tomasz Gudzowaty: The Monks of Shaolin

May 04

Polish photo-essayist Tomasz Gudzowaty has a deep commitment to documenting the often neglected area of non-commercial, non-mainstream sports and sporting activities. A law graduate from the University of Warsaw, he initiated himself into photography through work on nature, and then onto the social documentary, before arriving at his passion for non-commercial sports photography. Not unlike accomplished and critically acclaimed socially committed photo-essayists like W.Eugene Smith and Sebastiao Salgado, Gudzowaty chooses to express himself solely in the absence of colour, through remarkable black and white. The classic photo essay is often often identified as the one that is black and white – pitching itself into representing ‘stark reality’ as opposed to the distractions that colour might impose on the image, preventing the viewer from appreciating ‘the whole’. Non commercial sports also present unique moments, moments that Gudzowaty captures with mastery in his photo essay on the monks of the ancient fifth century Shaolin monastery in the Henan provice of China, a monastery well known for its martial arts practice of Shaolin Kung Fu. Take a look.

Immanuel Kant and the critique of reason

May 01

18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant single handedly put Germany on the map as an intellectual power (and lent it the pedantic tone for which it soon became notorious). British philosopher the late Sir Geoffrey Warnock gives us a glimpse into the mind and manner of the man who made sweeping revisions in nearly all branches of philosophy, thereby inspiring other philosophers to stop bickering among themselves and get serious about thinking again. Certainly effected what Kant called a “second Copernican revolution”: The origin of the world as we know it, he insisted, is the human mind itself, which, far from being tabula rasa (“a clean slate”), has an inherent structure through which we filter all experience and which imposes its own order on the world of phenomena (though not on the real/ideal world of “things-in-themselves – German Dinge-an-sich,” which is unknowable). Likewise, humans have an innate awareness of moral law, in the form of the categorical (i.e., unconditional) imperative (i.e., command), a sort of bottom-line ethical “ought.” In attempting to make the world safe for both god and science, Kant managed to restore some dignity to the idea of the human mind; also to destroy the credibility of traditional metaphysics (since we can’t “know” any external reality that isn’t colored by our own “knowing”), to make modern philosophy more subjective than objective (and to prefigure such radically man-centered movements as existentialism), and to widen the rift between philosophy and the physical sciences.

Doctoral Research Scholarships: Australian National University. 2013

May 01

The Australian National University (ANU) is offering a number of scholarships for Doctor of Philosophy or Professional Doctorate by research in all fields of study. International students, Australian and New Zealand citizens are eligible for these scholarships. International students should submit the application latest by 31st August, 2013 and Domestic Students by 31st October, 2013

The Research School of Humanities and the Arts offers opportunities in the following schools and centres:

Remembering Storm Thorgerson (1944-2013) : Wish you were here.

Apr 22

British artist, graphic designer and film-maker Storm Thorgerson has left an indelible mark on the minds of a generation or two of youngsters (or ‘oldsters’ for that matter) who grew up imagining the music of Pink Floyd. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Thorgerson’s influences were many, and when he was brought in to deliver the artwork for the ‘psychedelic-progressive’ music of Pink Floyd in the late 1960s – early 70s, he mapped his interest in the surrealism of René Magritte, Salvador Dali and the inimitable Man Ray, to the atmospheric music of Pink Floyd. This touch defined the music, created spaces for imagining, and was provocatively original. Working with analogue, pre-Photoshop tools, Thorgerson was singular about his vision and uncompromising. However hard we may try, it is difficult to evoke Pink Floyd without Thorgerson. He passed away quietly, a few days back (18th of April, 2013). Storm Thorgerson. Wish you were here.

Hiroshi Teshigahara: Suna no onna. Japan. 1964

Apr 16

Adapted from Kōbō Abe’s 1962 novel of the same name, ‘Suna no onna’ (translated as ‘The Woman in the Dunes’) is the piercing vision of a remarkable film artist, Hiroshi Teshigahara. Trained in the Japanese traditions of ‘Ikebana’ and classical painting, his turn to cinema was distinctly an aesthetic choice. In ‘Suna no onna’, he translates cinematic frames into canvases for his expression, while telling a story resonating with the myth of Sisyphus, within the existential paradigm set up by authors like Albert Camus, whose work Teshigahara was familiar with. ‘Suna no onna’ is both a brooding and scathing critique of human reasoned argumentation (the man-of-science, the urban man, the man governed by explanations for everything), and an emphatic tribute to the intuitive knowledge of nature, that which is instinctive and intrinsic, that which has not undergone the distortions imposed by human reason. Ultimately, ‘Suna no onna’ transcends itself as a cultural product of early 1960s Japan, to make a universal and specific statement about the human condition. Watch.

Joseph Tawadros: Street in Sarajevo

Apr 11

Joseph Tawadros - Street In Sarajevo

Watch this video on YouTube

Jordan Matter: Dancers among Us

Apr 10

New York city native Jordan Matter happens to be a great admirer of Henri Cartier-Bresson, and for a photographer who holds spontaneity dear to him, Jordan has more than enough reasons to smile about, in his photographic project, “Dancers among Us”. Over a period of three years (2009-11) Jordan teamed up with dancers of various dance companies like the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects, Elisa Monte Dance and others, to come up with images of spontaneous dance expressions in public locations across different cities in the USA. The striking poses of the dancers in each image are in stark contrast to the surroundings – humans, and the built environment. If you are having a bad (or good) day, this might just make you smile, or dance. Take a look.

René Descartes: Philosophy and seventeenth century Rationalism

Apr 05

British philosopher and eminent Descartes scholar the late Sir Bernard Williams talks about the relevance and importance of Descartes as a seminal figure of modern philosophy. René Descartes, as a man of science, mathematics and philosophy, known best for his ‘Discourse on Method’ and ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’, certainly marks the point at which the world decided to go ‘modern’. His philosophical system based on deductive reasoning and a priori truths, were the basis for seventeenth century Rationalism. Individualistic, lucid and methodical, he believed in innate ideas, ones that do not come to us through experience, and not to forget his contributions to analytic geometry and the mind-set behind the scientific method, Descartes was determined to make a clean sweep of all the comfortable old assumptions, to take nobody’s word for anything, to doubt everything. We are all better for that.

PhD position: Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Sweden

Apr 05

Project: Urban infrastructure transformation from an STS perspective: Translating visions of Smart and Sustainable Cities.

Brief: Terms such as “Smart Cities”, “Smart Infrastructures” or “Eco-Cities” are increasingly employed to describe future visions of urban development and urban infrastructures and to design related policies or research programmes at national and European level. However, the question remains how such visions are actually translated into socio-material practices of infrastructural change. Do they give rise to new actor coalitions in cities? How are they used strategically by different actor groups? How do such ideas congeal into concrete projects of infrastructural change – at the level of technology, governance, institutions and practices? The aim of this PhD project is to explore these linkages and translation processes in a very small number of case studies of Swedish cities in a comparative perspective.

Frédéric Chaubin: Soviet Architecture. 1970-1990

Mar 30

Fascinated by the massive scale of Leonid Brezhnev era architecture, french magazine editor Frédéric Chaubin toured the former USSR for seven years (between 2003 and 2010), during which he stumbled upon 90 soviet buildings scattered across 14 former USSR republics, bearing the identifiers of what he calls ‘cosmic communist constructions’. His documentation is an important contribution to architectural history, especially of an era, of which not much is comprehensively known. Architectural Brutalism is somewhat evident in these structures that reveal a surprising freedom from the top-down directives of 1920s Constructivism and thereafter. These striking buildings, constructed on a huge scale usually from reinforced concrete, are anti-picturesque, their outlandish gravity-defying forms pitted against the landscape. Chaubin maintains that architecture reflects and expresses ideology and philosophy of that era. Take a look.