Yotam Ottolenghi (whose cooksbooks are as notable for their design as for their recipes) got invited to do an event at the Met for their Versailles show in 2018, and he recruited some amazing pastry chefs (Dominique Ansel, Ghaya Oliveira, Dinara Kasko, Sam Bompas and Harry Parr, Janice Wong) to create elaborate displays and desserts. The documentary Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles (directed by Laura Gabbert) gives us just a glimpse of the logistical challenges involved in realizing the ambitions of each chef: a pump for a "whirlpool of booze" that doesn't work; a batter that starts to curdle; wheeling the half-assembled displays from the kitchen to the galleries, setting off a fire alarm on the way.
There's some attention to the role of Versailles as center of power and how it displayed to the world France's new technologies and aesthetics, but the film isn't interested in a corresponding inquiry into the role the New York culture industry plays with its gala events. The only tastings we get are of recipes Ottolenghi is testing at his home base in London. But the stories of how each team manages to pull off their culinary experiences are delightful.
Looking over my "life list," I remember how many items are about expanding my range of ways to be creative: knitting, sewing, beading or making jewelry, playing with photos, writing. I found iHanna's lovely blog when she was the curator of the @sweden Twitter account. One of her first posts for 2013 was about her intention to make a collage every day this year, a kind of "project" she has done before (here's a list). I decided that I wouldn't (couldn't) make a commitment to one particular art form, but that I could make room every day for creativity.
Jan 1, I took a "photo safari" around Zaragoza and put up three blog entries with some of my photos. Jan 2, I pillaged the magazine pile and cut out words and images related to the turning of the year, and to my exploration of making major changes in my life. It was hella fun, and I ended up making two collages: one inside the cover of my current journal using mostly words, and another more visual one on a journal page. I've taken photos of them and will decide if they are good enough to post (the photos, not the collages), because I'd like to document these projects. But I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't manage to write or post about this every day. Maybe I'll end up doing a weekly round-up on a particular day; I'll see how it works out. I'm adopting iHanna's tag of #365in2013.
The Stone Bridge (Puente de Piedra) stands where the Romans had originally built a wooden bridge. Built again in the 1400s, it has been partially destroyed by floods, and rebuilt over the centuries. A pair of lions stands at either end.
I began my walk by crossing the Puente de la Almozara, from the southern bank to the northern bank. Just a few decades ago, that side of the river was mostly gardens and farm land: we have watched as block after block of apartments have been built.
From the middle of the bridge, looking east and upstream, I could see the Pasarela built during the Expo that leads to the new train/bus station, Delicias. Almost all of the buildings constructed for the Expo are unused, a product of the frenzy of speculation that preceeded the current economic crisis in Spain.
The next bridge down is the Puente de Santiago, and you can see the Stone Bridge in the distance. a flotilla of ducks is hanging out in the shadow. On the other bank one can see the monuments of the various ages of a city that is more than 2000 years old: the Roman walls, the Moorish tower, the Basilica del Pilar, the church towers of San Juan and San Pablo.
The Basilica (above) is an impressive heap, but it's not my favorite church at all.
The river is wide and fast as it moves through the city. The water is
high now, in the winter, but will get much lower in the summer.
A new moon is a time for planting seeds, and the new moon in Scorpio means we have the chance to dive deep and work through our deepest truths, to be reborn like the phoenix from its ashes.
What would this mean for you? What does it mean for me?
Monday's total solar eclipse intensifies this moment; the sun, the moon, and the earth are aligned. The last such eclipse in this series was 18 years ago, within days of my child's birth and my own birthday. It was a moment of profound transformation, birth and rebirth. Now she is 18 and has moved out of the house, on her own journey as an artist and student and a young woman. I didn't realize how profoundly this would affect me, but after some hard struggle I am moving through, opening myself up to this moment of transformation.
The Scorpio archetype calls to mind Persephone's descent to the underworld, which she must do to detach from her mother Demeter.
A commitment I have made to myself for the new year is to embrace my creativity. This weekend I had a variety of experiences, and my "artist date" for today is to blog about them so that I can explores some of the ways my head is still full of images and ideas. The events in Arizona have been an emotional blow, so I'm holding on to these manifestations of human creativity right now.
Errol Morris has a web page chock-a-block full of links to fascinating stories. I must explore it when I get the chance. We watched his film Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control on Netflix on Friday night. I'm going to watch it again soon because there was so much that was fascinating (naked mole-rats! robots with funny walks!), funny and also sad (the lions and tigers). The film makes you think animal life and instinct, mechanical self-perpetuating systems, and the human drives that connect, re-order and create in and around them. There are four stories: a man who devotes his life to creating and maintaining topiary animals in Green Animals Gardens for a wealthy woman in Newport, RI; another who documents and organizes exhibitions of naked mole-rats, an MIT scientist who takes extraordinary pleasure in building artificial creatures that can move like organic creatures, and a man whose ambition is was to be a "lion-tamer." Watching his interactions with the big cats was distressing. What is it that drives us to make a spectacle of the violent confrontation of humans and powerful animals? Can we leave it behind?
On Saturday, we made a visit to the Minnesota Institute of Arts, one of my very favorite Minneapolis places, not least because it is free. We attended a lecture by my U of MN colleague Michael Gaudio on European representations of the Americas and the idea of "natural history," from the Utopian writings of Francis Bacon and the watercolors of John White in the 1580s (including the butterfly above) to "Mister Peale's Mastodon" and art as part of American nationalism. One of the most beautiful images he showed was by an artist named Catesby, a "forerunner of Audobon" who is less well known, but no less accomplished. I want to learn more about his life and work, having visited botanical gardens in Amsterdam and London. I have discovered that a film has been made about him:
Underlying this tradition of representation was both the joy of "illuminating" the world, and the process of conquest, appropriation and colonization. So it was fitting that we should also be able to see the gorgeous, beautifully curated collection of Native American art for a second time. It was crowded because the show was closing this weekend, and we ran into people we knew: one of R.'s English teachers, a former grad student who is now a professor and a sculptor, a colleague from the U of MN. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to see a show that brought together so many beautiful examples of the art, yet painfully aware of how this legacy also speaks to the ongoing reality of colonial rule here where I live.
Finally, we watched the first chapter of a British series "Downton Abbey" on PBS, which is fitting because it dramatizes the slow implosion of the British ruling class. Best line of the first episode: Maggie Smith, "What on earth is a week-end?"
Last night, we watched the movie The Fall, (available for instant view on Netflix) by director Tarsem Singh. Tarsem (as he calls himself) has created many ads and music videos ("Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. is his) as well as two spectacular films, The Cell and The Fall.
Adam Howarth, who has also worked on many commercials and films, played a major role in realizing Tarsem's vision by making things blow up, creating building models, and making many of the spectacular costumes, working with reknowned costume designer Eiko Ishioka, including this amazing horned headdress. Howarth's photos on Flickr are all wonderful, and the set from the shoot is breathtakingly beautiful, giving us a glimpse behind the scenes of a movie that was made entirely on location in some of the most spectacular landscapes and structures in the world. Here is his Flickr Set, published under the name of his company Siam Eye. In these photos, you can see some of the amazing details of costumes, building models, and many of the stunt doubles, actors, local people and sights during the filming.
I wanted to know where all the scenes were filmed, and found this wonderful site where someone who shared my desire has compiled a detailed list with still photos. Thanks, to blogger ally for helping us travel vicariously!
For another vision by Tarsem that incorporates many of the elements he expanded in the film, here is a video he did for the French duo Deep Forest (Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet), who mixed a vocal from the Solomon Islands with their own production. The original video, shown on MTV in 1994, can be viewed on his website's reel, but this remake adds much more to the "around the world" dream. In both this video and the film, a young girl's dream vision guides us through the imagining and creation of a voyage around the world.
All movie stills used in this post are available for download at the movie website.
TED talks, my Internet crush, has introduced me to Sir Ken Robinson. I want to make the leadership at the University where I work watch this and apply it to transforming our mission and how we do things.
Two things I take away from this as a teacher that underpin his lecture: he establishes contact with his audience ("how are you?" "amirite?" "do you?"). He uses jokes and stories to make his points, which he then also spells out clearly and concisely. It's a lot harder than it looks to do this!
And also "The whole purpose of public education is to produce University professors," and as a University professor who has studied teaching and learning styles, I think he's right.
His bio on the TED site says:
A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.
If you like this, you should also watch the amazing talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who talks surviving about her own stroke. She, like Sir Ken, talks about the corpus callosum, but on the most profound, fundamental level.
via sytycdism, one of my favorite blogs, comes this wonderful piece created by Legacy. It gives me a lot to think about. After the challenges of learning contemprary dance styles on the show, working with dancers and choreographers, in a milieu that identifies so-called contemporary dance with "dance" and his kind of dance with "tricks", this is a fascinating statement.
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