Borrowed ideas - Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders and Her Morning Elegance

Intertextuality as a concept was first introduced by Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva in 1966. Kristeva didn't believe a text could be an isolated entity which operates in a self-contained manner. Any text, she said, is the absorption and transformation of another. Meaning, it could be an author borrowing and transforming a prior text, or a reference to one text in doing another. However, intertextuality is too often used to excuse plagiarism, as one of my favorite Spanish writers, Lucia Etxebarria, has done on a couple of occasions. I still like her books, but one does wonder where true creation begins and "inspiration" ends.

Her Morning Elegance was the release single from the album The Opposite Side of the Sea (2009) by Israeli artist Oren Lavie.; the video was directed by Eyal Landesman and Yuval & Merav Nathan:

When I start looking for trivia of Her Morning Elegance video, I was far to imagine that I would bump into yet another intertextuality case. It turns out the makers of Her Morning Elegance had taken one of Mitchell Rose's films as a source for their own video, borrowing more than a couple of ideas from it. Rose, was not to happy about it and bitterly said: It does matter where you “TAKE this from.” Intellectual property — ideas — are all an artist has.

The film is the award winning Case Studies From the Groat Center for Sleeping Disorders (2002), and in Rose's own words is a faux scientific investigation study of ASDICT (Adult Sleep Disorder Induced by Child Trauma), showing glimpses of rare archive footage from the renowned - but fictional - Groat Center for Sleep Disorders.

Unter dem See neben Zurich

Things you can find under the Zurichsee: bicycles, shopping carts, ski motorcycles, refrigerators, microwawes, vespas, boats, cellphones, office chairs, bar stools, glasses. The water is potable, though, and swimming in the lake is very popular.

In case you lose something, you can always ask the Seepolizei to find it for you. It will cost you, of course (about 150 CHF per hour). But, you will only pay if they find it. Wedding bands and engagement rings are at the top of their requests.

The future is coming - and it is only 498 years away

In the future almost nothing will be as it is today. It will kind of look like an iPhone, but with an extra piece you can lose sometimes.... At least according to this Sarcastic Gamers parody of Microsoft's future visions series:

And the original Microsoft's vision of 2019:

A lingua portuguesa e muito rica - Palavra do dia III

Cerca de um terco das pessoas que vivem em Zurique nao sao suicas. Isto sem contar com os secondos, a segunda geracao de emigrantes, que alem de schwiizertueuetsch, falam tambem a lingua dos seus pais. O mais normal na rua e ouvir varios idiomas, desde os mais corriqueiros, como o ingles ou espanhol ate obscuros dialectos africanos. No entanto, os portugueses, apesar de serem uma das maiores comunidades de emigrantes, pensam que ninguem mais os percebe e que podem discutir onde calhe, alto e bom tom, inconfessaveis secredos. Eu tambem fazia o mesmo, ate que me dei conta que nao estou sozinha e que esteja onde esteja, ha sempre grandes probabilidades que o vizinho do lado seja portugues.

De isto nao se aperceberam duas simpaticas senhoras que encontrei no outro dia num tram, a uma hora relativamente sossegada. O tram estava quase vazio, o que convidava a por conversa em dia. Sem um aviso, um sinal sequer que ia presenciar uma revelacao e um momento de solene transcendencia, ouco atras de mim “ O qu’ essa gaija e, e’ma ganda songamonga”. Reconheco a palavra gaija, e os tempos verbais sao correctos. Isto e portugues, e portugues dos bem falados. ”Ai filha, o ela quer e c’o desembelgado do marido lhe faca tudo em casa”, responde-lhe a amiga, tres oitavas mais acima do necessario. Tento camuflar-me com os estofos para poder continuar a ouvir a conversa. “Tu nao t’amofines que ja vais ver c’a tua cunhada ja lhe vai dizer tres coisas”, continua a amiga. Neste momento, tenho que correr para a saida, mais ainda vou a tempo de ouvir “ Troncha, o qu’ ela e’ma troncha! O qu’ela fez foi’ma rebaixolice…. “. Uma vez na rua, aponto as palavras chave: songamonga, desembelgado, amofines, troncha e rebaixolice. Desconheco o significado, mas nao me parece que estas senhoras estejam a falar “dela” em termos elogiosos.

Chego a casa, e abro dicionario. Comeco por procurar songamonga . Songamonga, ou songa, diz-se de uma pessoa que e sonsa e disfarçada. Em definitiva, e uma expressao pejorativa, que tambem se poder aplicar a alguem que e apatico, lerdo, sem iniciativa ou lento. Francamente, nao vejo como e que alguem com estas caracteristicas pode aspirar a que o marido lhe faca tudo em casa.

A segunda palavra da lista e desembelgado. Tal como suponho, este termo nao esta relacionado com retirar a nacionalidade a um cidadao belga. Alias, desembelgado nem sequer existe como palavra. Mas, podemos encontrar embelgado como forma verbal de embelgar. Que tambem nao tem nada que ver com conceder a nacionalidade belga a um cidadao. Embelgar e um regionalismo do Alentejo e das Beiras, que significa dividir um terreno em belgas (pequeno campo cultivado) por meio de regos paralelos, ou dispor o mato roçado em linhas paralelas. Algo me diz que o marido desta senhora seria conhecido na capital como sendo um esgroviado. Ou seja, alguem sem juizo e mal arranjado. Nem sei como e que “ela” esta a espera que “ele” lhe faca tudo em casa, porque claramente deixar estas a tarefas a cargo de um desembelgado parece ser um risco demasiado grande. Mas, “ela” la sabe.

Continuo com amofines, que resulta ser um tempo verbal de amofinar. Ou seja, afligir, arreliar, apoquentar. Sabio conselho a ter em conta, sobretudo se a cunhada vai tomar cartas neste assunto. Nao sei se a cunhada e uma mulher de forte personalidade e verbo rapido, mas acho que para uma songamonga casada com um desembelgado, sao necessarias mais que tres coisas para repor a verdade.

Restam-me troncha e rebaixolice. Troncha, feminino de troncho, diz-se de alguem que foi privado de algum membro ou apêndice, ou mutilado. Informalmente, utiliza-se como sinonimo de torto ou tortuoso. Ou seja, que alem de ser lerda, “ela” e torta. Estas condicoes sao ideais para cometer uma rebaixolice, que e como quem diz em sentido popular, uma sacanagem ou uma baixaria. Suponho que o suficiente para justicar o agravio e a intervencao da cunhada neste tenebroso assunto. Ainda, tentei seguir o desenlace desta historia e apanhei varias vezes o mesmo tram, mas nunca mais me voltei a cruzar com estas senhoras. Uma pena.

Mad World - A Michel Gondry video for a Gary Jules song

The French director Michel Gondry started his career making musical videos. As an in-demand professional, he worked with everyone from Björk to Massive Attack, including Beck and The Rolling Stones. In 2001, he directed his first film, Human Nature, scripted by Charlie Kaufman. They collaborated again on 2004's Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, which won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar . He also made commercials for Gap, Smirnoff, Air France, Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas, Polaroid and Levi - the latter making him the most highly-awarded director for a one-off commercial.

Gary Jules is an American singer-songwriter, best known for his cover of Tears for Fears single Mad World, which he recorded together Michael Andrews for the film Donnie Darko.

In 2004, the two artists got together to produce the promotional video of Mad World. The clip was done in a single-shot. Sitting at the rooftop of a school building in Brooklyn, Jules watches children choreographing simple, child-like pictures on the pavement: a car, a house, a boat:

Taylor's drawer I

In Spanish language, a cajón de sastre is the drawer where the taylor keep his instruments. In figurative sense, it is the drawer where everything that does not have specific place ends up. It is what we would call in English language an hotchpotch or an hodgepodge - meaning, a confused mixture or a motley assortment of things.

I have several taylor's drawers scattered around my life. Probably the most used is the kitchen one, where film rolls, garlic crushers, egg whiskers and blade sharpeners live happily together. It is also known as the drawer (have you seen the scissors? Oh yes, last time I have seen them, they were in the drawer!).

The most useful taylor's drawer I have is probably the one in the office, which is euphemistically called personal belongings. Last time I emptied it, I found almost everything you need to have in a work environment, but were always afraid to ask: make up, used boarding passes, tooth paste and tooth brushes, a comb, perfumes, stockings, hand cream, business cards, universal plug adaptors, spare pens, pain killers and so many coins of different currency that I could have bought lunch.

Inevitably, my blog also has also a taylor's drawer. It lists a few unclassifiable websites or blogs that for unspeakable reasons I am following. They could be marked as my favorites, but, helas!, that wouldn't honor them as they deserve.

Where I else but in a taylor's drawer could I have saved My milk toof? This blog is authored by Inhae, a California-based artist, who welcomed home a couple of milk tooth. Of, Anna the Red's Bento Factory, a blog about Bento boxes, that includes recipes? Anna's lunch boxes are so pretty that are almost uneatable. Or, Atlas Obscura, a compendium of curious places? Right now, the featured museum on this web site is the Icelandic Phallological Museum, known to have the worlds largest (and only) encyclopedic collection of mammal penises. And, last but no means least, were else could the Lunchbreath photostream be? This a flickster gallery where a Chicago based artist with a caustic sense of humor publishes his cartoons.

Source - some of these sites were found at the Huffington Post, others at Shooting the Cheese

A story of mixed emoticons

:-)

Thomas Dolby - from I Scare Myself to La Vie en Rose

Thomas Dolby recorded I scare myself in 1983, as a track of the album Flat Earth (1984). This recording was made on the tube around those days:

In 2001, Dolby was appointed Musical Director of the TED - Ideas Worth Spreading. He performed live La Vie en Rose, together with Rochelle Garnier in 2004:

I look forward to seeing what he will be doing in 2024...

How to be happy in business

found on Swiss Miss; source and full story on What Consumes me

IKEA - Bringing design to the masses

The aesthetic form is there for all. And not just for the museum

IKEA Catalog, 1979  

In a couple of weeks I might be off to IKEA in Munich. Not to IKEA, the store, but to IKEA, the exibihion at the Pinakothek des Moderne 

Democratic design - IKEA  is the first ever show about the Swedish company that has shaped the concept of bringing design to the masses like no other. As understood by IKEA officers and designers, democratic design means that having a limited budget should not prevent people from creating a beautiful home, with practical and sensible elements. This groundbreaking concept make them one of the most impressive success stories of the 20th century, and the world's biggest producer of furniture and decorative objects. It is was estimated that one in 10 Europeans are conceived in an IKEA bed.

 

A perfectly good example of bringing the design to the masses and democracy of design is the PS Jonsberg series of vases, created by Hella Jongerius.    

Hella Jongerius is a Dutch designer whose innovative creations are sold by high end design companies, shuch as Droog, Vitra or Donna Karan  She heads her own company, JongeriusLab, which designs and produces unique ceramics, textiles, tableware and furniture.

 

Jongerius is known for her attention to detail, and also the individuality she puts on each piece. Almost all of her objects involve handwork during the production process. “Normally my work is made in small editions, which gets expensive”, she admits  (the limited edition of the repeat big pot can cost something like EUR7000; a unlimited production, like the NON temporary vase can be EUR400).

For the Jonsberg vases, Jongerius wanted to integrate her love of handwork with the high volume production requirement IKEA imposes. “I was searching for a way to create something mass-produced while preserving attention to the richness of details,” she says. “I wanted to make a product that is uniform in shape, but that reveals that it must have been made in a traditional workshop because there is no industrial production technique for this particular ceramic process. This was possible because Ikea has manufacturing companies in China, which produce very high-quality handwork, but can also deal with large volumes”.

 “The 4 vases all have an identical shape, a familiar archetypal vase form, which for me is a blank sheet of paper on which I can design. Every vase has a pattern that represents a particular part of the world, and each pattern is also assigned its own ceramic technique. It reveals the great diversity of the ceramics world. Moreover, it shows four different characters and traditions that produce completely different vases, despite the fact that the basic form is one and the same”.

 

I am the proud owner of several of those vases, that were something like CHF50 each (about EUR40):

I love them!

Europride 2009 - There is a little gay in everyone

Imagine a rainbow flag flying facing the world’s most expensive commercial square meter. Imagine it flying next to a Swiss and a Kanton Zurich flag, overseeing the Old Town and Lake Zurich. I didn’t have to image it – I was there and I have seen it with this two eyes earth will swallow one day.

 

Since May 2^nd, the City of Zurich is the official GLBT* capital of Europe, hosting the 2009 EuroPride. The event will offer a whole month of pride activities, that will end on June 6 and 7^th, with  massive street festival and parade. Over 100 000 visitors are expected.

 

The theme for this year edition is Celebrating 40 Years with Pride. It commemorates the GLBT* rights movement that formed in 1969 after police raids on New York’s Stonewall bar. I certainly prefer the advertisement slogan - There's A Little Gay In Everyone: 

Although Zurich has the reputation of being very open and GLBT* friendly, an homophobic ultra right wing lobby tried to stop it. But, at the end even the Police welcomed the visitors.

A spokesman has commented on the ad saying that it is etwas klischiert, aber es ist ja Werbung: a bit of a cliché, but such is advertising. 

*lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people