Singularity
visual culture

Art History Poster by Vuk Vidor
By the way, ‘Duchamp owns everything’.

Henry Jenkins is the director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. In this viral-info-snack he discusses the power of media in a 21 century trans-mediated world. A world where converging technologies and cultures give rise to a new media landscape.

From RTE,

“ON TV, ONLINE AND THE RTÉ STILLS LIBRARY, LOOK OF THE IRISH CELEBRATES THE PHOTOS WHICH HAVE SHOWN US WHO WE ARE SINCE 1839.”

‘The Look of the Irish’ is a series of 9 programs dedicated to Photography and representation. This is the list:

Fergus Bourke: In His Own Words

RTÉ One, 11.10pm on Sunday 9 August 2009

Made shortly before his death, this moving portrait of renowned photographer Fergus Bourke was first shown in May 2007. It introduces us to his life and work and the wide array of Irish life captured through his lens, including Dublin street scenes, pioneering photo-journalism, remarkable portrait photographs and classic images of Connemara and the Irish countryside.

Day By Day By Day

RTÉ One, 7.30pm on Monday 10 August 2009

Robert, William, and Alec Day photographed their native Cork for over 100 years, creating a unique and unsurpassed photographic record of the city and its surroundings. This new documentary tells the story of an unusual family and the images they produced, from visiting kings and streetscapes to naked ladies and departing liners.

The Day Before Yesterday

RTÉ One, 8.30pm on Monday 10 August 2009

First broadcast in April 1994, ‘The Day Before Yesterday’ looks back at Ireland in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, as shown through the lens of Jesuit and photographer Fr. Francis Browne. Scripted and narrated by Michael Ryan, over 2,000 photographs from Fr. Browne’s collection of 40,000 are seen onscreen, a fascinating account of the birth and growth of independent Ireland record, of the people and the times.

David Farrell – Elusive Moments

RTÉ One, 11.05pm on Monday 10 August 2009

David Farrell is the only Irish photographer to have won the European Publishers’ Award for Photography, for his hugely successful exhibition Innocent Landscapes, dealing with the searches for the so-called “disappeared” from the conflict in the north of Ireland. Shot in Dublin, Wicklow, Cork, Italy and Paris, Elusive Moments follows two years of his working life, taking photographs, editing and printing his pictures, preparing them for exhibitions, and dealing with the marketplace.

Riviera Cocktail

RTÉ One, 11.25pm on Tuesday 11 August 2009

The Côte D’Azur in the 1950’s was the most glamorous place on the planet, where high society, big business, art, music and literature gathered to play. And Irish photographer Edward Quinn (1920 – 1997) was there to record it, producing exclusive photos of Grace Kelly, Federico Fellini, Pablo Picasso, Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Sophia Loren, Edith Piaf, Max Ernst, Frank Sinatra, Brigitte Bardot, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Miles Davis and so many more.

Sweet Cork Of Thee – Edwardian Cork On Camera

RTÉ One, 7.30pm on Wednesday 12 August 2009

Some 15 years before Tomas MacCurtain and Terence McSwiney defined Cork’s republican credentials, English cinematographers Mitchell and Kenyon observed an altogether more ‘loyal’ Cork than that portrayed in the Rebel Cork story. In this RTÉ Archive Unit documentary, first shown on Christmas Day 2005, Pat Butler casts a wry eye on the Citizens of Cork, as they sport and play and go about their lives on the Banks of the Lee in 1902, spiced with Victorian and Edwardian ballads.

Dark Room

RTÉ One, 11.55pm on Wednesday 12 August 2009

First shown in February 2003, Dark Room looks at the life of the famous Irish photographer, Harry Thuillier, Jnr. Born in Dublin in 1984, his subject matter was noted for its particular darkness, including ancient skulls, limbs decorated with opium pods and flowering nudes. He survived an attack on a Dublin street which left him with only 80% vision in his right eye, and went on to make very distinctive and beautiful work, until his unexpected and mysterious death in Milan in December 1997.

The Man Who Shot Beckett

RTÉ One, 11.05pm on Thursday 13 August 2009

John Minihan is probably the most important Irish photographer alive today, his subjects ranging from Francis Bacon to John Hurt, Princess Diana to William Burroughs, his acclaimed pictures of Athy, and the famous series of photographs he took of Samuel Beckett in London and Paris. This profile of Minihan was first shown as part of RTÉ Beckett 100 in April 2006 and celebrates the friendship between Beckett and the photographer, a friendship that produced some of the most remarkable images of the great writer.

Townlands: Not Fade Away

RTÉ One, 8.30pm on Friday 14 August 2009

In the wet and windy summer of 1913 two young women arrived in Ireland from France. Marguerite Mespoulet and Madelaine Mignon were women on a mission – to document what they regarded as the dying remnants of a great Celtic culture. During May and June 1913 they made a total of 75 colour photographs, stunning images, many with the delicacy of paintings, which together with their travel notebook, form a unique and fascinating record of an Ireland that, even then, was quickly fading away. (First shown in August 2004.)

The official site for ‘The Look of the Irish’ is here:

http://www.rte.ie/lookoftheirish/index.html

The Mondrian’s Room Gallery, (was) located in South Anne Street, Dublin. They showcased last November 2008 some unique glass plates (autochromes) by The Lumiere Brothers, which represent the invention of colour Photography. Despite the fact that such a relevant collection of artifacts was offered for public enjoyment, very little was mentioned in all ‘expert’ media and the everyday papers. What a pity.

I just happened to be walking by the area when I saw one of the plates on the window display. I couldn’t believe it!







(Find more at Mondrian’s Room site)

But who is behind Mondrian’s Room?

In their site you can also see other available work from Doisneau, Muybridge and other historic figures.

The shop is now closed, but here’s what is coming from them in 2009:

For a start, our gallery and activities will become more mobile.

As major renovation works will be commencing shortly on the South Anne Street buildings, over the next 6 months Aebhric and I will be focussing our energies on developing future exhibitions, and travelling around Europe to source new artworks and collaborating with European curators and collectors. We hope to reopen our gallery space in Autumn.

In early May, we will be relaunching our website with lots of new content and features, to broaden the reach and services of Mondrian’s Room.

During the Summer, we will be working on a new TV programme designed to excite people about international art and photography, and continue exposing Irish audiences to a whole new world of artworks never before seen here. Sneak-peaks will be available on our website.

Our consultancy services will also be expanded, due to growing demand. In February, Mondrian’s Room worked on the installation of the major James Coleman exhibition, currently on view until 26th April at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hibernian Academy, and Project Arts Centre. (James Coleman)

As usual, we will also be sourcing specific artworks for our clients and providing investment advice. Whether you’re looking for drawings, photos, or paintings from any period or country, we will be very pleased to help you in any of your art enquiries.

Looking forward to that!!

via Mondrian’s Room

‘Dear Mr President‘ is PEPSI’s advert (thought and thus, it would be so much cooler if it was Mr PEPSIdent); you are suppose to answer this question: ‘what would you say to the man who is about to refresh America?’. PEPSI then becomes the channel, the messenger, the carrier, the pigeon, the media between the audience and the target. Very clever. An banking on one of the most widely liked presidents on the history of the United States of NorthAmerica, that is also clever. You can see there loads of videos and short textual messages from famous and the rest of us. 

Its all here.

With Camel and Camera – Historical Orient Photography 1864 – 1970
20th April – appr. 7th September 2008
opening: Sunday, 20th April 2008, 11 am

With catchwords like “clash of civilizations” and “Islamist terror” a rather undifferentiated picture of the Islam is currently conveyed in western public. However, about 18,000 historical photographs of the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg from the Near and Middle East and North Africa draw a different picture. For the first time, a selection of these aesthetically outstanding and scientifically important documents is offered to the public. The exhibition of these photographs, taken between 1870 and 1970, shows the regional and social complexity as well as the historic dynamism of the region. The displayed images are characteristic examples of the European view on foreign parts at that time. In continuing orient painting they shaped the western perception of the East, as it influenced them in reverse.
The broad scope of represented photographers, regions, and images of our collection is exceptional. There are aesthetically highly appealing photographs from professional studios in North Africa, Egypt, and the Holy Land of the 19th century which reflect the prevalent Eastern stereotypes. Pictures of North African Berbers, who were presented to audiences as living objects, for example at Hagenbeck, reflect the fascination for the wild and the exotic. Historical touristic souvenir pictures are as well part of the exhibition as very early photographs of scientific expeditions which led to regions hardly or not at all accessible for Europeans until then.
Thanks to the intensive support of the ZEIT-Foundation Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius, their photographic stock from the Near and Middle East and North Africa could be digitized, remastered, and scientifically reconstructed within the framework of a three-year lasting project.

via voelkerkundemuseum.com.