abandoned places. enchanted places.

so i gotta thing for abandoned places. ruins. especially modern ruins. somehow i came upon this pretty incredible site which seems to be some sort of image archive. there's hundreds of pictures of different places. i don't know anything else about it because the whole thing is in chinese. or japanese. i'm not sure, i can't read it. either way, i just want to curl up into the screen...























i feel like i've posted an obscene amount of pictures. but i don't care.

you can check it out if you're interested.

bridymo, what do ya know???

tree people

george steinmetz (photographer):

In 1995 I had the rare opportunity to document clans of tree-dwelling people in Indonesian New Guinea that had no prior contact with anyone outside their language group. I went there with Gerrit Van Enk, a Dutch missionary-anthropologist who at the time was the only outsider who spoke their language. Together with his missionary friend Johannes Veldhuizen, we crossed what Gerrit termed the "pacification line". These Korowai and Kombai speaking-people live in a remote part of the New Guinea lowland forest. They had been seeing overflying aircraft for several years, but agressively resisited contact with outsiders as they feared it would bring an end to their world. We went there to make as accurate a recording as possible of their way of life before they were innundated by the modern world, as had almost every other culture on the island.

The Korowai and Kombai live in tree houses that stand in clearings they have carved out of the forest. Beyond the pacification line we found people without clothing, metal, or any form of cooking vessel. This reality was made clear by the stumps of trees we saw there that had been felled (litteraly beatted to death) with stone axes, and resmbled giant shaving brushes. Although slowly dying out, there was still cannibalism in the area. Gerrit believed it to be part of their criminal justice system, as most of the tree-dwelers did not believe in natural death. The Korowai believed that most deaths were caused by sorcery, and they would try to find out who the sorcerer was to kill and eat them. It was a very difficult and dangerous environment in which we could only make first contact by first getting an invitation to cross the pacification line through relatives who had married into a neighboring clan. These were not easy inviations to get. We spent six weeks on the ground there, and the photos were published in both National Geographic and GEO Magazines. For the Korowai I think it was a bit like a team of Martians landing in their back yard and then telling them to act naturally, like the Martians weren't really there. Our experience was steeped in the awareness that we may have been documenting our effect on the Korowai rather than how it was before we arrived, and the pacification line was like a rainbow that was always just outside our grasp. But our goal was to make as accurate a documentation of a vanishing way of life as possible, for them and their future generations as much as for the outside world.






george steinmetz photography

the white queen

anybody remember this movie? alice through the looking glass circa 1985. must've watched it hundreds of times growing up, and just thought to look it up on youtube. i found exactly what i was looking for. this lady freaked me out so bad when i was a kid and in finding it again it still is just as creepy and weird as it ever was...uh, especially the part at the end where she turns into a goat... uhhh...

robert & shana parkeharrison

robert & shana parkeharrison. these are a few photographs from their "architect's brother" series.

sigur ros lovin

brilliant

communal bike system. how can we make this happen here?

article about the system they got goin on in paris.

s'more info from wikipedia.

street art

ethos:

banksy:

a bunch of links:
ekosytem.org
wooster collective
streetsy
barcelona street art
graffiti & street art: index
banksy. check it out yo.

article from artnet.com. don't know when it was published. no date:

London Calling..
by Joe La Placa

The graffiti artist Banksy is London's phantom celebrity. Millions have seen his work. But few have seen Banksy. Preferring to be thought of as a "quality vandal," he winces at the idea of being called an artist. "I'd never write that word on my passport, it's a bit precious sounding" says the skinny 28 year old. He has a silver tooth and sports an earring. "I'm not trying to recast graffiti as an art. The word vandal would suit me fine, a 'quality vandal' that is. I'd like to reclaim the word 'vandal' the way hip-hop reclaimed 'nigger'."

Banksy's first major exhibition "Turf War" was one of England's best -- and briefest -- shows this season. Staged in a warehouse on Kingsland Road in London's East End, the exact location was kept secret until the last minute.

"Turf War" was supposed to be open from July 18 to 24, but police closed it down two days after the opening. Why? Because artist Banksy is a wanted man.

Guests packed the space to see Banksy's provocative work that included a smashed up police van, vandalized monuments and graffiti-coated live animals.

Many celebrity fans like chef Jamie Oliver and DJ Sara Cox wanted to meet Banksy at the opening. So did the police. But the elusive vandal was nowhere to be found. "I have warrants out for my arrest and besides I don't like dealing with the public," he said.

Banksy's been busted before. He has a penchant for branding London's public buildings and bridges with his well-crafted black-and-white stencils of visual puns and slogans. Banksy's form of self-expression has put the police on his tail. Graffiti may still be a hot cultural form. But in London, it's punishable with a prison sentence of up to ten years.

All this makes Banksy a "cultural gangster" at large. And crime seems to be paying. Banksy's numerous products are selling. The pop band Blur asked him to do the cover of their recently released album, "Think Tank." You can buy Banksy's posters at Selfridges department store. Pop stars and night club owners are clamoring to commission him. Banksy's brand can be found on t-shirts. His canvases are selling for up to £10,000 apiece. And as demand is high, it's only a matter of time before prices follow.

Would Banksy sell work to Charles Saatchi? "He can keep his money. I would rather my work was in the hands of thousands than in the hands of one man."

Despite his fame, Banksy turns down many lucrative offers. The latest was issued from the world's biggest sneaker pimp, Nike. Banksy turned them down flat. "I'm not worried about selling out. I concentrate on the work." Spoken like the true outlaw.

Many think that graffiti's jump from the trains to canvas -- from breaking the law to entering the art market -- has been responsible for the death of the movement.

But canvas is the car of the art market, the vehicle that everyone uses to transport their visual message. In the mid-1980s, New York graffiti was the hottest commodity on the international contemporary art scene. Invited to mount an exhibition at the Basel art fair of 1984, my partner Guillaume Gallozzi and I sold 72 paintings and 40 drawings in three days. An ironic outcome, given that we flew to Switzerland with $50 between us and left with over $250,000, much of it in cash.

As an art fad, graffiti was soon played out -- though it lives on in advertising, where the look of graffiti is used to give products the street credibility that is needed to reach the multibillion-dollar youth market.

"Our culture is obsessed with brands and branding" says Banksy. He hasn't done a bad job branding himself as the mysterious vandal, famous yet anonymous at the same time. Even his parents are unaware of his secret identity. They think he's a decorator.

"Turf War" features live cows, sheep, lambs and a ewe literally branded with Banksy's trademark spray-painted stencils. "I'm taking the idea of branding back to its original roots, which is cattle branding. I call it Brandalism," he said.

But there's also a less serious reason he used farm animals. "I'm from Bristol," says Banksy, "and if you come from outside London they [London's snobbish graffiti establishment] give you a lot of shite about being a country bumpkin. So I thought, right, I'll give 'em country bumpkin -- I'll just get all these animals together and paint them."

Watching over this menagerie is an enormous stencil painting of Winston Churchill sporting a green Mohawk with the word "Thug" branded underneath.

The seemingly small and insignificant act of unauthorized writing in public spaces still evokes crisis in city administrations around the world -- including London. Last year over £100,000,000 pounds was spent on cleaning graffiti. It boggles the mind to think what could be done with even a fraction of that money if were given to gifted vandals like Banksy.

Surely London mayor Ken Livingstone would appreciate Banksy's baiting tourists with his meticulously stencilled sign on the base of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square reading, "Designated Riot Area"? No ground is too sacred for Banksy's form of prose. At the London Zoo, Banksy managed to sneak inside the penguin enclosure to leave a calling card saying, "This place is too cold."

So what's in it for Banksy -- the thrill, the money, the fame, les femmes? "I'm doing it because I can. Painting sucks, art sucks -- hopefully I'll get out of it soon and find something a bit more worthwhile to do with my time," he says audaciously. Throwing a final dig at collector Charles Saatchi, Banksy adds, "I don't like the gallery system. These days, the value of art seems to come down to whether one millionaire likes it or not." But with paintings going for £10,000 a pop, who else could afford one?

Despite his success, Banksy still gets the biggest charge from his covert stencil-and-run operations. "Nothing is as exciting as doing a painting where nobody wants it," he says. "Even a major exhibition at the Tate Modern couldn't compare with that."

museum of fantastic creatures

museum of fantastic creatures.

sooo...if you go to this link, you may notice that everything is in japanese. but if you click around in random places, those links will take you to picture archives full of these little guys. all different kinds.

if you go to this site: pink tentacle you'll find some info about it and some links in english.

but i guess that all of the creatures showcased in the museum are sculpted from paper, modeling paste and bamboo and are completely imaginary... created by Hajime Emoto. pretty cool. and creepy. and awesome.

amy sol

uh... i'm in love.