a public service anouncement

i like your style...

animated shorts
Anyone down at the V&A this past weekend may have found themselves at an animated shorts screening called "Sparks", part of a celebration of the opening of the new Sackler Centre for arts education. A wonderful 2 hour trip through recent works including the excellent "Paradise" from Canada (pictured above), a Pleasantville type piece enacted in a nostalgic, and sometimes sinister, mechanical wonderland. Check out the trailer and more here.

Another work of particular note was the poignant "Skhizein" by Jeremy Clapin, about a lonely young man who, after being struck by an asteroid, finds himself living exactly 91cm from himself. Even shown without subtitles this French piece was hauntingly beautiful. You can see an earlier work by Clapin, "Une Histoire Vertebrale", here.

Want to check out some other standouts?

"Astronauts" by Matthew Walker (UK) - very British, very funny.
"No Room For Gerold" by Daniel Nocke (Germany) - wild animals... house-sharing?
"She Who Measures" by Veljko Popovic (Croatia) - a thought provoking parable on modern life.

And for some absolute hilarity: "Roof Sex" by Sarah Phelps (UK), which I cannot describe better than the programme's 'XXX chair-on-chair action!!!' Actually, I'm tempted to make a Sex and the City allusion, but nevermind... just enjoy!

this season's colour

Or, how to look like everyone else.

so...

a colour-coded interlude

then and now

word processing

Now I love my laptop, and I'm sure I'm not alone. They have become extensions of ourselves and we mourn them when they inevitably die and take a little piece of our history with them, cursing ourselves for not backing up. These days we move on quickly though: new models, more memory, faster processing... a delicious new fling. But sometimes it's great just to indulge in a time before we "needed" these boxes that can do a million things a minute - when simply putting words on a page was enough.

Think of the tapping of keys as Hoffman and Redford seal Nixon's fate in the pressroom, as Itzak Stern compiles the list of names, or as Briony Tallis creates her unfortunate play. Perhaps I don't cause any such monumental ripples when I take out my Lettera 22 (a boot sale bargain, the poor thing), but at least I don't have to worry about my wifi crashing, or unwanted messaging, or my carbon footprint. I just tap away and hope the neighbours don't mind the clacking!

I like your sound...

Goodbye Lenin

the lookouts

orpheus' descent

making a statement (aka. going out in style)

breezy at the temple

the new great wall

a palacial dusk