the index - my lensography

Cinema 

La Haine

La Haine by Mathieu Kassowitz starts with a scene where a voiceover tells a story of a man falling down from a high rise building. At the level of every floor, the man tells himself: until here, everything is fine. But it is not the journey that co...

Krzysztof Kieslowski - master of insight

"Live carefully, with your eyes open, and try not to cause pain." Krzysztof Kieslowski was an influential Oscar-nominated Polish film director and screenwriter. He is internationally best known for his trilogy Three Colours: Blue White Red - Trois C...

Wim Wenders - road movies

Wim Wenders is a German filmmaker, best known for using road movie form in his works. Within the German New Wave, Wenders is often characterized as the existentialist. Thematically the films of Wenders often deal with the innermost, states of consci...

Anton Corbijn - in black & white

Anton Corbijn started his career as a photographer in the 70's with portraits of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel and Joy Division. It was Corbijn who created the public image of U2 in the 80's and he still continues to shape it. F...

Stanley Kubrick - revealing unforeseen

Stanley Kubrick directed only twelve films in almost forty-five years. However these 12 manifest a rare sensitivity in their utmost attention to detail. Kubrick was also a forerunner in the world of cinema in a sense that he devised new technologies...

Ingmar Bergman - the magic realism of Cinema

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. Ingmar Bergman Bergman was born as the son of a Lutheran pastor who eventually became ch...

François Truffaut - de la Nouvelle Vague

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself. François Truffaut Without François Truffaut, we would have not experienced and learned from the French New Wave. For me the Fahrenheit 451 and the Story of Adèle H. remain always...

Philosophy 

Discerning Subject in Spacetime

"In perception we do not think the object and we do not think ourselves thinking it, we are given over to the object and we merge into this body which is better informed than we are about the world..." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Percepti...

Beautiful Promises with Laughter

"Time simultaneously makes the present pass and preserves the past in itself. There are, therefore, already, two possible time-images, one grounded in the past, the other in the present. Each is complex and is valid for time as a whole." Gilles Deleu...

Roland Barthes - pleasure of text

The pleasure, isn't it only a small enjoyment? Enjoyment, isn't it only extreme pleasure? The pleasure, isn't it only a weakened enjoyment, accepted - becoming through echelons of conciliations. The enjoyment, isn't it just brutal pleasure, immediate...

Feminism 

Luce Irigaray - becoming subject

"If we continue to speak the same language, we are going to reproduce the same story. Relaunch the same stories. Don't you think so? Listen: around us, the men and the women, we would say it is the same. Same discussions, same disagreements, same sh...

Julia Kristeva - art and language

Julia Kristeva could be described as philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, feminist, as well as a novelist. Her concepts cover a vast array of ideas nevertheless always with clarity and cohesion. For me Kristeva has been one of the very influ...

Donna Haraway - critical ironic dreamer

AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, ou...

Elizabeth Grosz - corporeal feminism

For more than thirty years Elizabeth Grosz has been writing influential articles, essays and books combining and juxtaposing philosophy, architecture, sciences and feminism. In her texts Grosz often brings other philosophers in discussion with her:...

Aural 

John Cage - indeterminacy

'There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.' 'The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is wh...

Jean Sibelius - music powerful as nature

Jean "Janne" Sibelius started to play the violin when still a boy. For his beloved instrument, when in his thirties at the beginning of the 20th Century Sibelius composed The Violin Concerto in D, that became one of the most famous and beloved Violi...

Joy Division - Decades

Joy Division formed during 1976 in Salford, greater Manchester area in the UK by four young men: Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris. Originally the band was called Warsaw. Warsaw became also the name of the first planned albu...

Trent Reznor and the Nine Inch Nails

"When I look at people that I would like to feel have been a mentor or an inspiring kind of archetype of what I'd love to see my career eventually be mentioned as a footnote for in the same paragraph, it would be, like, Bowie." "I get involved with...

Legendary Voices 

Jim Morrison - Desire & dreams

'What are you doing here? What do you want? Is it music? We can play music. But you want more. You want something & someone new. Am I right? Of course I am. You want ecstasy Desire & dreams. Things not exactly what they seem. I lead you this way, he...

Maria Callas - La Divina

Maria Callas truly incorporated all the essential qualities of a venerable Opera Diva. Her voice became one of the unforgettable landmarks of the 20th Century Opera. A collection of her recordings would definitely be included to my desert island dis...

X-ray spex - oi bondage up yours!

Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard But i think Oi Bondage Up Yours! 1-2-3-4 X-ray spex Poly Styrene

Marlene Dietrich - not a myth

"I had no desire to be a film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash. It was always a big bother to me." Marlene Dietrich

Edith Piaf - the Voice

Born as Edith Giovanna Gassion, Edith Piaf - La Mome, became one of the greatest voices of the 20th Century. Around the story of her life there are almost as many versions as there are tellers. For me, my pilgrimage started in 72, rue Belleville in...

Misfits - the American Punks

Although I quite firmly believe that Punk was born in the UK, I nonetheless enjoy some of the American Punk bands as well. I was introduced to Misfits when I was in my teens and I was blown away! I had enjoyed a classical education in music since m...

Lydia Lunch - the primal scream

Art of Lydia Lunch ! "It seems to me, that for over two thousand years now; mad-men, maniacs, and would-be-messiahs have been pilfering, have been pillaging, have been plundering, and have been raping the entire planet; and the way I see it, Mother...

Iggy Pop - lust and life

Raw Power from Detroit! Iggy Pop was one of the first American Punks. His fierce stage performance and diving into the the audience was something new and fresh in the early 70's Detroit. Oh the passenger How how he rides Oh the passenger He rides a...

Visual 

Louise Bourgeois - forever art

Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. She studied mathematics at the Sorbonne when she was 15, which lead her to discover cubism through geometry. She went on to study at the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts, which gave her a possib...

Joseph Beuys - performing life

This famous slogan by Joseph Beuys points to the importance of creativity in life, for everybody - not just something special reserved for artists! Beuys demonstrated with his own life how the creativity and sensitivity towards the world around us c...

Henry Moore - a family man and a Sculptor

"All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the me...

Bill Viola - becoming light

Bill Viola, one of the pioneers in video art, exhibiting his work since the 70's. Viola's art has been exhibited in many large venues for Contemporary Art; the National Gallery in London, Guggenheim Berlin, Guggenheim New York, Whitney Museum of Amer...

Jean-Michel Basquiat - King of the Zulus

"I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life." Jean-Michel Basquiat Basquiat was an American painter, born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960. He started by painting graffiti in the City as well as forming a band 'Grey', that perf...

Andy Warhol - famous forever

It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, "In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous." An...

The Guerrilla Girls - no prisoners

The Guerrilla Girls - the conscience of the Artworld touring since 1985 "When we first spoke to the press, it was clear we needed code names to distinguish between members of the group. The day we taped NPR's Fresh Air, Georgia O'Keeffe died. It wa...

Nam June Paik

"I used the term information superhighway in a study I wrote for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1974. I thought: if you create a highway, then people are going to invent cars. That's dialectics. If you create electronic highways, something has to hap...

Niki de Saint Phalle - Nana Power

Niki de Saint Phalle was a French sculptor, painter and film maker, most well known for the rounded and liberated female figures in all sizes she titled "Nana". Niki de Saint Phalle carried out an important public commission, together with Jean Ting...

Tom of Finland

Ten years ago I was working at the Finnish Cultural Institute in Paris. The first exhibition I was in charge of featured Tom of Finland. Tom of Finland must be the most influential Finnish Artist ever. His drawings of charming bikers with their leat...

Tracey Emin - on the loose

I must confess - I like the Art of Tracey Emin! Yes, she is wild, she is daring, she exposes her private life to the eyes of the audience - but aren't these some of the very factors that render contemporary art closer to the spectators of today. Le...

Digital & New Media 

Storytelling in the Digital Era

GOODBYE MR. NAM JUNE PAIK! was a message I received by e-mail at the night of 29th January 2006. This great pioneer of electronic media had left us. Only the new fashion he created to tell us stories; his art, remains. The following morning I attac...

Discerning Subject in Spacetime

"In perception we do not think the object and we do not think ourselves thinking it, we are given over to the object and we merge into this body which is better informed than we are about the world..." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Percepti...

World through Digital Art

Digital Art is a form of Contemporary Art where the artwork is created either partly or entirely with computers as the Artists' tools. Today's Digital Art extends to a wide spectrum of different areas; digital photography and visualisation, 3D (anima...

Nam June Paik TV Buddha

Nam June Paik TV Buddha, 1974-82 TV Buddha is an enigmatic work by Nam June Paik which consists of a Buddha statue gazing on a video screen, to his own image, being projected there by a closed circuit video camera, together with the images of the vi...

Beautiful Promises with Laughter

"Time simultaneously makes the present pass and preserves the past in itself. There are, therefore, already, two possible time-images, one grounded in the past, the other in the present. Each is complex and is valid for time as a whole." Gilles Deleu...

Architecture & Design 

alessi - design with a pulse

I strongly believe that everybody should have some Alessi in their life, even if it is just a Juicy Salif! Through this design classic, the designer Philippe Stark has astutely recognized that usefulness isn't the same as function. "We have to repl...

Aino & Alvar Aalto - Architecture in the Nature

Aino and Alvar Aalto, Finnish Architects and Designers that became renown through the World. This Finnish couple revolutionised the Modern! From the Northern perspective their lives' work reflects on the values of nature in design as well as the hum...

Marimekko - a Finnish Design Classic

The visionary philosophy that Armi Ratia applied to Marimekko was strongly inspired by the ideals of Bauhaus: functionality and 'less is more'. The first two designers that worked at Marimekko were Maija Isola and Vuokko Nurmesniemi followed by Liis...

Fashion 

Yohji Yamamoto - In Black

"For me, a woman in Yohji is like a nymphomaniac nun. His clothes are at once sensual and very ritualistic." Jean-Michel Jarre

Vivienne Westwood - Grand Mother of punk

Dame Vivienne Westwood is an English Fashion Designer who, together with Malcolm Mac Laren, became responsible for the looks of the Sex Pistols. Westwood also brought the safety pins, straight jackets as well as suspenders from the underground world...

Coco Chanel - craft & style

Coco Chanel - she liberated the feminine body from the strain of the corset! At the beginning of 1900's Chanel started creating the style for a New Woman. She also cut her hair short, which was quite rare back then. Chanel wanted to give the joy of...

Tartan - with Pride

Tartan is something that never goes out of fashion, the punks, the chavs heck even the highlander wore Tartan with pride. "I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that...

Photography 

Anton Corbijn - in black & white

Anton Corbijn started his career as a photographer in the 70's with portraits of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel and Joy Division. It was Corbijn who created the public image of U2 in the 80's and he still continues to shape it. F...

Pierre & Gilles - Once upon a Time

The French artists Pierre & Gilles have been working as a duo in Paris since 1976. Their magical portraits feature a myriad of artists; Nina Hagen, Madonna, Marilyn Manson, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Catherine Deneuve to name just a few. So come on, fo...

Performance Art 

Gilbert & George - Art for all

Gilbert and George, a pair of gentlemen, in their suits. Carrying out most thought provoking performances. 'Singing Sculpture' was the start. Back in 1969 Gilbert and George were still students. They performed this piece many times, sometimes even f...

Marina Abramovic - the grandmother of performance art

Journey of Marina Abramovic and Ulay Marina Abramovic (Belgrade, 1946) met Uwe Laysiepen alias Ulay (Solingen, Germany, 1943) in 1976, after moving to Amsterdam. From that time on they started to speak of themselves as parts of a "two-headed body."...

Orlan - Art in flesh

"Finally, it is the invention of a femininity which renders women superfluous, the invention of a difference which is nothing more than a diverted copulation with one's double. In the final analysis [au fond], any encounter with otherness [alterite]...

Gardening & Green living 

Gardening with the Moon

It is the beginning of the new year that starts the gardening season for me. It is time to start with the new growth, time to put the knowledge gathered during the previous seasons in action! My gardening philosophy is simple: anything grows. The cha...

Astronomy 

Valentine's gift ideas for beloved stargazers

When looking for a perfect Valentine's day gift for my husband I came across this wonderful idea that I would warmly recommend to anybody, who is desperately looking for the ultimate gift for their loved ones. I will name a star after my husband,...

Chocolate 

Chocoholics' Heavenly Treats

I admit it, I am secretly a chocoholic! I mean that I love chocolate, almost any kind. But there is nothing gluttonous about it, on the contrary. Just when I need my lift, I know that I need it. Chocolate! I can even go without chocolate for many d...

Futurology 

Futurology - Foresight and Visions

The nature of future-oriented knowledge is often multi-disciplinary. There are also different techniques, protocols, methods and methodologies through which this type of knowledge can be produced. In Futurology the production of future-oriented know...

punk & antiauthoritarian 

Combat boots - always in fashion

Combat boots come with attitude. Wear them with a suit, Levis, skirt or combats or anything you like. Get ready to make some noise! "For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms a...

Misfits - the American Punks

Although I quite firmly believe that Punk was born in the UK, I nonetheless enjoy some of the American Punk bands as well. I was introduced to Misfits when I was in my teens and I was blown away! I had enjoyed a classical education in music since m...

Dr Martens Air Wair With Bouncing Soles

They are my favorite foot wear, I have lived in my boots since I was 15 years old. I have even shook hands with "Madame le President" Chirac in 1998 at Musée d'Orsay opening in Paris, where one of my early installation was exhibited, wearing a pair...

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars 

Ziggy Stardust - with peace & love

Ziggy Stardust, with the Spiders from Mars, landed on the UK in 1972. They started to tour in 1973. Ziggy Stardust became a superstar.

David Bowie - glam slam a superstar

David Bowie, born David Robert Jones in the UK in 1947. "I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir."

Zen 

hardcore zen - here and now

'Right action is doing what needs doing right here and right now. Wrong action is doing what doesn't need doing.' Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up

everything zen

'I have discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color - something which exists before all forms and colors appear.' Shunryu Suzuki-roshi 1905 - 1...

Neural 

in the brain

The intriguing idea of translating images directly from the visual cortex has finally taken place! The current breakthrough has been made possible through machine learning combined with fMRI, that reads the fluctuations of human cerebral activity wh...

Brain Games online

I am getting highly addicted to the Lumosity brain training program. But I have also made a steep learning curve in increasing my brain plasticity, logic, speed, problem solving and memory. I have tested some other online brain games as well, but...