Mircea Cantor – Special Event at Transilvania International Film Festival 2012 / Cluj-Napoca, Romania
June 1-10, 2012

The Romanian artist often compared with Marcel Duchamp and scouted by the world’s distinguished galleries and museums, Mircea Cantor, will star in one of TIFF 2012’s special events.

For the first time, a few of his video works will be screened in Romania, outside the space they were initially conceived for – the gallery. The artist will attend the screening, giving the audience in Cluj a chance to meet him and take part in discussions.

„Mircea Cantor is on the gallery of Romanian artists who are far more known and valued abroad than in their home country. (…) The screening of his video short films in a cinema is a special program at TIFF by which we try to fix this abnormality”, says the artistic director of the festival, Mihai Chirilov.

The audience will be able to view at Cluj eight of his video works, already included in the prestigious galleries and museums of the world as part of other exhibitions: 9+1=10? (2003-2005), Dead Time (2003), Departure (2005), Double Heads Matches (2002-2003), Nulle part ailleurs (2000), Sic Transit Gloria Mundi (2012), The Snow and the Man (2005), Tracking Happiness (2009).

Mircea Cantor creates images that are at once crystalline in their clarity, yet deeply paradoxical. They are concerned with issues of memory, history, oppression, and the futility—and necessity—of hope. While his thematic concerns may reflect his identity as a Romanian-born artist, his work is also accessible and universal. As he has said, refusing to be pigeonholed by identification with one nation, “art is my country.”

Mircea Cantor was born in 1977 in Oradea and, at the moment, lives in Paris. After moving to France in 2000, four years later Cantor won the most important award granted to young French artists – the Paul Ricard Award, one of his works being purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. In 2011, the Romanian artist received the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Award and this year he will host his own exhibition at Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Patience EP by Lights Out!

“Patience” EP is a series of six ambitious voyages through rock grooves and deep, blissed-out psychedelia. Warm, dreamy guitars creating sweeping soundscapes and a voice that will haunt you during your waking hours, stir you from your deepest sleep - let them drill themselves into your subconscious and broodingly melt you.

Formed in February 2010, Lights Out! are a four-piece psychedelic/indie rock band. Consisting of high school students and friends Teo Retegan (vocals and keyboards), Andrei Bobiş (guitars), Andrei Sîncrăian (guitars), Oana Pop (drums) and former bass-player Alex Bondor, all from Cluj-Napoca, the band made its debut on the musical scene of this Northern Romanian city late April, the same year. A few months later, in November, Lights Out! managed to record their first demo, a song called “Inside Out”, that marked their first breakthrough as young musicians: the band won the popularity award at the 2nd edition of byron|Rock Your High School.

The beginning of 2012 saw Lights Out! entering the studio to record a debut EP. Their first discographic effort, called “Patience” is to be released on April 7th.

Teodora Retegan: Vocals / Keys
Andrei Bobiș: Guitar / Bass
Andrei Sîncraian: Guitar / Bass
Oana Pop: Drums

Follow Lights Out! on Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Soundcloud.

The performance of Highly Strung featuring the giant 14 meter puppet took place on the night of October 28th 2011 during the Nati Frinj festival. The puppet took ten people to operate and had animation (largely created by the children at the local primary school) projected onto it from projectors mounted both on the ground and in the head of the puppet itself. Music by Stephen Oakes.

Filmed by, Jacqui Schulz, Dave Jones, Gareth Llewellin and Cindi Drennan.

More making of / behind the scenes stuff at theartofdave.blogspot.com.au/

With so many other forms of entertainment the puppet shows of today may seem like an already dead medium. However, you’d be wrong in thinking this, since Australian filmmaker Dave Jones shows us that there is still a fair amount of life in the ancient form of storytelling with his highly ambitious piece, “Highly Strung.”

Performed on the back of grain silos, “Highly Strung” features an enormous 45-foot tall puppet that took 10 people to operate. The giant work of art was bolstered by projected animation done largely by local school children, giving the production an eerie Tim Burton vibe. This particular performance took place at the Nati Frinj festival in Natimuk, Australia.

Jones said of the animation, “For the mouth we actually mounted a projector inside the puppets head and gaffer taped it to an iPod which we could control wirelessly from the ground 20 meters below.” Though it is just a five minute edit of the whole performance, the clip is captivating, immersing the viewer in a bizarre, but ultimately innocent world of dreams and wonderment. (via the Huffington Post)

Extruding Clay by Max Cheprack, student at the Holon Institute of Technology in Israel

“My research examined the extrusion process in a new material - clay. For this purpose, I built two pneumatic extruders (for two different die sizes) that push clay through the die. The semi-industrial process enabled me to manipulate the material, with never-before-seen precision and complexity. My research led to the creation of various objects that illustrate the many possibilities of this technology. Finally, I chose to express the result of my research process in a new design for a stool. The final result is inspired by the material culture of the Middle East so as to express time and place. The research opens up new possibilities in ceramic design and shows great promise as a method of production and design.”

Max Cheprack on Etsy and Behance.

On the eve of a major retrospective at Tate Modern, Gerhard Richter talks about his life and work with Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate. / 11.10.2011

Gerhard Richter: Panorama, Tate Modern
6 October 2011  – 8 January 2012

Spanning nearly five decades, and coinciding with the artist’s 80th birthday, Gerhard Richter: Panorama is a major retrospective exhibition that groups together significant moments of his remarkable career.

Since the 1960s, Gerhard Richter has immersed himself in a rich and varied exploration of painting. Gerhard Richter: Panorama highlights the full extent of the artist’s work, which has encompassed a diverse range of techniques and ideas. It includes realist paintings based on photographs, colourful gestural abstractions such as the squeegee paintings, portraits, subtle landscapes and history paintings.

Midnight City by M83

Directed by Fleur & Manu (Division/Les Télécréateurs)

Midnight City is the first single of the new M83 album, Hurry up, We’re Dreaming.

Barry Flanagan was one of the most radical sculptors of his generation. Though best known for his statues of bronze hares, his earlier work, in materials as varied as cloth, plaster, and sand, show how he challenged the very idea of what sculpture could be. Fellow artist Peter Randall-Page shares his memories of his close friend. Download this video.

Barry Flanagan: Early Works 1965-1982, Tate Britain
27 September 2011 - 2 January 2012

Barry Flanagan was one of Britain’s most original and inventive artists and a key figure in the development of British and international sculpture. He is best known for the large-scale bronze hare sculptures that he began producing in the early 1980s and that can be seen in many galleries and public spaces around the world. The success of these pieces has tended to obscure the equally important and very different work that characterised his early period. Made from materials as varied as cloth, plaster, sand, hessian and rope, these works highlight a concern with material properties and processes - a concern that is at the heart of his practice.

A contemporary of Gilbert & George, Flanagan studied sculpture at St Martin’s School of Art from 1964 to 1966. The exhibition takes this period as a starting point and reveals the impact of this early work on his later development towards casting in bronze, which he began in 1979. This is the first major retrospective of Flanagan’s work in London since 1983, and by focusing on his early works, shows how this radical and imaginative artist challenged the very nature of sculpture in his time.

Halocene by Bon Iver, official music video | filmed around Vík, Iceland

Director: NABIL
DOP: Larkin Sieple
Editor: Isaac Hagy
Producer: Jill Hammer
Production Company: NE Direction