Just stumbled across these gorgeous fashion editorial photos titled "Memories of a Dream," featuring the Japanese shironuri artist and model Minori. More images can be found here.
Also, other random bits that I am learning about Japan today:
Well, we survived another end of the world, and humans are still just as beautiful as ever.
This video always makes me cry...
noun
1.
Astronomy .
a.
either of the two times a year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator: about June 21, when the sun reaches its northernmost point on the celestial sphere, or about December 22, when it reaches its southernmost point.
b.
either of the two points in the ecliptic farthest from the equator.
1.
Astronomy .
a.
either of the two times a year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator: about June 21, when the sun reaches its northernmost point on the celestial sphere, or about December 22, when it reaches its southernmost point.
b.
either of the two points in the ecliptic farthest from the equator.
2.
a furthest or culminating point; a turning point.
a furthest or culminating point; a turning point.
You all know that the world is ending tomorrow right? Well, just in case you didn't, I'm letting you know that the Mayan calendar ends at exactly 11:11 UTC on December 21, and since the Mayans were ultimately all knowing (which is why they're still thriving as a race), we should all be prepared for the apocalypse to begin tomorrow.
On the list of things to prioritize in the event of a crisis, what you wear should definitely be on the top. Just so that you can look your best when the end begins, the best in apocalypse fashion:
According to Style Noir in their article Fashion for the Apocalypse, we have a very definite style that we need to follow if we are to be fashion forward when the world ends. Here are so of the tips from them:"FOOTWEAR.
Standard issue Army boots are your only real choice here, not some fashion alternative. After all they need to last! Although to be fair, some hellish heels are not such an insane idea, six inch spikes are not bad for fighting off aforementioned packs of wolves, terrified humans or creatures of the night.
OUTFIT.
When it comes to your actual outfit leather is going to do wonders as it’s practical, stylish and tough. But to keep you looking meaner than one of the four horseman themselves we’d advise Antiseptic Fashion or even AMF KORSETS for stunning corsetry.
On to the main part of the outfit. Personally our choice has to rest with the incredible works of Rachel Freire. But coming a close second to impress those four lonesome riders are Dora Mojzes and of course Maria Francesca Pepe. Maria’s wolf fur coat and leather dress are serious contenders and to be perfectly honest with you, some of her jewellery is so large and sharp it could easily double as make shift weapons. As for Dora Mojzes the Jean D’arc collection is perfect, with a gorgeously dark aesthetic, maybe a little refined for those final days, but nevertheless, stunning."
When it comes to your actual outfit leather is going to do wonders as it’s practical, stylish and tough. But to keep you looking meaner than one of the four horseman themselves we’d advise Antiseptic Fashion or even AMF KORSETS for stunning corsetry.
On to the main part of the outfit. Personally our choice has to rest with the incredible works of Rachel Freire. But coming a close second to impress those four lonesome riders are Dora Mojzes and of course Maria Francesca Pepe. Maria’s wolf fur coat and leather dress are serious contenders and to be perfectly honest with you, some of her jewellery is so large and sharp it could easily double as make shift weapons. As for Dora Mojzes the Jean D’arc collection is perfect, with a gorgeously dark aesthetic, maybe a little refined for those final days, but nevertheless, stunning."
Good to know the fashion police will still be around after the world falls apart...
Although really, I could dress like this world end or not:
“Painter born in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture in 1976. Lives in Tokyo. Half-open mouth opened wide to the vacant eyes, draw a unutterable unstable figures posed an infant. At the same time overwhelming force, backed by sophisticated depiction technical details which are deformed out of the exquisite sparked the imbalance, anxiety and emptiness of a society where everyone faces in today’s society, and madness of the times have been able to accurately represent the air.” (Google translation of description on artist website)
Anodyne
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can't
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan's midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river.
I love this body
made to weather the storm
in the brain, raised
out of the deep smell
of fish & water hyacinth,
out of rapture & the first
regret. I love my big hands.
I love it clear down to the soft
quick motor of each breath,
the liver's ten kinds of desire
& the kidney's lust for sugar.
This skin, this sac of dung
& joy, this spleen floating
like a compass needle inside
nighttime, always divining
West Africa's dusty horizon.
I love the birthmark
posed like a fighting cock
on my right shoulder blade.
I love this body, this
solo & ragtime jubilee
behind the left nipple,
because I know I was born
to wear out at least
one hundred angels.
Yusef Komunyakaa
(University of North Carolina University,
2006
and desire, and desire still more,
until that desire tears away the veil
of appearances covering his eyes,
and he can finally see his essence.
Then he will be able to see
the abstract substance of life.
For all essence is the abstract substance of life.
-Khalil Gibran
(Love Letters in the Sand,
Souvenir Press,
2005)
Jodi Sharp
2013
Performance, 4 hours
120mm film
Siren is a performance piece that deals with the societal dichotomy placed on men and women. Focusing on the Greek myth of the Sirens, the artist sets out to kill the ancient archetype of the femme fatale.
The legend of the sirens states that all men who sail too close to their island are so enraptured by their song of knowledge that they sail too close and dash their boats on the rocks. But the traditions predict that, as with the Sphinx, they would not survive the first man to resist them. Defeated, they would be seised by a self-destructive force powerful enough to have them commit suicide.
This myth is indicative of a certain societal view of women- woman who exist purely in relation to man, and of woman who's worth is in question when her sexual prowess does not have an effect. These are two archetypes which are still placed on women today. In a desire to kill off this archetype, the artist creates a ritual to dissolve this paradigm.
Building a nest, the artist waits for a male presence, and being resisted, she begin to tie herself up and self torture. Eventually her scene ends in ritualistic death, but it is death with a hope.
According to Plutarch, there is a direct relation between the greek works to die and to be initiated. In most of the Eleusinian mysteries in fact, death was ritually invoked with a miming of the event, inevitably followed by cathartic rebirth. Possessing the secrets of the eternity, the initiated- as Sophocles explains- were freed of al anxiety. Through the destruction of the archetype of Siren, the intent is to see the hope at the end of the ritual that comes from the removal of these damaging ideas of the female gender.
Through this performance, the artist is able to release confining societal views, and emerge from a ritually invoked miming of death into a cathartic rebirth. Following the tradition of the Eleusinian mysteries, the artist is released from death possessing the secrets of eternity, and is freed from all anxiety.
I've been working on something for awhile that is finally starting to come together. A lot of people have been involved so far, so I thought I would post my in process so they could all see what's going on!
As a child of the 20th century, I have been born into a transient world. Because of this my biological family lives all over the globe and that means that I'm rarely in contact. Seeing them in person happens even more rarely.
Before the industrial revolution, people tended to live and make a life where they were born. Their family was intimately involved in their everyday life, like it or not. Those who were biologically connected to you were your friends and your support system. But in a world where transportation takes a matter of hours or days instead of months or years, we suddenly find ourselves with a group of people who move around the globe. I am one of those. I have lived in 45 places, all around the world, and for almost the last decade, I have not once lived in the same place as someone who is a member of my biological family.
So what does a person do when they longer have a community or support system that they were born into? They begin to make their own family, one that has no blood relation, but in different ways can fill so many of the roles that the traditional family and community used to.
The project that I'm working on now is an expression of my own family that I am building wherever I go. This project is based around a symbol of a family crest that I have drawn for myself and the household where I currently live.
The first part of the project is a stain glass box that I am making. Because family is generally biological, I wanted people who I consider my family and supports to donate some of their biological matter to me as a symbol that we have the capacity to choose each other. Each one of these samples goes on a microscope slide, and will be placed inside the box when it's finished.
Before the industrial revolution, people tended to live and make a life where they were born. Their family was intimately involved in their everyday life, like it or not. Those who were biologically connected to you were your friends and your support system. But in a world where transportation takes a matter of hours or days instead of months or years, we suddenly find ourselves with a group of people who move around the globe. I am one of those. I have lived in 45 places, all around the world, and for almost the last decade, I have not once lived in the same place as someone who is a member of my biological family.
So what does a person do when they longer have a community or support system that they were born into? They begin to make their own family, one that has no blood relation, but in different ways can fill so many of the roles that the traditional family and community used to.
The project that I'm working on now is an expression of my own family that I am building wherever I go. This project is based around a symbol of a family crest that I have drawn for myself and the household where I currently live.
The first part of the project is a stain glass box that I am making. Because family is generally biological, I wanted people who I consider my family and supports to donate some of their biological matter to me as a symbol that we have the capacity to choose each other. Each one of these samples goes on a microscope slide, and will be placed inside the box when it's finished.
My biological sample goes in the center of the crest, and you look down through the box onto the samples inside. I chose stain glass to symbolize the sacredness of family and the act of creating community. Also, as the final box will be three or four shelves, I love that you will look down through the glass pieces and all of the biology begins to merge signifying unity, while at the same time DNA is one of the most individual things possible.
At the same time, the use of glass gives the piece a tentativeness. Glass is easily broken as I discovered when I knocked my water bottle over and broke some slides. (Yes I cried) It is a reminder to me that relationships are special, and also fragile. They have to be cared for, and also let go of when they sometimes break.
The second part of the project is actually attaching the symbol of our family to the outside of our bodies so others can see as well. I have taken the outside of the crest and begun embroidering in on people's clothing, starting with my roommates. On the inside of the crest each person gets to choose their own symbol because, while we may be surrounded by a family that we loves us, we are always and firstly, individuals.
On my own body I have begun to tattoo the symbol. This project is about my family, and although people will come and go, take off the symbol and put it on, I will forever be working at the job of finding others to share my life with.
And what I'm listening to as I work today-
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Doubleday, 2011
Circus has always been one of my favorite things. If you still could run away with the circus, I would've done so a long, long time ago. So imagine my delight when my next book recommend was for a wonderful new book that was all about doing just that- running away with the circus and never coming back.
The circus serves a darker purpose beyond entertainment and profit. The magicians Prospero the Enchanter and the enigmatic Mr. A.H— groom their young proteges, Celia and Marco, to proxy their rivalry with the exhibits as a stage. Prospero teaches his daughter to hone her innate talents by holding ever larger and more complex magical workings in her mind. Celia takes her position on the game board as the illusionist who makes true transformations, adding tents and maintaining wondrous aspects from the inside. Mr. A.H— trains his orphan ward with books in the ways of glyphs and sympathetic magic and illusory worlds that exist only in the mind of the beholder. Marco takes a position as majordomo to the producer of the circus; he works from the outside in, connected to the circus but not a part of it. The two beguile the circus goers and each other with nightly wonders, soon falling in love despite being magically bound to a deadly competition with rules neither understands; the magical courtship strains the fate laid out for them and endangers the circus that has touched the lives of so many and cannot survive without the talents of both players.
The imagery in this book was absolutely stunning. Set entirely in black and white, each new chapter revealed more and more about the circus, describing it is such great detail that you couldn't help but fall in love with it. The love story of the two magicians crafting the space was just so beautiful, each making more and more beautiful spaces as a gift to the other contender.
One of the characters in the novel had hieroglyphs and spells tattooed all over her body, reminding me of the incredible tattoo artistry of Thomas Hooper.
3 Act Circus from Sherif Mokbel on Vimeo.
These portraits from Matilda Temperley come as close as I found to the style that I felt in the book. Odd, kind of morose, stark black and white, and very beautiful.
And although these photographs from Ashot Gevrokyan aren't black and white, I had to share them anyway.
And so I have decided that my birthday theme this year will be Night Circus themed. Shall we play this game this weekend friends?
‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the spider to the fly,
‘ ’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy,
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve got many curious things to show when you are there.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ said the little fly, ‘to ask me is in vain,
For whoever goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.’
-Mary Howitt
I was in Boston on the weekend, and I happened to go to this little museum I had never heard of through the suggestion of another traveller. It turned out to be one of the most incredible places I had ever been, gorgeous, so inspiring, and absolutely magical! I stayed until they kicked me out.
The Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum is this incredible space created by a society woman in the early 1900's. Its designed to look like a 15th Century Venetian Palace, it has an incredible glassed in courtyard in the center, with three stories of rooms that all look into the courtyard.
What's incredible about the museum is that Mrs. Gardener displays her collections in a way that is not typical of a museum. Instead of grouping like things together in a time period, Isabella Stewart Gardener carefully installed her collection in a way that evokes an intimate response to the art. Things are placed according to aesthetic and intuitive choice, instead of in traditional museum groupings. The effect is stunning.
I wish I had been allowed to take my own images, these don't do it justice at all. If you ever get the chance to go to this museum, GO. It was so amazing, if I lived in Boston I was be there at least once a week. I could explore that place for the rest of my life.
$5 for students, free if it's your birthday or your name is Isabella. :)
And what I'm listening to today-
An adorable song written by my sister, the musician Carla Anderson, to help my niece with teething. I just can't stop listening to it!
My roommate just showed her incredible stop-motion animation at the IMAGE+NATION festival in Montreal. I love it so much, and it struck me just how many talented people I know in the world who do super incredible things! So I thought I would share just a few with you.
To view Iris Moore's incredible video Beyond the Mirror's Gaze, please go here.
And because I'm showing everyone else's work, it's only fair that I share one of my own, even if it is really old-
I'll been feeling a little, out of my head for awhile, and so I ended up spending this morning in my closet, trying to make images about how I feel. It was definitely not the thing I had scheduled myself to do with my time, but what can you do? Sometimes, you just gotta go with it.
And who I listened to as I worked today-
