new generation

New faces, young people, new blood to the world politics.
Obama, 45 yrs, in the US and Miliband, 41 yrs, in the UK.
Miliband comes from Environment Affairs, runs his own blog and was today in the Observer.
"If David Miliband challenges Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership he will win" - said Tony Blair.

A letter on the 50th anniversary of the EU

Umberto Eco
Dario Fo
Günter Grass
Jürgen Habermas
Václav Havel
Seamus Heaney
Bernard Henri-Levy
Harold Pinter
Franca Rame
Tom Stoppard

Lemur

After all, the animal is real, all these years thinking it was imagination. This one and another 19.

TRILOGY

The tree

Falling into the sky. She was living well above it.

And one day, she collapsed in a grey stone. The tree said she wasn’t looking. And yet she was. One of the edges of the stone was smiling. One other was silent. An ambivalent grey stone. While she was falling, she thought about the tree. The stone was falling just beside her. Both landed in the sky but in different clouds. One went East, the other West. They didn’t see each other again for years. Until she collapsed in a grey stone.

Short story by a fairy

She woke up smiling. Many times she knew she had laughed during the night. He told her. Not this time. This time she was just smiling and nobody noticed. She saw her eyes. She didn’t have red hair. She saw her smile and smiled back. To her daughter to be.

(untitled)

Secrets dissolve or linger under a bridge in Madison County.

principles

Babel

To me, it is a movie about imperfect systems, human beings lost in the inability to deal with certain things, difficulty to live in an imperfect world, yet always pursuing perfectness. Imperfect relationships, the imperfect American system to deal with immigration, the imperfect Japan living on the edge of suicide, erotism and high buildings, the imperfect poor societies of those who live with bare feet on the ground, surprised by new things coming from the richer, such as weapons. How naive they all are, after all. Yet, how human. And this woman everywhere. Cate's turn to shine.

uma coisa é certa

Ouvi-o noutro dia num programa na televisão e gostei. Apesar de não concordar com tudo, achei que sim, essa coisa de impingir desmesuradamente regras Europeias a Portugal porque sim é uma grande merda. Então, a propósito de outra coisa, diz Vasco Pulido Valente no Público dia 11 de Fevereiro:

"O referendo, e principalmente este género de referendo, não une, separa. Resta saber se a hostilidade se prolonga para lá de hoje, como se prolongou na América. Uma coisa é certa, o resultado não será aceite como o resultado de uma eleição. As maiorias não mudam convicções."

Estou convencida que tem razão, especialmente depois de ver o debate pós referendo na SIC.

Research activism

I'm usually very suspicious about petitions. But this one has a rationale and implications I fully understand and agree with. It's about research, that's what I do. It's about the lack of dissemination of findings and projects that sit on someone's desk as nice PhD thesis, or serve as market products for publishers who gatekeep access. A EU report showed that the price of scientific journals rose 200-300% beyond inflation between 1975-1995, in a market now worth up to $11bn (£5.6bn) a year. Who looses? The public, societies and research itself. Free access to research stands as crucial to a much wider and more effective knowledge. 16,000 people have signed the petion already, over 700 from Portugal, over 1,100 from the UK and including Nobel prize winners for medicine Harold Varmus and Richard Roberts. Read more in Publico and the Guardian. Needless to say, the petition is a EU initiative, the US wouldn't agree, would they?

Meanwhile, let's not just blame the system. It's also responsability of individual researchers to make sure their findings leave their offices and houses and to explore creative ways of reaching people. I believe it's part of the process. Unlikely you'll have a press office to do this job for you.

Casa da Animação

Fica uma sugestão e o site.

A rolar sessão de curtas-metragens da FilmesDaMente com cerca de 1h de duração, nos próximos dias 03 e 04 de Fevereiro, pelas 21h30. A sessão conta com a presença dos autores, que falarão sobre os filmes antes da sua exibição. Sempre bom, poder fazer-lhes perguntas desconfortáveis. A ver: O site da casa disponibiliza os filmes da casa online - apesar de demorarem muito a "baixar", vale a pena dar uma olhada. O Presente, é o meu preferido.

Já agora fica a informação: FilmesDaMente, é um colectivo de produção de filmes, nascido em 2002, que produz ficção, documentários, animação ou experimental (em formato de curta ou longa-metragem).

As curtas em exibição são:

- Intemporalidade|Victor Santos|12'|2006 (estreia)
- Noite de Cão|Carlos Amaral|17'|2006 (estreia)
- Ctrl Alt Fly|Victor Santos|3'|2005
- Berço de Pedra|Nuno Rocha|28'|2005

Berço de Pedra ganhou o prémio ficção no VideoCor 2006 e Ctrl Alt Fly assinou um contrato com a :2 de exibição pois o mesmo foi premiado Take One! Conquistado no festival Internacional de Curtas Metragens do Porto 2006.

Bilhete custa 3,5 euros, 3 para estudantes e a loja abre às 20.45. Houve quem comprasse lá prendas de Natal.

Mirror, mirror...

This is Portugal in the world news today. First, the movements against the abortion law, the turnover in opinion polls, from 53% to 38% in favour, and the opinion of a Roman Catholic Portuguese priest comparing abortion with the execution of Saddam Hussein - "it's a variation of capital punishment". Secondly, the rating in the programme Greatest Portuguese, adapted from the BBC Greatest Britons. Those in the top 10 were announced alphabetically but someone was first. Wanna bet who that was?

Sonic Bed_ London

Kaffe Matthews has said to be one of the leading artists working with sound, and become known by making site-specific sound works live, playing in the dark in the middle of the space, the audience surrounding her, the sounds moving around them. This project - Sonic Bed_ London, developed in 2005, has been transformed and developed again and in new in different places, in all a different bed. I went to the London Bed on a sunday afternoon, at Kaffe's current residency in Bethnal Green. Climbed the stairs, stretched in bed and started to feel the music in a way I have never experienced before. I had 6 sub woofers under the mattress and 8 mids+tweeter behind side panels, meaning that 12 independent sources of sound were playing and moving independently at any one time around and under me. It makes you literally feel all the vibrations of the music in different parts of your body. Kaffe sees the bed as an instrument, and therefore works with anyone who is interested as well as commissioned composers to make pieces for it, using the specially developed software, built by and being developed in collaboration with David Muth. This allows her to control the 12 sources of sound and that act as 12 preassure points in your body. She chooses where to touch you. Kaffe says it's like bringing a gig to a person who can't go, it's about making new and experimental music more accessible to more people, by exploring other ways to experience it. I guess it's that but it feels more than that. Made me feel about other possible uses for the Bed, for example for people who, for some reason or another, are stuck to their beds. Anyway, Kaffe has a website - Annette Works - if you want to see what she is up to. To know a bit more about this project and the other beds (in Shangai and Taipei), read in Music for Bodies. This is intended to happen in 12 countries around the world, with a new localized bed being fabricated in each country using materials and craftspeople of that place and a local Bed Team found and facilitated to run the workshops and new music making activities in new spaces beyond the initial installation. Ah, by the way, Sonic Bed has been already awarded a Distinction in Digital Musics at Prix Ars Electronica, 2006.

comentar a arte: ajuda?

O Expresso comenta o novo tríptico de Paula Rego - Vanitas. Chamo a atenção para a seguinte linha descritiva da obra - "um género particular de natureza morta". Se o diz.

poesia dos últimos dias

Deixar fechar a porta

puxar o capuz e tapar o cabelo

molhado

Esperar no beiral da porta.

A chuva cai aos poucos, há luz no lampião

E o cimento revela-se

Reflexos de cores, primárias

Coisas primárias vivem à chuva.

Molham-se

Guantanamo

Dezenas de activistas da Amnistia Internacional vestiram impermeáveis cor de laranja e cobriram as caras com máscaras brancas em representação dos perto de 400 detidos na base militar norte-americana de Guantanamo, em Cuba, por suspeita de ligações à Al-Qaeda. A iniciativa decorreu junto a uma réplica da Estátua da Liberdade em Paris e teve como objectivo exigir o encerramento de Guantanamo pelos alegados abusos cometidos contra os prisioneiros sob a responsabilidade dos Estados Unidos. Foto: Maya Vidon/EPA

A primeira a chegar

Bum shake. Espalhanço ao comprido numa calçada de Lisboa para quem corre os dois minutos finais de 2006. Entrar com um joelho esmurrado em 2007 não me parece de todo mal. A arte de fazer planos não concretizados tem vindo a caracterizar os meus finais de ano. Ia a muitos sítios. Confesso que começa a ter uma certa piada. As coisas já não são o que eram e no entanto somos os mesmos. Bem-haja o novo ano, há-de trazer coisas novas, com certeza. 2007. Sempre fui muito má com datas mas pode ser este o ano em que começo a associar acontecimentos às datas. Género “2007, o ano em que houve inundação no primeiro andar a pingar para o rés-do-chão, que valeu a duas bacias lugar na mesa de jantar na casa dos Bengaleiros na noite de Natal ao lado da travessa de bacalhau, do vinho quente e do azeite quente com cebolinha. E que belo Natal. Ou terá sido 2006?

Um clássico de mudança de ano que não entendo é acerca do primeiro bebé a nascer. Desta vez foi a Cármen. Consta que pesava 2,420 quilogramas. Importante. Não entendo mas está bem. Diz que foi a primeira a chegar.

And while London burns

Fire, flood, love and turmoil.
Thriller, opera and guided talk.

An opera, downloadable from the website, that takes the listener, with her/his mp3 player (you can also borrow one from the PLATFORM, the arts organization who produced this project), on a walking audio adventure through the streets of the Square Mile - the most powerful financial district on earth but also the centre of Britain "carbon web". 70 minutes. An interactive opera: "part love story, part hard hitting polemic, part walking tour".

The composer - Isa Suarez, is said to evoke London past, present and future through the eyes of a financial worker. "It's like being a character on a film". A requiem for the warming world.

No need to say more, will try on sunday.

More art

Radioactive Hollow Planet



Facing shadows



El Chavez

Favas com chouriço

- "Amo-te querida"

- "hum...hum..., pois, olha aquilo ali, que comichão aqui no braço,...ui...tão tarde? já? tenho de ir, esqueci-me...portanto."



Agora imaginem este diálogo ao contrário. Ele chama-se José Cid e desenvolveu a melhor fuga para a frente para este tipo de situações.

Artist In Focus

Waiting for the yellow



Miróllock



Loads of free time



Snowman


4DPict



Kiki

it hurts just there

This is how i see the small muscle spasm that causes me so much pain sometimes. like small, bloody, veined angry knot.

Chamira