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MONO.KULTUR #35 / SOUNDBITE 01

Sunday, November 3, 2013, posted by kvr.

Coming up: mono.kultur #35.

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SOME PEOPLE ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Sunday, November 3, 2013, posted by sr.

Name: David Simon
Age: 52-53
Occupation: Writer/producer/showrunner; former journalist
Status: Dangerous

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Q: What makes an idea ‘dangerous’?
An idea is dangerous when it claims a simple, painless solution to complex, fundamental problems.

Q: Which technological or scientific advancement excites you most?
The notion that the internet’s shared and rapid-fire marketplace of ideas might vanquish fundamentalist religion of all kinds within a century or two.

Q: Which social or political movement scares you most?
Libertarianism.  Or, in day-to-day parlance, selfishness.

Q: What’s the one thing you wish society better understood?
That liberty alone cannot build a great society, and that communal responsibility alone is tyranny.  And that it is in the natural and healthy tension between those two required attributes that great societies and common goals are achieved and maintained.

Q: Will the defining catastrophe of the next decade be natural or man-made?
Man-made, with an emphasis on our indifference to natural resources and natural vulnerabilities.

Q: What question have you been dying to ask someone (and who)?
To I.F. Stone:  Was it worth losing nearly every argument to the 20th Century while at the same time knowing you were right?  Or just fucking exhausting?

Q: What question have you been dying for someone to ask you?
Are you as angry and misanthropic as they make you out to be?  Or is that hype and horseshit?

Q: If you could outsource one part of your life, what would it be?
Giving/considering blurbs for books, films, documentaries, etc.  And pitching my own projects to television executives.

Q: What’s your favourite book and why?
‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’ by James Agee, with photographs by Walker Evans.  Journalism on a perfect and perfectly human scale.

Q: You Twitter handle is _____.  Your website is _____.
No Twitter.  Website is www.davidsimon.com

via

David Simon is a speaker at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas this weekend!

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GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY

Thursday, October 31, 2013, posted by kvr.

Gosha Rubchinskiy is one of the very few Russian designers who has managed to cross the Iron Curtain and make a name for himself in the West; and with Comme des Garçons taking charge of production and international distribution, you’re likely to hear a lot more of him in the years to come. Unashamedly Russian and drawing heavily on the country’s troubled past and present – but never in a picturesque, obvious way – Rubchinskiy is building an aesthetic that is referring to street wear as much as to clean high end design, all put to great effect in his own photographs, which are beautifully Slavic in their own peculiar way. But if in Berlin, judge for yourself tonight at the opening of a small exhibition of Gosha’s photographs at the Comme des Garçons Black Shop in Mitte.

Comme des Garçons Black Shop
Linienstrasse 115
10115 Berlin


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EN VOGUE

Thursday, October 31, 2013, posted by mc.

Erwin Blumenfeld’s fashion photography is still ever-present, even with the opulence of high-fashion imagery we are surrounded by. The Parisian gallery Jeu de Paume presents a selection of his photographs, drawings and photomontages and collages, that brings together over 300 works and documents from the late 1910s to the 1960s. A must-see if out and about in the autumnal French capital!

Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969)
Photographs, Drawings and Photomontages
Jeu de Paume
1 Place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
15 October 2013 – 26 Januar 2014

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Raise The Roof

Thursday, October 31, 2013, posted by rh.

We (only) do interviews over here, but ROOF did poetry back in the seventies (in fact they still do), and thanks to Jacket2 (an archival platform for magazines committed to poetry and poetics) you can get yourself a coffee (or a case of beer), call it a week, and dig in.

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KRULE INTENTIONS

Wednesday, October 30, 2013, posted by svk.

King Krule. Photograph by Pari Dukovic.

King Krule–otherwise known under the still magisterial Zoo King–doesn’t let you sit easy with expectations. The 19-year old carrot-top wan faced lad looks more in line, it’s been said, with a certain clan in Harry Potter than the future of jazz indie, a disjunct brought to full force with his ragged melodies and eerie echo of, as a friend pointed out, the Joe Strummer throb.  The melancholy contradiction between childlike guilelessness and barfly world-weariness contribute much to the curiosity (and his visual iconography leads an oblique path to Where the Wild Things Are), but his debut album 6 Feet Below the Moon represents an thoughtful artist with an interesting career in front of him.
For now, here’s a prototype of his song Lizard State from his Zoo King days.

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IL PALAZZO ENCICLOPEDICO

Tuesday, October 29, 2013, posted by kvr.

As this year’s Biennale di Venezia, which is pretty much one of the most beautiful and inspiring exhbitions in recent years, goes into its last month, here is a little snippet by its curator Massimiliano Gioni, who we dedicated an issue to in 2006, when he curated the Berlin Biennial with Ali Subotnick and Maurizio Cattelan – 7 years old and yet still relevant:

‘Maybe to engage less on intellectual questions and to focus a bit on the pragmatic aspects, which does not mean that we’re stupid, but to engage the theoretical aspect through the pragmatic or even, if one can be very ambitious, through the poetic. Maurizio would never name it this way but I think that was important to us all, and maybe, to have a little fun. For us and the artists involved, we hope it is also about having an interesting experience, a chance to work closely together. We are really, really engaged with the artists. See, the best feedback we could get so far is people saying, ‘Yes, it’s great. We’re dealing with YOU, we’re in a strong dialogue.’

Maybe the show will be shit, but at least we know that it was not done just by name-dropping, but by getting involved as much as we could. It is a privilege to be able to work with many people we had never worked with before and with others we had always dreamt of working with. It’s important to engage with people and with artists, and to devote time and energy to them.’

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WES

Monday, October 28, 2013, posted by jb.

Matt Zoller Seitz’s newly released The Wes Anderson Collection looks like a pretty wonderful book on the Wesonian universe; it’s full of interviews, story boards and all those good things. We do love him, needless to say. (And Bill Murray too, he should have another hug). Also, above is the trailer to The Grand Budapest Hotel- Wes Anderson’s latest film to be released in March. Something to look forward to indeed.
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TRUISM OF THE DAY 23: NARCISO RODRIGUEZ

Saturday, October 26, 2013, posted by kvr.

And isn’t that what we’re all hoping… Fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez (of Michelle Obama fame) in Interview.

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STORE OF THE MONTH: TABLE OF CONTENTS / PORTLAND

Friday, October 25, 2013, posted by kvr.

In the epicentre of cool, namely rainy Portland, you can find the beautiful Table of Contents, one of those prime examples of modern shopping, or what commonly goes under the tired banner of ‘concept store’, meaning little else than the offerings being carefully selected and presented, and shouldn’t all stores do that, really? Anyway, Table of Contents’ list of brands reads like a who is who among the designers young and old to follow, supported by a range of fine objects and printed matter, including yours truly, and hello.

Table of Contents
33 NW 4th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209
USA

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