Gabriel García Márquez.

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He would have been 90 years old today. In reading a remembrance, there was this particular quote:

“The more power you have, the harder it is to know who is lying to you and who is not. When you reach absolute power, there is no contact with reality, and that’s the worst kind of solitude there can be. A very powerful person, a dictator, is surrounded by interests and people whose final aim is to isolate him from reality; everything is in concert to isolate him.”

— From The Paris Review Interviews, Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69

How very apt.

Load Bearing Felt.

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I find all of this to be wildly attractive, it’s so Geigeresque.

A group of MAarch students from the Bartlett School of Architecture have devised a method of turning felt into load-bearing structures that they hope to build into an fabric pavilion.
The Flextiles project focused on developing a design system using a composite of felt fibres and expandable foam for reinforcement.

Students Noura Mheid, Hameda Janahi, Minzi Jin, Zoukai Huo found inspiration in the traditional craft of felt-making as well as the differential growth patterns found in nature – which is what gives their finished structures their distinctive, seaweed-like curls.

After exploring the load-bearing potential of these structures by crafting them into chairs they could sit on, they finished the project by presenting a fabric wall unit. The unit forms one side of what they hope they can one day extend into a full pavilion.

Their process stands in contrast to most current fabric architecture, which usually features soft fabric attached to a support structure. The Flextiles structures can be soft in some places and hard in others, transitioning smoothly from one to the other.

“Unlike traditional uses of fabric in construction, this technology introduces a new perspective on how to integrate structure into a soft material such as fabric and go beyond the typical disintegration between the draping of fabric onto a completely segregated support,” Mheid told Dezeen.

You can read and see more at Dezeen.

Moisés Hernández.

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© Moisés Hernández.

Mexican designer Moisés Hernández’ dipped his Immersed Birds collection in dye to emulate the plumage of tropical fauna. The wooden birds are based on the form and colouring of toucans, hummingbirds and Mexican quetzals – chosen for their bright, contrasting feathers.Hernández used computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) technology to mill soft, continuous wooden shapes that replicate the structure of the birds’ bodies. Exaggerated tubes form tails, while slender spikes make for beaks.

The designer then developed an experimental painting technique that immersed sections of the wood in coloured water. This allowed Hernández to create overlapping and contrasting layers of colour, and play with transparency – leaving the grain of the wood visible beneath the dye.

“This way, the birds acquire a duality where handmade and machine-made complement each other, resulting in three decorative figures,” said the designer, who has exhibited his work around the world.

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© Moisés Hernández.

Via Dezeen. Moisés Hernández’ site is full of wonders, oh, have a visit!

The Walled Off Hotel.

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The Walled Off hotel may sound utilitarian, even bleak. Its owner says it has “the worst view of any hotel in the world”, while its 10 rooms get just 25 minutes of direct sunlight a day.

But, nestled against the controversial barrier wall separating Israel from the Palestinian territories, the West Bank’s answer to the Waldorf offers travellers something more elusive than any luxury destination.

The lodging in Bethlehem is a hotel, museum, protest and gallery all in one, packed with the artworks and angry brilliance of its owner, British street artist Banksy.

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From the disconcertingly lavish presidential suite where water splashes from a bullet-strafed watertank into the hot tub, to the bunk-beds in the budget room scavenged from an abandoned army barracks, the hotel is playful and strongly political.

All the rooms look out on to the concrete slabs of the wall and some have views over it to pill boxes and an Israeli settlement – illegal under international law – on the hillside beyond.

“Walls are hot right now, but I was into them long before [Donald] Trump made it cool,” said Banksy in a statement. The artist, who fiercely guards his anonymity, first came to Bethlehem more than a decade ago, leaving a series of paintings on the barrier that have become a tourist destination in their own right.

Since then, the town’s pilgrim and sightseeing-based economy has been ravaged by ever-tighter Israeli controls on travel between Israel and the Palestinian territories, so the new hotel is expected to provide a welcome boost in jobs and visitor numbers.

Banksy’s reputation is likely to keep all rooms fully booked, but he wants guests to leave with more than just a selfie. “(It’s) a three-storey cure for fanaticism, with limited car parking,” he added in the statement.

The hotel opens to guests on 20 March, with bookings via the website.

You can read much more here, and the photo gallery is here. I hope it’s a great success, in every sense.

The Colors of Home.

The second journey that Lufthansa #inspiredby HEIMWEH takes us on, “The Colors of Home”, followers Nepalese jewellery designer Arpana Rayamajhi from her adopted city of New York to her native land of Nepal, in search of the meaning of home.

In the film, Lufthansa accompanies Rayamajhi from New York back to her hometown of Kathmandu, where the designer searches for her creative and personal identity. Having experienced a childhood influenced by strong Nepalese women, Rayamajhi finds herself navigating a city that is at once familiar and distant. In between this tension, she must learn to reconnect with her roots, be inspired by different versions of creativity, and experience a new feeling of what it means to be home.

Beginning in Kathmandu, Lufthansa’s voyage transports the viewer through the journey of color, sound and vibrancy of the capital, as well as the city of Pokhara and its regional provinces. Sweeping views of the Himalayas alternate with vast cityscapes, showcasing the vast diversity of both the country and  Rayamajhi’s inner journey.

Via iGNANT.

Fighting for Cultural Survival.

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Everything Anywhere.

A steel blindfold covers the head of a human female figure, yet, unlike Lady Justice, her arms and legs too are bound. Fiber, in an interlocking braid, ties her wrists, wraps her neck and belly, and snakes down to hitch her legs at the ankles. Over her shoulder, however, her hands clutch the means to freedom from her bondage: a soft white blade digs beneath the rope around her neck. Salvation via ceramics.

Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger was born on the Standing Rock Reservation. He is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian heritage. A graduate with honors from The Institute of American Indian Arts, in 2016 he was the recipient of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artists Fellowship Award for artists who “represent the cultural continuity of Native peoples in contemporary contexts, and are the creative voices of their communities.” His work in sculpture is figurative yet imaginative, assembling a panoply of cultural symbols—feathers, bones, textiles—into signifiers all his own. More mythopoeic than surreal, it frames him as a medium, a psychic intermediary between colonizer and Native, ancient tradition and modern understanding, soft clay and hard ceramics.

Nature.

Nature.

 

The Creators Project has an interview with Cannupa Hanska Luger, you can see and read much more!

http://www.cannupahanska.com/

Streets of Gold.

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In the Spring of 2014, after spending a decade working on her photography book, The Oldest Living Things in the World, artist Rachel Sussman came across an image circulating on the internet: a broken bowl that had been restored using gold dust and glue. The bowl was the product of a traditional Japanese art practice called kintsukuroi, which translates to ‘golden repair’ and involves fixing broken pottery with lacquer that’s been mixed or dusted with powdered color pigment. After she was introduced to the technique, Sussman had the idea to take this practice to the streets—literally—by using it to repair cracks in sidewalks. This concept ultimately went on to become the basis of her ongoing series, Sidewalk Kintsukuroi, a contemporary take on the traditional Japanese practice.

You can read and see much more at The Creators Project.

Miyazaki Dreams of Flying.

Joe Hisaishi, the composer who put music to nearly all of Hayao Miyazaki‘s 11 feature films, once remarked in an interview that, “Many of his works have flying scenes and flying has always been the dream of human beings.” In fact, few artists have so successfully captured how the imagination defies gravity than the My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke director. A new film essay by Zach Prewitt gathers some of the 76-year-old director and producer’s finest flights of fancy into a rejuvenating three-minute video.

Miyazaki, who recently announced he was coming out of retirement (again!), explains the paradox of his love for military airplanes and his hatred of war in the video below. While little is known about the narrative of his upcoming film, currently titled Boro the Caterpillar, an ending in which the protagonist transforms into a butterfly and attains flight would align with Miyazaki’s fascination with airships, fantastical insect-winged aircraft, flying castles, and early 20th century aircraft. All of the above and more stretch their wings and take to the skies in Prewitt’s Fandor-produced video.

Via The Creators Project.