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Photography
Photographs from #OccupyLSX taken yesterday
Photos from this year's Battle.
In 2008, Slavoj Zizek was in Liverpool for a couple of days. I took a few photographs of him at a lecture, which have been published in numerous books about him. It is also the photo used within his Wikipedia entry and, today, another publication has used this image. I am very fond of this picture and am sure that its success is predicated on its being freely available online.
However, given the many uses to which it has been put, I wonder whether one may begin to describe it as an iconic image. The photograph conveys a lot about the man, his independence of thought, his simple, but complex ideas and the bleak background also mark him out as a thinker who can be both celebrated, but also isolated at times, alone with his thoughts.
The success of the photograph makes me wonder whether our sense of what constitutes an iconic image has changed in a digital age. I don't really claim that this photograph has become iconic, but expect that the repeated distribution of a single, free image can create a singular impression of a person which previously may have been afforded by publication in leading periodicals.
This remarkable theatre production took place in Liverpool tonight and is not to be missed if it comes to your city. It is performed by The Wired Aerial Theatre Productions. Here's a photo selection from the evening.
Wired magazine recently published one of my pictures of Stelarc in a feature on BioArt. Here's the image:
The photograph was taken at the Virtual Futures conference at Warwick University. For more photography, click here
The Cheltenham Science Festival is a remarkable experience and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was involved with 4 events and there only 2 nights, but also managed to catch a lot of other events. Here's a photo summary, followed by a Flickr Set.
Greg Foot, Science Daredevil (the next Brian Cox)
Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Physicist Extraordinaire
Professor Lord Robert Winston, Godfather of British Science Communication
Professor Kathy Sykes, Festival Director
Professor Mark Lythgoe, Festival Director
Alan Moore, Watch Man
Iain Sinclair, Psychogeographer
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, not Ali G, the other one
and here's the full Flickr Set with many more people...
dreamspace
Dreamspace is in the news again this week. It was the first art work i saw in Liverpool when I moved there. It subsequently blew away and killed a couple of people. My reportage is my most viewed selection of photographs on Flickr and it was a wonderful experience. I hope someone is brave enough to remake it one day. Sadly, the artist Maurice Agis died in 2009 soon after the case against him for gross negligence mansalughter was resolved. The court were unable to reach a verdict and he eventually received a reduced fine of £2500.
I had heard that Hamburg was a very cool place, but it really exceeded expectations. It has a lot of character, with enormous new developments around the city, edgy warehouse environments like Kampnagel, and beautiful lakeside suburbs. Here are some of the people we encountered.
On the return from New Zealand, we squeezed in a wee stop in Dubai, hired a car and took in some of the sites of this extraordinary construction site.
Photographs from around Christchurch, one month after the earthquake of February 2011. The city was still closed and the perimeter guarded by the military. The only people around were those taking photographs of the devastation. It was a very unsettling experience to witness, but there also felt a strong sense of strength from the community members we spoke with. We were not sure how it would feel to be a 'tourist' passing through, but were told by numerous locals that they were really pleased we came, as most people have decided to avoid their city.
Watching the news tonight with Pres Mubarak's speech takes me back 3 years. We went first to Cairo, then took the night train to Aswan. From there, flew to Abu Simbel, then train back up to Luxor, finally arriving into Cairo again with just enough time for a day trip to Alexandria. Tough schedule, but such a glimpse into a remarkable country.
It has been about 18 months since I last visited Olympic Park and a lot has changed. As part of a conference organized by Birkbeck, we had a great Olympic park walk around the perimeter, including a stunning view from an Jim Woodall's art work 'Olympic State' gallery space on the north east side.
Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds currently at TATE Modern. Here is some text from TATE:
Juliet Bingham, Curator, Tate Modern
"Ai Weiwei's Unilever Series commission, Sunflower Seeds, is a beautiful, poignant and thought-provoking sculpture. The thinking behind the work lies in far more than just the idea of walking on it. The precious nature of the material, the effort of production and the narrative and personal content create a powerful commentary on the human condition. Sunflower Seeds is a vast sculpture that visitors can contemplate at close range on Level 1 or look upon from the Turbine Hall bridge above. Each piece is a part of the whole, a commentary on the relationship between the individual and the masses. The work continues to pose challenging questions: What does it mean to be an individual in today's society? Are we insignificant or powerless unless we act together? What do our increasing desires, materialism and number mean for society, the environment and the future?"
It is well known that the installation originally permitted people to walk around these porcelin seeds, but that due to the health risk posed by the dust, this came to an end rapidly. I'm sure it would have been beautiful to walk amidst them, but the fact that seeds were taken from the installation seemed to add an additional layer of complexity to the work.
To the extent that the art work is a motif for the West's reliance on the East's low-cost industrial labour force, the pillaging of seeds by Westerners reinforces the notion that this is an exploitative relationship. Yet, given the pride taken by the village's people in the crafting of ceramics, this unavoidable inequality still has integrity, meaning and value for a community that otherwise would have no source of income, as was true of this particular village, whose ceramic work was reaching its end.
I first saw this beautiful work of art at a Bjork concert in Manchester, then re-encountered it around my work for the Human Futures book. I finally played with the actual version at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, as it was part of the Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition exhibition. It is such a fun piece to photograph.
While this is over a year old, I was just finishing a book proposal on the Olympics and fancied posting some of the images from last year.
Mike's inaugurallecture was titled 'Anger is an Energy: connecting time and space through action, movement and memory'
5 nights in Seoul and 5 nights in Daejeon. Recommended. If ever you go, the must do is the USO tour to the North/South Korean border. Under UN command for part of it. If you've never come close to military environments, it's an enlightening experience. I could live in Seoul.
The International Olympic Academy has a very special place in my life and is a lovely place to reflect on life and attain some quiet, while soaking up the energy and life stories of fascinating people. These shots don't do it justice, but it is the most important place in Olympic history, past and present.