Beyond Nationalism: Honorable Medals and Infographic Olympiads

In the earliest modern Olympics humans excelling in the arts also received gold, silver and bronze medals.

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 with the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin's hopes that men should be educated both physically and intellectually (competing in sports not wars), the arts were part of the games too. Five artistic competitions were introduced and architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture oeuvres inspired by sports would combat for gold. After 1954 this event fizzled, replaced by the slightly less competitive cultural olympiads.

The 8-Bit Games!

Anyways, I agree with Coubertin: I like critical minds more than I like nationalism, so it's nice to see all the creations that have emerged from thinking about sportive prouesses not just as physical competitions but as signs of global realities that should be challenged. For instance Gustavo Sousa has come up with these simple infographics using the Olympic flag's five rings to illustrate data from each of the five continents - from Coca Cola sales, to total populations and CO2 emissions per capita. And the Guardian reported on a team from Imperial College and the Royal Statistical Society determining in real-time the actual amounts of medals won for each country in relationship to GDP or population... so for instance while China may have officially won 24 medals, in relation to its GDP it has a petty 0,95, and while Columbia has 2, according to the study it has won an honorable 4,59.

And all the rest...

Things and Happiness

Boris Vian et sa La complainte du progrès (1956) (The lament against progress). Le frigidaire, l'évier en fer, le tabouret à glace, l'armoire à cuillère, un four en verre, la tourniquette pour faire la vinaigrette, le canon à patate, les draps qui chauffent, ou l'arrache poulet et le bonheur sera à vous?

DJ Medhi, Layton, Winehouse: A Dead Famous Person or The Collective Ritual

The death of famous people does something funny to the common people left behind. It's not quite like loosing a friend with whom you've actually talked to, established a reciprocal relationship with, it's more like loosing a collective notion, idea or product embodied by a human. 

Obviously everyone agrees that death is a sad event - it's difficult for humans to conceive of their own mortal nothingness - but when it comes to celebrity deaths it generally turns out to be this really great opportunity to connect with all the living people left behind. Over and over again similar things occur: facebookers change their facebook statuses quoting their last words (Jack Layton), tweeters tweet #allmythoughtstothefamily (DJ Mehdi), bars play their music again (Amy Winehouse), the highest-grossing documentaries of all time are produced (Michael Jackson), prices skyrocket (Lucian Freud) and solo shows sell out (Alexander McQueen); and all this with the best indications that they were simply geniuses, that success and death are anecdotal.... 

Overall a virtuous circle gets established through general mobilization: everyone wants to partake in this collective mourning or performative event where the famous person's death and life get washed-down, simplified and commodified into a tasty digestible narration. Unlike those that are still alive, famous dead people can't disappoint. Unlike those that are still alive, famous dead people get closer to home and in a sense become more alive than when they were actually alive.

Consuming a famous dead person is both an attempt to belong to and by those left behind and an honest mechanism of panic in front of oblivion.

Hence, because DJ Mehdi died earlier this week, as a way to confront death and in the hope to be part of a collective CBC played this - I never knew he produced it, but Tonton Du Bled was a huge hit when I was 15 keeping it real in Sèvres:

Akon's Daddy Has Talent

Mor Thiam is Akon's father. Strong heritage wouldn't you say? Selon Wikipedia on peut le retrouver en Floride, Orlando entre les giraffes et les singes du Animal Kingdom du Walt Disney World Resort. Ça vaut peut-être un retour en enfance?

Koyaanisqati - The Existence of a Past Everyday

On the premise that facebook hinders honourable graduation, during my MA I refused to get an internet connection. Consequently most of my free home time was animated by a UCL library video collection binge. An eclectic - very francophile, Scandinavian savvy and sound oriented - but nonetheless impressive collection.

Among the Bergmans, Vilgot Sjöman and Éric Rohmer, I rented all of the Qatsi trilogy after a Post-Colonial Visual Culture class during which the last film, Naqoyqatsi (2002), was torn apart for its condescending universalism. Still I got really obsessed with Koyaanisqati (1982) - the first in the trilogy - and watched it twenty times over a weekend (London can be very rainy). Sometimes as background (a Philip Glass soundtrack) music, sometimes as a whole, sometimes as extracts, sometimes as loops, sometimes to observe what the 1980s everyday looked like: what were the colours of billboards or on planes? What forms were cars and trucks taking? What were lighting systems like? What was makeup like? Technology like? Outfits like? Hairstyles? Glasses? Traffic systems? Smoking habits?

While aspects this 'experimental' documentary are sometimes condescending (the title of the film does translate as Life Out of Balance) and underneath its 'objective' looking images has a clunky and at times desperately unsubtle social comment, my curiosity for the everyday overruled all of it....

Yesterday I was in nyc's midtown eating soap in a front window - it felt like television. And watching people on their cellphones bustling around reminded of my obsession for this 'experimental' documentary by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass:

How did people look when they lived without cellphones?

Pretty Birds and Big Guitars: a lovely mediated version of an installation by Boursier-Mougenot

This Céleste Boursier-Mougenot installation was presented some time ago as a commission in the Barbican's The Curve. Although I never experienced the installation - it has now been replaced by John Bock's playful metallic home structures - and maybe the mediated version of it was better than the art it captured anyways, but there's something so subtle, delicate and humorous as well as violent and dark about this video/art piece that it is still worth a look every then and again: