All posts filed under: Creative Industries

Qui A Tué Roland Barthes?

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Le point de départ du dernier roman « La septième fonction du langage » de Laurent Binet est la mort de Roland Barthes, renversé par une camionnette de blanchisserie, le 25 février 1980. L’auteur part du postulat suivant : il s’agit d’un assassinat dont le coupable évoluerait dans les milieux intellectuels et politiques de l’époque. Il va alors déployer le récit d’une enquête policière, un réjouissant thriller, déjanté et très intelligent qui se moque de tout, surtout des vanités et des impostures. L’histoire se concentre autour d’un document – la septième fonction du langage -,  prétendument détenu par Roland Barthes et disparu après son accident, qui serait capable de donner à son détenteur un pouvoir insurpassable : la maîtrise du discours, faculté permettant à celui qui la domine de prendre l’ascendant sur son interlocuteur… et sur le monde.  Un an avant l’élection présidentielle de 1981, mettre la main sur cette formidable arme linguistique ne peut qu’intéresser les giscardiens, les mitterrandistes et les diverses factions politiques de tous les mouvements libéro-capitalistes d’un côté et socialo-communistes nationaux et internationaux de l’autre. Le …

Won Sou-Yeol: The Art Of Korean Abstraction

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Based in France since 1984, Won Sou-Yeol was born in a small town on the island of Chejudo in South Korea. This place between land and sea has nurtured her inspiration through the strength of the natural elements, which are to be found in her painting. Her work is imbued with dynamism and power marked by the contrast between black and white, light and shadow. Master of calligraphy, she mixes her technical spontaneity with a large and concentrated gesture. Like a dance where cracks and splashes are created. “I kept my strength. I was not talking to anyone. I was not sleeping. “. The work and the artist are one. Won Sou-Yeol is devoted entirely to her art. At the point that she said that one day, while she was painting, she wanted to look at the clock. Three years had elapsed. Won Sou-Yeol wants to free herself of something that belongs to her. Her work is a weapon of freedom both strong and light. It enables to access the immaterial world that fascinates her. …

Wikibuilding: The User-Generated Urbanism

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The topic is not really new. At the end of the 2000s,  some sociologists and urban planners had prefigured the emergence of a “city 2.0” referring to the emergence of collaborative practices on the Internet: blogs , Wikipedia and maps that made digital more prevalent in our cities. Even though collaborative planning is not necessarily linked to digital, the consultation process is now common for most urban projects. Thereforce, user-generated urbanism might be the future of cities. In France, the phenomenon has reached a new level with the birth of Wikibuilding. The building would be designed within a wiki process, all plans and experimentations being open source. Any citizen would be able to draw, to use, to improve or to test the building. Promoters or insurers would test the wikibuilding with residents, real estate agencies and 5% of the area would be reserved for a living Lab. Wikibuilding would be a place for experimentation and open to the architecture schools in order to design and include continuous Open Design updates. The Paris School of Architecture is already …

Hong Kong: Inside Zhu Jinshi’s Boat

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Born in Beijing in 1954, Zhu Jinshi moved to Germany in the mid-1980s, and at present lives and works in Beijing. Zhu began painting abstract works in the late 1970s, and participated in the Stars group exhibition, the first avant-garde art exhibition held after the Cultural Revolution. The core of Zhu’s artistic practice is most fittingly characterized by traditional Chinese aesthetics, which emphasises the harmony between human beings and the natural world. Part of the legendary generation of artists who left China in the 1980s, Zhu Jinshi was clearly marked by his move to another country and culture. He used contemporary Western art languages to find the contemporary possibilities in the cultural resources and materials of China. At Exchange Square in Hong Kong, visitors are immediately greeted by Zhu Jinshi’s monumental Boat. Bamboo, cotton and 8,000 sheets of pale white Xuan (rice) paper meticulously hang from the ceiling, forming a spherical tunnel and stopping just before touching the ground. “I used materials, thoughts, and traditions of the East as a tool to go against the …

Bu Hua: Beijing Babe Loves Freedom

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Bu Hua born in 1973 is a female Chinese artist. In her strong imagery and flat, decorative backgrounds there is a trace of the traditional woodblock prints of the revolutionary period, and also her love of Japanese art and design. Often described as a pioneer of digital animation in China, Bu Hua was one of the first to use animation software in an art context, creating surreal narratives about contemporary life. Her animations and still images often feature a feisty, sassy pigtailed child dressed in the uniform of the Young Pioneers, a Communist Party youth group. A clever combination of innocence and knowing, cuteness and cunning, playfulness and cynical parody through a characteristically crisp graphic style creates an allegory of industrialisation, pollution and militarisation. Her heroine, armed only with a slingshot, takes aim at flocks of white birds which prove, on closer examination, to be military aircraft. More about Bu Hua http://bit.ly/1BAxKsH

Louvre Abu Dhabi: Can Museums Be Exported?

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Abu Dhabi has a new cultural center on the island of Saadiyat. Importing the expertise of the most recognized institutions, the city brands its image as universal and global. The most famous architects of the post-modernist era such as Jean Nouvel have been selected and are at the source of this new branding approach. Lack of knowledge and experience in creating cultural institutions led the Arabian power to collaborate with the Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum and the British Museum. As a result, a collection belonging to the Louvre was moved to Abu Dhabi for a summer exhibition. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is born. However, this does pose questions. The issue of exporting culture has become crucial as our world becomes increasingly fragmented since global. Can culture be exported? Can art be read in a foreign context regardless its place of creation? For some experts, separate artistic creation from its nation of origin would lead to eliminating its sense and integrity whereas on the other hand, some institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum highlights the history of avant-garde through museums perceived as …

Hong Kong-born Artist Paul Chan Wins Prestigious Prize In NY

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The artist Paul Chan was awarded the prestigious Hugo Boss prize in New York last week. Initiated in 1996, the prize is awarded every two years to an artist who has made “a significant contribution to the evolution of the contemporary visual arts“. Paul Chan is prototypical of his generation, exploiting the potential of the World Wide Web and its information overkill to excess, redesigning it and establishing links with goal-oriented, unbridled enthusiasm. He has already created a wide-ranging oeuvre that reveals him to be one of the most inventive and multifaceted practitioners in contemporary art. His studies of current political and social issues, as well as the great and timeless concerns of history, literature, and philosophy, are incorporated into his art with lighthearted verve. More about Paul Chan http://bit.ly/1xHql3C