artaffair
magazine
#2 - a URBAN issue
Theme A city is a place where there is no need to wait until next week to know th answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to hear and family to see again. Margaret Mead
This edition is an ode to the city and to the moment. To time and to the lack of time. To art without concepts or pre-concepts, the art of today, of here, of now. Being urban is‌ urban is not a style of art, construction or pavement. Urban is a style of life. It is being underground abovethe-ground, it is being different and yet the same, living in the city and doing what you want and what you like, or not doing any of that but still be stuck in traffic everyday yelling at the red sign. It is walking by foot to get there faster. It is swearing a lot, even if only to the inside. Being urban is believing that the noise of the cars equals life, crossing the road when the sign is red, wanting to change the world. Always want more. From a group of urban and other not so urban people, arises this edition about cement, scaffolds and walls dripping off sketches. We hope you like it!
to know more about this issue visit http://www.artaffairmag-en.blogspot.com
Indice
Index
Gallerys Photography Multimedia Illustration Plastic Arts
Cronics Art Music Cinema Literature Destinations
4 10 14 18
Artaffair Magazine Issue #2 - URBAN 1 of March of 2010 Digital diffusion at www.artaffairmag.com Printed version available by order
3 9 13 17 21
Tutorial 22
Contributed to this edition: Ana Pastoria (design and direction) Catarina Bizarro (literature) Daniela Rodrigues (photography) Diana Aleixo (destinations) Fábio Fernandes (music) Alexandre Mingatos (cinema) Joana Ferreira (plastic arts) José Carlos Pereira (multimedia) Maria Matilde Marques (editorial review) Miguel Martins (illustration) Rita Roque (art critic) Tânia Santos (translation) Marcos Soares (tutorial) Brian McMorrow (destinations)
Guest Artists: Daniel Camacho (photography); UrbanScreen (multimedia); Alex Rietveld (illustration); Kurt Wenner (plastic arts)
Art Critic Mazza Tintoscopia from Porto) breaths and works with materials, manipulating a variety of techniques of the usage of primary pigments with different compounds to get a metamorphosis that exploring effects and textures provides us an imagery of human bodies. In a constant aesthetics but stylistically abstract, the artist deals with the senses through a manipulation of essences in an experimenting process that seeks to explore the dimensionality of painting itself.
In this global era, being the artist an image creator, is inevitable a growing speculation and interpretation of the study of creativity individuality. The devices of mise en scène, show us the idea that there are no pure visions or pure creators, but that the place of the painter is far beyond the screen. Certainly, all the Post-war Art evolution is marked by new meetings and cultures where it is possible to see an even more open world to knowledge like a living body in permanent learning. The new techniques together with the freedom of the human being understanding, the evolution and the stylistic metamorphosis transform the art into the “blood” of life itself and of the existential essence of the artist. Said that, it is responsibility of the critics, to give voice to the creator that provides a way of thinking, in this case, a way of thinking the art itself against to the old speech about the dead of painting. The urban scenery is the start to a young artist that has been developing a kind of painting that appears from anatomic reflection. The proposal crafted by Mazza (Mário Neves Ferreira de Silva
by Rita Roque -3-
Admittedly, the artist doesn’t have the worry of creating a narration, but instead he worries about manipulating the senses of the observer itself through a wide laboratory work, around of techniques and material research. In this relationship between painting and sculpture, the artist also explores the possibility of expansion of painting to the installation, and presents a work that doesn’t undermine the disappearance of the “ink” element, but that explores in its core, with presentations and floating interpretations, as if it was a human and intimate body. Note that the utilization of templates of the human figure, after being filled with ink raises once again an escape to the evident support of painting. This manipulation, through the experimentation and the study about the body, wins a dominations of its own and self-sustaining. Mazza explores and expand an immense field of possibilities and is naturally through a sense specifically artist and scientific that his constructive concerns appear. Showing this clear connection between art and science releases an imaginary flow, worth of exemplify the restless construction of new frontiers and bounds of contemporary painting.
Photography
by Daniel Camacho -4-
Photography
-5-
Photography
-6-
Photography
-7-
Photography
http://www.danielcamacho.net/ -8-
Music Olso Fluid a Norwegian Wave
This time the highlight goes to a British band that is already around drumming at the ears of many people, the Hot Chip. Being part of the fourth generation of dance music, they integrate on themselves the frenetic sonorities of the XXIst century allied to an essence of the eighties but in a totally renewed style. As a strong point we must stress the voice of the lead singer Alexis Taylor, peculiarly weird but that integrates pleasantly at his electro-pop register. Coming from Leeds and together since the year 2000, they jumped immediately to the European and American market. In 2006 they set definitely their position by being nominated at the Mercury Music Prize to the award of best album with “The Warning”. It is on the same year that the distinguished music magazine NME focuses the single “Over and Over” as the best production. Back in 2009, with some tops achieved, they are nominated by the famous
´ by Fabio Fernandes -9-
Grammy’s Awards as the best dance music with the single “Ready for the Floor”, from the album “Made in the Dark”. Taylor, during this interval, does not waist the opportunity to begin a solo career, without however unsettling the group that just debut their most recent work entitled “One Life Stand”. Associated to the editor DFA Records, property of James Murphy, member of the iconic LCD Soundsystem, they present to us, in this last record, devastating tracks such as “Thieves from the Night” or “I Feel Better”, which promise to reach, once again, a good place at the disco graphic rank. Here stand, then, the suggestion to an energetic sound and full of rhythm, proper from an industry in profound mutation where, to attain success, it is not enough to make good music but also to pass on the idea of a good alternative image and the promise of fun. de diversão.
Multimedia
by Urbanscreen - 10 -
Multimedia
- 10 -
Multimedia
http://www.urbanscreen.com - 11 -
Cinema Dark City Somewhere between “The Crow” (1994) and “I, Robot” (2004), Alex Proyas directed “Dark City” a true masterpiece of science fiction which, thanks to a barely inexistent marketing campaign, passed along the side of most of its potential fans. In a short presentation, at the commencement of the movie Dr. Daniel Schreber (Keifer Sutherland, Jack Bauer from the series 24) tells how an alien race, on the verge of extinction, came to earth on a quest for salvation and how, to do so, needs to understand human emotion. These aliens have the capacity of moving physical objects with their mind, ability to which they give the name of “tuning” and to what we Earthlings call telekinesis. Right at the start, in a sort of freeze, the whole city stops and everyone rests asleep where they are at. At the following take, the central character wakes up confused and memory less in the bathtub of an apartment with a dead hooker by his side. If the beginning may seem confusing, it is worth to watch with attention for in the movie everything will be explained in a satisfactory matter, at due time. Throughout the movie the protagonist will discover, with the help of Dr. Schreber, that he himself has the same skills as the aliens and more, that he may even fly. We have then a movie where some non-humans holders of extraordinary powers create a surreal city where they keep the humans locked without their knowledge, until the day that the chosen one discovers with the help of a much more experienced character, that he has the same powers but is ten times more powerful and stands up to them. Does this recall another movie? A lot has been said about the similarities between the Matrix and the Dark City but before you start shouting “imitation!” bear in mind that Dark City was released one year earlier than Matrix.
by Alexandre Mingatos - 13 -
um filme de Alex Proyas
If the special effects of Dark City are nothing of astonishing when compared to others, the scenography is fabulous and the production values are extremely high. The whole movie is set in a city of America’s 50’s style but much more obscure and pinged with some retro futurist details. One of the graphic elements that make part of the movie is the spiral that appears at the initial generic and in several other occasions. This spiral resembles the one in “Saw” and its significance is pretty much the same, as in the Rhodes Labyrinth, finding the exit door is a prodigious accomplishment. But if from the labyrinths of “Saw” it is possible to escape mutilated and with life, from Dark City the only way out is death. The “Mysterious City” is claustrophobic ad its constant mutations, either of the buildings or of the identity of the citizens, makes of her an insecure place and with nothing the hero or the spectator can take as granted. A film that, inside it’s genre, leaves nothing to lose comparing to other productions that, much better publicized, quickly became blockbusters!
Illustration
by Alex Rietveld - 14 -
Illustration
- 15 -
Illustration
http://ryuuka.deviantart.com/ - 16 -
Literature The pickpocket that ran on time “The pickpocket that ran on time”, wrote by Francisco Moita Flores in 2001 describes the changes of urban and the transformation of a society submissive to the consumerism. Moita Flores is a former investigator of the Portuguese Judiciary Police, owner of a unique imagination and of an unequal capacity of transforming tragedy into comedy. Graduated in History, the current Mayor of Santarém shows us in this book that his experience as investigator allowed him to know a wide variety of people and lives. Fred Astaire, known like this by his talent for dance, finally get out of prison, and returning to the “outside” world finds that the world was changed, beyond the pain that the absence of Inês caused to him, to whom he dedicated his elaborated inner monologues. When he opened the stolen wallets in search for money, all that he found out was plastic. One card and another, from one bank and another, Visa, MasterCard, Electron, and all the classifications seemed absolutely useless to the main character. Wandering through the city of Lisbon, lost in the streets that are no longer familiar, walking through the stones that no longer tell the same story, he finds a new family that also seeks for an easy way to make fortune and to feed their destructive vices.
by Catarina Bizarro - 17 -
a work of Francisco Moita Flores
Gabriela, a prostitute, Urânios das Doses, an addicted, Messias, a former police and a former banking, Porcalhão, become the crew lead by Fred. Together they will try to reach the high society through all that is bad in it, the undeserved fame, the numbness provided by TV and the big phenomenon of reality shows. This book represents people who fight with all their strength to follow the transformations of society, the same society that once was no more than a big village, not very long time ago, that suddenly revealed itself as an urban, and as any other urban, cruel and relentless for those who can’t follow the rhythm. With Inês always in his mind, Fred and his crew go through the challenge of fooling the public in order to reach a place in the Portuguese red carpet. Moita Flores writes with an accurate humor and typically Portuguese, with simple and hilarious dialogues that dramatize a whole national disaster.
Plastic Arts
by Kurt Wenner - 18 -
Plastic Arts
- 19 -
Plastic Arts
http://www.kurtwenner.com/ - 20 -
Destinations Nova Deli, Índia the urban side of the orient photographs de Brian McMorrow
My choice for this number is New Deli and the urban side of a city from the east. Take off from prejudice and open up yourself to a new culture, where cows, sacred animals, walk between newly constructed buildings, where traffic is chaotic and where cars, motorcycles, women dressed in saris, rickshaws and pedestrians that argue for a space in the busy and unorganized city streets. The best way to take a walk is by rickshaw, motorized tricycles which take until three passengers, but never do it without haggling the price first. Everything is cheap in his town. Much more we haggle, most cheaper we get. It’s a fantastic experience that you’ll never forget. Rambling these streets, don’t worry about the traffic signs because they’re not fulfilled by the inhabitants of the city. Limit yourself to get down to the first hole that you’ll find between cars and have no accidents, or else you’ll ruin the whole scheme of “transit” to the date created.
by Diana Aleixo - 21 -
But New Deli is not only traffic, and the city also offers uncountable attractions to the visitor. Starting with religion, being India a deeply religious country, do not pass without a visit to one of the many Indus temples (dominant religion). The most beloved gods are Ganesha (elephant-headed) and Krishna (flute player). Temples that you mustn’t miss are the Bahai and Sikh, where from the outside you can notice great architectonic differences, resulting from the various times that its construction crossed. Both Presidential Palace and the India Gate are the visit card in New Deli. This is an agitated city where hundreds of bars were, and still are, emerging during the last years and where you cannot stop eating a very spicy dish in every restaurant. If you’re a female, don’t walk around the streets with your arms or legs half naked because you’ll be the center of attention wherever you’ll pass, because the female clothing is predominantly the sari. Besides, it’s not usual an Indian woman walk alone, much less after sunset. Finally, join now into the spirit of New Deli with these words, Namaste (respectful way to greet someone), Shukriáh or Deniwad (thank you) and Ram Ram (good luck) for you and your trip.
Tutorial Grafitti Often associated with urban vandalism, Graffiti was and always will be a controversial type of art in which the artist manifests a revolution against the rules of urban society. The word Graffiti originated in Italy and its definition comes from the Greek word graphein that means “to write”. During the Roman era, Graffiti was applied to write on walls. In modern times, this term embraces more themes than the Roman era, but still presents the artistic aspect of writing. Just like any other type of art, graffiti does not have a correct way to be done and it consists of creating your own style.
Method: 1. Study and research about Graffiti- Graffiti can be seen in any urban location and to recognize the different styles of the art means to recognize the different ideas that the artist presents. In order to research more about Graffiti, the Internet and websites such as www.artcrimes.org can serve as a database to the artist 2. Create a sketch- After establishing an artistic name, the artwork should be drawn in a piece of paper in order to determine the size, style and colors that will be used. For the beginners, the best thing to do is to draw capital letters with lots of space between them. The artist should keep drawing until a unique style is achieved. The style of the piece will determine the artist’s “personality”, creativity and message. 3. The piece- After intense research and practice, the artist must find a workplace (pay attention to the location. This place must be authorized due to graffiti being illegal in many urban places) and draw the piece. Using a light color, draw the final sketch. This process is long because it involves a lot of concentration in order to avoid mistakes. The next step consists of copying the letters shapes and starting coloring the piece, in order to discover the colors and the harmony of the image. The final step involves the artist adding concepts of luminosity and depth, by varying the line thickness of the piece. In order to become a master in this type of urban art, the artist needs to practice and never give up. Graffiti, just like any other type of art, takes time to be perfected and can only be mastered with practice.
by Marcos Soares - 22 -
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The theme for the next issue is “IDENTITY”. Participate!
works accepted until the 15th of March