Olly & Suzi

Wolf
aquarelle on paper


“Olly & Suzi are an artist duo whose art-making process is directly coupled with their journey, which they describe as a collaborative, mutual response to nature at its most primitive and wild. Painting together at the same time on the same piece of work, the majority of Olly & Suzi’s art is produced out on location in diverse and remote environments in close proximity to animals, subsequently making the wild their studio. Often endangered, the animals and the surroundings in which they live are the primary subject of their work.

Focusing on representation and symbolism, Olly and Suzi’s aim is to raise awareness and understanding of their subject matter. Sometimes the animal will be presented almost as an icon; singular, primitive and large in relation to the paper, and sometimes a landscape is present and a heard or migration is incorporated into the work. In both cases, the artists strive to create clarity and ambiguity in the same painting; educating and prompting curiosity to equal effect.”


Grizzly aquarelle, sepia and oilstick on linen


“Often the track, print or bite of an animal may be incorporated into the work in an attempt to document the habitat of a creature that may soon be extinct. The artists see this interaction as form of primal investigation; evidence to an event that will never occur in the same way again.

Olly & Suzi continue to travel the globe in the search of preserving the memory and existence of endangered creatures.

Olly & Suzi have been making art together since they met at Central St. Martins School of Art in 1987. Their on-going collaboration was cemented whilst on D.I.P.A Scholarship to Syracuse University in New York State in 1988/89. It was during their early journeys throughout America that they first encountered Native American Indian art and mythology. Inspired by the underlying respect for nature and animals inherent in indigenous art, they decided to formalise their mission as artists; to make art in response to their own journeys, the wild and Nature.”

Please visit Olly & Suzi’s website to learn about, and see more of, their work.

[Citation: Text reproduced from Eyestorm. ‘Wolf’ image reproduced from Olly & Suzi’s website. ‘Grizzly’ image reproduced from Clive James’ website.]

5 years of journalism in Iraq

This month, the United States completed 5 years of war with Iraq. It has not been an easy time for the people of Iraq – nor the United States. Over the past 5 years, we’ve all read about the war in Iraq, seen many photographs in print and video coverage on TV… with mixed feelings.

The Internet, too, has made its own contribution through words, pictures and videos. From India, I’ve followed the coverage of the Iraq war over local publications and channels – and the Internet for a more global feel of the news coverage.

Recently, two news projects on the journalism behind the Iraq war caught my attention: Bearing Witness from Reuters, and Paul McLeary’s On The Ground on Columbia Journalism Review. Both projects are worth reading and seeing and listening.

Reuters’ Bearing Witness is stunningly visual. The commentary/interviews are exemplary. Paul McLeary’s On The Ground, somewhat of a blog approach, is exceptional journalism; but as they are written reports, they require more concentrated reading.

Bearing Witness can be found here.

On The Ground requires a more careful search on the Internet. Try ‘Paul McLeary On The Ground Columbia Journalism Review’ on any search engine. The report is a series of posts, so you’re likely to find many results for the search. [I was lucky to have subscribed to the CJR newsletter.]

The Maze

Panos Karnezis’ debut novel, The Maze, is an anti-war fable that takes us through hopelessness and hope, discipline and disillusionment, rivalry and repentance to prove, once again, that war changes our lives.

The Maze is about a lost brigade of Greek soldiers on their retreat from losing the war against the Turks in 1922. The place is Anatolia, just before the Turks gained their Independence. The Greek brigade is trying to find its way to the coast in order to join other expeditionary forces and return home.

The novel is in three parts. In the first, The Retreat, Karnezis describes the low morale of the soldiers, made worse by the weather (hot and dry during the day, cold at night, sudden torrential rain now and then), a series of unexplained thefts, evidence of Communist propaganda material, and the memory of a massacre of Turkish civilians.

Karnezis etches the characters well. The old Brigadier: in love with his dead wife and Greek myths, addicted to morphine, disturbed by the recent thefts and the Communist propaganda. The self-righteous Major, his Chief of Staff: a decorated soldier who has lost faith in the war and in imperialism; who believes a change is coming over Europe, brought upon by Communism.

The Corporal: the Major’s only comrade in the army who believes that the letters he receives are from a beautiful woman in love with him – when they are actually disguised propaganda from the Communist Party.

The Medic: saddened by the futility of war, believes his purpose is to serve humanity, regardless of race or religion. The Padre: troubled by the fact that no one attends Church or goes to confession; roams the army camp aimlessly looking for his flock, clutching his tattered copy of the Bible, followed by his mangy dog.

There’s an injured pilot, an orderly, and a cook. Everyone has a story to tell, even the dog, but Karnezis keeps their tales short. When this dusty brigade chances upon a town untouched by war, it decides to camp there for a couple of days in order to rest, recuperate and reinforce supplies for its onward journey to the coast.

In the second part of the novel, The Town, Karnezis adds colour to his narrative through a bunch of lively townspeople: the schoolmaster, the mayor, the grocer, the Madame, the Madame’s maid, and the maid’s Arab hunchbacked lover – the gardener. There’s even an ambitious journalist waiting for a big score.

Although the townspeople with their simple ways add a wonderful touch to the narrative, they remain incidental to the main story of the lost brigade. Yet, the town is where The Maze comes to its climax. For, unknown to everyone, the army’s temporary occupation of the town, and the incidents that follow soon after, changes everyone’s lives.

The third part of the novel, The Sea, is short, but it completes the novel and the brigade’s journey. At this point, however, Karnezis takes a literary leap and introduces a metaphor (an ominous red dust settling over the town), and adds a fable-like dimension to the story, taking it to its inevitable end. The task is, perhaps, a little ambitious for a debut novelist, but Karnezis seems to pull it off rather well.

The Maze is, undoubtedly, a book worth reading.

Kota Ezawa, video artist

‘Two Stolen Honeymoons Are Better Than One’
Kota Ezawa, video artist
Video still, 2007

Kota Ezawa is a German-born US-based video artist of a unique kind. He re-records moments from media and history, and creates his own rendering in 2D video animation. After collecting photographs and video footage of specific events – such as President John F Kennedy’s assassination or the O J Simpson trial – on a computer, Ezawa traces the images frame-by-frame and uses flat colours to fill in details and provide highlights.

The effect is quite unique. According to Kate Green, Curator of Education and Exhibitions, Artpace, San Antonio: “Ezawa’s simplified versions of photographs, which are themselves already subjective takes on the real, paradoxically amplify emotive content and create a hyper-real.”

For instance, the image displayed in this post, Two Stolen Honeymoons Are Better Than One, a two-channel animation, is created from Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s infamous home video of their honeymoon. Ezawa re-drew each frame of the footage on his computer and coloured in specific details. The end-result is almost a Disney-like animation.

Kota Ezawa was born in Cologne, Germany in 1969 but is now based in San Francisco, USA. He received his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA from Stanford University.

Kota Ezawa’s bio can be found here and here, and samples of his work here and here.

[Citation: Artpace, Artkrush, Haines Gallery, Murray Guy gallery, California College of the Arts.]

Anthony Minghella

In his own words (reproduced from Tripod member site The Storyteller):

“Wisdom used to have it that only bad books made good movies. Such dispiriting theories stem from Hollywood’s fear of literature and literary figures because of course, the pillage I’ve described can only succeed in a climate of mutual suspicion. The studio view is that films which aspire to the conditions of art, the complexities of a really good book, the equivocations and debates, the edginess or complexities of a really good book, or worse still, the melancholy, will necessarily be limited in their appeal, consigning the to that circuit of dungeons known as the art house (a place which has always held a sneaking appeal, even in its name).

The English Patient is a prime example – a period story, thematically burdened, with a central character burnt beyond recognition, European, elegiac and tragic. It was impossible to find a backer. Successful movies aim low, is the studio mantra, aspiring to the atmosphere of the fairground not the salon, the fireworks display not the microscope. Even those who’ve asserted and achieved the poetic in cinema are at pains to distance themselves from books. Bergman insisted that movies had nothing to do with literature and that the character and substance of the two forms are generally in conflict.

Having written original material for most of my adult life I find myself in the middle of a trilogy of adaptations, which began with The English Patient, continues with my current project, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and will end with Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. I must deduce, then, that I, too have fallen prey to the same desire to steal a march on the elusive process of getting a film made. It makes great sense, I think, to be the writer of the films I direct but the metabolism of film-making is slowed accordingly. Years can pass before I can walk back onto a film set. The English Patient took over four years to write and direct. If I want to make a film I have to have a subject. Starting with a book accelerates the process. I am afraid it may be as banal as that.”

British film director Anthony Minghella, best known for winning his Academy Award in 1997 for directing The English Patient, passed away on Tuesday (18 March 2008) in London at the age of 54.

The New York Times obituary can be found here.

Michael Clayton raises a question of ethics

George Clooney delivers one of his best performances in the lead role in Tony Gilroy’s debut moral thriller Michael Clayton which hit the silver screens earlier this month. It’s a flashback of events over four days which brings us back to the present and a thrilling end.

Michael Clayton, a ‘fixer’ (he uses the term ‘janitor’ to describe himself) for a big-time New York corporate legal firm, cleans up messes left behind by the firm’s rich and famous clients. When the firm’s highly-experienced lawyer Arthur Edens (another great performance by Tom Wilkinson) breaks down on a multi-billion dollar class-action suit against a prestigious agrichemical client, U.North, Michael Clayton, a long-time friend of Edens, is sent to clean up the mess.

With Edens’ breakdown, things seemingly get out of hand for U.North on the class-action suit, and the corporation’s ambitious chief legal counsel, Karen Crowder (played fabulously by Tilda Swinton), steps in to salvage the situation for her organisation and protect her own turf. When her own private investigation indicates Edens’ plan to sabotage the class-action suit in favour of the plaintiffs, Crowder resorts to some unsavoury means which lead to chilling consequences.

While investigating Edens’ breakdown, Clayton is straddled by the burden of his work, a failed marriage, a son he has no time for, a failed attempt at starting a restaurant business, an imminent company merger which may jeopardise his job, and a gambling habit. When his friend Arthur Edens is suddenly found dead, Clayton begins to trace Edens’ erratic behaviour and learns that U.North may have been responsible for the deaths of, and damage caused to, many farmers – a fact Edens wanted to make public.

Michael Clayton re-assesses (for us) the notion of ethics in today’s corporate world and the lengths we are willing to go to overlook or defend it. It’s a moral tale that presents to us the risks of choosing either side.

The work I do

While visiting friends yesterday, their 15-year-old daughter approached me with great excitement. She showed off her new Converse shoes – the Chuck Taylor All Star classic.

Why did she push her parents into paying a small ransom for shoes which looked no different from the ordinary, and cheap, canvas hiking shoes I wore when I went camping with my geologist dad some 35 years ago?

Her response was utter amazement. Duh?!! Because everyone who was someone was wearing one. And she was the first among her friends to own a pair. Now all her friends wanted one too.

I stopped and thought about the work I do as a marketing strategist.

It is my job to advocate ways by which my clients and their brands can appeal to consumers… so consumers can buy their brands and my clients can grow rich. And, in the process, several advertising – and other marketing-communication – agencies and media companies can grow rich.

Sometimes, it’s at the cost of my friends paying through their noses to keep their children happy.

Diane Keaton on photography

Image from book Clown Paintings, edited by Diane Keaton




Most of us know of Diane Keaton as a Hollywood actress, with many award nominations to her credit, winning her Academy Award for Best Actress in 1977 for her role in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall – which also won her a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA in the same year.

However, if I were to tell you that Diane Keaton has been awarded the 2008 ICP Trustees Award by the International Center of Photography in New York, you might wonder what’s going on. The fact is, apart from her career in acting, Diane Keaton is an avid photographer and curator of photographic collections.

Her contribution to American photography can be stated as (and I quote from ICP’s website):

“…outside of Keaton’s many acting, directing, film production, and philanthropic pursuits, she has long pursued her interest in the photographic medium. Several collections of her own photographs have been published, and she has edited or co-edited multiple collections of vintage work, commonly focusing on photographers who are forgotten or ignored. The latter include Still Life (1983), Mr. Salesman (1993), Local News (1999), and her forthcoming collection of images from Fort Worth, Texas, Bill Wood’s Business, to be published in conjunction with the ICP exhibition of the same name in May 2008.”

The news of Diane Keaton’s 2008 ICP Trustees Award win is not really a big surprise to me. I had been fortunate enough to learn of Ms Keaton’s devotion to photography earlier; and was reminded of it upon reading an article in the New York Review of Books a few months ago. The article, by Larry McMurtry, titled Diane Keaton on Photography, had some wonderful things to say about Ms Keaton as a person and her contribution to American photography.

Here’s an extract:

Over the years, sometimes with the help of the New York writer-curator Marvin Heiferman, Diane has sniffed out collections or archives of photographs that she feels are unjustly overlooked, neglected, or lost — like, very often, the tarnished human beings who appear in them. Once convinced, she mothers these archives and attempts to arrange for their exhibition and safekeeping and, so far, publication in five books to which she’s written prefaces…

Her eye, however, is broadly welcoming and embracing, as are her sympathies. Ron Galella, the Dean, as he was known among paparazzi and their subjects from the Sixties on, once shot Diane in rollers and yet she easily forgives him:

“Lovers, who, with the turn of the head once had the power to crush, or lift me into the realms of impossible elation are gone, gone, gone. Yet they have returned with the flash of Ron’s camera. I see our lives, and am cognizant of the absurdity of some of my choices, even though they were such very sweet encounters for awhile. But what I am ultimately confronted with is the hard fact that there is no permanence for any of us... ever. Permanence can only be found in the immortality promised by the results of the click of a camera. Like it or not, life moves on as quickly as the photograph doesn’t.

In the end I’m glad to be among the Dean’s cavalcade of celebrities, not just for the recognition value, which I can’t deny I once pursued with a relish I am ashamed of, but also because of the education he gave me.”

[Citation: (a) Diane Keaton ICP Trustees Award, ICP’s Infinity Awards 2008; (b) Diane Keaton on Photography by Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 17, 8 November 2007; (c) Clown Paintings image courtesy Amazon.com.]

Overwhelming

Every once in a while we see films that mean something special to us – something special at an individual level. This year, I’ve been fortunate to come across two such films: Indian actor-director Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par and Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn’s Into The Wild. These films have a personal significance for me as I have experienced some of the emotions of the two young heroes of these films.

Like 8-year-old Ishaan (played magnificently by Darsheel Safary) in Taare Zameen Par, I, too, am dyslexic and have suffered the shame of not being ‘up to the mark’ like everyone else in my class – or in my family. And, like 24-year-old Christopher (played by the talented Emile Hirsh) in Into The Wild, I, too, have cut myself off from my family and walked out of a promising life in search of the truth.

Forty years ago, no one in India knew what dyslexia was. As an 8-year-old dyslexic, I had to find my own means of coping with the world and try to make sense of what was happening. And, unlike Ishaan’s world in Taare Zameen Par where an observant and caring school teacher pieced things together, no one came to my rescue and explained to my parents what the trouble was with me.

I grew up troubled, and my later itinerant years – somewhat similar to those of troubled Christopher in Into The Wild – were (and still are) a result of my alienation from my family and a rebellion against the values they represented. Like Christopher, I, too, embarked on a journey to live life on my own terms – dropping off my ration card (India’s equivalent of social security), driver’s license and passport along the way.

However, that’s where my story differs from Christopher’s. I had the sense to realise that, although truth has a special place in my heart, it is equally important not to lose sight of two vital life forces: a livelihood and the love of friends. Christopher’s folly – or immaturity, perhaps – was to trade his college-educated level-headedness for an imaginary life.

For, Christopher’s search for the truth and his disdain for the material world eventually took away his life’s energy – the pure goodness that had driven him to embark on a journey across America to Alaska, touching various people’s lives along the way in most wonderful ways. In Into The Wild, Sean Penn chronicles Christopher’s journey over two years until its heart-achingly overwhelming end.