“One of the recurrent themes in my books is the importance of paying a price for your dreams. But to what extent can our dreams be manipulated? For the past few decades, we have lived in a culture that privileged fame, money, power – and most people were led to believe that these were the real values that they were to pursue.
What we don’t know is that, behind the scenes, the real manipulators remain anonymous. They understand that the most effective power is the one that nobody can notice – until it is too late, and you are trapped. The Winner Stands Alone is about this trap.”
– Paulo Coelho, in his latest novel The Winner Stands Alone
[Reproduced from the Foreword of The Winner Stands Alone by Paulo Coelho; translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa; HarperCollinsPublishers 2009.]
07 April 2009
04 April 2009
02 April 2009
Could have fooled me
Pranks on April Fool’s Day have been commonplace in my life. Though, with the advent of technology, these days, my friends have (thankfully) chosen emails and mobile text messages over the more elaborate pranks we used to play on each other while growing up. So, apart from the usual jokes that filtered in or beeped into my inbox yesterday, the day had ended rather uneventfully.
However, while surfing the internet before going to bed, I came across two hilarious April Fool’s Day pranks – both, amusingly, from the world of journalism – that, if it hadn’t been April Fool’s Day yesterday, could have easily fooled me, and perhaps the rest of the world, into accepting their facts as reality.
The first was a Guardian article announcing Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink – a light-hearted account of how Guardian’s news stories will now be available on a message service. And the second, a Christian Science Monitor story, titled Scientists worldwide admit global warming is a hoax, on how Al Gore and his mantra on global warming have really been fooling us for years.
You can read the stories here and here.
I wish the Indian media had a sense of humour to match these stories.
[Citation: Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink by Rio Palof from The Guardian website dated 1 April 2009; Scientists worldwide admit global warming is a hoax by Eoin O’Carroll from The Christian Science Monitor website dated 1 April 2009.]
However, while surfing the internet before going to bed, I came across two hilarious April Fool’s Day pranks – both, amusingly, from the world of journalism – that, if it hadn’t been April Fool’s Day yesterday, could have easily fooled me, and perhaps the rest of the world, into accepting their facts as reality.
The first was a Guardian article announcing Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink – a light-hearted account of how Guardian’s news stories will now be available on a message service. And the second, a Christian Science Monitor story, titled Scientists worldwide admit global warming is a hoax, on how Al Gore and his mantra on global warming have really been fooling us for years.
You can read the stories here and here.
I wish the Indian media had a sense of humour to match these stories.
[Citation: Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink by Rio Palof from The Guardian website dated 1 April 2009; Scientists worldwide admit global warming is a hoax by Eoin O’Carroll from The Christian Science Monitor website dated 1 April 2009.]
10 February 2009
No pop-up ads here
Hurray! No pop-up ads here!
How often can you say that with satisfaction when you’re on the internet these days? Not too often, I’m guessing, unless you’ve programmed your web browser to effectively block off those irritating pop-up ads on your computer system. Even then, you’re likely to have a face-off with the shoshkeles every now and then.
But pop-up ads and shoshkeles aren’t the only irritants while surfing the internet for news and information. There are other drawbacks too, which we grudgingly accept everyday. Drawbacks, perhaps, not in the pure sense of the term; but definitely considered as drawbacks when compared to the old-age system of gathering news and information through the print medium – typically through newspapers and magazines.
Although not in India, but globally, the print medium is losing its readership, with more and more people switching to the internet for their regular dose of news and information – and much much more. I had blogged about this a couple of years ago, but the bitter truth is, today, globally, the print medium is under threat from the online industry.
What should the print industry do in response to this threat?
Well, here’s a story: In an article I read recently on the National Press Club website – titled Newspapers are fact-checked, hand-delivered, no pop-up ads. What’s not to love? – Ken Paulson of Newseum defended the print medium, offering an interesting and humorous perspective of the advantages the newspaper offers to its readers vis-à-vis the online medium.
Paulson wonders what would have happened “if Gutenberg had invented a digital modem rather than a printing press; and that for centuries all our information had come online. Further, imagine if we held a press conference announcing the invention of an intriguing new product called the ‘newspaper’. That press conference might go something like this:
We’re pleased to announce a new product that will revolutionize the way you access information. It will save you time and money and keep you better informed than ever before.
Just consider the hours you’ve spent on the internet looking for information of interest to you. We’ve hired specialists who live and work in your hometown to cull information sources and provide a daily report tailored to your community, your friends and your neighbors.
We also know that you sometimes wonder whether you can trust the information you see online. We plan to introduce a painstaking new process called ‘fact-checking’ in which we actually verify the information before we pass it along to you.
In addition to saving time online, you’ll also save money. You won’t need those expensive color ink cartridges or reams of paper because information will be printed out for you in full color every day.
You’ll also save money on access charges and those unpleasant fights over who gets time on the computer because this product will be physically delivered to your home at the same time each day, for less than what you would tip the guy from Pizza Hut.
You worry about your kids stumbling across porn on the internet, but this product is pre-screened and guaranteed suitable for the whole family.
And in a security breakthrough, we guarantee newspapers to be absolutely virus-free, and promise the elimination of those annoying pop-up ads.
It’s also the most portable product in the world, and doesn’t require batteries or electricity. And when the flight attendant tells you to turn off your electronic devices, you can actually turn this on, opening page after page without worrying about interfering with the plane’s radar.
To top it all off, you don’t need a long-term warranty or service protection program. If you’re not happy with this product on any day, we'll redesign it and bring you a new one the next day.”
There’s, of course, more to this story. To read the entire Ken Paulson article on the National Press Club website, go here.
[Citation: Newspapers are fact-checked, hand-delivered, no pop-up ads. What’s not to love? by Ken Paulson of Newseum, posted on the National Press Club website under NPC Wire New & Noteworthy by Sylvia Smith on 6 February 2009.]
How often can you say that with satisfaction when you’re on the internet these days? Not too often, I’m guessing, unless you’ve programmed your web browser to effectively block off those irritating pop-up ads on your computer system. Even then, you’re likely to have a face-off with the shoshkeles every now and then.
But pop-up ads and shoshkeles aren’t the only irritants while surfing the internet for news and information. There are other drawbacks too, which we grudgingly accept everyday. Drawbacks, perhaps, not in the pure sense of the term; but definitely considered as drawbacks when compared to the old-age system of gathering news and information through the print medium – typically through newspapers and magazines.
Although not in India, but globally, the print medium is losing its readership, with more and more people switching to the internet for their regular dose of news and information – and much much more. I had blogged about this a couple of years ago, but the bitter truth is, today, globally, the print medium is under threat from the online industry.
What should the print industry do in response to this threat?
Well, here’s a story: In an article I read recently on the National Press Club website – titled Newspapers are fact-checked, hand-delivered, no pop-up ads. What’s not to love? – Ken Paulson of Newseum defended the print medium, offering an interesting and humorous perspective of the advantages the newspaper offers to its readers vis-à-vis the online medium.
Paulson wonders what would have happened “if Gutenberg had invented a digital modem rather than a printing press; and that for centuries all our information had come online. Further, imagine if we held a press conference announcing the invention of an intriguing new product called the ‘newspaper’. That press conference might go something like this:
We’re pleased to announce a new product that will revolutionize the way you access information. It will save you time and money and keep you better informed than ever before.
Just consider the hours you’ve spent on the internet looking for information of interest to you. We’ve hired specialists who live and work in your hometown to cull information sources and provide a daily report tailored to your community, your friends and your neighbors.
We also know that you sometimes wonder whether you can trust the information you see online. We plan to introduce a painstaking new process called ‘fact-checking’ in which we actually verify the information before we pass it along to you.
In addition to saving time online, you’ll also save money. You won’t need those expensive color ink cartridges or reams of paper because information will be printed out for you in full color every day.
You’ll also save money on access charges and those unpleasant fights over who gets time on the computer because this product will be physically delivered to your home at the same time each day, for less than what you would tip the guy from Pizza Hut.
You worry about your kids stumbling across porn on the internet, but this product is pre-screened and guaranteed suitable for the whole family.
And in a security breakthrough, we guarantee newspapers to be absolutely virus-free, and promise the elimination of those annoying pop-up ads.
It’s also the most portable product in the world, and doesn’t require batteries or electricity. And when the flight attendant tells you to turn off your electronic devices, you can actually turn this on, opening page after page without worrying about interfering with the plane’s radar.
To top it all off, you don’t need a long-term warranty or service protection program. If you’re not happy with this product on any day, we'll redesign it and bring you a new one the next day.”
There’s, of course, more to this story. To read the entire Ken Paulson article on the National Press Club website, go here.
[Citation: Newspapers are fact-checked, hand-delivered, no pop-up ads. What’s not to love? by Ken Paulson of Newseum, posted on the National Press Club website under NPC Wire New & Noteworthy by Sylvia Smith on 6 February 2009.]
28 January 2009
Slumdog Millionaire
By now you would have heard, or read in the media, a great deal about British film director Danny Boyle’s latest film Slumdog Millionaire. The film narrates the story of a child from the slums of Mumbai who, though orphaned and growing up in abject poverty, overcomes many hardships in life to win millions on a TV gameshow and find true love.
May I request that you ignore all that you’ve read and heard about Slumdog Millionaire so far and go see the film yourself. Then, go and see the film again. Whatever you think and feel about the film after that is exactly how it should be.
If you’ve seen Slumdog Millionaire already, you know what I’m talking about.
May I request that you ignore all that you’ve read and heard about Slumdog Millionaire so far and go see the film yourself. Then, go and see the film again. Whatever you think and feel about the film after that is exactly how it should be.
If you’ve seen Slumdog Millionaire already, you know what I’m talking about.
06 November 2008
JR: extraordinary street art
He is a graffiti artist with a camera – and a huge imagination. His name is JR, and he is transforming the streets of many of our cities with his extraordinary street art/photography.
JR (he uses his initials because of the illegal nature of his work) pastes huge, (usually) B&W photographs of people in high-visibility public spaces such as walls and windows of buildings, rooftops, side panels of buses, etc creating a new kind of graffiti in the guise of street art/photography.
The themes of his photographs highlight a deep concern for humanity, drawing attention to social causes, wars, human emotions and suffering – challenging many of our present-day (preconceived) notions.
For instance, in a write-up on JR’s street art, the Tate Modern Gallery website cites, “His work with Palestinian and Israeli citizens explored the similarities of their daily lives, rather than focusing on the ever present divide, highlighting fundamental human emotions.”
A Frenchman who remains incognito (like Banksy), JR describes himself and his work on his own website:
“As an undercover photographer, JR transforms his pictures into posters and makes open space photo galleries out of our streets. An acute observer of our time, as comfortable in cozy neighborhoods as in urban ghettos, he questions pedestrians with the exhibitions he mounts on their everyday commutes.
Using a camera he found once in the subway, JR finds inspiration in informal encounters he makes following his travels and his intuitions.
From 2001, he has been pointing his camera to a number of communities (writers, breakdancers, freestylers...), and worked with popular actors and musicians such as Vincent Cassel, IAM or the Gotan Project.
From 2004, he has been working on the 28 millimetres project, the first part of which – Portrait of a generation – led him up to the New York Times front page. The large size pictures of the Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois youth have been notably displayed on the walls of the European Center for Photography and the square of the Hotel de Ville, in Paris.
His pictures are beginning to sell at Hotel Drouot of Paris; he keeps on planning unauthorized exhibitions of large size pictures such as in Rome or in Wuppertal (Germany). He is currently working on the second and third parts of the 28 millimetres project in Middle East and Brazil.
The 3rd stage of the 28 millimeters project – Women Are Heroes – has already led him to Africa in post-conflicting zones to shoot the women with whom he wishes to share painful stories and to testify their desire to live. Their portraits were already pasted in Sierra-Leone and in Liberia. In 2008-2009, JR will develop this project in India and in Asia.”
To learn more about JR and his extraordinary street art, please visit JR’s website (showing videos of how his street art is installed), or the Lazarides Gallery JR page, or the Tate Modern Gallery JR page.
JR’s 28 millimetres project has its special place here.
[Citation: JR’s website, Lazarides Gallery website, Tate Modern Gallery website, 28 millimeters project website. JR’s street installation image reproduced here from the Tate Modern Gallery website (courtesy the artist and the Lazarides Gallery).]
03 November 2008
Elle Muliarchyk – the bold and the beautiful
Alone Hermès
self-staged photograph by Elle Muliarchyk.
Belarus-born Elle Muliarchyk, 23, blonde and beautiful, sets my heart racing. Not just for her beauty, but also for her artistic accomplishments, which she seems to have achieved with a curiosity and daring not easy to come by.
Elle Muliarchyk is a model and a photographer in her own right, modelling in her own photographs and staging the entire performance with clothes, make-up, props, lights, tripod and camera… in dressing rooms of high-fashion boutiques, and even in dangerous locations outdoors at night… within minutes and in most trying situations, to avoid getting caught.
What Elle Muliarchyk does is walk into some of the most glamorous boutiques, take photographs of herself wearing the choicest expensive clothes, posing for the shots, adding props and lights to compose her pictures, and then walk out of the store without buying anything. She usually has only minutes to do this daring act before getting caught by the store attendants and getting kicked out of the store or arrested by the police.
As she says in her self-styled profile on SHOWstudio: “Doing this I become my own photographer, model, art director, make up artist and hair stylist. I can be whoever I desire at that moment ‘a movie star, a Vamp, a Seductress’, and own those outrageously unaffordable clothes for a few moments, never having to pay for it!”
But that’s not all. While collaborating with fashion designer Bella Freud on a project, Elle Muliarchyk has walked around in some of London’s seedy areas at night, armed with her tripod and her camera, taking self-portraits in Freud’s latest collection. Apparently, during her first shot, she was attacked and mugged by a gang of eight men, witnessed a robbery of a boutique and had to escape the guys on the motorcycles. But, as she says in her SHOWstudio profile, “the images were totally worth getting.”
Fashion Television has featured Elle Muliarchyk and her daring acts on a couple of occasions, which can be seen here and here.
Elle Muliarchyk’s SHOWstudio profile can be found here, and a selection of her photographs can be seen on the German website Stern.de.
Zarah Crawford of The New York Times has done a story on Elle Muliarchyk in August 2006, called Pretty Larceny, which makes interesting reading. It also explains the ‘Alone Hermès’ photograph displayed in this post.
[Citation: Elle Muliarchyk profile on SHOWstudio; Elle Muliarchyk videos on Fashion Television; Elle Muliarchyk’s photographs on Stern.de; and Zarah Crawford’s story on Elle Muliarchyk, Pretty Larceny, on The New York Times, 27 August 2006. ‘Alone Hermès’ photograph reproduced from Elle Muliarchyk’s collection on Stern.de.]
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