Exactitudes

Who does she think she is?

No ads on web sites anymore

Go Backpacking

The Possibility of an Island

I don’t know why, but I picked up that book during our last trip to NYC… I did not know the author nor the title.

But it turned out to be an excellent book and I immediately ordered more books from the french writer Michel Houellebecq. I especially loved the mixture of philosophy, futurism and criticism on today’s culture and society.

Update: La Possibilité d’une île is about to be released as a movie!

Online Events at Tate Modern

I am a big fan of the Tate Modern museum in London. I have never seen a boring exhibition there and I love the architecture of the building. Many of you might not know but the Tate Modern is organizing a lot of artist talks, symposiums and conferences as well. In 2003 I have been attending user_mode, a 3 day conference about emotion and intuition in design and art. It was a great conference with very interesting speakers: Joshua Davis (Praystation), Lev Manovich (love his book), Simon Biggs and many more.

But now the great news: The Tate Modern put their video archive of all their events online and they will continue to record all their events! That’s great news if you are interested in artists like Joep van Lieshout (who confesses in that video that he has to build a phallic sculpture every now and then), Thomas Hirschhorn, The Guerilla Girls and others. I’m busy watching videos from the archive since some days… one more argument for me to not buy a TV set!

Link to Tate Modern Online Events (via WMMNA)

Story by Chris Car for Vu d’ici

Pangea Day

I am a vegetarian and I love meat

This sentence sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? But in the near future it could be reality, at least for vegetarians who don’t eat meat in order to protest against industrialized mass-killing of animals, which is the sad reality of today’s meat production industry (40 billion animals are killed every year alone in the U.S.).

But since a while scientists around the world are researching to produce meat in the laboratory without killing animals. It’s called in-vitro meat production which uses a medium to grow meat. I guess it’s similar to growing plants. But you can imagine that the meat industry is not very thrilled by that idea and won’t support research in that field. That’s the reason why PETA (= People for the ethical treatment of animals) stepped in and are offering a 1$ million reward to the first scientists to produce and bring in-vitro meat to the market.

More info to that reward can be found on the web site of PETA.

I don’t know exactly what to think about it. On the one hand it sounds like a plausible and great idea, but on the other hand I don’t if we – as human beings – are going too far in that point: is an in-vitro grown meat alive? Does it hurt someone? I think these are ethical questions, but killing 40 billion animals… that’s definitely not ok either.

By the way I became a vegetarian because I cannot support the meat industry anymore. And I don’t even miss real meat because there are excellent tofu products available which mimic meat just perfectly.

Written by Chris Car for Vu d’ici. More banners on Peta2.com

Self-destruction in 48 hrs

Featured artist: Darlene Charneco

She is one of my all time favorite artists on Flickr. I love the style and detail of her work – for me her work is all about architecture and candy 3D worlds.

But since I am not an art critic (thank’s god!), just have a look by yourself and enjoy!

Visit Darlene Charneco’s web site and Darlene Charneco on Flickr.

Written by Chris Car for Vu d’ici

3 Tage wach

Radiohead

Eco-bourgeoisie

The Austrian fashion label Fabrics Interseason combines ecologically produced fabrics and high style in their collections. They describe their clientele as the eco-bourgeoisie: being conscious about the environment and nature as well as wearing locally manufactured clothes with a conservative and classic chic.

Link to Fabrics Interseason spring summer 2008 collection

(via de-bug)