Nicolas Henry is a filmmaker, photographer and artist. Usually based in Paris/Marseilles, he is currently working on a major photographic series – Les Cabanes de nos Grands Parents. This has seen him traverse the world from Marrakech to Moscow, meeting and engaging with all sorts of grandparents.
Henry travels to the home of each of his subjects (he says, a friendship is sealed when you visit a home) and invites them to make a hut or play-space with their personal belongings. Inspired by their childhoods, the resulting huts are intimate glimpses into their strikingly rich and diverse lives.
Delightfully, Henry had the good fortune to meet and photograph my wonderful grandmother in New Zealand. As I understand it they met while she was volunteering at the local visitors centre of her seaside village.
Here she is in her much beloved but wild sub-tropical garden – click for a larger view. The picture above Betty’s head is one of her crocheted woolen blankets and a portrait of her as a young girl. Note the teaspoon collection in the back! I love this photograph so much.
Another summer, another Waitangi Day. Here in New Zealand we annually celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Most of us take a holiday, go to the beach, some people drive to Waitangi. I spent my weekend swimming, snorkeling, walking, visiting friends and drinking coffee.
We also celebrated by having a hangi at my flat on Sunday night. We live in the city, so it was non-traditional of course – no pit-digging and playing with stones in the back yard. Rather we used a contraption that steams the food baskets in metal keg, heated by a burner attached to a gas cylinder.
Still, the notion of sharing with your whanau is still present; and all the food is prepared the same way my grandmother does it, carefully wrapping everything in cabbage leaves. We even added manuka chips to get that smoke-on-the-tip-of-your-tongue taste.
Perfection. I hope you had a lovely weekend too, no matter where in the world you may have been.
Daniel Johnston’s recent outing at the fantastic Laneway festival reminded me of a little something I saw at the end of last year.
It’s hard to believe at first, but in our iPhone obsessed world there is even an app dedicated to the music and art of Johnston. It’s entitled, ‘Hi, How Are You‘; and suprisingly is not just a vanity project, but a well thought out puzzle game that is pretty fun to play!
Hi, How Are You the game features classic Johnston characters like Joe Boxer and Jeremiah the Innocent; the stalk-eyed-froggy-creature who is famously depicted on a mural in Austin, Texas, Johnston’s adopted home. The game focuses on a couple of motifs common to Johnston’s work – fighting the evils of the outside world, and searching for the girl of his dreams through that quagmire.
The game itself was created by two Austin based developers and costs around US$0.99 (or a more splashy NZ$4.50) – it’s an affordable, fun experience for any technologically endowed Daniel Johnston fan.
Dinner with Murakami is a 2007 documentary directed by Yan Ting Yuen about the life and work of legendary Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
“Largely structured round Murakami’s enigmatic absence, the film dramatizes Murakami’s impact on his readers and takes the camera into the hinterland to determine what is “Murakamian” in the Japanese landscape. The resulting film has a beautiful sense of form and poetic structure.” [Indie Flick Pick]
In the film everybody from groupies who hang outside Murakami’s old jazz club to schoolchildren, share their piece on the publicity shy writer. Norwegian Wood has been likened to the Nippon equivalent of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; so it is unsurprising most Japanese people have a story to tell about their relationship with Murakami’s work.
Weary legs. Who hasn’t wished for somewhere better to perch while wasting away the hours at a the airport, bus stop or train station? Well Dutch designers Nieuwe Heren (the New Gents) took 4 suitcases, added a dash of ingenuity and some sweet styling to create the Suited Case.
A comfortable solution for the times when you’re tempted to sit on your suitcase (I broke my dear travel bag last year by doing just that). If I wasn’t always in transit by myself I’d snap the set up! Perhaps their next move can be the solo traveller’s armchair.
Would you use something similar? Do you have any ingenious temporary seating solution that you use on the road?
Australian & New Zealand friends -Yen Magazine and their surfy mates at Rip Curl are running a fashion blogger competition. Dip your toes in the frothy sea of fashion power scribing.
This worked, I tried it! “Nearly-instant mood lifter: throw 5 cinnamon sticks & some orange peel in a pot. Add lots of water. Bring to a boil. Simmer. You’re welcome.” – Emma Alvarez Gibson.
The first Auckland Laneway Festival (an offshoot of the St. Jerome’s tour) was held on Monday. Acts like Dear Times Waste, The 3D’s, Cut Off Your Hands, Daniel Johnston and Sarah Blasko took to alternating stages in the heart of the city, and performed their little hearts out.
Acts of the day? The Xx – never seen a skivvy look that sexy … and that Florence woman. She was amazing, yelling about the weather, shimmying and throwing out such a powerful voice from her tiny frame. I think 5000 people fell in love with her at the same moment..
The blog:
The Ana{b}log was a public blog created on site on a large-scale blackboard. We (2 writers, 2 scribes) updated it constantly through the 12 hour day. There was a lot of chalk snapping and laughter. Content was of the highest quality – reviews, interviews, news and gossip.
The Ana{b}log is a spectacle, an antidote to the same-same expectations of Web 2.0 – a genuine conversation with kids on the street. That was my favourite part of the day (aside from the bands) – watching people engage with the board, pick up a stubby piece of chalk in their hands and add to it. Or if they weren’t sure of it, they’d come have a chat!
The Ana{b}log is but a fleeting moment in time… a record that is subject to the elements – the wind, the rain and 15-year-old boys writing naughty words about their anatomy.
Above is a picture I snapped of Tana and Brock hard at work, to the left is the “Twitter” feed. Below is what we deemed as quote of the day – a truly wide ranging vox pop on how people were finding the day thus far garnered this answer:
It was a great day and topics spanned from a review of the waffle caravan to festival tips (plastic bags make a good poncho) and Fashion Pit – our hourly fashion assessment. Florals reached saturation point, Raybans were 36% down.
TeuxDeux is a simple, designy, browser-based to-do app and the first collaboration between studio-mates swissmiss and Fictive Kin. The idea was to build a bare-bones, but visually compelling and highly usable to-do app based on Tina’s personal ideal work-flow.
Aesthete Tina Roth Eisenberg has teamed up with her neighbours Fictive Kin to release a pared back, red-white-and-black day planner. It only takes a couple of seconds to sign up to Teux Deux; from there you can easily add tasks, move and delete them, make notes in the ’someday’ bucket, as well as look at the weekly overview. An iPhone app is currently in development, if you’re that way inclined.
I’ve been using it for about a week now and it’s been really grand – saving my desk from being swamped in a tsunami of scrappy to-do lists. The name is adorable too. My only complaint? I just wish my laptop screen was bigger so I could see everything in one go. Better add that upgrade to my list.
On Monday the inaugural Auckland Laneways festival is taking place in the city! Exciting! It might not be a sassy wee alley like St Jerome’s but Britomart will be rocking I’m sure. Here are a few videos I’ve pulled up in the last couple of days – bands I am gagging to hear live.
Black Lips – Bad Kids
The Black Lips live show is meant to be pretty badass – I’ve heard reports of band members pashing, vomiting and getting raucous on stage. Will they show Auckland a naughty time?
The xx – Crystalised
SEXY VOICES. Can they pull it off live? And will they duet with Florence?
Echo & The Bunnymen – The Killing Moon
Echo doesn’t want me to embed his 80’s gold, but here’s a link to the video anyway. The next video is very reminiscent of The Killing Moon aesthetic:
Florence and the Machine – You’ve Got The Love
Nearly a year ago I blogged about F&TM and now she’s playing here! Felicity commented on that post, and yay, you get to see her on Monday.
The Naked And Famous – All Of This
LOVE. All of this.
I’m working on the day as a writerly type person so say come say HI! - I’ll be lurking around a giant blackboard for Red Bull. (I would love to interview some people and get their thoughts on how the day is going!)
Look at this sweet shot of Raquel Zimmermann by Nick Knight for Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2010 Campaign. Snakes on a model lolz, etc.
Demi Moore – a lovingly photoshopped advertisement. Before and after…
Oh yeah, and on the topic of ‘editing’ – Heidi Montag’s face… Laugh (or not because your face is frozen) but the photos in this article are pretty raw/good.
You can listen to the underwater sounds of the Antarctic Ocean! There’s delay of only a few seconds.
RZA recommends this sweet vege burger. Can’t wait to make it and I’m pretty sure there’s a waffle iron lying around here somewhere (or a crimping iron, ha).
Vintage Christopher Walken: “Despite popular belief, Christopher Walken did not come out of his mother’s womb as an old man who takes no shit from shit.”
Vogue Body and Beauty by Bronwen Meredith is my new favourite old book. I finally took the time to read this beast, and it’s fabulous. “This sumptuous yet eminently practical handbook gives the facts and possibilities about health and beauty honestly and without feeding women’s dreams and illusions.”
Great book, but I must say; seventies diets for health are outrageous… really, how many grapefruit can you eat in a week? There seems to be many copies of this floating round, so if you have the chance to get your elegant wee paws on it, do so. From the eating plans, to the DIY treatments, to the Vogue full-colour plates – it’s good in so many ways.
Oh Wellington! It was so good to see you again, as well as partake in all your fine establishments have to offer! Ernesto, Fidels, Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, Plum, Deluxe, Matterhorn, San Francisco Bath House. Burritos, Pimms, tacos and the legendary Bling cocktail from the Matterhorn (an adolescent dream achieved). Your stores were welcoming too, like the adorable Swonderful, Rex Royale, Hunters & Collectors, Slowboat Records and Good As Gold. But of course it’s the people make the place. Sweet Wellingtonians, you are so rad! I hope you will invite me back soon.
The number one reason for our Wellington visit (I use the word ‘our’ but in reality I was gatecrashing my friends’ holiday) was to go see the Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years exhibition at the City Gallery.
To celebrate the exhibition, they kitted the entire gallery exterior out in polka dots!
Yayoi Kusama is an avant-garde Japanese sculptor, painter and novelist.; her work concerns many themes, but is usually expressed through the polka dot and infinity net motifs that are her trademarks. Kusama started painting dots at a young age, after suffering ‘hallucinations’.
In her twenties, Kusama moved to New York and nurtured her talents further, gaining recognition for her large scale works, working in the same sphere as Warhol and other notables. In 1973 she returned to Japan and produced several novels and anthologies while continuing to create art.
Today, Kusama’s trippy paintings, tentacle like sculptures, performance art and installations have attracted a cult following around the world, and she has found acclaim as one of the world’s most important living artists.
The Mirrored Years exhibition is on in Wellington till February 10, so if you’re anywhere in the region and you haven’t scoped it out yet, you simply must! It’s simply dotty, mind boggling and a lot of fun to be immersed in.
I saw The Books play in Wellington on Tuesday night, as part of a double billing with Glaswegian heart breakers Camera Obscura. The Books are Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong; and they make what they describe as “collage music” – a pastiche of found sounds and original folk melodies.
Samples are sourced from thrift store cassettes, home videos, and things like “the voice recorder from Home Alone 2″. They don’t use a drum kit for their percussion, preferring children’s toys and filing cabinets, which are sampled and looped.
“And the library keeps swelling, especially when Zammuto and de Jong are on the road. Trolling Salvation Army and Goodwill stores in the towns they encounter on tour, they’re particular about what they’ll buy; they’re partial to old instructional videos for products that don’t exist anymore.” [The Boston Globe]
I really enjoyed the gig, and while some may see the mash-up and looping approach as juvenile and too accessible, I found it quite fresh; especially when accompanied by the most glorious instrument of them all – the cello. Here are a few of The Book’s entwined songs and videos:
Weary legs. Who hasn’t wished for somewhere better to perch while wasting away the hours at a the airport, bus stop or train station? Well Dutch designers 
Aesthete Tina Roth Eisenberg has teamed up with her neighbours Fictive Kin to release a pared back, red-white-and-black day planner. It only takes a couple of seconds to sign up to Teux Deux; from there you can easily add tasks, move and delete them, make notes in the ’someday’ bucket, as well as look at the weekly overview. An iPhone app is currently in development, if you’re that way inclined.
