On The Margins

Thursday March 08, 2007

[ Personal ] Shiraz, 2003

In July 2003, I visited Shiraz with my family on holidays. I've finally posted all the digital photos from that trip on my flickr gallery. I also have some video clips which I might venture to post on YouTube later.

In the meantime, you can watch this low-resolution video of my younger daughter (then five) running in the courtyard where we took the photograph above.

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art iran photos shiraz video

Monday February 19, 2007

[ Art (هنر) ] In the American West: Photographs by Richard Avedon

The 20th-anniversary exhibition of In the American West: Photographs by Richard Avedon ends at the Cantor Arts Center after a national tour.

If you live in the Bay Area, as I do, or if visiting here, I highly recommend that you make it to Cantor for this exhibition, which will end on May 6, 2007.

Cantor Art Center has sponsored a lecture on Avedon's work for this Thursday, February 22, at 6:30 pm.
 

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american art photography

Sunday February 11, 2007

[ Art (هنر) ] Color of God

Now that I've just mentioned Bahman-e Ghobadi's Turtles Can Fly, I should probably also mention, again, Majid Majidi's Color of Paradise, another Iranian movie worth a very close viewing. In the original Persian, the sub-titled movie was called Ranghe Khoda, or Color of God. This movie tells the story of a father and a son, a blind boy who yearns for home.

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art film iran

Monday February 05, 2007

[ Culture ] The Shackle of Extensions

Lawrence Lessig writes about the shackle of copyright extensions on orphaned works.

When a culture cannot renew itself freely through its roots, it forgets living.

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art copyright orphan works

Friday January 19, 2007

[ Media ] How Things Change

Things have changed in America since 28 years ago when I first arrived here as a very young teenager.

[By way of a preamble, feel free to read my note on the taboo against political discourse.]

In these days, even a Fresh Air (purportedly, the NPR art review program) turns into an odd farce when it attempts to sandwich ugly lies and political propaganda on the Middle East spoken by self-professed PR men in a delicious mix of music and film reviews --- a perfect concoction mixed on its way to co-opt the innocent and brain-wash the tired driving masses haplessly listening to prime time radio shows in hope of a bit of culture!

Perhaps, we are witnessing the era of the classy, well-oiled totalitarianism gone weary.

However, I will have to hold my judgement until a Terry Gross or some other anchor of a nationally distributed and widely-consumed program interviews people like Ali Abunimah on prime-time to reach millions.

In the meantime, the choice of the driver with an FM radio is a very personal one -- either submission to well-placed prime-time propaganda oozing with jazz and propagated, somewhat ironically, as some Fresh Air (e.g. the Jan. 18 program) or an effortful patience to seek and read alternative perspectives (e.g. this review of the response to president Carter's recent book or this direct translation of a sentence.)

It is not a great choice and many of us do not even have the patience to care or the luxury to make it ... So, good night, and I'll pray for a better day!

2007-01-19 23:37:52.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
art change lies truth

Thursday January 04, 2007

[ Art (هنر) ] Snow Flakes

Small tourist towns such as South Lake Tahoe, near where I was fortunate enough to ski with my wife and daughters over the Chirstmas holidays, can still sustain independent and small businesses such as the Neighbors Bookstore. We went there to supplement the books we had bought or borrowed from libraries back home--one must have alternatives to skiing when snow pack is insufficient. In the very small but well-stocked drama section, I was yet again fortunate enough to find and buy the single copy of Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in The Creative Interpretation of Human Motives that still stood on the half full shelves.

I found this passage particularly apt given how it started:

Science will tell you that no two snowflakes have ever been discovered to be identical. The slightest disturbance in the atmosphere, the direction of the wind, the position of the falling snowflake, will alter the pattern. Thus there is endless variety in their design.  The same law governs us all. Whether one's father is always kind, or only kind occasionally, or kind but once, or never kind, will profoundly affect one's development. And if the paternal kindness coincided with one's happiest and most contented moments, it might pass unrecognized. Every move hinges upon the peculiar circumstances of the given moment. 

There you have it -- lots of philosophy packed into a fragment from one paragraph by Egri, found on a cold snowy night in South Lake Tahoe with no laptop in sight.

Notes:

For the physics of snow crystals, see here.

2007-01-04 23:09:21.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
art character dramatic flakes plays snow structure theater writing

Monday January 01, 2007

[ Technology ] The Film and the Cell Phone

New tools have potential to produce new art forms.

Try reviewing some of the short films from the Pocket Film Festival. (BBC had a preview of the festival, and a later commentary can be found here.) 

Daniel Terdiman of Wired had written about cell phone films much earlier, and more recently, Boston University students are making short films using mobile phones provided by Amp'd. (Amp'd, a mobile communications operator, focuses on serving young subscribers.)

We probably have to wait a bit more to discover the best genre and quality characteristics of these films. For example, will the films have the same dimensions as usual dramatic work: premise, character, conflict and resolution? (Some of the shorts form the Pocket Film Festival seem to give a positive answer to this question.) What stories will these films be best suited to tell? Who will be the primary audience? For what purpose and how will the viewers watch these films?

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art film france mobile video

Thursday December 21, 2006

[ Art (هنر) ] A Painting Biennial in Tehran

While looking for a photo of yalda celebrations this year, I ran into this interesting photo from the scene of The Fourth International Painting Biennial of The Islamic World in Tehran, Iran. Click on it and you'll see a larger image at Flickr. I believe the biennial started in the last week of November, and it looks like it ended today, December, 21, 2006. Here are some other pictures I found. It would be good to see more photographs of this exhibition. (As another example, check out this work.) There does not seem to be a website for the biennial or one that actually displays all the paintings. I believe my friend, and ex-Berkeley-ite, Bobak Etminani, also has several paintings on display in the biennial.

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art exhibition iran museum painting tehran

Saturday November 25, 2006

[ Travel ] Thanksgiving in Tehran

Since I have been traveling to Europe to attend a work-related meeting the week after Thanksgiving, I decided to see if I could take an extra day off to pay a visit to family and friends in Tehran during the Thanksgiving holidays. I was fortunate because the circumstances came together and made this possible. So, the moment I arrived in Frankfurt earlier this week, I went to a ticketing agent and purchased a ticket to Tehran. Only 370 Euros from Frankfurt to Tehran on a flight that takes only 4.5 hours. (I paid about that much in the summer of 2004 for a train trip from Frankfurt to London and back.)

In contrast to its hot summers, Tehran is quite cool in November. I arrived at midnight and took a taxi from the airport to my parents, a very smooth ride on the freeways that connect the different parts of the city. My parents were waiting, and after a short nap, I went out to buy sangak bread freshly made in the neighborhood. There had been snow in higher elevations in the city, and as I walked back to have breakfast with my parents, I could see the magnificent mountains to the north covered in a white blanket.

Unfortunately, I was only there for a few days and had no time for mountaineering, an activity everyone who visits Tehran should accommodate in their travel schedule. Instead, I spent most of my time visiting family and friends, includling my good friend and prominent painter Bobak Etminani, who also took me to a birthday party where I met a group of Berkeley (California) friends after more than a decade. We had lots of lively conversations at the party and afterwards, and I had a good chance to touch base with Bobak about the recent turn in his work.

Please stay tuned. I will try to include some images of Bobakäs recent paintings in a blog entry after I return to the States. I will also post some photos on my flickr album.

I should probably end this short diversion by saying that I don't make it a habit to leave my wife and children behind in the U.S. during Thanksgiving holidays. Really, my absence this year was not that bad. Back in California, my family have had very good visiting campany, including many friends and a grand-mother, and they were invited to a very large, extended-family Thanksgiving dinner at my wife's uncle.

2006-11-25 02:24:53.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
art california contemporary iran paintings tehran thanksgiving travel