Archive for December, 2009
Happy Holidays
Wherever you are, Happy Holidays from the team at White Line Hotels.
We’re taking a few days off, so see you in the new decade…may it bring you all that you wish for.
Iain and Co.
The Christmas greeting used above was created by James Theophane for Lost Boys International to demonstrate their core value of collaboration (a value White Line Hotels believes in). The full story can be found on James’s blog.
Daily Life Wall Clock
As time ticks away until Christmas and the end of the decade, this rather unique view of time telling appeared on our radar.
By designers BGM Project, the Daily Life Wall clock does away with traditional hands in favour of a grandmother, grandchild and a dog. The wall clock tells the time through a series of scenes of daily life, with each figure moving through the scenes to represent the time.
11:57:04
New Years Eve. Do it White Line style.
Do you remember where you were for the Millennium? Do you remember how cool you were and the vast amounts of metallic clothes you had on? Do you remember your hair? I’m sure it would still be in fashion now. Do you remember you wondered where you would be in 10 years time?
Well, you’re here now but where will you be? Will you be over-looking Hamburg’s fireworks? Or perhaps you’ll be greeted with a regal welcome with champagne and beautiful people? Christmas will be a cringe-worthy memory by this point and your big feast of the year is well and truly over. However ladies and gentlemen, there’s one last chance to redeem yourselves by spending New Year having an incredible last supper of the decade. Do something worthwhile instead of every other mediocre 31st December there’s been since the dawn of time. Do it right. Do it White Line style.
The Anarchy of Silence
The Anarchy of Silence John Cage and Experimental Art
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
If a piano is in front of a room full of people, but no one hits a key, does it make a sound? John Cage’s arguably best-known work, 4’33” (1952), answered this question very simply: yes, if only because true silence is never possible. Cage’s 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence in 3 movements have certainly seen more than their duration of critical and satirical fame. Less often are they placed in their context. The Anarchy of Silence, however, offers exactly that rare opportunity to see Cage’s work exhibited in direct relation to key works of contemporaries (from Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (1951) and Robert Morris’s Box with the Sound of its Own Making, (1961), to the new mediascape of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and beyond).
This first historicization of Cage’s work moves decade by decade through the artists’ work, from the 1930s through to the final decades of his life. While the focus remains on Cage, of particular interest are the links framed by dialogues with other artists (Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg, among many others) that position Cage’s work in the “post-Pollock” generation that sought a cultural tabula rasa, and follow its influence into the 60s avant-garde, Fluxus, and conceptual art.
Until 10.01.10 at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), 1 Plaça dels Àngels 08001, Barcelona.
Need a place to stay during your visit? Hotel Omm is perfect.
Gender Check
Gender Check Femininity and Masculinity in Eastern European Art
MUMOK – Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna
The issue of commemoration almost inevitably produces a quandary. Where should the focus lay? On the event itself, historically speaking? Or on the changes between the time we are marking and our present?
Berlin marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November with the fall of a wall of 8-foot dominoes and the music of Bon Jovi. Gender Check at MUMOK in Vienna, which opened just days later, offers a different opportunity to consider the meaning of the fall of the iron curtain. Rather than trying to jump in the Delorean with Marty McFly, curator Bojana Pejic and a team of experts from 24 different countries have assembled an exhibition of over 200 artists that examines the progression of gender and gender roles as they have been portrayed in the art of the former soviet block over the last 50 years. With over 400 works including paintings, sculpture, installations, photography, posters, films and videos, the relationship between art and history is woven together thematically as well as chronologically. From the “sexless society” of Socialist Realism and the “unofficial” art that answered its ideology with irony, to the new challenges posed by merging with the west, Gender Check is the first comprehensive exhibition of this, until recently, largely unknown chapter in art history.
Until 14.02.10 at MUMOK, Museumsplatz 1, A-1070 Vienna, a short walk from hotel Hollmann Beletage.