ZERMATT UNPLUGGED a festival

Switzerland and the jaw dropping Alpine vistas of Zermatt provide an altitudinous festival of acoustic music, love songs and storytelling. It is all about getting back to the simply beautiful song: raw, direct and immediate.

A backdrop that could bring you to your knees, with stages in the airy heights. In its fifth edition from the 17th to the 21st April 2012, Zermatt Unplugged presents singer-songwriters, bands and young talent from the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Zermatt Unplugged was founded in 2007 by Thomas Sterchi and Marco Godat as a singer-song writer festival. It grows continually as a meeting point for avid followers of true sounds. Musicians and bands like Suzanne Vega, Chris de Burgh, Alanis Morissette, Billy Idol, Seal, Lionel Richie, Stephan Eicher, Jason Mraz, David Gray, OneRepublic and Mando Diao enthusiastically agreed to be part of the idea of Zermatt Unplugged and have performed in the past festivals.

Zermatt Unplugged is the only festival of it’s kind in Europe and is promoted by important Swiss music festival organisers, such as Claude Nobs (Montreux Jazz Festival) and Urs Leierer (Blue Balls Festival). In 2009 the concept artist and musician Dieter Meier (Yello) became the Festival’s patron. Princess Anni-Frid von Reuss, the A from ABBA, and Jon Lord, Hammond organ player and founder of Deep Purple also support Zermatt Unplugged.

This year, Chris de Burgh, Gregoire and Aloe Blacc are just some of the performers taking stage – get yourself off for a little mountainous culture – more Zermatt Unplugged 2012 here and remember – White Line Hotels have just the perfect pad for the festival – Cervo Mountain Boutique Resort.

White Line Hotels – Cervo Mountain Boutique Resort, Zermatt Switzerland

George Condo’s Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

The Stockbroker, 2002, oil on canvas

In case you didn’t hear, Kanye West used a painting from a series he commissioned from George Condo as the cover of last year’s release My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The album was promptly rejected by numerous retail outlets enraged and disgusted by the cover, which depicted the singer straddled by an armless naked woman with wings. That was exactly what West had in mind.

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Why Can’t We Be Ourselves Like We Were Yesterday?

When I walked through the darkened entry door of Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum last week, there were a few things I expected to find, and even to feel, when visiting the first major survey of the movement. A Michael Graves tea kettle, for example. Maybe an occasional twinge of repulsion as well. Postmodernism was, in a way, very reactive; surely not all of its expressions could hold up decades later. Add to the mix that no one seems to know how many more “post” prefixes to add on to accurately describe where we’ve philosophically been at in the last 10-20 years, and what I really expected was an almost indescribable suffocating nausea. I also expected that to fuel a good few conversations about why we, in a collective sense, seem to be struggling to throw over the weight of post-modernism (or post-post-modernism, or so on…) the way they had done with modernism, and just get on with it.

The last thing I expected was to be slapped in the face, almost immediately, with an overwhelming and incongruous sense of nostalgia. How on earth did that happen? Jenny Holzer’s Protect Me From What I Want never seemed so relevant…

In one way, I was relieved. That kind of reaction must really mean that post-modernism really is dead. The discussion is over. We are free. So why did I still feel such a sense of loss?

For one, the curation and exhibition design were excellent, and they knew what they were doing: throwing a funeral service. The low lighting, ostensibly to protect the objects exhibited, worked with the dark industrial display units to create an extremely somber atmosphere that at times created the perfect backdrop, by means of contrast, to postmodernism’s most colorful and playful moments. Pieces by early postmodernist Italian design group Memphis were among the works that looked more joyous for this context; the expected Michael Graves tea kettle, however, could have been an Egyptian relic in its low-lit vitrine.

Postmodernism covered a lot of ground, and the stand-out achievement of the exhibition was the successful transition between art, architecture, product design, film, fashion and, perhaps most importantly, music. Pop songs become siren songs, irresistibly pulling you around dark corners to discover the next chapter in Postmodernism’s story, and then decline. Indeed, the room on pop music seems to serve as the exhibition’s control room. Here costumes from Grace Jones, David Byrne, and Klaus Nomi are displayed at unnatural heights, elevating the characters they represent to a God-like status. If any doubt remains as to music’s importance in the exhibition’s narrative, that becomes as dead as the movement itself at the exhibition’s end. Staring at Andreas Gursky’s Tokyo Stock Exchange (1990), you’re pulled around one last corner, past a Robert Longo drawing, by the sound of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle. In this last dark room is the video Longo directed for the song, and it’s almost impossible not to see it as an epitaph for a movement that, at that time, was just beginning to crash under its own weight:

I feel fine and I feel good
I’m feeling like I never should
Whenever I get this way
I just don’t know what to say
Why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday

Far from its funeral service, London’s Bethnal Green is still just off average tourist’s radar. For a different London experience, base yourself at White Line Hotels edit Town Hall Hotel & Apartments.

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Contributing writer: Melissa Frost

Photos: Victoria & Albert Museum

Music, Arts, and Political Discourse at Elevate Festival

You’ve heard of music and arts festivals before, I’m sure. Throw in some political discourse on top and you have the unique blend of a very individual festival, indeed: the Elevate Festival. Starting today in Graz, Elevate achieves it’s special mix by combining discussions, workshops, lectures, and film screenings with a program of contemporary music performers and DJs. If you’re not sold on it yet, how often do you get to go to something inside Graz’s historic Schlossberg? After taking an elevator literally down inside the hill, you’ll spend your festival time in a series of caves and tunnels inside the rock.

This year’s line-up of performing artists is so extensive, you need to read it for yourself, but expect an eclectic program that ranges from evenings of house, to avant pop, to psychedelic noise rock. The diversity offered at Elevate is made possible by extending the usual 3-day festival program to 6 days, and utilizing several venues means that on some days, you’ll have 4 simultaneous concerts to pick from. Just remember when you’re dancing to the last DJ’s set at 6am, the program of talks and films probably kicks off at 10am…to party through, or to power-nap, that is the question…

You’ve probably got everything planned already if you’re traveling to Graz for Elevate Festival this year, but how do you immerse yourself in the arts in Graz during the rest of the year? Easy – at White Line Hotels edit Schlossberghotel the art is so close, you’re sleeping in the same room with it.

ART IS IN THE AIR: sommer.frische.kunst

Bad Gastein is one of those rare places where, almost as soon as you enter it, the world outside its mountain-defined borders seems to evaporate into a distant memory. Imagine you’re walking down one of the spa town’s many winding Alpine streets, en route to a thermal water spring no less, and the unmistakable smell of spray paint begins to mix with that of the mountain air. Your first reaction is confusion. “What IS that?” you ask yourself as your second reaction begins; you remember what spray paint is and begin for a moment to come back to the real world. As you round a corner and begin down some stairs, you realize that you have not just had your Bad Gastein bubble burst. No, you have just entered a new pocket of it: sommer.frische.kunst.

The summer long festival program includes an artist residency culminating in the presentation of a light installation by artist Thomas Hoke and an exhibition opening on August 27th in the historic hydroelectric power station, used in the meantime as a studio building for the residency’s artists. After you’ve worked your way all the way down the hillside, it’s no time to be shy – the power station door is more than likely open, and if you happen to catch one of the artists with a minute to spare, maybe you’ll get a preview of what’s to come in August’s exhibition. If you don’t get lucky at the power station, don’t despair. Just head up to Hotel Miramonte where works by several of the artists – who are also spending their residency at the hotel – are on display in the lobby and dining room.

Visual arts not really your thing? No problem, sommer.frische.kunst still has something for you! The Summer Jazz In The City program offers 15 national and international jazz acts performing in the open air, or if the skies aren’t cooperating that evening, in the Grand Hotel de l’Europe.

Bad Gastein is home to endless hotels all perched on its steep cliffs, but we can only see 2. Start your Bad Gastein experience at Haus Hirt or Hotel Miramonte, the edit chosen by White Line Hotels.