Tag: Architecture

Week in Review: May 21st – 27th, 2018

Max MayoLeave a comment

Who We Are and How We Got Here – This will be one of my favorite books I’ll read this year. David Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here details the still nascent field of ancient DNA analysis, how it is upending the existing scientific hierarchy, and how ancient DNA is retelling the story of human evolution on planet Earth. Before this period, we had to rely on anthropology, archeology, philology, and older science, like carbon dating, to triangulate knowledge about human prehistory. Now, thanks to cheaper DNA sequencing technology and new methods of comparative analysis, scientists can gather a bone segment from central Eurasia and quickly know, with near absolute precision, which historic population of humans that sample is from, where that population came from and which populations were near them. The major revelations are twofold; first, pre-historic human populations have been moving around the globe almost continuously since the hypothetical (now in question!) “Out of Africa” theory; and second, these human populations have been mixing with each other for just as long. The implications here are massive. For example, you will learn repeatedly that Earth’s current racial demography is a relatively recent state of affairs and there have been numerous races before. The book details only 30 known human population mixture events, of which there are more still yet to be discovered; these events represent mixtures of populations more genetically disparate than modern Europeans are to modern Asians. There is a steep learning curve to this book, but Reich makes the cutting edge technology understandable for a layperson (read: me) while layering in a moral optimism to the findings. One cannot come away from this information without a profound sense of connection to our species’ shared history.

The Nasher Sculpture Center – A few unsurprising thematic clusters of permanent collection classics comprised the main exhibit on this visit, but the experience was still rich due to Renzo Piano’s wonderful design for the building. His penchant for overhead natural light in gallery spaces is still underrated, and the building’s comb-like structure up’s that ante with glass walls on north and south ends. The joys of that building were then tempered by the sculpture garden which I found a bit generic now that we live in an age where every modern art museum does more or less the same thing here.

The Crow Collection – Only the ground floor was available, but even with one floor and only two micro-exhibits, The Crow Collection is a gem for the city of Dallas. The first exhibit detailed a full set of Japanese samurai armor piece by piece. The armor was arranged on a mannequin in the center of the room allowing for a 360 degree analysis of the many pieces and ornaments. The second exhibit was a brief survey on the history of Korean ceramics. . . which was pretty fantastic luck because Korean ceramics happen to be my favorite ceramics in nearly every way: their colors, their glazes, and most of all, their shapes. The works were arranged by time period and paired with contemporary Korean ceramics for some interesting contrasts. I am always astounded by how distinct, elegant and sophisticated these works are from this tiny peninsula. My suspicion is that the extreme pressures of being sandwiched between the massive, ubiquitous cultures from China and Japan made such creativity possible and necessary.

Foxtrot

Max Mayo1 Comment

Warning! This movie is really, really good and this partial review spoils major plot points. I would advise not watching any trailers nor reading any reviews before going in.

The foxtrot is a dance where, “No matter where you go, you always end up in the same spot.” Michael Feldman explains this to his wife Dafna, late in the film Foxtrot, as he performs the steps in their modern Tel Aviv apartment. Right step, then back step, left step, front. Then right step again, then back step, left step, then front. Ad infinitum. . .

In the film’s first step, Michael and Dafna receive a knock at their door. Dafna opens it, looking straight into the lens, only to faint into a backdrop of spiraling squares. It’s the Israeli military, their very presence needs no explanation. With disquieting efficiency, Dafna is administered a sedative shot and carried to the bedroom. This leaves Michael alone with the officers, the pressure of shock and grief collapsing in him, as they explain that his son Jonathan was killed in action.

We learn that Michael is an architect by trade. Fittingly, he’s framed in disorienting spaces (some of which he likely designed) as he fails to compartmentalize this trauma, and we later learn, traumas awoken from the past. We witness Michael meet with his mother suffering from dementia, his brother, his sister-in-law and his own daughter, each encounter revealing a rapid retreat inwards that is visualized externally.

Michael seems on the verge of imploding irreparably when he gets another knock at his door. There’s been a mistake. A clerical error. It turns out that Jonathan is safe, it was a different boy who was KIA. This prompts Michael to instead explode, demanding his son be returned home at once. And then the film takes its next step.

Director Samuel Maoz utilizes nearly every tool in cinema’s arsenal to execute a severe formalism that pivots radically from tone to tone, act to act, character to character. It’s difficult to overstate just how jarring these shifts are during the experience. This film is a total assault of mise-en-scene, cinematography, music and editing, even space and time, which I found exhilarating.

On one level Foxtrot functions as a family tragedy, a reckoning between mankind and fate. On another, it’s an anti-war film, about the latent violence inflicted on every party in a conflict. But on its grandest scale, Foxtrot is depicting a multi-generational disillusionment of the Israeli project, a national identity crisis in progress. Maoz’s remarkable film acts like a mirror, or maybe a prism, refracting the entire dance across time.

Week in Review: March 12th – 18th, 2018

Max MayoLeave a comment

D’Annunzio’s Cave – Another Heinz Emigholz architecture film, this time about the home of Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio. I was unfamiliar with the man, or his celebrated novels, but it seems his political ideas may have influenced the eventual spread of Italian fascism. For this fact, or for the ghastly interior decorating, Emigholz directs this space as a horror film. As the camera does its usual Emigholz tessellations, an experimental discordant score by David Byrne and Brian Eno puts one in a perpetual state of unease. The rooms of the house are uniquely dark, jarring, over-stuffed, lacking any recognizable or appealing style. It feels like the home of a serial killer.

Koyannisqatsi ft. The Philip Glass Ensemble – Philip Glass was back again, again with friends! This night was a screening of Godfrey Reggio’s city-symphony classic, Koyannisqatsi, with Glass’s original score played live by him and his Ensemble. The Washington Chorus was also there to help. The performance was shaky during the slower nature sequences, but the stage found its groove mid film in time for the rapturous climax. The film remains as relevent today as it was in 1983, and we are still catching up with Ron Fricke’s cinematography.

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez’s surprising and delightful, if bittersweet novel about the power and importance of impassioned love at any age. Stylistically, Márquez abandons the literal magic here, and instead refines his near mystical talent to twist his characters in new directions throughout their lifetimes. The majority of the pages are devoted to several of the steamy 622 love affairs of our hero, Florentino Ariza, as he bides his time, waiting over 50 years for another chance at his first love, Fermina Daza. By the end, you have felt the draining strain of time on Florentino and Fermina as they approach Death’s door-step, but even stronger, you feel these character’s natural will to revivify a type of passion most only get to feel once in a lifetime. That this may be self-delusion is irrelevant to Márquez. The magnetic strength of this urge inspires him, and the reader, above all.

A Brighter Summer Day – Edward Yang’s 1991 epic four-hour coming of age story is a lush time capsule into early 1960’s Taipei. Yang’s primal filmic theme is the erosion of filial piety and A Brighter Summer Day may be his deepest exploration of this process. His narrative strategy this time involves rhyming disparate threads utilizing similar motifs – illumination vs darkness, architectural framing, pop cultural fixations – to layer his multiple story threads. For me, this is the pivot point for Yang’s output, an integral piece of the puzzle in how he moves from the outright fatalism of Taipei Story to the broad humanism of Yi Yi.

Saturday Night Live – This week’s episode with host Bill Hader hit a lower mark than the Sterling K. Brown episode, but there continued to be sketches that were pushing the show’s normal absurdity boundaries. One featured Cecily Strong sitting on her geriatric husband (Hader) in an electric wheelchair during a game night with her girlfriends. His Cialis has just kicked in and they have a limited timeframe to take advantage. In response to the consternation of her friends sitting across the table, Strong pleas, “Its no different than breastfeeding!” A second brilliant skit was a fake ad for an office lamp toilet that you can keep on your desk. Beck Bennett, the office worker who becomes addicted to the lamps, is second only to Kate McKinnon as the most consistently funny and versatile players in this cast.

Plants – I’m told that Chilean film is on the up and up, and was excited to see this 2015 effort by Roberto Doveris. It’s an atmospheric sexual awakening tale about a young girl named Flor who’s family unit is in the midst of decay. Her brother is in a coma (one of the titular plants) and her mother is in the hospital with a terminal illness. The father is out of the picture. Flor spends her free time going to comic conventions, preparing dance choreography with her friends, and naively messaging guys on chatroulette. Real life chat windows, plant life and comic book drawings feature sporadically in the frame as Flor sexual urges lead her into some dangerous encounters. Ultimately, this movie feels like a stew of visual ideas that never congealed. Pablo Larraín remains the face of this emerging cinema, but Doveris could be a director to watch, especially with a more cogent script.

Week in Review: February 26th – March 4th, 2018

Max MayoLeave a comment

Sampha: Process – A Malick-like collage of performances set in urban London, the beaches of Sierra Leone and in a giant empty diving pool, among others. It amounts to an experimental album film, consisting of no linear plot or dialogue (or full songs for that matter), but one gets a vague sense of Sampha’s background and concerns around his mixed global identity.

Sullivan’s Banks – Another short collage, this one about eight banks designed by American architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Heinz Emigholz directs the structures one at a time by simply placing the camera at various angles for observation. Shot in the 1990’s, each analysis begins with a few elliptical master shots where you can see how each building blends in to a small town square. Only when the camera moves closer do you begin to see their quiet radicalism and idiosyncratic nature. Sullivan was a fan of ornament and the density of details and materials on these banks absorb you as the camera tessellates around them. While the film offers no opinion per se, if there is an argument being made it is that Sullivan was a modernist and a visionary that American architecture stopped following.

Maillart’s Bridges – This is another Emigholz short film that is part of his Architecture as Autobiography docu-series. It examines 14 structures, primarily bridges, designed and built by Swiss engineer Robert Maillert (1872-1940) early in the 20th century. Maillert was notable for his creative use of reinforced concrete to minimize material usage and structural footprint. Emigholz’s camera replicates the approach to Sullivan’s banks, with one caveat: as the camera pivots around the sturcutres we almost never see their functional tops. Instead, Emigholz is fascinated with looking at the bridges the way Maillert may have, admiring and exploring the visual play of curves and lines amongst the Swiss Alps’ landscape.

Blind Spot – Teju Cole is one of my favorite creative minds and his first photobook does not disappoint. As he notes within the text, the book represents the 4th segment in a tetralogy about looking. A photography project shouldn’t come as a surprise though. Cole’s penchant for flaneuring in his literary works helps elucidate the formal continuity between the four projects. The photographs, representing over a decade of international travels, are often stunning but he lets none of them speak for themselves. Each image is coupled with a piece of text on the opposite page that contains a reaction to his prolonged exposure to his picture. The pairs are organized thematically and they elliptically build out a continuous stream of thought around his philosophical, aesthetic and political ideas. With this photobook, one looks at Teju Cole looking at what he was looking at.

Chef’s Table – It’s hard not to chuckle at the self-serious formula at this point, which is unfortunate because the chefs are still anything but formulaic. I watched Season 3, Episode 6 about chef Virgilio Martínez of Central based in Lima, who’s ecosystem inspired dishes are fascinating. He and his team scavenge around Peru for hundreds of unique ingredients used nowhere else in the world, and then combine them in groupings based on elevation. Apparently some of the dishes aren’t even designed to taste good.

Solaris – Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1973 three hour Russian science fiction classic. This was a re-watch as part of my Annihilation post-mortum and I can confirm that it still holds up. The film is much broader than I recalled, though I think its possible to read the film as Tarkovsky’s personal crisis over the then obvious shortcomings of the Soviet experiment. A telling 5 minute sequence set in a futuristic Moscow is merely a drive around the multi-tiered infrastructure and booming skylines of Tokyo.

Taipei Story

The 90th Academy Awards – I watch the Oscars every year for shallow reasons that I can’t quite reckon with. It is almost always the same: a drab four hour affair punctuated by a few funny presenting bits and the ensuing consensus of whether or not the host was any good. This year I was pleased by the #MeToo tone of the evening and Jimmy Kimmel’s general presence, but there just weren’t any surprises in this stagnating event. I uncharacteristically did not make a prediction list, but I didn’t need one. All most all of the wins were predictable. The one spark was when Kimmel took a caravan of stars over to a local movie theater, interrupting an ongoing film’s audience with candy baskets and hot-dog canons. The bit ran too long, and it honestly looked like chaos, but it contained the potential for disaster and thus was exhilarating. If the Academy really wants to expand the broadcast audience, they need more uncertainty.