schwarzfahrer

Yesterday, in Babylonia e.V. ( alternative center for languages, political discussion, cultural events and exhibitions), during my German lesson has been screened "Schwarzfahrer", a 10 minutes short movie from 1993, written by Pepe Danquart.

This plays around the meaning of the word "Schwarzfahrer", which can be litteraly translated as "Black rider", while in the spoken language refers to who travels without paying the fare. 

The staged episode is about racial discrimination that, during a tram ride, a "schwarzfahrer" (fare dodger) undergoes to another "schwarzfahrer" (black rider).

Here the movie:

simplicity of expression

After a week of deep diving in the strenous universe of german grammar, I finally successed in putting down my first short lecture. As subject, I've chosen the well enough known asian poetry form "Haiku".
Further, I tried my best to disclose the tradition of juxtaposing Haikus (in the form of calligraphy) to paintings made in order to create minimalistic works. These, called "Haiga", convey the idea of the binomial beauty-simplicity rooted in the cultur of East-Asia.

Considering my not-too-wide knowledge of german, the presentation results quite synthetic. And regarding the english version, unfortunally, so far I haven't had time to occupy myself with it. 
Anyhow you might enjoy the few emblematic pictures I sparsely arranged in the pages.


Here you can have a look at the PDF.

a thousand grasses

Some weeks ago, fishing around at the library of Martin Gropius Bau Museum (Berlin), I had to stop few minutes to browse a charming book: "Le Japon artistique" - Japanise floral pattern design in the Art Nuveau Era". 

Bewitched by the elegant prints i found in it, I could not resist making it part of my bookshelf.

Thanks to it, I came to know the so-called "Rinpa", one of the oldest schools of Japanise paintings, in which is developed a distinctive style, that turns the classical Japanise motifs in abstraction of composition, through a courious illusion of details (plants growing from no earth, creation of shapes through the absence of colour) and a poetic arrangement of visual elements.

Of the affiliation of the fine artists the book introduced, one excited most my curiosity and brought me to carry a little research out, he was Kamisaka Sekka (Chigusa), who was artist, designer and last figure belonging to the Rinpa school.

Of Chigusa, I found of remarkable beauty the collection of pictures of one of his woodblock printed design books: A thousand Grasses (1899). 

Here i post two substancial works:

Here, i link a rich database with a detailed sum of his works. To have a spacious view of japanise art,  i reccomand you to have a look to some other artists pages, some of who i will, hopefully, tell you more soon :)