Ominously nicknamed “Devils Mountain,” Teufelsberg is what you imagine from Berlin, a city still showing the scars of the Cold War. The complex on top of Teufelsberg was a former U.S. listening post during the cold war and the hill itself was actually made from all the rubble of the city after Berlin’s destruction during the Second World War. The hill covers a Nazi military technical college designed by Albert Speers which the Allies unsuccessfully tried to destroy, so instead they covered it with a hill.

The result is an artificial hill rising 80 meters high in West Berlin, comprised of what some estimate to be 400,000-buildings worth of rubble. In an effort to overturn its notorious history, investors planned to build a gleaming high-rise for what was supposed to be a luxury hotel and apartment complex, but rumors (now unsubstantiated) of radioactivity quickly shut the project down. The hill has recently caused another scandal when director David Lynch courted the mountain with plans to erect a university dedicated to Transcendental Meditation in 2007. As of now, Teufelsberg still stands bare and unadorned—an eccentric relic of Berlin’s divided past.

On top of this hill sits the abandoned listening station. A huge facility full of dank passages, jail cells and topped by three goedesic domes. You could spends days exploring the inside of this facility, but if you do, remember to take a torch.

Read more: http://berlin.unlike.net/locations/303363-Teufelsberg#ixzz0lxowpqUR and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg

Tristan Perich: Interval Studies (Part 2) from Tristan Perich on Vimeo.

The songs of choice for the night were dominated by what is referred to as the “golden age” of hip hop, when the music was more about celebration than gangsta posturing. This was a time when New York hip-hop led the way with acts like Audio Two, Slick Rick, Eric B & Rakim, Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest. So when the music of each of these acts, along with others from that era, predominated the night’s playlist the event was instantly elevated into full-on hip-hop golden era revival mode. And as the dozen contestants of the night, over instrumentals spun by DJ Wex, rapped their way through three rounds for a chance at the $1,000 prize they revived such much loved songs as “Half Time” (Nas ‘92), “Scenario” (Tribe ‘91), “Slam” (Onyx ‘93) and “The Choice Is Yours” (Black Sheep ‘91), the loudly enthusiastic audience chanted along with every word. The music ended up becoming the star of the night.

So even when some of the participants, including 33-year-old Brooklyite Charlie and 28-year-old Queens native Jessica, didn’t quite do justice to their songs the benevolent crowd cheered them on regardless. In fact even the generous judges—Big Daddy Kane, Buckshot and Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg—were so swept up in the vibe that they handed out some points based purely on sheer love for hip-hop. Hence the reason how the enthusiastic but sub par Jessica took the grand prize when the clear crowd fave Doni D, a rap-star-ready 30 year old from Harlem, only came in second place.

Have a look at the clip below to get an idea of what the night entailed.

Slash: Paper Under the Knife takes the pulse of the international art world’s renewed interest in paper as a creative medium and source of artistic inspiration, examining the remarkably diverse use of paper in a range of art forms. Slash is the third exhibition in MAD’s (Museum of Design and Art) Materials and Process series, which examines the renaissance of traditional handcraft materials and techniques in contemporary art and design. The exhibition surveys unusual paper treatments, including works that are burned, torn, cut by lasers, and shredded. A section of the exhibition focuses on artists who modify books to transform them into sculpture, while another highlight’s the use of cut paper for film and video animations.

Slash presents a range of subjects that artists across the world are exploring through cut paper, such as landscape, the human body, architecture, politics, and language. The processes and techniques used in these investigations include burning, tearing, perforating, and shredding paper as well as cutting with knives, scissors, and lasers. Some artists work slowly, cutting intricate designs with painstaking patience, while others slash and crumple with performative energy. Amongst the eight thematic groupings of the show are “Cutting as Topography: Exploring Landscape,” which explores landscape real and imagined; and “Structure and Space: Slicing Architecture,” which takes the role of paper beyond the simple model or maquette, and explores new possibilities in the interrelationship between flat paper, three-dimensional space, and the built environment.
Below are links to some of the artists who impressed me

http://www.miapearlman.com/

http://adamfowler.com/default.aspx

http://www.andreaskocks.com/works.html

http://www.norikoambe.com/

http://www.robcarter.net/ (you have got to watch some of his video clips – Amazing)

http://www.saraben-studio.com/

http://www.velliquette.com/Site/HM.html

Bringing Christmas Spirit to Bumms near you

I expected Philly to be the quintessential suburban America we’ve all become accustomed to in movies and TV throughout our lives. The America affected by foreclosures and the economic downturn, where danger and gun shots are just a suburb away and all the supposedly regular people are connected only by highways to their work and friends in other similar residential areas.

To some extent this is the Philly that I saw, but also with some very surprising additions to that depressive story but there are reasons for this. I stayed on the border line to “the wrong side of the tracks” where West Philly starts getting ghetto and dangerous. Surprisingly this is the area that UPenn is in, an Ivy League Uni with an amazing architecture and design school. This location does mean that there is always an army of security and police at every turn, just in case….. It gave you the feeling that if the security and surveillance was reduced or distracted for one instant the area would be swallowed by the seedy underbelly of the city just next door. But this location is surprisingly cheap and becoming gentrified as it is just across the river from Downtown.

The Border Line to West Philly

My biggest discovery is that Philly has some of the best stocked bars and restaurants that I have come across while. Most non-dive bars had a wide range of tap beers and bottled beer from all over the world and rarely had Bud on tap. We even managed to find some locally brewed beers with an alcohol content well over 12%, something I haven’t tried outside of Belgium.

And the Food, it ranged from budget Indian, to fine dinning Cuban and everywhere in between. Granted I did arrive for the start of Restaurant Week and therefore were able to go to some places usually out of our price range. But even disregarding this the food was amazing. From contemporary Cuban to a Mexican restaurant decorated like a wrestling ring and still serving surprisingly unusual dishes, Philly certainly has a lot to offer and at a reasonably price. But if you want to try the famous Philly Cheese Steak, make sure you get to Tony Luke’s and order the Fries with Bacon bits and Ranch dressing. Heart Attack in a basket but something you have to try once….

Chocolate Cigar - Cuban Culinary Delight

The four days spent in LA were a mixture of days spent driving the city looking for architectural highlights (which were hard to find, but total gems when I did) and nights spent going from gig to gig with an up-and-coming LA pop rock band I was staying with called Skyrocket love.

Pop/Rock is certainly not my kind of music but it certainly gave me an interesting side of LA and by the end I was surprised that I even kind of liked their music (kind of). I hoped that the music industry still had some organic talent left that rose to the ranks but after seeing their approach to attacking the market its a business from start to finish. But I guess when you’re competing against 12 year old kids who already play like rockstars (we went to an all age gig in Pamona with a whole range of bands) you can understand why their approach has shifted from the music being the most important selling point.

If you really want to see what I’m talking about have a look at the clip or their Myspace linked below, but I can understand if you don’t.

http://www.myspace.com/skyrocketlove

Its impossible to take a bad photograph of this building. Like some massive piece of sculpture standing in the middle of Downtown LA wasteland, an eerily empty world, it sits attempting to inspire.

As a funny anecdote, I heard that because of its highly reflective surface the reflected light has significantly increased the air conditioning of adjacent buildings and now they are attempting to sue the City for damages….

I went along to a photography exhibition on Melrose Place, Beverly Hills the other night for three recent graduates of art school in the LA area, or to be more accurate an exhibition for some rich LA princesses who had just finished photography school and their parents had banded together to put on an exhibition in a swanky gallery on Melrose to show off their daughters talents.

Sage’s stuff was basically a travel journal from New York back to Los Angeles and was a collage of arbitrary but sometimes exciting pics of the journey. Slugs, surfers and footballers who were met along the way, to friends lounging beside pools looking young, hip and exciting trying desperately to nonchalant and spontaneous. This is not meant to be overly critical, but it certainly wasn’t anything new or particularly exciting (or even well taken).

Gia’s work was better and consisted of a collection of small prints mounted in an aesthetic rhythm one leading onto the next ranging form desolate landscapes, beach balls in pools and rusted tin cans. The shots developed from one to another through a thematic or aesthetic similarity resulting in some very stunning pictures. Yet still I would question reaching into my wallet.

Well if the art wasn’t great at least the place was packed with free drinks and celebrities. At about 930 in walks Paris Hilton – she does look exactly like her pictures and seems to seep perfume form her pours. Later Jason Schwartzman, Ashton Kutcher, that guy from how I met your mother and Marisa Tomei turned up and ended up staying for a couple of hours. Turns out the whole reason all these celebrities came was because of the parents who organized the exhibition. Welcome to Hollywood – Snap.

(These shots are taken from www.thecobrasnake.com)

Rousse’s work, from the 1990s to today, generally appears at first glance to be photos of desolate or abandoned spaces (buildings, rooms, parking garages or streetscapes) often on their way to the wrecking ball, on which the artist has superimposed precise geometrical shapes or squiggly graffiti.

However, this is an intended illusion: what Rousse does is to paint these designs onto the abandoned spaces before taking the photo, correcting for such things as the slope of floors or the interruption of beams, so that the painted designs come together to produce the illusion of a simple, flat design floating on the surface of the photo.

This type of work is referred to as anamorphic art. It changes but is only viewable in its intended focus from one precise viewpoint. The projects involve not only painting, but also some construction of sometimes major proportion! Curved walls, angles of light all play into the finished project.

Found at www.todayandtomorrow.net

Embed code: