Never Land, 3 channel synchronized slide projection, 153 color slides, 2008
Wonder Land, 80 color slides, 2008
"To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause", audio documentation of performance, poster, 2007
NEVER LAND
Christodoulos Panayiotou
Preview/ açılıs: 24.02.09 18-21
Exhibition/ sergi: 25.02.09 – 04.04.09
Open/ açık: tue-sat 12-18/ salı-cum 12-18
Rodeo
Tütün Deposu // Lüleci Hendek Caddesi No 12 Tophane 34425 Istanbul TR
T + 90 212 2935800 www.rodeo-gallery.com info@rodeo-gallery.com
Rodeo is very pleased to announce the first Istanbul solo exhibition of Limassol born, Berlin based artist Christodoulos Panayiotou.
The exhibition takes its name after the three-channel synchronized slide show Never Land, one of the three works presented at the gallery. Never Land (first shown at the Taipei Biennale 2008) is an abstract scenario on the subject of failure. Composed after research in the archives of the oldest newspaper in the Island of Cyprus “Phileleftheros”, the work proposes a view on the decade of the 90s, the socially and politically charged period during which Cyprus was in the process of becoming a member of the European Union.
Wonder Land (single slide projection), the second work presented in the exhibition, is the outcome of extensive research in the municipal archives of the city of Limassol pointing out the obsession of locals to disguise into Disney characters during the carnival parade (one of the most important social events on the island). The work covers the period from late 70s up to 2007.
To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause is the audio recording of the performance under the same title, which took place on a boat traversing the Aegean Sea in September 2007. Seven songs from American musicals of the cold war and that use weather metaphors for utopian projections are performed by the singer Kristian Finne Kristensen. The performance is part of a project under the general title Let it shine which was initiated in Istanbul while the artist was a resident at Platfrom-Garanti and which documents the way in which ordinary meteorological reports constitute the subversive language of politics and political ideology.
“Originally trained in dance and performing arts in Lyon and London Panayiotou's works are performance-based and collectively span every level of what one could describe as a spectrum of the performative in art – from creating a space for an activity such as dancing, directing actors and events, to the recording and tracing of both the artist's and society's 'performances'. Formed in a range of media, often incorporating video and sound within installations Panayiotou's aesthetic interventions often reference political stimuli and yet can be read in a multitude of ways. In 2005 Panayiotou won the 4th DESTE Prize from the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Athens, Greece. He has recently exhibited in The Museum Of Modern Art Oxford, UK, 2006; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, 2007; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center Istanbul, 2006 (where he has also been a resident artist the same year); Den Frie, Copehagen, 2007, The Busan Biennal (2008), Taipei Biennale (2008).” (N.P)
Panayiotou is currently a resident artist in Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, where his solo exhibition opens in March 2009. In the coming months will be exhibiting at MOCA Miami and the 2nd Athens Biennial.
In April, an extraordinary auction will provide an unprecedented look into the private world of Michael Jackson. More than 2,000 items, ranging from personal effects and costumes to pieces from Jackson's private art collection as well as fittings and furnishings from his Neverland ranch, will be up for sale at a four-day public auction at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles.
Given the continuing fascination that the self-styled King of Pop exerts over the public imagination, Darren Julien, the affable Los Angeles-based auctioneer of celebrity merchandise who is directing the sale, expects a media circus to descend on the hotel as well as tribes of devoted Jackson fans from all corners of the globe. Select lots are to be sent on a touring exhibition that will arrive in Dublin and London in March before a full-scale exhibition opens for one week in Beverly Hills prior to the sale.
The idea, Julien says, is to create the kind of spectacle with which Michael Jackson has been so often associated throughout his career. This is the first sale that the superstar has sanctioned of his property. Michael took legal action in 2007 to try, unsuccessfully, to halt an auction held in Las Vegas of Jackson family items that had been acquired by New Jersey businessman Henry Vaccaro.
This new auction seems to mark Jackson's severance from Neverland, his Xanadu and a symbol of his success as well as his largesse. The ranch opened as a private amusement park in 1988, with its own zoo and Ferris wheel, roller coaster and bumper cars. It was named after Peter Pan's fantasy island where children never grow up, and for years children would arrive by the busload, invited to play freely in its grounds. But following the 2005 child molestation trial - which saw Jackson acquitted of all charges - the singer never returned to the 2,800-acre property in the Santa Ynez Valley, 130 miles west of Los Angeles. There were stories of him pitching up in Dubai, Dublin and Las Vegas before he started renting a seven-bedroom mansion in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, earlier this year. The 50-year-old star was said to be defaulting on payments on vast loans, and while he is thought to retain an interest in Neverland through his involvement with a private investment company, Colony Capital, he has said that the police investigation of the premises "violated" it in his eyes.
Before it was recently renamed Sycamore Valley Ranch, and at Jackson's request, Darren Julien and his team were brought in to scrutinise the ranch. What they found inside was the most astonishing collection of objects these experienced auctioneers said they had ever seen in a celebrity home. "It seemed as if everything he owned was made of bronze and marble and gold," says Michael Doyle, who catalogued the sale items, as well as determining their value.
Jackson surrounded himself with regal finery. There were suits of armour, display cases of custom-made crowns and an ornately carved throne with red velvet upholstering in his bedroom. "King Michael" even had a royal cape, a Father's Day present inscribed inside with a message from his children "Princess Paris" and "Prince Michael". In the lobby of the house was a commissioned portrait of Jackson as a young man in Elizabethan dress, holding a crown on a velvet pillow. Julien and his team spent almost two months at Neverland last summer, meticulously cataloguing 2,000 items, which will be sorted into 1,500 lots. Cranes and forklifts were brought in to dismantle the fairground rides and move the ornate bronze sculptures scattered across 38 acres of the estate.
In a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the famed gates of the Neverland ranch now sit against a wall. The interior of the warehouse is littered with the ornaments that once decorated the grounds. There are bronze statues of frolicking cherubs, replica marble busts of Roman emperors, a huge statue of Prometheus that used to sit on a skull near the entrance. On shelves there are child-size diesel-powered race cars that used to zoom around the grounds. There is a Pope-mobile-style electric buggy fitted with tinted windows and stereo system. Another buggy has the King of Pop's face painted on its bonnet.
The sale also includes vintage video game machines, as well as Jackson's collection of 18th- and 19th-century art. There are books about Disney, the Three Stooges, Peter Pan and Alfred Hitchcock, as well as a collection of black history books, including the autobiography of Malcolm X. Then there is a selection of his own stage costumes, dating back from the days of the Jackson 5 through to the present. There is one of the fedoras he wore in the video for Billie Jean; a pair of trousers so studded with diamanté that they feel as heavy as chain mail; there are customised military jackets, featuring insignia surely acquired on his global travels - including badges from the Royal Air Force and the Thai Narcotics Bureau.
While the lots are "priced as if you and I had owned them, not as if they were owned by Michael Jackson", according to Martin J Nowlan, the Irish co-owner of Julien's Auctions, this is "certainly not a fire sale" of Jackson's belongings - there is, he says, much more to the singer's hoardings. But it would seem to have a personal significance, perhaps symbolising the point at which Jackson himself feels finally able to divest himself of much that conspired to tarnish his career in order to begin anew.
Source: The Guardian
Grūtas Park - lith. Grūto parkas - is a sculpture garden of Soviet-era statues and an exposition of other ideological relics, founded by the Lithuanian entrepreneur (and former wrestler) Viliumas Malinauskas, near Druskininkai, about 130 km southwest of Vilnius, Lithuania. It is unofficially called Stalin's World or Stalin World (by way of reference to theme parks such as Walt Disney World and SeaWorld).
After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, these statues were all taken down and dumped in different places. Later Malinauskas requested the Lithuanian authorities to grant him possession of the sculptures, so that he could build a privately-financed museum.
This Soviet theme park was created in the wetlands of Dzūkija National Park. Many of its features are re-creations of Soviet Gulag prison camps: wooden paths, guard towers and fences. The park is rich in irony and is intended to amuse as much as to inform, but it awakens many painful memories; its establishment faced some fierce opposition, and its existence is still controversial. Some ideas originally meant to be a part of the park were never allowed. Examples include transporting the visitors with Gulag-style trains, and the restaurant only serving Gulag food.
The park also contains playgrounds, a mini-zoo and cafes, all containing relics of the Soviet era.
Source: wikipedia
Grūtas Park official website
"Hachikō (ハチ公?, November 10, 1923–March 8, 1935), known in Japanese as chūken Hachikō (忠犬ハチ公?, "faithful dog Hachikō"), was an Akita dog born in the city of Odate, Akita Prefecture remembered for his loyalty to his master.
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In 1924, Hachikō was brought to Tokyo by his owner, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. During his owner's life Hachikō saw him off from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno didn't return on the usual train one evening. The professor had suffered a stroke at the university that day. He died and never returned to the train station where his friend was waiting.
Hachikō was given away after his master's death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. After time, Hachikō apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachikō waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he didn't see his friend among the commuters at the station.
The permanent fixture at the train station that was Hachikō attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachikō and Professor Ueno together each day. Realizing that Hachikō waited in vigil for his dead master, their hearts were touched. They brought Hachikō treats and food to nourish him during his wait. This continued for 10 years, with Hachikō appearing only in the evening time, precisely when the train was due at the station.
That same year, another of Ueno's former students (who had become something of an expert on the Akita breed) saw the dog at the station and followed him to the Kobayashi home where he learned the history of Hachikō's life. Shortly after this meeting, the former student published a documented census of Akitas in Japan. His research found only 30 purebred Akitas remaining, including Hachikō from Shibuya Station.
Professor Ueno's former student returned frequently to visit the dog and over the years published several articles about Hachikō's remarkable loyalty. In 1932 one of these articles, published in Tokyo's largest newspaper, threw the dog into the national spotlight. Hachikō became a national sensation. His faithfulness to his master's memory impressed the people of Japan as a spirit of family loyalty all should strive to achieve. Teachers and parents used Hachikō's vigil as an example for children to follow. A well-known Japanese artist rendered a sculpture of the dog, and throughout the country a new awareness of the Akita breed grew.
Hachikō died on March 8, 1935, of filariasis (heartworm). His stuffed and mounted remains are kept at the National Science Museum of Japan in Ueno, Tokyo.
The statue of Hachikō in Shibuya.
In April 1934, a bronze statue in his likeness was erected at Shibuya Station, and Hachikō himself was present at its unveiling. The statue was recycled for the war effort during World War II. After the war, Hachikō was not forgotten. In 1948 The Society for Recreating the Hachikō Statue commissioned Takeshi Ando, son of the original artist who had since died, to make a second statue. The new statue, which was erected in August 1948, still stands and is an extremely popular meeting spot. The station entrance near this statue is named "Hachikō-guchi", meaning "The Hachikō Exit", and is one of Shibuya Station's five exits.
The Japan Times played a practical joke on readers by reporting that the bronze statue was stolen a little before 2AM on April 1, 2007, by "suspected metal thieves". The false story told a very detailed account of an elaborate theft by men wearing khaki workers' uniforms who secured the area with orange safety cones and obscured the theft with blue vinyl tarps. The "crime" was allegedly recorded on security cameras.
A similar statue stands in Hachikō's hometown, in front of Odate Station. In 2004, a new statue of Hachikō was erected on the original stone pedestal from Shibuya in front of the Akita Dog Museum in Odate.
[edit]Annual Ceremony
Each year on April 8th[3], Hachikō's devotion is honored with a solemn ceremony of remembrance at Tokyo's Shibuya railroad station. Hundreds of dog lovers often turn out to honor his memory and loyalty.
Saurce: Wikipedia
TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - An Iraqi town has unveiled a giant monument of a shoe in honor of the journalist who threw his footwear at former U.S. President George W. Bush.
The two-meter (six-foot) high statue, unveiled on Thursday in former dictator Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, depicts a bronze-colored shoe, filled with a plastic shrub. "Muntazer: fasting until the sword breaks its fast with blood; silent until our mouths speak the truth," reads an inscription, in honor of journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at Bush and called him a "dog" at a news conference during the former president's final visit to Iraq.
Zaidi has been held in jail in Baghdad since the incident, facing charges of assaulting a visiting head of state.
Fatin Abdul Qader, head of an orphanage and children's organization in the town, said the one-and-a-half-tonne monument by artist Laith al-Amiri was titled "statue of glory and generosity."
"This statue is the least expression of our appreciation for Muntazer al-Zaidi, because Iraqi hearts were comforted by his throw," she said.
(Reporting by Sabah al-Bazee; writing by Peter Graff) Saurce: Reuters
