Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Ari Marcopoulos at Dashwood Books

Apologizes all for the lack of posts in the past few weeks, we at the fourm have been very busy putting together next months magazine & ticking off a few well needed vacation days. Anyhow we are back and ready to keep you informed/excited/motivated & whatever else we do for you.

Over this little break we discovered a gem of a bookshop just around the studio called Dashwood Books. It houses quite a collection of rare & out of print photography books as well as the current contemporary titles. However the beauty is they only carry photography books & their helpful and friendly staff are much more resourceful than those of Barnes & Noble or the likes. We highly recommend a visit & taking out a loan beforehand as it is not cheap.


As well as offering one of the best selections of photo books in Manhattan Dashwood also puts on book signings. Next Thursday, April 3rd at 6pm Ari Marcopoulos will be signing his new book "The Chance is Higher". Those not familiar with Marcopoulos will be immediately struck by the lo-fi aesthetic a good deal of his images & books have as a result of using a Xerox machine to print them.



Dashwood will have 700 limited edition copies at $85 a piece, while also offering 50 deluxe editions for an undisclosed price, whatever that may be.

Ari Marcopoulos: The Chance is Higher
April 3rd 6-8pm
Dashwood Books
33 Bond Street
New York, NY 10012
212 387 8520

See you soon,
The Forum

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Things On

Hey All,
We hope everyone is getting over the post PDN30 hangover that seemed to consume the internet the past week. We have a few bits of information concerning shows & the photo world we thought we might pass on to y'all:
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Nothing groundbreaking here but Glenn reminded us of the plethora of brilliant exhibitions currently being hosted by some of Manhattans finest Museums:

Head to the Upper Eastside of town for a dynamite of an exhibition, I Want To Believe featuring Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang in the Guggenheim. Chances are you have seen some of his highly publicized drawings recently, there not hard to miss, there the ones made with gun powder & explosives. In addition there's photographs from what he calls "Explosion Events" and an installation of what else, cars that are exploding with rave lights. Be sure to catch it before it ends on May 28 or you might just explode.
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While in the area make your way downtown a bit to the always entertaining MoMa, that houses not one but two captivating shows. The first of the two is, Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today. Half retrospective half social conquest, Color Chart asks us to look back at color and how it has affected the artist choice and thus our relationship with it. The accessibility of mass produced and standardized color has paved the way for concepts like Crayola, Benjamin Moore & Pantone to become common place in our society. So next time you are searching for Vivid Tangerine in your Crayola Crayon box maybe think about that.

Carrying on with the social effect & change theme, The MoMa also presents, Design and the Elastic Mind. In a nutshell this exhibition attempts to present a timeline of essential & clever bits of design that have helped progress society in a time of hyper globalization. One quote we felt holds the essence of this show was;
"One of design's most fundamental tasks is to stand between revolutions and life, and to help people deal with change."

It seems both shows have a lot of questions for you to pounder afterwards but we think it's quite nice the MoMa seems to not be highlighting any superstar artists but rather the well-being & understanding of today's evolving society.
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If museums aren't your deal than jump on a Brooklyn bound train to check out a couple gallery shows thanks to Jami & Sean. The first of the two is a bit installation and a bit photography and is Suspended Realities by Sarah Lynch at Klompching Gallery. Lynch's genius in this series lies in her ability to create great tension between seamlessly mundane objects. Her neutral color palette, low angles and distant horizon line do wonders for her simple composed accents, they have a way of feeling playful but ever so serious.

So if installations or perhaps sections of walls going thru gallery spaces are more of your thing than check out Smack Mellon and the architectural installations of Amanda Mathis. Under Renovation addresses the ongoing trend of interior renovation and focuses on building materials & methods to juxtapose the new & the old. Using materials from the original Smack Mellon, the refurbishment and new materials, Mathis replicated parts from the original structure to offer us a new perspective on something old.
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On last minute and upcoming addition, Bond Street Gallery hosts Coney Island of The Heart with pictures by Harold Feinstein, Bruce Davidson, Bruce Gilden, Sid Grossman, Harold Roth & Henri Silberman. Feinstein represents the majority of these nostalgic images but the exhibition also features selected work of the latter. It looks to be a blast from the past and is bound to get us all ready & excited for that summer thats just around the corner. Be sure to check out the Opening Night on the 27th of this month.
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Lastly, The New York Photo Festival has announced their programming for what looks to be an exciting couple of weekdays & weekend in May. The highlight clearly appears to be the curators (Martin Parr, Kathy Ryan, Lesley A. Martin & Tim Barber) laying out their personal roadmaps & visions for contemporary photography, its sure to make one think alot.
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Cheers to Jami, Glenn & Sean for keeping us well informed.

Massive Respect,
The Forum Crew

Friday, March 7, 2008

Master of Disturbance: Michael Haneke

"My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."

Michael Haneke came to our attention last year, when one of our Nutopia members, Andreas Laszlo Konrath, did a photo shoot with a young actor named Brady Corbet. Corbet had just finished filming the remake of Funny Games, and told Andreas about the director and his films.


Since learning about Haneke, we at the Forum have tried to watch his extensive filmography:

- The Seventh Continent (1989)
- Benny's Video (1992)
- 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)
- Funny Games (1997)
- Code Unknown (2000)
- The Piano Teacher (2002)
- Time of the Wolf (2003)
- Cache (2005)
- Funny Games (2008)


Haneke’s vision, although disturbing in most of his films, also makes you question your own definition of what and what isn’t ‘disturbing’. Constantly pushing your own perception of right and wrong, it is rare to find a murder scene in film (where you don’t even witness the physical act of violence), and to be totally emotionally wrecked by it. This plays with our emotions rather than being desensitized by the repetitive mowing down of humans in gory detail that we see in most violent films these days.

It is has almost become common place to witness death in films and not to even blink an eye, where as Haneke makes his scenes with such intensity that you genuinely worry about your own safety in this world. Of course, Haneke is not glorifying murder at all, but showing it in such a way that you become angered by the act. Surely being tested by such film making is what we need every now and then, rather than just sitting back and having an easy ride through the journey of a film.



We advise you see the Austro-German version of Funny Games (1997), and then prepare yourself for the scene for scene remake (by Haneke himself) in English, set in America, with an new all star cast including Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt & Brady Corbet.

An interesting idea of remaking your own film with no changes in script or shots what so ever, and it will be up to the audience to decide how this new version lives up to the highly acclaimed original.


1997


2008

News in the movie pipeline (or sewer!) that Ron Howard is remaking Haneke’s Cache … This also leads us to the question of why Hollywood feels the need to remake every decent European film… But with Funny Games at least the result entirely lies on Haneke’s head, let’s hope he and his new version can live up to the hype.

The remake of Funny Games will be released on March 14th, 2008.

Keep challenging us Haneke!

Nutopia Forum.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Hot Off The Presses: PDN30


We would like to congratulate two forum members, Mike McGregor & Andreas Laszlo Konrath on their inclusion in the illustrious PDN30 this year. Spot on fellows.



Also Mike will be a panelist at PDN's Transitions: Strategies For The Young Working Photographer on March 10th. Looks to be an exciting and eventful evening @ Parsons.



Lastly, Nutopia got it's self a bit of press at the end of the issue with a nice bit of text & our first four covers. We would like to thank our friends at PDN for the exposure. However we would like to note they made a bit of mistake in the article as our website is NutopiaForum.com not Nutopia.com, but you knew that.


Over and Out,
TNF

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Nutopia 5

Welcome to March
&
Welcome to Nutopia Issue 5
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This month we feature the work of:
Cole Barash
Sean Carroll
&
Sung Hyun Sohn

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Out now, check it.
Nutopia Magazine

Cheers
The Nutopia Crew

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Amendment To Previous Post

After a telephone conversation with a mate of ours we feel we must put right a wrong we made the other day.

31 under 31 is opening tonight, rather than sunday.
The Original Post

Sorry for the confusion, we are human afterall.
Hope to see some of you there.