Saturday, August 7, 2010

“Cultural Agenda - Today's Zaman” plus 1 more

“Cultural Agenda - Today's Zaman” plus 1 more

Cultural Agenda - Today's Zaman

Posted: 07 Aug 2010 04:41 PM PDT

The four-day festival offers concerts by such bands as Soulfly, Therapy?, Helldorado, Bulutsuzluk Özlemi and Gripin. (www.biletix.com)

The eighth Bodrum International Ballet Festival will open on Saturday and present eight performances by ballet companies from Turkey, Italy, Spain, South Korea and Greece through Sept. 1 at the Bodrum Castle. Full program and tickets: www.bodrumballetfestival.gov.tr

İstanbul's First International Youth Orchestras Festival offers five concerts by ensembles from around the world through Aug. 29 in the Aya İrini Museum. Tickets can be purchased at Biletix sales points.

The Seventh Gümüşlük International Classical Music Festival runs through Sept. 8 in the southwestern holiday resort town of Gümüşlük, near Bodrum, with recitals at the old Eklisia Church. www.gumuslukfestival.org

The 10th Side International Culture and Art Festival will continue until Oct. 29 in the Mediterranean town of Side, near Antalya, featuring live performances by Turkish and foreign pop acts, international classical music ensembles and folk dance groups. For a full program, visit www.sidefestival.com.

EXHIBITIONS

Cer Modern, Ankara's newly opened modern art museum in Sıhhiye, will unveil two new shows, "interactive," by Gülay Alpay, and "ID's Please!" on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively. Visiting hours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

The Rezan Has Museum in İstanbul's Cibali quarter on the Golden Horn coast is home to "Hasankeyf'i Bilir misin?" (Have You Heard of Hasankeyf?), a group exhibition of photographs of the southeastern ancient site of Hasankeyf in Batman until Aug. 31. Visiting hours: 9 a.m.-7 p.m. every day

"Renk, Işık ve Görkem: Milli Saraylar Tablo Koleksiyonundan Seçmeler" (Color, Light and Splendor: Selected Paintings from the National Palaces Collection) can be seen until Sept. 5 at the Dolmabahçe Palace Art Gallery in İstanbul's Beşiktaş district. The gallery is closed on Mondays and Thursdays.

The Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM) in İstanbul's Emirgan is hosting the exhibition "From Byzantion to İstanbul: 8000 Years of A Capital" until Sept. 4, offering artifacts that chronicle an 8,000-year section of İstanbul's history. The museum is closed on Mondays.

A selection of cartoons from the "100 pour 100" (100 Percent) exhibition, unveiled in January in France as part of the Angoulême International Comics Festival, is on view until Sept. 13 at the French Cultural Center in Taksim.

"Yol" (Way), a series of photographs by Turkish artist Murat Germen, is on display until Sept. 19 at İstanbul Modern's photography gallery. The museum is closed on Mondays.

"Starter," a selection from the contemporary art collection of the Vehbi Koç Foundation (VKV) featuring more than 160 works of art by 87 artists from Turkey and abroad, is on view through Sept. 19 at the ARTER art space in İstanbul's Beyoğlu. Visiting hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 12 p.m.-8 p.m. from Friday through Sunday.

The Pera Museum in İstanbul hosts two exhibitions from Japan, "Ikuo Hirayama: Turkey, a Crossroad of Culture between West and East" and "Japan Media Arts Festival," until Oct. 3. The museum is closed on Mondays.

The İstanbul Modern is home to a selection of fashion collections, art and film projects created between the years 1994 and 2009 by famous Turkish Cypriot fashion designer Hussein Chalayan until Oct. 24.

PERFORMING ARTS

The Anadolu Ateşi (Fire of Anatolia) dance company presents its show "Anadolu Ateşi -- Evolution" every week at the Gloria Aspendos Arena in Antalya. The shows start at 9:15 p.m. For tickets and full program, visit www.biletix.com.

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Kanye West's "Power" Video: A Cultural Cheat Sheet - MTV

Posted: 06 Aug 2010 09:39 AM PDT

Most music videos aim to overwhelm you with quick cuts, big explosions, clever editing tricks and flashy sets that look really expensive.

Then there's Kanye West's clip for "Power." Never one to follow trends — peep how he's already reinvented the art of tweeting in just a week — West's 90-second clip is less a video and more a moving painting in which a grim-faced 'Ye stands center stage while a galaxy of saintly and devilish female figures surround him.

Director Marco Brambilla said his intention was to create a video "portrait" that would "visualize power ... to do a portrait of what power would look like in a sort of timeless way."

We spent way too much time studying what feels like a trailer for a larger piece of conceptual art and broke down the imagery in the video. If it's been a while since your last art history class, get ready to go to school:

Dragonlance: An image of a sword descending into a crown hovers over Kanye's head, bringing to mind Volume Two of Douglas Niles' series "The Crown and the Sword: The Rise of Solamnia," in which Sir Jaymes Markham commands the orders of the Rose, Sword and Crown.

M.C. Escher's "Waterfall": The Dutch artist famous for making eye-popping images in which gravity and space were twisted into pretzels sketched an image in 1961 in which the water at the base of a waterfall appears to be flowing uphill against gravity before reaching the top of the fall, much as the water pours towards the sky out of two urns held by maidens in the Kanye clip.

Chiaroscuro: The monochromatic clip plays with this Renaissance style of painting, in which the artist used sharp contrasts between light and dark to highlight the drama on the canvas. Often, unseen sources of light would illuminate the subjects; in the clip, Kanye appears to have an inner glow that manifests in his eyes and the sword and crown above him cast a light on the entire scene.

Jean-Leon Gerome: The French painter known for his love of historical painting with Greek mythological themes created an image titled "Head of a Woman with the Horns of a Ram," which is not unlike the albino-like female figures sprouting long, pointy horns who frame 'Ye.

"House of Flying Daggers": Though he's transposed the action from China to ancient Greece, Brambilla might be paying homage to the 2004 action-romance "House of Flying Daggers" with the scene at the end of the video, in which two combatants are flying through the air in mid-sword fight as white bursts of light fill the screen.

Ed Moses' "HOLA": This features a haunting single eye glowing behind a swirl of heavy brush marks that some have compared to the mask of a superhero. In "Power," Kanye's eyes have an eerie glow as he stares unblinkingly, also not unlike actor Idris Elba's Heimdall in the upcoming movie "Thor."

Michelangelo: From the rows of Ionic columns surrounding him to the floating parade of gauzy-shift wearing Greek men and women who drift into the frame, Brambilla is clearly taking some inspiration from the classic frescoes painted by Italian Renaissance painter and architect Michelangelo.

Q-Tip: The legendary rapper and member of A Tribe Called Quest released an album called The Renaissance in 2008. He said the reference to that period was more than just an album title and a sign of his unwavering commitment to keeping his art pure.

Ancient Egypt: Yeezy once again rocks the unbelievably fat chain he wore at the BET Awards earlier this year. Its giant pendant is an image of Horus — the Egyptian god of the sky, war and protection.

What images do you see in Kanye's "Power" video? Let us know by below.

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
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