“German book fair to showcase cultural melting pot Argentina - Feature - Earthtimes” plus 2 more |
- German book fair to showcase cultural melting pot Argentina - Feature - Earthtimes
- Cultural Icon, Lauren Conrad, Shares Her Thoughts on Living Drug Free and Choosing Fashion as a Natural High - StreetInsider.com
- Modern kitchen design reflects cultural changes - Tuscaloosa News
| German book fair to showcase cultural melting pot Argentina - Feature - Earthtimes Posted: 02 Oct 2010 07:02 PM PDT Buenos Aires - Argentinians love to read books, and some of them love to write them as well, as Germans will be discovering next week on book-review pages and TV during the Frankfurt Book Fair.Every year the Fair nominates a special guest for promotion to the German reading public. Argentina is to use its five days of glory at the October 6-10 event to highlight younger writers who do not yet enjoy world fame.The country is a "melting pot" of world literature, says Mario Goloboff, a writer himself and professor of literature, referring to the multi-ethnic style of his homeland. Goloboff thinks this is what makes Argentine books so special.The nation is funding visits to Frankfurt by 60 Argentine authors and other intellectuals and mounting 12 exhibitions in Germany.This is a special year for Argentina: the bicentennial of its independence from Spain.The government has funded a programme to translate 300 books by 230 Argentine authors, mainly into German but 32 other languages have benefited. Many of the books deal with Argentina's dark past: its years under a brutal military dictatorship.Several major German newspapers publish one or two pages of reviews of books from the special guest nation just before the Fair, and TV arts programmes interview the writers if they speak German, so the seed money may pay off with increased book sales in Germany.A country of 41 million people, Argentina offers not just breathtaking natural beauty and scenic variety but also high culture.Its best-known cultural export is the tango, danced to melancholy music and haunting words written by some of the nation's great poets."Enrique Cadicamo and Homero Manzi,an Argentine surrealist, wrote tangos, as did Hector Negro," said Goloboff when asked to name names.The ranks of Argentine novelists and essayists with a world following are led by Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar. Others would name Adolfo Bioy Casares, Roberto Arlt, Manuel Puig, Ernesto Sabato, Juan Gelman and Osvaldo Bayer.Argentine book publishing is strong, with 22,600 titles published in the country for total annual sales of 88 million last year. Two thirds of those sales are by classical publishers selling through bookshops: the remainder are free religious tracts and advertising publications.Argentines seem to be keen writers, judging by the success of creative writing courses conducted by recognized or budding authors.Says Goloboff, "I find my students tend to be more serious about what they are doing than the students I used to have in France. People are very dedicated to literature, even if there's not a hope in hell that it will ever earn them an income."Organizers of Argentina's self-promotion at the book fair hope to win TV and German news coverage for younger authors such as Felix Bruzzone, Elsa Drucaroff, Martin Kohan, Guillermo Martinez, Samanta Schweblin and Alan Pauls."They are figureheads of some important and courageous literature," said Goloboff, 71, who compiled an anthology of work by authors who were killed or driven into exile by the 1976-83 dictatorship.Goloboff said major names in the group included Rodolfo Walsh, Paco Urondo and Haroldo Conti, the latter a figure who Goloboff believes deserves greater fame than he has won so far.The professor says that what he finds most fascinating about Argentine writings is the mixing of cultures."Take me for example. I grew up in a home where we spoke Yiddish," said Goloboff, whose Jewish grandparents emigrated from Ukraine in 1904. "My roots obviously affect the way I use language."Roberto Arlt (1900-42), author of the coming-of-age novel Mad Toy, was typical too.Arlt once said, "They say I write rather badly."He spend his childhood in Argentina in a family where German was spoken (and his mother was a native Italian speaker), so he mostly heard badly spoken Spanish and had to teach it to himself. His Spanish always remained idiosyncratic, said Goloboff."But that is what gave his style its incredible force," the professor explained. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2010 12:58 PM PDT
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Modern kitchen design reflects cultural changes - Tuscaloosa News Posted: 27 Sep 2010 01:28 AM PDT Published: Monday, September 27, 2010 at 3:30 a.m. NEW YORK | The kitchen, once tucked away in the basement or a back annex, became a laboratory of modern design in the 20th century. It became a showcase for consumer culture and a symbol of changing gender roles. The changing kitchen is the focus of an exhibit that opened this month at the Museum of Modern Art called "Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen." It comprises almost 300 works, all from the museum's collection, including design objects, architectural plans, posters, photographs, archival films, prints and paintings. The inspiration was the acquisition last year of the "Frankfurt Kitchen," on view for the first time at the Modern. Designed by German modernist architect Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky from 1926-1927, it was one of about 10,000 kitchens built as part of an affordable housing initiative in Frankfurt after World War I. The Frankfurt Kitchen exemplifies the early 20th century belief in the transformative power of design, particularly as a way to transform the lives of working people. Compact and ergonomic, it integrated appliances, work and storage space in a new way. "The design embodies the concerns of the modern movement: efficiency, hygiene, standardization and social concerns," says the show's curator, Juliet Kinchin. It also is the museum's earliest work by a woman architect. Another example of standardization on display: the brown paper bag. The flat-bottomed paper grocery bag was developed by Charles Stillwell for the Union Paper Bag Machine Company in Philadelphia and was first patented in the United States in 1883. The show also features a lithograph from Frank Lloyd Wright's "American System-Built Houses," a folio in which he illustrated different ways to configure factory-produced, standardized building components. After World War II, a burgeoning consumer culture in the United States was fed by corporations that capitalized on wartime research into new materials and technologies. Kitchen products such as the Tupper Corporation's nesting refrigerator bowls and the Chemex Coffee Maker were symbols of an economic boom that contrasted with the postwar deprivations in Europe. Photographs of the 1959 "Kitchen Debate" between President Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev exemplify the political implications of the sleek, 20th-century American kitchen. In the 1950s, kitchens were still considered the domain of women, but there was interest in making the work easier. An article on display titled "New Kitchen Built to Fit Your Wife" (Popular Science, September 1953) describes a test kitchen developed at Cornell University's Housing Research Center in 1952 to ease work based on time-motion studies. The re-emergence of European design during the 1960s and '70s is highlighted by "Spazio Viva," a hinged, mobile kitchen on castors that incorporates a stove, small refrigerator, pullout cutting board and storage space. It was designed in 1968 by Virgilio Forchiassin for the Italian company Snaidero, and is "a kind of Frankfurt Kitchen for a younger, more affluent generation. And you can take it with you when you move," Kinchin says. The "Counter Space" exhibit ends with examples of how contemporary artists have used the kitchen as a backdrop for statements about gender, economics and politics. Those include Cindy Sherman's film stills with groceries in a kitchen, William Eggleston's photographs of the inside of an oven and freezer, and Laurie Simmons' photos of dollhouse scenes, which she has said express feelings about domestic life. "It's interesting for me that a picture can be so colorful and so bright and so vivacious and so lonely at the same time," Simmons has said. "Counter Space" runs through March 14. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from cultural - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment