Today: Live Q&A session with Alter Nature curator

Most of the time the audience of an exhibition only sees the final product of an artist or curator: the artwork and the exhibition. We want to give our audiences the chance to take a look behind the scenes. We already posted pictures of the building up of the show on Flickr, now we want to take the next step on Facebook in a live q&a session.

On Wednesday, 1st of December, between 13:00 – 15:00 (CET), Karen Verschooren, curator of the “Alter Nature: We Can” exhibition will be ready to answer all your questions! Are you curious how did we choose this topic for the exhibition? Want to know how long does it take to organize such an exhibition, how the artworks are chosen and how the artists react on a curator’s choice? Or perhaps you have a question about an artwork? All your questions are ready to be answered by our experts.

All you have to do is log-in with your Facebook account and go to the Z33 page (facebook.com/z33be). Post your question on the Z33 Facebook wall. In real time, curator Karen Verschooren will answer your question. As we will all be connected on Facebook, we can transform this into a lively discussion!

Plus, the best question will be featured in one of our videos! We will select the most interesting issues brought to discussion and create a video in which Karen will give extended answers.

See you on Facebook! (in one hour!)

 

Visual Monday: Rory J Cole

I fell in love with these photographs, but unfortunately I can’t tell you anything about their author. I discovered them through Flickr and even though the photographer also has a blog there’s no bio provided.

 

Office styling

I’m participating in a styling contest to win the sweater in the image and this is my view on a fashionable day at the office! What’s yours?

Just another day at the office by Sabina Baciu featuring goldtone

 

 

If you want to play around and create a styling set as well try Polyvore, it’s really easy (and fun).

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

Ok, so first you have to see this movie:

Freaky, no? Probably also not true. Well just do the simplest test: go to your bathroom, take a random beauty product and look at the ingredients. I did this test and this is what I found:

Body Shop Banana shampoo – First ingredient: Sodium Laureth Sulfate , which is a detergent that produces foam. But some products can be contamined with toxic ingredients such as 1,4-dioxane. Plus, it can produce skin and eye irritation. Next my shampoo has butylparaben as an ingredient: Butylparaben is in the paraben family of preservatives used by the food, pharmaceutical, and personal care product industries. Parabens mimic estrogen and can act as potential hormone (endocrine) system disruptors. So yes, this paraben can disrupt our endocrine system or even affect our reproductive system! The Body Shop Shampoo has no less than 4(!!!) parabens. How can a supposedly “natural” shampoo have so many toxic ingredients?

Moving on to my Bioten face wash, which will offer me a natural care for a natural beauty. Uhm.. yeah. Also with Sodium Laureth Sulfate and other long chemical names, but no sign of the honey and arnica promised on the bottle. I also checked the Bourjois Healthy Mix foundation.

There I found Parfum (Fragrance), which even though seems harmless, is actually very toxic:

The word fragrance or parfum on the product label represents an undisclosed mixture of various scent chemicals and ingredients used as fragrance dispersants such as diethyl phtalate. Fragrance mixes have been associated with allergies, dermatitis, respiratory ditress and potential effects on the reproductive system.

Guess what, ladies, I don’t want to put that on my face and body. And the thing that really upsets me is that there are products that don’t have these kind of ingredients in them. There are products with ingredients such as shea butter, lavender oil and so on. I recommend Lush cosmetics because they have all their ingredients listed on the website. Otherwise there are so many handmade cosmetics sites – for Romania Breslo is definitely worth checking out. Otherwise there’s a lot of stuff you can do yourself, with natural ingredients. I already make my own scrub with coffee grounds. So there’s really no excuse of buying these cosmetics bullshit.

For more info on the campaign go here, and to read more on cosmetics’ ingredients check out the cosmetics database.

Visual Monday: Guy Bourdin

The artist I want to talk about today was one of the most innovative fashion photographers. Guy Bourdin (1928-1991) was born in Paris and his career as a fashion photographer spans over three decades. His work is related to Vogue magazine, where he became famous together with Helmut Newton.

Bourdin is said to be the first fashion photographer to shift the emphasis from the product to the image. Instead of taking a photograph of  a shoe, he created a visual story – the shoes may be part of the image, but they are not at all the focus.

Visual Monday: Egor Shapovalov

I have decided to start a weekly column on my blog related to photography. It happens so often to spend my time browsing photography portfolios online and there are a lot of links in my bookmarks folder waiting to be (re)discovered. So every week I will share one of my favourite artists with you. And what better day to do it than Mondays?

The first artist I want to present is Egor Shapovalov: a Russian boy born in the same year as me, 1988. I like his photographs because they create a very still, silent moment. These images are not about movement, snapshots of our daily life. They are not trying to send a message about how we are and how we should be. It’s almost as they represent an oasis of quietness and peace.

What have I been doing in the last 6 months

I know I haven’t been writing. But in the last 6 months I’ve been between countries, houses, between graduation and internships.. My journey is not ready yet, as I’m still jumping between cities and countries hoping to find a cozy spot to rest for a bit. But about future plans later on, now I just wanted to give you a small update on what I’ve been doing lately.

- First of all, I graduated Cum Laude the MA Media Culture! It has been an interesting year, with lovely dinners with new friends and many trips to the Maastricht University library. As everything, I guess, the MA had its strong points as well as things I would definitely change, but all in all I’m happy as a graduate. I spent the second semester writing my thesis, “A study case of digital portraiture: Facebook profile pictures”. After 5 months of researching and writing I’m happy with the result. It was sometimes very difficult to find the motivation to keep on going, as most of my colleagues did internships or organized their own project and were busy bees while I had to read, take notes, write, read, take notes… But nothing beats the day when you print the final version of your thesis and take it to the binder. Aaaah.. still gives me goose bumps : )

- I spent the summer between Bucharest, Berlin, Budapest and Vama Veche. I really missed the long talks over beer with my friends from back home and really enjoyed the trips to the seaside. For a couple of moments we all felt like in our Bachelor years, with their crazy parties and no job, no money, no problems attitude.

- In Berlin and Budapest I participated in two summer schools and had three really awesome weeks with amazing people. I fell  in love with Budapest and will definitely visit it again. The summer schools were “Arts as Cultural Diplomacy” organized by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (Berlin) and “Culture as a Resource: Cultural Practices and policies after ’89″, organized by the Central European University (Budapest).

- The seminar in Berlin lead to an invitation to take part in an international organization called the European Cultural Parliament. Together with other young people involved in arts & culture I am now part of the Youth Network of ECP. We are now drafting a project and I hope I’ll have more stuff to tell you later.

- After the summer I went to Belgium where I started a joint internship at Social Spaces research group (Media, Arts & Design Faculty, Genk) and Z33 house for contemporary art (Hasselt). In the meantime, I discovered how difficult it is to be a “new member” in the EU, as Romanians and Bulgarians still need working permits in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, UK and Malta! So much for free borders, eh..?

- As my MA thesis proved to be quite kick-ass, I went to present it at “Networked Humanities: Art History in the Web”, a conference organized by the European Science Foundation.

All in all, it’s been a crazy and busy year and now I am trying to plan what I’m going to do from January on. I have  no clue, really, and as exciting as that might sound, it’s causing me a lot of stress. I’m applying for jobs and internships in digital communications and arts & culture, but so are other 10 million smart and ambitious graduates. So keep your thumbs up for me, and I hope to have more interesting stories to post on this blog for next year. Otherwise I’m just gonna be a couch potato for undetermined time. And we don’t want that, do we?

In any case, I’m going to start posting more often. So thanks for following my story, or if you are a new visitor, welcome!

Hugs from rainy Belgium

My favourite Cannes Lions ads

The Cannes Lions advertising festival was held last week, between 20-26 June. I really enjoy every year to look at the ad spots that were selected, as they are very often really smart and funny.

Here are my favourite ads from this year’s edition:

This ad for Old Spice body wash won the Grand Prix. It is made by Wieden + Kennedy agency (USA) and it is hilarious! The campaign has also a Facebook page and it seems very very successful: http://www.facebook.com/OldSpice

This TV spot is created for an Argentinian film festival and it shows in a very creative manner that even though Argentinian football kind of lost its glory, the film industry is going up.  Ad agency: Conill Saatchi & Saatchi (USA) – Lions Gold

What a powerful message and moving story. I love this one and especially the fact that they played it in reverse. I think it adds so much more to the message. Agency: Ogilvy (South Africa) – Lions Gold

This Gatorade campaign reunited some ex-highschool football players in order to show the importance of  ’a second chance’, and more important of always practising sports (and drinking Gatorade). Their event was really successful, with a huge media coverage. Currently it is broadcasted as a documentary and there are plans to turn it into a Hollywood movie.  Agency: TBWA\CHIAT\DAY (USA) – Lions Gold

A funny way to convey the message that Land Rover makes you feel safe. Agency: Y&R (USA) – Lions Silver

Lastly, these Panda commercials are whack! You can’t say no to the cute panda!!! Too bad they only got a Lions Silver. Agency: Advantage Marketing and Advertising (Egypt)

You can check out more Cannes ads here: http://www.canneslions.com/work/film/

Looking for a muse??

It seems nowadays you can find a muse on craigslist! I found this job (is it a job??) posting on Craigslist auckland. I’d love to read the CVs sent to the artist.

VERY UNIQUE LIBERATED EROTIC FEMALE MODEL/MUSE WANTED BY AMERICAN MALE ARTIST PAINTER…TALENT SCOUT …SCULPTOR…PHOTOGRAPHER…WRITER…POET …AND…INFINITELY MORE

I M FRANK…AND..I JUST …ADORE VWOMEN

YOUR AGE…RACE…AND …SOCIAL CONDITIONS …R ..NOT IMPORTANT TO ME …

IF U R SHY ….AND/OR …. A BEGINNER …DONT WORRY ..FOR..I WILL TEACH U EVERYTHING ..NICELY ..PATIENTLY …PROMISE

JUST …DONT LET A GOOD THING PASS….FOR …LIFE IS TOO SHORT ….

OK ???

YOUR

FRANK A R T I S T K I S S

Haha, so how ’bout it?

With just a little willingness

It is amazing what you can do online, with just a bit of time and willingness to do something good. After reading an article in Mashable about “9 ways to do good with 25$ or 5 minutes” I tried two websites: The Extraodinaries and Free Rice.

In The Extraodinaries you are asked to help projects from institutions such as The Smithsonian Institute, Brooklyn Museum or even the Haiti Earthquake.

You might ask yourself what could you possibly do for them, but the answer is very easy and I must admit I would have never thought of it: tag pictures! What impressed me the most was the Haiti Earthquake cause where you could tag photos from Haiti in the search for missing people.

Even the featured projects are solely from the USA, I can imagine there can be European institutions to benefit from this website as well. You can set a project for free, so it is worth at least trying! Nevertheless, I find it an extraordinarily smart idea.

The second website, Free Rice, is an initiative of the World Food Programme set up in 2007 (how come I find about it only now!). What you have to do is play a quiz and for each correct answer you donate 10 grams of rice to poor countries. The rice is paid by sponsors and on the website you can read more about WFP and how to help end world hunger. The quiz is fun, and not to easy even though I felt a bit weird in this situation: I’m playing to help other people eat. There is something wrong in this whole equation, but I guess the end result is more important (is it?!)

What do you think? Have you tried these websites, or do you know of other web initiatives for a good cause?