Pipilotti Rist’s innovative video installations give audiences an “Eyeball Massage”

by Jessica Festa on

Don’t worry, nobody will physically be touching your eyeballs. However, you will be taken on a unique sensory journey through dazzling color, perceptible images, and hypnotic music.

Until January 8, 2012, the work of Swiss Artist Pipilotti Rist will be featured at the Hayward Gallery in London in “Eyeball Massage“. Through this exhibit, viewers can see Rita’s work from the 1980’s to the present, including videos, sculptures, and installations. Spectators will see a lot of experimental video work that plays around with color, noise, and bleeds. With sculpture, Rist combines everyday objects with video and gives them life as well as a chance to tell their stories. Moreover, her art installations are not just splashes of color and pictures to look at but instead a parallel dimension that visitors will become immersed in. According to the event page, “Rist wants the exhibition to provoke feelings of energy, serenity and enlightenment, and hopes that her work makes visitors smile”.

For a preview of what you can expect check out this video. While there’s something a bit eerie and overwhelming to it, you can also appreciate the creativity behind it:


Want to try 300 drinks from 5 different continents?

by Jessica Festa on

On December 1, 2011, ZaZa Bazaar will unveil its Wunder Bar. You will basically be able to go on a cocktail tour around the world without leaving Bristol, United Kingdom, as the bar will feature 300 drinks from five different continents.

Bar manager, Les Richards, and bar consultant, Ro Santus, have spent hours upon hours coming up with innovative and worldly drinks for all tastes and budgets. There will be 35 cocktails with European, Asian, American, and Arctic flare, as well as an extensive selection of spirits, wines, and champagnes. Beers will come from 10 different countries, some of which include China, Portugal, India, and Brazil. No matter what drink you choose, know that you are getting a high quality product that you can feel good about.

“We’ll use the freshest ingredients. Even the syrups and purees will have been made that day. All fruit and vegetables used in the bar will be sourced locally,” says Richards.

And, it’s not just drinks that will be international. There will also be an array of unique menus from around the globe, some of which include curries, sushi, Italian pasta, BBQ, Far East, Chinese, Indian, pizza, burgers, dosa, nacho bar, tex mex, and more.

For more information, visit their website.

Baltimore photos in black and white by Patrick Joust

by Elizabeth Seward on

Patrick Joust, a distinguished photographer from Baltimore, has recently released one of his latest sets of Baltimore photos. Black and white, these photos, titled ‘Street’, capture people and places around town. And I am especially fond of this photo set. I was born in Baltimore and I have spent time regularly throughout my life going back to the city to visit my extended family. It’s been apparent to me since I was young that Baltimore isn’t always the softest of cities, with well-documented struggles with crime and highly contrasted economic social classes. Some of these photos by Joust depict these struggles, but some of these photos also depict something else–an unmistakable sense of contentedness no matter general circumstance. Well, that’s what I see, at least. What do you see?

Check out the full photo set here.

New film invites us to spend 40 Days at Base Camp

by Kraig Becker on

For decades Mt. Everest has held sway over the imagination of adventurers everywhere. Standing 29,029 feet in height, it is the tallest mountain on the planet and the focus of countless books, television shows, and movies. But a new documentary entitled 40 Days at Base Camp looks to offer new insights into what it takes to climb the mountain and spend more than a month living in its shadow.

As the name implies, filmmaker Dianne Whelan spent 40 days living in Everest Base Camp on Nepal’s South Side of the mountain. During the spring climbing season, Base Camp becomes a tent city, filled with hundreds of climbers from around the globe, along with their all-important Sherpa guides. The film follows a number of those climbers as they pursue their dream of climbing the mountain, no matter the risks and the costs.

Whelan’s film is unique in that it deftly mixes the drama of the challenging climb along with the daily routine of living in Base Camp, where climbers spend much of their time resting, acclimatizing, and physically preparing for their ascent. She also examines the effects of climate change on Everest and the implications for the future of the ecology of the mountain. As you’d expect, all of this is set with the stunning backdrop of the Himalaya Mountains – one of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth.

The film is in limited release, so it may not be arriving in theaters everywhere. But if you have an interest in mountaineering or Everest itself, it looks like a fantastic documentary worth tracking down.


Museums and politics in the West Bank

by Sean McLachlan on

A new bill working its way through the Israeli government would put museums on Israeli settlements in the West Bank under Israeli law.

This piece of legislation is more than it seems, the Jerusalem Post reports. The real purpose of the bill, as its author, minister Uri Ariel of the National Union party makes clear, is to slowly annex the West Bank.

If this bill passes, Ariel hopes it will open the door for more Israeli law to be applied to the West Bank, gradually incorporating it into the rest of the country.

Currently museums on West Bank settlements are under military law, a product of the region being taken from Jordan in the 1967 war, and thus cannot get the same kind of funding as other Israeli museums.

The West Bank and Gaza strip are nominally part of the Palestinian Authority, but this government has had trouble receiving full international recognition and much of its land is actually owned by Israelis. Palestinians are barred from or have limited access to much of the West Bank because of Israeli settlements and their security zones, as this UN map shows.

The Knesset (Israeli parliament) education Committee has already passed the bill and it will probably be seen by the entire Knesset in the next two weeks.

I visited some West Bank museums when I was working as an archaeologist in the region in the early Nineties. The Israeli ones were mainly devoted to proving their right to the land and highlighting Muslim atrocities. The Palestinian ones were mainly devoted to proving their right to the land and highlighting Jewish atrocities.

In a country like Israel, history and politics always go hand in hand.