Cultrface – a blog dedicated to culture and how it enriches our lives.

What's The "Jamaica Coalition"?

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Jamaica and Germany flag pins

Until recently, the biggest link between Jamaica and Germany was tennis player Dustin Brown but now there’s a new connection. But it has nothing to do with the Jamaican people.

What is the Jamaica coalition?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened talks on Friday to form a coalition with the other two political parties. This coalition would comprise of Merkel’s CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany), the FDP (Free Democrats Party), and the Green Party. Each party’s colours are black (CDU), yellow (FDP), and green (Green Party): the colours of the Jamaican flag. The coalition was first mentioned back in 2005. The FDP decided opposition was a preferred option after the elections that year. While Merkel talks it out, a Jamaica coalition is already underway in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. CDU leader Daniel Günther became Minister President alongside Free Democrats’ Wolfgang Kubicki and the Greens’ Monika Heinold.

What does this all mean for the future of Germany?

Merkel has voiced her optimism but “less fiscal room than expected” will be a stumbling block. Each party will want as much money as possible for their own policies, much like the nonsense between the Conservatives and the DUP in the UK. If a three-way coalition doesn’t work out, Merkel could negotiate a minority government or call another election. Either option could lose her credibility or perceived power and the former comes with a caveat. The SDP (Social Democrats) said they would reject the proposal but would reconsider if Merkel stepped down.

There’s a hint of irony in the Jamaican phrase “no problem” with difficult talks ahead for the future of Germany.

The classic one-liners of Mitch Hedberg

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Mitch Hedberg, One Liner Stand Up Genius!!

One of my favourite Mitch Hedberg quotes is:

I did a radio interview. The DJs first question was “Who are you?” I had to think, “Is this guy really deep or did I drive to the wrong station?”

The outward reflection of his bad jokes were jokes in themselves. I’m still not over the hilarious simplicity of “dogs are forever in the push-up position”. It never gets old and neither does his delivery.

Mitch released three comedy albums before his death in 2005 and if you’re on Spotify you should check them out.

Awesome Queer Halloween Parties in Castro

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Halloween in San Francisco Castro street 2014

Atlas Obscura wrote an article about Two Decades of San Francisco’s Wildest Queer Halloween Parties. Check out this excerpt from 1995:

“This annual Halloween party is a victim of success […] It simply got too big for its britches—although not all partygoers have bothered to wear them. Part of the event’s appeal has been its disdain for good taste and conventional modesty: The only dress code has been that imposed by the chilly night air.”

– San José Mercury News in 1995

The parties died out completely by 2007. Bars closed early, and the police were out in force to “keep the peace”. In an ironic twist, death had become them.

Below is a video of a 2014 party in Castro. Shout out to the zombie Michael Jackson and his friend.

Kintsugi: The Japanese Art of Repairing Pottery with Gold

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kintsugi

The concept extends beyond pottery or objects and speaks to our humanity. We go through life feeling happiness and sorrow but dwell on the bad times more than the good. Metaphorical cracks form and we break from time to time. But do the pieces have to stay broken or can they be “glued” back together with a stronger more radiant bond?

The literal translation of kintsugi (or kintsukuroi meaning “golden repair”) is “golden joinery”. The art form involves repairing broken pottery with lacquer combined with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. A theory of its original derives from Japanese shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa who sent a broken Chinese tea bowl back to China for repairs in the 15th century. It came back with metal staples holding the pieces together. Japanese craftsmen sought improved ways of repair and kintsugi was later born. Lacquer repair had been an age-old tradition in Japan but the idea of adding luxuriant colours came from the brutal stapling.

Kintsugi is very much a Japanese tradition but it has found its way into Western art. The Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art have held exhibitions for the golden repair. Rock bands “Hey Rosetta!”, “The Rural Alberta Advantage”, and “Death Cab for Cutie” have used kintsugi and its ideal for song titles and album inspiration. The cover for Cathy Rentzenbrink’s A Manual for Heartache also has a similar style, with a golden jigsaw outline on an eggshell green background, perhaps a more British variant on the concept. But its influence lies heavy in philosophy. It shares similarities with the Japanese philosophies of wabi-sabi and “no mind” (無心 mushin), which “encompasses the concepts of non-attachment, acceptance of change and fate as aspects of human life”.

Rather than disguise the “scars”, kintsugi treats the cracks as historical signposts, showing a followed path and a beautiful destination in shimmering gold.

Reading/watching list

Flickwerk The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics — Christy, James; Holland, Henry; Bartlett, Charly Iten (2008)
EASTERN PHILOSOPHY – Kintsugi by School of Life [Video]
Perfect Imperfection (The Art of Healing) by Billie Bond, Dr Jeremy Spencer (2017)
Broken a pot? Copy the Japanese and fix it with gold

The Philosophy of Cowboy Bebop

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Cowboy Bebop - The Meaning of Nothing

It’s not that I didn’t want to, I just never got round to it. I know it’s a classic and it’s still on my to watch list. But Open Culture has given me a new incentive.

Video essayist Lewis Bond looked at the philosophical musings of Cowboy Bebop in “The Meaning of Nothing”. Bond immediately opens the video dismissing the notion of a “hierarchy of art”. He promotes television for its helpful methods of storytelling “unattainable in film”. He then delves into the meaning behind the stories and why the protagonists distance themselves from the rest of the world.

Cowboy Bebop ended after only 26 episodes, but a live-action reboot is in the pipeline. With any luck, the futuristic existentialism will carry over but I doubt it. Remakes of Japanese works lose a lot in translation thanks to Western butchering.

While I make up for lost time, you can buy the complete Cowboy Bebop series on Blu-ray. That’s the best way to watch it.

(via Open Culture)

Semiotics: myths, #BlackLivesMatter & #AllLivesMatter

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Intro to Semiotics Part 2: Sign, Myth and #AllLivesMatter

I’m still on my semiotics tip and discovered this interesting video about myths, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and the loathsome #AllLivesMatter. I was wary of how both hashtags would be described but they went how I’d hoped in such a short video. I’ve not heard or read about either one described from a semiotic perspective and it’s good to know the arbitrariness carries such weight in #AllLivesMatter.

As Electric Didact says when quoting semiotician Roland Barthes, “myth freezes or immobilises intention.” This considers the notion that while Black Lives Matter is a movement, All Lives Matter isn’t.

Watch the video below and leave a comment with your thoughts on the semiotics angle.

Vulture's Oral History of "Batman: The Animated Series"

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I have been obsessed with Batman since I was 3.

My dad bought me a double VHS set of Batman and Batman Returns as a present (which was questionable given the 15 certificates, but I was grateful). From there, I discovered the animated series. The portrayal of Gotham as a quintessential American city from the 20s was superb. The Art Deco style of illustration remains iconic, finding its way into the Superman animated series and refreshed in Batman Beyond. Abraham Riesman spoke to those involved in their genre-defining work for Vulture, including Bruce Timm, Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin.

The Caped Crusader has fallen down the reboot rabbit hole since the disastrous Batman and Robin with two new film series since 1997. Christopher Nolan apparently took notes from the animated series and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight novels, bringing the story’s darkness into a near-pitch black territory. Ben Affleck has yet to show similar promise. His further darkness borders on bleak despair, but enough about the quality of the movies…

Head over to Vulture to read the full article.

A Quick Lesson in Semiotics

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Semiotics: the study of signs

Signs and symbols are all around us and their meanings carry much more than we think. Semiotics analyses sign processes and their relationship with each other and the world that uses them. It has a major influence on disciplines such as literature, graphic design, and communication. It is not the same as semiology, which is regarded as a subset of semiotics, introduced by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

In the video below, Matt Dewey discusses a brief overview of semiotics and how it all started. The discipline started in Europe but there was a split from semiology as Charles Sanders Peirce became the man behind what we know today.

Seitō - a 1911 Japanese magazine exclusively for women

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seito-cover

A publication for women, particularly women of colour, is something I can get behind and Seitō is one such magazine.

Initially created as a collection of work “for women and by women”, Seitō (the Japanese word for “Bluestocking”) started in 1911 slowly became a feminist movement. The five women who created the magazine, known as the Japanese Bluestocking Society, or Seitō-sha, were:

The Japanese government moved to ban its publication but this only spurred the writers to continue. Feminist Hideko Fukuda wrote this for “The Solution to the Woman Question”:

“Only under such circumstances will real women’s liberation come about,” […] “Unless this first step is taken, even if women get voting rights, and even if courts, universities, and government offices in general are opened to women, those who enter these, will, of course, only be women from the influential class; the majority of ordinary women will necessarily be excluded from these circles. Thus, just as class warfare breaks out among men, so class warfare will occur among women.”

Seitō was a pioneering publication for Japanese women and went onto produce 52 issues and feature over 100 contributors before it folded in 1916.

Further reading

Codex Seraphinianus is one weird-ass book

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Codex Seraphinianus

There are plenty of weird and indecipherable texts in history. But one of the most curious texts in recent times is the Codex Seraphinianus. Published in 1981, the codex was written by Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini over a two-year period between 1976 and 1978.

But what’s inside the Codex Seraphinianus?

To put it crudely, it’s a made-up encyclopedia. Codex Seraphinianus depicts an imaginary world with a cypher and a host of different topics including nature, clothing, and architecture. The illustrations in the book were surreal to say the least. They included:

  • A weird horse-carriage fusion
  • Bleeding fruit
  • Chair-shaped plants
  • A couple that transforms into an alligator

The point of the codex is to stretch the realms of the imagination but it’s incomprehensible. The cypher is but none of the text has any meaning. And that was the point.

At the end of the day [it’s] similar to the Rorschach inkblot test. You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speaking to you, but it’s just your imagination.

Luigi Serafini, author and illustrator of the Codex Seraphinianus

Where can you buy a copy?

It was originally published in Italy but it made it to a few other countries. The original edition is still super rare but a newer edition came out in 2013, selling out its 3,000 pre-ordered copies.

You can buy a copy of Codex Seraphinianus from Amazon. A hard copy is about £75 if you have deep pockets for surrealism.

The Photography of Sook Moon

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The Photography of Sook Moon

Sook Moon is one such creative who brings a new life to the seemingly mundane: butchers’ markets, closed convenience stores, empty alleys. Yes, they are stylised in a certain way but not to diminish the character or the story each image tells. Instead, they enhance the vision and give extended importance to their portrayal.

We take for granted the food we eat or the shops we visit for a packet of cigarettes or box of teabags. There’s an ugly abandonment to these services, commercially and emotionally. But these images put them at the forefront and turn bleak and underappreciated moments into felicitous wonders.

You can follow the rest of Sook’s work on Instagram and I strongly recommend you do.

  • The Photography of Sook Moon
  • The Photography of Sook Moon
  • The Photography of Sook Moon
  • The Photography of Sook Moon
  • The Photography of Sook Moon
  • The Photography of Sook Moon

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Modern Art - It's More Than Just White Paintings

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Why these all-white paintings are in museums and mine aren't

The fact they’re white is more than a little poignant. Vox asked the question “Why do all-white paintings sell for millions of dollars and end up in museums?” The answer isn’t “because high art is pretentious and has a serious problem with diversity and inclusivity” as I’d have hoped.

Instead, Elisabeth Sherman of the Whitney Museum of American Art said “there is much more to these paintings than meets the eye, and while you could have painted one of these priceless pieces of art, you didn’t” (quoted from the Vox video description).

While I agree with the latter, the former feeds into the general pretension of modern art. A lot is inferred but the reason behind some works of art could just be “I liked how it looked” without a need for a deeper, hidden meaning. But that would devalue otherwise mediocre white art, wouldn’t it?

Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait

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picturing-prince

Prince was quite a secretive person but you won’t be short of photographs of him. Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait will piece together never-before-seen photos of the late musician, taken by Steve Parke.

A new book from Cassell, Picturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait, out September 5, aims to add depth to Prince’s public persona; it features never-before-seen photographs by Steve Parke, the musician’s former art director at Paisley Park, including 16 pages of lost photographs from his extensive archive.

Along with those images are some hilarious anecdotes from Parke, revealing more about Prince than most fans would know. Stories include The Purple One renting out whole movie theatres at 4am, requests for exotic animals, and his love of basketball. Away from taking photos of Prince, Steve Parke also designed his album covers and merch before becoming the official Paisley Park art director. That’s a high accolade given Prince’s attention to detail and perfectionism when it came to his image.

This is a must-read for Prince fans and music lovers alike.

View a slideshow of nine photos via The Cut.

The Simpsons - The One At the Bottom (Remix)

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The Simpsons - The One At the Bottom

I don’t know who created this but it’s the perfect marriage (lol) of good music (pun intended) and classic Simpsons quotes. The title comes from S2 episode War of the Simpsons where Homer gets very drunk and asks Maud to get him some peanuts from the bottom of the dish so he can see her cleavage. Of course, Marge was watching in shock and disgust and they had to work on their marriage at a retreat. How their marriage is still together I don’t know.

And if you didn’t already know, the backing music comes from Gorillaz’s Feel Good Inc. A true animation mashup.

Stream “The One At the Bottom” below.

Update: Sorry, they’ve taken the video down. There’s a version on Facebook though. (sorry about that too)

Jumanji Fan Steven Richter Builds Replica From Scratch

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Making a Jumanji Board -Timelapse

According to the late Robin Williams, the word jumanji is Zulu for “many effects”. While I’m not 100% sure of its validity, this real-life board game lives up to that definition.

Steven Richter is a sculptor and prop-maker by trade and he lent his fantastic skills to a Jumanji board game just like the one from the 1995 film. Rather than any paranormal forces pulling the pieces around, Richter’s version uses simple magnets but the attention to detail is out of this world.

You can watch how the board was made below.