Surf's Up!!

Dirty Gold - California Sunrise from Panaframe ▲ on Vimeo.

For the famed Cali-shooter, Leroy Grannis, this utterly beautiful video is as close to surf-porn as it gets!! Sitting here, Boxing Day, with last nights Morgan's spiced rum marinating my liver, I just took these three-odd minutes and used them well. I have never felt so close to 'doing' the West Coast, USA. What a treat! Although, in reality, it's probably mutated from this zen, trendy, surf/skate Mecca, to more like a gross, obvious, over-commercialized, hell-pit, much like Great Yarmouth. C'est la vie!!

Ben Lamb

I saw these about a week ago, and instantly fell in love. Oi Polloi, them trendy bastards, have only gone and commissioned a super-talented illustrator, Ben Lamb, to design a series of über-cool cards. The range starts with three standout American heroes in the shape of Hunter S Thompson alias The Good Doctor, Jack Nicholson as George Hanson in Easy Rider, and of course the King of Cool himself - Steve McQueen. What's more, even eco-warriors will be pleased to know the cards are printed on 100% recycled paper, using soya based inks. Buy them all! Quick!!

FREE VOINA!!

Voina (Воина) have got to be up there as one of the World's most controversial performance art groups!! Hailing from Russia, their works are extremely provocative and politically charged, which is why at present it has members behind bars! The group was founded in 2007 by philosophy students at Lomonosov Moscow State University and is led by Petr Verzilov and Oleg Vorotnikov who conceive works that act/work as 'protest political street action art'.

Voina came to widespread public attention with their 2008 work Fuck for the heir Teddy Bear!, when they staged a "mass fuck" (массовая ебля) the day before the election of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whose last name is derived from the word medved, "bear" in Russian. Five couples involved with Voina, including one pregnant woman four days from giving birth, had public sex in Moscow's Timirayzev State Museum of Biology.

The groups reasons for Fuck for the heir are as follows, "We do not have a goal to necessarily be radical provocateurs. We have a goal to be honest artists and tell what we think. We think that the government fucks the people, and the people like this. This is why the action 'Fuck for the heir Puppy Bear' was born". They continued to say that, "This is a portrait of pre-election Russia: everybody fucks each other, and the puppy bear looks at that with an unconcealed scorn".

Currently, Oleg Vorotnikov along with Leonid Nikolayev have been detained by the Moscow police in connection with an anti-corruption protest, and possibly face a seven year prison sentence. In response to their detention, controversial street-graffiti artist/enigma Banksy decided to raise money for the 2 artists by donating all the proceeds of a recent online print sale, raising £80,000 for Voina's cause.

Taken from The Moscow News, Banksy approached the group at the weekend. “[He] asked his journalist friends to find us and personally offer us help. On Dec. 11 at midnight in London and 3.00 am in Moscow his journalist friends found us and discussed everything. We thanked him for his help and brought his attention to the problem of the extermination of human rights in Russia,” Alexei Plutser-Sarno, Voina’s chief ideologist, told gzt.ru.

Voina has directed many of its actions at state officials and politicians, saying they are part of a war waged for the “destruction of outdated repressive-patriarchal socio-political symbols and ideologies,” the Guardian reported. Go Voina! BE FREE!!

Gold Panda

2010 is swiftly closing for business, if you hadn't noticed! It's time to take a look back on some stuff that has been fresh and engaging musically. First for me, left-field producer and remixer, Derwin, or Gold Panda, who has been dreamy. The great thing about him really is the processes of his creation. I seem to be on this theme quite a bit at present! Seriously though, how can you not love the idea of Mr. Panda scouring charity shops for old records and VHS tapes, which he then turns into distorted samples, wrapping them in minimal, warm beats. 'Snow & Taxis' & 'Peaky Caps' are 2 tracks that are essential in a summation of anything aural this year!!

His work

Michael Craig-Martin's work has always been vibrant and compelling. I stumbled across this article the other day discussing his work processes, and more widely, his career development. For me, the idea of 'digitalism' is enthralling, as Craig-Martin, as a man of an older disposition, has fully embraced the uses of technology within the process of his work. But, he makes the rules between himself and machine. Seemingly relieved, he said "I could scan all the separate images that I wanted to assemble on to the computer, which was unbelievably liberating for me. My work process was tediously slow in the past, and the implications of making even the smallest change were immense, but now I can make 1,000 changes and think nothing of doing 100 drawings" Insightful. A lovely look at ideas and views, that'd otherwise usually be contained within the inner-sanctum of four studio walls.

Berlin, Tempelhof

Situated in the south-central borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, this airport is haunting. Creepy, to the point that I want to go to the city just to make a ethereal 6-minute long silent film on Super8 - being wheeled around on a baggage trolley, shooting from ground level, of this now derelict shell. A film that contemplates not just the greatness of the space, the beauty in it's pre-war structure, but also its tormented Nazi past. Albert Speer, chief architect for the Third Reich, was in charge of designing all the Nazis building projects, the more grandiose, the better. Tempelhof was one of Europe's most iconic pre-WWII airports, which in its history has boasted having the world's smallest duty-free shop. However, in the 1930s, like most of Berlin, it took on the Nazis, lost, and got all expanded and redeveloped!!

The old terminal was replaced with a new terminal building in 1934. The airport halls and the adjoining buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe and a symbol of Hitler's "World capital" Germania, are still known as one of the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a 1.2 kilometre long quadrant. Arriving passengers would have walked through customs controls to the reception hall. Interestingly, and less controversially, this is the birthplace of the German national airline, Lufthansa, which was founded in Tempelhof on 6 January 1926.