Across saturated sunset hues, birds are the new subject of Mark Borthwick's latest book. As the first in a new trilogy of small books exploring particular bodies of work by photographer and Purple contributor Mark Borthwick, the polaroids flow through surreal skyscapes and serene horizons, honoring Borthwick's vision of the sublime in nature.
Vanishing from the mainstream headlines, the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima seems more and more eclipsed from our eyes. Out of sight, out of mind, so would the governments like it to be. If you visit The Japan Times website, you will see at least some information on the ongoing crisis. 'Radioactive beef already sold, eaten'. A few days ago, the headline 'Cesium found in Fukushima cattle feed' outlined in its article that 'the contaminated beef did not reach retailers, the officials said'.
Where are all these headlines in our newspapers?
Yesterday, TEPCO announced that it hopes to reduce the highly radioactive leaks by end of July and to cool the reactors by January 2012. And across the ocean, in America, two nuclear incidents are escalating with minimal press reporting. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Facility in Omaha, due to be re-licensed until 2030, is being submerged by dangerous flooding, with its surrounding area now designated a 'No Fly Zone' since early June. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, a 93 square mile wild fire approached the Los Alamos' nuclear lab dump site, where an estimated 20,000 55-gallon drums of nuclear waste are being inadequately stored above ground. After burning an acre of lab property, crews are now preparing for flash-flooding in the area triggered by the fire. This would not be the first time that governments, particularly the U.S. Government, withhold data and violate free exchange of information 'for national security purposes'. Sites such as Fort Calhoun and Los Alamos, essentially produce enriched material for nuclear weapons and bombs, holding close ties to the military. In 1959, Boeing Rocketdyne nuclear testing facility released the third greatest amount of radioactive iodine in nuclear history. The incident went unreported for 40 years.
'It is a great error to believe that by making the political choice of its energetic turnaround, Germany is breaking with the European concept of modernity and turning towards an archaic age...What is irrational is not the exit from the nuclear power, but continuing to defend it after Fukushima...refusing to take our lessons from history's experience', says the German sociologist and philosopher Ulrich Beck in Le Monde. And moreover, who wants to trust our future with an industry that keeps its lips so tight?
The artist George Herms in his Studio Irvine, California. Herms' work is on view as part of his latest group exhibition Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown), until October 2 at the MOCA Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood. Photo Tamara Weber
'Underdressed and oversexed'. It's the beautiful in the obscene, and the obscene in the beautiful. NUDE PAPER, the Hamburg-based independent magazine of new standing, reignites the freedom beyond clothes and their politics. 'An orchid paper full of genitalia', Uwe Jens Bermeitinger, Art Director for NUDE PAPER, told me. A conversation in a sauna one day between Uwe Jens Bermeitinger and Hannes Deter (publisher), and NUDE PAPER was born. The first issue was launched in 2009, unknowingly to most. Young men, girls, older men, and transgenders - the only elitism that reigns through NUDE PAPER is the worship of nudity. It all lies somewhere between art, fashion, erotica and a certain philosophy - nudity as physical liberation, a sexual lure, a spiritual exercise. Those naked bodies on the hued paper usher in the unapologetic chic and poetics of beauty au naturel. It reads like sexuality's grammar: our fetish, our perversities, our inner exhibitionist, our unrestricted selves..."LIBERTE. EGALITE. NUDITE!"
NUDE PAPER Issue N°III can be ordered at BOYS BOYS BOYS with a limited 1000 handnumbered copies worldwide, featuring stories with and by Francois Sagat, Nettie Harris, Daniel Josefsohn, to name a few.
Photo Uwe Jens Bermeitinger and text Sophie Pinchetti
Entitled Meeting, James Turrell's site-specific installation has been a part of the MOMA PS1 since 1986. As part of Turrell's series on skyspaces, all exposing the sky through rectangular or rounded holes cut into the ceiling of the enclosed space. Turrell has described the space: "There’s
this four-square seating that’s inside, seating toward each other,
having a space that created some silence, allowing something to develop
slowly over time, particularly at sunset. Also, this Meeting has to do with the meeting of space that you’re in with the meeting of the space of the sky." Photo Tamara Weber
Meeting by James Turrell is on view permanently at the MOMA PS1, on the Northern side of the third floor, 22-25 Jackson Ave. at the intersection of 46th Avenue, Long Island City, New York.
GALLERY
