Off Center

A just fascinating story I came across this morning:

On January 1st, 2007, a funny thing happened in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The city of approximately eleven million people, South America’s largest, awoke to find a ban on public advertising. Every billboard, every neon sign, every bus kiosk ad and even the Goodyear blimp were suddenly illegal.

The ban on what the mayor calls “visual pollution” was the culmination of a long battle between the city’s politicians and the advertising industry, which had blanketed Brazil’s economic capital with all manner of billboards, both legal and illegal. Within months, the city has gone from a Blade Runner-like vision of the future to a reclaimed past.

Businessweek also has an article on the ups and downs of the ad ban:

Already the law has led to some strange discoveries. Because the site-ing of billboards was unregulated, many poor people readily accepted cash to have a poster site in their gardens or even in front of their homes. With their removal, a new city is emerging: “Last week, on my way to work, I ‘discovered’ a house,” says Piqueira. “It had been covered by a big billboard for years so I never even knew what it looked like.” The removal of the posters has “revealed an architecture that we must learn to be proud of, instead of hiding,” says de Marco.

But there are downsides--Piqueira worries that much of the “vernacular” lettering and signage from small businesses--”an important part of the city’s history and culture”--will be lost. The organisers of the São Paulo carnival have also expressed concerns about the long-term future of their event now that sponsors will not be allowed to advertise along the route. The city authorities for their part have made it clear that certain public information and cultural works will be exempted from the rules.

The São Paulo No Logo photoset by Tony de Marco gives a good idea of the effect this can have on the way a city looks. You start to understand just how many times per day we are bombarded with visual messages.

The Vineland Plaza and Vineland entry to the Bazinet Lobby are now complete and open to the public. This entry also reconnects Vineland with the parking garage, a long awaited passage for both visitors and staff.

Photographer Vincent Laforet has recently been getting a lot of attention for his aerial work with shift lenses. After seeing his feature in a recent New York Times Magazine, I decided I’d take out a few of our old shift lenses and go for a walk in the garden.

Typically used to correct distortion in architectural photography, shift lenses can also be used to create a false sense of closeness by mimicking an extremely shallow depth of field. Such a shallow depth of field — or the amount of the image that is in sharp focus — is usually only attainable when viewing a subject from a short distance.

You can hear Vincent speak on his techinique and see examples of his work with shift lenses HERE.

• Bill T’s Tony nod: Bill T. Jones--whose extensive history with the Walker includes a long-term artist residency, commissioned performances, and a gallery exhibition--picked up a Tony Award nomination last week for his choreography for Spring Awakening, his Broadway debut. Quoted in the Chicago Tribune, he said he never fantasized about winning a Tony. “I am not and never have been one of those choreographers waiting around for my Broadway break,” he says. “Broadway found me, more or less. And though I’ve been well received there, it’s a different language, another world.”

• Democrazy: Francesco Vezzoli, whose film piece Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula, was featured at the last Whitney Biennial, is taking on American politics and media in his installation at the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Bienale. His work Democrazy consists of two political advertisements by American politicians: French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy is candidate Patrick Hill, Sharon Stone is “Republican Hillary,” Patricia Hill. “They are different, but as the names suggest, fundamentally the same,” writes Bloomberg’s Martin Gayford. The project premieres at Venice this week.

• Thinky smackdown: The Great American Think-off, a national philosophy slam now in its 15th year, has a winner–and it’s a Minnesotan and an arts administrator. Giving the most convincing answer to the question “Which should you trust more — your head or your heart?” Minneapolis’ Joe Kaiser was dubbed “America’s Greatest Thinker.” He debated his friend Paul Allick, an Episcopal priest from Burnsville, who won a silver medal.

• Ice Cream! The Star Tribune tips me off that Walker chief curator Philippe Vergne was one 10 curators who picked the 100 artists featured in the new Phaidon book Ice Cream. Among the faces familiar to locals: Minneapolis natives Rob Fischer and MCAD grad Jay Heikes (featured recently in the exhibition Ordinary Culture). Other artists recently featured at the Walker include Cameron Jamie, Jim Lambie, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Mark Bradford, Nari Ward, John Baldessari, Gilbert and George, Dan Graham, and Huang Yong Ping. Also featured is Tino Seghal, an artist “known for making art without actually making any objects,” who’ll be featured in a Walker solo show this winter. Look for Ice Cream in the (newly redesigned) Walker Shop online.

• Starck v. Barbarians: French designer Philippe Starck says there’s something more important than art and consumerism at the moment. “I believe we are definitely in a time of barbarians and therefore it is less important to talk about design or art. Priority is to be given to political action in order to fight barbarians,” he told Reuters. “The most positive action is to refuse…to buy. But if you need to, the minimum is ethical. To go back to the essence of things and ask myself: do I need this?”

• Dr. Anger on Spider-Man 3: “For three hours I was forced to endure the biggest, most effeminate pile of crap I have ever seen in my life.” So says Kenneth Anger after being brought to see Spider Man 3. Read more to find outo his thoughts on Toby McGuire’s beard pattern, James Dean’s acting, and the film Seabiscuit (”which was about a runty little horse and the runty little jockey who climbs on his back and loves him to death”).

• Miranda July, Poser: Filmmaker/artist Miranda July, who made the area premiere of Me and You and Everyone We Know at Women with Vision 2005, strikes one pose per second in a new Mike Mills-directed video for Blonde Redhead’s single, “Top Ranking.” Watch it.

• Obligatory Hirst Skull post: Tyler Green on Damien Hirst’s hundred-zillion-dollar, diamond-encrusted skullpture.