Dance!

DJ Mamy Rock - She loves to see the kids enjoy themselves!

A new London diva has been born - Mamy Rock is a 70-year-old retired widow who, after attending her grandson's birthday party at a "disco", fell in love with electronic music and the dance culture. She put on a pair shades, big earings and a sparkly Adidas track suit and began DJ-ing. This reminds me of the women in Southern Serbia who launched a house painting business but also of my 87-year-old grandpa who, having heard some electronica from my computer, thought it was very "interesting and modern" music.

Mamy Rock's style is a bit too commercial for my taste, but she seems to be very popular - she performed at the trendiest Cannes Film Festival parties. Not surprisingly, the night her grandson's birthday, when she had just been Ruth Flowers and not Mamy Rock, the bouncers gave her funny looks and tried to talk her out of entering the club.

Why do we slam doors on others, and ourselves, based on what "category" we belong in? When I was little, I dreamt of being a jokey or a cashier. Ever wonder what direction your life would have taken if it weren't for the clearly defined categories that mapped most of it out for us?

Camouflage and Other Hidden Art

I would love to take part in a disorienting art project in my city, similar to those of Fred Lebain or Liu Bolin. I will try to convince my friend Dana, who may be up for it, considering her Action. Reaction. Interaction. project for which she, among other things, "hijacked" the audience's direction by randomly placing fun directional arrows throughout London that eventually led to a sign bluntly announcing: GO BACK. PLAY. She explains it as:

Guiding people through the urban space, and surprising them by changing the signs, playing with arrows, is a system to analyze the politically coded society today. Challenging people’s senses, directional choices, trust, curiosity, behavior - in order to explore what makes sense for me, and how it can affect the others, and to make them become active: to play with the environment.

Lebain played with the New York audience by taking photos of certain spots, boosting them on posters and later aligning these posters in their original environment:

Liu Bolin from China does something similar - but with his body. With the help of his assistant (I wanna be someone's assistant on such a cool project!), Liu paints a part of an ambient on himself and then takes photos of his body picture blended with the real picture. Enjoy!

Hello Spring, Long Time No See

Constantin Pilavios: What is That?

This is a short Greek film from 2007. A small reminder to love and appreciate the love we receive:

Forever Bottled

Happy World Water Day!

We are well aware of the implications of bottled water. It's a wasteful money making industry that has often been proven not to offer anything different or better than the free and local version - tap water. The Food and Water Watch draws attention to the fossil fuels, oil and enormous amounts of water used for the production of the water bottles while only a tiny fraction of them ends up being recycled. The rest gets trashed and, because plastic degrades so slowly, it is likely that every water bottle ever produced still exists in some pile of garbage, somewhere.

Having read about similar studies countless times, as I was throwing an old water bottle with a sip or two of "stale" water left in it out of my car, I couldn't help but wonder... How many times have I done this without having drank or at least poured out the left over water? I started noticing that many people around me do the same thing too. This must cause for thousands of gallons of water to be trapped in barely degradable plastic. So, not only are we polluting our water and slowing down its purification through the ecosystem, but we may be actually trapping huge amounts of it in bottles buried in trash, disabling it from entering the ecosystem. I would be very interested to see some studies on the relevance of this phenomenon.

Random thought... If somebody had told me when I was little that, one day, I would actually purchase water, I would've probably considered them mad. Then, life in Beijing in the 90's brought me to the realization that not all tap water is drinkable. So, we boiled and cooled tap water every evening and, as much as my memory serves me, I still had not heard of anyone buying water. When did the idea of packaging and selling water become acceptable? It seems like it took a rather small fraction of my life for me to get used to this folly... What's next? Purchasing packaged clean air?

Looking Forward to Hearing MODERAT Live

I have been waiting for oh so long so see Moderat perform. The day is finally approaching. The trio, consisting of Apparat and Modeselektor members, is coming to Serbia in July for a live show at the Exit Festival's Dance Arena.

Moderat "Rusty Nails" from Pfadfinderei on Vimeo.

Some of my other favorites at this year's Exit Festival:

The Twelves
Boys Noize

Crystal Castles

SebastiAn

Mika
Antenat
The Bambi Molesters

To see the full list of performances at the 2010 ExitFest, click here.

Women with Newspaper Hats in Southern Serbia

A couple of days ago, Serbian media station B92 ran a report on a Kursumlijan woman's business start-up. With absolutely no work experience, 70-year-old Dragica Milanovic came to the idea of using a skill she has known since she was little. She trained a group of 10 unemployed women, gave them newspaper hats and launched a house painting business. The business has been so successful that it even won the tender to paint the City Hall. The article cited the workers' content after years of life on welfare. One woman claims how she only got into house painting as a means of survival but would never give it up now. Others say the money is good - enough to support their children as well.

Dragica Milanovic's conquest of a young men's profession is inspiring. Kursimlija is one of the poorest municipalities in Southern Serbia, which itself is an empoverished region in a transitional country. Word about Danica's business has spread to other towns in the region and, acknowledging the difficult economic climate, Dragica is looking forward to expanding and hiring additional workers outside of Kursumlija.

Things are moving, but slowly. Another report by Glas Javnosti had an advertisement right below the article stating:

-Good Pay, Excellent Conditions-
We are looking for new workers in Vojvodina. Perfect job for responsible men.

Random Documentary Picks

Way of Nature by Nina Hedenius (2008) - one year in the life of a Swedish farmer. Amazing photography and detail, no narrative.

Pretty Dyana by Boris Mitic (2003) - enters the "carton suburbs" of Belgrade populated by Roma, who have opened up a sector of economy for themselves. They are the ones who take care of recycling in Serbia, as there is no centralized system and have invented a new form of vehicle for this purpose, resembling an agricultural machine, by remodeling the old Citroën Dyane, the last of which was produced in 1983. You can watch the full video here.

Pianomania by Robert Cibis and Lilian Franck (2009) - follows the life of a German piano tuner, shedding light to the peculiar search for the right pitch of some of today's most renowned pianists. Definitely uncovered a new world to me.

The Unfilmable Banksy Film

The great stencil-stunt-artist Banksy has finally come out with a movie - not about himself of course, but about how another person failed to make a movie about him. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is out in selected cinemas today!

Once again, Banksy is mocking the ugly side of us, our eternal wish to learn about the subjects we admire, more than they themselves are willing to uncover. Maybe, Banksy is trying to ask us to be satisfied with the messages that the artist willingly doles out to us through his/her art... Right around the film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Banksy left several new marks in Park City, Utah. Here is one that I think most directly relates to the film's message - Why do we have to film something, even at the price of its destruction, in order to enjoy it?


As Banksy proudly states for BBC - "It's the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed".

Sidenotes:

• Exit Through the Gift Shop music credits by Geoff Barrow (from Portishead) and Roni Size;
  
• In case you have never heard of Banksy, check out the official website;
• StuffWhitePeopleLike has a hilarious entry about our love for Banksy and street art in general;
• Here are a "few" of my favorites:

Trotting Tulum

In 2008, my mom and I decided to go to Mexico for spring vacation. Her yoga instructor insisted we see Tulum. Personally, I am not the type to enjoy all-inclusive resorts - I prefer to feel the culture I have traveled to. So, knowing that Tulum is only a 2-hour drive from Cancun, I was skeptical. We arrived in the evening with reservations only for that first night at the Posada Dos Ceibas bungallows on the beach (I like taking this risk because it has usually bred better deals - the next day we looked at several cabanas and got a bargain for La Via Laktea). It was pitch dark. Surrounded by absolute silence, we ate and fell asleep early.

I slept like a rock. However, we strangely woke up at around 6AM, both of us at the same instant. A gorgeous sun was rising. We decided to run out for a stroll on the beach. I opened the door of the cabana and, as soon as my bare foot touched the warm sandy ground, I realized I was in paradise. We crossed the endless empty beach stretches, absorbing the colorful sky that was evolving slowly from red to blue. All that existed for miles, it seemed, were waves. No other sounds, no other thoughts. This was the first of the several days spent in this tranquillity, barefoot, waking up and falling asleep to the turquoise ocean.

Tulum's beaches spread south from what are considered to be the most beautiful and best preserved Mayan ruins. The Tulum Ruins are situated on a cliff above the ocean. This combination makes it one of the most stunning historical sites I have ever seen. However, be prepared - it is overcrowded with tourists and this will especially be unpleasant if you have spent a few days in the cabanas isolated in nature. This is why I recommend you see the ruins at the very beginning of your stay in Tulum.

The cabanas are situated on a preserved strip of beaches that lead to yet another natural treasure. The Sian Ka'an Biological Reserve, a 1.3 million acre UNESCO World Heritage Site, literally means "Where the Sky is Born". This area is full of Cenotes - freshwater lakes in limestone, most often connected to aquifers.

With all its beauty, this is a perfect place - for a peculiar set of travelers (like myself). The tap water is salty, the solar-powered electricity only runs in the evening hours (5PM-11PM), it's damp and the bungalows and camps are set directly on the sand, which the wind inevitably carries into the rooms. Because of the Biological Reserve, construction of real houses/buildings/hotels is prohibited. Here's how I see it: the lack of air conditioning definitely gets compensated by the tune with nature and the fact that, even at peak season with every cabana overbooked, there simply aren't nearly enough cabanas to make this place crowded.

As is the case with any paradise, portraying Tulum is virtually impossible. Let's just say that I met quite a few people who visited once and stayed forever. No wonder.

A few tips:

• Do not go if you are not a nature lover.
  
• Use websites like Trip Advisor to skim through the list of cabanas but ALWAYS try to find the actual website of the cabanas you like, find the contact information and call directly to make a deal, preferably in Spanish. It's cheaper that way.
  
• The cabanas can get pretty pricey - they range anywhere from $20 to $200 per night. Be careful how you pick your accommodation as the cheaper options may not actually be on the beach.
  
• If looking for low budget accommodation, go with the camping option, which costs approximately $5 per night.
  
• Have snacks with you! The food is great but it is expensive. The town is not on a walking distance and it adds up to eat at one of the cabanas' cafes all of the time. That being said, keep in mind that you will be surrounded by wonderful fruit.
  
• Visit the town, its market and restaurants. It's full of life and the food is amazing and cheap (but the taxi to town, one way, costs around $8).

The Bureaucratization of Death

Most of us have lost someone close but what do you do when an immediate family member dies?! I am not talking about mourning - there is barely any time for that if you are responsible for funeral and other arrangements. It has recently come to my attention that the loss of a loved one requires extensive managerial skills.

Between taking your deceased friend to the morgue, completing the identification process and choosing the appropriate burial wardrobe, one barely has time to organize the funeral, let alone be emotional. Then come the obituaries - you first have to arrange the funeral in order to announce it but do not want to arrange the funeral before you know you can make the obituary deadline for it to be published at least a day prior to the funeral, so that people can be informed.

How about finance? Old people often keep a savings account for their own funeral. The more organized ones even have their burial wardrobe set aside - clean and ironed - ready at all times.

While the idea of this death bureaucratization gives me the chills, I do see some reason behind it. In a society where we have been so removed from the essence of life that we barely ever talk about death, a bureaucratic mechanism may just be the answer to keep people sane during hard times. Nonetheless, I think it's all rather sad.

"Fun" fact: Ever thought about what happens to your social website accounts in the event of death? Deutsche Welle recently ran a report on a new virtual burial agency called My WebWill. My WebWill takes on the responsibility for erasing you from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc in the event of death, while also giving you the possibility of transferring your user name and password to a loved one. At the cost of $17 per year you can leave your electronic credentials to My WebWill, which in turn ensures that your virtual will is fulfilled, whether it be transferring electronic poker chips to another user name or deactivating multiple accounts.