_|-|_ Guillaume Dutreix - Unfinished Town _|-|_

() Carla Liesching - The Swimmers ()

My work explores human relationship to structure, particularly ideological shifts in geographic organization and narrative. I am fascinated by the historical quest to envision the globe as a whole, to mark out its territories, to draw lines upon it. I view these maps and borders as physical manifestations of our desire for stability, familiarity and fixedness; a desire that manifests equally in the personal identity narratives we construct as we delineate the parameters of our selves. I am interested in what seems to be a global shift, or rupture, in the way that we perceive our selves in space and interact with the world. It is a condition characterized by an unrelenting sense of displacement and a subsequent search for belonging that can no longer be tied to one fixed geographical or ideological position. Through my work I seek to explore new ways of realizing the self within this unstable space. My photographs depict an imaginary terrain; the human subjects are both an embodiment of an attempt to navigate and a faux-ethnographic study – a native/explorer of an uncertain land. The staged photograph, in turn, becomes a relic of our expedition as we peer into the abyss of unknowable possibilities.

carla liesching

::: Francesco Pergolesi - ZERO ZERO :::

Un progetto fotografico che nasce dalla riflessione sul viaggio, inteso come senso di abbandono interiore alle proprie radici per partire da Zero ed assaporare un nuovo inizio. Gli elementi primordiali come la terra e l'acqua tornano ad essere gli unici punti di riferimento e l'uomo, il suo piccolo esploratore, è ancora senza una vera identità strutturata.L'evidente sovraesposizione di ogni fotogramma prende spunto dalla tecnica di sviluppo in camera oscura in cui i mezzi toni che contraddistinguono la nascita dell'immagine, e così di un nuovo inizio, sono i primi a rivelarsi e con essi la nostra percezione del mondo. 

francesco pergolesi

°° SPECIAL - HEART HOUR °°

By Lulu Sinclair, Sky News Online

Lights have gone out all over the world, as millions shut down for "Earth Hour", an event in its fourth year which aims to highlight the threat of climate change.

Abroad, world-famous landmarks went dark including Sydney's Opera House and Harbour Bridge, Beijing's Forbidden City, The Pyramids and Eiffel Tower.

In Britain, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, St Paul's Cathedral and the London Eye were among the tourist hotspots that plunged into darkness, as was Manchester United's Old Trafford football ground.

Residents of Norway's Longyearbyen, the world's northernmost town, were braced for an influx of curious polar bears normally deterred by lights.

The residents voted - for the first time - that taking part was worth the risk.

The event was the biggest yet with 37 more countries taking part than last year, in the aftermath of the failed climate summit.

Despite December's fractious Copenhagen summit and recent controversy over climate science, public opinion still hopes for meaningful action to avert catastrophic global warming, according to Earth Hour founder Andy Ridley.

"There appears to be some fatigue to the politics around it. But people are far more motivated this year than they were last year," he said.

"Earth Hour is meant to cross geographic, economic, country boundaries," said Mr Ridley.

"It's one hour, one day, one year. We're not saving the planet by turning the lights off for one hour."

But, he added: "What you are doing is adding your voice to a global call for action."

Now run by the WWF, Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007 when 2.2 million people switched off the lights in their homes, offices and businesses for 60 minutes to make a point about electricity consumption and carbon pollution.

The campaign went global the following year and this Saturday, more than 1,200 of the world's best-known sites will kill their lights at 8:30 pm local time in what organisers describe as a "24-hour wave of hope and action".

A raft of multinational companies including Google, Coca-Cola, Hilton, McDonalds, Canon, HSBC and IKEA have given their backing to Earth Hour 2010 and pledged to darken their offices worldwide in support.

earth hour

+** Floria Sigismondi **+

Floria Sigismondi was born in Pescara, Italy to opera singing parents. When she was two years old the family immigrated to Canada, settling in Hamilton, Ontario. Floria has exhibited her photography, film, and sculpture installations in exhibitions internationally in New York, Paris, Toronto, Rome, Los Angeles, Mexico City, London, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Copenhagen. The multi-disciplinary work of Floria Sigismondi encompasses film, video, photography and installations. Incorporating early film and painterly aesthetics Floria creates a hyper-surrealism based on the figure, using images derived from hallucinatory dream-states. Her videos mix seamlessly with her photography series, and her photographic images translate naturally into mixed-media forms. Floria's images exist in a theater setting that is both narrative and starkly visual, revealing the poetic and sometimes macabre world. Musical artists Floria has worked with include The White Stripes, David Bowie, The Cure, Leonard Cohen, Sigur Ros, Marilyn Manson, and Bjork, among others. Her photographs have been included in group exhibitions with Cindy Sherman, Rebecca Horn, Vanessa Beecroft, Tony Oursler, Donald Lipski, Francesco Clemente, and Joel-Peter Witkin. Sigismondi has published two books of her photography—Redemption (1999) Immune (2005). She made her feature film directorial debut with The Runaways (2010), starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart. Sigismondi is married to Lillian Berlin, the lead singer of the rock band Living Things. They have a daughter, Tosca Vera Sigismondi-Berlin, born in 2004 and divide their time between Toronto, NYC and Los Angeles.

floria sigismondi