Gu Wenda is often associated with ink. But while his work is the contemporary, cosmopolitan manifestation of years of training in Chinese calligraphy and classical ink painting, it doesn’t mean he always uses ink. For example, his multi-year project United Nations used hair from hundreds of people to create words and flags to convey a desire for harmony.
On September 24, Gu is going to be in Shenzhen for another project where a Chinese landscape painting will be created without ink. Read More...
Back in the 1960s comedian and actor Bob Newhart performed a famous stand-up monologue called the Bus Drivers’ School. His premise was that American bus drivers must be specially taught to make life hell for their passengers, because they did it in ways which couldn’t simply be instinctive. Skills on the school’s curriculum included slamming doors in the faces of old ladies and mispronouncing street names.
Listening to this again recently, it occurred to me that there is perhaps a similar institution offering advanced driving tuition to Hong Kong motorists. Read More...
HBO Go’s demon, meanwhile, is brought (back?) to life in black and white by renowned Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang, who showed “Pob” to no little acclaim at last month’s Toronto International Film Festival, its Primetime category featuring big-screen-capable programmes made with what the festival calls a “cinematic” quality.
Perhaps here they had in mind the B-movie special effects of the 1950s, which are recalled by certain scenes in which the phi pob, who calls himself a “ravenous ghost” (forget merely “hungry”), gorges on a victim’s bloody insides. Read More...
