The Munich based Bavarian National Museum exhibits the entire culture and gender history of handbags. The long lasting formation of the artisan craft is a must-see for every fashion enthusiast, handbag fetishist and art historian. Bags are all along status symbols and class signifiers with a fundamental tradition. Organizing a sachet-guild in 1599 the rennessancian sewer masters established an honorable codex of the subtly laudable craftsmanship. Preserving the artistic approach of bag creation, the exhibition features variously designed and embroidered hunting bags, fashionable wallets, key purses, travel bags, ridicule and a lot more forms of cases one would not even think of.

With its two richly illustrated catalogues the exhibition TASCHEN is a substantial source of inspiration for potential possibilities of usage and design. The archeology of the bag examines all the roots of modern handbags no matter if it is the handle-purse of Maximilian I. Joseph – the King of Bavaria – or Chanel’s 2:55. “When I was tired of carrying my bag in hand, and losing it again, I mounted a strap … and since I wore it as a shoulder bag” once she said. Creative approaches arise through necessity. Accordingly, the genealogy of the bag teaches us that aesthetic appeal is inevitable, but handiness and convenience are immanent.

The exhibition runs till the 25th of August.

We’re in a train, we pass the stations
What is our final destination?
We hurry, plan and try to find
Our way, don’t realise that we are blind

And when we’re about to reach our aim
Like in a never-ending chain
At the end of a long queue
We see the beginning of a new

Is there a stone we have to carry?
Why is our life so arbitrary?
Look inside us, in disguise
Lies a faulty compromise

A compromise between young and old
Between our dreams and what we’re told
Between expectations, norms and visions
We make ‘individual’ decisions

But once, in a silent, thoughtful hour
We dare to look out of our Ivory Tower
Forget the train, the queue, the fuss
And with some luck, we might find us

Anonymous

Our new issue of the listening habits-series gets away from four to the floor sounds and dips into a musical journey through a widely different spectrum of musical styles. From Balinese via Korean classical music to the experimental sounds of Pierre Schaeffer we cover many different genres and cultural influences. Most certainly not an everyday mix but a maverick compilation of high quality sounds from all over the world. So lean back and enjoy the uniqueness of these tunes.

listen

The curious beauty of music is that […] it can ignite the political resolve of those who might otherwise be indifferent to politics.
Nelson Mandela 

Having originated in the early ’80s in the American city of Chicago, house music first appealed to those who did not fit into the mainstream society, relaying amongst those who were considered to be the outcasts. The godfather of house music, Frankie Knuckles, pivotal in developing and popularizing house music in the ’80/’90s, once said house is like “church for people who have fallen from grace.”

Over two decades have passed and now in the age of flourishing Western electronic music scene, it might be surprising for one to learn that the country with the world’s biggest house music market per capita is South Africa. The term ‘House Nation’ could have been coined specifically for South Africa, where house music has played an integral role in the country’s cultural history in the period of the post-Apartheid reconciliation.

The birthplace of house music in South Africa is considered to be Pretoria, which then dispersed to Johannesburg where it was slowed down and merged with local elements to shape kwaito. While slow tempo kwaito was the music ascribed to the generation that came at the end of the Apartheid regime, South African house of today has fetched the beats right back up to become more in accord with the increasingly “globalized” South Africans.

Although often referred as Afro House, South African house is idiosyncratic. South African DJs took what they have learnt from kwaito and applied it to house, adding elements from the lived reality of South Africans.  Knotted with the elements of the South African identity, South African house was meant to stand out from European or American house by presence of lyrics in one of the local languages, samples from the traditional instruments, or heavier basslines.

Many perceive house as mere dance-oriented music assigning it an apolitical character. While in some cases it might hold true, it is important to keep in mind that a refusal to deal with the contemporary politics is a political statement of itself that denounces the status quo. It does so by the means of escapism of the given reality and recreation that looks toward the future rather than the past. One could argue that the stance of house music is more of anti-political than apolitical for it represents the negation of politics, thus disengaging from the long years of oppression and disempowerment and celebrating freedom.

In South African house, the essence is not in the poetics of the lyrics. The beauty of it lies in the instrumental arrangement and its composition. The post-Apartheid oppression is not to be forgotten. The poetry innate to South African house turns to better times — to hope, to cultural integrity, and to dreams come true. Through music, South African artists join to create a realm where the struggle no longer exists.

South African House Music Mix

Sevara Pan

If God created this place in 7 days,
How long do we need to destroy it?
The challenges societies embrace
Still end as situational waste

Realise our duty
Accept our responsibilities
Find out capabilities
Be creative and just try
As safety is just another lie

It is the thing that creates fear
We fear to lose, what seems so near
To avoid the bigger change
Don`t see the necessity, the range

Demand is rising while freedom declines
People colliding, especially their minds
Humanity needs sensible belief
Retrieve and find, sense of any kind

It seems sustainable and easy
To make more profit try to tease me
We work for money
And the money works for us
As long as we can, as long as we must

We need to change, our point of view
Let`s share and use the synergy
Time elapses and you will see
The first change that is always you

In an open mind there is no wall
But the bridges they are tall
They reach nearly every destination
No longer divided in dozen nations

We share, enjoy and love
And the sun will shine above
Drink, laugh and cry together
It won`t make the problems better

But it helps to unlimit
And if we consider the “good” as our spirit
Lets start to crack the walls
Before our Babylonian tower falls.

by Matthias Z.

After a certain time of collecting records here is a rough mix by Kaspar – enjoy.

listen

Suddenly, another world opened up before me: dancing. Somewhere amidst swirling and twisting, I found the balance of my innermost self. Like a swing, I’d literally lose and then find myself again. Delved into my essence, in those moments, I was connected to everything — the ground, the air, the sounds. All my senses were alive  in much the same way as infant might feel — that feeling of oneness.

I was brought to the dance school prior discovering trails of formal education.  And I fell in love.  Having started off with classical ballet, I evolved into a contemporary dancer until I realized what it truly meant to me.

It was during my teenage years when I discovered street dance, more formally known as vernacular dance. Vernacular dance  was born  outside of  dance studios  in any available  open space, such as  streets,  parks,  school  yards, and  raves. Claiming that any movement was dance and any person was a dancer, it was a silent protest against the legacy of “high-art”. In fact, street dance pioneers  rarely had professional degrees in dance, thus distinguishing street dance from other modern dance forms.

Often improvisational and social in nature, vernacular dance  encourages interaction and contact with others. Be it at a New York hip-hop block party or in the urban Berlin nightclub of finest techno, it is part of the vernacular youth culture and a form of the ultimate connection that brings people together by means of music.

Emerging in a social environment, vernacular dance, however, falls under the rule of “Chinese whispers”, thus encouraging expression of an individual self. The effect is that one cannot perform an absolute copy of someone else’s dance move. Hence, it boosts creativity inciting to come up with a unique style or an entirely new move.

Lost in the world of music, a dancer finds not only a unique style, but his own self breaking away from the system and the invisible cage of the modern society. In this liberating process, one momentarily escapes and deconstructs the present reality. Blown-out, somewhere between highs and lows deep within the soundscape, a dancer discovers himself in accord with the mind.

For dancing is his freedom, his jouissance, his nirvana.

Sevara Pan

Suitable for facing a new year is the idea of life as a perpetual movement disemboguing in emptiness. Already shown in many literary works of Dostoevsky, Sartre or Camus, we can see here the exhausting and determined circle of life in an avant-garde minimal play by Samuel Beckett. The television play was produced in 1981.

watch

Quad, lacking words, lacking voice, is a quadrilateral, a square. While it is perfectly determined, possessing certain dimensions, it has no other determinations than its formal singularities, equidistant vertices and center, no other contents or occupants than the four similar protagonists who traverse it ceaselessly. It is a closed, globally defined, any-space-whatever.
Even the protagonists, who are short, slight, and asexual, and wear long gowns with cowls, have nothing to individualize them but the fact that each departs from a vertex as from a cardinal point, any-protagonists-whatever who traverse the square, each following a given course and direction. You can always cause them to affect a distinguishing light, color, sound, or sound of footsteps. But this is a means of recognizing them; in themselves they are only spatially determined, in themselves they are affected by nothing other than their order and position. These are unaffected protagonists in an unaffectable space.
Quad is a refrain that is essentially propulsive, with the shuffling of slippers for music-like the sound of rats. The form of the refrain is the series, which is no longer concerned here with objects to be combined, but solely with objectless journey. The series has an order, according to which it waxes and wanes, waxes again and wanes again, following the appearance and disappearance of the protagonists at the four corners of the square: it is a [musical] canon.
It has a continuous course following the succession of segments traversed: side, diagonal, side … etc. It has an ensemble that Beckett describes as follows: “Four possible solos all given. Six possible duos all given (two twice). Four possible trios all given twice” (Quad 451-452); a quartet four times. The order, the course, and the ensemble, render the movement all the more inexorable in that it is without object, like a conveyor belt that makes moving objects appear and disappear.
Beckett’s text is perfectly clear: it is concerned with exhausting space. There’s no doubt that the protagonists tire themselves out and will drag their steps more and more. But tiredness is a minor aspect of the enterprise, which concerns the number of times a possible combination is realized (for example, two of the duos are realized twice, the four trios twice, the quartet four times). The protagonists tire according to the number of realizations. But the possible is accomplished independently of this number, by the exhausted protagonists who exhaust it.
The problem is this: in relation to what can exhaustion (which is not the same as tiredness) define itself? The protagonists realize and tire at the four corners of the square, along the sides, and the diagonals. But they accomplish and exhaust at the center of the square, where the diagonals cross. That, one might say, is where the potentiality of the square lies. Potentiality is a double possibility. It is the possibility that an event that is itself possible is realized in the space under consideration. The possibility that something realizes itself and the possibility that some place realizes it. The potentiality of the square is the possibility that the four moving bodies that inhabit it will collide-two, three or four of them-following the order and the course of the series.
The center is precisely that place where they might come together; and their meeting, their collision, is not an event among others, but the only possibility of event-the potentiality of the corresponding space. To exhaust space is to extenuate its potentiality through rendering any meeting impossible. The solution to the problem from now on is found in this nimble central disconnecting, this sway of the hips, this swerving aside, this hiatus, this punctuation, this syncope, rapid sidestep or little jump that foresees the coming together and averts it.
Repetition takes away nothing of the decisive, absolute character of such a gesture. The bodies avoid each other respectively, but they avoid the center absolutely. They sidestep together at the center to avoid each other, but each also sidesteps in solitude to avoid the center. It is the space that is depotentialized, “track.. . . Just wide enough for one. On it no two ever meet” (Closed Space, 199- 200).
Quad is close to a ballet. The general similarities between the work of Beckett and modern ballet are numerous: the abandonment of all privileging of vertical stature; the agglutination of bodies as a means of keeping upright; the substitution of any-space-whatever for designated areas; the substitution of a “gestus” as a logic of postures and positions for all story or narrative; the quest for a minimalism; the appropriation by dance of walking and its accidents; the acquisition of gestural dissonances…. It is not surprising that Beckett requests that the walkers of Quad have “some ballet training.” It is needed not only for the walking but the hiatus, the punctuation, the dissonance.
It is also close to a musical work. A work by Beethoven, “Ghost Trio” appears in another piece for television by Beckett and gives it its title. The second movement of the Trio, which Beckett uses, assists us in the composition, decomposition and recomposition of a theme of two motifs, of two refrains. It is like the increase and decrease of a more or less dense compound along melodic and harmonic lines, its aural surface traversed by a continual, obsessive, obsessional, movement. But there is an altogether different thing as well: a sort of central erosion that first arises as a threat among the bass and is expressed in the trill or wavering of the piano, as if one were about to abandon the key for another or for nothing, tearing the surface, plunging into a ghostly dimension where the dissonances would come only to punctuate the silence. And Beckett underlines just this each time he speaks of Beethoven: a previously unheard-of art of dissonances, a wavering, a hiatus, “a punctuation of dehiscence,” a stress given by what opens, slips away, is swallowed, a gap that punctuates nothing other than the silence of the latest ending. But, if the Trio effectively displays these traits, why was it not used to accompany Quad, to which it is so well suited? Why is it used to punctuate another piece? Perhaps because there is no need for Quad to illustrate a music which, in developing differently its ghostly dimension, has a role elsewhere.

(Analysis by Gilles Deleuze. Excerpt from The Exhausted)

“Who thinks he’s important, is a donkey.”

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho was born on December 15th, 1907 in Rio de Janeiro. He was well known as a pioneering figure of modern Brazilian Architecture. Last night the world not only lost an important architect but also an intellectual and a visionary. He became world-renowned for his work on the newly planned Brazilian capital Brasília.

The construction of Brasília began on October 22nd, 1956. Already after 10 days the first provisional presidential palace has been completed. Till today it is known as the first building of Brasília. Many workers were fascinated by the idea of a completely new and modern city, with the result that they came to the newly planned city and worked there up to fifteen hours a day. The construction of the city has been almost finished in four years after the beginning.

The most famous building in Brasília and probably of Niemeyer’s portfolio in general is the Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida, a catholic church in the centre of the city. The building has a diameter of 70 metres and is solely made out of concrete and glass.

Sixteen pointed concrete columns cause the hyperbolic form of the building, which is still very distinct compared to the cubic constructions of the rest of the city. The symbolism of the church could be interpreted as Jesus’ crown of thorns, praying hands or a heavenward flower.

Today Brasília can be seen as a paradoxical blend of impressive but also unrealistically planned architecture. For tourists the city remains still rather inaccessible. The city has almost no sidewalks or street-crossings. To get somewhere without a car is almost impossible, but even the taxi drivers speak almost no English. Still there are some upward trends. The income rates per capita are the highest in the country. There are a lot of cultural events going on besides all the malls, bars, clubs and pubs you can find. From a modern architectural perspective Brasília can be seen as one of the most important and interesting cities in the world.

Niemeyer was not only an extraordinary architect but also an exceptional individual. The era Niemeyer was double-edged as life is itself. His architectural work was focussed often more on aesthetics than on utilitarian principles. This brought him a lot of accusations by colleagues. Some blamed him to be a creator of “soulless and communist” architecture.

Though, his examination of new aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete was very important for the architecture of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He achieved his aims being a man of work and revolutionising architecture, urban planning and design. Recognised and criticised as the “Sculptor of Monuments”, Niemeyer was praised for being a great artist and one of the great architects by fellow planners like Le Corbusier, with whom among others he designed the UN headquarter building in New York.

Fingerprintless impressions upon the pliable dough of sanity are a walk. The offering that to each—the very way of being—becomes his own in fretless perambulation. So you wander Thameswise from Waterloo and ponder your hangover or joy or nothing and think in terms that the wakes of passing ferries illumens the metronomic lurch of moored skiffs’ feeble masts. You seek answers to questions yet unformed. Skyward, you examine the shale of clouds shielding and disseminating light evenly upon faces and brickwork and the bodies of those who pass holding faces containing similar thoughts, possibly, walking dogs or jogging. The structureless skyline jumble shall appear then, to you, clearly and without reason. You’ll snatch at the treacle of poetry oozing from nearby mortar as though some desperate, hungry bear. You will wish you could learn how to paint, or another language.

The Tate appears with it’s monolithic defunct chimney and you enter. The paintings are all the same still, yet this time though you realize things in them you didn’t know you’d been capable of seeing before. The last time you were here you saw the undertones you now are awash in viewing. A layer has been thinly scalped away by the cool surgeon of experience. Below the layer—seen yet not, in more of a sensed opacity—the next layer lies in promise of a return visit. So you exit as your powers of appreciation wilt. The men selling peanuts offer the air around them caramelized nostalgia. You cross the footbridge, hook up around St. Paul’s and venture East again to watch the Orwellian brutalist concrete of Barbican give the sliding sky a slow papercut.

Then, South. Called yet again back towards the river. You lose yourself in thought amongst towerblocks. You find the canal, finally, and follow it in a big endless loop. You move through deserted Limehouse where the boats mingle with the sound of traffic reflected from their sullen lagoon. There is no movement but yourself. You stop into a pub along Wapping, heading West again, for some reason, and wait in silence for the hot bark of dropped kitchen plates as your ale is pulled. Eye contact and currency, possibly, interpolate the time between your entrance to the place, sitting, sipping, rising and leaving out yet again.

Night now, or at least dusk. It’s quite difficult to discern. The overground is packed and there are people Dalston-bound and made up for the evening holding bottles of things. Women talk about the nothing-women things that occur on trains when eavesdropping. A few nearby, lurching in scarves, jaunt obscene vowels at nervous eyes bordered in fringe. The game being played involves a marked degree of loquacity. You exit and wonder if volume can measure attraction and wander some more up through Shoreditch or down past deep-fried Whitechapel where invariably a cookie-cutter person in a tracksuit offers to sell you drugs of some kind. You smile and nod past pretending not to hear. You wander towards home, though feel that when you get there it will have felt better to have been out all along. The dough is kneaded and it has begun to drizzle. You’ve forgotten your umbrella, you realize.

Nick Kipley, London

Imagine there’s no Heaven, It’s easy if you try,
no Hell below us, above us only sky
Imagine all the people, Living for today

Is the meaning of less,
Not meaningless?
We don’t play chess
Life is more, not less

We adore, suppress
Get punched and rest
Life isn’t a test
It is a journey
Not a tourney
No attorney will suspect
Your actions are the fact

Life is certain
That is real
It is easy if you try
And you can truly feel
The emotion, the poison
The water, the ocean
Emotion is a trigger
Just figure out,
What it is all about

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do,
nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too
Imagine all the people, Living life in peace…

Do we nobles pay a price for peace?
At least we get one
And peace is measured with dead sons
The pressure is on
Because we will solve the math and wealth
But the wealth of nations will collide
As long we don’t provide
A system that divides, but shares

Our society needs a lead
Otherwise Europe won’t succeed
The birth of the Union was hard
In a family with moral hazard
Not a lot in common except of war

You may say I am a dreamer, But I’m not the only one,
I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.
Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man

Don’t leave the place to fanatics
Because this earth is fantastic
And we can socialize
Create, stop to hate and celebrate
That we have better possibilities
And do it useful, not to tease
Because the only way to please
Is humanity

Imagine all the people, sharing all the world…

John Lennon is still to mention
He was murdered by one intention
The obvious insanity
Or the human being he tried to be
His dream gave people hope
Out of any scope
Imagine this world, is just the same boat.

by Matthias Z

Bombardment. A word that describes the amount of information we receive daily about the economic crisis. We feel threatened from every side of the globe; break down of the euro, emerging markets’ growth slowing down, reforms needed in the United States…
What do people understand from these propagations? How do we feel? Especially the transformational generation; one that some coin the ‘lost generation’? The Youth. What do we think of our prospects in this uncertain paradigm that is put forward?

Sixty years ago, the world entered a new financial era, the baby boomers’ business cycle. This era can be defined as ‘mergers and acquisitions’, this term being relevant to all aspects of society during this time. How much can we get? What can we get? And can we get more? From the housewife acquiring her new vacuum cleaner to the CEO of an oil company acquiring a developing country’s fossil fuels, improvements in business mirrored onto society, developing mass consumption. People, at least in the West, were ‘living the dream’. From this expansionist era, disillusion and fallibility operated at full blown and delivered the goods; the depleted West created its wealth on disparity of resources creating a worldwide financial bubble that would serve Western prosperous ambitions.

Finally, the bubble burst. Those critical thinkers who had envisioned the housing market to erupt had done so since the 1990’s. Warning signs had been sent, think tanks had been created, and the Club of Rome had shared their concerns about our common future. Presently, we are in a plight, asking for better, playing the blame game, condemning the ones who had once misled us. In this confused ecosphere, the only thing we know is that it is the end of the hedonist business cycle. The exhilaration that people and nations needed to overcome the traumas of WWII is insolvent now. The question, we need to ask is what do we want next?

A lot of people feel sorry for our generation, and a lot of us probably would have wished for an earlier birth. I believe that we should not feel sorry for ourselves; we have one of the greatest opportunities of the century to be part of a new era. Like the late baby-boomers, we are part of a transformational generation. If we take this chance, we will get to act on what we want next. Building a stable future that lay on solid ground sounds very ideological and naïve. Nonetheless, it is possible. Politicians, economists, business leaders have understood that we need to say our goodbyes to hedonist corporate behaviours.

‘Sustainability’ is the new politically correct word that is being used to encompass all that relates to enduring human needs. Climate change, eco-systems, green energy, the economy, diversity, smarter technologies are enclosed in this expression that unifies everybody behind the subsistence of human kind. ‘Sustainability’ is and will be used in business for a long-time as we perceive changes towards responsible behaviours, business as socially involved, and a force for good. These new ideals and mottos endorsed by the very individuals who led us to this momentum do not sound realistic and viable to the ears of many sceptics. Why should we trust people who abused the system?
And this is exactly the point; we will never drive change if we follow their paths and their rules. Mirroring our beliefs onto theirs to shape our place in society will not work as the current system is gasping its last breaths; we need leaders for Tomorrow who will officially start off the race to the age of sustainability. We thought we started with the election of Obama, but electing someone who is a perfect product of his time does not bring change, it brings reassurance, it brings hope to the ones who need guidance to visualise the future.

From recent research brought about by the Apollo-Gaia project created in early 2005 which focuses on the study of the earth’s feedback systems relating to climate change, experts have found that the projected 4 degrees’ increase in temperature for 2100 by the Copenhagen Climate summit is unrealistic. The actual increase could be of 15.8 degrees taking into accounts all of the earth’s sensitivity systems. The changes that we have experienced recently with the climate and seasons are the result of a variation of only 0.8 degrees. Hence, it is not a matter of sustainability anymore, trying to respond to the changes around us, it is about survival. 
Researchers from the Apollo-Gaia project state that we have seventy years to change our whole system around before the earth sets on a runaway behaviour leading us to our perdition.

Therefore, here is a call-out for real leaders for the seventy years challenge. Do we really want to be coined the ‘lost generation’? With the near-complete globalisation that we are experiencing we become more informed and better educated. 
In the 50’s, you had perhaps a minority of graduates who spoke a second language, nowadays it has become usual to see people speaking more than two languages and acquiring better qualifications than ever before. 
Consequently, if we have the brains, the information and the aptitude to do it, the only thing that is missing is courage. Courage to change the course of time, courage to lead creatively, courage to think outside of the box, courage to face our own vulnerability against nature.

Limitless. Is the word that should be appointed to our generation. Limitless in terms of thinking, innovation, creation and reconstruction. Leaders of tomorrow will not try to reassure the public by selling dejà-vus and dreary concepts; increasing taxes, increasing regulation, nationalising failing institutions, giving government bail-outs … and blah blah blah. Creative leaders will not be scared to ask real questions and finally fight for the preservation of human rights, human kind and the natural environment.

As young and informed individuals, we should not stand anymore for hypocritical observations of human misery caused by governments; younger we witnessed international failures in Bosnia and Rwanda, currently we are witnessing the same in Syria, literally observing massacres through the eyes of UN observers.

Winston Churchill was accused by his Conservative peers to be a traitor as he did not defend the Conservatives’ policies. Churchill followed his independence of heart and mind to serve his nation. Accordingly, this kind of independent leadership that focuses on the benefits to society is the one we need.

As George Bernard Shaw said so well; “You see things; and you say why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?”

by Dea Gjinovci

This time, we are proud to present you a mix by Muanda, who is part of the upcoming artist collective HardWorkSoftDrink from Frankfurt/Offenbach. In combination with a lovely visual prescence, lots of analogue equipment and far away from trending hypes they create their own unique style of minimalistic and atmospheric techno music. Playing already on the decks at the world famous club Robert Johnson you can awlays expect a well-thought and sophisticated mix of underground club music when you listen to the label HWSD. The first upcoming release is a remix by Thilo Dietrich for Sascha Dive, which has been released on Be Chosen.

Muanda created this impressive mix of dark tunes exclusively for Dispatch for the Dedicated. You should not miss it.

listen

Let’s create fiction for walking and staring at the sidewalk. Fiction about sidewalk gazing. Gaze walk, with thoughts. Actions occur as they are so wont too occur – but only in knowing that that’s the end effect of them, really. As thoughts themselves, occurring. Action denotes thought and thinking. The process of walking, conversely, is rooted in thinking because all processes are rooted in thinking. Walking down the street is a way to orientate yourself with not only the world around you but within the world you possess inside of your head. The world in your head is deeper than the one around you and can go further. By deepening the world inside of our heads, the depth of learning is passed on upon the world around us. In that way, thinking makes for ‘Beautiful.’ And walking makes thinking. It’s an extroverted introversion, an exercise in movement.

All movements – be they positive or negative – are progressive in that they (the thoughts, with movement) occur and that with each thought is attained a certain level of progress. You further yourself, hurtling, into the future with hands in pockets at a steady four miles per hour. Ours is a generation whose most popular fabric is apathy in dappled shades of revolt. There is too much fluoride in the water, too much violence on T.V., too many similar politicians for us to really actually be affected by anything. We carry thousands of songs in our pocket and we want to gaze upon clouds – foreign clouds – always, constantly, in good company and enjoying ourselves.

To purport mediocrity makes for a cop-out that’s simultaneously genius unwound as much as it is neurosis wound-tight. So, meet oddballs. The way a shield volcano works is by growing with the spread of gravity upon its oozed lava, layer upon layer. Itself, upwards. That being said: there is no such thing as a ridiculous conversation. Become engulfed. Tighten your genius-instinct. Get a little loose around people. Nothing you can possibly say will ever mean anything of real significance until someone has repeated it. Become repeatable, is all. Dabble in dog-paddling the fathomless gulf of the absurd, but make sure to wear goggles.

But most of all decide to love and do so ‘till the palms of your hands quiver like Wagner’s as you walk down the street. Blast weird music on the top story of the bus and allow for the arrhythmia of clenched fists and gritted teeth direct glissandos of wild-animal traffic. Fall in love often and too easily. Tarzan-swing from love to love. Onward. Forward. Up. This is The System, and The System provides. The function of the System is self-perpetuation inspired by movement and love and desire and want and thinking and mostly, walking places. So walk. Stare at the sidewalk and just keep on walking.

Nick Kipley, London

Today, most people in the world, mainly in the so-called Western one are used to the daily confrontation with all the terrible things happening in this world. It seems to be a concern of all of us – we start being lonely, depressed mavericks on the quest for gratification in our short life, which is not possible as we are anxious about the future. As some sociologists already coined it – we live in a society of risk (Beck) losing our ontological security (Giddens). The world around us is not simple anymore, maybe it was never straightforward but we guess generations before ours handled it somehow more positively than we do today. Every day the Western World worries about its loss of the political and economic strength. We fear the decline of our fertility rates and overpopulation at the same time. Migration might seem logical here, but we fear it even more. We fear that there will be an end to economic growth and prosperity resulting in the decline of our own well-being. We fear natural catastrophes as well as technical ones, greenhouse effect and diseases harming our health. The international society is like an old nagging person – always grim, never happy.

Today we measure everything: growth, markets, universities, restaurants, food, cities, well-being, happiness, life quality, animals, human beings… And this list doesn’t have a (happy) end. Maybe we should measure the status of anxiety in today’s societies, where everything seems quite all right. Or maybe we should just stop to measure everything and starting to experience life as a unique and solitary phenomenon. Most people in the Western World have too much to eat, can pursue their interests, are ‘free’, but still there is this permanent state of anxiety: ‘What about tomorrow? And the day after tomorrow?’, ‘What about the EU, the Euro and the migration? What about terrorism and the war in Syria?’ – And if there is no source of fear around, we’ll find one. This is why for instance the German writer Günter Grass decided to be scared of Israel quite recently. At least Mitt Romney is going to be scared of ‘binders full of women’ now.

It’s neither about doing nothing, nor a call for plain hedonism. Our world faces huge challenges such as the global prosperity gap, overpopulation and climate change to name but a few. But what we need is activism, participation and creativity – not blind fear. We sit on our couches; watch all the bad things happening around us. We are worried, even anxious – but do we really care? Our anxiety makes us passive; others will handle the problems – meanwhile we worry.

Let’s stop it. What happened to the good old happiness of everyday life, to get up and see the sun and be happy that we exist? Life is great and if it comes to existential questions, than it is quite human. Why are we here, what is our purpose? Career? A lot of money? Happiness? Love? To change the World? There are different questions of different moral value and it is good to ask these. But our purpose should not be to get up every day and fear what comes next, being exhausted, stressed of everything. We live one life and we should remember that day by day – changing the world through and around us with a smile on our face.

Whenever I felt nerve-wracked and uneasy, I’ve started questing. Combing through the web, through books, like a lunatic. Since I’m 16. It sharpens my mind. I am a big fan of quotes and sayings even though they don’t provide context. They don’t provide context, but they give you perspective(s). Rarely there is a right or wrong, good or bad. More often than not, there are shades of sounds, colours, touches, words, gestures, actions. Change your frame of reference, and suddenly you feel fine. That’s why they say that love looks through a telescope and envy through a microscope. Understanding is my remedy.

Ekaterina D.

Jeffrey David Wall was born on September 29^th, 1946 in Vancouver and has become one of the most influential photographers today. After studying art history at the University of British Columbia, Wall completed his PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London in 1973. During his studies he already dealt with different techniques of photography and in 1978 he began to produce large-sized photographs attached to lightboxes.

With the use of these light boxes, Wall created a very interesting type of the presentation of images. The backlit photographs appear like oversized diapositives and emphasize the surreal atmosphere of his scenes. Most of his photographs convey the impression of a snapshot but are staged with meticulous precision. They seem to be documenting works but they are thoroughly planned.

The combination of the modern way of image presentation through lightboxes and the classic features of image composition characterize his works. In his photographs he often portrays unpleasant issues like pollution, violence or solitude. In combination with the form of backlit presentation the photographs could also be compared with some film stills of a David Lynch movie.

As an art history graduate Jeff Wall refers in various photographs to painters like Caspar David Friedrich, Édouard Manet or Francisco de Goya.

The following selection shall provide a short overview of his work, click the title to see the full picture:

The Destroyed Room (1978) (right)

The painting “Death of Sardanapalus” by Eugène Delacroix served as a model for this photograph. The main topics of the image are aggression and violence. This picture was the first lightbox-photograph Jeff Wall created.

Picture for Women (1979) (above)

In this picture Wall refers to Manets painting “Bar in Foliesbergère” and deals with the term perspective.

The Thinker (1986)

“The Thinker” refers to the eponymous sculpture by Auguste Rodin.

Dead troops talk (1992) (right)

“Dead troops talk” was arranged within a studio with different actors. It consists of different pieces which where assembled afterwards.

A sudden gust of wind (1993)

With this picture Wall recreated a famous woodcut by Katsushika Hokusai called “Ejiri in Suruga Province”

The flooded grave (1998-2000)

A combination of images of two different Vancouver cemeteries and a studio photographed living aquatic system.

Tattoos and shadows (2000)

This photograph is inspired by the painting “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe“ by Manet. But in contrast to Manet’s painting Wall’s work is full of obscenity. Moreover, he refers to Charles Bukowski to emphasize the salacious mood of the whole scene.

What is postmodernism? It would break the mould to explain the whole idea of this flux. There are a lot of seminal texts describing the phenomena of post-modernism or hyper-modernism, but the categorization of this decade seems not be simple and is controversially debated.

Post-modernism is known as a period, which was firstly mentioned in 1870, but it started to be discussed and propagated in the 1960s with its whole socialisation and width reception mostly in the US. It encompasses architecture, art, music, philosophy and sociology and many other different spheres, even in international relations. If you think about postmodernism you may associate names like Le Corbusier, Foucault, John Cage or Derrida. But it seems that we have never understood the ideas or the work of these people. It remains still a perpetual process of discovery. Though, there is little new to show, it is only a connection between the past achievements and our eclectic creative phase. There are voices telling that the next “post-post-modern” times descend.

Are we at the end of history? Can we talk about progress in culture? And what is culture? Is that just a buzzword everyday practices or is it about ‘high art’ like Tchaikovsky and Kandinsky. The only severe progress that can be seen belongs to 3 disciplines: science, economy and consumption in all its forms. But let’s make an attempt and categorize our current trends. It’s all about retro with a small eclectic breeze of matching the lifestyle of past decades in one. In music we are far from real innovation. We can listen to good albums like battles or grizzly bear, but where are the pioneers? It’s not the purpose to create perpetually something new, but it is a question of identification and classification of our time in present and also for the future. How is the cultural world constituted we are living in? The aesthetical judgement is mainly based on post-modern philosophy, art and design – a spirit of relativism and epistemological crisis, no matter if we take arts, economics or politics.

I would suggest to put our decades also in the time of a post-modern ambivalence, because the unsolvable problems of globalization, politics, environment, economy, which are implicitly discussed in music, art, fashion and architecture are nearly the same like 30 years before, maybe being more harsh. But we should still, at least, try to encounter the everyday life as something special, trying to find new forms of expression. If you are interested in the problems of this topic I can recommend you a very short introduction in Postmodernism published by Oxford University Press.

He hadn’t slept the night before. He had backache. When he arrived in Cologne, Germany, on January 24, 1975 they gave him a cheap unprofessional piano. He was about to refuse to play and had to be convinced by the concert promoter. Keith Jarrett played. And what came next was the world-famous ‘Köln Concert’, the best-selling jazz solo album in history and the new benchmark for jazz piano improvisations.

Curtain up for timeless music.

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With “listening habits” we start a new series of mixes featuring different approaches on house and techno music. In the mixes we want to combine the different emotions house music can deliver. The first mix contains tracks of different subgenres like dub-techno and some more melodic house music.

listen

Grit – as i look to the sky – Meanwhile

Stefan Lohse – Plaetschern – Uncanny Valley

Stl – Vintage Hunter – Something

Dresvn – untitled – Acido Records

Marco Bernardi – Days gone by – Royal Oak

Eltron John – Electric Wordlife – U know me records

Jacob Korn – It (Original Mix) – Mildpitch

Strolling through the empty streets of Venezia in a breathtaking summer night we passed a surreal gallery which would not really fit in the picture of this antique and romantic city. Right next to a beautiful church and a few restaurants you could see neon lights on an Andy Warhol portrait, a muscular mannequin, skulls made out of glass, plenty of silk-like showy clothes and lots of extremely impressive photography showing very dark Venetian masks combined with naked skin and a sadomasochistic touch.

On the next day we visited the place again and found ourselves in a mix of art gallery and fashion store, all created by fashion designer and political artist Fiorella Mancini. After a charming and informative conversation with the main employee we were asked to interview her a few days later, enough time to do some research.

First opening a store in Venecia in 1968 she was already collecting pieces from the most extreme design avantgardes of the 20th century long before it became a trend. With her spectacular performances, political and anti-Venetian art, hand painted velvets and one-of-a-kind apparel she shocked the conservative and well-heeled people of the city and also made herself an outlaw. At the time for example she sailed on a battleship with a commando of guerrilla girls, launching on an attack for the liberation of the Venezia Biennale where she and other alternative artists where never invited to present their work. Also she held legendary parties for a whole bunch of artists, designers and powerful people with names like Pink Prison Party or the Cat International Party, which we were told must have been orgies in any kind of ecstasy you can imagine.
1984 was the year of her landmark exhibition I Dogi della Moda, presented in the prestigious Palazzo Grassi. Twenty of the most influential fashion designers of the time, from Armani to Vivienne Westwood, created a piece on the theme of disguise, presented on mannequins sculpted by Australian artist Rod Dudley, featuring the heads of twenty doges, members of the venetian parliament 300 years ago, on a stylized female body.
The visitors were accompanied by guides carrying on the back sculptures of giant bees.
In the mid 80′s, as she was shuttling back and forth between Venice and New York to manage her Broadway showroom, she opened Fiorella Gallery in Campo Santo Stefano. It was to become one of the most iconic and controversial spots in the city. The gallery showcases rare pieces by designers and artists including Gaetano Pesce, Ettore Sottsass, Mario Schifano, Rod Dudley, Ludovico de Luigi and G.K. Bodanza. Still, the majority of the pieces are by Fiorella herself.

We spent about two hours with Fiorella, talking about her past and the politics of the time. During that time pretty much happened at her store. From one moment to another there where about 20 people of different groups creeping through the impressive landscape of her art, always nicely welcomed and treated well. An artist from England bought one of Fiorella’s beautiful jackets for an installation he build up at Burning Man this year. When we had a discussion about Silvio Berlusconi a suited lawyer entered the conversation, speaking 10 minutes about the radical politician and his connections to the Italian mafia. Later we were told not to publish this part, and we respect that.

Trying to understand Fiorella Mancini’s person and art is quiet impossible because of her wide range of style and influence in fashion, photography, sculptural work and political activism. After all these years Fiorella’s mind still seems to be lead by rebellion and anarchy. It is a big pool of unity and contradiction, the looking for truth and the vivification of human fears.

Fiorella, thank you for having us here. In the late 60s you were forced out of a velvet factory in Marghera for leading a strike against the rough working conditions. Was this the point in your life when you decided to create art which questions and criticises Venecia and its society?

I have already been doing performance art with other fashion designers before, also combined with erotic influences. During the protest we were all wearing gas masks as a sign of insurgency against the politicians of Venice who pretended a change in their acting but it was not allowed to say anything against them at that time. Surely, it was an important incident for me as a political artist.

Your anti-Venecian art caused a lot of bad reactions by the people who lived here. Still you are an exceptional artist. How do people from the mainland and specially other artists who live here react to your person today?

Most of them ignore my person. Of course they know my work, but they do not come here, I still do not fit in their conservative thinking. Children pass my store and run into it, immediately being pushed out by their embarrassed parents. Though, it also happens that they are already crying outside when they look through the windows.

Can you see a change in the urban society during the past decades?

There is no real change in the minds of the people here; I got the feeling that it is even worse than 20 years ago. There is too much private interest of the politicians, also the church has a lot of power and influence on politics. Since the financial crisis a lot of Chinese business-men are buying shops in the city as they are the only ones who can afford the high rents.

A lot of your work features gay men and HIV/AIDS. Why?

I do not really have an answer to this, it just happens. Lots of my friends are gay and I also think they are very attractive and sexually more open than women. A few years ago a gay man was working for me in this gallery all day long. Later I was told that he often locked the store at lunchtime, which he was not supposed to do. Then I found out that he has always invited his lover to fuck him in the backroom. Also I am using the grindr app for my mobile phone, it is an application which shows gay people if there are other gays around; that brings me more customers (laughs).
Especially in Italy women are hypocrites and loose themselves in their imagination of true love. While they live in their romantic fantasies men just do their thing. Again it is religion which still causes the gender segregation. But I have to add that there is a big swinger club culture in Italy, especially in rural environments, it is like an open secret.

The sounds of a vocoder and keytar decorate the musical landscape created by Robert Glasper and his band of talented young musicians (Casey Benjamin; saxes and vocoder, Derek Hodge, bass; Chris Dave, drums) who together make up the ‘The Robert Glasper Experiment’. If you’re thinking to yourself those instruments sound out of place in the context of jazz music, it’s about time for you to reassess your mental image of what a jazz album should sound like.  After having studied music at the New School in New York he spent years honing his jazz chops and foraying occasionally into the hip hop world working with artists like Kanye West and Common and the legendary J. Dilla. Forays that helped mold the concept for The Experiment’s debut album, Black Radio.

His musical crossovers culminated in the group’s smoky debut Black Radio released in Feburary 2012 that has set the music world buzzing by creating a fresh mix of musical styles that have been explored previously by the likes of hip hop giants Tribe Called Quest and jazzmen like Herbie Hancock, both of whom he names as influences on his music.

Glasper brings traditional jazz sensibility and harmonic structuring to the world of fluid sensuous R&B vocals from artists like Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) and Lalah Hathaway (yes, that’s Donnie’s daughter). But his work on this album goes beyond the merging of two worlds.

Every one of the tracks feature tight drums and solid penetrating bass lines that one would expect on a hip-hop album with vocals that one would expect to hear on soul and R&B records. Glasper and co. provide fresh, complex instrumental accompaniments on all the tracks that give the album a hazy sensual vibe while remaining intellectually exciting for true jazzheads.  On certain cuts including his cover of Mongo Santamaria’s classic Latin tune ‘Afro Blue’ he exercises a delicious restraint embellishing Erykah Badu’s vocals with flurries of notes, without ever veering into a true solo. Unlike Glasper’s first project, Black Radio is not meant to focus on his own talent, but rather explore and generate a concept. A concept that is perhaps best exemplified by his cover of Cobain’s ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’ a song that Glasper says he admires for it’s melodic beauty and the interesting chord changes. While the album seems to be brimming with covers, on originals like ‘Ah Yeah’ featuring Musiq Soulchild and Chrisette Michelle, the Rhodes organ and drum snaps are sexy and original. And on others like ‘Why Do We Try’ that begins with Stokley’s warm vocal overtones cushioned by vocoder harmonies, Glasper’s solo produces an angularity  that is challenging and pleasing at once.

Though some critics have said essentially ‘that ain’t jazz’  Glasper told Public Radio International’s Bullseye that Black Radio was meant to move the jazz world out of its current period of stagnation. “All [jazz] ever did was change.  That’s the spirit of it. That’s what I’m doing. I’m playing jazz that’s 2012”. That certainly seems to be the case, and now we’re eagerly awaiting what 2013 will bring.

Hillary Donnell, London

While thinking about our generation guided by rampant consumerism and nihilistic hedonism, it is good to recall Allen Ginsberg’s famous words written over half a century ago. Lean back and let them blow your mind.

HOWL (1956)

Theo Parrish’s electronic music career started 1994 when he moved to detroit. In a short time he became one of the most heard and highly respected house producers and DJ’s of all time. Solitary flight is one of our favourite tracks because it combines dreamy classical orchestral sound passages with a pumping house groove, which makes this track very unique in its genre.

A perfect track to play at sundown.

We have the pleasure to present an exclusive podcast for Dispatch for the Dedicated mixed by YNK (Maria Colors):

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Tracklist:

Aroy Dee – Sun [MOS003]

Dorian Gig – The James Herbert Theory [SRT150]

Gemini – Crossing Mars [PLE65313-1]

Brian Harris – Chemistry [CHUN001]

Craig Smith – On The D.I. (Eastside Deep Mix) [IDRT003]

Common Factor – Over You [TTM001]

E-Dancer – The Dream [KMS079]

Aroy Dee – Boraric [MOS003]

Gene Hunt & Ron Hardy – 16 And Indiana [HHYR 10]

YNK – Twistin’ [TDPR003]

Scott Ferguson – Dramatic Disco [FPR008]

Cellule Eat – Panda (Taron-Trekka Remix) [COLOR002]