La Biennale di Venezia

Venice International Film Festival
65th Venice Film Festival - 27th August to 6th September, 2008
11 days of glitz and glamour, a high-profile media event among the most important in Italy and around the world, set on the Lido di Venezia. The international focus consists of, and gives equal emphasis to, the press, experts in the field, international “opinionmakers” and commentators, and the general public.

International Art Exhibition
53rd International Art Exhibition. The event will run June 7th to November 22nd, 2009.
In 2007, the event attracted almost 320,000 visitors in the Giardini and Arsenale venues, and 34,000 professionals in four vernissage days. A world-wide cultural event that attracts a varied international public throughout a 150-day exhibition period.

International Architecture Exhibition
11th International Architecture Exhibition. The exhibition is from September 14th to November 23rd, 2008
The only specialized exposition of its kind in the world, developed in the same spaces (Giardini and Arsenale) as the International Art Exhibition; in 10 editions it has become a point of reference for designers, architects, professionals and trend setters from the world of art, fashion and communication.

International Festivals of Dance, Music and Theatre
6th International Festival of Contemporary Dance - Beauty. From June 14th to 29th, 2008
Commonly bound by an elevated level of research and experimentation, the three festivals have taken their place on the international scene, looking to a young and curious audience, in tune with the most innovative and experimental cultural changes. The Dance and Music Festivals are co-produced by the Teatro La Fenice.


History of the Venice Biennale

1895 - 2008

The Venice Biennale has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Established in 1895, the Biennale has an attendance today of over 300,000 visitors at the Art Exhibition.

The history of the Venice Biennale dates back from 1895, when the first International Art Exhibition was organized. In the 1930s new festivals were born: Music, Cinema, and Theatre (the Venice Film Festival in 1932 was the first film festival ever organized). In 1980 the first Intl. Architecture Exhibition took place, and in 1999 Dance made its debut at the Venice Biennale.
Read more...

Christoph Niemann's illustrations

Christoph Niemann's illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. His work has won numerous awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club and American Illustration. He is the author of two children's books, "The Police Cloud" and the forthcoming "The Pet Dragon," which teaches Chinese characters to young readers. After 11 years in New York, he moved to Berlin with his wife, Lisa, and their sons, Arthur, Gustav and Fritz. His Web site is christophniemann.com.

Arquitecture is a language

The phrases 'contemporary architects' and 'contemporary architecture' have obvious meanings but like 'modern architects' and 'modern architecture' the terminology is open to interpretation - shades of meaning.

Modern Architects
Modern Architecture became linked to a certain genre of building and thus over time wasn't really 'modern' anymore. Contemporary Architecture currently has less baggage, it is not affected by fall-out from the reign of a certain style.
Modern Architecture - the 'International Style' - was associated with some great architects and some powerful countries and companies. It became the equivalent of the Classical Style in the Georgian period, ie the establishment architecture, the status quo. Some key Modern Architects include Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Since the seventies architecture styles have become more fractured and we have - amongst what could be termed contemporary architects - post-modernists, neo-modernists, deconstructivists, contextualists, expressionists and so on.
‘Contemporary Architects' suggests a position that is anti-vernacular, comfortable with new materials and non-local materials & forms, using architectural language that is not generally steeped in past typographies or traditions.

Famous World Architects - Contemporary

Santiago Calatrava
David Chipperfield
Terry Farrell
Foster & Partners
Future Systems
Frank Gehry
Zaha Hadid
Michael Hopkins
Steven Holl
Toyo Ito
Henning Larsen
Daniel Libeskind
MVRDV
John McAslan
Rick Mather
Richard Meier
Enric Miralles
Rafael Moneo
Jean Nouvel
Cesar Pelli
Renzo Piano
Richard Rogers
Moshe Safdie
Alvaro Siza
Snohetta
Bernard Tschumi
Ruy Ohtake
Oscar Niemeyer

What is Subvertising?

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces. Our work has been embraced by organizations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, has been featured in hundreds of alternative and mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television and radio shows around the world.

Adbusters offers incisive philosophical articles as well as activist commentary from around the world addressing issues ranging from genetically modified foods to media concentration. In addition, our annual social marketing campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week have made us an important activist networking group. Read more...

Subvertising

The word subvertising is a portmanteau of the words subvert and advertising. Thus, the primary goal of subvertisements, more commonly referred to as subverts, is often to sabotage political candidates and campaigns, corporations, and other targets.

Art History Timelines - a pet project of Scott Zagar

To generate a timeline with image gallery, select as many categories as you want and click the "Generate Timelines" button below, or simply click on a category name. You can also get to the images by using the search engine and artist browse features to the right. This database contains 1640 images of 1303 works by 266 artists.

About Scott Zagar
Since 1997 I have worked as a software developer, graphic artist, web and sound designer and project manager. I have developed vertical portals, e-commerce solutions, search engine interfaces, database applications and large-scale web publishing systems. Read more...

the bird machine - screen print posters

the bird machine, inc., is a screen print poster workshop, owned and run by jay ryan, which is located very close to chicago.

jay learned to screenprint beginning in 1995, working under steve walters at screwball press. jay printed posters for his own band (dianogah), his friends' bands, and the clubs they played at. slowly, work from other clubs and other bands came in.

in 1999, jay started the bird machine print shop in the basement of his apartment building, and soon hired mat daly to help with the printing responsibilities. mat worked with jay until the end of 2007. Read more...

Coudal Partners, Films About Hand-Made Posters
The Beginning and End Are Up To You, is a mini-documentary about John Solimine who created the limited-edition poster for Field Tested Books 2008. For our first summer reading feature we asked Jay Ryan of The Bird Machine to design and hand-screen a limited run of posters. We visited Jay and Mat Daly at the Bird Machine Shop and we can tell you that the whole thing is refreshingly analog and deliciously slow.

Design Matters - RememberTibet

RememberTibet.org is an initiative started by Jonathan Barnbrook and Pedro Inoue designed to engage people during (and after) the Beijing Olympics Games through art and design to help raise awarness of China's policies towards Tibet. I asked Barnbrook to explain his goals:

What is your long term plan?
Our long term plan is, in some small way, to add to the weight of opinion that will change the situation. It's important, though, to not see this as only a design project even though we are asking for creative pieces; it is these pieces that can be used as tools but without getting hung up on whether they are legitimate design or not.

Do you think this will make a difference?
We will never know. Things aren't as simple as someone putting up a poster and the world will change. But I do believe that things change because of people forcing an issue onto the agenda.

What is the inspiration for the animated sequences (shown below)?
The animation is the first part of the project. It is there to publicise the web site and encourage people to contribute their own work.The main point of doing this animation is to remind people very simply and clearly about this situation in a balanced way. That is why it is just two people [in the narration] discussing the situation; there is no heroic ranting and we are trying to tackle the grey areas that Chinese government constantly tries to bring to this argument. By Steven Heller