Actually, I am impatient...

...and as such can't mention the fantastic-futurism-news without posting just one image. This is by my favourite futurist of all, Giacomo Balla, and encapsulates the futurists' fascination with and reverence for all aspects of modern technology. Here the romance which usually goes hand in hand with depictions of the moon and stars, is instead afforded to an ordinary streetlight. But, of course, for Balla, the streetlight is anything but ordinary: it is a sign of modernity, technology, and of man's ability to surpass nature.

Giacomo Balla, Streetlight, 1909

Winding up - the last week in Rome

(you think that means it's over, but really there are still posts to come with backlog from Pienza, Siena and Florence...)

I have now been back from Rome for over six months. The feeling of being there, with so much art and so much history and, contradicting that, so much sheer here-and-now life whirling all around me still has yet to fade. Some days, when life in Melbourne is failing to inspire, the month away starts to feel like a bit of a dream, but then I sit down with a Rome-buddy or two, discuss the altar paintings at Chiesa Nuova or the pavement at the Campidoglio and --hey presto-- it's like we were there only yesterday. But reminisce all I like, the Rome chapter has now well and truly closed for me: results are in and technically I am no longer enrolled in the subject at all. This slightly sad note does have a happy ending: my grade for all the Rome assignments was better than I ever could have expected, and means my plan to do honors in art history in 2010 is coming along very nicely. My intended thesis topic is (literally) centuries away from all the Renaissance and Baroque art I was studying in Rome...but geographically it isn't that far off at all - I plan to write on Futurism, an early twentieth century avant garde movement, started (of course) in Italy. My love of Futurism deserves more than a fleeting mention at the bottom of a set of photos, so rather than explaining it here, I promise to devote an entire post to Marinetti and his merry men in the near future.

Meels' Year of the Photo part three: Inspiration from Motor Town

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre photograph ruins, but not as you know them. You won't see a Colosseum or Sphinx among their photographs, instead you'll find the ruins of modern society, "the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension."

The pair's images range from disused industrial facilites in the old GDR to once opulent theatres across the states, and, in my favourite set, the remains of Detroit's 1950s heyday.

From Marchand and Meffre's site:
"Detroit was...the dazzling symbol of the American Dream City with its monumental skyscrapers and fancy neighborhoods... Since the 50's, "Motor City" lost more than half of its population. Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization."

The Detroit photos are dripping with poignancy - the grand old buildings appear as a ghost town: looming large, they are devoid of human presence, yet nonetheless convey a strong sense of past occupants. Furthermore, there is an overwhelming impression of the impermanence and fragility of man's endeavours against the ever ticking clock of the universe. Indeed when visiting the ruins of Hadrian's villa outside of Rome, the thing I was struck most by was the contrast between the crumbling bricks and the vigor of the umbrella pines growing all around them. Looking at ruins can remind you of the insight and ingenuity of our early ancestors, but it also puts things in perspective and makes you realise how small and insignificant your life is in the grand scheme of things.

As much as I am moved by all this emotional and philosophical content, I think it is the textural quality of Marchand and Meffre's images than I enjoy the most. Paint no longer just covers surfaces, it flakes, cracks, chips, dust flutters in beams of light; hell there is even a melted clock. Take that, Salvador Dali. I, too, snap away whenever I encounter interestingly decaying paint and surfaces, but never in all my travels have I encountered anything as beautiful as the remains documented by Marchand and Meffre. Now enough of my philosophising/jealous rambling, time to let the images speak for themselves. Suggested soundtrack for viewing: Sufjan Stevens, 'Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head!' (well, what else?).

[http://www.marchandmeffre.com/index.html]

Current crush

I found out about Natasha Khan aka Bat For Lashes through the song Prescilla from her first album, Fur and Gold, but it is the song Daniel, taken from her new album, Two Suns, which really has me smitten. Not to mention has the most amazing-creepy-amazing film clip I've seen in a fair while.

EDIT: The video now has embedding disabled, so you need to go here to watch it. 

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, I....

1. Finally put all my very favourite clippings onto twp pinboards. Organised AND inspired, what a combo.
2. Basked in the sun at Systems Garden, Melbourne Uni
3. Was captivated by end of semester art installations, Melbourne Uni.
4. Took sneaky mannequin pics at Portmans (more to come on my mannequin obesession soon).
5-6. Snapped an Armadale afternoon (I am also obsessed with laundromats. Hmm. It appears June was quite the month for idiosyncrasies).
7. Spotted Mr Hendriz hiding out in Windsor.
8. Enjoyed the glow outside Hawksburn station. Finishing work early rocks my world.
9-12. Snapsnapsnapped the ' Light in Winter' installation in Fed Square. By British art collective UVA.

The lost photos - and a lost place

For the girl who snaps and snaps like there is no tomorrow, nothing can be more distressing than a broken camera mid holiday. But then again my Canon IXUS was almost five years old, and in all fairness, I had really put it through its paces. It fizzled and froze and steamed in protest at all the overworking, three weeks into my trip to Rome. Unfortunately, it also fizzled the day after a very long bus trip around Lazio...so long that that one day, I had decided it was too late to upload my photos. I didn't even go through and review any of them. Figuring that changing the CF card and/or battery would fix the snapped snapper, you can imagine my dismay to see "DATA CORRUPTED" in tiny text on the tiny (5 years old, remember) LCD screen. And, following on from this heartbreak, I'm sure you can also imagine my delight upon discovering that Michael's Camera World could indeed extract the precious images from sad old Mr Ixus. Ahhh, it was an oldie, but it sure did take a good photo and the days shots are no exception. Rome roadtrip #3's itinerary doesn't sound that interesting - just some villas and a monastery, so what - but when you combine the day's wild WILD weather with the eerieness which resulted from us being the only visitors at each respective destination, well, let's just say 'atmospheric' does not do it justic at all. Particularly moving was the monastery of San Benedetto in Subiaco (Italy that is, not the suburb of Perth). The entire monastery complex is clinging to a remote mountain cliff and was built around the cave that Saint Benedict lived in as a hermit for three years before establishing a monastic community. San Benedetto was last on our itinerary, and we arrived just as the late winter afternoon was turning into night. The monastery itself was deserted, and from the minute you step inside, there is a feeling of having also stepped back in time, or more accurately to a place where the concept of time doesn't really exist (the twenty first century certainly doesn't exist at San Benedetto). Every wall and ceiling has been frescoed by the monks who have lived in the monastery over the past 1500 years. As we progressed further into the Lower Church, the sense of being in a sacred space increased, and at the heart of the complex, in sacro specco, the remains of the cave St Benedict lived in, I felt an overwhelming sense of smallness against the grand scale of a) time and b) the world itself. I am aware of how prosaic and exaggerated this all sounds, and maybe writing this is discrediting me as an academic a little. But nonetheless, this is how it felt to be in such a sacred space, so far removed from modern secular life. It was quite possibly the highlight of the whole trip (yes, the highlight of an art-trip was a monastery, as strange as that may seem), and I consider myself lucky to have had such an opportunity.

Rome update the second: Hadrian's Villa, Villa D'Este & Tivoli