Magali Reus

Interview : Christopher Kulendran Thomas

O conjunto de entrevistas agora iniciado, para o programa Molduras – Antena 2, RTP, centra-se no campo da prática artística contemporânea neste período da globalização e nos dilemas do paradigma actual. Esta série de entrevistas consiste numa única questão, colocada a artistas contemporâneos, nacionais e internacionais, sobre como estes testam as condições políticas, em particular as estruturas económicas. Ou seja, de que forma é que a prática artística corrente informa sobre os processos de globalização, e durante o processo transforma e faz visível as condições políticas da sociedade contemporânea.

RGC: In which way do you think 'conflict' is controlled and informs in your work?

CKT: Well this work was borne out of an incredibly conflicted situation, as was I for that matter. I was born in London in 1979 after my parents fled escalating conflict within Sri Lanka. The ensuing civil war ended brutally in 2009 as the Sri Lankan government leveraged international interests to comprehensively defeat the Tamil Tigers. Now, as the North and East of the island is about to be sold off to the international backers of Sri Lanka’s genocide, the economy is booming and with it a new context of Contemporary Art has emerged. The capital Colombo’s first Western-style commercial galleries have very quickly established Contemporary Art – as in the West – as the highest benchmark of connoisseurial consumerism in what is now one of the world’s fastest growing small economies. My response to this is the ongoing enterprise When Platitudes Become Form, whereby I reconfigure, for the Western art market, artworks by some of Sri Lanka’s most celebrated young artists. This radical re-marketing of the island’s contemporary art raises funds to resist the oppression of communities displaced by civil war, channelling resources that are not under government control to the formerly Tamil-occupied territories of the North and East of the country.

2012-2013 London's Art Season is on

The 2011-2012 art season is off! The 2012-2013 art season is now open for belligerency. Hostilities this time start with,
Alexandre da Cunha
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Sarah Lucas
Ugo Rondinone
Pre-Raphaelites
Artist Books Weekend
Thomas Schütte
Ângela Ferreira
Frieze Art Fair ...
and a whole bunch of frenzy parties and connections all over the place

2012-2013 London's Art Season is on

The 2011-2012 art season is off! The 2012-2013 art season is now open for belligerency. Hostilities this time start with,
Alexandre da Cunha
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Sarah Lucas
Ugo Rondinone
Pre-Raphaelites
Artist Books Weekend
Thomas Schütte
Ângela Ferreira
Frieze Art Fair ...
and a whole bunch of frenzy parties and connections all over the place

newsfromlondon201208

A rainy taste of London's Summer!

Notting Hill Carnival

A Small Taste of London's Summer Carnival!!!

Way beyond all the community, integration, values, performance, spectacle and the exoticism things' that tend to characterise Notting Hill Carnival held in the middle of metropolitan's babylondon.

One of the images that most vividly comes in to my mind is related with an affective moment in The Rum Diary, from the novel written by Hunter S. Thompson, when Chenault disappears under a black cloth of human bodies at Porto Rico's local pub; or in one of the 70's pushing boundaries of what was then acceptable on movie screens, Emmanuelle, when the character played by Sylvie Kristel is raped by one of the denizens at an opium den, in Bangkok, or in the movie Mandingo, with the British actor James Mason, when the sexually repressed white woman, from the South US, has sex and become pregnant by the husky male slave in order to get revenge on her white husband and his bed-wench black woman (the same cross-cultural confrontation happens in the novel Equador, by Miguel de Sousa Tavares, when Ann Jameson, the wife of the British's observer in São Tomé e Principe, is spied while having sex with a local worker).

I'm use to the brazilian carnival, a bateria, a theme, colourful and bright outfits, almost naked men and women, dancing and singing throughout the spectacle lasting three whole days. In here, we have a PA, a DJ, on a truck, with all the family behind. Some strange mating-rituals – that's carnival e ninguém leva a mal! – happen in the meantime.

I'm wondering, if those films are the reason why one to the stereotype reflecting European culture and woman, to people from the other side of the Mediterranean sea, is that of European woman just want to fuck!? Believe me, I had some girl friends being asked that question just because they are European! I know almost all the continents (except Oceania). I have been there (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, North America, India, Japan, and Europe in general)! Digging deep into all those Venusian' mountains and the sustainable feeling is the same everywhere: some women do, others' don't!

Notting Hill Carnival

A Small Taste of London's Summer Carnival!!!

Way beyond all the community, integration, values, performance, spectacle and the exoticism things' that tend to characterise Notting Hill Carnival held in the middle of metropolitan's babylondon.

One of the images that most vividly comes in to my mind is related with an affective moment in The Rum Diary, from the novel written by Hunter S. Thompson, when Chenault disappears under a black cloth of human bodies at Porto Rico's local pub; or in one of the 70's pushing boundaries of what was then acceptable on movie screens, Emmanuelle, when the character played by Sylvie Kristel is raped by one of the denizens at an opium den, in Bangkok, or in the movie Mandingo, with the British actor James Mason, when the sexually repressed white woman, from the South US, has sex and become pregnant by the husky male slave in order to get revenge on her white husband and his bed-wench black woman (the same cross-cultural confrontation happens in the novel Equador, by Miguel de Sousa Tavares, when Ann Jameson, the wife of the British's observer in São Tomé e Principe, is spied while having sex with a local worker).

I'm use to the brazilian carnival, a bateria, a theme, colourful and bright outfits, almost naked men and women, dancing and singing throughout the spectacle lasting three whole days. In here, we have a PA, a DJ, on a truck, with all the family behind. Some strange mating-rituals – that's carnival e ninguém leva a mal! – happen in the meantime.

I'm wondering, if those films are the reason why one to the stereotype reflecting European culture and woman, to people from the other side of the Mediterranean sea, is that of European woman just want to fuck!? Believe me, I had some girl friends being asked that question just because they are European! I know almost all the continents (except Oceania). I have been there (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, North America, India, Japan, and Europe in general)! Digging deep into all those Venusian' mountains and the sustainable feeling is the same everywhere: some women do, others' don't!

newsfromlondon201208

... in the meantime, on BBC Asian Network, «Nihal asks if it's disrespectful for a woman to enter a place of worship during her period.»

Business flying away

Of those three air-flight companies, which will get the business?

TAP Portugal

British Airways

IBERIA

newsfromlondon201208

Sunday afternoon, with 30º C degrees outside

= sun + camera+ + book + blanket + iPod + drinks / time

newsfromlondon201208

Somewhere in London, after lunch, I've stop and looked at the sky expecting to see something different, a change! Just as like on TV it kept on showing the same image: a blue sky with white clouds. Nothing new!