Brugge

read: Tio du Pacifique, by Natsuki Ikezawa

Cute novel, kind of novel about the lessons of life seen from a child that grows up in an ideal/idyllic place...

Read: Mon ange, by Guillermo Rosales

Read this short autobiographical novel. First Cuban novel I've ever read. Very pessimistic about life.
The character-author ends up in a boarding home for insane people. The one that drank from such inspiration sources, like Hemingway or Proust, found peace in death. Every bit of hope in life gets bitten by reality...

Boarding home ! Boarding home ! Depuis déjà trois and, j’habite dans ce boarding home. Castano, le vieillard centenaire qui sans cesse veut mourir, hurle et empeste l’urine comme avant. Ida, la grande dame déchue, rêve encore que ses enfants viendront un jour du Massachussets pour la délivrer. Eddy, le fou calé en politique internationale, reste suspendu aux journaux télévisés et réclame à cor et à cri une troisième guerre mondiale. Reyes, le vieux borgne, suppure toujours de son œil de verre. Arsenio continue de donner des ordres. Curbelo mène toujours sa vie de bourgeois grâce à l’argent qu’il nous extorque.
Boarding home ! Boarding home !
J’ouvre mon recueil de poètes anglais et je lis un poème de Blake intitulé « Proverbes de l’enfer »
Conduis ta carriole et ta charrue
Sur les ossements des morts.
Le chemin de la douleur mène au palais
De la sagesse
La prudence est une vieille fille riche et laide
Que l’incapacité courtise
L’horloge égrène les heures de la folie

Je me lève. Dans un coin du salon, Reyes, le borgne, pisse longuement. Arsenio lui fonce dessus et dégrafe son ceinturon. Avec la boucle, il assène un coup violent sur le dos du vieux borgne. Je vais sur Arsenio et lui prends le ceinturon des mains. Je le brandis au-dessus de ma tête et le laisse retomber, de toutes mes forces, sur le corps squelettique du vieux borgne.
Dehors, Caridad la mulâtresse appelle pour le dîner. Il y aura du poisson froid, du riz blanc et des lentilles crues.

Découvrez Maduro!

Seen: flamenco @ Petit Palais

Exhibition at Petit Palais. La nuit espagnole: Flamenco, avant-garde et culture populaire
I'm what you call a "late-time fresh" Spanish language learner, so was quite interesting to get to know some bits of Spanish culture...
Particularly enjoyed the paintings from Picabia.
Unfortunately, there were only a couple of videos illustrating the art of flamenco, and no music. This sounds like smelling a cake and not tasting it...
The few dresses designed by Lacroix and displayed at the end of the exhibition are just gorgeous...

Découvrez Chloë Hanslip!

Seen: Traces du Sacré @ Beaubourg

Bouhouhou. This is a dark dark dark exhibition. I can't say I enjoyed it. Why the hell should belief be depicted in such a dark way? Why should "sacré" be treated through an ethnocentric glance?
The only nice work I liked was Yazib Oulab's installation of smoke and light... The rest was too depressing, anxiety-stricken... though the thema could have been of interest. Dommage.



Then, there was that part about Dominique Perrault. Some part of his works are nice. But... think BNF, think studying at the BNF, and you'll feel like hunting the architect for the absurd construction, the far distances between the rooms that are useful (for the mouse), the slippery wooden front when it rains, the too strong cooler in the summer that makes you get a cold... etc etc. The only nice thing there is the table, the wooden surface is very agreable.



I enjoyed her falling black sand installation at the entrance...



This was the nice surprise of the day/visit at Pompidou. Sweet photographs, very naturalistic, naive... catching the very moment when the photograph-model is not conscious of being photographied and gives her body to the photographer's voyeuristic eye...

Seen: Oum Kalsoum @ IMA

This was a "during lunchtime" short visit to the Institut du Monde Arabe. Had been craving for so long to pay a visit to the place created by Jean Nouvel.
The exhibition is devoted to one of the most famous singers in Egypt.
The scenography of the exhibition is brilliant. I love the capsule-like lamps that let you listen to her Oum Kalsoun's voice, as if it were an angel singing from above...
A good discovery of Egyptian culture. A nice lunchtime break!

Découvrez Oum Kalsoum!

Seen; Augustin Lesage & Elmar Trenkwalder @ Maison Rouge

Seen the exhibition at Maison Rouge. Quite scary and disappointing. I used to see so many good stuff there (above all, the opening exhibition on private collections).
The idea of confronting two artists was good, but the mixture's so strange. Finger like stuff with synchretic paintings; yerk.

Seen: le soleil se lève aussi (Tai yang zhao chang sheng qi)

Saw it two days before.
A fresh, lovely film.
Cute, attaching characters. The mad mother that named her son Aliocha, the running son, the couple... An outlook of the Chinese countryside, with its poetry, simplicity. Very touching film. Lovely music and lovely colors
Odd and funny moments of the beginning, when the roles of the mother and the son get reversed because of the mother's madness.

Seen: Versailles

I saw this yesterday, was awesome.
The rhythm of the movie may seem slow (but now, I'm used to slow films, because of Korean movies ^^) but it serves the generous and committed film maker's glance at poverty.
Guillaume Depardieu and the kid play so well. Feline moves and looks. When the discovery of the "fatherly instinct" saves a man from the streets/woods.

Seen: Change with Kimura Takura and Abe Hiroshi

Well, I spent two nights with Kimura and Abe... through the drama Change.
OK... So, once and again, the drama is good (because I did watch the 10 episodes, not just out of a professional/researcher goodwill)
a) the two main male actors, Kimura and Abe, are of course... of interest.
b) the arcanes of power and the Prime Minister. Japanese dramas are sometimes quite good at these kinds of dramas. I'm thinking of Shiroi Kyotou before that, about the arcanes of power in a hospital.
Well, the drama was a good way to revise the Japanese constitutional law. Apart from that, too simplistic about politics in general, far too idealistic. (that's the bad tongue from the old days in Sciences Po talking...)
Cute characters in general. Very high audience in Japan (what is the driver: Kimura? the ending song by Madonna? Btw, should be the first time a Japanese drama ends with an American pop song, no?)

Seen recently: Osen

Mmm, mouse back on the research track, watching dramas... So, I discovered this Japanese drama through the song Odore. Don't ask why hehe...
Not bad. Actually quite good.
Two or three remarks...
1. I guess the theme of the drama -traditional food and a restaurant- is quiye related to the success of the Korean drama DaeJangGeum.
2. The come back of traditions. That has something to do with the concept of "scent" Iwabuchi often uses. Means probably that the persistent smell of Japanese food in the drama is an indicator of Japanese confidence about its media products on the Asian markets...
3. Sounds that other Asian people also enjoy the drama. Can be seen on Pandora TV or mysoju, so...

Seen recently....

Sex and the city (at last!) and Bons baisers de Bruges (a good remembrance of the past trip with the orchestra...

Ambleteuse and its fireworks