If you planned to go but haven’t made it yet, get a move on. The MoMA‘s Cindy Sherman retrospective will be gone in a week, on June 11th.
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Cindy Sherman at the MoMA
Vera Lutter, Chephren and Cheops Pyramids, Giza: April 12, 2010
VERA LUTTER, Chephren and Cheops Pyramids, Giza: April 12, 2010, 2010, Unique Silver Gelatin Print, 14 3/8 x 21 1/8"
It is fascinating to me that these enormous buildings have been left alone and are in a natural state of deterioration within the magical landscape of the desert.
—Vera Lutter
Tree to Sea
Here’s a short movie by Barry Mottershead—one of the foremost chargers of the Ireland big wave scene—showing the handcrafting of an Alaia board from Paulownia wood. You’ll usually find Barry crashing around on huge Irish waves, so here’s some more mellow radness. Music by Siskiyou – Twigs and Stones.—from Drift Surfing
John Jeremiah Sullivan: “Always wanted to write about surfing”
Matteo Pericoli drawing's for The Paris Review illustrating a recent blog post by John Jeremiah Sullivan
From KQED:
You’ve written about everything from Michael Jackson to Hurricane Katrina to touring with Guns ‘n’ Roses to an 18th-century German who worked to unite Native Americans against colonialism. Is there a subject you’ve always wanted to write about, but haven’t had the chance?
John Jeremiah Sullivan:Â Always wanted to write about surfing.
—Sullivan’s Pulphead was one of the most acclaimed books from last year. This essay from the book, which was published in GQ, might be of interest.
An excerpt: (more…)
Toot Toot!
We’re not big on tooting our own horn, but sometimes you just can’t resist. The Harmony Hotel was recognized in a CNN article today about 10 luxury eco-hotels around the world. They had such lovely things to say:Â “I have yet to find another hotel that inspires green living more than this sweet spot in the dreamy surfer town of Nosara, Costa Rica. From the lavish locally-sourced and organic complimentary breakfast to the refreshingly fresh fruit smoothies and bamboo straws to the can’t-miss-it greenhouse, the Harmony Hotel can work its ‘be green’ magic in just one morning. (more…)
Thad Ziolkowski: “April Is the Gnarliest Month”
Illustration by Jonathan McNaught
From a very nice piece from the New York Times by Thad Ziolkowski:
When I began surfing in New York in the mid 1990s, it was a seasonal sport, something done from late May until around Thanksgiving. Bowing to the cold each fall was hard, especially since the waves are often best at that time of year, with large, slow-moving storms sending one swell after another and the light taking on a stern, northern beauty. But if you really wanted to surf year-round, you found a way to live in California. This changed about a decade ago, when significantly warmer and more flexible wet suits came on the market. Since then, a growing number of New Yorkers have taken to scampering over snow-encrusted sand in neoprene booties to paddle into an Atlantic Ocean where temperature can dip into the mid-30s. I was skeptical at first, but couldn’t resist buying one of the new and improved wet suits myself. After spending upward of $400, I felt I was ready to join the hard-core year-rounders of New York.
Read on! Thanks to Brian for sending my way.
Land.
A short and compelling video about the pre-production of the feature film Land. here! “Taha sets out on an epic 600 km journey along the Moroccan Atlantic coast to Europe—on a windsurfboard. More about the film.
Free play
Derrida: The concept of structure itself — I say in passing — is no longer satisfactory to describe that game. How to define a structure? Structure should be centered. But this center can be either thought, as it was classically, like a creator or being or a fixed and natural place; or also as a deficiency, let’s say; or something which makes possible “free play;” in the sense in which one speaks of the “jeu dans la machine,” of the “jeu des pieces,” and which receives — and this is what we call history — a series of determinations, of signifiers, which have no signifieds finally, which cannot become signifiers except as they begin from this deficiency. So, I think that what I have said can be understood as a criticism of structuralism, certainly.
