Hi everybody, I am proud to say I will be part of “30.” exhibition which will take place at Shoreditch Townhall Basement in the end of April.  I hope to see you all at the private view on the 28th of April at 7pm.

Press Release – March 2009

30. Shoreditch Town Hall Basement

28th of April – 2nd of May 2009

Tuesday – Friday 10am-6pm

Saturday 12-6pm

The Basement Project is proud to present 30., a collective exhibition of thirty

emerging photographers whose common denominator is experimentation,

diversity and innovation.

30. aims to bring together broad ranging photographic and visual disciplines

through a non-conventional approach. The show seeks to immerse the

viewers within the labyrinthine basement in the Shoreditch Town Hall,

allowing for unconstrained exploration whilst creating unique narrative paths

around the work.

30. encourages an open dialogue between photographic works and

installations that incorporate found objects and video projections. By pushing

and blending the boundaries of photographic genres, the show creates an

atmosphere that is at the same time familiar and estranging.

30. reflects the uneasiness and malaise that characterizes our everyday life,

from the personal to the political, while asserting the need to creatively

negotiate the spaces around us. It is through this need that we reaffirm our

desire for openness and diversification, for an encounter with the real that is

not prejudiced by grandeur or mastery. By interrogating the relationship

between individual subjectivities and given states of reality, the show unfolds

the moment where the personal engages the social.

Private View: Tuesday 28th of April 7-10 PM

Free Admission

Shoreditch.Basement.Project@gmail.com

380 Old Street, London, EC1V 9LT – 020 77396176 -

More information at http://30-photography.blogspot.com/ .

See ya.. !

Artists working at the London Design Museum will be exhibiting their work at the Shoreditch Town Hall from the 27th of March to the 29th.

The private view will be held on the 26th at 7pm, and will be a great occasion to see the work and meet the artists, so make some space in that busy agenda of yours and pop in for a drink.

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.” (Marx and Engels, The communist Manifesto.)

According to the latest news the world is in an unprecedented economical crisis.  I was born in Argentina, a country in constant crisis, and I’ve seen crisis where people raid supermarkets because they don’t have anything to eat, where the banks freeze your money while they devaluate the coin to return you only an oat from your oatmeal, where the raided supermaket owner shoots himself the following day because he’s lost his lifes achievement.  Nothing to be proud of, but one should never look away from these things.  That has never afected the first world.  In england today, the media fills us with panic advertisement for the current economical crisis.

But is anybody, specially the economical institutions, aware of the crisis or trying to do anything for a change?  It is in times like this that there has to be a call for the restructuring of burocratic and government institutions, not only cut bonuses, and bail out banks, but optimize these institutions for future “happenings” (which never happen by themselves).  Has anybody heard anything about restructuring or change? 

Banks are on the edge of the cliff, but no action has been taken within the institutions.  For some, it is made impossible to open a bank account.  It seems as if they are not interested in having peoples money.  Lets take my case.  I go to Barclays Bank to open a bank account with my proof of address and enrolment letter to university.  I am an EU citizen.  But no, because I don’t have an id card from my country of origin, Denmark, I don’t “qualify” for an international student bank account.  As I have not been living in the UK for more than 3 years, then I don’t qualify for a UK Student Bank account.  But I don’t work either, because I have a student grant from the Danish government which I am lucky enough to be able to live from, so I don’t qualify for any other type of account.  

Now my thought on this is the following.  A university student is a potencial earner in the coming years, hopefuly he will be making good money and buying a house and getting hooked up on a loans and debts, having to work for the bank, not for himself.  Added to this, there is an economical crisis in which banks cannot sustain themselves because many costumers have withdraw their money, amongst other “bigger” reasons.  So why on earth don’t they take peoples money, and potencial money.  A good buisness man would keep potential costumers happy as they would do with their current costumers.  So banks, at least Barklays Bank, seems to be managed by a bunch of retards who have no idea what to do in the current crisis.  There needs to be a call for restructuring, and it has to happen now.  Not when the world has finally fallen appart and people really suffer from it.

Stop calling the crisis as if it were a morning cereal (“Credit Crunch” is the term used in England), and start calling it a CRISIS, we need to take this seriously.

Credit Crunch Morning Cereal

The guard and the nun, TAH, 2007.

 A story unfolds from a captured moment.  One thousand stories one could tell about an image, and yet, all a product of our imagination.  For a story did unfold when the image was taken, but most likely one which has nothing to do with ours.  The story is not contained in the image, it is the viewer who projects a flux of narratives and speculations on the image, falsly atributing this flux to the image.  Even so, only a powerful photo can set us off in this way and create a dialogue between image and viewer.  

In order for a photograph to set of this flux, you need a creative viewer, otherwise no narrative would emerge from the heart of the photo.  This takes me to think that one has to consider, even when it is merely photographing reality, the audience to which the image will be exposed.  Without an appropiate viewer the image will not have a life of it’s own, and is most likely to be lost in infinity.

I like to meet people who don’t really give a flying fcuk about current mainstream siht.  The last couple of sundays I’ve been hitting the Sunday Up market in search of the fantastic De La Panza meat club.  A couple of “buena onda”, laid back Argentinian fellows cooking meat sandwitches and “choripanes” with lots of love.  

Today was my third visit there, I was doing some photos in exchange for food…  Definitely worth it.  Getting to know them I discovered they are both musicians.  Great ones I must say. Tongas dribbles between Tango, Afro-beat and dub, producing music largely based on percusion, and a back track with a scent of Piazzola.  A pleasent and mellow beat to sit back and take a moment for yourself.  On the other side of the river, Pabs & the Frogcats mixes new-disco, house and arcade sounds, great for the transition between a lounge afternoon to a hard night of mayhem. 

I’m not talking about any mainstream glamour-disco-trash; everybody is spinning that right now in the clubs around London (and worldwide).  I’m talking here about true musicians who believe in what they do.  I was quite surprised because the first thing I’d expect to hear from music makers or music takers is :  ”I’m a DJ…” and after, a silence to which one is supposed to be impressed or something (never judge a book by it’s cover, not that I had, at least in that way, but sometimes the content of a book might surprise you with an unforseen variety of subjects).  Unfortunately not many people keep such a humble low profile and are good at what they do.  Anyway, Pabs gave me a demo to play at home, and Tongas (between the lines) sliped a paper with his myspace.

Pabs and the Frogcats

Tongas

Enjoy..!

This diptic is from a series of photos about the urbanization of south west Copenhagen. It recently won it’s place in the Harker Photography Center at the University of Westminster, and will be displayed on the walls of the HPC, amongst 11 other winners.

København, 2009. (Click to Enlarge)

The utopian urbanization which is going on follows the general line of Copenhagen, and respects the straightness and minimalism of Danish Architecture, a reflection of a wonderful society that seems to be years ahead from any other place in the world.

To see the full series click “Urban Concept” in the top menu of my web site

TAH, January 2009

There is light, there’s a lens, and there is also light being reflected from the subject to the lens.

Be aware.

Wake up.

It’s no joke.

Let’s imagine how light is reflecting on us.