Creative Collision Blog

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Waterfront

Debacle after debacle, after controversies and conspiratorial agendas, the Waterfront of Auckland at least has a vision now. A few colourful albeit stark and 'frozen time' shots of what the Waterfront Auckland have finally come up with. How about we get a move on with a bit more efficiency?

Battle


DSLRs can look like some intimidating weaponry at the best of times, and this humorous mock battle pulls fun at the the battlesque forms of this creative tool. It also brings up a theme that has lingered through creativity since ages ago. Didn't a whole pile of painters pose with their brushes as the sword? Jacqueline Fahey, for example (couldn't find it on the web but it does exist! - brush posing as sword, palette posing as shield). They use their creative flair as fuel for whatever purpose they think is worthy of defending or, on the flip-side, shredding to pieces. Writers warble on about their pens being mightier than swords (which sounds slightly arrogant/derogatory hah). It's really only the amount of effort we put behind our actions that any such tool can become the most effective tools of an allusion war.

Reflection

So apparently this is what our cities would look like if they floated. I beg to differ, they'd probably be much less Second Life and way more messy, like human ball of fur that we manage to defiantly suspend somewhere. But we can dream!

TEDxEQChCh

The other day I attended TEDxEQChCh, which, as said by it's curator Kaila Colbin, is possibly one of the clunkiest event acronyms/hashtags out there. Just try saying it. Despite the unfortunate name, a hugely inspiring conference was put together and executed without a hitch.

The theme of the day long event was Re-imagining Christchurch and was a fine mixture of international and local speakers meant to stimulate the minds of 700 future invested people. I went down there with a group of AFH Auckland members who seemed to act as Cameron Sinclair's personal entourage while he was present. I live tweeted throughout from the front row (I actually don't quite know how I got there... VIP much).

Above, the photo is of the MC explaining the picture behind him. The picture, which resembles 'Starry Nights' with the Christchurch cathedral, is made up of thousands of tweets about the Christchurch earthquake (possibly from the #eqnz hashtag). The artwork was donated to the cathedral for its future home.

Cameron Sinclair from Architecture for Humanity sharing his wealth of experience in urban recovery. Part pragmatic, part an aspiring goal, AFH has responded to just about every disaster to help communities.

Art Agnos and his rousing speech about the difficulties he faced as mayor after the San Francisco 1989 earthquake. A great character of courage, who put the city before his own political career. He ended his presentation with the attendees standing up and all making an oath to rebuild a better city. Very American but it's the sort of morale boost that perhaps NZ lacks in all its public endeavours.

All in all a great day with a plethora of different viewpoints for a better post-disaster city. It is important for a small country like ours to have such events - getting us to think about ideas that are beyond our reach and current vision is essential to rebuilding in a world class manner. Christchurch definitely deserves the best foot forward.

Named

... Or not. Banksy has been one of the most mysterious of artists in recent times and by mysterious I mean evasive and secretive: no one really knows much about him. In this way, chatter has been generated, from critique to mockery. The picture shows a trivial stab at this quality of Banksy not as an artist, but a person. So it's statement art?

This is where this commentator (read: illegally wall vandalising person) has got it wrong. This graffiti scrawl isn't all that funny, tasteful, or even interesting, which totally goes against the consistency seen in Banksy's work as a street artist (I don't use the word 'philosophy' because we don't even know the guy's name, how can we extrapolate one's philosophy). I personally think street art can be a brilliant thing, art with as much nuance as a masterpiece created with oil paint, a worn-in brush and a well primed canvas. Not everyone deserves the city walls as their infinite canvas. This clearly shows it.

Tour

For some reason I once did a post on a chair sofa made out of chopsticks and I thought that was pretty stellar, but then I found this elaborate toothpick sculpture of San Francisco. Both use an extremely commonplace product. The result though is very different. Whereas the chopstick chair is utilitarian and systematic, this toothpick sculpture is an organic manifestation likened to the vibrant city that it reflects.
The visual experience reminds me of Peter Madden's Necrolopolous, which I saw at the Auckland Art Gallery recently, a sculpture which is busy by nature. You have to move around it to see all the different constituents that emerge from the delicate construction. The toothpick sculpture isn't all looks, though. Several paths through the sculpture allow balls to roll through on 'city tours'. It is packed with personal significance - something that the chopstick creation lacks entirely - and is a creation grown on one's love for their home city.