dimanche, juillet 31, 2005

bikini

Villa Romana del Casale, Sicile: le bikini a été inventé par les Italiens au temps de la Rome antique. Ici vous pouvez voir un extrait de cette célèbre mosaïque où l'on peut voir des filles en bikini qui font du sport et jouent au ballon.

vendredi, juillet 29, 2005

esperanto

I don't know why I entered the esperanto office in Paris today. It was on my way to meet someone in Bastille. The people there are very charming; the girl is russian and the boy is the french secretary. They go to Poland by road tomorrow, since there is a big session of esperantists there. I bought a nice esperanto book, a very old one. I don't want to learn esperanto but i like the idea of having 2 000 000 people able to speak a trans-language. That's a great project which still sounds futuristic, even if it was created in Poland, more than 100 years ago, by an utopian (not so utopian).

mardi, juillet 26, 2005

methode

This man is about to move to Japan. He's drinking one last beer in a Paris café with some friends: DJ Chienloup, Eric Ker and Toog. They all fell asleep so he starts to read the liner notes on his first album, KITCHEN. He also thinks about the bar he is in: Descartes is around. Le discours de la méthode. DIGIKI ergo sum.

samedi, juillet 23, 2005

auraphoto

J'ai vu une petite lumière autour de ma tête qu'est-ce que je dois penser c'est très simple vous êtes un saint un saint mais qu'est-ce que c'est je vais vous le dire un saint c'est quelqu'un avec une petite lumière autour de la tête vous aussi vous avez une petite lumière elle est verte pourquoi verte pourquoi pas verte oui c'est vrai au fond pourquoi pas verte si vous voulez je peux changer le bulbe et vous l'aurez jaune moi verte ça me va très bien jaune ça me va aussi jaune vous va même mieux que verte alors allons y pour jaune je vous dois combien c'est 50 euros si vous pouvez me régler en espèces je préfère les espèces je comprends vous pouvez me faire une facture sans problème à quel nom la facture dieu pardon j'ai dit dieu le vrai dieu oui bien sûr bon alors pour vous ça fera 50 euros impression comprise.

Aura photo, 58, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre (9e)

jeudi, juillet 21, 2005

monika

Monika played the girl in my only music video. She's a model, an actress and a journalist. She asked me questions about the sixties/seventies for a future magazine called "Culture". This new cafe is Le Brébant, at the corner of rue Montmartre and boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. Nice decor, huge terrasse and assholish service (they take you're glass away as soon as it's empty).

mercredi, juillet 20, 2005

mermaid

Ils ont parfois de drôles d'objets à vendre à l'hôtel Drouot, à côté de chez moi. Cette authentique sirène des mers de Chine était montrée dans les foires et les gens payaient pour la voir.

This genuine mummified mermaid has been fished a long time ago in the Singapour harbour. I took the photo today in the auction house Drouot (rue Drouot, 9th arrondissement, métro Le Peletier or Richelieu-Drouot).

mardi, juillet 19, 2005

davincicodestrasstringtina

They closed rue Notre Dame de Lorette the last night and shot some scenes for the Da Vinci Code movie. I couldn't see Audrey Tautou or Tom Hanks but here is one spotlight that I shot from my studio at the 5th floor. Other pictures are from today: strasstring girl in a bar; our press officer Tina Camara after the radio interview at RFI (Radio France Internationale) with Aude Bouvry. The program is called "la bande passante" and it 's scheduled on the 1st september.

lundi, juillet 18, 2005

tarzan_copy

Mon ami Momus est un inventeur de nouveaux concepts. En voici un de mon cru: sauvage-timide, wild-shy. Je considère que Toog est un sauvage-timide. Quelqu'un qui a beaucoup de points communs avec Tarzan, mais qui reste assez timide quand il s'agit de muer le cri en action ou l'action en cri. "Toog wandered a strange jungle, grim, terrible, hate-filled." (Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs; The Battle for Teeka).

samedi, juillet 16, 2005

eisenbraun

My grand father Theodore Eisenbraun built this house in the 30's in Mulhouse, the hometown of William Wyler, Toog and the Schweissdissi. It was his first house. He drew it with only one arm since he lost the other one plus his friend when he was a kid, while playing with a bomb. Wars also kill after war. This house has nothing remarquable like Gerry, Niemayer, Koolhaas or Ban. It only has about 30 windows by floor. Which is a lot of work when the time of cleaning has come. Why so many windows? I guess Theodore Eisenbraun preferred to have many windows showing small cuts of reality instead of having few and large windows showing wide cuts. Maybe he also loved to watch the buxom buttocks of the cleaning woman and caress her with his wooden arm.

vendredi, juillet 15, 2005

14 juillet: invisible tools

outils

14 juillet: Yvan Améry and Toog

amery toog 14 juillet

mardi, juillet 12, 2005

FLO et K2

K2 Luna: une série de 5 snowboards de Florence Manlik pour K2 (Canada). We are ready for the Montmartre snowboard cup. Only missing the snow right now.

dimanche, juillet 10, 2005

kalk seeds

"Every now and then a little record label, in the great morass of record labels, produces a compilation that is truly original and charming – and Kalk Seeds is such a compilation.

The label has been established for eight years now, producing eclectic electronic music and giving artists the complete creative freedom to express themselves unhindered. You only have to hear this 16-track album to appreciate that assertion, and realise why Karaoke Kalk, and the few other labels around of its ilk, are so important to the progression of electronic music.

To be honest, not every track is my cup of tea, many are so bizarre and abstract it’s hard to know how to enjoy them. But I fundamentally acknowledge that a label such as this will always throw up gems, whilst other labels are all too depressingly willing to prosper from their uniformity.

However, scouring through this collection, many tracks pricked up my ears. Saving Juno, from Roman, is an impressive opener – an elegant slab of pop/funk, bounded by its off-the-wall choral backdrops. Then there’s the Sora & Wechsel Garland track Spring - with its bizarre arrangement of bells, horns, manipulated clicks and cuts, and even banjos. This is followed by the delightfully authentic guitar and violin fusion, Mio Pianto, by Tagkagi Masakatsu, a classically arranged folk song that is stunningly beautiful in its simplicity. Takeo Toyama’s Der Meteor later follows in its footsteps, its classical piano and strings worthy of comparison to any Ryuichi Sakamoto soundtrack piece - high praise indeed.

There are more gems too. I enjoyed the Le Rok track, Directors Cut – full of cutesy beats and intricate sampling, its haunting, whining synth and off-colour pitches conveying some deeply satisfying melodies. You’re left asking, what sort of pop music is this? Meanwhile, Pascal Schafer’s Tic Tic is another lingering nugget, with ambient synth melodies warmly floating over soft techno-flavoured loops and reverbed thread sounds – again, this transports your emotions to a different place altogether.

In between all of these, we have more off-the-wall, avant-garde experiments. Karaoke Kalk champions their album as having generic interpretations rooted in techno, abstract electronica and minimalism, which is true, but for me this album is most strongly rooted in the folktronica genre. Yet each and every artist is allowed to play unconstrained, like big stones thrown into a small pond, its ripples are always looking to seep through the secretions of its barracades, and Karaoke Kalk wisely ensure there are plenty of holes for them to escape through."

http://www.barcodezine.com/

01. Roman = Saving juno
02. Hausmeister = Pumer
03. Sora/Garland = Spring
04. Hauschka = Two stones
05. Takagi Masakatsu = Mio pianto
06. Kandis = Letter
07. Le Rok = Directors cut
08. Toog = Ugly ducklings
09. Pascal Schäfer = Tic tic
10. Donna Regina = Slow killer
11. Kuchen meets Mapstation = Kmm
12. Takeo Toyama = Der meteor
13. Leichtmetall = Wir sind blumen
14. Kan Daisuke = Xi-huan
15. Poto&Cabengo = Suevian rhapsody
16. März = Welt am draht

Bonus: Pluramon = White eyes - quick time movie

jeudi, juillet 07, 2005

Point

Madrid, Londres, peut-être Rome bientôt. Bravo à tous nos dirigeants qui ont soutenu les combattants texans dans leur quête de justice et de vérité.