ICELANDIC AMBASSADOR TALKS ECONOMY in BERLIN

http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16567&ew_0_a_id=351271

Los Angeles in shock and grief

This is an old article that I wrote in June 2009, which appeared in the reader section of Zeit Online and which I later transferred to my personal blog on Blogger. Los Angeles in Shock, Grief, and Acceptance over Jackson’s Death by Simone Kussatz When the news came out that Michael Jackson (50) had died on Thursday, June 25th, 2009, in Los Angeles, a Hispanic sales clerk in a grocery store in Culver City shed tears. “It’s so sad,” she said. “He was just one year younger than me,” one of her customers replied. About an hour after Jackson’s death was confirmed, news reporters from Eyewitness News, Fox, and NBC, among others, were waiting for details from the press conference in front of the Medical Plaza at UCLA. Meanwhile, throngs of people were standing next to them in a daze. Some were singing Michael Jackson songs, while others were pushing themselves into the spotlight of the media. Not even the summer heat could prevent people, mostly tourists, from lining up on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to see the sidewalk “star” of Michael Jackson, to put down flowers, and to speak a few words into surrounding cameras. A Jackson impersonator gave his usual moonwalk performance. This was not only filmed from the obvious cameras in front of the Chinese Theater, but also from a secret place on top of the Roosevelt Hotel across the street. Five days after the legend of pop music died, police officers are still guarding Jackson’s former mansion, which is blocked off with police tape, located just a bit off Sunset Boulevard, close to UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. Paparazzi and reporters are still eagerly waiting to see relatives and others getting in and out of Jackson’s house. Unless they were VIPs, people can only get to a memorial site on the corner of Carolwood and Sunset, where his fans left flowers, cards, and candles for their beloved idol. Yet is this collective grief appropriate, and did Jackson’s death deserve so much media attention? Opinions differed. Stefanie Sneed, a UCLA undergraduate student of Psychobiology and African American Studies, thought that the media attention about Jackson was well deserved. “He was an icon, positive and theatrical,” she said. “Being a black person, I felt empowered by him, but I feel angry that the media is looking for the negative things in his life.” Javier Arteaga, a UCLA undergraduate student of Psychology, however, felt different about this. Arteaga was only a block away from the hospital on his way towards his friend’s apartment when he received a text message, saying, “They just brought in Michael Jackson in an ambulance.” Instead of staying with a crowd in front of the Medical Plaza that had built up from 10 to 20 to 100, Arteaga hurried home to gather information via CNN. “I feel sad about Michael Jackson’s death, especially since he died at a young age, but I also feel that the media didn’t respect his family’s privacy. I was upset about how people were bragging about who was the first to set the traffic cone at the entrance to the hospital. It was unimportant. I feel Michael Jackson deserved more respect than this.” Lindsay Guzman, a hairstylist from Colorado who is currently visiting L.A., was not surprised to hear about Jackson’s death. “I thought he was actually sick for a while, but when he died, they had to say something.” From the perspective of the people working for UCLA Medical Center, Jackson’s death seemed not so much a matter of grief as it was a matter of inconvenience in their daily lives. For one thing, their integrity was tested. A nurse at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center said, “I can’t give you any information. Journalists are escorted out if they’re found here.” Another nurse claimed it was too hard for her to get into the hospital. “For me, every patient is a VIP,” she said. A staff member at Patient Services pointed out that employees of UCLA Medical Plaza are not allowed to give out any information about Jackson’s death, other than referring to Media Relations at 924 Westwood Plaza, a department that seems overwhelmed by the requests of reporters. People who have been working in the Hollywood industry for a long time and achieved considerable success stressed Michael Jackson’s great talent, and put the incident in the context of current politics. Film-maker Henry Jaglom, known for “Hollywood Dreams,” a film about a fame-obsessed person who becomes a tragic victim in a fame-obsessed culture, said, “Like everyone in Hollywood I was stunned by the news, but then with the flood of old videos on television and the Internet I was grateful to be reminded how truly extraordinary he was, how profoundly talented a dancer, as no less an authority than Fred Astaire pointed out, how significant and influential an artist in developing a generation of children who would grow up so free of race prejudice as to vote Obama in as president 25 years later. Many of us had forgotten all that in recent years after being endlessly told about his eccentricities, his weirdness, his countless cosmetic surgeries and all the distorted sex stories, according to everyone I know who knew him well he was the sweetest creature who ever lived, good-hearted and naive to a fault, never having had a childhood so being obsessed with being with children and staying a child forever.” Composer William Goldstein, who had scored all the episodes of NBC’s FAME and was brought under contract to Motown, said, “Michael Jackson’s death was tragic. He was a brilliant artist, very gifted, but a troubled soul. Yet, there seems to be a budding revolution in Iran, and it was wiped out by the media.” Therefore, Michael Jackson’s death has been perceived as a great loss by most Americans. The media coverage about his death will still go on to a great extent, especially with the upcoming funeral, for which reporters have already driven up north to Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, according to an ABC news reporter. Written by Simone Kussatz. Freelance journalist. Los Angeles. June 29th, 2009 Yesterday, Friday, July 3, 2009, African American pianist Larry Nash of Larry Nash and The Jazz Symphonics played a tribute to Michael Jackson during the free Friday Night Jazz Concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nash gave a beautiful and sensitive performance of Jackson’s “She’s out of my mind.” The concert was held outdoors underneath palm trees and a gradually sinking sun in front of LACMA’s permanent outdoor installation of a large number of Los Angeles street lights, facing Wilshire Boulevard. Written by Simone Kussatz. Freelance journalist. Los Angeles. July 4, 2009

CABARET - Vincent Paterson

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/November05Articles/Paterson.html

Liza Minelli winning an Oscar for CABARET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFstpIKW7A4

ART REVIEW - Sebastio Salgado

Sebastião Salgado’s “Africa”

by Simone Kussatz

Peter Fettermann Gallery, Santa Monica Bergamot Station

The interplay between pristine beauty and human suffering in the latest gallery exhibit of Brazilian humanitarian photographer Sebastião Salgado encourages us to take action. One feels moved by the compelling sights of white cattle herded together by Dinka tribesmen, zebras lined up at a river, faces of refugees and victims suffering from diseases and famine and the children of Africa. These stunningly beautiful black and white silver gelatin prints are a small selection of Salgado’s work photographed over the past four decades.

In a 24x 20” photograph, displayed in the first exhibit room on the left wall in the Fettermann Gallery, Salgado shows us an image of a woman blinded by sandstorms with a chronic eye infection who is waiting for food distribution. The light falls mainly on the woman’s face on her blind and infected left eye. Her other eye is covered by a dark veil. This particular angle suggests that one of her eyes is invisible to us as life is invisible to her through her blindness. The strong contrast in the picture derives from the white areas on the woman’s face, neck and arms caused by the light and the dark areas caused by her black veil that merges with the dark background, building one black unity. Standing in front of the image one feels her sorrows and pain. It literally invites us to learn more about Mali, a country that belongs to the 25 poorest in the world and had just suffered its second episode of severe drought, when the picture was taken in 1985. In its overall sensibility the photograph is similar to some of the etchings of women by German Expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz. Therefore, the real strength of Salgado’s photographs is that they show a deep care and understanding of the societies he presents to us.

Left picture:

Sebastião Salgado Blind woman. Woman blinded by sandstorms and chronic eye infections, this woman is waiting for food distribution. Goundam region, Mali, 1985. silver gelatin print 24x20”
Sebastião SalgadoDinga Group at Pagarau Cattle, Camp, Southern Sudan, 2006silver gelatin print 20x24”

Right image:

Sebastião Salgado

Dinga Group at Pagarau Cattle, Camp,

Southern Sudan, 2006

silver gelatin print

20x24”

Interview with Daniel Rotman - Social activist in L.A.

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2006/August06Articles/HomelessLA.html

London/China - Beijing Olympics

http://www.common-talk.com/Common_Talk_Material/CommonTalk/08-9-2/opinions.htm


Olympic baton passed to LondonArticle and photo by Simone Kussatz Translated by Xu Ming

Thousands of people gathered around Trafalgar Square on August 24, 2008 to watch the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Inclement weather that varied between heavy rain and bright sunshine could not dampen the spirit of viewers seated around the giant screen in the center of the square.

The crowd was a colorful and enthusiastic mix of people from all over the world, including some of London's 60,000 Chinese residents.

Mr. Miao from Shenyang city in Liaoning province has been living in London with his wife and daughter for the past four years and said: “I feel better now. For a century, we were waiting for the Olympics to come to China. Now it has finally happened.” Chinese fans were delighted that the country garnered 51 gold medals. However, Mr. Miao conceded that Chinese athletes had an advantage over competitors from other nations: "They don't have as much of a support system." A female student from Hong Kong who studies at the University of Southampton, said: “The Beijing Olympics were well organized and I feel proud of my motherland.” A Beijing expatriate was particularly pleased about London’s effort to bring the Beijing Olympics to Trafalgar Square: “I’m glad I could see everything here and celebrate with all these fans.”

The crowds roared when the screen showed Beijing mayor Guo Jinlong at the side of IOC president Jacques Rogge handing over the Olympic flag to his London counterpart Boris Johnson. Perhaps the biggest applause came when soccer superstar David Beckham kicked a soccer ball from atop a red London double-decker bus.

伦敦庆祝北京奥运会闭幕2008年8月24晚，成千上万的人们挤在特拉法尔加广场观看北京奥运会的闭幕式。尽管天气状况很不稳定，一会儿大雨倾盆一会儿阳光明媚，还时不时下着小雨，但也没挡住人们坐在为这次奥运会特设的广场大屏幕前观看闭幕式。这些来自世界各地的人都热情洋溢，其中有一些是华人，代表着居住在伦敦的六万中华儿女。他们当中有许多人看到精彩处不禁欢呼雀跃。苗先生来自中国辽宁省沈阳市，与妻女在伦敦已经生活四年了。他说：“现在感觉好多了，我们等奥运会来中国等了一百年了，现在它终于来了。”这些华人为自己国家能获得51枚金牌兴奋不已。不过，苗先生也承认，比起远道而来的外国运动员，中国运动员更有优势。“相比而言，他们没有那么强大的后方支持”，苗先生说。一名来自香港在南安普顿大学求学的女生说：“北京奥运会组织得非常到位，他们为此付出了很大努力。我为我的祖国感到自豪。”一个来自北京的华人表示，伦敦把北京奥运会搬到特拉法尔加广场让人尤其感到欣慰。“在这里什么都能看到，而且还能跟这么多人一起庆祝，真让我开心极了。”当大屏幕上显示站在国际奥委会主席罗格一侧的北京市市长郭金龙把奥运会会旗交给伦敦市市长鲍里斯·约翰逊的时候，全场欢呼。当足球巨星贝克汉姆从红色的伦敦双层巴士车顶上把一只足球踢下去的时候，欢呼声达到了高潮。

ART REVIEW - NIHAO GALLERY CHINA

http://www.common-talk.com/cms/node/1573

Film review: Seraphine

Movie biographies can be tricky. We only get to see a fictionalized version of what has once actually been. To please the majority’s tastes, biopics often focus too much on the external instead of getting down to a character’s core. Undaunted by such constraints, Séraphine, a film directed and written by Martin Provost in 2008, which is an homage to French artist Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), won multiple Césars, France’s version of the Oscar, although sobriety and discretion are its dominant tones. In her César-winning role as the former shepherdess and housekeeper who became a painter, Belgian actress Yolande Moreau slowly blurs the tenuous gap between artistic genius and madness. The film concentrates on the later years of devoutly Catholic Séraphine’s life in Senlis, France, where she works as a servant in the temporary home of German Avantgarde art dealer Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), who is impressed by her artistic ability. With Uhde’s encouragement and financial help, Séraphine receives her first group exhibition, with her work displayed alongside that of Henri Rousseau. Provost’s nuanced portrait leads us gently into the inner world of Séraphine. Through her eagerness to evolve, her sensuality and authenticity, her need for artistic expression, and her love of nature, which becomes her source of comfort and inspiration, we begin to understand how Séraphine’s vulnerability will also soon break her. Séraphine sheds light on a unique friendship between two people who exist on the fringes of society. Uhde, because of his closeted homosexuality, and Séraphine, because her social class does not allow for her eccentric behavior. She hugs trees and swims nude in the rivers where other women wash their clothes. Their friendship is broken, however, when Uhde cannot keep his promise to exhibit her work again. Distressed by the news, Séraphine meanders deliriously through the streets, where people see her dressed in a wedding gown. Diagnosed with a mental illness, she is eventually committed to the Clermont de l’Oise psychiatric hospital, where she dies alone after years of institutionalization and treatment. This aspect of the film is particularly interesting and disturbing at the same time, considering the historical period in which Séraphine’s story unfolds. Europe was not only overshadowed by the Depression, but was also entering a period of growing political extremism and intolerance. With Hitler’s rise to power, the persecution of people considered socially or racially undesirable became increasingly institutionalized. Among those persecuted by the Nazi regime were people with mental illnesses and homosexuals, although their persecution took different forms and occurred within different historical contexts. Against this backdrop, Séraphine’s isolation and vulnerability acquire an additional and unsettling significance. Provost’s mise en scène is deliberately restrained. Costumes, upholstery, and other objects are rendered in subtle, mostly pastel colors, standing in striking contrast to Séraphine’s canvases, which glow with warm and radiant hues. Many scenes are filmed outdoors in natural light, surrounded by the lush landscapes of the French countryside. The soundtrack is equally understated. Rather than relying heavily on music, Provost allows natural sounds to dominate, including the chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves, and the ringing of church bells. This restrained approach to mise en scène gives the film a quiet, contemplative quality while also emphasizing the contrast between the subdued world in which Séraphine lives and the vivid inner world expressed through her art. It ultimately reinforces Provost’s complex portrait of a socially marginalized woman whose extraordinary artistic vision exists alongside her growing vulnerability. Edited by Aparna Bakhle Ellis Managing editor of FABRIK Magazine, Los Angeles

Film review - Sandra Vaghe Stelle Dell' Orsa during a Luchino Visconti retrospective at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood

SANDRA

Vaghe Stelle Dell'Orsa, 1965 (a film by Luchini Visconti)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqrGVU7WNcA

by SIMONE KUSSATZ

This is a film review I wrote about Luchino Visconti’s film Sandra (Vaghe stelle dell’Orsa...) from 1965, which I saw during a major Luchino Visconti retrospective hosted by the UCLA Film and Television Archive at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood. After a brief scene of a party given by Sandra (Claudia Cardinale) and her husband Andrew (Michael Andrew), with an international crowd of people conversing in different languages and mingling in front of a grand piano played by a classical pianist, the viewer witnesses a long sequence of a fast ride in a convertible, traveling through Geneva, the Alps in northern Italy, Florence and Tuscany, and finally to the small city of Volterra. During the ride, the camera is positioned inside the car, so that we do not see the occupants, but only their view as they pass freeway signs, bridges, building facades, and everything else that surrounds them. Volterra is where Sandra grew up. It is the place where her childhood home stands, where her mother betrayed her father and later became mentally ill, where her father was taken by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, where he died, and where Sandra's husband Andrew discovers the incestuous relationship between Sandra and her brother Gianni. It is also Gianni's final destination, where he commits suicide, and the place where Sandra wishes to pay homage to her father through a bust placed in the garden. As much as the events in Sandra (1965) are gloomy and mysterious, so is the aesthetic of the film. Shot in black and white, many scenes take place at night or in dimly lit rooms. In one scene, for instance, Sandra walks alone through a completely dark garden on a windy night toward the bust of her father, which is covered with a white piece of cloth. As she embraces the bust and the white cloth rises into the air, one might think that she is embracing a ghost. The fast ride in the car toward Volterra seems symbolic. It is a journey from the present into the past, a dive into the subconscious, where the tragedy is imprinted in Sandra's mind. The reference to Sophocles' Electra is obvious, although slightly modified. There is Sandra as Electra, and Gianni as Orestes; their dead father evokes Sophocles' Agamemnon, who was killed by his wife's lover. Although Gianni, like Orestes, becomes mentally unstable, in Visconti's film, he does not kill his mother but himself. In Visconti's version of Electra, the Trojan War becomes World War II, and the ancient site of Delphi becomes Volterra. The film does not go into detail about World War II or Auschwitz. Therefore, it does not serve, as many war films do, as a means of confronting or overcoming a traumatic past. Instead, the war and the Holocaust provide the film with another layer of complexity and a particular perspective on the characters and their relationships. The interaction between the characters is more visual than verbal. Their eyes and body language tell us more than their words. Although furnished with antiques, Sandra's home seems to contain a void. The large rooms, which have remained unused for a long time, express a profound sense of loneliness. The monotonous sound of a ticking clock, interrupted only occasionally by classical piano music, such as a nocturne by César Franck, adds to the sadness that accompanies the characters' lives.

ART REVIEW - JACK RUTBERG

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/MarchApril05Articles/MarchApril05FrameSet.html

DANCE REVIEW - TSUNAMI

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/February05Articles/RememberingTsunami.html

LARRY JOHNSON AT THE UCLA HAMMER MUSEUM

Larry Johnson at the UCLA Hammer Museum of Art, Westwood

by Simone Kussatz

Celebrity culture is the main theme running through Larry Johnson’s retrospective exhibit. Johnson’s celebrities are faceless and shown to us in a most outré way. We see them through the eyes of their creators, the machinery of mass media, which not only profits from their early and tragic deaths, but, as the exhibit suggests, may have also caused them. This sinister and ironic view can be felt throughout the sixty-work show, organized by adjunct curator Russell Ferguson and spanning Johnson’s career since 1982.

The overview opens with Johnson’s reworking of a Paul Rand video in which the individual letters of the word “women” move up and down like the horses in a merry-go-round, accompanied by circus music. In the very next room, Johnson’s six-panel breakthrough work Untitled (Movie Stars on Clouds) (1982/1984) is installed high up on the wall, showing a light blue sky with puffy clouds and actors’ names — Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo — superimposed on them. From one’s earthbound perspective the names have a god-like quality to them but at the same time remind us of their unhappy lives, cut shockingly short like Michael Jackson’s, who died five days after the exhibit opened.

Cartoon-style animals appear in subsequent works, including a goat and a donkey with a bee stinging its rear. The four panels comprising Untitled (Land w/o Bread) (1999–2000), are ironically named after Luis Buñuel’s sober 1933 documentary Land without Bread. Two of the photographs show Johnson’s finger in front of the camera’s lens, admitting to the artist’s technical and conceptual imperfections. Johnson’s goat images, as noted by Christopher Knight and others, relate to Greek mythology but also carry a gay subtext.

What stands out most in Johnson’s display are his text-based works. Some of them feature bright, multi-colored or constantly changing lettering on colorful backgrounds, rendering texts artful and decorative, similar in approach to Jenny Holzer but deliberately more tasteful. Johnson’s fragmented texts derive from different genres and sources (some he appropriated, others he wrote himself). Since celebrities are made and known through the media, words logically play a key role in Johnson’s approach. As Johnson put it himself, “To master celebrity is to master language.”


Edited by Peter Frank

Peter Frank is Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum and Associate Editor for Fabrik and The Magazine. He was born in 1950 in New York, where he served as art critic for The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News, and moved to Los Angeles in 1988.


Larry Johnson,
Untitled (Winter Me)
Color photograph
45 1⁄2 x 61 in. (115.6 x 154.9 cm)
1990


Edition of 3


Private collection

Astronaut Interview: Stephen K. Robinson

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/October05Articles/Robinson.html

http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2009/astronaut.html

Quotes by Michael J. Massimino taken by Simone Kussatz July 14, 2009 at the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

"It's a chance of a lifetime to look at the world like that."

"There are no words to describe what it's like to be out in space. If you're in heaven that's the view, but it's more beautiful than heaven."

"Things go wrong. When it was dark, I broke the handrail off, which made me think of my uncle Frank and when I was 14 years old.......... but to overcome the obstacles that's the success. "

Full quote will come shortly.

Artist Interview: Melanie Pullen

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/October05Articles/Pullen.html

Artist Interview: DANIEL BEN-HUR

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/November05Articles/BenHur.html

http://212.227.189.105/sara-asperger-gallery.de/vita.php?thema=1&id=Daniel%20Ben-Hur

ART REVIEW: ITURBIDE - MEXICAN ART

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/MayJune05Articles/Iturbide.html

Juedische Allgemeine: BAHMA & HENRY JAGLOM

http://www.juedischeallgemeine.de/cgi-bin/search_jaz.cgi?ps=20&q=Henry+Jaglom&finden.x=8&finden.y=1

Filmmaker Henry Jaglom

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/MarchApril05Articles/Mendelssohn.html

Book review: Nicole Krauss - The History of Love

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2005/December05Articles/Krauss.html