association chain: tree // roots // strenght // family // origin / nobility // crown // diamonds // tip of the iceberg // depth // what lies beneath //
Look at all these fabulous women.
Then rethink (as if you ever really thought about it, did you?) shaving your pits. I mean: Have you even once seen your underarm hair grown out, as god gave it to you? Or are you one of those who started shaving when the first hair appeared at the teen age?
Every girl (and boy) should be free to wear her/his hair as s/he wants it - boldly bushy, sleekly trimmed, shaved and polished. Everyone should deliberately and unaffectedly decide how s/he likes it best.
Isn't it weird that this free choice has a touch of rebellion to it when you only think it?
If you need to intellectually meditate on this issue, try the following articles:
The first, about a 10 week body hair rebellion experiment, may make you want to try hairy pits even less. It documents and reflects the
hostile feedback you may get as well as the norms you quarrel with.
From personal experience I can confirm the survey results. But I can
also happily report that at some point it magically stops and just a
little later, someone who was very sceptical will come up to you and -
in the best case - will tell you that he actually really loves your
underarm rebellion (ehm, and he might want to lick it too, haha).
The second article is more general, about Stigma and Women's Bodies, such as body fluids, aging etc.
I have to learn a huge load of chemistry these days, which includes learning about the structure and reactions of salt. The daily table-salt 'NaCl' is one that appears rather often in my life, as it also does in the books. I know by now, how the atoms/ions connect to each other, that they form a specific, regular cristall-structure and how they dissolve in a polar solvent like water. I like learning this stuff. Signe Emma's images even give it an aesthetic value, a beautiful touch.
Thank you for that.
(you should really check her site, as the story to these images gives them another dimension more. and she has other funky stuff to offer too!)
I started growing my own vegetables on 20 square metres. And I want more!
It is a beautiful experience to see your food grow, to get a feeling for the time and care it takes and for uncomparable freshness when nibbling the radish directly from your garden...
It is also surprisingly easy to produce your own 'best veggies in the world'. Therefore I will definitely work more and more land in the future. And these two videos are encouraging me to follow my hippie-dreams of being a part-time farmer! (as does my dear friend Saskia, by recommending me these videos.)
My dad always told us kids, that when he and my mom first dated, they had a walk on the seaside and met >>us<< - in form of 4 wonderful little fireflies.
Dimitri Tsykalov is a Russian sculptor who has an atelier among the
woods in Nogent-sur-Marne outside of Paris. He sculpts with wood and
earth in an approach which he describes as "contrary to the brutality of
modern images."
These images (especially the fox) by Stefano Unterthiner remind me of the long silent walks I took in the forest near our house when I was young.
I had read the book "Försters Katja" (which would translate as something like: Forest Ranger's Daughter Katja) by Ilse Kitzinger and Katja went deerstalking in the book, which inspired me to do the same. I remember how I was overwhelmed how much is to discover and observe when you just walk alone, silent and calm with your eyes open for what is going on around you, how close you can come to the animals. I guess it was one of those "nature-experiences" that still impress and mould me today.
The book is from 1968 already, my mother read it when she was a young girl and I loved to get all her old books out of the cellar and devoured them! And I will definitely keep them!
I posted about (the exhibition) "Paradise Lost" before. Peter Bialobrzeski (who is not featured in said exhibition) takes a slightly different approach - his series "Paradise Now" shows us the nature left between glass and steel and concrete in our big cities. He captures and creates a surreal image of this left-over nature by long exposure times.
I found the one above in a magazine (chrismon) nearly A3 sized and must say that it looks much better that big than in the mini version here on my blog. I'd love to have it original sized (126 x 160 cm)...
The trees stand tall and stately,
surveying their domain --
The first to glimpse the sunrise;
the first to feel the rain.
(find more than just the first stencer of this poem: here + the image is - as far as I remember - cut out from XOXOtheMag (where I also found the wonder machine before) and hangs at my bedside. I love how the flash of my camera adds "sunlight breaking through the branches", haha)
The exhibition "Paradise Lost" in Istanbul Modern deals with the old dualistic understanding of culture vs. nature in the western world. The shown video-installations approch this issue from many different perspectives. Some of them focus on the "clash" of nature and modern technology, others wake and exhibit a deep fascination for the creation (wich I do not mean in a religious sense!) with all the structure and beauty in it. You will see naked people in the clouds, women dancing on saturated green mountain meadows, opened skulls, memories stored in light and a biker comforting kangaroos. And more that keeps you thinking.
"Paradoxically we celebrate or mourn modern industrial society as the cause and effect of humans' victory over nature. Modern industrial society thus is seen as the end of nature and the highest state of culture. Yet modern industrial society is at the same time critically dependent on "natural" resources such as hydrocarbons. Modern human society is not independent of nature; at best (and at worst) it's a hybrid of nature and culture."
The video below gives an insight to the installation that captured me most because of its stunnig, calm aesthetic, without a wagging finger or moral sermon, and yet offering "a message" - Migration by Doug Aitken. Every shot in it would be worth a frame.
"Even many animals are not really unambiguously part of nature or culture. Several of North America's iconic "wild" animals, for example, are neither wild nor domesticated. Turkey, deer, buffalo, pigeon and geese all passed through genetic bottlenecks as humans subjected the species to dramatic selective pressures by (nearly) exterminating them, breeding them back or managing their populations."
(quotes from Interview with Emmanuel Kreike, associate professor of history and associated faculty member of the Princeton Environmental Institute, by Carol Peters found here)
temporary exhibition "PARADISE LOST"
in Istanbul Modern
until the 24th of July,
on thursdays entrance is free
Absolutely lovely. Even though I must say that she looks like the incorporation of alternative-eco-stereoptype: I think this is really cool. And I was astonished how much harvest she actually has in the end - even though we're only shown a very small part of it. This got me definitely hooked! I found the video via yougrowgirl.com, a page for people who have maybe even smaller or no gardens at all.
