Saturday, February 8, 2014

Trash - A stunning installation by Mexi Lane at Imagin@rium

Houses and books in the waste... We can't imagine a more sad and tragic end of world.
When you want experience that, visit Mexi Lane's installation Trash at her MiC-Imagin@rium SIM.
On a narrow sand stripe front of the main island, huge bulks of garbage close up the horizon.


The shock is very hard: compared to the classical, calm beauty of the temples and buildings on the island, to the clean sand of the coast and to the quiet and sunny sea, slowly lapping the beach, the rubbish mountain chain is strongly disturbing!

 
 

But a closer view is even worse: our most beloved objects, houses and books, our own homes and our knowledge's and pleasure's homes are most of the rubbish rising up to the sky. Moreover, they lay on a faint base of garbage and the mountains are spangled by fat black plastic bags, suggesting other, worse garbage. It's heartbreaking!

 
Mexi would depict the crisis of our world in the saddest way: she's a great art connoisseur and lover and she knew how much all educated people would be hit by seeing their most beloved objects trown out and neglected like rubbish. Sumptous book bindings, golden fonts, pretty roofs and chimneys seem being no longer useful.
I want to stress that houses aren't huge building or flats: they are the beloved pretty houses we all dream when we think af a quiet day spent reading or listening good music.
However, under some daylights they look like De Chirico buildings, adding a touch of surrealism to the whole installation.


So, maybe we can also think of it like a nightmare. But nightmares are warnings, too: they come from real dangers and fears. They teach us to do our best to avoid they become real.
Thank you Mexi! Shivers and sadness your work gave us are a push to awake ourselves and to hope the awesome world of your island could come back, when we would start a wiser way of life.




Friday, February 7, 2014

Slideshow "American Signs" :))

I got a lot of fun, making a slideshow on You Tube, showing a series of my photos titled "American Signs" :))


I gathered there many pictures of different kind of signs. I've taken them for my series "Americana", since signs are a typical expression of urban culture.
Neon lights, advertising posters, motels', diners' or gas stations' signs populate our imaginery, and some of them are masterpieces of fun, of vintage style or even of urban popular culture.





Through SL you can find a lot of them, and this collection is a parade of fonts, lights and announcements from dozen of beautiful SIMs I visited.
I paired to them a cheerful country-rock soundtrack by Chris Norton and Frank Mezin, that looks fitting well to the images, mostly taken in Southern or Western SIMs.

The Americana series, a work in progress, counting at this moment more than 200 pics (but I planned to post up to 500), is avalaible on my Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/melusina_parkin/sets/72157635715192173/

Enjoy it!