Trio of Paris Picks
The advent clock is ticking; the times they are a-changing. Three events have aligned themselves in a rare astrological communique. The signs are on the wall: Sorry Mr. Foer, everything is broken.
Film and Music: Philip Glass's Qatsi trilogy screens this weekend with live music at the . The trilogy -- Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi -- portrays a society dancing to an unnatural rhythm. The films, like us, are cut, sped up, spliced and shoved back together. Glass's hypnotic music is combined with Godfrey Reggio's hypnotic images. Koyaanisqatsi, subtitled "Life out of Balance," is first up on Friday the 16th, followed by the equally portentous Powaqqatsi, "Life in Transformation," and, on Sunday, Naqoyqatsi, "Life as War." There's also live music by the Philip Glass ensemble. The films are terrifying and beautiful as humans race like ants, ants work like humans, rats race, cities sprout, and sprouts wilt away.
More Parisian picks after the jump.
Music: North of the border and disdainful of its wayward southern neighbor, Toronto is a haughty and distant ville. From the outside, it is difficult to tell whether Toronto even has a social scene. Let alone a broken one. But, thankfully, they do. In fact, Toronto's Broken Social Scene rocks. The ten-to-fifteen member indie rock band descends en masse to the 20th arrondissiment's La Maroquinerie on Friday the 16th. Stoked by the Arcade Fire, touched by the Strokes, and sprinkled with the Stars, Broken Social Scene crafts perfect pop songs.
Graffiti: OK, so not quite an event, but this week's Parisian hebdo Zurban has a little feature on graf-artist Jerome Mesnager's latest "work," a take off of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa. Every city has its own pretentious graffiti artist -- New York's De La Vega springs to mind -- but Mesnager's fame is particularly ill-deserved. Remember those kids in high school who could only draw one thing, like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes or Garfield, and who filled their notebooks with the same character? Or that kid at a party who always sits down at the piano and plays the same piece -- the only one he knows -- over and over again? They are Mesnager's cognates. The man only knows how to paint one thing: the silhouette of man (see above). True the man does different things, but none of them are very interesting. There is genuinely interesting graffiti in Paris. In fact, the stencil (pochoir) movement was founded here in the 1980s by Blek the Rat, and many of his pieces can be found scattered throughout the city. "The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated," says Gandhi, but I would add to that, "and by the quality of its graffiti." If Mesnager and De La Vega command our respect, it is true, the heavens are right, we are doomed.
Agenda [Cite de la Musique]
La Maroquinerie [Official site]
Jérôme Mesnager [Le Pans de l'Ours]
Previously: Paris Illumine Paris, Ron Mueck at Fondation Cartier, Le Fooding Awards Announced, William Klein at Centre Pompidou, Rubbing Victor
