Ben's Misc.

www.bensecret.com

[skeletales]

San Francisco-based artist Jeremy Mann lives and works in San Francisco where he executes these sublime, moody cityscapes using oil paints. To create each work he relies on a wide range of techniques including surface staining, the use of solvents to wipe away paint, and the application of broad, gritty marks with an ink brayer. The resulting paintings are dark and atmospheric, urban streets seemingly drenched in rain and mystery.

[showstudio]

[bensecret]

“There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you. Suddenly the TV reveals itself for what it really is: a video of another world, ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its images indifferently, indifferent to its own messages (you can easily imagine it still functioning after humanity has disappeared).”

— Jean Baudrillard, America

[scanzen]

View on the Empire State Building and the nocturnal illuminated Lower Manhattan from the R.C.A. Building, which was being constructed at that time, 1932. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images) 

[bensecret]

One of my favourite Flickrs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dejona/

[bensecret]

Roses Rising - Renée Vivien

My brunette with the golden eyes, your ivory body, your amber Has left bright reflections in the room Above the garden.

The clear midnight sky, under my closed lids, Still shines….I am drunk from so many roses Redder than wine.

Leaving their garden, the roses have followed me…. I drink their brief breath, I breathe their life. All of them are here.

It’s a miracle….The stars have risen, Hastily, across the wide windows Where the melted gold pours.

Now, among the roses and the stars, You, here in my room, loosening your robe, And your nakedness glistens

Your unspeakable gaze rests on my eyes…. Without stars and without flowers, I dream the impossible In the cold night.

[zombiejig-deactivated20200211]

[hellanne]

[bensecret]

I'm aware I'm a social relic from an age when you walked through the shopping centre with an unbagged album under your arm to show like-minded souls who you were, and when the book as an object was quietly fetishised. Now kids stake out their personal space with knives and guns and gadgets, and working stiffs flip falsified pages of virtual books on Kindles. I'm like a character in a dystopian science-fiction novel, holed up in a cave full of cultural artefacts, waiting for the young Jenny Agutter to arrive in a tinfoil miniskirt, fleeing a poisonous cloud on the surface, to check out my stash and ask me: "Who exactly was the Quicksilver Messenger Service? Who was this Virginia Woolf? What kind of man was Jonah Hex?"

– Stewart Lee (The Observer, Sunday 1 August 2010)

[hiddenlex]

The Rain Room - Barbican Center, London

The Rain Room is a 100 square metre field of falling water which visitors are invited to walk into. Sensors detect where visitors are standing, and the rain stops around them, giving them an experience of how it might feel to control the rain.

[bensecret]

INDIA. Mumbai. 2006. A little girl playing in Laxmi Chawl, a neighborhood of Dharavi. The little lightbulbs are put out for an upcoming neighborhood wedding.

© Jonas Bendiksen

[godsangel07-deactivated20210203]

[ruineshumaines]

Cloud by Caitlind Brown.

‘Cloud’ is a large-scale interactive sculpture created from 6.000 light bulbs, new and burnt out. Constructed by artist Caitlind Brown and collaborator Wayne Garrett. As part of the process of creating the sculpture, Brown collected burnt out incandescent light bulbs from local households, businesses, museums, and eco stations. The idea was to create an informal collaboration between the community and the artists, reduce costs, and experiment with the potential of items post-use.

[nekroplooss]

[everconstant]

[bensecret]

[bensecret]

Jonas Bendiksen. RUSSIA. Altai Territory. 2000. Villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies. Environmentalists fear for the region's future...