The photography of Lukasz Wierzbowski — a photographer and social psychology student currently living in Wroclaw, Poland — unsettles. His pictures feature gorgeous young women in the woods or at home or on the street; wherever they are, their figures alone occupy the frame. Draping themselves across tree branches, grassy lawns, or unkempt bedspreads, these women seem bored and frustrated with the viewer’s gaze — in almost every image, the face of the model is turned away, obscured, or simply facing the camera with eyes staunchly shut. There is something uncanny about these pictures; looking at them, the viewer feels implicated as voyeur into someone else’s private world.
     Despite the fact that his work appears rich with implied meaning, Wierzbowski explains that he doesn’t have any kind of artist statement: “The only thing I can say [about my work] is that I feel strongly attached to this certain mood, feeling of in-between where not everything is the way it seems.” Indeed, Wierzbowski’s images bring to mind that old joke: “I woke up this morning and discovered that someone had stolen all my stuff and replaced it with exact replicas.” While the world in these pictures looks just as we expect it to, something in the atmosphere just doesn’t feel right.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the French director best known for his film Amelie is many things: the pride of the French cinema, the darling of film connoisseurs, a man with a clear and unique creative vision. What he is not, contrary to what many film buffs may think, is a highfalutin artist that lives in a parallel universe where low-grade pop-culture is not allowed to enter.
     At 56 Jeunet has enjoyed both artistic and popular success. His first two features, Delicatessen (1991) and The City of Lost Children (1995), produced with his collaborator, Marc Caro, were well-received by film critics and went on to become cult hits. The eccentricity of both pictures, the off-kilter characters, the unique cinematographic style, and incredible attention to detail quickly became Jeunet’s signature.
     On a recent afternoon in New York I sat down with Jeunet to talk about his career, his most recent film, Micmacs, and Rambo. The Tribeca Film Festival, where Micmacs premiered, just ended and Jeunet looked a bit tired, but his inquisitive blue eyes were sharp and alert. Naturally, our conversation turned to his unique aesthetic vision. The hallmark of Jeunet’s talent is his ability to create a world that is distinctly his own. In this world, the strange freely interacts with the familiar, turning the viewer into an Alice tumbling down a rabbit-hole.

We did a piece last year on mockups for the international pavilions slated for this year’s World Expo. Now that they are actually all built and the expo is officially open, we wanted to show you how some of the finished structures turned out.

All images courtesy of Dezeen

The Fall is not a band; it’s punk attitude turned to music. “They are always different, they are always the same,” said noted British radio host John Peel. Always different, partly because Mark E. Smith has been the only consistent member throughout The Fall’s 34-year career, and the same because, regardless of album or decade, The Fall’s songs always follow the same basic structure, with Smith speak/singing, often in seemingly random spurts, over a repetitive hook. Brash and snotty, a first-time listener could easily mistake any one of The Fall’s countless songs as little more than a looped soundtrack for bandleader Mark E. Smith to sneer over.
    Your Future Our Clutter, The Fall’s 28th studio album, is uncharacteristically concise and fun. It’s also one of their best. Smith, a unrepentant curmudgeon, trades in his sneer for a smirk, making this the Bart Simpson of Fall records. Most of Clutter’s nine songs are built around a rollicking rhythm section, driving toward anti-climax.

Buy this at Other Music or iTunes.

Seems you can’t move an inch anymore without running smack dab into the words ‘street art’. Increasing media exposure and growing acceptance of the method as a legitimate art form has generated an onslaught of new discussion about the crossover medium. As more art and design schools, magazines, and distinguished institutions like the Tate Modern jump onboard, the need for real information increases. Beyond the Street is Gestalten’s comprehensive response to supply this new demand.
     More of a manual than a coffee table book, the behemoth is comprised of 400 pages of in-depth interviews and full-color photographs. The book is smart, slick, and poses the long overdue questions burning in everyone’s mind. What makes street artists tick? What kind of implications does their work have on the urban landscape? Will the genre’s freedom ultimately trump the commercial art world? One hundred global power players in street and urban art are highlighted here including Wooster Collective, Shepard Fairey, Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Agnes B, and Juxtapoz Magazine.

For anyone not living there, it’s hard to know what on earth goes on inside Iran. For some, it’s a cradle of culture; for others, a breeding-ground for extremists. What is certain, however, is that the current Islamic regime doesn’t tolerate dissent, shuttling any and all opposition voices off to jail at will. Now, they have a high-profile convict to deal with: award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Many of Panahi’s films have been explicitly critical of the Iranian government, like his masterpiece Dayereh (The Circle) from 2000 — winner of the Golden Lion at Venice — which addresses the treatment of women under the Islamist regime. The story is about different women outcast from their families and on the run on the streets of Tehran — not exactly the image that Iran’s highly sensitive leaders want to project of their country. Before his arrest, they had even banned Panahi from travelling abroad, apparently for having worn an item of green clothing — the color of Iran’s opposition, favored by Iranians in exile — at the Montreal Film Festival. Now, an international movement demanding his release is gathering momentum. Dozens of high-profile cineastes like Spielberg, Redford, De Niro, Loach, and Kiarostami (who Panahi used to assist), as well as countless film entities and culture ministers around the world have signed a petition, bringing further international scrutiny to the regime. Panahi may not have intended it this way, but being cast as the martyr has brought massive media attention to the Iran he so desperately wants to change.

For more information and ways to help, go to the Free Jafar Pahani facebook page.

Floria Sigismondi is the real deal. Born in Italy and raised in Ontario, Canada, Sigismondi is a 21st century Renaissance woman who has spent her career bridging the gap between film, videos, music, and photography. Her new film, The Runaways, premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, garnering immediate buzz and critical accolades from around the globe. Although the multi-disciplinary artist counts music videos for The Dead Weather, David Bowie, Interpol, and Björk as past projects, The Runaways is her first feature film. Deviating from the stark, surrealist dreamscapes she’s known for, Sigismondi captures the feverish rise and descent of the 1970s all-girl teenage rock group (which featured Joan Jett) with style, awe, and sensitivity. Here’s an exclusive peek with the rising director.

What initially drew you to The Runaways and made you want to tell their story through the language of film?

I was intrigued by their age and how young they were in the world of rock and roll, touring with virtually no parental guidance. I focused the story on Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, because they were completely different people coming together for the same goal. They were breaking new ground.

Jazz — African style — is Ethiopia’s Mulatu Astatke’s specialty. The veteran musician first reached Western ears with the domestic release of his work with the Heliocentrics, the third installment in the Inspiration Information series. On Mulatu Steps Ahead, the listener is exposed to Astatke’s work across time and space. Collecting together compositions written in the East Coast of the United States all the way to the South of France, it draws from Astatke’s thirty-plus years of musical experience. Mulatu Steps Ahead is a lot more structured than the Inspiration Information collaboration. This can best be attributed to the jazz scaffold that the album is built upon; Mulatu Steps Ahead has strung the Afro-jazz thread throughout. Like the soundtrack to a Discovery Channel program on lions, exotic, hollow woodwind sounds mingle with noodly, self-involved jazz passages, creating a dusty, calming blend. One can almost smell the shimmering heat rising from the ground on “Assosa” while the moodiness of the aptly titled “Mulatu’s Mood” is palpable. Jazz en Afrique.

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Buy this at iTunes. After the jump, check out a video in which Mulatu Astatke discusses the making of his first album in over two decades.

Sustainable Exchange, a series of weekend workshops, installations and exhibits featuring artists who work within the sustainability movement will take over TODA Design Studio on West Broadway to demonstrate and explore the versatility and possibilities of sustainable consumption in the fields of art and design. Featuring performance artists, textile artists, fashion designers and musicians—plus many more—the gallery exhibition and workshops are offered free and open to the public 12-6pm daily. The range of workshops is wide: beginner finger crochet (no hooks necessary); the art of dyeing cloth with natural sources such as spices, teas, and roots; fashion illustration and collage; a seminar on sustainable business practices; cooking local seasonal fare with reknowned sustainable foods chef Anne Apparu. The three-day event aims to create a veritable labaratory of ideas and practices—mixing together public participation and the ideas and creations of long-standing sustainable artists, the project hopes to collectively nurture the growth of the sustainability movement.

Sustainable Exchange: Methods and Practices for Collaborative Partnerships will be open for public participation on May 7th-9th from 2-6pm at TODA Design Studio, 250 West Broadway, 6th Floor.

The Earth Awards is an attempt to bring international public awareness to the necessity of sustainable design. An annual competition since 2007, the Earth Awards “came from a collective of creative thinkers who were designers, architects, scientists, writers, entrepreneurs”, says director Karena Albers. Collectively, the group was “in agreement that not only [are] good design and sustainable design synonymous, but also that … this movement of environmentalism was not moving ahead as quickly as we would have liked, and we believed it was because sustainable thinking wasn’t integrated into popular culture”.
     The Earth Awards’ mission is to “find good design and then to connect the innovator with whatever that innovator needs to further his idea or her idea into the marketplace”, says Albers. Past winners have integrated biomimicry with building design, designed solar-powered LED lighting schemes, and created sustainable ways to farm ocean fish.
     A particular strength of the Earth Awards lies in its selection committee. The Awards aim to bring in some of the most visible (and visionary) minds in the fields of art, architecture, design, environmentalism, activism and fashion. The eclectic group of judges ranges from Jane Goodall to Diane von Furstenberg to Paola Antonelli, the Senior Curator for Architecture and Design at MoMA.