Our Monthly Favourites

Exploring The Ephemeral

The Berndnaut Smilde

This picture is part of a series by visual duch artist Berndnaut Smilde titled Nimbus. Composed of 11 photographs, this series aims to freeze in time via a picture a “transitory moment of presence in a specific location” (Brendnaut website). All routed in the temporary, the photographs need to be taken at a very specific instant before the cloud starts falling apart. In order to create such a phenomenon in these interiors, Smilde uses a smoke machine, a humidifier and reduces the temperature: “It has to be cold, damp and really wet, so I’m moisturising the air as much as possible. The moisture has to stick to the smoke, making it heavier.” he declared in an interview with the BBC. 

What’s also captivating about his work is the juxtaposition and duality of this cloud with the interior he chooses to shoot in. He declared to Kate Andrews in an interview for Dezeen: “Lots of the time I work in a site-specific way reacting to the architecture or the history of the location”. His work was cited by TIME Magazine as one of the top 10 inventions of 2012 and he was commissioned to work with many well known figures of the art world such as Donatella Versace, Dolce e Gabbana, Karl Lagerfeld, the Saatchi Gallery and more.

Junya Ishigami & Associates - Balloon, 2007

In the “Space for Your Furture” exhibition as the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, architect Junya Ishigami placed a floating 1 ton cuboid volume, almost the size of a house wrapped in aluminium and filled with helium. Floating in the museum’s atrium, this work is a representation of the constant dualities met in architecture, materiality vs impact, abstraction vs presence. 

The use of aluminum allows for light to reflect in interesting patterns, bouncing off from surface to surface causing a rippling effect ultimately pushing the viewer to ask the question: are we seeing how this cuboid volume is affecting the space or how the space is affecting this cuboid volume?

In a 2010 interview with Art It magazine, Ishigami declared that his installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo “had to be something that could transform the space and reveal an unprecedented architectural potentiality”. This intervention indeed achieves this goal as, as it drifts in the atrium it might lower down, creating a new low ceiling to this room, allowing the visitors to not interact with the actual immense dimensions of the space. At other times, it may move towards a corner and create new sub-sections to the space, thus dividing it.  

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a 2004 film directed by Michel Gondry starring Kate Winslet as Clementine alongside Jim Carrey, as Joel. It embarks its viewers on a past love story after Clementine decides to erase the memory of their tumultuous relationship. When Joel comes to that realisation, he decides to go through the same process and is ordered to gather a box with his souvenirs of her. This reminisces about their shared relationship and he falls in love with her again, whilst the procedure is operating which leads to a race against time of him trying to grasp his last desperate moments in her company. The film plays with time, fading memories as well as incorporating fantastical and surrealist elements. The colour code allows one to replace the events in its real-time frame through Clementine’s protagonist’s hair. This heartbreaking narrative explores relationships, its grief and sometimes impossible endings.

Babette’s Feast

Babette’s Feast is a 1987 film directed by Danish director Gabriel Axel, inspired by Karen Blixen’s book. 

This simple story with no major plot takes place in a small religious Danish village, where Babette, a French cook that fled her country after the Franco-Prussian War, becomes the housekeeper of two pious sisters. The atmosphere of its setting is cold and dull, its protagonists remain unpretentious and quiet, whilst the impeccable cinematography brings a comfort and warmth aesthetic. After Babette wins the lottery, she decides to prepare a sumptuous meal for the two sisters and her guests, offering them an insight to her culture as well as a temporary moment that will live beyond digestion.

Sharing a meal is such a peculiar and short moment registered in time that each one of us have the privilege to relate to, especially when it comes to being with the right people whilst engaging our taste buds.