girlotron's New Writeups

Parkour (thing)

2002-05-24T22:34:14Z

Le Parkour, ou l'Art Du Déplacement, consiste à utiliser les obstacles rencontrés sur son chemin, pour effectuer des sauts ou acrobaties. Le tout, en alliant vitesse, fluidité, esthétique et originalité.
from http://membres.lycos.fr/parkourll/

BBC1 and BBC2, being publicly funded, don't carry advertising. Occasionally ads for the channels themselves are run, to cover gaps in scheduling. One such ad currently being screened on BBC2 stars David Belle, a 28-yr-old athlete from Paris and creator of a new extreme sport which involves crossing the city 'using encountered obstacles as your highway', via daring and highly dangerous acrobatic feats such as swinging down fire escapes, climbing backwards up high walls and leaping across rooftops. The ad, shot in Paris, starts with a shirtless (and deliciously torsoed) Belle performing a controlled, graceful handstand on a railing high above the city, and is edited to give an elegant, almost balletic feel to his amazing leaps and spins…

Wayne Wang (person)

2002-03-14T02:59:22Z

Born in Hong Kong in 1949 and named after his father's favourite actor John Wayne, Wayne Wang studied film and television at the College of Arts and Crafts in California and returned home to work, but found little interesting work to do on his home patch. He returned and settled in San Francisco where he got grants to produce, write and direct his first feature film Chan Is Missing (1982). This and Dim Sum: a little bit of heart (1984), which focus on the relationship between a Chinese mother and her American-born daughter, offer unique, wry looks at Chinese-Americans and their environment, and established Wang's reputation. His next film, Slamdance (1987), was an overstylized melodrama, but he returned to form with Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989), a comedy about newlyweds in 1949 Chinatown, and Life is Cheap... but Toilet Paper Is Expensive* (1990), a highly experimental, graphic film that was released with no rating because of objections to the gore content of some scenes.

Wang's…

How children draw (idea)

2002-02-04T00:34:17Z

A child's first drawings are scribbles. Streaks and lines at first, then squiggles, curves, circles as small hands get better at co-ordinating the crayon. At first it's just for the pure pleasure of making marks with their movements, then gradually children learn that different movements make different marks, and start to combine them. Holly, who is coming up for two, puts her whole body into making squiggles: both hands clutched tightly to the paintbrush, her head and shoulders rocking round and round with the lines, her baby face all serious with concentration. Then, when the lines go round a steep curve, or get faster, she giggles. According to some child development theories, the marks don't mean anything, not yet. But this dark blue streak in the middle is me, she says, and I believe her.

At the age of roughly three is when the marks and loose circles start to take on meaning. Educational theorists call this the preschematic or presymbolic stage. This blue lollipop figure, a…

Berthold Lubetkin (person)

2002-01-28T18:40:52Z

Berthold Lubetkin (1901-1990) was a pioneer of modernist architecture in Britain. He was born in Georgia to a Jewish family, and while studying in Moscow witnessed the birth of the Russian revolution at first hand, which was to greatly influence his political and artistic thought. Later he continued his architectural education in France, where he met Le Corbusier and fell in love with the rational, beautiful and above all functional reinforced concrete buildings being created by Modernist architects in and around Paris. In 1930 he came to England and established the Tecton Group, which would become the leader of the British Modernist movement. Their famous buildings in the UK include the Gorilla House and the fabulous Penguin Pool at London Zoo, Highpoint One flats in Highgate, the Finsbury Health Centre, and the Spa Green housing estate - designed to provide decent affordable housing for workers - also in Finsbury. All were built of clean, white concrete with dramatic, clean…

Closure (idea)

2002-01-18T05:36:46Z

There's the box of memories I have which is basically a bunch of holiday snapshots. Stuff I did with friends. I look through them now and again, when I run out of images. Halfway up a mountain in a tent which is being washed away by heavy rain and held up by giggling shouting people in wet pyjamas, that kind of thing. Most of them have audio, mainly laughter tracks, background music. Some are spectacular. Some are just funny.

Then there's the box I guess a lot of people have. The one with old letters. The one you keep at the bottom of a closet or in a drawer nobody uses. Under the bed is too obvious. I put them there and I almost never look at them unless I come across the box while in search of something else. When this happens, I am surprised at how little they move me.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep all this old junk around. Is it necessary to have a record that you felt certain emotions, or did certain things? Does it just fill up space that could be used to store new…

Theatre of the Lost (idea)

2001-11-19T18:21:32Z

Here in the city, an age-old theatrical tradition flourishes: the theatre of the lost.

There have always been various schools within this theatre, small companies and lone performers, developing different strands of mobile and impromptu performance around the place. Once there were mummers and jesters, fools and freakshows, commedia dell'arte, Punch and Judy. Now the theatre of the lost can be loosely grouped into three strands: comedy, experimental and participatory. Their performances are free, and there are always plenty of them.

The comedy performers are the loudest and their performances usually involve a good deal of alcohol. Opposite Islington Green, two spectacularly dirty performers with wild hair are staging a play by the bus stop, involving a short flight of steps and a balancing trick. The play, if it had a title, might be called 'The Fall'. One actor stands on one leg at the top of the steps, leaning slowly forward while the other actor cheers. Then with a…