A visitor

Today a cute little thing paid a visit.

Café Piu Piu, São Paulo

Just got back from a 10 day stay in São Paulo. What a great city. I always used to complain about how ugly it was. How could such an interesting people build such a horrible city? But this time around I got São Paulo. It's fascinating, beautiful in it's own way, in it's scale. And my audience is in São Paulo. I look forward to showing my work A LOT there in 2008 and beyond.
I went to a great café/bar called Café Piu Piu in the Bexiga quarter. And I saw a great choir perform there called Juke. Check out http://www.juke.com.br They sing jingles and intros to old TV shows like Hawaii 5-0 and Speed Racer. They are hysterical and charming at the same time.

Peter Greenaway craps on Paulista

Peter Greenaway showed a 50 film called "The Tulse Luper Suitcases" on Avenida Paulista two nights ago. I, along with what seemed to be a large portion of São Paulo's hipsters, crowded the streets to watch. Greenaway began by asking the audience if we agreed with him that cinema was dead. The crowd mumbled a yes showing some resistence to his opinion. He told us that we were about to witness a 50 minutes of a new language of non-linear cinema that would be exciting and entertaining. He sat before a giant touch flat touch screen monitor and dragged, by hand, a series of looping images to the top portion of the screen which appeared on 4 huge projection screens on a building. After 3 minutes I realized what we were getting ourselves into: a 50 minute display of your typical VJ loopings and samplings. It went on and on. No change in texture. This could have been a video display at an MTV after-party. I tried to start a boo-ing but I could tell that everyone was going to applaud just another piece of contemporary video crap of multiple sceens showing non-communicative looping imagery. At the end body-guards escorted him into the Itau building. As he walked by me I just yelled "Looping is not Innovation".