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Iceland

These haunting, otherworldly images are by Selina Elkuch for SOME/THINGS. I like the desolate beauty, and their revelation of the Iceland coast shrouded in mists and crowned by towering, strange, dark, mysterious rock formations.

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Xenophora Objects

Xenophora Objects is a brand of handcrafted jewelry designed by Karissma Yve. Using techniques such as sand casting and lost-wax casting, these unique, brutal objects are inspired by nature and alchemy – the tagline (As above becomes below, within becomes without) is a play on the alchemical maxim “As above, so below.” I like the raw quality of these pieces, how they remind me of natural forms, how extremely tactile and primal-feeling they are, and their embodiment of her vision of “a perfectly imperfect composition of ash and blood.” Karissma is also quite the wordsmith and I like the emotionally intense vibe, a sort of incandescent, poetic priestess-like energy, that she infuses into the stories she creates around her lovingly made pieces.

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Flowers and Insects: The Art of Toru Kamei

Toru Kamei’s lush works are reminiscent of vanitas paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries. His motifs are flowers with eyes, skulls, butterflies, and other creatures including bats and beetles. His masterful use of lighting and color brings a sumptuous glow to his illustration of death and decay. I love his juxtapositional imagery, such as the blossoms overflowing and spilling from the rib cage in almost obscene abundance, while strange, alien, seemingly sentient vegetation grows around it in the night, with its sense of still, mysterious hunger.

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DEMOBAZA

One of my favorite online clothing stores is Bulgaria-based DEMOBAZA. Raw, gauzy, tattered, asymmetrical knits dominate this unique, futuristic label. With unconventional shapes, various textures, cutouts galore, exposed seams, arm warmers, cowls, and hoods, it brings to mind the image of a fierce yet pixielike urban nomad. I would describe its aesthetic as haute cyberpunk. I love the unusual silhouettes which lend themselves so much to draping and layering.

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A Brief Review of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

“There is a spoon of medicine, I says, and it’s a silver spoon what you did get born holding, ever so painful for mummy dear but grasped so hard it was in a little screaming red fist. Later you used your spoon to dig a hole in the garden to get all the way to Mexico, and then you did eat worms with your spoon on the way to stay fat.
This spoon was the same you gave your twins, then you used it to dig a hole to their clockwork souls and you ate up their hearts like soup on the way to keep you fat.
Fat little mole, where will you dig next, I asks, you and your little silver spoon made from the silver spine of your children, and wrapped in the hair of your dearly departed?”

Although Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs has had a somewhat mixed reception since its release last September, it haunted and affected me as games rarely do. I think I even consider it to be stronger than its acclaimed predecessor, Amnesia: The Dark Descent – not from the perspective of gameplay mechanics or anything of the sort; and Descent is much scarier and more horrific in terms of actual terror. But I found Pigs to be much more moving, and darker in its far-reaching implications.

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Naomi Kizhner’s “Energy Addicts”

Energy Addicts is a project by Israeli graduate student Naomi Kizhner. Kizhner, a designer and “trend theorist,” seeks to “provoke the thought about how far we will go in order to ‘feed’ our addiction in the world of declining resources.” The project comprises three devices, the Blinker, the E-Pulse Conductor, and the Blood Bridge – jewelry pieces which harness the body’s energy to generate electrical power. Some of them are embedded into the veins, and thus invasive.

Kizhner plays with the idea of human bodies as “biological wealth.” Using “invasive gold and biopolymer devices,” electromagnets, micro energy cells, and micro turbines, she turns the wearer into a natural resource, where “simple movements performed by the subconscious are fully utilized” – provoking interesting questions about ethics and the quantification of the individual. The Blinker extracts energy from blinks of the eyelids, the Blood Bridge uses a hypodermic needle inserted into the arm and circulates blood through the wheel, turning it, and the E-Pulse Conductor is inserted in veins near the spine and picks up electrical impulses.

This ingenious project is simultaneously technological wizardry, fashion statement, and social commentary. She has also made a short film to accompany it, which depicts individuals using their bodies to light up their world in a way that makes it meaningful for them, drawing them further into this addiction, but also seeming to drain them. It is as if they only feel alive when they can have this visionary reality before them, which requires their energy to manifest; so what makes them feel alive is what ironically enervates and devitalizes them, and is also what closes them off to any other world, perpetuating the cycle.