Things I'm embarrassed to admit I first learned about in the New York Times
1. This story about DJ Venus X makes me, among other things, want to live in New York.
Within a year, GHE20GOTH1K was widely recognized as reanimating New York’s underground night life. It was one of the few parties where a wide cross section of the city — gay and straight, black and white, goths, punks, hip-hop heads, artists, music snobs, fashion designers like Mr. Ervell and even the occasional celebrity like Diplo — came to dance under one roof. Ms. Soto said she views D.J.-ing for such a diverse audience as a defiantly political act, and frequently peppers sound clips from the Al Jazeera news network, audio from the riots in Egypt and sound pings from submarines into her sets.
“I’m going to play Al Jazeera in the club, and you’re going to like it,” she said. “And it’s going to be cool, but not weird cool. It’s going to be like Kanye West and Jay-Z cool.”
"It's going to be cool, but not weird cool."
2. Kutluğ Ataman (go to Turkish artist for the NYT?) is using the concept of silsel to piece together a quilt of tiny "letters to Turkey" written on colorful shapes of fabric that will be sewn together during a performance as part of the Istanbul Theatre Festival. The story behind the idea is quite beautiful, although I haven't been able to confirm with a google image search. While Ataman was recently on his way to work on a project in Syria, violence in the area kept him in the Turkish city of Mardin, where he met a woman with an unconventional ceiling.
Once inside the traditional house of a woman known as Nasira Hanim, Mr. Ataman was intrigued by its ceiling.
“It was painted bright turquoise in a zigzag pattern,” he said recently by telephone. “It was very graphic, very contemporary-looking in design.”
“She told me that in the past the Syriani were scared of going outside, fearing for their lives — they were being attacked and killed by others. It doesn’t matter who, but I think she meant in ethnic clashes,” he said. “But because they were trapped inside, they painted a symbolic sky on their ceilings to alleviate their yearning for the real thing.”
That motif was called silsel, a word he did not recognize as being either Turkish or Arabic.
“I researched further and discovered it was Aramaic, the original language of the Bible and what was spoken at the time in that region,” he said. “It seems to have had a double meaning, either the fluttering of wings, or the sky.”
A single word sharing both the sense of "fluttering wings" and "the sky"...a painting on the ceiling to quench one's dangerous desire for freedom. For anyone in the area, I believe the exhibition opens May 12th at noon in the Galata Rum Primary School (Kemeralti Cad No 25). But don't count on me for anything.
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