Shells

Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn

Cast

noun

noun: cast; plural noun: casts

1. an object made by shaping molten metal or similar material in a mould.

   "bronze casts of the sculpture"

   • a mould used to make an object by casting.

     noun: plaster cast; plural noun: plaster casts

     "the artist's casts and moulds became the property of the museum"
   • a bandage stiffened with plaster of Paris, moulded to the shape of a limb that is broken and used to support and protect it.
      noun: plaster cast; plural noun: plaster casts

     "I had to spend a month in a cast"
     
2. an act of throwing something forcefully.

   "he grabbed a spear for a third cast"
   
3. the form or appearance of something, especially someone's features or complexion.
   

   "she had a somewhat masculine cast of countenance"

   • the character of something.

     "this question is for minds of a more philosophical cast than mine"
4. a slight squint.
   

   "he had a cast in one eye"

Sunday Tune

Saturday Cartoon

“A Handy Tip For the Easily Distracted” by Miranda July - NOWNESS from NOWNESS on Vimeo.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

― Alvin Toffler

set yourself free

(gif found here)

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”

  --Voltaire

Johnny Dawes

  "What you learn helps you to find out who you are. The rock will show you exactly in what way you are not being you." --Johnny Dawes (via archclimbingwall)

learning to swim...methods are always changing!

Patterns

"Before you make a pattern, you gotta break a pattern.” -Gray Cook

 "The culture that gave us yoga did not intend to provide trendy flexibility exercises, but for many Westerners, that is what yoga represents. We fail to see that yoga does not serve as a workout, but as a daily moving meditation where breathing and movement become one, creating mobility, stability, endurance, strength, patience and focus that can increase that day's quality.
...We often spotlight the physical side effects of calorie burning, and neglect the primary purpose, the chance to gain competency and efficiency in a movement."

 Gray Cook on yoga

take a step back

a note.

Sometimes opening your eyes to knowledge's blind spots can reveal fresh solutions to old problems and give you an appreciation for the unknown. ...this is the journey I am on right now with all this yoga stuff. It's both terrifying and tremendously exciting to step away from my old dogmas, question assumptions and challenge paradigms, but change is hard!

I'm currently taking my time to adjust my work flow and research and implement new skills. It hasn't been easy to admit that there are plenty of gaps in my knowledge of how the body works and moves, but i'm taking the responsibility of unlearning and relearning to heart and hopefully this little space I tend to on the world wide web reflects that, tips and hints of things to look at always welcome!

learning to unlearn

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”

-- a summation of Darwin’s workby someone in the 1960's...

Sunday Tune

Sunday Tune

Saturday Poem

Saturday Cartoon

"We are made of all the things that broke us just to keep us alive"

--Anthony Anaxagorou

Audrey Louise Reynolds

Audrey Louise Reynolds, A Fashionable Selby Film from the selby on Vimeo.

Searching for Stability

"We tend to become tense and stiff when we feel unstable but this is unhelpful - rigid structures topple more easily than responsive ones. The principle concern in balances is to develop poses slowly, steadily and with quiet stability."

-- Peter Blackaby Intelligent Yoga

Balance Face

Brilliant photo via  orbityoga
from South Dakota, 1959.

Do you have a concentration face?

Nice little exercise in awareness, notice which bits of your body get involved unnecessarily when you are trying to complete a new task. For example when trying to wiggle just your left big toe, does your right big toe try and join the party? When balancing do you stick your tongue out or clench your jaw?

Your body is one big conversation. When something is challenging or new sometimes your methods of communication misfire or get their wires crossed. The more you practice the new movement the better at communicating you will become.

Shedding Skin

“The skin biopsy was the first stage to creating the artwork. It was the moment when I thought OK this is real. It was a proper procedure. It wasn’t overly intrusive – it didn’t hurt or anything – it’s just a case of sterilising a part of my arm and cutting out a chunk of skin.

About two weeks later we converged at the Institute of Neurology to look at the stains and the actual skin that had been processed. They were stained in particular colours; a purple, minty green, blue and a pinky colour. They looked amazing – they just looked like paintings. I was really blown away by all the detail. What we created was me!”

-- Ghostpoet on the making of his latest album Shedding Skin.

Found via it's nice that. 

Maryanne Casasanta

But what if the truth is neither in the represented nor in the representation? What if the truth is in its material configuration? To participate in an image rather than merely identify with it could perhaps abolish this relation. This would mean participating in the material of the image as well as in the desires and forces it accumulates. How about acknowledging that this image is not some ideological misconception, but a thing simultaneously couched in affect and availability, a fetish made of crystals and electricity, animated by our wishes and fears, a perfect embodiment of its own conditions of existence? It doesn’t represent reality. It is a fragment of the real world. It is a thing just like any other—a thing like you and me. 

--Hito Steyerl

Work by Maryanne Casasanta.

Wild Women

I went to the Banff Mountain Film Festival at the Union Chapel this weekend and loved this film! For California-based Faith Dickey mastering the fine art of slacklining and highlining is a passion.

She set the women’s world record for highlining length (a full 345 feet of pure balance and fear mastery) in Moab, Utah. She also set a record for highlining height at 4,000 feet up from the valley bottom in the Swiss Alps. Faith also has accomplished 30 free solos (highlining without an attached safety leash), the longest of which was just over 91 feet.
Can you imagine?

I've been dabbling with this (at very low heights!) and it has to be one of the best balance tools i've ever tried.  Balance is so dynamic and there is no getting away from that on one of these. I like this one...gibbon-slacklines

Here's a clip of Faith in action from polishedproject.

He could use the bridge, but no. I like his style.
Lesson learnt: You have to choose to vary your movement!

“Don't confuse symmetry with balance.”

― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues