Talking about running: some ad people can make any city look good.
Beginning Workout
December 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Coldplay’s “Paradise”
October 19, 2011 By 3 Comments
Coldplay’s new video for the song “Paradise” was released on the band’s website today. The plot revolves around a man dressed in an elephant suit (it later turns out to be Chris Martin inside the suit) who escapes from a zoo in London and smuggles himself onto a plane to Cape Town. With few exceptions there are no real people in this elephant suit’s world. Mr Elephant buys a unicycle in Cape Town (Woodstock to be specific, guess Tom) and heads out to the Boland/Karoo where he meets up with 3 other elephants (his band members). They get transported to a stage in front of a massive crowd–turns out in Johannesburg–and play out the song. Paradise indeed.
Everybody and their cousin has something to say about it.
We have work to do, so I sent an email around AIAC. Below follows a slightly edited version of our conversation:
Tom: Paradise is Cape Town’s central business district, a Woodstock bicycle shop and giraffes in game parks.
Sean: Is this Coetzee’s Eden or am I giving them [Coldplay and the video's director] too much credit?
Robo the Technician
September 30, 2011 By 1 Comment
From the Johannesburg-based record label that recently introduced us to Yugen Blakrok and Fifi the Rai Blaster comes this video for Robo the Technician. (“We’ve got a production studio here at Iapetus, that’s where it was shot.”) South Africans will recognize some familiar faces in the background.
Music Break / Spikiri
September 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Browsing our archive, I found very little kwaito tunes. Our bad. Some of them are irresistible, like this one by Spikiri and friends. About the videos we can be short: we’re still waiting for the first one that doesn’t feature a DJ, sizzling meat, bling, cars or house parties. It often also works, less so this time. But that beat…
‘The garden boy’s picture on the wall’
August 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Earlier this year, while I was in Cape Town, I interviewed Emma Bedford, a specialist in painting, watercolours, drawings, prints and sculpture at Strauss and Co., fine art auctioneers based in Cape Town. I asked her about what sort of artwork investors were interested in buying, and what these purchases indicated about South Africa’s vision of ‘art’. In the imaginary of the ‘Captains of Industry’ who arrive at auction, ready to compete for a prized piece, what was a valuable piece? What was art, in their eyes?
I met Emma many years back, as a newcomer to Cape Town, when she was Senior Curator and Head of the Curatorial Departments at the Iziko South African Gallery. I had no connections and couldn’t do anything to promote artists, artwork or the gallery. I think I had on a $20 red H&M hoodie.
Music Break / Khuli Chana
July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Strong track and video by Johannesburg MC Khuli Chana. JR (remember him) is driving the car.
The Sound of Johannesburg
July 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment
South African artists BLK JKS and Athi-Patra Ruga provide this month’s mixtape for the Italian architecture, art and design magazine Domus (other mixtapes in the past gave us musical snapshots of Buenos Aires, London, Melbourne, Milan, Harlem and Mexico City — all of them highly recommended, by the way).
Listen to the mixtape on the Domus website. This is the tracklist of “The Sound of Johannesburg”:
