It’s What You See That Counts

For more than thirty years, mild-mannered, innocuous Mark Landis has managed to dupe unsuspecting museum curators in more than twenty U.S. states into accepting his forged artworks. Most of the institutions are blissfully unaware that they’ve been taken in by this milquetoast, miscreant from Mississippi. Maybe it has something to do with the disguises that he adopts when presenting his conterfeit masterpieces, or maybe the offers seem too good to scrutinize too closely? Either way, Landis has never financially profited from his enterprise, so no harm no foul.

This intriguing documentary on Landis and his career in art forgery is from the online interview magazine called The Avant/Garde Diaries.

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Not The Tourist Office Version

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Travis Jensen is a street photographer who brings an unvarnished perspective to images of San Francisco and its inhabitants. His earnest and emotional photos of the street scene in the city may not match our orthodox, tourist bureau view of one of America’s most loved cities, but he opens a window on a world that visitors rarely see or acknowledge.

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This documentary on Jensen’s work is called Brainstorm: Travis Jensen and was produced by kayo corp.

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Man Ray Keeps London Going

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Earlier this month we marked the 150th anniversary of London’s iconic Underground network. As we noted, the London Transport Museum will be hosting a show highlighting the rich visual language of Tube related poster art. Featuring an amazing group selected from the London Transport Museum’s archive of more than 5,000 posters, Poster Art 150—London Underground’s Greatest Designs runs from Feb. 15 through Oct. 27,2013.

Please stand on the right of the escalator

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By Underground to fresh air

The six components of the show will be: Love Your City, Capital Culture, Finding Your Way, Bright London, Away From It All and Keeps London Going.

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Or take the Tube

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Keep your personal stereo personal!

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A Terminal, Not A Station

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On February 1, 1913, more than 150,000 curious New Yorkers crowded into the new Grand Central Terminal to gape at the city’s revolutionary transportation hub. Situated in the heart of Manhattan at Park Avenue and 42nd Street, the marvel of Beaux Arts architecture was an awe-inspiring secular cathedral and a marvel of modern engineering.

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The opening of Grand Central inaugurated a golden era in American rail travel that has long ago faded. Today 275,000 passengers a day pass through the terminal, but sadly the only trains that stop at Grand central are run by the suburban Metro-North Railroad.

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A year-long centennial celebration begins today at the spectacular terminal with a multi-media installation, exhibitions, concerts and special tours. There’s even a book dedicated to the 100th anniversary: Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years of A New York Landmark by Anthony W. Robbins.

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By the way, although hundreds of trains visit daily, Grand Central is not actually a station, but is a terminal because trains start and stop their routes there rather than passing through.

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Disturb the Universe

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This wonderful series of posters by Evan Robertson illustrates lines from iconic texts. The New York City-based graphic designer has selected deft lines from writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Woolf and turned them into literature-inspired works of art. You can see more of his work and learn about purchasing copies of the poster art for yourself at Robertson’s website Obvious State.

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Journey Through the Seasons

Norwegian NRK broadcaster and filmmaker Eirik Solheim created a series of entrancing videos based on trips on Norway’s Nordlandsbanen, the nation’s northernmost railway. This 800km-long railway, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, links the fabulous city of Trondheim with Bodø in the far north.

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The goal of the project was to create one video that seamlessly overlapped and synched to incorporate all four seasons. The short version of the final video, titled Nordlandsbanen: Minute by Minute, Season by Season, is hypnotizing.

If you’ve got the time to spare, there’s a 55 minute version on the NRK TV website. And here’s another slice of the project:

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What Do We Have in Our Pockets

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The short film below, which premieres this week at Sundance, was directed by Goran Dukic and is based on Israeli writer Etgar Keret‘s short story “What Do We Have in Our Pockets”. The tw0-page story is included in Keret’s terrific 2012 collection Suddenly, A Knock On The Door.

If you haven’t read any of Keret’s mind-bending short fiction, start with his early collections The Nimrod Flipout or The Girl on the Fridge. But for now, you can read “What Do We Have in Our Pockets ?” at failbetter.com .

According to Keret:

“In this project, Dov Alfon and I are trying to do something that’s supposed to be the literary version of the music video. Basically we’re trying to get filmmakers to express reading. We believe that it’s a new kind of storytelling that can bring people who are not natural readers closer to literature, and advance the idea that stories are there, waiting to be read, and don’t necessarily have to be threatening.

People relate to literature like it is castor oil for bones, like music and cinema are fun, and literature strengthens your bones. We’re trying to say that it isn’t so,” said Keret.

“Goran Dukic worked my book ‘Kneller’s Happy Campers,’ into a feature with Tom Waits. We approached him about it, and he made a video called ‘What do we have in our pockets,’ and in the meantime, we’re very happy that it has received almost 150,000 views in just a few days, and we are getting lots of tweets expressing support from literary magazines. The movie will also compete at Sundance,” continued Keret.

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Inherent Vice Indeed

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While trolling the net for more information on Thomas Pynchon‘s upcoming title The Bleeding Edge, I ran across a brief interview with director Paul Thomas Anderson regarding his work on the film version of Inherent Vice. Anderson describes his film of Pynchon’s novel as “like a Cheech and Chong movie”.

I wish that I could muster some enthusiasm for the film, and for Pynchon’s forthcoming novel, but after Inherent Vice it’s doubtful. I mean, have you read Inherent Vice ? What a disenchanting book. Take a look at the original book trailer for Inherent Vice, reportedly narrated by the reclusive author, and you’ll get some sense of my dismay.

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The Free Book Incident

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Seattle, Washington’s Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers has partnered with Olson Kundig Architects to create the Free Book Incident. This project “is not a book store (there is nothing for sale); it is not a library (there is nothing to return)”. Operating from a Pioneer Square storefront, the FBI project has been stocked with an initial donation of 2,500 books, but will be accepting donations until mid-February when the project ends.

According to bookseller Michael Lieberman, “there is more value in releasing the books into the community then offering them for sale”.

Sounds like Amazon and eBay are about to shut down another indie bookstore.

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Free is the way to travel

Rental car and camper companies need to move their vehicles between branches all of the time. In the U.S. we call them driveaway cars, but in Australia and New Zealand they call them relocation vehicles. The guest post below is from Robert Reeve on the numerous free car and camper opportunities that Transfercar offers.

Transfercar: Delivering a Win-Win Solution for Businesses and Consumers

Win-win situations tend to fall under the category of being ‘too good to be true,’ especially in the business world. However, Australian firm Transfercar have managed to deliver that very scenario, offering a leading service to their business partners as well as their clients.

Who are Transfercar?

Transfercar are an Australian based business that is able to offer free car hire to travellers that are looking to explore the majesty of the country. All that someone needs to do is to head onto the Transfercar website, check the current availability of free rental cars and campervans, and make a booking.

Okay, so this probably is still sounding a little bit ‘yeah, right,’ so let us explain how this works.

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Facilitating Free Vehicle Hire

Transfercar aren’t a company that owns a lot of vehicles and gives out free hire just because they are a nice bunch of people (although they are that, too).

What Transfercar do, is work with many of the leading vehicle hire firms around Australia that need to have vehicles returned to a specific location. The rise in popularity of one way car hire means that rental firms in certain towns and cities will perennially find themselves with a lot of vehicles, while stations in other locations are under stocked.

Car hire firms now have a problem, in that they have customers kicking their door in for a vehicle in Brisbane, but all of their fleet is in Perth, for example. Their options are then to sit and wait for customers travelling from Perth to Brisbane, pay a high fee to a transportation firm to move the vehicles back, or talk to Transfercar.

Transfercar offers these companies a much more competitive rate than a transport firm would. Transfercar then advertises the cars that need to be relocated, and hires them out free of charge to anyone who is happy to take the car from A to B. This is where the win-win situation comes in.

Making it Work

Say Mike lives in Adelaide and wants to visit his relatives who live in Darwin, but he is short on money. Mike can log on to Transfercar’s website, see which vehicles are available on that route, and book himself a free journey to see his family. The car hire company in Darwin then looks forward to receiving the vehicle back from Adelaide, which it can then re-hire to another traveller and boost their own revenues.

It is a simple, easy to understand business model and operation, and one that will transform the Australian car rental sector, as well as attitudes towards travel, for many years to come.

This article is written by Transfercar, a car hire Australia service, providing travellers free transport for major cities in Australia.

 

 

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