chaîne de télévision

Coinciding with the Principality’s National Day (La Fête du Prince) chosen by the reigning sovereign, Albert II, to mark his investiture ceremony in 2005, his father Rainer III on this day back in 1954 held the inaugural broadcast of the oldest extant private television network in Europe (the first, the regional Télé Saar started broadcasting in February of that year and was also funded by the Prince and his backers), Télé Monte Carlo, established to showcase his upcoming wedding to Grace Kelly—nearly two years in the planning.  Due to an arrangement with then French president François Mitterand, the joint Franco-Monégasque venture reached viewers as far away as Montpellier in south-central France. Though the airwaves are far more crowded these days, TMC continues to show a variety of programmes, including quite a bit of original material covering the royal family and aspects of politics, culture and economics in Monaco.

rabbit redux

Reminiscent of those murderous bunnies found in the marginalia of medieval manuscripts and ever successive cottontale congress thereafter, Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, Lewis Carrol’s White Rabbit and the Killer Bunny guarding the Grail, artist YiMiao Shih plumbs UK politics with a tapestry in the tradition of Bayeux reimagining pivotal moments as Rabbrexit.

de scrutarius

Having just had an exchange with my landlady over an email missive reputedly from myself having landed ceremoniously in her spam box (albeit it’s a bit tangential to the topic but I’m noticing that the circle of people that I care about are getting a lot of junk, phishy correspondence from each other disguised as earnest and heartfelt messages from one another—a dialogue that would make the occasional dip into that holding area worthwhile all on its own) and assuring her that I would dispatch a text message if there were an actual emergency, this thoughtful essay on the nature of urgency and authenticity in the lost art of correspondence, appreciating that communications are bi-directional and not just artillery for firing demands from Adam Gopnick struck as especially resounding and true. Not only do we concur with the assessment that there are distinct gradations when it comes to insistence versus aspiration that separates texting from email (or even those soul-shattering seconds of an unexpected telephone call), we moreover found the observation deliciously ironic that the protocols of the algorithms and filters that consign suspect mail (rightly or wrongly but usually erring, on balance, to segregate junk from everything else) are informed by the letter-writing etiquette and structure that we’ve been taught as polite and correct. A sincere form of flattery, the automated guardians of our inboxes target that which follows the structure of salutations, surprising developments (something worth writing home about), a detailed proposal and a proper closing for our epistle whereas less formal spam might find its way through to the recipient.

nagai go manga gaiden

Via Miss Cellania, we are graced with the musical stylings of Italian show-master and performer Stefania Rotolo (*1951 – † 1981) in her fantastically choreographed number of the theme song to the Super Robot manga series known to audiences familiar with the artist as Goldrake—or as its title for English-speaking export markets, Force Five: Grandizer, the inspiration for Voltron, Thunder Cats, etc.

Confusingly and roughly contemporaneously, the title also referred to an adult comics series. Those are fantastic costumes and look like Flash Gordon surplus. Rotolo was best known for hosting a popular television music programme called Piccolo Slam—Little Hits—in the late 1970s and launched her recording career with studio album, Uragano Slam (1978)—referencing the show and her nickname, “Hurricane Girl.” Her rising stardom was cut tragically short by cancer, but she is still fondly remembered and a dance prize has been awarded annually since 2011 in her name.

triadic ballet

In keeping with the theme of all the pieces featured in this year’s Performa in New York City that paid tribute to the Bauhaus movement on its centenary anniversary, Kia LaBeija’s contribution takes the outline of the third act of Oskar Schlemmer’s 1922 experimental choreography (previously here and here) and expands it as a showcase not only for her talent but moreover as a reappropriating of a school which for all its subsequent influence and resonance was rather still a product of its age and the domain of the few—not representative of the reach that the members’ aspired for.  The costumes not only exaggerate the dancers’ figured and invites one to think on the function that belies our conceits but also what sort of prosthetics and inventions we can avail ourselves of, not just in terms of image and health but also as something enhanced beyond human weaknesses.  Much more to explore at the links above.

courtesy ensign

Recently trending on a well-visited webring focusing on the vexillological arts, we are delighted to discover a number or national and sub-national banners reflagged in the style of that of Kazakhstan, the template designed by Shaken Onlassynovich Niyazbekov (*1938 – †2014) in deference to the flag of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Charged with the emblem of the Sun or some other guiding principle, a bird of prey soars beneath with the hoist decorated with a complex ornament. Variants pictured include the United States of America, Canadian, Prussia, Brazil and South Korea.

sametová revoluce

Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of what had been inscribed on calendars across the globe as International Students’ Day, when in 1939 Nazi forces stormed the University of Prague and arrested over twelve hundred pupils and professors, the series of demonstrations that precipitated from this gathering, massing to a half a million people, turned against the Communist ruling party of Czechoslovakia.
The first large-scale and enduring rally since the Prague Spring, the peaceful Velvet Revolution, riot police often rebuffed with flowers and the spirit of change being something quite infectious and not limited to the metropolitan areas, the name for the movement being selected by the dissident students’ translator Rita Klímová (*1931 – †1993) and later the country’s last ambassador to the US before splitting into its constituent republics, and continued through the of the year, unseated the ruling Old Guard, opened the borders and brought about the first democratic elections held in the country since 1946 with rebel poet and human rights activist Václav Havel (*1936 – †2011) voted into the office of president on 29 December.