neunundneunzig

The Berlinale film festival happening now is also a showcase for new mini-series for the small-screen. Among the new premiers is a spy drama set in a divided Germany (EN/DE) called “Deutschland 83,” which will be simulcast for American audiences on the Sundance cable network as one of the first German television shows to be distributed in this manner. The series takes place in the year 1983, when Cold War tensions were at their height over the Strategic Defense Initiative and the same year that performer Nena sang her cross-over protest hit, 99 Red Balloons. It might be fun to follow this trans-Atlantic thriller together. 

platitudnal

Via the inestimably great wonder-source Boing Boing comes this collection of motivational posters inspired from unflinching world-view of film director Werner Herzog Stipetić. Check out the link for more unabashed truisms snatched from bleak but resounding dialogue.

worth one-thousand

The Daily Beast has a very interesting profile of awarding-winning photographer Alec Soth and his team who are taking an epic road-trips and documenting Americana, sharing his dispatches with all and sundry that really draws in the reader, as the artist’s eye does.

Soth’s latest show is a collection of evocative, black-and-white images, all purposefully untitled and without a caption. The pictures are at first jarring and jumbled, and in trying to interpret what the subjects are doing and to make sense of the setting, one’s focus shifts to find little details that become extremely telling. Never staged and strangers appreciative of the attention, Soth’s work does invite the viewer to construct a narrative—but nothing more, as Soth know the story behind these images either, not wanting to impose his message or meaning. The artist’s publisher and agent also sponsors workshops and retreats to help other to hone their talents for visual story-telling.

desk-job

Via the nonpareil Neat-o-Rama, comes the next phase of office furniture engineered to make one jump out of his or her chair, a surfboard like foot rest that requires one to constantly readjust one’s weight and make small shifts in one’s posture to remain upright.
It’s a clever idea and I bet it would be much more fun to rock and keep one’s balance rather than just standing still or going through a litany of sitting, standing and kneeling like one’s at Mass—but sometimes this idea of healthy ergonomics makes me want to jump out of my skin sometimes. I would imagine that the goal of all of these subtle and not so subtle changes to the work environment is to eventually allow us to redeem the virtues of being able to rest one’s feet and work in a setting not buffeted by distraction and walking the high-wire. The office is a venue for combating our general laziness and inactivity because we’re rather captives for what someone has deemed our own good, never mind that being seated—or even lying in bed is probably more conducive to creativity and productivity and fitness ought not to start or end at work. Besides, I think the layout of the office, even as a sandbox for collaboration, is changing too quickly for any of these sedentary iniquities to really take root.