A pair of skeletal sculptures that harness the power of the wind to walk strutted around Boston’s City Hall last week at the start of the U.S. tour of Dutch artist Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests. Constructed of PVC tubes and about the size of large sport-utility vehicles, the pair was just a taste of the largest fleet of Strandbeests to go on exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, north of Boston, next month before heading on to Chicago and
San Francisco.
A time machine of sorts in Berlin
If you could go back in time to change your city, what would you do? Would you try to stop gentrification? These are some of the questions being posed by a Berlin-based collective called “copy & waste”, in a performance inspired by the 1980s Back to the Future films. Titled Knick-Knack to the Future, by day the artists run a fictional “concept store” selling coffee and Back to the Future-themed bags, in a bid to encourage people to discuss how much they’re willing to pay for products. At night the group uses the space to offer “time travel workshops”, performances in which the audience follows the cast from room to room as they explore issues of gentrification.
ABBA piano to be auctioned in October
The piano used to play the glissando that kicks off ABBA’s disco hit Dancing Queen will be one of the star attractions at a rock and pop auction at Sotheby’s next month where it is expected to sell for up to $1.24 million. The instrument comes with a certificate of authentication from ABBA co-founder Benny Andersson, who describes it as “one of a kind and a great source of inspiration”. It was designed by Swedish instrument-maker Georg Bolin in Stockholm, where ABBA recorded the 1976 song.
Britain hosts three generations of manga
London’s British Museum takes a look at manga, Japan’s widely popular graphic art form, in a new exhibition showcasing the works of different generations of artists. Manga Now: Three Generations features recent and newly commissioned artwork from Chiba Tetsuya, known for his sports manga, Hoshino Yukinobu, who specialises in science fiction comic book art, and Nakamura Hikaru, known for her wry work focusing on daily life. On display are Tetsuya’s color drawing of a young golfer on a green in Fair Isle Lighthouse Keepers Golf Course, Scotland while the work of Yukinobu depicts a newly created character “Rainman” in black and white.
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