Flying Cow

Car Junkyard March 8, 2011

car junkyard ? kenapa kok kami tertarik ? karena manusia sebenernya tertarik kepada mortalitas/kefanaan mereka sendiri…lagi2 ini adalah apologi buat motret awut2an
tapi buat beliau, fotonya ga awut2an lah

Pop eskapisme March 3, 2011

Pop eskapisme,
Kalimat pojok yang ditulis oleh sebuah media cetak untuk halamannya yang meresensi sinema.

Sebuah pilihan kalimat yang mengusik, eskapis ? Apa alasan dapur redaksi memilih pilihan kata-kata tersebut untuk rubrik sinemanya ?

Jika eskapisme diambil dari kata ‘escape’ yang berarti berlari dari masalah, sebuah pelarian, maka pemilihan tersebut merujuk film sebagai produk untuk pelarian dari masalah sehari-hari.

Dan tampaknya memang seperti itu adanya, untuk kadar ‘pop’, sebuah film memang dibuat dan ditujukan untuk menghibur, sebagai tempat pelarian sejenak, melupakan masalah sehari-hari yang dihadapi manusia. Masalah sebagai efek samping kebudayaan. Lucunya, film sendiri adalah produk dari kebudayaan.

Maka efek samping kebudayaan, entah itu berupa turunnya index pasar, hubungan keluarga yang tidak harmonis, alienasi karena tuntutan kebudayaan itu sendiri, opresi mayoritas dan lain sebagainya membuat manusia lelah, mereka butuh pelarian untuk rehat sejenak. Paling tidak lupa sejenak selama durasi rata-rata 60 hingga 120 menit. Manusia lalu lari ke film.
Kita kemudian bertanya, apakah hanya itu kegunaan film ? Tidak hanya sebagai sarana eskapisme, tapi juga sebagai sarana ‘mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa’, ‘memajukan kebudayaan manusia, ‘menyuarakan opini’ dan sebagainya ? Tentu saja bisa.

Sebagai medium dan text maka film dengan berbagai genre digunakan untuk berkomunikasi, menyampaikan pendapat. Muncullah film-film yang tidak cuma menghibur tetapi memutar otak, mempertanyakan kemanusiaan dan mendefinisi ulang kebudayaan.

Seperti membaca buku, mungkin kita bisa menemukan inspirasi, mengisi semangat untuk menghadapi masalah setelah menontonnya dan mungkin menemukan solusi, tidak secara langsung tentu saja, paling tidak secara filosofis dan psikologis.

Maka plot film dikembangkan untuk memenuhi tuntutan itu. Jalan cerita dibuat supaya menginspirasi manusia, mengajarkan manusia, plot menjadi kurikulum baku dan tiba-tiba saja, hampir semua film punya plot serupa.

Timbang saja untuk beberapa film drama. action di dekade terakhir, secara plot/sintagmatik tidak jauh berbeda dengan analisa Propp terhadap dongeng-dongeng rakyat, dan mengutip sedikit kalimat Woollacott, ‘dongeng rakyat rusia jadi tidak jauh berbeda dengan star wars’

Tapi tokh, dengan plot berulang, tidak ada hal yang baru, (‘tokoh-konflik-tokoh naik level-konklusi’) kita tetap saja pergi menonton film karena masalah memng tidak juga berhenti untuk berdatangan.

J.K February 28, 2011

"I try to be a photographer. I cannot talk. I am not interested in talking. If I have anything to say, it may be found in my images. I am not interested in talking about things, explaining about the whys and the hows. I do not mind showing my images, but not so much my contact sheets. I mainly work from small test prints. I often look at them, sometimes for a long time. I pin them to the wall, I compare them to make up my mind, be sure of my choices. I let others tell me what they mean. [To Robert Delpire] My photographs, you know them. You have published them, you have exhibited them, then you can tell whether they mean something or not." -Josef Koudelka

Charles Harbutt February 4, 2011

“Reality comes without adjectives, it just is. The photographer’s problem is to come to see the real world as it really is, like the boy hero of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. In some ways, all photographers must become cavemen. Or aliens. Or children.” – Charles Harbutt

Words of Wisdom January 24, 2011

Rasa cepat puas pada hasil, lambat laun akan membuat gambar kita menjadi kitsch dan itu-itu saja bak lukisan mooi indie
Rasa bosan, mandeg bisa diatasi dengan membuat tema baru, misalnya pergi kepasar dan hanya memotret orang tertawa
Siapapun qualified untuk mengomentari foto, karena foto mestinya tak eksklusif
Mencontoh lalu melepaskan diri sebagai copycat butuh waktu, ada keengganan apalagi jika khalayak telah memuji
Labelling bagus untuk segementasi dan positioning dalam marketing, tapi kadang membuat saya enggan pindah dari comfort zone
Biarkan foto tampil sendiri, tanpa ditopang oleh teori/dalil yg cangih
Pemirsa melihat foto dengan prekonsepsi yg berbeda, saya tak ingi mengajari mereka, saya belum tentu lebih pintar
Lagipula dengan memberikan guidance, kita membatasi interpretasi pemirsa, dan #fotografi menjadi hubungan client-patron

– Igor Firdauzi

Kata2 bijak dari Igor Firdauzi,
hati2 dengan pujian…
dan kawan, ‘membaca’ berbeda dengan ‘menulis’ walau kadang terbawa juga cara2 ‘membaca’ saat kita ‘menulis’

Untuk ini :
jika orang yang melihat foto anda berpikir dan menereka serta merasakan moodnya maka anda cocok menjadi fotografer #YudhiSoerjoatmojo

abaikan kata2 lain

4-/,4 January 23, 2011

Saya semakin tertarik dengan tulisan2, poster2, tanda2 dan rambu2. Manusia mulai tidak menarik lagi bagiku

Obsessive Observer January 21, 2011

when i watching a movie, i have to watch it with detail
often i reverse, pull backward a scene and watch it over and over to catch the details
obsessive ?

Gong Fu December 10, 2010

: “Many people have a misconception that martial arts is about fighting and killing,” the monk was quoted as saying, “It is actually about improving your wisdom and intelligence.”

As many scholars have pointed out, the predominant orientation of traditional Chinese philosophy is the concern about how to live one’s life, rather than finding out the truth about reality.

was he Zhuangzi who had dreamt of being a butterfly or was he a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi?

views about human nature are more recommendations of how one should view oneself in order to become a better person than metaphysical assertions about whether humans are by nature good or bad.

Art is not ultimately measured by its dominance of the market. In addition, the function of art is not accurate reflection of the real world; its expression is not constrained to the form of universal principles and logical reasoning, and it requires cultivation of the artist, embodiment of virtues/virtuosities, and imagination and creativity. If philosophy is “a way of life,” as Pierre Hadot puts it, the kung fu approach suggests that we take philosophy as the pursuit of the art of living well, and not just as a narrowly defined rational way of life.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/kung-fu-for-philosophers/?src=me&ref=general

Salah satu Interpretasi December 10, 2010

Photography critic and curator Carol Squiers has been studying the ways in which the news photograph transmits political and cultural messages. By analyzing photographs that she isolated from the text of The New York Times over a four-month period, she found that-despite the seemingly objective character of the predominantly banal style of photograph used-the frequency of certain types of images conveyed a consistent world view. In general, the photographs presented cultural stereotypes: Men were most often shown as competent and in positions of world power, whereas women were pictured much less often and usually in subordinate roles. (From a press release for the exhibition In and Out of Power, P.S. 1, NY, ’81). She also determined that the way in which text and photograph are currently linked in photo journalism was first defined by Life magazine. Like The New York Times, Life deliberately chose fairly undistinguished photographs to illustrate stories, ones that could be easily colored by words. Photographs that were too expressive, such as those by Walker Evans or Andre Kertesz, were reserved for a special section entitled, "Photographic Essay." (Squiers, "Looking at Life," Artforum, Dec. ’81).

Hidden biases in the media are revealed through various strategies, such as creating visual narratives through selected sequences of photographs; arranging the material into subject categories to uncover the media’s perspective on what constitutes the news; and altering the meaning of an image by the choice of caption.

Mandel and Sultan’s interest in the media goes back to 1973, the year they collaborated on the first of many billboards. They were attracted to the billboard as an artistic vehicle, because they wanted to reach a much larger and more varied public than would ever find its way into an art institution.

Our society is exposed to countless images every day, most of them designed to sell products. The image, and the verbal messages paired with them, are so common that many people are unaware of the power they exert over our lives.

The text of the mass media image, as the late French philosopher Roland Barthes explained in his essay, "The Photographic Message," (Image, Music, Text, NY: Hill & Wag, ’77) functions on both the level of denotation (identification) and that of connotation (the communication of certain cultural ideas through textures, colors, selection, etc.).

He recognized that just as language structure is based on a system of signs or symbols, so is a visual image. (darn, that incident is so embarrassing -red)
A photograph is a complex of signs that can be analyzed scientifically-Barthes called this method of sign analysis semiology.

he artists extracted these photographs from the everyday world and gave them new meanings through placement in a different context, in a way similar to Marcel Duchamp’s creation of "ready-mades." Evidence is structured in the photo-narrative style of such books as Robert Frank’s The Americans; there is a subtle order to the progression of images. Sultan said that, by recording existing information, he and Mandel were making "…poetry based on (the institutions’) facts."

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/12/larry-sultan-mike-mandel-matrix.html

I have failed October 26, 2010

me have failed memakna kurang dalam
ngga mikir