Despatches
The best of this month’s events across the network. Plus: Saudi’s military artist; Dublin goes app crazy; Beirut’s best boutique
[ DATEBOOK ]
Photo boost
[ Until 18 April ]
LONDON IS A WORLD LEADER IN CONTEMPORARY ART, but its photography scene lags behind other international creative hubs such as Paris and New York.
Yet a winning combination of a benevolent German financial institution and an innovative British gallery has been introducing British crowds to cutting edge image-making for some time now.
The 14th annual Deutsche Börse Photography prize, held at The Photographers’ Gallery, just off Oxford Street in London’s West End, draws to an end this month. The £30,000 prize is open to all comers, regardless of nationality. Its final shortlist of four includes French photographer Sophie Ristelhueber’s work on war and memory and American Zoe Leonard’s collection of forlorn architecture. But the best work comes from the two Brits: Anna Fox’s vividly coloured photographs show the weird and slightly sinister underside of British life, shown right, while Donovan Wylie’s coolly rigorous examination of Northern Ireland’s abandoned Maze prison is a paean to a wasted generation.
The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, The Photographers’ Gallery, 16–18 Ramillies Street W1, www.photonet.org.uk
17,18 & 20 April
Catch Whitney’s comeback in Dublin
She’s gone from the top of the charts to way off the rails. Yet having topped the Billboard 200 once again, Whitney is back on the road. Catch her comeback as it rolls into the Irish capital. www.theo2.ie
15-25 APRIL
See PIX in CPH
CPH PIX, Copenhagen’s leading feature film festival, takes its name from the city’s IATA airport code, aviation fans. An international theme is continued in the festival’s programme, which hosts the only global competition for directorial debuts. www.cphpix.dk
23-25 APRIL
Modepalast
Some call it the fashion world’s biggest jumble sale. Modepalast brings new, locally designed fashion, jewellery and accessories to style-hungry buyers at Vienna’s MAK museum and gallery. Also look out for fashion shows, award ceremonies and parties. www.modepalast.com
4 APRIL
Have a happy Paskha in Moscow
The Russian Orthodox Church’s Easter Sunday services centre around Moscow’s 16th-century Church of the Ascension in the grounds of the bucolic Kolomenskoe estate, to the south west of the city. Head here for great scenery and a wonderfully evocative ceremony.
23 APRIL – 3 OCTOBER
Avoid Global warming in London
The Globe, the recreation of the 17th-century London theatre where many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed, stages a production of Henry VIII as part of its new 2010 Kings and Rogues season. However, dogged traditionalists should leave their pipes at home; in 1613 the original Globe burned down during the first performance of this play. www.shakespearesglobe.com
3-17 APRIL
Check out weird science in Edinburgh
The Scottish capital’s International Science Festival seeks to engage and educate the young and old with its programme of exhibitions, experiments, interactive displays, shows and talks. Look out for over 220 different events across the city. www.sciencefestival.co.uk
BOOKING AHEAD
[ 25 April – 15 August ]
VISUALISE LOVE IN HANOVER
Love is the theme for the latest exhibition at Hanover’s Sprengel contemporary art gallery. Watch out for works by Munch, Picasso and Joan Miró. www.sprengel-museum.com
[ Until 9 May ]
SEE EL GRECO IN BRUSSELS
Some of the greatest works by the Greek-born Renaissance painter, including the Disrobing of Christ, are on show at the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels until the beginning of May. www.bozar.be
[ 14-16 May ]
TRY SPANISH MOVES IN RUSSIA
Keep those castanets handy. Moscow’s Academic Youth Theatre hosts their annual flamenco festival. Lively displays of Iberian dance routines will be accompanied by classes and themed food. www.fiestaflamenco.ru
[ 16 May ]
GET KISSED IN ZURICH
The ancient glam band Kiss bring their Sonic Boom over Europe tour to Zurich’s Hallenstadion. Do you dare to go in full black and white face paint? www.kissonline.com
[ 9 & 10 June ]
RUN FOR THE HOMELESS IN LONDON
Some of the British capital’s most wealthy people raise money for some of its poorest, by taking part in housing charity Crisis’s Square Mile Run event. www.crisis.org.uk
[ 29 July ]
RAVE IT UP IN JORDAN
Contemporary dance music ricochets around the ancient Wadi Rum once again, when Distant Heat, the dance music festival, returns to this breathtaking setting. www.distantheat.com
[ JEDDAH ]
Artist in a bag
ABDULNASSER GHAREM CERTAINLY STANDS APART from most artists. Hailed as the leading conceptual artist in Saudi Arabia, Gharem, 36, is also a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian army. But he has no plans to give up his position.
“My art is about being among people. The one thing I fear is running out of ideas, and this will happen only if I leave the country, or I stop talking to people.”
And when it comes to Gharem’s art, people certainly are talking. For one piece, Flora and Fauna, Gharem spent a day wrapped in a polythene cocoon with a tree, surviving on the oxygen it produced.
Based in Khamis Mushait, 300 miles south-east of Jeddah, Gharem is now beginning to make a name for himself internationally, with forthcoming exhibitions in Venice, Berlin and Dubai; if a working life is the key to his creativity, let’s hope Gharem keeps his day-job.
Henry Hemming
[ MOSCOW ]
Russian Doll
RUSSIAN BEAUTIES ARE OF WORLD RENOWN.
But every so often a stunning young girl from east of the Dnieper does for the internationally accepted ideals of female perfection what Mike Tyson did for the uppercut.
Once that girl was Natalia Vodianova, the catwalk phenomenon who has graced the cover of British Vogue no fewer than nine times. However, as Vodianova – wife of the London property tycoon Justin Portman – turns her attentions to motherhood, could Daria Zhemkova take her place?
This Russian doll has been wowing the runways of Paris and the spreads of the fashion glossies. She also graces the cover of the debut edition of Idoll, an American magazine dedicated to the fashion model lifestyle. As its publisher Tyrone Christopher explains: “She is able to convey many different looks and she is completely stunning on the runway.”
[ BEIRUT ]
A STYLISH NUMBER
FOR BEIRUT’S STYLE-HUNTERS THERE IS ONE PLACE THAT IS A MUST VISIT. Boutique 1 first opened in Dubai back in 2003 and quickly became the shopping destination for the Middle East’s growing fashion-hungry populace.
Beirut – with its stylish population, flourishing fashion scene and fêted designers like Elie Saab – was the obvious choice for the first expansion.
“Boutique 1 operates as a fashion authority in the Middle East,” explains fashion and buying director Nicole Robertson. “The Beirut store is an exciting new project.”
Opening last summer, the store was designed by Beirut-born architect Pascal Tarabay, and features video screens, modernist furniture and steel structures for the clothes. Gracing those structures are a range of labels.
“We are taking a serious fashion approach,” says Robertson. “A lot of these brands have never been available in Beirut before.” For example, Victoria Beckham, Thomas Wylde and Peter Pilotto. You can also check out Middle Eastern brands like BodyAmr from Oman and Dubai’s Royal Rickshaw.
Add a personalised service and an area dedicated to books and interiors, and this store works perfectly with the new vision of Beirut – everybody’s new favourite city. Fashion capital status is only a matter of time. Lauren Cochrane www.boutique1.com
[ MOSCOW ]
House keeping
DOES A HOUSE REMAIN A HOME when it’s also a hotly contested piece of real estate and a world-renowned architectural gem? Moscow’s Melnikov House, one of the city’s most famous buildings, is in the throes of an ownership tussle along those lines.
The building – an icon of modernism – is hidden away in a small lane off the tourist heart of Moscow. It was a family home constructed by Konstantin Melnikov, one of the Soviet Union’s foremost architects, in the 1920s.
Melnikov’s granddaughter, Yekaterina Katerinskaya currently lives in the house, which is made of two interlocking cylinders and has extraordinary space and light. It was once described as a spaceship landed in central Moscow.
But the ownership of the building has long been at the heart of a family dispute. Things changed in 2005 when Viktor Melnikov, Konstantin’s son, died leaving his quarter of the house to the state on condition that they would turn it into a museum. At the same time, a half-ownership of the house was bought from relatives by Sergei Gordeyev, a senator in the Russian parliament’s upper house, who promised to turn the building into a private museum, setting up an international foundation to assist in that.
However, the trustees of the foundation now say that Gordeyev’s involvement is putting the building in jeopardy. “We believe that the Russian Ministry of Culture must come forward [to support the project],” wrote the trustees in a letter. Whether they will or not remains to be seen.
Kevin O’Flynn www.melnikovhouse.org
TRAVEL SPY
Voyager’s visual guides
Arabian arches
a) Iqd mada’ini or trilobed arch
b) Iqd mudabab or pointed arch
c) Iqd qawsi or horseshoe arch
For more, visit Riyadh’s Exhibition for Real Estate and Architecture Development, 9-12 May, www.ramtan-expo.com
[ DUBLIN ]
App, app and away
SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS IN DUBLIN have figured out a solution to one of modern life’s most pressing problems. How do you keep from walking into lamp posts when out and about with your smartphone?
Dial2Do is a new hands-free assistant for anyone shooting off tweets, emails or texts while on the move. Ask, and the clever software reads out your messages. Speak, and your replies get converted into text and sent.
The Irish company’s slick software is typical of the no-sweat web services on show at the Future of Web Apps conference in Dublin next month. “Give it a year or two and everyone will be doing everything via their smartphone,” predicts Greg Annandale, the Dublin event’s producer.
According to IT analysts Juniper Research, the revenue from the mass-market mobile web will amount to a staggering $25 billion by 2014. What’s behind this increased uptake is that the design bods have gradually accumulated a sense of what ordinary people want from their gadgets as well as how they use them.
Annandale says: “Increasingly, you can switch on a new smartphone and it’s a cinch to get it working. The design is so good, you don’t have to be a geek.”
Dial2Do is just one of the new wave of sharp Dublin techies pushing ordinary users towards the next phase of the web’s evolution. While economic conditions might prove choppy, with low start-up costs and a premium placed on creativity, an increasing numbers of Dublin’s web savvy software developers, designers and entrepreneurs are now moving into the apps market.
The city has long been a tech hub. Google set up its first regional base outside of the US in the Irish capital back in 2003. US tech investment was high during the noughties. Today you can find a bicycle to rent using Dublin Bike’s iPhone app, and then navigate around the city with the handset’s compass (pictured).
Indeed, Dublin’s strength is its business ecosystem, says Annandale. “The concentration of developers and the support they get from the government means that it’s easy to get ideas off the ground. The place is buzzing.” Asif Hashmi Future of Web Apps, 15 May, University College, Dublin, www.futureofwebapps.com
Word up!
Informal phrases from around the bmi network
BERLIN
Alda
NOUN: Dude
Use this when you backslap your Teutonic homies. It’s a recent corruption of the more formal German address, alta or old one.
ADDIS ABABA
Timbatam
ADJECTIVE: Very rotten/smelly
Though this is the word to describe an unpleasant whiff, it also serves as a vulgar description of anything deemed rotten or foul.
MOSCOW
Bábki
NOUN: Money
Bábki translated directly into English means ‘little grandmas’. This is an informal phrase for a cake, which in turn has developed into a monetary term, just as dough can mean cash.
BEIRUT
Hi, kifak, ça va?
GREETING: Hello
If you meet some chi-chi Francophone Lebanese, try this on them. Combining English, French and local slang, it’s the pretentious polyglot’s way of saying hello.
