Experiencing Covid from space, the emotional directness of the Fandangoe Kid, and nearly-unacceptably Eighties: some visual soul-food
Our occasional cleansing of the doors of perception, the better to seize and change the world revealed… for more see here.
And to kick off, above, from Aeon:
In September 2019, the Swedish-American biologist and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir realised her lifelong dream of travelling to space when she launched from Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS), where she would serve as flight engineer for the next seven months. Featuring remarkable footage – including Meir’s euphoric first steps into the ISS and her participation, with fellow astronaut Christina Koch, in the first-ever all-female spacewalk – this short documentary captures scenes from Meir’s roundtrip journey with intimacy and grandeur. Occurring over the course of many tumultuous months on Earth, including the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film also ponders what it’s like to experience the trials of humanity from 254 miles above.
From Creative Review, on The Fandangoe Kid:
Annie Nicholson’ [artist behind the Fandangoe Kid] designs expanded from the pages of her notebooks into large scale public artworks – characterised by bright colours and her powerful use of language. The artist says she uses her work to “smash taboos” around subjects including loss, trauma, mental health and gender constructs. Often these pieces have also been places to “bottle, remember and have a public record and archive of some of the things I’ve learned from family members that I didn’t want to lose”.
Recent projects include a mural for YouTube for World Mental Health Day in 2020, and public art pieces for the University of the Arts, Mayor of London charity Thrive and mental health charity CALM. She’s also designed nurse’s scrubs for Marie Curie and the NHS, co-directed a film about how dancing can be used to work through loss, and launched a capsule clothing collection. This year, Nicholson is hosting radio show The Grief Mixtape on Soho Radio – which will see her invite guests on air to talk about love and loss – and has also published a title via Rough Trade Books, Tender Hearted Bold Moves, dedicated to her late sister and the bond the pair shared.
Again, from Creative Review:
When [Indonesian-born] motion designer and illustrator Ardhira Putra was a kid he often drew Son Goku from Dragon Ball as well as copying characters from other comics such as Astro Boy, Doraemon and the Adventures of Tintin. When he was 16, it was all about MTV and its respective channels, where Putra fell in love with the idents and graphics that framed the music videos.
“I also loved going to the bookstore to look at graphic design books and magazines,” he says. “At that time I was only using my graphic design skills to edit my profile picture on Friendster. Then I bought Adobe Photoshop and all the tutorial books as there weren’t any videos tutorials on YouTube yet.”
Putra’s passion for the visual world led him to study animation at Multimedia University of Malaysia and he was introduced to the world of motion design.
“It really opened my heart to everything to do with Asian cinema, animation from the Gobelins school, Pixar animation, Japanese animation, and I read blogs to search for inspiration,” he says. Still based in Singapore, these days Putra works full-time for a software company, but by night creates animations and illustrations for various clients, often creating projects for the independent music scene.