diary of a filmmaker

One of the many artistic muses at The Cleveland Museum of Art. By Charles Meynier (Paris, 1763 – 1832), Clio, Muse of History (1798). Image Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

It’s next time again.

“All art is quite useless.” With this provocative phrase Oscar Wilde ends the preface to The Picture of Dorian Grey and begins his only published novel. I’ve always loved this quote. It’s like a slap in the face. It sets up all sorts of reverberations. What can you actually do with Art besides enjoy it? Art may be useless but that doesn’t mean it is not valuable.

This became very tangible to me after recent mind expanding visit to Gerhard Richter’s amazing retrospective at the Tate Modern museum in London. On view were several of his colorful so called “squeegee” paintings. Abstract, dense, thickly-painted canvases that somehow evoke the feelings of sunlight on water. I love these paintings and was stunned to see in the paper the following day that one of these gorgeous works recently sold at auction for three times the reserved price; a staggering 20 million dollars. Useless yes. Worthless no.

One of Gerhard Richter’s “squeegee” paintings just sold for 20 million dollars. Seems pretty expensive until you compare it to other things we value. According to Forbes, this year’s 50 highest paid athletes earned $1.4 billion combined or $28 million on average. Le Bron James who left Cleveland for Miami was 6th on the Forbes list at $40 million.

Does this mean Art is only valued by and reserved for the rich? Certainly not. I will never be able to own such a painting but that does not prevent me from enjoying such masterpieces in the museums. Some of these institutions in both the U.S. and abroad receive public tax money, which raises lots of questions. Does art have any value to a community? Should public money fund the arts? Is art and culture only a playground for the wealthy or can anybody join the game?

To be honest, I am usually more interested in writing about the experience of art than its economics, but for the past three months I’ve been captivated by these ideas thanks to several new friends and collaborators at WVIZ/PBS ideastream – in Cleveland.

We have been working on a short mini-documentary, for national broadcast, about how the arts are funded in Cleveland. Along the way we’ve had the opportunity to meet several experts in the field of public funding of the arts. We’ve had the chance to interview them, think about the value of art in its contribution to not only quality of life issues but also how it’s power can be harnessed as an economic engine. This has been a truly fascinating experience and one I’m anxious to share.

The Money Changer and his Wife by Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540, oil on panel, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello.

Money, art and power have been linked together for a very long time. A recent show at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence investigates these issues in an engrossing exhibition with the fabulous title: Money & Beauty – Bankers, Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities. The exhibition, typical of the curators at Palazzo Strozzi, does several things right. Not the least of which is to commission a bona fide journalist/writer (Tim Parks) and an independent art historian (Ludovica Sebregondi) to do the descriptors. Instead of just dry information you get an extremely well written and literate point of view. Each descriptor is “signed” so you know who is saying what. I don’t know about you but I really adore exhibitions that tell a story. So why didn’t anybody ever think of this brilliant idea of hiring real story tellers before? (Maybe others have done this but I have never seen it.)

This transformed an exhibition with only a few masterpieces into a show where the ideas expressed outshone the art. That’s OK. It kept you completely involved in the sequential presentation of the artworks, artifacts, books, coins and treasures that were all carefully arranged to illustrate the ideas. You walked away having had an unforgettable experience.

Much of the show was about the great Florentine and fabulously wealthy banking family of the Medicis who are also perhaps the most famous patrons in the history of art. Lending money in their time was not considered an honorable profession and the exhibition demonstrated how they used the their art patronage to improve their image and solidify their power. I never really understood before why money lending was so frowned upon (other than the biblical representations of the moneylenders in the bible). How’s this for a beautifully written descriptor:

In the Church’s list of capital sins, Usury stands with Avarice. The usurer sins because he sells the interval of time between the moment when he lends and the moment when he is reimbursed with interest: he thus trades time, which belongs to God alone.

Marble statue of Terpsichore, one of the nine Muses, or goddesses of creative inspiration. By Antonio Canova (Italian, 1757-1822), 1816, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund.

So what does this all have to do with how Cleveland funds the arts? It points out money is important but it’s not the only thing that matters. On the other hand, art is almost never free and while we value all sorts of things, if we want to have art in our communities, we need to figure out how to pay for it. Wealthy patrons and corporations can only do so much. Public money funds all sorts of things for a region’s economic development and education. The question comes down to what a community thinks is important?

In 2006, the community in Cleveland decided to fund the arts with a tax on cigarettes. We passed a carefully designed ballot issue to funnel money into arts and culture. So why is this news? Because it adds up to 12 million dollars a year! That’s the sort of investment that would even get the attention of a Medici. One of the very smart people we interviewed in the mini-doc, Karen Gahl Mills, who runs the State agency Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC) responsible for distributing these funds says, “It is three times what the Ohio Arts Council provides for the entire State.” She also points out, as far as national rankings for public money dedicated to the arts is concerned, the States of New York and Minnesota are numbers one and two, but Cuyahoga County is number three.

So if the community is helping to bankroll the arts what do we get out of this “investment”?  The short answer is: jobs and economic growth. The music industry alone in Cuyahoga County provides 800 million dollars every year in economic activity.

Tom Schorgl and Karen Gahl Mills are two of the reasons public arts funding works so well in Cleveland.

Another one of the other interviewees in the story and the man who really put this initiative together, Tom Shorgl of the Cuyahoga Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) spends a lot of his time measuring, researching and analyzing these sorts of things. His agency works with arts organizations and artists to make them more self sustaining and help them with business skills to make them more successful. The strategy is working. To put this in perspective, the Ford plant these days employs about 3,500 people. Tom explains an independent research group recently looked at Cuyahoga County and discovered the Arts & Culture sector includes over 1,200 businesses and over 15,000 full time jobs.

I find it reassuring and impressive that Cuyahoga County has found a way to help pay for some of the “useless” art delivered by The Cleveland Orchestra, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Playhouse Square, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, WVIZ/PBS and 90.3 WCPN ideastream along with over 140 other arts organizations who currently receive part of their funding from the arts tax. Oscar Wilde and even the Medicis would approve.

The main title of the mini-doc features a charcoal drawing triptych by Laurence Channing, who recently received an arts fellowship funded by the cigarette tax.

Artistic Choice airs on most PBS stations around the country on Friday November 18th. The 16 minute mini-doc runs after a one hour documentary Women Who Rock. The full program runs from 9 –10:30 p.m. Check local listings.

Fresh, new, noisy (and very effective) performance art by the artistic team of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla at the US pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2011.

It’s next time again.

A few years ago I made a promise to myself. I would no longer stay in hotel rooms in which I would be ashamed to die. I’m pretty sure this was not an original thought but I don’t remember who came up with that delightfully clever phrase. So what has this got to do with the 2011 Venice Biennale? Read on and I’ll try to explain.

Two children check out a stair-stepped fluorescent light sculpture by Venetian artist, Monica Bonvinci, in the Arsenale. She has a well-done video for your enjoyment here.

This year, like every year, the art in Venice is a mixed bag. You wander through the two main venues and you always find something you like and occasionally find something you really love. As you probably already know, the two main venues are the Arsenale (a massive, gorgeous series of buildings from the 14th or 15th centuries where Venice’s legendary mercantile vessels and warships were constructed. The buildings alone make you gasp and are always a pleasure to see) and the Giardini where, for over a hundred years now, countries from all over the world have made little art pavilions in a large scale Venetian garden and have filled them with the best new talent and art their cultures can produce. This, at least, is the noble aspiration.

Part of the fun of the Venice Biennale is visiting palaces, neighborhoods and venues you have never seen before. Here, a marble bust of a moor graces the landing of a palazzo where this year, artists from Venice, California sent art to Venice, Italy.

But Venice gives you even more. All over the city are additional installations, sometimes in fabulous, usually closed, palazzos. It is a giant scavenger hunt. There is always the small victory of finding the place, and often a larger joy in seeing a building or a neighborhood you never knew existed. These buildings by themselves are often a marvelous discovery. You enter closed gardens where the intricate wrought iron gate is actually open and you can see what treasures bloom behind those old stone walls. You climb terrazzo stairways going up and up and up, to fabulous views of the city. Dappled sunlight reflects off the water through leaded pale pink windows. You discover threadbare rugs; beamed ceilings untouched since Canaletto’s time with the faintest tracery of gilt-painted scroll work; rococo plaster moldings; gigantic dust-dimmed Murano glass chandeliers; musty canal level entry ways and old somewhat lumpy panes of glass filtering that molto famoso Venetian light.

So, if by chance you get to see some bad, or fair, or fun, or sometimes good and occasionally great new works of art, you feel as though you won the lottery. It is always a pleasure and on rare occasions it is something transcendent. Now there are Art Biennales all over the world, but Venice remains perhaps the best of them and much of this has to do with the timeless beauty of the city itself. More on this in a moment.

Packing tape binds TVs as they play gruesome war-horror clips in this year’s Swiss pavilion by Thomas Hirschhorn.

This year in Venice, many young artists have discovered a new and fascinating art supply and they are using it with abandon – packing tape. Miles and miles of it binds the Swiss pavilion together. It adheres to Australia. It cobbles together Brazil and it even stars on TV in sticky High Definition glory. So what does this have to do with my admonition to myself up there about Hotel rooms? Well, I learned something very important about myself at this year’s Biennale. (If an Art show does not provoke self inquiry than it has not really done its job.) I have learned that I usually don’t like Art that is pieced together with packing tape. Call it a personal preference.

An orgy of packing tape adheres Thomas Hirschhorn’s kitchen glassware on plastic chairs next to a cardboard wall covered in tin foil. Something reminds me of an overdue school project.

This newly learned aesthetic preference is just like another prejudice I have developed from trial and error; I usually do not like hotels where you can’t remove the hanger from the clothes pole in the closet. I don’t know about you, but I always find that annoying. It indicates the hotel management does not trust me. I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but, if I find those annoying stuck-to-the-rail hangers, it is a red flag that I had better not die in this hotel. In a similar way, when I see packing tape in an Art installation, I have already given the artist a cranky critical demerit and I’m usually not in the mood to look for artistic illumination lurking underneath the oh-so-deliberate trash.

Robert Rauschenberg, “Aen Floga” (Combine Painting), 1962, Oil on canvas with wood, metal and wire. Rauschenberg often combined trash into sculptures. How he magically made these “Combines” so captivating is a mystery but I suppose one good word for it would be, Art.

Don’t get me wrong. I like deconstruction. I think Frank Gehry’s rough edges and Robert Rauschenberg’s “Combines” are brilliant. I’ve made films about these ideas. I can easily see, “The Beauty of Damage.” I’m not saying Art made with packing tape is not Art. I’m just saying I don’t usually like it. For me, Art made without craft or with a deliberate and self conscious resemblance to trash bears a heavy load. Let me give you a couple of examples because I’m wrestling with the issue in my own mind and before I mentally check out of this hotel with the unremovable hangers, your insights will be greatly appreciated.

The Swiss Pavilion by Thomas Hirschhorn is a good example of what one writer called “glorified trash.” Obsessive compulsive chaos, hard work, but (for me) no liftoff. No magic. Feckless. No insight. No transformation. Obvious and plain in its depressing motives. Valid? Of course. Some knowledgeable friends said it was “deep.” Other knowledgeable friends said it was high-school-level thinking; “War is bad! Wow! What a concept.” This installation, both physically and metaphorically, is hanging on by its fingernails. One acquaintance working there says, “They send me out for more ‘Scotch’ (what Italians call sticky tape) every day!” I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just not anything I choose to explore. (Which is actually not true because I have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about this.) I have learned if I get really turned off by an artist, that there is probably something there. That sense of irritation and disgust means they found a button and are pushing it. So, I did my homework. I visited and then I read the entire artist statement about the Swiss pavilion and visited again. Still no buzz. My knowledgeable friends who also found little glory in the trash, felt the artist statement was wonderfully articulate about the aspirations he totally failed to achieve. This makes it worse in a way. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my internal reaction and I’ve concluded that, for me – this is a blind alley. I am left with the irritation of not being able to remove that coat hanger and no matter how hard I try, I just can’t find it charming or even interesting. For me – it just doesn’t work.

Chinese performance artist Kwok Mang-ho looks through trash and finds a smile.

Hong Kong Frogtopia, by Chinese performance artist, Kwok Mang-ho, (aka Frog King) is at the other end of the trash art spectrum. It has a potent positive core. He recreated his studio in all its trashy glory. You just have to smile. It is slapdash and deliberately goofy and all of it was made really quickly and with little polish. It feels like graffiti with a heart of gold. Now it is much easier to love something so joyful than it is to love something depressing. But, for me, Frogtopia communicated its fun very directly and quite effectively. All the people working there were having a blast and their energy was charming, infectious and memorable. Just because something like the Swiss Pavilion is depressing doesn’t, for me, make it more significant.

Two of the happy workers at Frogtopia pose with eyeglasses even cooler than mine.

You could argue Frogtopia is lightweight so it soars more easily. But if part of your point is a reverse aesthetic (think a Duchamp urinal) then it might be even more courageous to find the unlikely surprise of joy in trash rather than the much more obvious unease and self evident ugliness.

The Saudi Arabian installation in the Arsenale gave an evocation of Mecca and featured projections on the floor, reflective spheres, an up-ended cube and a through-a-glass-darkly oval mirror. A video featuring this work by the artists, Raja and Shadia Alem is linked here.

Blogging about all this stuff is very frustrating for me because all of this is by its nature subjective and it is really hard to involve you in the discussion. So much of this art loses so much in translation that the attempt to describe it authentically is exhausting. “You had to see it” is such a terrible cop-out, that you might legitimately start to question the power of what was seen. Let me give you a really specific example.

Inside the U. S. Pavilion, a world class gymnast amazes the crowd with a strenuous 15 minute routine that combines athletic performance art with a sculptured replica airline seat. I’ll remember this beguiling piece every time I put “my seat-back into the fully upright and locked position.”

You read about the American pavilion right? It was all over the place. Huge kudos go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for sponsoring this project. Wow! Did they get their money’s worth. They did more for their reputation and brand with this one triumph than most sleepy museums achieve in decades of academically classy shows. I read all about this project involving performance, sculpture and Olympic level athletes before I left the states. I was utterly bored by the concept. The photos I saw were underwhelming. Even the artist statements I read did not perk my interest at all. So why am I telling you about this? One simple reason; it was among the best things I’ve ever seen at the American pavilion! Finally a sense of humor. This project really cut through the clutter and, in Landscape Architect’s Peter Walker’s unforgettable phrase which, for him, defines what he tries to do with his art; this piece will unquestionably, “live in memory.” Why? The execution was superb.

Outside the U. S. pavilion, “Track and Field”, features an upside down and functioning (sort of) Centurian MK3 tank, a very loud motor, treadmill and an Olympic level athlete who pounds the treadmill in 15 minute performances throughout the day, six days a week for six months.

I venture to say you have never seen a fully operational tank lying on its back belching diesel and making more racket than a Mack truck. On top an Olympic runner runs a treadmill. In concept and description and even in photographs it sounds sort of loony; in the flesh it was unforgettable.

The top prize for the Venice Biennale is the Golden Lion which this year went to Christian Marclay for his brilliant cinematographic triumph “The Clock.” Constructed of thousands of high quality film clips, from a mind boggling number of past and present sources, his vision runs in real time and ticks off almost every minute of a 24 hour day. This was a really good idea but it was the superb execution which made it truly great.

In closing, I’d like to go back to perhaps the most important thing about the Venice Biennale. Venice. The fact that this art fair happens here is the one big reason I think it is the best in the world. This year’s curator, Bice Curiger, tried to make this point (I think) in the main entry space to the International pavilion in the Giardini. She hung three masterpieces by Tintoretto (1518 – 1594), one of the most important 16th century Venetian Renaissance painters. Because of the way she did it, you sort of have the reaction – huh? If you hang paintings this valuable you have to have lots of security, creating long lines. This was a really great idea poorly executed.

“Pervasion” was the restful and elegant installation created by five artists for the China pavilion. All these ceramic jars contain a light fragrance-infused liquid used in Chinese medicine. Perfumed fog is released every few minutes to complete the zen-like artistic vision by, YANG Maoyuan, “All Things Are Visible”, 2011

Her concept for the entire Biennale was Illumination and Tintoretto is a perfect example of this. But to hang three gorgeous Renaissance paintings in a white room and proudly claim, “voila – Illumination!” is facile and did not work for me at all. In one stroke, she managed to trivialize both Tintoretto and the Biennale. If your goal is Illumination, why not give the Tintorettos a dark space and some respectful presentation and some mystery? They were hung just like everything else (sort of like poster art) and they were the real deal. Was this her clever point? Were the guards part of her “performance?” Maybe this could have worked in Miami but here in Venice? You can wander over to the Scuola San Rocco and see so many Tintorettos (in a gorgeous setting for which they were painted) it makes your head spin.

Part of the goal is what sticks in memory without the need for packing tape. So, after all this glut of Contemporary Art, and wandering around this gorgeous city to search it out, what (besides the U. S. Pavilion) will I always remember about this year’s Venice Biennale? Two vastly different exhibitions in the outlying venues.

David Claerbout The Algiers’ Sections of a Happy Moment, 2008, Single channel video projection, 1920 x 160, Black and white, Stereo, 37 min.

The first was in an excellent show at Palazzo Grassi. This piece truly has to be seen to be appreciated but David Claerbout has created a haunting video masterpiece by combining over 900 photographs of a single moment into a 40 minute extended montage of pure joy. This piece is not new and will surely make the International rounds so I hope you have the pleasure of seeing it.

Save Venice Inc. sponsored the two year restoration of three Paolo Veronese masterpieces. This detail is from “The Coronation of Esther” painted for the ceiling of the San Sebastiano church in 1556. Photo by Matteo De Fina. For a fascinating PDF about this amazing project click here.

The second exhibition, at the newly restored Palazzo Grimani, examines three masterpieces by another Venetian Renaissance painter, Paolo Veronese (1528–1588). O Dio! This was so amazing, I almost cried. The ceiling paintings from the church of San Sebastiano (where Veronese is buried) were just restored by Save Venice. While the church itself is being restored, they hung these huge, incredibly impressive, canvases on specially constructed easels at the serenely beautiful Palazzo Grimani. The opportunity to get so close to something normally seen from 30 feet away was jaw dropping. Gazing close up at Paolo Veronese’s beatific vision of the coronation of this legendary beauty is a metaphor for the glorification of the city itself. Fredrick Ilchman, curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, explains it much better than I ever could.

“The exhibition offers the once-in-a-lifetime occasion to examine Veronese’s ceiling canvases at the same distance the painter enjoyed as he created them. Following the treatment sponsored by Save Venice Inc., the paintings appear far closer to the artist’s intentions than they had for more than a century. These fully autograph paintings show Veronese at a new level of mastery and should be seen as a watershed in the development of the Venetian ceiling. This exhibition allows us to be present at Paolo’s breakthrough.”

Until next time with much love,
Tommaso

An architectural vision by Jean Nouvel of what the future will look like inside a world class museum far from home.

It’s next time again.

If America is the New World, what and where is the Next? Certainly giant-sized China is at the top of everyone’s list but what if I suggested to you, the Next might spring from a tiny country the size of Maine that didn’t even exist until 40 years ago? Even more surprising, it is located smack dab in the middle of a tempestuous region that one expert recently called, “a modified form of chaos.”

The UAE is located in one of the most strategically important regions in the world. Iraq is just above Kuwait.

I’m talking about the United Arab Emirates located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. If you are like me, you probably have heard of them, know they are in the Arab world, but not much else. Having just returned from there, I can tell you this place has the means, the vision and the drive to deliver the Next and if you are ready for some good news, this is a Middle Eastern country that is not only friendly to, but actively courting the West’s culture, investment and influence.

Dynamic, aspirational, filled with promise, stable, and friendly-to-the-West are not attributes normally associated with the Islamic nations we see on the news every night. While prosperity from oil has a lot to do with it, I was unprepared for how comfortable I felt in the United Arab Emirates and much of this had to do with an unexpected appreciation of world class Education, Healthcare and Culture.

To understand why the United Arab Emirates deserves consideration as the Next, you need to understand the country did not exist until 1971. What they have accomplished in the past 40 years is totally unprecedented. It was described by one writer as moving from the 18th Century to the 21st in a single generation. I suppose one would have to compare social infrastructures to see if either Beijing or Abu Dhabi had a greater modernization challenge but everyone already knows about China. The Abu Dhabi story is equally fascinating but lesser known.

The Founding Father of the UAE is Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan who was also a great humanitarian and visionary leader. He was known as “The Desert Falcon.”

The story is all the more compelling because it traces itself back to a single individual, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. It is no exaggeration to say without his courage, selflessness, diplomacy and ruthlessness the entire nation would never have happened. After oil was discovered in the early 1960’s, he resisted staggering personal bribes and braved the worst sort of Colonial exploitation to achieve his (at the time) completely unrealistic vision of uniting the tribes of his ancestors into a small but powerful single nation.

He succeeded because of the strength of his character and his astounding personal charisma. It is pretty hard not to exoticize Sheik Zayed, who is also known as The Desert Falcon. His powerful bearing, rugged cheekbones and traditional robes make him look like he just walked off the set of Lawrence of Arabia. But the most attractive thing about him is a moral compass which points directly at the long term best interests of his people instead of his own comfort. More about him in a moment.

Thanks to Sheikh Zayed and his descendants, and unlike most of the rulerships in the region, the welfare of the Emirati people, especially in the areas of Education, Culture and Healthcare are pre-eminent priorities in the region’s economic development. To plan out the next 20 years of the Nation’s growth (and a further reason I feel they will succeed in bringing about the Next) they did an exhaustive and formal 2030 Vision plan. This is an amazing document and outlines their dreams. Unlike China, where the future plan remains a mystery, the Emiratis have taken the time to plan out exactly what they want to see happen and they have communicated that plan to anyone who wants to listen. You can read it for yourself, a free ebook is linked here: The Abu Dhabi Vision 2030. This vision includes equality for women, economic diversification, environmental sustainability, the rule of law and much more. It is an astoundingly aspirational document and it puts the social welfare of the entire population at the top of its priorities list. The oil reserves in Abu Dhabi are huge. So in their quest for Western Education, Culture and Healthcare; the bar is set high. They want the best in the world.

So what would you choose? Say money was no object. What you you pick if you could pick anything in the world to import to a very new and under-developed country?

The Performing Arts Center by Zaha Hadid features flowing futuristic lines and science fiction mood

How about the Louvre, the Guggenheim, NYU, The Paris–Sorbonne, and The Cleveland Clinic? A pretty ambitious and visionary list wouldn’t you say? Wait, it gets better. To house these new initiatives they hired some of the best architects in the world to do some of the best work of their impressive careers. Most of them are Pritzker Prize winners. It takes more than money to attract such people and institutions. Credit is due to the Emirati leadership for not only their taste and vision but also their persistence and follow-through.

Unlike the other buildings pictured here, this one is a built project: Ferrari World, a theme park with a Formula One soul and is currently the world’s largest indoor theme park.

Maybe museums are not your thing. How about one of the finest Formula One Race Courses and a theme park next door, Ferrari World (which sounds like it came straight out of a Chevy Chase movie.) Or, if you are into team sports perhaps you would prefer soccer? They have world class soccer school since they now own one of the best soccer teams in the world; the historic Manchester City soccer franchise. It is important to point out, all of these remarkable initiatives have formal educational components at their core.

The world renown architect Lord Norman Foster is designing this stunning museum dedicated to Shaikh Zayed and the history of the UAE, as well as an entire community (not pictured) outside of the city which will be a model of environmental sustainability.

The Sheikh Zayed Museum (above) is such an important part of the mix because it will be dedicated to the Emirates indigenous history and culture. It is vital to their future to have this heritage museum. Otherwise the unique and precious qualities of the UAE would be overshadowed by the influence of the West.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi by Frank Gehry. It is likely the Emirati are hoping for a Bilbao effect multiplied many times since all these projects are happening simultaneously.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (above) will be the largest Guggenheim in the world. Frank Gehry says, “”I want to play off the blue water and the color of the sand and sky and sun,” It’s got to be something that will make sense here. If you import something and plop it down, it’s not going to work.”

The Abu Dhabi Performing Arts center was designed by Zaha Hadid who also designed the Shaikh Zayed Bridge already constructed in Abu Dhabi.

The architectural program of the Performing Arts center includes, “five theatres – a music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre and a flexible theatre with a combined seating capacity for 6,300.”

Jean Nouvel’s design for the Louvre Abu Dhabi features a lacy patterned dome over simple geometrically shaped gallery spaces.

The NYT reports, “The Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel as a 260,000-square-foot complex covered by a flying-saucer-like roof, is expected to cost around $108 million to build. Planned as a universal museum, it will include art from all eras and regions, including Islamic art.”

This picture of the massive Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi was taken two weeks ago. The construction site runs 24 hours a day and much of the work happens at night because when I took this picture it was 108 degrees.

Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi will feature a transparent glass curtain wall of double thickness separated by a substantial void. Hot air will be evacuated from this void to keep the inside of the building cool.

I went to Abu Dhabi to research a possible documentary about the massive Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi project which is scheduled to open its doors in 2012.  The origins of the project trace back to Sheikh Zayed, The Desert Falcon. In the early nineties he came to Cleveland Clinic for a kidney transplant. This carried on a long tradition of care for Arabian royalty at the Clinic.

Frosted glass and onyx are featured in the interior of the hospital.

The project is at a mind boggling scale. It “will house five clinic floors, three diagnostic and treatment levels and thirteen floors of critical and acute inpatient units.” This hospital with not only transform Health Care in the region. I believe the innovations and systems being developed at this unique institution will pioneer global Healthcare’s Next. I can only hope I get to tell the full story in a long form documentary which will explore all the details.

Until next time with much love,

Tommaso

They’re heeere! The “cloud-based” content providers have arrived. Netflix now streams thousands of movies and TV shows (like Steven Spielburg’s Poltergeist (shown above); all 138 episodes of the original Twilight Zone; the BBC’s Top Gear; the last four seasons of AMC’s Mad Men – coming mid-July) direct to your TV.  Amazon, Apple TV, Hulu, Boxee follow with their own vast collections. The result is now there is always something on TV you’d like to watch.

It’s next time again.

In case you hadn’t noticed there are several alluring strangers at your doorstep and, so the story goes, they can’t cross your threshold unbidden, you have to invite them in. The technologies we’ve been dreaming about and waiting for are ripe and ready. The “cloud” beckons with virtually limitless collections of pastimes at your fingertips. Streaming instantaneous Netflix is the best example: on-demand, no late fees, 24/7, instant gratification. I have been thoroughly seduced and I’m starting to worry about the narcotic-like way these irresistible time vampires are eroding my attention span.

So what do you look for in entertainment? Oblivion? Escape? Thrills? Meaning? Goose bumps?

I’m starting to worry about how lazy I’m getting when it comes to leisure pursuits. Vegging out in front of gratuitous TV is easy and relaxing. Used to be there was never anything on I wanted to watch. Now, there is always something on I want to watch and, especially when you’re tired, it’s a vampire’s bargain that’s hard to resist.

The late David Foster Wallace was fascinated by the concept of an entertainment technology so engrossing it was lethal. This was part of the premise of his masterwork Infinite Jest. His latest book, The Pale King was published posthumously last month.

David Foster Wallace, the amazing novelist and essayist probably says it best:

“I think a lot of people feel–not overwhelmed by the amount of stuff they have to do. But overwhelmed by the number of choices they have, and by the number of discrete different things that come at them. And the number of small . . . that since they’re part of numerous systems, the number of small insistent tugs on them, from a number of different systems and directions. Whether that’s qualitatively different than the life was for let’s say our parents or our grandparents, I’m not sure. But I sorta think so. At least in some–in terms of the way it feels on your nerve endings.

Entertainment’s chief job is to make you so riveted by it that you can’t tear your eyes away, so the advertisers can advertise.

So I think it’s got something to do with, that we’re just—we’re absolutely dying to give ourselves away to something. To run, to escape, somehow. . . . And so TV is like candy in that it’s more pleasurable and easier than the real food. But it also doesn’t have any of the nourishment of real food. . . . What has happened to us, that I’m now willing–and I do this too–that I’m willing to derive enormous amounts of my sense of community and awareness of other people, from television? But I’m not willing to undergo the stress and awkwardness and potential shit of dealing with real people.

And that as the Internet grows . . . at a certain point, we’re gonna have to build some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology’s just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it’s gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re gonna die. In a meaningful way, you’re gonna die.

. . . this idea that pleasure and comfort are the, are really the ultimate goal and meaning of life. I think we’re starting to see a generation die . . . on the toxicity of that idea.”

– From “Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace” by David Lipsky in conversation with DFW

Maybe you think this is hyperbole. For David Foster Wallace it was deadly serious. I think David Foster Wallace was searching for an effective way to shut off his massive brain. I think he used TV so he didn’t have to think ahead. I think this concept was at the core of much of his art (consider the premise of his masterwork Infinite Jest) and unfortunately at the core of his addictive personality. I think these obsessions contributed to the inescapable depression which ultimately led to his heart-wrenching suicide.

The first remote controls had a wire leading to the TV. The copy in this ad talks about the innovation as “like something from the Arabian Nights.” The genie is definitely out of the bottle.

The other factor I can’t help but consider is the national average on television consumption. If, as David Foster Wallace says, TV is candy, we have another major obesity epidemic on our hands. According to the the Nielson rating service, thanks to the Digital Video Recorder (DVR), TV viewing is at an all time high. They estimate the average American spends 135 hours a month in front of the TV. That comes out to 4 hours and 50 minutes every single day. When you think about this you realize it really is something pervasive and maybe a bit perverse. As a filmmaker, I’ve always said everyone is an expert when it comes watching TV. Imagine if we all spent 4 hours a day playing the piano and then you were invited to perform? The level of expectation is daunting.

This issue is not just about television. I should point out David Foster Wallace also said that reading is usually our first addiction.

So what is entertainment? We know certain things. It is not monolithic. This is my new word courtesy of curator Barbra Tannenbaum who was nice enough to point out China is not monolithic in a great comment to last month’s blog. This word works for almost anything but it is something we often forget. Entertainment certainly is different for everyone but what ties the concept together for all of us?

Part of it seems to be something that gets you out of yourself for a few minutes. So is it like sleep? Something absorbing from which you return refreshed and energized? There is more to it than that. I’ve been thinking about this for several weeks now and I’m going to need your help to make any sense out of this because the question gets really complicated – really quickly.

Let me give you a few examples. I love going to the Cleveland Orchestra except when I actually have to go. When I get home from work on concert night I am often crabby and usually just want to sit on the couch and veg out in front of the TV instead of having to make the effort to actually go. What is puzzling about this is that every time I do go, I adore it. I always have a great experience which is due to the quality of the performers. It is a world class concert every time. So why do I fight it? The easy answer is I’m just tired and stressed-out and don’t want to make the effort of paying attention. This is where it gets complicated.

Faye Dunaway cheats a bit at chess in this famous scene from the original Thomas Crown Affair (1968). The 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo could also qualify as “perfect non-think entertainment.”

I can remember a review I read of the classic move The Thomas Crown Affair. The reviewer called it “perfect, non-think entertainment.” I love that movie, and that phrase, and sometimes perfect non-think is just what the doctor ordered. But, there is much more to this issue than just “turn off the damn TV!”

Do we really want the candy of non-think entertainment to ravage our leisure time? If you are like me I guess the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. I think there is a big difference between the quality of the entertainment choices out there. Literature is different than trashy novels. Watching Kubrick is different than watching Wheel of Fortune. What are the differentiators? I’ve been trying to come up with a better word for high quality entertainment and all I’ve come up with is “enrichment”. What do I mean by that? I mean something that does more than pass the time. Something memorable. Something that is complex and layered. Something that holds your attention and does not reveal itself all at once. Something you can watch or read or enjoy over and over again and always find something new. Something which somehow changes you for the better.

Hard to imagine a more disparate group than Opera fans and gamers but both dedicate long hours to the entertainment choices they adore.

Some would say it is a question of attention span. I’m not so sure. I think of how many of my friends, at one end of the age spectrum, adore Opera and how many adore video games at the other. I think it would be a hysterical short film to see what would happen if they switched places and tried to interest the uninitiated into their entertainment of choice. Both Tannhäuser and Call of Duty take a significant time investment to enjoy. Both have layers of complexity. Both genres have rabid fans. Both can offer a satisfying experience to their audiences but most Opera aficionados consider video games a complete waste of time and the reverse is equally true.

Here is the concept with which I am wrestling: Is there a connection between how much effort we put into an entertainment and the scale of the enjoyment we then derive from it? What is the nature of that equation? If there is a relationship, why do we so often take the easy path when we know we’ll get more out of the more challenging path? As the number of entertainment choices increases are there effective strategies for making better choices? To use David Foster Wallace’s metaphor of candy, maybe it’s about time we started to read the (nutrition) label.

A bronze dragon spans a globe with clawed foot in Beijing’s Forbidden City. The complex dates from 1406.

It’s next time again.

Which of your freedoms have you thought about lately? Your right to create almost anything you want, and then own the rights? Your right to disagree with your government? Surf the internet? Sue somebody if you feel yourself to have been wronged? All this stuff I never gave a second thought. And then I went to China.

Don’t get me wrong. China has changed and it has changed a lot. In a mad rush to modernize, the government has allowed certain things while censoring others. If an international paper has a certain story the government feels is guilty of “China bashing” – the paper does not come out that day. Certain websites are disabled or disappeared. (For a recent NYT article on this click here.) There is a pervasive feeling of Big Brother but there is also a sense of hold your breath excitement; that China has arrived as the newest superstar on the world stage and is about to deliver a once in a lifetime performance. The rickshaws and coolie hats are long gone. Conspicuous consumption abounds.

The Jones Day offices in Hong Kong are in the middle of the financial district. The Hong Kong stock exchange is the second largest in Asia predominantly because it handles most of the international transactions for China. This is because Chinese currency is not freely traded.

I was sent there for work by a wonderful client who is working hard to define and implement the Rule of Law around the world. The client is Jones Day and they are one of the largest law firms in the world. Their mission has an obvious self interest but having worked with them for many years now, it also seems to me, at their core, there is a healthy dose of genuine passion and higher purpose. These are incredibly smart people filled with the infectious enthusiasm of doing what they love.

Luxury brands are making a name for themselves in China. Couture is big business in Beijing’s ultra-modern ultra-chic shopping malls featuring all of the major European designers.

China has tossed off the Mao-styled twill uniform and put on the Brooks Brothers suit. It is embracing all the most crass and disturbing elements of Capitalism. Being there around Christmas time was extremely disorienting. Bad hillbilly Christmas carols is not what I expected in glistening shopping malls filled with every luxe brand you can imagine. Dior, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, Chanel, you name it, they were there with bells on. Santa Claus was everywhere, sometimes next to a giant panda. There was nothing even remotely religious about any of this. It was all just vulgar American-style, make-a-quick-buck commercialism; just the sort of thing I hope to escape by traveling outside the U.S. at Christmas time.

My mission was to do some videos to explain what Jones Day is doing in Greater China? We interviewed very smart people with lots of experience and I marveled at their ability to keep pace with such a rapidly changing society. Let me give you some examples.

Many contemporary architects have projects in China. Some of these buildings became instantly world famous during the recent Olympics. When you land in Beijing, if you come from Hong Kong, you leave from a spectacular Norman Foster airport and arrive at an even more spectacular Norman Foster airport.

Sir Norman Foster’s Beijing airport is perhaps the largest roofed structure in the world. The effect is breathtaking. Photo courtesy of Norman Foster Partners

His Beijing airport is the largest roofed structure in the world, the size of over 140 football fields! The roof seems as vast as Wyoming and you cannot help but wonder, where in the world did he hide the HVAC? In talking with people who travel in and out of there all throughout the brutally hot summer, they wanted to know the same thing. Climate control aside, the structure is gorgeous and the point is made. Upon arrival you know you are someplace affluent, modern and very special.

A rendering of Beijing’s stunning Central China Television Headquarters designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. The building thrills but is perhaps the largest piece of vacant real estate on the planet.

A massive and highly creative Beijing project is the new CCTV building designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. This building is deceptive. It appears to be just remarkably innovative with its distinctive shape and grid design but it is also incredibly gigantic. It is uncanny;  but something about the design allows the building to scale itself perfectly into the urban landscape. People in “the Jing” as my cameraman referred to the city, call this building, “The Pants” or “Big Boxer Shorts.” Although you would never guess, this building encloses more than a million and half square feet. It is bigger than the Pentagon for Christ sakes and if you stacked its wings on top of one another it would be one of the tallest structures in the world. Bravo! But there was a problem.

Fire destroyed the building adjacent to the CCTV Headquarters in February of 2009. The structure was supposed to house a new Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a theater, cinemas and recording studios.

A companion building adjacent to the complex was destroyed in a catastrophic fire during the final phase of its construction. This has delayed occupancy of the main building for years to come and has spawned worries about its stability. The burned-out building was supposed to provide vital counter balance to the main structure’s foundation.  It seems that a celebration for the eminent completion of the project also included fireworks. The fireworks caught the insulation for the building on fire. Why is this unusual? Think about it. Insulation in the United States is not flammable, no OSHA inspector would ever allow such a thing. Enter the Rule of Law. The architects became clients of the Firm after the fire put the project into legal and liability turmoil. When was the last time you thanked OSHA for anything? I take them totally for granted, if not a source of bureaucratic irritation. As I thought more about this, all I can do is count my blessings. It seems horribly cliched but the freedoms and protections all assured to me by the Rule of Law in which I blithely live,  effect almost every aspect of my life and I pay them no respect at all. They are as under-appreciated as the air I breathe.

Which brings me to the air quality in Beijing. When was the last time you gave a second grateful thought to the EPA? During the winter months the dry air sweeping into “the Jing” from Gobi Desert picks up all the pollution from the city’s centralized coal-fired heating plants. This, coupled with the exhaust from 4 million cars (and I have read estimates that this number grows by 2,000 vehicles a day) produces over 51 million tons of pollutants every year. The dry smoggy air gives you a persistent hacking cough, watering itchy eyes, a vague sore throat, and an irritable disposition. Almost every person we interviewed had a humidifier in their office.

Rush hour in Beijing is a bumper-to-bumper smoggy nightmare worthy of L.A. This photo was taken from the roof of the office tower where Jones Day Beijing resides.

You think our roads and automobile industry is over regulated? I was astounded by the traffic. Bumper to bumper does not begin to describe their rush hour. How do I know this? We got special permission, as our last shot of the last day, to go up on to the 37th floor and access the roof of the building. We shot a sequence worthy of the time-lapse-filled masterpiece Koyanasquatsi. Imagine my surprise and delight when this exact same view was featured on page 2 of the Financial Times last week in an article about the massive automobile glut in China.

My visit was not completely filled with Western-style urbanism. One of the few truly Chinese cultural mind blowers were early morning visits to the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. What sticks about both of these landmarks is the scale and the empty space. The stone courtyards are immense and their stunning impact is not blunted by landscape.

Some of the Cypress trees outside of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing are said to be over 500 years old.

There are plantings but green spaces are primarily restricted to vast gardens. Cypresses from literally 500 years ago. They are planted endlessly. You wander through the gardens and get lost in the forest. But the two experiences are kept separate, like proper courses in an elegant meal. They are different, and because they are so completely separated, they each retain their impact. You walk out of the cold empty stone spaces into a forest. Your body reacts to this with a relaxing sigh as you leave the city down a sloping incline of grooved stone and enter a flat gravel garden pathway outside the containment wall. These inclines are much easier to navigate than steps. Your feet feel solidly held by the grooves and the slope is not too steep. Even so, your strides become restricted to accommodate the slope. You sense legions of warriors on horseback have proceeded your shortened footfalls by 500 years.

It is the vast stone courtyards and empty spaces which give the Forbidden City its drama.

I should emphasize all of these superficial thoughts are just first impressions from a very brief trip. For those of you who really know China this must sound like someone who makes generalizations about Europe after changing planes in the Paris airport. Spending two hours in the Forbidden City is like spending  ten minutes in the Louvre. It was just a taste. But it is the sort of knock your head off experience which burns itself into your memory. I could not forget that if you were a peasant in feudal China this was impossible to see. Those that breached the walls had their heads cut off.  The historical inequities between the elite status of the rulers and the rest of the country is mirrored in today’s experience of Beijing. The designer boutiques are for the rarified few in China (and of course for the foreign tourist).

China in the 19th and 20th centuries has gone through incomprehensible social change. Is there a more disgustingly arrogant example of the evils of Capitalism than the Opium Wars? No wonder this society was fearful of the West and its corrupting influences. The unimaginably brutal repressions of the Cultural Revolution and the enforced police state of the Communist regime, turned the Western World into a forbidden civilization.  Now, as China opens up once again to all the West has to offer, one can’t help but wonder what is the ultimate plan? Is there one? Is seemingly unbridled Capitalism the best hope for China and it’s 1.4 billion people? Greed-is-good Capitalism at least glorifies the individual who then wants rights and freedoms. One thing is for sure. The Rule of Law can only help a society as it transitions from authoritarian control to an inevitably more Democratic system. I had never so palpably realized how the legal system protects and defends Freedom. The legal profession gets beat up pretty badly in the popular psyche. It was a pleasure to consider its more noble purpose by such vivid examples of where we would be without it.

I hope those of you who know much more about China than I do (and especially the lawyers who read this blog) will weigh in.

Until next time I remain your,

Tommaso