Category: Article

It remains to be seen whether Brazilian singer Seu Jorge will perform his own sexy, samba-driven songs, or the set of the David Bowie covers that he played in the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. We’ll hope for more of the former, since the Bowie songs, sung in Portuguese to spare and jangly guitar accompaniment, have overshadowed Jorge’s own noteworthy songwriting. It only takes a brief listen to last year’s Cru to realize that his is hardly a novel talent, one marked by the street influences from a homeless childhood in Rio de Janeiro. 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org

If the current U.S. government funded art that reflected its ideals, we might see Thomas Kinkade’s cottage scenes take over museums as well as shopping malls. (Then again, Kinkade’s apparently acquired a rep for groping women and urinating in elevators, so perhaps he’s more bad-boy art star than the Bush administration might wish to sanction.) In the former Soviet Union, a system of art patronage led to the establishment of the Socialist Realists, a school of art that, like Kinkade, was none too subtle in lauding home, hearth, and country. But even as the Socialist Realists projected Communist ideals, celebrated Soviet leaders, and stayed well within the bounds of staunchly conservative stylistic traditions, another group that became known as “the nonconformists” was painting a vastly different picture of the Soviet experience—often at extreme risk to their own careers and even lives. Shown together in this fascinating and rare convergence, dozens of works reveal a world that was, and a world that never could have been. 5500 Stevens Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-821-9045; www.tmora.org

In a way, Alexander Calder is a movement of one—his mobiles, those feats of balance and grace, pretty much own the category. But Calder owes his inspiration to the surrealist movement, and this exhibit places him firmly within that larger context, demonstrating how his work grew out of influences from contemporaries such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and René Magritte. Calder’s drawings, sculptures, and mobiles are displayed amid works by other surrealists—Ernst and Magritte as well as Miró and Yves Tanguy—bringing a new perspective to his mobiles (the concept for which Duchamp thought up), and to his overall sense of humor and playfulness. This exhibition coincides with the opening of the institute’s new wing and renovated galleries. 612-870-3200; www.artsmia.org

In a valiant effort to create public art for St. Paul that doesn’t involve globe-headed cartoon characters, a group of stone carvers from Minnesota and around the world have gathered to unleash shapes and figures from blocks of our state’s finest quarried stone. A geologist’s bouquet of granite, limestone, sandstone, and gneiss will fall away to reveal visions from fourteen artists—six from hereabouts and eight from countries as far flung as Japan, Zimbabwe, Egypt, and Finland. They are all working in public, under the open skies, for six weeks, only having chosen the stone they would work with once they arrived on the site in St. Paul. Call it performance art for the very, very patient—and for those ready to duck when the occasional errant chip of rock becomes airborne. The artists will draw on inspiration from specific locations in St. Paul and its suburbs, where their finished works will be installed. Kellogg Blvd. and Summit Ave., St. Paul; 651-290-0921; www.minnesotarocks.org

Fans of Nick Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds, recognize that Cave has something of an obsession with murder and the torment that so often leads to it. So it’s not so surprising that, with his first screenwriting effort, the Aussie rock icon should focus on some other bad seeds—the gunslingers and thugs who ran rough-shod through the Australian Outback in the 1880s. Cave was originally tapped to write the score for this Australian Western, but director John Hillcoat ended up asking him also to pen the script, given the narrative gifts that come through in his songs. The proposition of the title is this: Three brutish brothers stand accused of a bloody crime. One of them—played by Guy Pearce—is ordered to hunt down the brother regarded as the greatest threat, in order to save the life of the third. Gun fights, jail busts, and bloody scraps with Aborigines thereby ensue, in what is being hailed as a gorgeous and original film. www.landmarktheatres.com

Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance was a relatively early, mostly ignored, and extremely prescient look at global warming and the fate of our planet. Thirteen years after its publication, we’re still waiting to see the kind of widespread social and political awareness that could bring about change and slow the planet’s demise. So is Gore; since his defeat in the 2000 election, he has ramped up his efforts to pull people’s heads out of the sand, and this documentary could do what his book couldn’t—it’s surprisingly engrossing. It catches him at work, trying to convince those in power to make a difference before it’s too late. We applaud these efforts, but can’t help but get exercised at Gore himself. Where was all that passion during his campaign? Winning the election surely would have been a more effective way to help avert environmental disasters yet to come—which are presented here intelligently, rather than sensationally. 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

Spawned by the success of Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books, the tiny New York City publishing house, launched a series of noir anthologies, each pegged to individual cities and their neighborhoods, and featuring all-new stories by local writers. With seventeen titles either in print or in the works, stories from the series are racking up a passel of literary awards. The brand-new Twin Cities franchise includes hard-boiled tales—some of them tongue-in-cheek—set in locales ranging from Uptown Minneapolis to Duluth. The Rake’s own Brad Zellar contributes a story set in Columbia Heights, David Housewright goes in for Frogtown, and even Kenwood and Linden Hills get the treatment from Mary Logue and Pete Hautman, respectively. 604 26th St. W., Minneapolis; 612-870-3785; www.onceuponacrimebooks.com

The sins of the father are visited upon just about everyone when a disturbed young man, recently discharged from the military, tracks down his birth father. However, Dad (played by William Hurt) wants nothing to do with his half-Mexican love child (Gael García Bernal, best known to Americans for his roles in The Motorcycle Diaries and Y tu mamá también). It would only ruin his high-profile career as a Corpus Christi Baptist pastor, not to mention tear apart his new, church-sanctioned family, which includes a comely teenage daughter. Naturally, an incestuous Romeo-and-Juliet plot unfolds, including a twisted revenge scheme, in which a son named Elvis attempts to claim his place as heir. 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

Humanitarian architecture: On the glamour meter, the term is right up there with “FEMA trailer.” But during a recent discussion on the topic at a noisy Dinkytown bar, my ears perked up when an “elephant migration specialist” was listed along with soil engineers, architects, and government officials as a crucial collaborator on a relief project in a tsunami-struck Sri Lankan village. Cameron Sinclair, who had just finished a semester as a visiting professor at the U of M, was talking about how designers were granted permission to rebuild several buildings on a vacant lot. But after meeting with community members, they learned why the lot had stood empty so long: “It was on a migrational route for elephants, and when elephants get really tired, they lean against trees and fall asleep … They lean on poorly built houses and then the houses collapse.”

The housing was built elsewhere.

While perhaps not truly glamorous, this bit of trivia does offer a glimpse into Sinclair’s work as humanitarian architecture’s foremost advocate. Sinclair founded Architecture for Humanity six years ago with his wife, Kate Stohr, and since then they’ve hosted design competitions to address systemic health and housing problems. In post-disaster situations, they raise funds and work with pro bono architects who move to their host countries to work for up to two years. Their low-budget, sustainable solutions have ranged from a mobile HIV/AIDS clinic in Africa to earthquake-proof homes in Kashmir, transitional housing in war-torn Kosovo to, yes, structures that drowsy elephants won’t topple. Beyond its official work as a nonprofit organization, AFH is also something of a movement: Dozens of independent chapters have formed in cities like New York, London, and Minneapolis. Our chapter (afh-mn.org), is particularly active, with about fifty designers doing pro bono projects in Sri Lanka, New Orleans, and outstate Minnesota.

Born in Great Britain and trained at the University of Westminster and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, Sinclair’s pedigree is impressive, but his realm is far removed from that of celebrity architects—“starchitects” in the vernacular—both in terms of process and ego. “If you’re working in a slum situation, for instance, if a project becomes your baby and you take total ownership of it, then it’ll never be implemented. Some of the designs we’ve worked on look beautiful on paper, but weren’t as sexy when implemented,” he admits. “Your vision isn’t the same as the people who are going to eventually live in these homes.”

Most projects are collaboratively designed, hatched and revised during long meetings in church basements or at late-night sessions over curry and beer. The goal is to arrive at solutions that emerge from, rather than are imposed on, communities. For instance, one village in Sri Lanka now generates electricity from the wind. Residents, remembering the agricultural windmill used there fifty years ago, suggested it. “They didn’t want solar technology,” he says. “They didn’t want rainwater collection. They were like, ‘We had a windmill, we know how that works, so we want to have a wind farm.’”

Sinclair admits that experimentation in his line of work is different from that of, say, Frank Gehry or Steven Holl. Since he’s dealing with the lives of people, often devastated by grief, buildings must conform not only to their needs but to their often culturally specific definitions of beauty. Sinclair’s mantra, which is also the title of AFH’s just-released book Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises, calls architects to be sensitive to their cause and their clients. “When you’ve lost everything, it doesn’t just mean you’ve lost all your clothes and all your equipment. It’s almost like the eradication of any memory you’ve ever had,” Sinclair says. “If you design the technically sophisticated but aesthetically challenged house, but it’s not beautiful, nobody’s going to care for it … The community ends up painting and decorating the building with their own traditional crafts. And it turns out really beautiful because it’s got part of that community in it, and there’s a level of honesty in the aesthetics.”

Modest as his working methods might be, celebrity has nonetheless found Sinclair. He’s been nominated for the Designer of the Year award at London’s Design Museum, and was awarded one hundred thousand dollars to “make a wish come true” at the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference this year. He’s using the winnings to develop an open-source network for architecture. The system will provide copyright protection for designers’ work, while at the same time offering those plans for free to be adapted and modified as geography, culture, and community needs dictate. He hopes it’ll further his aim of bringing good, safe design to people in the world who normally couldn’t afford it.

“I was joking about the fact that [celebrated Iraqi-born architect] Zaha Hadid probably has twenty people who can afford her services,” he says. “But we have 5.6 billion potential clients. That’s job security.”

The upside of a miserable school experience: It might help you become a great artist. Take French director Jean Vigo. His traumatic years in a substandard boarding school helped turn him to a life in art; in his 1933 film Zero for Conduct, he draws upon those years for inspiration. In the film, the students stage a rebellion to protest the conditions in which they are forced to live and learn. The grand-scale pillow and food fights are quaint by modern American standards, but this comic drama, which was banned for twelve years in France, has fantastical special effects and surrealistic interludes that made it far ahead of its time. 612-375-7622; www.walkerart.org