All the artists we select for our ‘Art in…’ weekly Rendezvous are creative in their own way. German artist Gregor Schneider works with constructed rooms, and one of his project raised controversy in 2008: the public dying-room.

His work can’t be summed up with this project only but most of his work is about rooms and death. On his Wikipedia page, we can read:

‘I want to show a person, which dies a natural death or just died a natural death. My target is to show the beauty of death [...] I want to display a person dying naturally in peace or somebody who has just died [...] My aim is to show the beauty of death’. Schneider describes the constructed room in depth. He wants to offer this room in a museum to a dying or a dead person. This could only be realized with the respective agreement of the participant, the relatives and with a nurse or caretaker present on site. He wants to lead death out of the social taboo with this public dying-room and to make it into a positive experience similar to the birth of a human being.

His new show just started at the Hezi Cohen Gallery in Tel Aviv. The exhibition “Pension” brings together two artists: Nahum Tevet and Gregor Schneider.

The name of the exhibition (in the Continental sense of a boardinghouse or small hotel) points to aspects of the experience it wishes to offer. It suggests a concrete place, a structure/institution inside which the activity that takes place is rest, and rest in the present context means being outside the world. Time in the work of each of these artists is a time of death, after things have lost their functionality.

You can check Schneider’s website for more information and work!

Image below: ‘END’ room (2009). Museum of Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany.

This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news…

This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive. If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

Norway Muslims question focus on Breivik’s sanity
Muslim leaders in Norway say they are concerned that the anti-Islamic ideology of Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right fanatic now on trial for killing 77 people, is being overshadowed by questions about his mental state. The self-described anti-Muslim militant shocked Norway on July 22 with a bombing and shooting rampage targeting the government headquarters and the Labor Party’s annual youth camp…

Judge denies Strauss-Kahn immunity claim
A New York judge Tuesday rejected claims by former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn that a civil lawsuit against him should be dismissed because he was protected by diplomatic immunity. Bronx Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon denied a motion by Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed by a hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault last year…

US expects dissident Chen Guangcheng to leave China soon
The US says it expects China to allow prominent dissident Chen Guangcheng to travel abroad soon. The US state department said Mr Chen had been offered a fellowship at an American university, and it would allow his wife and children to accompany him. Earlier, Beijing said the blind activist could apply to study abroad – paving the way for a resolution to a tense diplomatic stand-off with the US…

Facebook IPO will make Mark Zuckerberg richer than Microsoft CEO
Facebook Inc.’s $11.8 billion initial public offering will cement the status of 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg as one of the world’s richest men and put his social network among the highest-valued companies in the U.S. Facebook is offering about 337.4 million shares for $28 to $35 each, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. At the upper end of that range, the co-founder’s stake would be $17.6 billion…

On April 29, our favorite jewelry designer, Wendy Brandes, wrote on her blog: ‘I’m SMH at Topshop’s Version of My Swear Rings’. In her post, she explained: ‘The sterling-silver swear-ring set from my WENDYB by Wendy Brandes line has been one of my most popular designs since I introduced it at a designer friend’s runway show in 2008.’ She just realized a huge corporate chain store was selling swear rings looking just like hers: ‘ I admit that I find the execution of this idea a bit more similar to mine than I would like‘.

Many people blogged and tweeted their support to Wendy, we even launched a #TeamWendy on Twitter, Wendy’s PR person, Krista Blair placed a call to Topshop and then a few days later, the shop agreed to remove the product from their web site and apologized: ‘The @WendyBrandes style in question has been removed from sale. We apologise for any misinterpretation and its similarity to Wendy’s work.‘

All’s well that ends well. On May 1st, Wendy posted: ‘I’m convinced that the swift action was due in no small part to the support I received  from people around the world. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who tweeted and blogged on my behalf. Social media can be a great incentive to do the right thing.’ You’re welcome Wendy and we hope this ‘misfortune’ brought you free publicity and a boost in sales.

This post gives us the opportunity to support all independent designers. We know how hard they all work and how hard it is to be the victim of copycats. It happened to Max Dana, to Wendy Brandes and to many others and we hope these copycat designs will be denounced as often as possible.

So just to be sure you will go to the right place to get your swear rings, follow this link to Wendy Brandes swear rings!

PS: You should also check the Onyx Skull Ring, we fell for it in 2009

Last year, we mentioned the French city of Marseille in Marseille, a beautiful city far from any cliché. The article by Amy Wilentz was published on the New York Times.

Another article recently published by the newspaper caught our attention as it was this time about another beautiful French city: Lyon.

Journalist Seth Sherwood describes how he feels about Lyon and only the first sentences of his article give a great insight on his experience in the city:

“I know of only one thing that you can do well in Lyon, and that’s eat,” the 19th-century French novelist Stendhal remarked. Two centuries later, the image of France’s third-largest metropolis is still buried under a heap of food. No surprise. France’s most celebrated chef, the octogenarian Paul Bocuse, hails from Lyon, and the city’s bouchons — homey restaurants serving rustic, traditional cuisine — are famous countrywide.

Lyon is about food, culture and also history:

The street name says it all: Rue du Premier Film. There, on March 19, 1895, Louis Lumière activated the “Cinématographe” that he had designed with his brother, Auguste, and recorded a 50-second film of employees leaving their family’s photo-plate factory. And so cinema was born.

Sherwood had a great experience in Lyon but maybe he forgot to mention music and especially Jazz music. Lyon is very different from Marseille, so if you already visited Marseille, we think visiting Lyon is the best advice!

Earlier this month, we published: Urgence Darfour: take action to Stop al-Bashir! The French organization organized a launch party for its new campaign and put online the petition ‘Stop Béchir’.

The launch party went well but the online petition still needs some support. The petition is addressed to UN General Secretary, Mr Ban Ki-Moon and to the heads of Security Council member states.

The petition says: ‘It is estimated by UN that over 300 000 people have died, over 3 million have been displaced and over 4000 villages have been destroyed. The rape of women and girls is used as a weapon of war.’ We could add the half a million people in South Kordofan and Blue Nile that are at risk of starvation…

Urgence Darfour also made 2 videos. Watch them and if you decide to sign the petition, it’s right here!

Today, our ‘Art in…’ post is not about a particular artist. Two weeks ago, a reader (hello Babouyou!) sent us a link to an article on the New York Times about  art in Mali.

We read it and it was so well written and interesting, with a great insight on the Dogon art and culture, we decided it should be part of this weekly post about Art.

Here are some extracts from Holland Cotter article ‘In Mali, Art as Real as Life Itself’:

Political tumult in the last few weeks — a military coup, a Tuareg and Islamist takeover in the north — has all but eliminated tourism in this West African nation, which has long been a magnet for Western travelers in search of firsthand encounters with living art traditions [...] The Dogon, a farming people said to have come to the region centuries ago to avoid conversion to Islam, have long since been claimed by that religion and by Christianity alike, and by the most seductive of faiths, secular materialism. And as the force of incursions has increased, age-old means of self-support have diminished. Climate shifts and the departure of young men to cities have made agriculture a constant and losing struggle.

This is a must-read article!

This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news…

This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive. If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

Africa Groundwater Maps Could Help Improve Access To Water
Access to clean water remains a problem for millions in Africa, but new research suggests that there may be hope. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London have mapped the quantity and potential yield of groundwater across the entire continent, explained PhysOrg. They estimate that Africa’s groundwater totals about 0.66 million cubic kilometers, which means…

Hollande claims victory, setting up runoff with Sarkozy for French presidency
Socialist candidate Francois Hollande declared victory Sunday in the first round of France’s presidential election, setting up a showdown with incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May. The proclamation, made to a crowd of supporters, is consistent with exit polls detailed on French television. Results from France’s interior ministry show the same placement, albeit in a very tight contest. With about 75%…

Barack Obama Announces Anti-Genocide Board
Last week, the international community commemorated Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. For Jews, the day is a somber interplay between resilience and mourning, honoring the memory of Jewish victims and survivors of the Holocaust. For anti-genocide activists, Yom HaShoah is a firm reminder of humanity’s greatest failure, and of the persistent need to mobilize around, condemn, and take action to address…

Sudanese warplanes strike at South Sudan border towns
Sudanese warplanes crossed a disputed border region to strike Monday in South Sudan, escalating fighting that threatens to return the neighboring African countries to full-scale war, a witness said. A Sudanese military commander, Kamal Marouf, was quoted by Radio Sudan’s website as saying that more than 1,200 South Sudanese had been killed. A Sudanese military spokesman denied that Sudan had used…

Seeking justice for Haiti’s rape victims
Three days after a massive earthquake threw Haiti into chaos, Alvana was homeless, along with her two children. But her nightmare was just beginning. “I was gang-raped while I was sleeping in the middle of the street,” she said. “And I got pregnant.” Alvana did not know her attackers. Depressed and unsure of what to do next, she was directed by a friend to a clinic run by KOFAVIV, a Creole acronym…

We have to say we are no graffiti experts and we didn’t know what was a sgraffiti before we read Max Dana’s post about it. So when Max posted about moss graffiti, we were curious to know more about this new form of graffiti art.

And we were so excited about it we thought we should published this article on the Sama Gazette. It would have made a great ‘Art in…’ post, don’t you think?

Five years ago, I posted about graffiti and its origin: From sgraffiti to graffiti, from Cauchie to Seen. I mentioned French artists like Lokiss and Bando and also Futura 2000 and Seen. But if graffiti is about scratching a design into a surface, sgraffiti is about scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it (a technique still used by remarkable Morocco’s artisans with intricate and carefully carved stucco).

British street artist Paul Curtis (a.k.a Moose) creates graffiti by cleaning dirt from sidewalks and tunnels; this is the contemporary form of sgraffiti. So if you thought graffiti was only about spray painting, you were wrong. Now (it has been a couple years) it is also about eco-friendly materials like moss. Anna Garforth and Edina Tokodi are moss graffiti artists and their client list includes banks, design schools and galleries.

I would consider moss graffiti artists more like stencil artists like Miss.tic or Blek Le Rat than strictly graffiti artists because they have to prepare their work before. When you use a spray can, even if you already know what you are going to paint, you have more freedom than when you use a pre-cut piece of moss or a stencil.

Moss graffiti brings the nature closer to our urban environments, it will seduce eco-friendly people and most of all the ones who can’t stand graffiti art (remember what happened to graffiti artist Revok last year?) since moss can be cleaned up pretty easily… But now, impervious anti-graffiti coatings manufacturers won’t be happy!

An example of Anna Garforth’s work below. More pictures on the HuffPost.

You can read this article on Max Dana’s Blog.

Sometimes you think some things can’t happen. It’s impossible to confuse Paris Metro for a parking garage, and yet it happened. And The Huffington Post got the whole story:

The 26-year-old man, named Johan, was looking for an underground car park when he saw a sign near the Chaussee d’Antin la Fayette station in central Paris, International Business Times reports. Sky News writes the driver managed to brake before entirely descending the stairs. No one was on the stairs at the time, and Johan’s Dacia Duster vehicle remained undamaged.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, almost a miracle… The driver passed a sobriety test administered by police. But apparently, this wasn’t the first time such an incident has occurred; an employee at a nearby restaurant told the news agency that a similar incident happened four or five years prior.

A similar incident already happened? Now this is awkward!

 Two events are scheduled on April 27 and April 29: NYC Day of Action for Sudan and Justice in Sudan Rally. Whether you live in New York or Washington, if you want to support one of these events, here is all the information you need!

April 27: NYC Day of Action for Sudan

Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
47th Street between 1st & 2nd Avenues, New York, NY
1:30pm until 4:30pm
View this event on Facebook

Join anti-genocide activists in a rally to raise awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur and the unfolding mass atrocities in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions of Sudan. Attendees will also reflect and pay respect to the selfless service of the Late Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ), and write letters to Guisma – an 8 year old Darfuri girl living in a refugee camp in Chad.

Speakers will include Rabbi Steve Gutow, President & CEO of the Jewish Council of Public Affairs; Tom Andrews, Fmr. Congressman & President of United to End Genocide; Abdelmageed Haroun, Director of Human Rights and Advocacy Network for Democracy (HAND); and Faith McDonnell, Member, Act for Sudan.

The rally will feature musical performances by Brian Carter and drummers “making noise for Sudan”, Jane Kelly Williams and Stephanie McKay, Michael Perlman, Dave Dawson and Biggo Marcy (Ivory Coast).

April 29: Justice in Sudan Rally

Metropolitan A.M.E. Church
1518 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005
1:30pm until 3:00pm
View this event on Facebook

The rally is co-sponsored by the Darfur Interfaith Network and United to End Genocide to engage activists the community about the ongoing violence and system killing of innocent civilians by the Government of Sudan.