I've been writing stuff for Lopticulations, a paper-newsleter-thing for LopLops. So, what I'm going to do now is put up a few of the ones I kinda liked and a few of the ones for banks I liked even if my writing at the time sucks, sucks, sucks...
Enjoy.
First up...
The Impossible And The Implausible, The Art Of Li Wei
Li Wei is a photographer and performance artist. He likes to put himself into gravity-defying poses. He seeks to intentionally surprise and shock his viewer. Says Li Wei, "The first reaction is astonishment. Some people think they are full of sense of humour. They are curious about how I did this. Sometimes I am in real danger; I have to hang myself high with steel wires and people do get a little worried for me, but I am fine."
I discovered his photographs via The Wooster Collective, one of the best non-porn web sites ever, ever, ever. Through them I stumbled onto the series, "The Impossible Art Of Li Wei." Like many blogger and internet folk have commented, Photoshop trickery has turned pretty well all of us into cynics and disbelievers when it comes to photography. Which makes these photographs all the more exciting, they are non-digitalized. Except to erase wires and harnesses and scaffolding, they are not computer montages.
His self-portaits are part performance art, part photo essay. They are created using mirrors, wires, scaffolding and acrobatics. His body, stuck headfirst into a windshield, ramrod straight, feet to the sky, as if he has just plummeted to Earth from some great height. His head, sans body, is caressed by a woman, floats around her body, is stepped on. He is kicked off the roof a 25-storey building, a look of shock, disbelief on his face, captured at the moment he begins to fall. He falls horizontally out of an office building, outstretched hands trying to catch him. Li Wei again, "I am fascinated by the unstable and dangerous sides of art and I hope my work reflects these aspects."
He worked in oil until 1999, when he realized that "only performance art offers a chance to experience an action's message through one's own body." He has said that much of his work "involves the symbolic balancing act between personal freedom and emotional security, such as that of family." Much of his work is about change: "there is a feeling of losing grip on things, an uncertainty about tomorrow. It's a feeling in the air, of having nothing firm under the feet."
