Things we like

Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life

The very weird and even more wonderful director and animator Jan Švankmajer’s latest feature film, Surviving Life, is possibly the oddest thing Design Week has ever seen. Naturally, we loved it. The film uses a mixture of cut-out animation from photographs and live-action segments, to delineate the story of an unhappy married man who yearns to retain his powers to dream – and thus, enter his happier ‘other life.

The film is released today: expect giant snakes, giant tongues, chickens, eggs and feet – a list of things that sounds remarkably bland and pedestrian compared to what this surreal animation really beholds.

Here’s the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=row-LlGN–w

Some more shorts from Svankmajer, if this has tickled your fancy, can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfCOCIv_DU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQkWrZw05P4

The Dock Christmas

Tom Dixon’s Dock will be transformed for the festive season into a champagne and chestnut fuelled riverside riot of Christmassy goodness. Highlights include Christmas card printing from Mr Smith’s mobile letterpress workshop; help with wrapping your gifts from, conveniently, artists from Wrap magazine and a stitching class from an ex prison inmate. Christmas shopping inspiration will come in the guise of vintage cooking and photography books from Ideas Books; Dixon’s own Brass flat-packed light shades; Scandinavian jewellery by and Yvonne Kone as well as a food and wine market in the Dock Kitchen.

The Dock Christmas runs form 8-11 December at Wharf Building
Portobello Dock
344 Ladbroke Grove
London, W10

Nick Waplington’s Long Way Back to Nowhere

Long Way Back to Nowhere – New Works from the Holy Land, is artist Waplington’s first show in the UK since 2004, and shows the artist’s exploration of the East Jerusalem area that has been his home since 2007.

During this time, the artist has worked on various projects in the region that aimed to bring together disparate and conflicting communities living there.

The features works in photography, video, sculpture and painting form this period, such as the appropriated sign shown in Best Wank and the Abstract Expressionist-esque paintings.

The exhibition runs until  – 28 January at See Studio, 13 Prince Edward Road, Hackney Wick E9