THE ADVENTURES OF THE LITTLE MERMAID

In 1964 the Danish Artist Jørgen Nash cut off

 the head of the Little Mermaid.

It was a protest against the city development

and culture at that time.

In 2010 The Little Mermaid moved to China

for the World Expo 2010 where it will be exhibited in

The Danish Pavillion under

Welfairytales

April Fools Day 2010

PS: We are now awaiting the

cultural exchange installation

 by Ai Wei Wei

will it be the

Weifairytales

And this is the end of the fairytale

You, little mermaid, have tried with all your heart to do the same. You have suffered and borne

your suffering bravely; and that is why you are now among us, the spirits of the air. Do your good deeds

and in three hundred years an immortal soul will be yours."

The little mermaid lifted her arms up toward God's sun, and for the first time she felt a tear. She heard

noise coming from the ship. She saw the prince and the princess searching for her. Sadly they looked at

the sea, as if they knew that she had thrown herself into the waves. Without being seen, she kissed the

bride's forehead and smiled at the prince; then she rose together with the other children of the air, up into

a pink cloud that was sailing by.

"In three hundred years I shall rise like this into God's kingdom," she said.

"You may be able to go there before that," whispered one of the others to her. "Invisibly, we fly through

the homes of human beings. They can't see us, so they don't know when we are there; but if we find a

good child, who makes his parents happy and deserves their love, we smile and God takes a year away

from the time of our trial. But if there is a naughty and mean child in the house we come to, we cry; and

for every tear we shed, God adds a day to the three hundred years we already must serve."

AI WEI WEI

Ai Weiwei on Politics

Totalitarian society creates a huge space that, as we know, is a wasteland. The great success of this system is that it makes the general public afraid of taking responsibility; afraid of taking a position or giving a definite answer; or even of making mistakes. There is no revolution like the communist revolution. You simply burn all the books, kill all of the thinking people and use the poor proletariat to create a very simple benchmark to gauge social change. This has continued for generations – after just two or three generations deprived of continuity in education we inevitably become completely cut off from our own past. (Kirby, p. 25)


“So many crimes have been done to humanity and were never really publicly revealed-a lack of awareness, a tack of individual responsibility. And it's still the same system, the same party there. Even if it looks like it has broken, there are still some major facts that need to be cleared up. Without doing that, we can't be a democratic society, can't be a liberal-thinking society, and there's no true freedom of speech… I've said this in as many public forums as possible, but of course they will not publish it. So I put it in my personal blog, but there is danger in that also. People always warn me, telling me that I've touched on some areas you should never touch, that I'm the only person doing that. So many people today, they avoid it." (Thea, p. 29)

NEW YORK IS FULL OF LONELY PEOPLE

SIWAN

Oh! my chosen one among all beings ...my star ...my moon!

Oh! a willow branch when she moves

Oh! the look of a gazelle in her gaze

Oh! perfumed scent of the garden stirred by the breeze of dawn

Oh mistress of this languishing look which enslaves me

For you i shall give my sight and my hearing

When shall i recover from this lovesickness

يا صفوتي من البشر

شعر المعتمد بن عباد

يا صفوتي من البشـر ..... يا كوكبا بل يـا قَمـر

أيا غصنـا إذا مشـى ...... يـا رشـا إذا نظـر

يا نفس الروضة قـد ..... هبت لها ريح سحـر

يا ربة اللحـظ الـذي ..... شـد وثاقـا إذ فتـر

متى أداوي يـا فـداك ..... السمع مني والبصر

ما بفؤادي من جـوى ..... بما بفيك من خصـر

The focus of Siwan is not one of strict musical scholarship, but rather the imagining of what music would have sounded like at a certain place and time lost to antiquity. That time and place is medieval Andalusia, the southern most region of Spain, where Muslim, Christian, and Jewish intellectual cultures mingled unmolested before the Spanish Inquisition. Balke's studies of the history and writings of the region revealed a thematic universality among the Sufi poets and the Catholic and Sephardic mystics, a fact clearly evident in the texts chosen for this special recital: literary works as seemingly diverse as the martyred Moor Al- Aallaj's "Thualthiayat" and San Juan de la Cruz's (St. John of the Cross), ecstatic "Todo ciencia trascendiendo" ("Rising Beyond All Science").

INTERMEZZO

LA TABERNA

La Taberna del Gourmet

monastrell

Sevilla - forgot the name :- )

I didn't eat there...

CHANTS, HYMNS, DANCES

ECM's New Series has seldom delivered an album of such ageless beauty, or one that fits in with contemporary trends so majestically. Loosely based around the spiritual compositions of Armenian-born philosopher-composer Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, The narrative here centres around the effortlessly evocative solitary Piano of Vassilis Tsabropoulos, eventually finding companionship with Anja Lechner's mournful, intoxicating Cello. Although this year has certainly seen an incredible volume of groundbreaking imaginary soundtrack pieces, some breaking the mould with all sorts of anachronisms and electronic modifications, this breathtaking album manages to achieve this generic osmosis with nothing more then just two traditional instruments at its disposal. The way the piano notes resonate into infinity, the noir movements of the cello - suggestive of a bygone era yet strangely coherent with the new home listening stylings that have dominated this year's most exceptional albums. Fans of everything from Virgina Astley to Eric Satie, from Max Richter to Swod, from the Notwist's instrumental work to Michael Nyman...need to check this amazing album out without any further delay. Essential listening.

SONGS OF THE SIXTH DALAI LAMA

Songs of The Sixth Dalai Lama

White crane !

Lend me your wings

I will not fly far

From Lithang, I shall return.

So wrote a desolate and lonely Tsangyang Gyatso, The Sixth Dalai Lama, to a lady-friend og his in Shol town in 1706, when he was being forcibly taken away to China by the mongol soldiers of the Qosot Lhazang Khan - away from his people and the Potala Palace. No one at that time understood the message contained in the song.




Over the eastern hill rises
The smiling face of the moon;
In my minds forms
The smiling face of my beloved

Yesterday's young sprouting shoots
Are withered straws today.
Like the ageing body of a youth
Stiff bend as a southern bow.

If only I could wed
The one whom I love,
Joys of gaining the choicest gem
From the ocean's deepest bed would be mine


She smells sweet of body
My sweetheart, the highway queen;
Like the worthless white turquoise
She was found, to be thrown away.


Longing for the landlord's daughter
Blossoming in youthful beauty
Is like pining for peaches
Ripening on the high peach trees.


Sleepless I am
Because I am in love;
Fatique and frustration overhwelm
When day brings not my beloved to me.


Spring flowers fade in the fall;
It is not for the turqouise bee to mourn.
I and my sweetheart are fated to part;
It is not for us to cry.


Frost gathers on the glistering flowers
And then the cold north wind blows.
The frost and the wind must have come
To drive the bees away from the flowers.


In love with the lake,
The swan longs to stay longer,
But the ice covers the lake
And the swan flies
With no regrets.


The wooden horse,though devoid of feeling,
Glances back from the ferry;
But my beloved, devoid of gratitude,
Does not even glance at me.

I have hoisted prayer-flags
For the good luck of my beloved.
Forest keeper, Ajo Shelngo,
Do not trample her good luck flags.


The legal seal to seal documents
Cannot utter a word in witness;
Better it is to seal one's heart
With the seal of thruth and justice.

If the blossoming hollyhock is leaving
As an offering to the altar,
Leave not the young turquoise bee behind:
'Take me with you,
To the altar.'

If my beloved who stole my heeart
Renounces the world for the holy dharma.
My youth too shall seek
Retreat in a hermitage.

I incline myself
To the teachings of my lama
But my heart secretly escapes
To the thoughts of my sweetheart.

Even if meditated upon,
The face of my lama comes not to me,
But again and again comes to me
The smiling face of my beloved.

If I could meditate upon the dharma
as intensely as I muse on my beloved
I would certainly attain enlightenment
Surely, in this one lifetime.


The snow pure water of the Holy Dagpa Shelrill
The dew drops of the rare Naga-Vajra grass
Essence of the ambrosia
Fermented into wine by Yeshe Khandro
Incarnated as a wine-maiden
Saves the drinkers from rebirth in the lower realms,
If the ambrosia wine is drunk with the right mental attitude.

When my luck was good
I hoisted auspicious prayer-flags
And the young lady of noble birth
Hosted me at her home

She sparkled her smile
To the crowd in the tavern,
But from the corner of her eyes
She spoke of her love to me.

So enchanted by her
I enquired if she would be mine
'Only death can part us'
She said;
'In this life, nothing can
Separate us.'

 

It snowed at dusk
When I searched for my sweetheart
Now the secret cannot be kept;
In the snow my footprints remain

When I dwell in The Potala
I am Rigdzin Tsangyang Gyatso,
When I roam in Lhasa and Shol
I am the libertine, Dangzang Wangpo

TIBETAN DANCE.