Before the
Internet came on the scene, I used to collect all sorts of cuttings from newspapers and magazines for
use as idea starters for articles. I still collect these, but of course
now they're collected digitally, (even when I first come across them in print),
and I use Evernote for
this a great deal. The advantage of digital collection compared to the
old print approach is that the items can be searched.
For
instance, I was trying to find some items related to chocolate, because I
intended writing something about the gifts that available only at Shari's, where berries are covered in
wonderful concoctions of white and dark chocolate (with one swizzled on the
other) and almonds - see the example on the right.
One of the
items that came up in my search under chocolate was this daft
statement from a Facebook friend of mine (he used to live here in Dunedin with
his family, and go to our church): French is just English spoken with a
mouth full of chocolate. It's the sort of statement he's
prone to at times, but this particular one stuck out as saying something
surreal and poetic.
Another item
was about the artist, Viz
Muniz, who hails from Sao Paulo, in Brazil. In the home page
statement about him we're told that he has used dirt, diamonds, sugar,
string, chocolate syrup and garbage to create bold, witty and often deceiving
images drawn from the pages of photojournalism and art history. A
slightly different approach to using chocolate, one might think.
You can see his work on his website, but the reason I originally kept the
information was that he was involved in the making of a documentary
called Waste Land, which was filmed on the world's largest rubbish
dump where an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers
of recyclable materials - live. Muniz collaborated with these inspiring
people as they recreated photographic images of themselves out of garbage. The
documentary reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as
they begin to re-imagine their lives.
A further
item was a series of quotes on the addiction to acquiring money. John
Cleese was quoted as saying: If I like
chocolate it won't surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my
fridge, but if you find out I've got sixteen warehouses full of
chocolate, you'd think I was insane. Unfortunately
I have no idea where this quote came from.
Finally
there is an interesting blog post by Richard
Beck, a sometimes provocative blogger I read all the time for a while, but
haven't caught up with lately (mostly because he doesn't use Twitter!).
In this post he discusses the Chocolate Jesus, an anatomically
accurate depiction of Jesus hanging as though from the cross, but made entirely
out of chocolate. It's a work by Cosimo Cavallaro. When originally exhibited, it upset a number of
people, but Beck asks the question: why chocolate? His
answers are worth checking out. Cavallaro is a Canadian-born artist, not
a little given to provocation himself. You can see the Chocolate Jesus on
his website (the link is under his name above) along with a number of his other
works.
