Taktal at Testbed 1

One of F's friends Macken curated a fantastic art show last Saturday called Taktal at Testbed 1. After hearing about it, loads of people have asked me when it's on until. Unfortunately it was a one day only affair, but just to make you jealous, here's what it was like....

The show was held at Testbed 1, a former dairy warehouse at Ransome Dock, on the Thames in Battersea. Macken, who works nearby as an architect, managed to persuade them to let him use the space for the show.

They had a bar on unicycle wheels

A magic mirror with a time delayed reflection (if you look closely, you can see I managed to turn around quickly enough to take a photo of the back of my head)

Table tennis!

And lots of umbrellas.

The umbrellas are going to be part of a big installation at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada Desert in August. For 2 quid you get to give an umbrella a name and personality. People at the festival then choose an umbrella, based on its personality, to shade them from the burning sun, and you can follow their progress online. And you get a vodka jelly too. Here is a mock up of how the final piece will look.

The main installation was held in the huge vaults of the dairy. The room was totally black when you entered, except for some tiny tiny lights strung from the ceiling. The gravel on the floor made your footsteps crunch, and every now and then, a low boom would emerge from the dark. Then, a bright light would flash from the centre of the room, illuminating a part of the space. As you moved around, you began to realise that the light flashes were in some way linked to the sounds, but not exactly, only sporadically. Then, two women in pink dresses started to sing a winsome song, weaving in and out of harmony. As they sang and walked around the room the lights would follow them, occasionally. Click on the photos to view properly




The finale of the day was a huge shadow puppet show, projected onto a floor-to-ceiling screen.

Mainly Brazil

Had an amazing time in Brazil. We started in Rio. It rained for most of the time, but we did manage to see some cool places like the church of our Lady of Gloria, the hugely glamorous Cafe de Colombo and the Niteroi Art Gallery, designed by Brazil's most famous architect Oscar Niemeyer.

Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Gloria

Cafe Colombo

MAC gallery Niteroi

We then flew to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil which was plonked in the middle of the coutnry by the aforementioned Niemeyer in the 1950s. It's visually impressive, but awful to walk around, being entirely designed for the life of the future as envisioned in the middle of the last century.

Cathedral in Brasilia

From Brasilia we took various buses deep into the country with its rust red earth and savannah scrub. First we went about 400km south west of Brasilia to Goias Velho, an 18th century town that was the capital of Goias state until 1937. F asked me to marry him over one of the most delicious homemade breakfasts I have had. Obviously I said "yes!".

The red red earth of the Platano

A selection of the homemade jams at breakfast

From there we went to Sao Jorge, about 240km north of Brasilia. The bus from Goiana dropped us at Alto Paraiso, about 40km from Sao Jorge, at 2.30am. Managed to order a taxi in Portuguese over the phone using a number written on the wall. The driver arrived 10 minutes later half asleep and drove us at top speed down a road lit only by the spectacular display of stars in the sky. When the tarmac ran out and he continued driving down a dirt track, still at top speed, I worried for a moment we might be entering into the realm of the Cohen Brothers. But no, he dropped us at our spotless pousada (hostel) and was more than happy with the 100 reals we were more than happy to give him.

Over the next couple of days we visited the spectacular Vale De Lua (valley of the moon) - an ancient river that runs through rock formations that look like modernist sculptures - and went for a guided walk in the Chappadas national park. We swam in gorges, avoided being bitten by tarantulas and stepping on tiny scarlet poison arrow frogs, and ate a lot of crisp sandwiches (all there was in the shop).

Vale de Lua

Can you spot us in this picture? (click to enlarge)

We flew back to Rio and spent our last 4 nights in a crumbling-on-the-outside but beautiful-on-the-inside guesthouse on the road between the party district of Lapa and the faded bohemian grandeur of Santa Teresa.

Our hostel in Rio

The Santa Teresa tram