“It’s about overcoming obstacles in any way you can”

While living in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza where problems abound with overcrowding, unemployment and a lack of education, Mohommad and Abdallah escape through the artform of Parkour within their outdoor environment which teaches them the physical and mental discipline of overcoming obstacles.

This short documentary called Free Running Gaza from the Artscape program at Al Jazeera follows the young men as they work on their latest video for their YouTube site as well as explain and demonstrate how parkour allows them to feel free and as if they have been “transported to another world.”

image via flickr/rajaaonline

So often I am captivated by art purely by process and Judith Braun‘s latest technique is especially fascinating. With fingers dipped in charcoal, she draws patterns directly on the exhibition walls that have a very unique feel – full of personality in such simple strokes of gradation that move like sound or water.

Braun’s latest installation in Vienna at Galerie Andreas Huber:

images via Judith Braun

The world as it is today is in many ways an alien landscape from what it once was many years ago. Industry has cut right angles and sharp edges into the earth and new materials and technologies have created unnatural forms. The spaces that are leftover are often unwordly, even disturbing. And yet the very same spaces can be intriguing and even beautiful.

After going through some old photographs recently of an area which has been greatly transformed to the point that it doesn’t even resemble nature anymore, I’m reminded of a photographer that I particularly enjoy, Edward Burtynksy. The Canadian photographer has built a career based on examining these very spaces – the landscape which has been transformed by industry. In Burtynksy’s own words:

I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

There is also a great audio interview with Edward Burtynsky from LensCulture about his work in China. And of course, definitely check out the 2006 feature-length documentary, Manufactured Landscapes, on the work of Burtynsky and as well as his travels through China while shooting the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution.

images via Edward Burtynsky