Saint Etienne
Brit electro-popsters Saint Etienne are back with a vengeance, whizzing around the globe in between studio sessions for their next album, due out in the year 2000. The only band in the world who could come up with a song titled ‘Kofi Annan’ (no wonder their ‘Like a Motorway’ is the call sign for the news on Yugoslavia’s rebellious B-92 radio station, closed down by Slobodan Milosevic) are releasing their single ‘Lover Plays the Bass’ all over the place, in between a US album and a fan-club release. And In the middle of all of that, they’ve even managed a New York date to keep the college crowd sweet on them.
Zeffirelli’s filmobilia
Whether or not you like his films, Franco Zeffirelli is one of the most famous names in Italian cinema, and this exhibition currently showing in the Sala d’Arme in Palazzo Vecchio in his home city of Florence pays tribute to his career. Included amongst the 100 displays are a large number costumes from his films, such as those worn by Maria Callas and Anna Magnani and from the celebrated ‘Brother Sun, Sister Moon’. Opera is another field in which he is prolific and sketches and designs from such productions as ‘Aida’, Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘La Traviata’ are on display.
The Mind on the Edge (of the New Centres).
In this show, five artists from the Asian Pacific Rim look at globalisation’s brutal effects on their region. The buildings of Kuala Lumpur, reconstructed in three-dimensional photo-collages by Liew Kung Yu, become laughable objects. Hernan Chong and Cao Fei, from Singapore and Guangzhou respectively, use digitally produced cinematographic storyboards to describe the exciting, if confusing experiences of the new urban generations. Chen Chieh-jeh scans himself into photographs of important moments in recent Chinese and Taiwanese history while Beijing-based Zhu Jia presents metaphorical video scenes of everyday life.
