Network Node
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Name:
Astrig Akseralian
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City/Place:
Cambridge
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Country:
United Kingdom
CURATION
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from this node by:
Matrix
Life & Work
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Bio:
From a young age I have always had a desire to draw and wanted to be a potter. I had no doubt of my direction in life and have always pursued an artistic career. I studied Ceramics in London at the Central School of Art and Design and gained a BA Hons degree. After leaving college I ran a ceramics studio for some years in London, selling my work across the country to various galleries and shops. I also had a stall selling my work in Covent Garden artists' market.
After some years I decided on a career change, taking a job in the film industry at the Jim Henson Creature Shop where I worked as a freelance painter and art finisher. Over the next 25 years I worked in many Creature Effects and Prosthetic Make-up departments.
A fascinating job which was always challenging and one which took me to many locations around the world. I enjoyed the range of work and the fine detail and finish which was required, as well as the fun of working with some very talented creative people.
Since leaving the film industry and moving to Cambridge to live with my partner Nick, I have returned to my own work, rediscovering the freedom and pleasure in independent creativity. Being able to pursue my own artistic train of thought feels like a great luxury.
In my present work I am exploring mixed media and for me that currently consists of acrylic paint, pastels, charcoal, gesso and graphite. I enjoy experimenting with these and other materials and also with a mixture of surfaces. I have always taken a spontaneous approach being interested in trying to capture movement and energy in what I am viewing. Wherever possible I will work directly from my subject although I also work from sketches in my studio in the garden at home.
I hope you’ll enjoy browsing through my website showing past and most recent works. Please contact me if you have any queries.
What's Been Happening?
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I. IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS BRAZIL: "The time has come for these bronzed people to show their worth..." (Assis Valente)
Quincy Jones>Alfredo Rodriguez>Munir Hossn>Roberto Mendes>Alumínio & João Saturno
II. AND THE MISSION (THE OPEN WORLD)
III. AND THE ECONOMIST
Matrix team-member Darius Mans, Economist (PhD, MIT), president of Africare (largest aid organization in Africa), presents Africare award to Lula (2012). From 2000 to 2004 Darius served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola, leading a team which generated $150 million in annual lending, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment. Darius lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador, Bahia.
IV. LET THERE BE PATHWAYS!
"I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
— Susan Rogers, Personal recording engineer for Prince at Paisley Park Recording Studio; Director, Music Perception & Cognition Laboratory, Berklee College of Music
"Many thanks for this - I am touched!" — Julian Lloyd Webber
"I'm truly thankful... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)" — Nduduzo Makhathini, Blue Note Records
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!" — Alicia Svigals, Klezmer violin, Founder of The Klezmatics
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))" — Clarice Assad
"Thank you" — Banch Abegaze, manager, Kamasi Washington
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made evolved...
...all essentially cut off from the world at large. But after 40,000 years of artistic creation by mankind, it's finally now possible to create bridges closely interconnecting all artists everywhere (having begun with the Saturno brothers above).
Curate anybody in here. You appear on their page. Anybody in here curates you, they appear on your page...
...plugged into a superpower: the small world phenomenon.
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
And by extension, to within discoverable reach of everybody everywhere on the planet.
Small world curation is the Matrix's unprecedented innovation.
Because 40,000 years is a long time to wait.
And if all art is discoverable from everywhere, then Brazil's is too.
"The time has come for these bronzed people to show their worth..."
(Music by Assis Valente. Clip by Betão Aguiar. The Matrix was built in Salvador's Centro Histórico above, incorporating these marvelous people.)
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof.
Nowhere else but here. Brazil itself is a matrix.
