Be good, Andy Warhol

copyright@Sarah

Andy Warhol's Pop-Show at Taipei

"When he finally 'arrived' - after he had gotten rich and became a star - Warhol manifested the typical syptoms of a poor-boy-made-good.

Typical symptoms of a poor-boy-made-good

"During the week, he took on the role of provocateur, but on Sunday, he crept back into church. Warhol donated alms to ensure himself a place in heaven, but was irresponsible in paying his employees and helpers.

"A consummate Scrooge who appreciated nothing more than the crinckle of a crisp new dollar bill. An artist who loved money so much that he even painted it. A pretty bourgeois who slept on pillows filled with crumpled greenbacks. A pack rat who could not let anything go, who checked every bit of trash for fear that somenone might comb through it and start selling the content as souvenirs. A peacock who let himself be chauffeured around in a Rolls Royce, all the while complaining about his financial troubles.

"And yet at the same time, Andy Warhol was an extremely creative spirit who left almost no field of art untouched. He was a writer and a poet, a film-maker and photographer, and the founder and publisher of the now-legendary magazine Interview."

Are you famous?

That is Hans-Michael Koetzle, the author of PHOTO ICONS, talking about Andy Warhol. And I loved it.

Warhol once said that:"In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." OK then. When is the future??? Warhol had succeeded achieving everything he wished to and the story developed in a rather different way.

Being a gay and a celebrity, Andy is popular - among his fellow artist friends or crazy fans who might dream to be rich and famous just like him. Yet his sexual-orientation is so disputable this this even has brought him enemies among whom was the guy who tried to end his life. Nonetheless, lucky Andy survived.

Being famous is dangerous.?.

Money-maker-Mr. Warhol

Warhol has been making money for his whole life, and as mentioned above, he loves money.

After he died at age 59 in 1987, mountains of pictures, antiques, and knickknacks that the social climber - forever plagued by insecurity about the future - had been auctioned. The ten-day auction in Sotheby's in NYC was a huge success. The auction house had underestimated the hammer price in almost every case.

Andy's ring, which was estimated at $2000 went for a final price of $28,000 and his candy jars with a market worth of around $2000, were sold for a total of $247,830. The entire estate got doubled over the estimated $15 million...

Warhol's friend Fran Lebovitz joked about Andy's possible reaction over this astonishing figure by saying "Andy must be furious that he is dead."

It was a happy ending, right?

Women Behind the Camera

copyright@Sarah

What does it feel like when you are doing the real job yet it is someone else who gets merits? Well, women behind the cameras experiece this everyday.

Women Behind the Camera is an independent documentary film featuring women who were and are working as camera women in film industry from over 100 countries. When the director was asked about the reason doing such a project, she said it was for herself and her fellow female colleges.

Prejudice towards women in social areas are prevalent, not mentioning in industries like film and journalists. When I set up my mind to be a photographer during my university years, my mentor Mr. Hong told me that to fulfill this dream may take away everything in my life. I thought he was just joking in a serious way. And it turned out that I was toally wrong, and the truth there is that I cannot break the glass ceiling all by myself.

According to a report carried out by Global Media Monitoring Project in 108 countries, women are still significantly underrepresented and misreprented in news media coverage.

This is not even a surprise.The report with a title 'Who Makes News' revealed that news media show significant gender bias with 46 percent  of news stories reinforcing gender stereotypes while  13 percent of news stories focused centrally on women.

This reminds me of many scenes and things. Like the girl I met on tube today, she was wearing a black gown covering her whole body except her bright eyes. Like my favourite novel Wuthering Heights' author Ms. Bronte had to publish her novel in a man's name. Well, prejudice has been exited for such a long time that a lots of women have already got used to it.

Put on your heels and let's fight. And things would change. According to the report, female reporters are responsible for 37% of stories compared to 28% fifteen years ago, adn their stories challenge gender stereotypes twice as often as stories by male reporters.

It is slow yet it is improving. When women behing the cameras could get the same reputation as their fellow male colleges, that would be the end of the story!

Mr. John Doe's inspiring talk

copyright@Sarah

Paul has arranged a visit with the Daily Telegraph for the whole class last Friday and it turned out to be an inspiring trip. 

Mr. John Doe (I do know the man's name yet he himself insisted being anonymous) from the Daily Telegraph has made a three-hour presentation on the British media giant in their posh conference room. And everybody there could feel the proudness in that man's chest.

Of course he should be - as a senior member of the best-selling broadsheet newspaper in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, being honest, the man's presentation was interesting - focusing on the group's business succuss and their smart way of boosting benefits fighting against world's economic downfall.

What I said about the "inspiring" thing is his sharing of British social hierarchy - although this maybe some kind of common sense to others living inside this society, it was totally a new concept to me.

According to this theory, residence of a society would be seperated into different layers: A, B, C1, C2, D and E. Each layer represents a certain life style.

Group A may be less than 1% of the total population yet they control over 60% of wealth and they are extremely powerful and influencial to the society. Best education.

Group B is not so influencial as group A yet they are rich too. Statistics show this group controls over 15% of social wealth and are well-educated.

C1 group could be whitecollars, who work hard and are relatively well paid. They have aspiration. They long for better life and social recognition. Well-educated as well.

C2 group are normally blue-collar workers - better salary compared to those white-collars yet less-educated. They live in contentment - with less aspiration and more desires to show off.

Group D usually refers to those manual workers, less pay yet get paid from a job.

And group E - who rely on social support to carry on living. People who live on pension or jobless students are typical representatives of this group.

However, this hierarchy is not stable - i.e. students may jump directly from group E to group B or C through continuous enhancing of self-accomplishment, and a wealthy general may lose everything after a political persecution. Things change.

And to me, this indeed, is the most beneficial knowledge of that day - much more meaningful than the rest of the talk on how sexual ads on their newpapers were reformed to fit in their conservative tone.

London students protest

Gina went missing yesterday for a while. And it turned out to be she has been staying at a police station in central London for the whole afternoon.

Why would she ended up there??? Well, Gina was mobbed. By a black guy/teenager during the students demonstration against government cuts on tuition fees.

Gina recalled that when the protest started at the very beginning, it was really a civil and peaceful one - with corperative university students and nice cops. Things changed when the parade arrived at Whitehall, where the real riot started.

A police car has been vandalised by some of the voilent protesters and two police officer were hurt. And Gina's phone was mobbed by a passing teen.

That was weird. Shouldn't the protest remain peaceful and harmless??? There must have something wrong - mobs rather than university students!!! Who are those people trying to make the protest bloody and dirty??? Should anything be done to prevent this happening again???

Well, shame on those who tried to make a fuss over this issue and those who just wanted to get other people's purses!!!

Bankers in the City of London

Rena and I have been out in the City of London for a whole day to interview people randomly on our group project and I have found something really interesting about bankers "surviving" there.

Our ideal trip started early in the morning - managed to arrived at the London Bridge around half past eight when bankers are rushing across to get to their destination - the City of London. We have taken a few marvelous shots of the flowing "homosepian" stream by the Thames River successfully, and we even tried to record women's heel sounds as well.

Following the rushing bankers, we have got to the financial centre of the country - although Canary Whalf is apparentlly more famous in the world today, we still cannot deny that London's reputation of being one of the three biggest financial centre, started right from this place.

We saw RBS, HSBC, BOS, BOE, BOC... and numerous other banks with their names written in different languages in totally novel shapes to me. Well, Hello, the City of London.

Rena and I started doing some vox-pops first outside a cafe shop with a blackboard in front of its entrance saying "the BEST coffee in east - by TIMEOUT London". Wow~ Then we assume that bankers would certainly love this east-BEST-coffee and we have set our camera there up.

And we did manage to finish a few... yet none of our interviewees were bankers. Why is that??? Wrong spot???

Definitely not... The reason for this is extremly simple! Bankers are busy!!!

Of course we did not take this phenonmenon personally. And we totally understood their rush yet we have complaint a lot about this afterwards. Both of us thought they don't even have proper lives.

Bankers in the City of London rush, in a really high step pace with "agony" faces. Next time when you come to the City of London, it is quite easy to identify bankers among commoners - they do not smile, they look at the ground, they think while walking... Oh no, while running. Yes, they run.

Actually they are nice people, some of them kept saying sorry after declining our interview requests and murmuring words like "I wish to but I really don't have even a minute..." as they flee-ing away.

Funny experience anyway. And I do feel sympathy for them. We need normal lives. Money is something yet not everything. At least normal lives offer us more chances and mood to smile back at people. :)

Irish lessons for the world

Although once known as Celtic Tiger for its strong economy, Irish government announced to accept outside financial help to tackle its economic deficit officially last Sunday.

Celtic Tiger requires help

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said: "We are now in a position to apply for assistance."

He also has confirmed that the country and the EU have agreed a financial rescue package.

Negotiations would be held in the coming days with the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to decide the final amount, which is expected less than 100bn euros (£85bn; $136bn) according to Irish Financial Minister Brian Lenihan.

The UK and Sweden have also offered direct loans.

Why the country is now in a mess?

The country’s economic growth - helped by low corporate tax rates – was mainly built around the property market.

However, house values in Ireland have suffered a dramatic collapse since 2008. Bad debts built up in the country’s main banks, leaving them with huge liabilities and needing bailing out by the government.

This has opened a huge hole in the Irish government's finances - which will see it run a budget deficit equivalent to 32% of GDP this year.

An alarm to booming economics

What lessons could booming countries like the BRIC four (Brazil, Russia, India and China) learn from the Irish crisis?

Economists warn China that its property bubble burst is in danger now as more houses are built in the country while people who actually cannot afford to buy loan from banks to purchase them. 

Harvard professor Kenneth Grove said that China’s economic recession would have a severe impact on the world’s bank system.

The Chinese government is planning to introduce a property tax to discourage property speculation and contain surge in home prices.

EU concerns

EU Finance Commissioner Olli Rehn said the loans would help preserve the stability of the eurozone - the group of 16 nations using the euro as their common currency.

EU officials fear Ireland's financial problems might spread to other eurozone countries with large budget deficits, such as Spain and Portugal.

The EU and the IMF launched an 110bn euro rescue programme for Greece in May after the government was faced with the prospect of bankruptcy.

One day in Christmas Fair

copyright@Sarah

Thanks for Stephy's camera <3

Exhausted after one day's wandering in a Finnish Christmas Fair. Even though happiness is still there: being free to play, to say and to enjoy. Reminded me a lot about my hidden homesickness. Friends get together so that they could support and feel each other. Oh, I had a smoked reindeer sandwich today as my lunch and! It is really something! REINDEER!
HA!
And lolli pops there are nice too~ Love them!