32 h. ago São Paulo biennale review – chanting trees and hormonal humming create a cacophany of art

Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São PauloEverywhere you turn, there’s an installation making a total racket – but this overwhelming multi-artist sensory blowout comes to life when the images speak for themselvesMeditation and spiritual connection may be OK in small doses, but after three floors and 30,000 sq metres of darkened rooms, theatrical installations, altars and votive sculpture, more sound work than I’ve ever encountered in a single show, and a general encouragement to be moved, mesmerised and in touch with my spiritual side, my ears are ringing and I feel quite on edge.The São Paulo biennale, the second oldest art exhibition of its type in the world, takes the title Not All Travellers Walk Roads for its 36th edition, a line, which, with some irony, is from Of Calm and Silence, a poem by the Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo. In Cameroonian curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung’s show of 120 artists, this translates as imagining alternative forms of consciousness, invariabl...

Politics

32 h. ago São Paulo biennale review – chanting trees and harmonal humming create a cacophony of art

Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São PauloEverywhere you turn, there’s an installation making a total racket – but this overwhelming multi-artist sensory blowout comes to life when the images speak for themselvesMeditation and spiritual connection may be OK in small doses, but after three floors and 30,000 sq metres of darkened rooms, theatrical installations, altars and votive sculpture, more sound work than I’ve ever encountered in a single show, and a general encouragement to be moved, mesmerised and in touch with my spiritual side, my ears are ringing and I feel quite on edge.The São Paulo biennale, the second oldest art exhibition of its type in the world, takes the title Not All Travellers Walk Roads for its 36th edition, a line, which, with some irony, is from Of Calm and Silence, a poem by the Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo. In Cameroonian curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung’s show of 120 artists, this translates as imagining alternative forms of consciousness, invariabl...

Politics

6 d. ago UK creators including miracle coma survivor land spots on shortlist of 'Grammys of AI Music' awards

An awards ceremony celebrating music created by artificial intelligence has said they're using the technology to 'harness deeply human stories', with two UK content creators chosen

Events

1 week ago Frankenstein review – Guillermo del Toro reanimates a classic as a monstrously beautiful melodrama

Venice film festivalOscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi star as the freethinking anatomist and his creature as Mary Shelley’s story is reimagined with bombast in the director’s unmistakable visual styleGuillermo del Toro has created a movie about a grotesquely unnatural attempt to make a human being shocking in his physical strangeness but that’s enough about his film version of Pinocchio. Now Del Toro has written and directed a bombastic but watchable new version of Mary Shelley’s great novel and makes of it a stately melodrama, starring Oscar Isaac as the anatomist and passionate freethinker Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his creature: no passé neck-bolts or big fringey forehead, of course, and if you compare him with portrayals by other actors – Boris Karloff, Peter Boyle, Robert De Niro – he is, for all the picturesque prosthetic scars, the nearest this iconic figure has come to being a bit of a hottie.It’s an epic bromance between scientist and monster, both of whom speak wit...

Events

2 w. ago Inside dark world of online challenges as star found dead after '10 days of torture'

Warning: Distressing Content -A 46-year-old French influencer has died in the middle of a marathon livestream after being routinely subjected to violence and humiliation by his co-creators

Events

2 w. ago Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough review – a candid portrait of a literary one

Paul Sng’s documentary finds the Trainspotting author as funny, sharp and unrepentant as ever – from boyhood in Leith to globetrotting fame and a hallucinogenic trip in CanadaNo one would reject the title of national treasure more fiercely, but more good-humouredly, than Irvine Welsh. The brilliant Scottish writer and creator of Trainspotting takes centre-stage in Paul Sng’s documentary with just the same unassumingly athletic ease as in all of his other public appearances. For someone who has done as much drink and drugs and as many late nights as Welsh, he looks very good.This film is a great way to round off the Edinburgh film festival; Welsh is, after all, Edinburgh’s greatest living public figure. His 60s childhood in Leith and Muirhouse was followed by a spell in London, then twentysomething years back in Edinburgh during the 80s, studying at Heriot-Watt and working for the council, during which time he began to write. Continue reading...

Politics