Rainy mood

Illustration: Maaijke Middelbeek

The Golden Filter - Syndromes

Syndromes follows a young girl with mysterious talents that finds herself unwillingly entwined in an elite underworld that only the ailing wealthy are ever aware of. Syndromes features six original new songs. The music was written first. Grammy-winning Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli created the filmshort as a response to it.

Me or the?

Sometimes I wonder is it me or my imagination?
Are true occurrences part of living in a dream?
Fantasies become reality in my own creation
But they are not always what they seem

Voices are present just as an illusory
The inexplicable is something without a solid grip
Beauty is everywhere turns to be con-temporary
The art of it takes the mind on a sentimental trip

Though I try to get that train to the unconscious
Already bought a ticket to never ever whatever land
Travel along for answers avoiding the fractious
Knowing this is a journey without end



Poem: Maaijke Middelbeek
Photography: Laura Makabresku, Poland

Seabear - I'll build you a fire

Experimental Indie Folk from Iceland.

Analyse for the love of

I’d like to share a piece of me
My eyes, my lips, a thought or three
When you expect more well go search that key
The one that opens me up to get in more deeply
Than you can examine my cells thoroughly
Fly through my brain like a purposeful bee
Finally count my annual rings and tell me what you see
Because my heart I do not share for free

Poem: Maaijke Middelbeek

Wonderwall 1968

A miraculous, psychedelic and colourful movie with Jane Birkin.

Solitary moon

First you show me the moon
Now you leave me my skin bruised
My head and body filled with black holes
While you knew from the beginning
I could never beat your platoon


















Photo: MoonRiver by Ryan McGinley
Text: Maaijke Middelbeek

Dog-walking ground

Animation by Leonid Shmelkov
Собачья площадка

Water drawings

Life in amniotic fluid
Web of poison
Under my skin through my veins

Ink in water drawings: Maaijke Middelbeek

Swallow

Dear little swallow
Let’s fly out in the morning
Take me where the wind blows
us. Back, forth, up and down.

Dear little swallow
Flying over the sea
No matter where we’ll go
we’ll be coming home safely.

Maybe the true meaning of a swallow’s watching over me.

Dear little swallow
Don’t shed a tear
Rub two coins together
ensures wealth through the year.

Dear little swallow
Why feel so hollow?
We’ve come a long way
a little bit wiser every day.

Maybe the true meaning of a swallow’s watching over me.

Lyrics: Marielle Zijlstra
Painting: Jacek Galazka

Dreams from the Woods

Directed by Johannes Nyholm

The pilot for this shortfilm is a also music video for Little Dragon's Twice.. Mesmerizing music and images.

Corpus pellucid

Sketch: Maaijke Middelbeek

Dialogue

He: It’s so dark, where is the light?
She: I like it dark.
He: Huh?
She: We’ll be dancers in the dark.
No because your eyes don’t speak. Silence.
Instead you listen better, smell different, sense and taste more…
He: I don’t hear a thing.
She: Because you are not trying. I hear your breath, your heartbeat and far away some music. Shall I put on some music?
He: Ok what you have?
I’m starting to understand. I hear the wind blowing, the rain and darkness fall. Come closer? You smell nice and your hair is soft.
She: I think you smell like teen spirit… No, I’ll put on some classics. And you smell like fresh soap.
He: Just washed my hands.
She: Here feel my arm.
He: The goosebumps, wow. Are you cold?
She: No not all. It’s your breath, your touch… But why are you shivering?
He: Kiss me.
She: What?
He: Let’s dance in the dark.

Dialogue: Maaijke Middelbeek
Photo: Roger Deckker for Tank Magazine 2007

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Blue Leaves- Sóley

Beautiful songs from Iceland.
Check her out September 8th at Bitterzoet!

Hallelujah

Drawing while listening to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah...



Illustration: Maaijke Middelbeek

Portrait of a dark romanticist

"I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." Aubrey Beardsley



Aubrey Beardsley is probably the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era. The main themes of his later and more famous work are dark and perverse, with a grotesque erotica. His illustrations are as a rule drawn in contrasting black and white.

Beardsley produced extensive drawings for books and magazines and was also a caricaturist and political cartoonist, mirroring Oscar Wilde's irreverent wit in art. Beardsley was aligned with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and other English aesthetes, but the details of his own sexuality remain in question. He was generally regarded as asexual, which is hardly surprising, considering his chronic illness and his devotion to his work. Speculation about his sexuality include rumors of an incestuous relationship with his elder sister, Mabel, who may have become pregnant by her brother and miscarried. For sure is that his work is charged with eroticism.

Not only his drawings and short life were explicit. Beardsley was an outstanding public character as well as a private eccentric. Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair." Beardsley was meticulous about his attire: dove-grey suits, hats, ties; yellow gloves. He would appear at his publisher's in a morning coat and patent leather pumps.

Aubrey Beardsley, 1872-1898.

Text: Maaijke Middelbeek

I'll be your mirror

Love holds up a mirror where we see ourselves, the good, the bad, the beauty, the ugly, the truth and lies.

Photo: Boudewijn Rolff

Monogrenade - Ce Soir

Meet 'The Cucurbit'

THE CUCURBIT

Sometimes the troublemaker bothers me a bit
But you must love him, because he produces marvellous hits
He’s very smart because he reads a lot of lit
And always in good shape; long, slim and fit

To see whats going on you can follow his Twits
Last time I read he became friends with the worldfamous cousin It
And from the last money he bought a new strange car with a name; Kit?

On the stage he is like a flit
And his playings are full of wits
Let me introduce to you ‘The Cucurbit’!




Text & image: Maaijke Middelbeek

Money And Run

UNKLE feat. Nick Cave

Wing bolster beam

Illustration: Maaijke Middelbeek

Zoo

Reading your cardiovascular

Black, deep, far away
What do you see?
How do you play?

Questioning and absorbing clarifications, they get you like a batter
With strong precision you penetrate to the heart of the matter
You, always hungry to feed your brain
Even more when poison shifts through your veins

Nothing escapes your focussed blue eyes
You scan objects and occurings like professional spies
Your iris even widens when curiosity is growing and taking over
So I’d say no reason to stay sober

These obstinate features
Make you a most remarkable creature
Not only melancholic, but rather clear
So it’s time to pass that grey zone instead of keeping it near

You know exactly how to persuade and how to enchant
Your perceptive eyes and feral pilus promisses me a fierce romance.

Poem & illustration: Maaijke Middelbeek

Women are heroes

French artist JR is known for his X-large and extreme close portraits that are mostly exposed in the open air. His black and white photo's cover up buildings, roofs, stairs and nowadays even a bridge and a train. His new film 'Women are heroes' shows his latest covers and the process towards it. The stirring movie takes you through the slum areas of Kashmir, Rio, Nairobi, Phnom Phen and Monrovia to listen to the stories of brave and positive women - both young and old - all survivors of misery and war. These heroines were proud to pose for JR's camera and even more to dress up the environment with their enormous portraits, that often give them recognition or even a starstatus.

The faces and eyes of these real life models show their turbulent history, but also their strength and maybe even more the fun of live. With music from Massive Attack, amongst others, that works well with the changing atmosphere and accelerated images.



Text Maaijke Middelbeek

Horiyoshi III: The Skin Carver

Serpents twist over the shoulder amidst a cacophony of peonies and cherry blossoms; dragons breathe fire across a pectoral muscle; a tiger creeps over an elbow. The designs of Horiyoshi III, Japan’s undisputed tattoo master, come to life with every twitch and shudder of the skin. Born Yoshihito Nakano in 1946, Horiyoshi III had his epiphany when confronted with a Yakuza (Japanese gangster) sporting a full body tattoo—or “suit”—at a public bathhouse as a young boy. Inspired, he visited the studio of his later master, Horiyoshi I, for his own tattoo, and subsequently became his apprentice at the age of 25. Now based in the suburbs of port-city Yokohama, Horiyoshi works from a secluded, quiet atelier, crammed with skulls, Japanese Noh theater masks and even a dragon-print umbrella from Vivienne Westwood. His status as the most respected tattoo artist in Japan is confirmed by his adoption of his master’s honorific title, which he aims to pass down to his son, Kazuyoshi Nakano. (source: www.nowness.com)