Silent Rocco | Blog

… I’m just still occupied fighting evil unicorns. I’LL BE BACK SOON (after saving mankind) !!

Mark Jenkins is an American artist based in Washington, DC. Since 2003, he has been creating lifelike installations using a unique, cheap and pretty ingenious technique to assemble realistic clones of himself that he then sets up in different places in all over the world, often in a very provocative, sometimes even disturbing way. All he needs is some plastic wrap and some box sealing tape. There is also a special website that’s showing you how it’s done. The result is nothing short of brilliant. Just scroll down and have a look at some of his best works. And after arriving at the bottom of this post, after sharing, liking and leaving a comment, make sure to head over to Mark’s homepage to see many more of his fantastic installations. He even set up a fake living statue at THE European street-walkers’ patch for acts like these – Las Ramblas in Barcelona – and he obviously made quite some money (click the title image for a video). Now, enjoy the pictures. And to all my real living statue friends out there: Think about it. Read more

Étienne Decroux (1898-1991) – one of the most important people in the history of contemporary theater, “father” of the modern mime/pantomime and teacher of famous mime artists like Jean-Louis Barrault and Marcel Marceau – spent nearly all his life creating and developing a subgroup of physical theater that he called mime corporel dramatique; the dramatic corporeal mime. With this article, I don’t want to explain that art form in detail (Google can help you here), I rather want to give you my personal insights on it, what I think is interesting or important. Read more

Either I have been doing the robot for a very long time already. Or the extremely skilled film geek Krabaz from filmaton in Leipzig just perfectly knows how to recreate the VHS look & feel of the ’80s. Enjoy 27 seconds of a journey back to the days of charming video interferences, cheesy sci-fi rock music and silly soft porn.

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Since I’m still in the mood to show you stuff that really impresses me and since I totally wanted to see these last to headlines in a row, here we go with another little off-topic post. In 2009, I accompanied Marie Elisa Scheidt – an impassioned filmmaker and the person who stole my heart – to her screening at the DOK Leipzig, the oldest documentary film festival in the world. There we also watched a program of selected animated shorts. And one piece just blew me (and the whole audience) away. Since then, PLEASE SAY SOMETHING from the young and visionary David O’Reilly has been my absolute favorite short film with its unique style, its thought-provoking story and its strong emotional impact. For me, 10 minutes of animated perfection. Enjoy:

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I just finished the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. After reading the last sentence, I closed the book (a real one) and sat there – absolutely speechless. I love these moments; sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes or even hours. Brilliant artistic work can make that happen. And all my life, I’m searching for these moments. It’s hard to describe, but extremely wonderful to experience. It’s kind of the first raw and intuitive reaction of your inner self after a new terrific exploration. Cheap entertainment is easy, getting truly touched needs something special. That’s the difference of art and great art for me. Be it a song, a photograph, a movie, a theater performance – if it makes me speechless, it’s a winner and won’t leave my memory ever again. Read more

I guess, you all have seen one up to countless timelapse videos already. Short films of crowds running across the street, clouds running across the sky, the sun going up and down in no time and the moon doing the same. The world in fast forward. What looks stunning at first, can become boring after a couple of videos. But some time ago, I stumbled upon a special video which uses the beautiful effect of timelapse in a very unique and mesmerizing way. All you see is a male dancer wandering through a city. Sounds simple, looks spectacular. A nonverbal performance created in post-production. Personally, one of the best videos I’ve ever seen. Enjoy!

On December 07th, I had the pleasure to fly to Thailand for two weeks together with my metroccolis colleague and best friend Stefan Wabner. We were invited to perform on two street theater festivals – Street Show Bangkok and Street Show Phuket. And although I’m already back home for more than a week, I still feel blown away by all these fantastic impressions, happenings and audiences. I seriously had the best time of my life and all I can say now is: I want to go back, be part of this temporary paradise again in 2011. Read more

What you see above is my latest take on self-advertisement (something you should constantly try to master in your career as a freelancer). It’s a small decal for in- and outdoor use. I just ordered it and would now love to give you some insights on its creation process.

Short back story: In 2006, I already designed a decal which simply said “I’m your personal robot” in reminiscence of my Man Machines robot act with nothing on it but the sentence and the logo of my company. It was quite successful, people were sticking it on microwaves, mobile phones, laptops … and although not a direct ad for me in the first place, people loved it. But since I’m out of stock now, I thought about going one step further and came up with the new concept of having a blank space instead of the “robot” for several reasons: Read more