Liberatum will hold it’s first Hong Kong International Festival & Summit from 27th-29th April 2012. Liberatum Hong Kong will bring together international cultural icons, creative leaders and acclaimed artistic minds to Hong Kong to connect them with their counterparts in Asia through an original and captivating programme. Liberatum aims to celebrate contemporary Hong Kong culture and the modern face of the city.

After the great success of Liberatum festivals in different parts of the world including Istancool in Istanbul, Liberatum’s founder and artistic director Pablo Ganguli and Liberatum co-founder and creative director for Hong Kong and Mainland China, Rosey Chan will bring leading artistic personalities from the world over to Hong Kong, with a programme aimed at captivating and opening global minds. Some of the participants confirmed to attend include legendary singer Marianne Faithfull, renowned American screenwriter and filmmaker Paul Schrader, Nobel prize winning author Sir VS Naipaul, Wing Shya, Rosey Chan, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Terence Koh, Neil LaBute and Mike Figgis among many others.

Liberatum Hong Kong promises to be a mesmerising festival of art, design, fashion, literature, film, music and ideas. Building on the achievements of the previous global festivals, our vision is to produce an awe-inspiring three-day cultural convention, featuring a diverse and stimulating programme, and further raising the profile of Hong Kong as a forward-thinking world city. Liberatum HK will enhance the reputation of Hong Kong as a great cultural city and pay tribute to Hong Kong’s cultural heritage. It will present an ambitious and original programme, which will aim to place Hong Kong firmly at the centre of the international cultural scene in 2012.

Claudio Parentela is an Italian jack of all trades, illustrator, painter, photographer, cartoonist, and journalist who has been active in the underground scene. His work has been featured in tons of magazines, comics and publications and exhibited in galleries around the world. I especially love his whimsical pop art montage collection.

Greatest Inspirations or Influences? 

My life inspires me to create work. Being an artist is wonderful work since I get to paint all day- in fact its what makes me feel alive. All the wonderful people I encounter every day are my unique source of inspiration.

Most interesting response to your work? 

Every response I receive is really important to me and my art.

Favorite websites, blogs, publications?

Too many to list!

What would be a dream project for you?

To continue painting and drawing.

How does living in Italy influence your work?

It’s not really important where I live.
Anything else?

Just have fun in everything you do!

 French electronic music lover living in New York,  Amaury Meunier, aka Momus, bought his first turntables in 2004 and started to actively collect and play house records in Paris. He just recently came out of the New York DJ closet. Although its been a fun ride so far with manly sets at BLK Market or Sheik n Beik, and disco nights at YMEE, Momus is currently developing original music productions, so we can expect to be hearing a lot more from this fresh talent. Stay tuned on his Facebook page for info on his upcoming gigs and other cool musical materials.

Greatest inspirations or influences

The first time you properly party really opens your ears to electronic music and weights enormously in ones music tastes ever after. At my first party,  this local guy W.A.R.R.I.O. was playing in a typical Parisian tech-house style – Freak n Chic – danceable and catchy but musically not too obvious, stuff like Schatrax, Spirit Catcher or DJ T. I still play this kind of sounds, and they actually sound fresher than ever in the middle of today’s deep house mania!

A weekend at Panorama Bar opened my ears a second time with some new house sounds: Perlon, Poker Flat, Innervisions, etc. Then, I got into more raw and analog things after digging into Detroit and Canadian labels like FXHE, Metroplex, New Kanada… Also, the wizards Ricardo Villalobos and Bruno Pronsato aren’t to be forgotten, they helped me understand the power of minimal.

I’ve always loved disco, and more precisely italo disco . Giorgio Moroder “The Chase”, Donna Summer “I Feel Love”, and Charlie ”Spacer Woman” are always in my ipod.

My biggest influences however are what I hear and see everyday: friends, weather, places.

Best or most memorable set you’ve done so far?
The later I play, the better.
The last ones standing are always the most receptive, and I am myself more “into it”.  Electronic music is subtle and more appropriate at an advanced stage of the night. Following that logic I think my best – and longest – sets are the ones I played in private after parties.

Highlights this year in music

• Art Department made a lot of noise this year, along with Visionquest and Crosstown Rebels.
• I recently discovered San Proper, he’s my little crush, a genuine and complete artist. The kind of guy who composes, plays and loves any kind of music as long as its good, check him out.
• The Parisian scene had a clear impulse this year as well with the birth of 2 very promising labels: Hold Youth  (by Seuil + Le Loup) and Makesense records.

Best collaboration you have seen so far

Kenny Glasgow and Jonny White. Art Department were unmissable this year, they’re the typical example of 1+1=3 kind of deal. Their nasty growling bass lines combined with disco-ish beats and some vocals talk to everyone: to the non-initiates and to the underground connoisseur, to the lovers of techno, house or disco and even to me the complaining French.
Cem n Rg and Clockwork are two very complementary and friendly duo that I closely witnessed rising, it’s good to see! It’s great when 2 people can understand each other and click around music like that, I hope I’ll find my binomial soon!

Best part about being in NY?

Diversity and dynamism are high on the list but I think it’s much easier to look at the worst part about being in NY: I’d say the absence of good cheap food, the polar cold those days and the monstrously loud firetrucks horns – this shit is seriously dangerous for the human ear! – Cockroaches are pretty bad too, but I kinda forgot them when I moved to Brooklyn!

Momus created a special winter mix  for us  so check it out! Thank you

Panda Park Limited Edition Art Prints

Limited edition Giclée print created using archival pigment inks and finest quality fine art paper.

• Ink: Epson UltraChrome K3™ ink.
  Paper: Hahnemühle German Etching 310 gsm. 100% alpha-Cellulose . White mould-made. Acid-free
• Print has a border to allow for framing. Frame and mat not included.
• Verification of Authenticity:
  Each print is hand-signed and numbered( i.e. 1/75)

©2011 Tang Yau Hoong

Phantosmia -all but the smell

Dillon Gallery exhibited scent sculptures developed by Christophe Laudamiel that express key moments in his perfumery life declaring scent is it’s own form of art.  The installation featured seven independent microcosms ( tents), each representing a specific olfactory trip: At Your Own Risk, Fear, Fragile, The Last Virgin, The Monkey and the Banana, Remembrance of Things Lost and my favorite- The Whip and The Orchid ( which reminds me of the air after rain in Phuket, Thailand).

Laudamiel says, “Each scent should be considered like a painting, a sculpture or a beautiful short story.” His crusade for a fully recognized and unleashed Perfumery -artistically, emotionally and academically- is brought under a new light in this groundbreaking experience.

The smell that hits the visitor as they enter the gallery is titled “The Remembrance of Things Lost”. The critical components that went into the production of the rich discharge were inspired by the life of Marlene Dietrich.

|HOLST + LEE| is a New York City based fashion collaboration between designers Natalie Holst and Rochelle Lee. Stemming from the South, both moved North to cultivate their life-long backgrounds in Art, Fashion, and Culture. The two met and flourished while working in the hub of New York’s nightlife. Upon meeting, they soon discovered they shared a creative passion, through which a strong friendship and unique artistic outlet was formed.

Drawing inspiration from a wide range of people, places, culture and materials |HOLST + LEE| hopes to create a unique brand that gives back to the things that inspire them the most.

Greatest inspirations?

Our greatest inspiration comes from our love of color and texture and the amazing women that we see everyday. We both have art backgrounds so we approach our pieces with the idea that each piece should make its own statement and invoke a certain feeling much like a painting does.

• There are so many fashion icons that we love and draw inspiration from, but right now we are looooving Iris Apfel. She’s everything we want to be.

Iris Apfel

• We’re digging Alexa Chung’s quirky-sleek individual style.
• And on a random note we love Barry Weiss from Storage Wars…….fashion icon!

Holst + Lee was born first out of a friendship and second out of a common love for things beautiful and passion for creating. Also we really wanted to wear cool $#!t !

We love nowness.com which has great videos and articles about all things cool. We’re kind of obsessed with fab.com right now. They have the best array of just stuff. And of course, like all girls and boys in Fashion, we grew up reading Vogue.

Most interesting place you have seen one of your accessories?

So far, on a bride’s head. She looked stunning.

Where can one buy your accessories?

Right now purchases are available through info@holstandlee.com. We will be in stores coming this Spring including Saks 5th Avenue, The Webster Miami, shopbop.com, and in the grand opening of the Cut 25 store in Soho.

Just that we’re super happy to be doing what we love and that people love the end result of that.

Totally obsessed with the new prints for We Are Handsome’s 2012 Collection.

The Secret Garden Zip Legging

The Lilium – Corset Bikini & The Majestic  Leggings

I really enjoyed  Myra Gallerie’s exhibition during Art Basel titled  ” Comunist Dictator Visiting Miami” by artist Pete Kirill ( 1974), who is based in Miami. Kirill is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied fine art and design. In 2000, Pete began collaborating with the Cuban music group, Sin Palabras in Havana, where he spent the next several years participating in cultural endeavors and gaining a unique perspective on the impact of Stalinist-style propaganda and dictator worship.

Inspiration
This first-hand experience of Fidel Castro’s cult personality and fear-driven regime sparked in him a fascination with closed societies that continues today. That fascination caused him to learn more about North Korea. In the last two years, Kirill has worked towards initiating a creative dialogue between hypocrisy, spectacle and threat all resident within the North Korean mystery.

Through traditional oil and illustration techniques, Pete’s “North Korean Series” investigates the relationship between communism and capitalism in a modern world – both the differences between, and the often ironic, similarities shared by these two dramatically different systems.

In love with the playful feminine collection with original artwork and print of Brooklyn based designer Margarita Saplala. The designer was born in Manila, Philippines, before moving to Chicago with her family at the age of 2, where she ultimately studied fashion design at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. After working as a freelance designer in New York for larger corporations such as Banana Republic, Gap, Guess and Halston Coats, she decided to pursue her own line in 2006.

It took 17 years before Margarita returned to Manila, and ever since makes regular trips to visit family and learn about the culture. The uniqueness of Margarita Saplala’s prints reflects her fondness for the colorful memories from her many trips to the Philippines. She loves playing with colors and she gets a creative feed from the environment during her visits, “ you see a lot of beautiful embroidery, colorful tribal costumes and Manila is just bustling with color” Margarita explains. “I always loved color and I mix my memories with new topics that interests me”.

Spring Summer 2012 Inspiration:

This collection is inspired by the magic hour. The of the day when the sun is set, but there is still light in the sky. The yellow fades and hues of pinks, oranges and blues are on the horizon. Abstract elements of the magic hour mied with island kitsch clothing result in a modern interpretation of tiki dresses and Hawaiian blouses. Blown up pineapple prints acquire a reptile texture, banana shapes create floral patterns, as repeated images of the horizon during the magic hour become hazy free flowing stripes. The silhouettes of the collection reflect the same kind of airiness captured by the prints.

Greatest inspirations of influences?

• My influences come from different places. One of my biggest inspirations come from forms and colors of nature. I also love looking at exotic cultures such as Southeast Asia and Africa. Their use of pattern play and colors is a constant interest to me.
• Some influential designers are Cristobal Balanciaga and Madame Vionnet for their ingenuity of how a garment is cut and constructed.

Favorite websites, blogs, publications?

I really enjoy the street style blogs. Seeing people’s personalities in what they choose to wear can sometimes be more interesting than what is on the runway.

I love film, and especially the new breed of fashion films. For fashion publications I read the ones that keep me updated on what is going on in the fashion world, as well magazines that feature fashion and photography that is a little off beat.

• Jack and Jil, Showstudio.com, Dazed and Confused, Elle, and Vogue

Fashion icons in your opinion?

I love women that can bring out their strength and individuality through their sense of style.

• Bianca Jagger, Chloe Sevigny, and Kate Moss

Ok maybe her performance sucked on SNL but I still really like Lana Del Rey ( LDR) and don’t understand why the internet is giving her so much beef, there’s been a lot worse on that stage. So instead of talk about her videos, I just want to share my obsession for flower crowns she’s made popular. I wonder how many girls will be rockin this look this year at Coachella?

I love this Cult Gaia Lana Crown