Anupam Kher is all geared up for his next directorial venture, ‘Tanvi The Great’. Earlier this afternoon, he took to his IG handle to introduce his Director of Photography, Ms. Keiko Nakahara from Japan. Sharing a shot from the sets, he wrote, “Happy and Honoured to present the #DirectorOfPhotography of my directorial film #TanviTheGreat, Ms. Keiko Nakahara from Japan.Having worked with her for almost three weeks now I can see our story beautifully turning into reality. Jai Ho! 😍❤️🙏 #DOP #Cinema #Movies #Musical @anupamkherstudio”
Earlier, he shared that he has roped in Oscar winner MM Keeravani to craft the music of the film. Talking about the same, MM Keeravani shared, “I am thrilled to be a part of ‘Tanvi The Great’. Collaborating with Anupam Kher is like being yourself all the time. Work was never this much fun before”
M.M Keeravani is a recipient of Oscar Award and Golden Globe award for ‘Naatu Naatu’ song and many more acclaimed awards under his name. His musical brilliance brings in more anticipation for ‘Tanvi The Great’.Tanvi The Great is produced under Anupam Kher Studio.
A few weeks back, during a chat with ETimes, we asked the actor how he manages to remain so enthusiastic after doing 540 movies! Reacting to it, he said, “The most important thing in life is to have a sense of wonder. Because of the information available to you on google, the sense of wonder goes away. Google cannot give you knowledge, that can only come from living life. My competition is myself.”

Kher emphasised on the importance of not giving a lot of importance to oneself, “The most important thing is to not take yourself seriously. Even ‘one film wonder’ people take themselves seriously but I don’t take myself seriously.
You will never see my entourage. I am not saying people who have an entourage are wrong but I like to be light. I’m interested in people. I’m a people-oriented person and that’s what I put on social media – whether it’s my mother or someone selling a comb. Inspiring people is the best that you can give people.”

Can a person’s appearance define his or her identity? With this question we delve into the research of African-American artist Adrian Piper (New York, 1948), «too white for blacks, too black for whites,» from today, March 19, on view at PAC in Milan. Race Traitor is the first European retrospective devoted to the artist in more than two decades, and the exhibition features a large number of Piper’s works-lent by MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Tate, among others-that span sixty years of her career. Adrian Piper, a conceptual, minimalist artist and performer, investigates the complex mechanisms associated with racial determination and the history of mestizaje. As a female artist, in addition to racial and xenophobic issues, the artist gives back personal suffered experiences related to sexism and misogyny. But let us start at the beginning of the journey and explore the different techniques and themes that curator Diego Sileo wanted to bring together in this retrospective.

«What is “race”?» Agata Hofrichter asked Adrian Piper during an interview for the PAC catalog.

It isn’t anything. There is no verifiable thing, state, event or condition that is race. The term “race“ doesn’t refer to anything real. Rather, it’s a fantasy, like the Tooth Fairy, that people have used for various purposes of self-aggrandizement or self-condemnation, for roughly three hundred years.

Thus responded Adrien Piper, who has dedicated her life to the fight against racism, trying to eliminate the concept of “race” from her thinking. «To try my best to delete “race“ as a concept from my own thinking, replace it with empirically grounded concepts of ethnic and geographical origin. In conversation, I try never to use the word “race” without flagging it with the quotation marks gesture and rolling my eyes. I try never to describe other people with the adjectives “black” or “white,” which now strike me as racist insults pure and simple. I try to substitute terms that are more accurate, such as “pink,” “ivory,” “cream-colored,” “beige, ”mahogany,” etc. But in spontaneous conversation, sometimes the antiquated racist words slip out anyway because my mind has been so deeply programmed by them.»

The PAC’s itinerary-which brings together more than one hundred works including installations, videos, photographs, paintings and drawings-opens with Adrian Piper’s youthful works, which are able to offer the visitor a very precise temporal and cultural context. We are in the 1960s, the artist has not yet started art school but her attempt to look beyond the surface of things is already clear. With the “LSD paintings” Piper is looking for something else, later he will do so with philosophical studies, particularly those on the German philosopher Immanuel Kant with whom he shares the belief that true reality is not what we see. In other words, Piper seeks the noumenal world, which according to Kant is that plane of reality that exists independently of human experience.

Adrian Piper’s male alter ego

It is then the performances that highlight Adrian Piper’s activism. Think of The Mythic Being, her male alter ego who first appeared in 1973. He wears a mustache, wig, and sunglasses and will be recurrent in her performances until 1976. Piper’s goal is to explore the possibilities of the experience of someone with her own genetic history, that of acknowledged African descent, but with a gender and outward appearance different from her own. From ’76 onward, however, political awareness makes its definitive entry into her research, even entering media debates such as the one in ’91 that saw Anita Hill at the center and then triggered the start of the third wave of international feminism.

Concluding this introduction to Adrian Piper’s PAC exhibition is a piece of advice from the artist herself, responding to Agata Hofrichter’s question, «If the interested reader of this text asked you for one daily practice they can follow in order to erode racial discrimination, what would you recommend?»

I would suggest counteracting the pre-programmed impulse to generalize over large populations using the concept of “race“ with stubborn and persistent concentration on concrete particular individual humans. For example, whenever you catch yourself in the process of forming a judgment about “the blacks” or “Black people” or “the whites” or “White people” in response to the latest bad news about the entire human race, envision the particular coffee-colored or peach-colored or ivory-colored or mahogany-colored individuals you actually know; and ask yourself if that judgment in fact applies to them. If you don’t know any, or only associate with individuals of the same-colored skin as yours, you need to get out more.

The Race Traitor exhibition is open until June 9, 2024 at the PAC in Milan.

COVER: Adrian Piper, Everything #2.8, 2003 Fotografia fotocopiata su carta millimetrata, levigata con carta vetrata, sovrastampata con testo a getto d’inchiostro, 21,6 x 27,9 cm Collezione privata © Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA) Foundation Berlin

Have you ever missed out on witnessing a great moment just because it happened to quickly? Well, scientists in Canada have developed a revolutionary ultrafast scientific camera that might change that.

They believe this camera can lead to breakthroughs in fields like shock wave mechanics and medicine as it can capture images at a rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) per pixel or 156.3 trillion frames per second.

The swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography (SCARF) is a research-grade camera which has successfully captured ultrafast events like semiconductor absorption and metal alloy demagnetisation, Engadget reported.

The team is working with two companies, Axis Photonique and Few-Cycle, to develop commercial versions of SCARF which they have already described as “low-cost with low power consumption and high measurement quality compared to existing techniques.”

It can study micro-events that come and go too quickly for today’s scientific sensors.

Professor Jinyang Liang of Canada’s Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), led a research team that published a study in the journal Nature.

The study, which builds on a previous study, focuses on ultrafast cameras.

Typically, these systems use a sequential approach, capturing frames one at a time and observing objects in motion.

However, this approach has limitations, as Liang explained: “For example, phenomena such as femtosecond laser ablation, shock-wave interaction with living cells, and optical chaos cannot be studied this way.”

“SCARF overcomes these challenges,” INRS communication officer Julie Robert wrote in a statement. “Its imaging modality enables ultrafast sweeping of a static coded aperture while not shearing the ultrafast phenomenon.”

She further revealed that the camera uses computational imaging to capture spatial information by allowing light to enter its sensor at slightly different times, allowing it to capture “chirped” laser pulses at up to 156.3 trillion times per second.

The paper described that the camera pulled this off by “using off-the-shelf and passive optical components”.

Marlene Dietrich, 1936

Many of Huene’s subjects during this period were based at Paramount Pictures, including Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, Mae West and the director Ernst Lubitsch. Paramount was regarded as having a strong European sensibility and Huene likely felt at home among this coterie. Here, Huene’s lighting accentuates Dietrich’s sculpted features and prominent cheekbones

Promotion: the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) has announced the winners of its annual Concrete in Life photography competition that aims to highlight the “beauty and essential role that concrete plays around the world”.

The winners were picked from 21,000 entries submitted by professional and amateur photographers across the globe, with subjects ranging from skyscrapers, urban cityscapes and transport infrastructure to sea defences and rice fields.

The results were announced this week at the opening of a new exhibition at London’s Brunswick Art Gallery, where more than 100 photographs from the competition’s five-year history went on show for the first time.

The top accolade, Concrete in Life Photo of the Year, was awarded to Saeed Rezvanian for his black and white photograph of a boy flying a kite on the steps of the Teopanzolco Cultural Center in Mexico. Rezvanian received the grand prize of $10,000.

“My photo shows how concrete develops both artistic and functional environments in our lives. I was captivated by the children playing amongst the beautiful structures,” said Rezvanian. “It’s a great honour to win the Concrete in Life 2023 competition.”

The image received praise from the judging panel, with Digital Camera World content director Chris George describing it as “a beautifully framed image and a good use of black and white”.

A new award, the People’s Vote Prize, was introduced this year to mark the competition’s fifth anniversary. Decided by a public vote, the $5,000 prize was presented to Muhammad Murudin for his photograph of the Mandara Toll Road in Bali.

“This toll road is built on the sea that connects the city of Denpasar, Ngurah Rai International Airport and Nusa Dua in Bali,” explained Murudin.

“It is a great honour to be one of the winners of the Concrete in Life 2023 photography competition and show how concrete is an excellent link between people in my country.”

Submissions were divided into four categories, with a winner from each category also receiving $2,500.

Owen Davies was recognised in the Urban Concrete category for his photo of the Armstrong Rubber Building in New Haven, Connecticut, in the US.

Andre Hidayat Arrasuli’s image of the New Priok Container Terminal in Jakarta, Indonesia won the Concrete Infrastructure category.

Alexander Arregui Leszczynska was awarded the top prize in the Concrete Beauty and Design category for his image of the Maurerhalle lecture hall in Basel, Switzerland.

Meanwhile, A P Hari Wibowo was named the Concrete in Daily Life category winner for their photo of the Aquatic Stadium Gelora Bung Karno, also in Jakarta.

“Many congratulations to Saeed Rezvanian, and all this year’s winners. Their outstanding images highlight how concrete is so many things – strong and enduring, but also touching and beautiful, supporting our many lives across the planet,” said GCCA chief executive Thomas Guillot, who helped judge the competition.

“Now, with the public exhibition to mark five years of the competition, we hope as many people as possible get the chance to see for themselves just how impressive the images are.”

The Concrete in Life exhibition is open until 28 March at the Brunswick Art Gallery and is free to visit.

For more information about the Concrete in Life photography competition and to see the winning and shortlisted photographs, visit the GCCA website.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for GCCA as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.