Lithuanian Animation

It's not Animation Week, but the popularity of those posts have prompted a new addition since I didn't have anything more interesting up my sleeve.  I was able to scrounge up some interesting animators from the small country, and even found some from one of my blog followers, Ruah Edelstein. 

Bombing of Poems

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I came across this on Calypso Edition's website months ago (the lovely cooperative press I have collaborated with for several months) and decided it was time to feature it.  I have spent the past few weeks writing more about politics while neglecting the cultural and artistic aspect of CEE.  This project, however, is a lovely conception of political connotations and artistic vision.  It is a healing and beautiful way to reconceptualize past events into a modern event of exuberance.  A Chilean art collective, Casagrande, has been running the project "Bombing of Poems" (Bombardeo de poemas) since 2001, when they bombed Santiago with poems.

Balkan News

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My RSS feed reader is slowly becoming larger than the newspapers I read.  I recently made it worse by adding Balkan Insights, which will supplement the six I was reading before.  I can't even keep up with some of them, so I simply browse headlines to keep myself sane.  This website is great and a fantastic addition to my feeds because I need some more Balkan news.  I give a full review after the jump.

Kosovo cont'd.

I came across this Eastern Approaches article today.  I found this development arresting considering my recent spotlight on Kosovo and this European Voice announcement last week.  It makes me wonder if perhaps canceling the talks was such a good idea.  The rationale behind canceling seems solid enough, but perhaps they could have made headway on the stamps and avoided a possible border showdown.  I can only speculate from my seat thousands of miles away, but the two events seems suspiciously correlated.  There's a lot of moving pieces in politics, but why has Kosovo taken such an interest in taking over those border controls mere days after the talks were canceled?  Was it to convince Serbia that it may not be the one in power, but rather economically dependent on Kosovo taking their exports?

A Bit of Fun

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I came across this link to Jacek Yerka's work.  He is a Polish artist.  I love the fantastic elements, very magical realism (which I am deeply in love with).  You can find more of his work here.

This was just to give you all a break from the stiffness of political discussions.  Pretty images always soothe the troubled soul.