As you may have gathered from our previous coverage, a temporary pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival was inaugurated for the screening of Kanye West ’s debut short film Cruel Summer. The pavilion, with a design led by Shohei Shigematsu of OMA, is a raised pyramid containing a seven-screen cinema designed by West’s creative team, Donda. The pavilion is designed to immerse the audience in a space defined by seven screens of cinematic proportions (17′ x 17′, 17′x30”). Shot with a custom seven-camera rig in Qatar, Cruel Summer was envisioned for this space as a constellation of projections that wrap around the audience. Located along Palm Beach, the pyramid’s canopy is hemmed to open up a panoramic backdrop of Cannes and the Mediterranean while creating an effect of levitation above the red carpet. Filmgoers ascend into the pyramid along a continuous red carpet that widens into the 200 seat auditorium. The pyramid was open for two days of public screenings on May 24 and 25. Photography: Philippe Ruault Have a detailed look at the structure after the click. via OMA Related posts: » Kanye West’s ‘Cruel Summer’ Film Premiere in Cannes – Recap » Kanye West To Debut Short Film at Cannes Film Festival » Kanye West’s Cruel Summer Premiere at Cannes » Kanye West To Debut New Short Film ‘Cruel Summer’ in Cannes » Kanye West’s Paris Fashion Week Show Confirmed

Our contemporary notion of art generally endorses an abstract analysis of our daily realities and pillories any vestige of nonreflective and unfiltered criticism (pun intended). Even the more surprising and fantastic, that it is exactly the dull and candid hate the work “DIE GUILLOTINE” by Iman Rezai and Rouven Materne provokes from its online audience, that propelles the piece to what it is: a substantial reflection and justifiable comment on our modern democratic society. The two UdK Master Students built a giant polychromatic, toy-like yet fully functional guillotine, putting their online audience in the position to decide over a sheep’s life or death. Via online vote the spectator can become a mediate executioner or repriever of the animal. Or stay a detached bystander, of course. You can still vote today here . Words: Nathini van der Meer Read the rest of the article after the jump. To say that Rezai and Materne received harsh criticism for their work would be understated. Their youtube-clips as well as their personal facebook-pages where flooded with hate-mail and death threats, their private home-addresses where made public by strangers, within weeks the piece that was initially set up as a winking social experiment evolved into an issue of political dimensions. It is exactly this naturally occurring segmentation into perpetrator (vote yes) target-oriented activist (vote no) and furious lynch mob that elevated the work to what it is today: a 1,75 Million Euro artefact on the art market, recently sold to an American private collector. It is ironic, that all the frantic protest achieved nothing to amnesty the sheep or topple the project, which mirrors the powerlessness and impotency of any individual member of our democratic society. The colourful and dazzling guillotine (a comment on the visually bribing yet deeply rotten and dysfunctional nature of our medially governed social system) will come into use – or not – only two days from now. For more information read further, watch their youtube statement or be part of the vote on www.die-guillotine.com . – All images and film courtesy to Iman Rezai and Rouven Materne – Related posts: » Vans California Era Wingtip Fall/Winter 2010 » Huf Fall 2010 Footwear – The Genuine » Levi’s x Medicom Toy 1000% Be@rbrick » Huf Fall 2010 Footwear – Huf 1 » Bounty Hunter x fragment design Teddy Bear