Jul 31, 2006

The River Fountain, Place de la Concorde. (Eiffel Tower in the background.) Yes, I’m inordinately fond of photographing things with the sun behind them but the cloudscape was especially attractive on this afternoon. There wasn’t as much visible water coming off the fountains as there had been previously but the spray was most welcome on […]
Jul 31, 2006

The Obelisk, Place de la Concorde. I love the way the thin layer of tarmac in the Place has been worn away by the traffic to reveal the cobblestones beneath. The Paris Obelisk seems more impressive than Cleopatra’s Needle, not least because of its dramatic setting and the way it’s aligned with the Tuileries promenades […]
Jul 31, 2006

The 2006 Jack Trevor Story Grand Prix was decided on Friday afternoon at L’Horizon, rue St Placide in Paris. The sans precedent prize can be seen above. After much deliberation the judges decided that Mr Steve Aylett was a worthy recipient of this most ingenuous of literary awards. Mr Aylett now has to spend the […]
Jul 25, 2006

77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno, Laforet Museum, Harajuku, Tokyo. Brian Eno is in the latest Wire talking about his forthcoming DVD-ROM, 77 Million Paintings. He also mentions coining the term “generative music” in 1995 to a resounding silence. 77 Million Paintings continues the generative project: This will be available later in the year as […]
Jul 24, 2006

Photography by Eugène Atget (1857–1927).
Jul 24, 2006

For once the hyperbole about a new band is justified. Through the Windowpane is a great album.
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Jul 24, 2006

Thomas Pynchon – A Journey into the Mind of [P.] (2001) Written and directed by Fosco Dubini and Donatello Dubini Music by The Residents Language: English Runtime: 96mins “Things are not as they seem.” In US writer Thomas Pynchon’s case, this is a mantra, cornerstone to a life and labyrinthine oeuvre freighted with ceaseless speculation. […]
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Jul 24, 2006

I’ll be in Paris this week so some French-related postings are in order. Michel Houellebecq’s HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (which I still haven’t read) has been in the news again recently, with a number of reviews appearing in UK newspapers and magazines, most of which present the by-now rather tired spectacle of […]
Jul 23, 2006

Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The men with swords archive
Jul 23, 2006

Cartoon by the wonderful Steve Bell. I keep resolving to stop posting so much political stuff, there’s enough of that elsewhere and generally I’d prefer not to have the names, faces and actions of these miserable wretches polluting my web space. This was too good to miss, however. And this piece of polemic makes a […]
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Jul 23, 2006

New Thomas Pynchon novel to be released Mysterious author’s first novel in almost a decade comes out in December NEW YORK—Thomas Pynchon fans, the long wait is apparently over: His first novel in nearly a decade is coming out in December. But details, as with so much else about the mysterious author of such postmodern […]
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Jul 22, 2006

This new Savoy volume was an exhausting task, 608pp with illustrations on nearly every page. The book is another study of Savoy’s long career as publishers with many digressions examining the various maverick and often unsavoury characters that have fuelled David Britton’s books and the wider Savoy corpus, from real and imagined fascists to pulp […]
Jul 21, 2006

Left: The scarce first edition of the Hamlyn novelisation. From the Coulthart library. I realised some years ago that all my favourite films have great soundtracks, almost without exception. Something about the blend of drama and well-chosen music really excites me, so it’s no surprise that The Wicker Man would appeal, having as it does […]
Jul 21, 2006

The international committee to choose the winner of the Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup has at last been selected. The jury consists of Mr John Coulthart (UK), M. Jean-Luc Fromental (France), Mr Michael Moorcock (UK), Mr Martin Stone (France) and Mr Jeff VanderMeer (USA) who will meet to confer in the course of the following […]
Jul 21, 2006

Sparsely-attended but very worthwhile performance at the Unitarian Chapel this evening by Steffen Basho-Junghans (above) and Danny Saul (below).
Jul 19, 2006

Arthur magazine‘s recent feature on life in the Middle East by Daniel Chamberlin was an excellent mix of travelogue/reportage. Iraq and the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict aside, the region was fairly peaceful last year. How quickly things change. This is from the latest Arthur email bulletin. FROM ARTHUR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR DANIEL CHAMBERLIN: Last summer I went […]
Jul 19, 2006

Diminuto, 7″x5″x6″ (2004) Antique hardware, bone, leather, cast painted glass eyes. Lupe, 11″x6″x16″ (2005) Antique hardware, brass, bone, glove leather, painted wood ball, glass eyes. Gorgeous stuff, reminds me of some of Jan Svankmajer‘s sculptural works (which are possibly an inspiration) but with an added dimension of Victorian playfulness. Via Boing Boing.
Jul 18, 2006

“The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient.” General William Westmoreland, commander of US military operations during the Vietnam War, speaking in Hearts and Minds (1974). Yahoo News, Mon Jul 17, 2006, 4:47 PM ET UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – US Ambassador John Bolton […]
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Jul 18, 2006

It’s the same every year, the weather gets hot (30C today) and out come the Main CDs, although the march of progress has meant importing them into iTunes this time round. For some reason Main’s Hz collection (6 EPs, later a double-disc set) is especially suited to warm temperatures, partly due to remembrance of them […]
Jul 17, 2006

Alaska Melting, vinyl-only release by my favourite electronic artist.
Jul 16, 2006

The Netherlands celebrate four hundred years of Rembrandt’s genius. While looking around for links I noticed this story for the first time: Margaret S. Livingstone and Bevil R. Conway, neurobiologists at Harvard Medical School, say Rembrandt’s many self-portraits reveal that his eyes are focused in slightly different directions, depriving him of the “stereo” effect that […]
Jul 16, 2006

The Garden of Instruments by Paul Schütze and Kevin Pollard.
Jul 15, 2006

Poster design by Albin Grau. Friedrich Murnau’s Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922) isn’t the first horror film but it’s certainly the first truly effective one which is why it’s been so influential over the years, inspiring a remake by Werner Herzog (1979), the vampire’s appearance in Salem’s Lot (1979), Coppola’s Dracula (1992), and a […]
Jul 15, 2006

Manikins (1951). Male Nude (1954). Good gallery of his often enigmatic paintings here. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The gay artists archive
Jul 14, 2006

Wasted talent John Patterson Friday July 14, 2006 The Guardian If you’re making a serious movie about drugs, it doesn’t hurt to assemble a cast that knows whereof it collectively speaks. And for his adaptation of A Scanner Darkly, Philip K Dick’s unsettling 1977 masterpiece about drugs, fractured identity, paranoia and betrayal, Richard Linklater has […]
Jul 14, 2006

Hajime Emoto creates very convincing imaginary creatures, all with a slightly desiccated appearance, that range from the strikingly demonic (like the example above) to more mundane fish, amphibians and plant life. Site is Japanese-only but that don’t let that prevent you from browsing. Via The Nonist. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The fantastic art […]
Jul 14, 2006

New York Series, 57th Street, 8 Hours (2005). Atta Kim: On-Air International Center of Photography 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, New York June 9 through August 27, 2006 This exhibition presents a selection of recent works from the ON-AIR Project by the Korean contemporary artist Atta Kim (born 1956). For these large-scale, […]
Jul 13, 2006

Photography by Ekmel Ertan & Murat Germen. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The panoramas archive
Jul 12, 2006

Some of the honourees of America’s National Design Awards tell the President’s wife why they won’t be attending a special gala breakfast at the White House. Dear Mrs. Bush: As American designers, we strongly believe our government should support the design profession and applaud the White House sponsorship of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. […]
Jul 11, 2006

Love by Hassan Massoudy. Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East The British Museum 18 May–3 September 2006 Room 35 Admission free Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East is an exhibition based largely on the collections of the British Museum complemented by a number of loans. It demonstrates the imaginative […]
Jul 10, 2006

These are people after my own heart as this is something I’ve been doing for years with jukeboxes. Usually the challenge was to find the weirdest thing in the whole selection of records which would often be a B-side of some sort. “Wyatting” seems a rather unfair name for something that’s annoying people (although if […]
Jul 9, 2006

In the vestibule, candles are arranged in the shape of the constellation Aquarius. Hotel Tressants in Menorca ArchitectureWeek 21 January 2004 When Italo Calvino wrote his 1972 novel about magical cities based on places he imagined Marco Polo might have visited, he was probably not thinking specifically of the Spanish island of Menorca (Minorca). The […]
Jul 8, 2006

Photo of JLB by Pepe (José María) Fernández. At the ever fabulous Ubuweb. Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man (2000) 260MB (AVI) Directed by Philippe Molins Written by Alberto Manguel Runtime: 47mins Language: English Previously on { feuilleton } • Borges in Performance