Steampunk overloaded!

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Yes, it’s the “S” word again, and if there was any doubt that this has been the Year of Steampunk here at Coulthart Towers, look at these recent works. And this is by no means everything I’ve been doing in this area, there’ll be further announcements later on.

The covers for KW Jeter’s novels are a pair of reprintings from UK publisher Angry Robot whose books will shortly be available in the US and Canada. Jeter is now famous—infamous, perhaps—for having given the word “steampunk” to the world in the early 1980s. This was intended as a jest after he and a couple of other writers (including a favourite of mine, Tim Powers) had written a number of science fiction novels set in the 19th century; like many light-hearted neologisms, it gained a life of its own. Angry Robot are reissuing two of these early works as a result of the ongoing steampunk explosion.

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Morlock Night (1979) is a pulpy affair which sees the Morlocks from HG Wells’ The Time Machine using the Time Traveller’s vehicle to return to Victorian London and wreak no end of havoc. Infernal Devices (1987) is a rather more substantial confection involving a great deal of clockwork mechanisms (for once the clock parts are justified!), automata, fish people, and a device capable of destroying the earth. I’ve been producing a lot of engraving collage à la Ernst and Sätty recently but the technique seemed especially appropriate here as a means of illustrating works which themselves are collages of Victorian motifs.

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Meanwhile, over at Tachyon Publications, there’s this cover for another Victorian adventure, two in fact, from master beserker Joe R Lansdale. Flaming Zeppelins combines a pair of comic adventures, Zeppelins West (2001) and Flaming London (2006), which feature a host of notable figures including Mark Twain, Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody…and a talking seal. Publication date is November 1st.

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Then from Tachyon in mid-November there’ll be Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, a 430-page anthology edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer which includes fiction and non-fiction from William Gibson, Caitlín R Kiernan, Jeffrey Ford, Cherie Priest, and many others. Also a comic strip, copious illustrations and a very full-on interior design from yours truly of which I’ll only show you the above page for the time being. Yes, that’s a mechanical ostrich but if you want to know what it’s doing there you’ll have to read the book. More about this later. And more later about The Steampunk Bible to which I’m also a contributor, a glossy, full-colour guide to the entire sub-culture which will be published next year by Abrams. By the time that appears I’ll probably be sick of the sight of clockwork parts, dirigibles, florid typefaces and Victorian decoration; I’ll be needing a good dose of Helvetica and Josef Müller-Brockmann minimalism to calm down.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Skeleton clocks
Vickers Airship Catalogue
The Air Ship
Dirigibles
More Steampunk and the Crawling Chaos
La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
The art of François Schuiten
Steampunk Redux
Steampunk framed
Steampunk Horror Shortcuts
The Airship Destroyer
Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

Naked Bodies, Naked Souls and Mind Pixels

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Pictures by Daniel Barkley (left) and John Dugdale (right).

Two exhibitions worthy of note for those in the New York area. Jan Kapera of JKK Fine Arts notified me about a new show he’s curated, Naked Bodies, Naked Souls, currently running at the Loft Gallery in the Delaware Arts Center,
Narrowsburg, NY.

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The realm of ‘Naked Bodies, Naked Souls’ is a very private, personal world; a world of artists’ secrets, dreams, feelings, and deepest emotions,” says curator Kapera. “They have expressed the unexpressed—they have found the way to show spiritual and mystical states of soul in dream-like, symbolic images.

This exhibit features the work of 16 international artists: Daniel Barkley (Canadian), Luigi Casalino (Italian), Joanna Chrobak (Polish), John Dugdale (American, NYC), Barbara Falender (Polish), Michel Henricot (French), Michael Kuch (American, MA), Tom Misztal (American, OR), Aleksandra Nowak (American, NJ), Darek Nowakowski (American, NYC), Egidijus Rudinskas (Lithuanian), Krzysztof Skorczewski (Polish), Lubomir Tomaszewski (American, CT), David Vance (American, FL), Damian Wojtowicz (Polish), and Piotr Woroniec (Polish). (More.)

Naked Bodies, Naked Souls runs to September 4, 2010. Thanks to Jan for the photos!

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Water Spike (2003) by Daina Krumins.

And by chance this weekend I happened to see news of a forthcoming exhibition of work by artist and filmmaker Daina Krumins, Mind Pixels, at the Barron Arts Center, Woodbridge, NJ.

The Barron Arts Center is located at 582 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge. Admission is free and everyone is welcome to attend. The “Mind Pixels” exhibition features photomontages, sculpture and films by surrealistic artist Daina Krumins. The exhibit opens on Aug. 21 and runs until Sept. 15. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 2-4 p.m. The public is also invited to attend the opening reception on Sunday, Aug. 22 from 2-4 p.m. Light refreshments will be served and reservations are suggested. (More.)

As part of the exhibition three of Krumins’ very strange animated films will be given a rare screening this Thursday, August 26. One of the three is Babobilicons, her epic filming of the activity of slime moulds and stinkhorn mushrooms. I’ve been intrigued by the sound of this for several years (see an earlier post about the film) but have yet to see it so anyone in Woodbridge is in a fortunate position this week.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Babobilicons by Daina Krumins
Saint Sebastian in NYC

Surrealism, graphic design and Barney Bubbles

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Poster for Mademoiselle (1970) by Franciszek Starowieyski.

Work has cranked into overdrive this week so posting will no doubt be minimal until some semblance of normality is restored. I can however mention two essential exhibitions which will be running through the forthcoming months.

Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, is curated by design writer Rick Poynor and runs to 24 October, 2010. On display is an intriguing mix of work from familiar names such as Jan Švankmajer and Eva Švankmajerová, poster artist Franciszek Starowieyski, graphic designers Vaughan Oliver and Stefan Sagmeister, and many others.

Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design uncovers the presence of an alternative tradition in graphic design. The Surrealist movement of the 1920s and 1930s focused on literature, painting, photography and the object, and the Surrealists’ publishing activities provided only hints of what a fully conceived Surrealist graphic design or typography might look like. Many of the most suggestive early examples came from Czechoslovakia, where Surrealism would become a lasting influence. Subsequently, Surrealist ideas and images had a profound impact on image-makers in every sphere of art and design, and by the 1960s the effects of Surrealism were widely felt in international graphic communication. Uncanny traces this intermittent line of development up to the present.

There’s further information at the gallery site including a page of related works.

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And launching later in the year is Process: The Working Practices of Barney Bubbles, a very timely exhibition of the designer’s work at Chelsea Space, London. Bubbles biographer Paul Gorman is the curator and the event will also see the launch of a second edition of his study of Barney’s life and work, Reasons To Be Cheerful.

The show will contain many never-before-seen items drawn from private collections, including student notebooks, working sketches, original artwork, paintings, books and photography. These were the raw material for videos, record sleeves, t-shirts and posters created by Bubbles for such performers as Ian Dury, Hawkwind, Elvis Costello, The Damned and Billy Bragg (who is contributing a one-off rug with a rendition of the designer’s Masereel-quoting cover for his album Brewing Up With).

Process opens on September 14 and will run to October 23, 2010.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Franciszek Starowieyski, 1930–2009
Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films
Barney Bubbles: artist and designer

Rammellzee RIP

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Rammellzee.

I consider that immortality is the only goal worth striving for: immortality in space. Man is an artefact created for space travel.
William Burroughs, 1982

We have to leave this tasteless mould of a planet.
Rammellzee, 2004

It’s fitting that a post about the late Rammellzee should follow one about Brion Gysin even if the circumstances aren’t those one would wish. Before he was involved in music Rammellzee was a graffiti artist and the convoluted mythologising which he later wove around the art of the graffiti tag—and his obsession with words and their meaning—bears comparison with Gysin and Burroughs’ similar mythologising, their theories about the viral origins of language. Look at Gysin’s calligraphic paintings (which he based on Arabic script) and you’ll see an exact analogue with the stylisations of graffiti taggers.

Given all of that, it’s even more fitting that Rammellzee was one of the voices chosen by Bill Laswell to set beside William Burroughs on Material’s finest forty minutes, Seven Souls, in 1989. I knew that voice from the great 1983 single he made with K-Rob, Beat Bop, one of many highlights on the best of the Street Sounds compilations, Electro 2, so it was a pleasant surprise finding it on the album which remains the best musical work that Burroughs was involved with. Rammellzee’s subsequent recordings with Laswell and others evolved an elaborate strain of what’s now known as Afrofuturism which he extended into paintings, collages and sculptural work. When you look at his detailed, science fiction philosophies, or at the underwater mythologies of Drexciya, it’s evident that there’s a rich seam of the African-American imagination which exactly parallels Burroughs’ visionary work. Visionaries right now are in short supply; we can’t afford to lose another.

Rammellzee: The Remanipulator versus Syntactical Virus by Peter Shapiro (1997)
No Guts No Galaxy—Rammellzee & phonosycographDISK (1999)
Rammellzee: The Ikonoklast Samurai by Greg Tate (2004)

Previously on { feuilleton }
Street Sounds Electro
The art of Shinro Ohtake

Weekend links 20

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Transfiguration (1952) by Sulamith Wülfing.

• Observatory posted photos of its Lovecraft art exhibition; see if you can spot my pics. Related: Write Club has more photos. Also, A Word From Our Sponsor.

Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick. Related: Beat Memories—The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg.

• Adam Curtis on BP and the Axis of Evil; how the the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became British Petroleum and helped give Iran over to the Ayatollahs.

• The Quietus interviews Peter Christopherson (TG, Coil, etc) and Dr John.

The Strange World of Adolf Hoffmeister at A Journey Round My Skull.

An Artists’ Dialogue On CocoRosie’s Grey Oceans at Stereogum.

Werner Herzog and David Lynch combine their talents.

Jon Savage on The Residents versus The Beatles.

• BUTT magazine interviews James Bidgood.

• The Daily Drop Cap.

The Gay Rub.

Can on German TV in 1971.