Extending the recent pagan theme, Ubuweb posts Derek Jarman’s determinedly occult and oneiric film, In the Shadow of the Sun (1980), notable for its soundtrack by Throbbing Gristle. This was the longest of Jarman’s films derived from Super-8 which he made throughout the 1970s between work as a production designer and his feature films. He never saw the low resolution, grain and scratches of Super-8 as a deficiency; on the contrary, for a painter it was a means to achieve with film stock some of the texture of painting. Michael O’Pray described the process and intent behind the film in Afterimage 12 (1985):

In 1973, Jarman shot the central sequences for his first lengthy film, and most ambitious to date, In the Shadow of the Sun, which in fact was not shown publicly until 1980, at the Berlin Film Festival. In the film he incorporated two early films, A Journey to Avebury a romantic landscape film, and The Magician (a.k.a. Tarot). The final sequences were shot on Fire Island in the following year. Fire Island survives as a separate film. In this period, Jarman had begun to express a mythology which he felt underpinned the film. He writes in Dancing Ledge of discovering “the key to the imagery that I had created quite unconsciously in the preceding months”, namely Jung’s Alchemical Studies and Seven Sermons to the Dead. He also states that these books “gave me the confidence to allow my dream-images to drift and collide at random”. The themes and ideas found in Jubilee, The Angelic Conversation, The Tempest and to some extent in Imagining October are powerfully distilled in In the Shadow of the Sun. Jarman’s obsession with the sun, fire and gold (which spilled over in the paintings he exhibited at the ICA in 1984) and an ancient mythology and poetics are compressed in In the Shadow of the Sun with its rich superimposition and painterly textures achieved through the degeneration “caused by the refilming of multiple images”. Jarman describes some of the ideas behind In the Shadow of the Sun:

“This is the way the Super-8s are structured from writing: the buried word-signs emphasize the fact that they convey a language. There is the image and the word, and the image of the word. The ‘poetry of fire’ relies on a treatment of word and object as equivalent: both are signs; both are luminous and opaque. The pleasure of Super-8 is the pleasure of seeing language put through the magic lantern.” Dancing Ledge p.129

Ubuweb also has some of the short films which were used as raw material for the longer work: Journey to Avebury (1971) (with an uncredited soundtrack by Coil), the Kenneth Anger-esque Garden of Luxor (1972), and Ashden’s Walk on Møn (1973).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Derek Jarman at the Serpentine
• The Angelic Conversation
• The life and work of Derek Jarman

The Chevalier d’Eon wins a fencing bout.

I’ve known of the cross-dressing Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Thimothée d’Eon de Beaumont—or the Chevalier d’Eon (1728–1810) to give him his title—for some time thanks to a typically witty and informative entry by Philip Core in Camp: The Lie that Tells the Truth (1984). The nobleman rubs shoulders there with the equally flamboyant Henry Paget (1875–1905), Fifth Marquess of Anglesey, known as “the Dancing Marquess”, and Romain de Tirtoff, better known as illustrator and designer, Erté, who we see in a photo dressed as “Claire de Lune”. Aside from his status as a historical curio, and a failed attempt by Havelock Ellis to borrow his name to describe transvestism—Eonism, the Chevalier seems less celebrated than he might be. So it’s a pleasure to hear that theatre director Robert Lepage has created a new stage production, Eonnagatta, based on the Chevalier’s colourful life:

For a long time now, the actor and experimental theatre director Robert Lepage has been fascinated by the life of the Chevalier d’Eon, an 18th-century French soldier who had a flamboyant career as a diplomat and secret agent for Louis XV, and spent much of his adult life dressed as a woman. Officially, the Chevalier’s skirts were worn as a professional disguise: his exceptionally fine features allowed him to pass easily for a woman, and thus move around undetected as a spy. But the Chevalier didn’t just do it for the job. He was a genuine cross-dresser, an 18th-century transvestite.

Lepage’s fascination has now led to Eonnagata, a daring collaboration inspired by the life of the Chevalier that gets its British premiere next week. The work has been put together by four very different, and internationally acclaimed, artists: there’s Lepage, the choreographer Russell Maliphant, the dancer Sylvie Guillem and the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. That’s quite a team – and the result is a unique hybrid of their art forms. How would they describe it? Maliphant gives it a go: “It’s not pure dance: it doesn’t have Sylvie doing splits or amazing falls. But it’s not pure theatre, either.” (More.)

Eonnagata.

So, a camp character from a camp era, then, although the Chevalier slightly predates the Regency camp of Beau Brummell and his foppish entourage. D’Eon was renowned for his prowess as a swordsman and despite its lethal nature there’s something camp about the swordfight, especially in its 18th century incarnation when fencing matches reduced the deadly art of the rapier duel to a mannered, rule-bound sport rather like a ballet with weapons. Being a spy for Louis XV, the Chevalier’s swordplay would have been a serious business and there’s something satisfying about the engraving above which shows him besting an opponent in a fencing match for the English Prince Regent; this was a man who was capable of defending his non-conformity to the utmost.

The unusual title of Lepage’s stage production is derived from the onnagata, male actors in Japanese kabuki who perform female roles. This tradition may explain why the Chevalier’s character has also been used as the basis for a recent Japanese anime series, Chevalier: Le Chevalier D’Eon, one of the few fictional manifestations of his life.

D’Eon is a member of the Secret Police, working in the shadows to keep the peace within French society. When his sister suddenly turns up floating down a river in a coffin with ‘Psalms’ written on it, D’Eon is thrown into a deadly struggle with revolutionaries and supernatural forces in order to uncover the truth behind his sister’s death. D’Eon looks remarkably like Lia, which turns to his advantage whenever he needs to meet with a ruler who was once Lia’s friend.

left: The Dancing Marquess relaxes; right: Bridget from Guilty Gear.

Given the way that most anime boys are distinctly androgynous, he wouldn’t have to try too hard to impersonate his sister. And impersonation gives a boy an excuse to drag up, of course, rather than leaving the series writers to tackle (or ignore) the adventure-unfriendly issue of gender confusion or transvestism. Japanese culture seems far more open to this kind of identity play than we’re used to here. The character of Bridget in fighting game Guilty Gear, for example, is actually a boy who was “born in a village where the birth of twins of the same gender was considered bad luck, and hence his family named and raised him as a girl.” Can you imagine American film or TV executives approving a story—for kids, yet—with a cross-dressing central character? Neither can I. I’ve yet to see any anime which can hold my attention for long but Chevalier may be worth seeking out. If anyone has seen it, please leave a comment.

Eonnagata runs from 26 Feb–8 Mar 2009 at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The men with swords archive

All Is Vanity by Charles Allan Gilbert (1892).

The surreptitious skull is another of those perennial motifs that recur in art from time to time and one which has become especially prevalent since the late 19th century. There seem to be a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being that if you’re going to show how clever you are by hiding one image inside another you may as well make the hidden thing something that everyone recognises. A secondary reason would seem to be the waning power of the vanitas theme. As painting became more pictorially sophisticated it wasn’t enough to simply show a skull and expect people to accept that and a stern moral as the principal content. Hence the development of death as a non-skeletal character in Symbolism and the reduction of skulls in pictures to a kind of playful game.

Holbein’s anamorphic skull in The Ambassadors is probably the grandfather of all the later versions but the more recent popularity of the hidden motif can be traced back to Charles Allan Gilbert whose 1892 picture, All is Vanity, drawn when he was just 18, was sold to Life Publishing in 1902 and subsequently spread all over the world in postcard form. Despite giving birth to a host of imitators, Gilbert’s picture is the one that still inspires artists and photographers up to the present day.

A Pierrot’s Love (uncredited) (1905).

Another very popular version.

La Famille Impériale de Russie; French postcard (1908).

In Voluptate Mors by Salvador Dalí & Philippe Halsman (1951).

Dalí was the master of this kind of pictorial illusion, of course, and worked several of his own variations with skulls. The most famous is the Philippe Halsman photograph which was recapitulated in the poster art for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991 and, more recently, The Descent.

The Adventures of Luther Arkwright by Bryan Talbot (1982).

Gilbert’s picture started to be reproduced as a poster from the Sixties on and eventually began influencing rock album sleeve art. There’s more than enough examples of these, most of them pretty ropey. The Damned used Gilbert’s picture in 1977 while Def Leppard produced their own version for Retro Active in 1993. Far better than the metal attempts was Trevor Brown’s sleeve for Coil’s Hellraiser Themes EP which you can see on his blog page along with some other 20th century examples of the motif.

Bryan Talbot’s panel from the first book of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright is less well-known. I’m sure there’s been a lot of this kind of thing in the comics world over the years but Bryan’s version is the only one I have to hand.

Lord Horror: Reverbstorm (1991).

And speaking of comics, here’s my own variation in a panel from Reverbstorm #3, drawn in 1991 but not published until 1995.

Hellblazer (unpublished) (1994).

One of the editors at DC Comics liked my Lovecraft and Lord Horror work and asked me to do a tryout for a Hellblazer cover in 1994. I’d only just switched from gouache to painting with acrylics at the time and didn’t feel very confident about using them but also didn’t want to turn the offer down. The painting above was the result and they didn’t like it. I thought I was trying to be clever by doing the skull thing when all they wanted to see was a portrait of John Constantine, not a guy with his face blotted by shadow.

Poison by Dior, photographed by Vincent Peters (2002).

And so to the 21st century and this award-winning ad shot which brings us full circle with a copy of Gilbert’s original picture.

The effect was achieved with skilful lighting, set design and photography rather than post-production trickery, says Peters.

“The image recalls the blending of art and psychology that occurred at the end of the 19th century. I shot it straight, with very little post-production. The trickiest part was getting the composition right – there was only one spot I could take the shot from; an inch to the left or right and the effect would have been spoiled.”

He stresses that the resulting image was “a collaborative effort” and makes special mention of the agency’s creative team. “The agency came to me with the idea and asked me how I would do it. These day it’s rare to be approached for your technical skills. Normally it’s because you can achieve a certain mood. In this case I added the fin de siècle atmosphere.”

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Darwin Day
• Vanitas paintings
• Giant Skeleton and the Chocolate Jesus
• Perfume: the art of scent
• Very Hungry God
• Dalí Atomicus
• History of the skull as symbol

Title by John Dee, words by William Shakespeare, narration by Judi Dench and music by Coil; Derek Jarman’s oneiric film/poem is released on DVD, along with two other works.

The BFI releases three Derek Jarman films together—Caravaggio (1986), Wittgenstein (1993) and The Angelic Conversation (1985)—all digitally restored and re-mastered for DVD and each with extensive and illuminating extra features.

The films were made with the BFI Production Board, whose aim was to foster innovation in British filmmaking, thus providing a natural home for Jarman’s artistic sensibility. These three films represent highpoints in his career and are perhaps the most enduring in their appeal and relevance to contemporary audiences.

Intense, dreamlike, and poetic, The Angelic Conversation is one of the most artistic of Derek Jarman’s films. With his painter’s eye, Jarman conjured, in a beautiful palette of light, colour and texture, an evocative and radical visualisation of Shakespeare’s love poems.

Of the 154 sonnets written by Shakespeare, most were written to an unnamed young man, commonly referred to as the Fair Youth. Here, Judi Dench’s emotive readings of 14 sonnets are coupled with ethereal sequences; figures on seashores, by streams and in colourful gardens. The disruption of these magical scenes with images of barren and threatening landscapes echoes perfectly the celebration and torment of love explored in the sonnets.

Shot on Super-8 before being transferred to 35mm film, the unique technical approach results in a striking aesthetic, with Coil’s languorous soundtrack completing the intoxicating effect.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• James Bidgood
• Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally
• Un Chant D’Amour by Jean Genet

The Guardian of Paradise by Franz Stuck (1889).

We’ll let Coil have the final word on the angel theme, the post title being taken from their Cathedral In Flames. Those words recognise—as does the painting above—that the Christian concept of Heaven is of a gated community guarded by warriors to keep the undesirable at bay.

Symbolist painter Franz Stuck was (as far as we know) robustly heterosexual but his angel isn’t far removed from the work of contemporary photographers like Anthony Gayton who specialise in teasing out the erotic undercurrents in this kind of imagery. Which brings us full circle, seeing as we started with Caravaggio and his distinct brand of religious subversion. The irony is that some of the more vocal elements of Christianity can’t help subverting themselves or their own messages, as John Patterson notes in his Guardian piece today, alluding not only to the Ted Haggard debacle but also to Haggard’s favourite artist, Thomas Blackshear, both of whom were discussed here in November. Patterson writes that the recent brand of bigoted fervour that’s swept America seems to have abated, or at least retreated, after threatening to become a mainstream force. Europe often seems a haven of healthy heathen sanity by comparison, a part of the undesirable world being kept outside the American Paradise. St. Peter now demands retinal scans, fingerprints and a biometric passport. Continual rumbles from Pope Maledict and his closeted cardinals are an increasing irrelevance, the background static of a dying regime. Paradise may be guarded by attractive angels but we can only look and never touch. As Patterson says, the devil has all the best tunes. And the best books and movies and games. And sex and fun. I know which side of the fence I’d rather be on.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive
• The men with swords archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gay for God

Electric light orchestra

Maddy Costa
Friday, October 20, 2006
The Guardian

Ceinws in north Wales is the kind of tiny, bucolic town where nothing unusual is supposed to happen. And possibly it didn’t before Mark Anderson moved in. A sound-artist, instrument-maker and pyrotechnic with the performance group Blissbody, he has a workshop opposite the village pub that appears perfectly innocent from the outside, but inside could pass for a laboratory from a Frankenstein movie. Glass tubes and dangerous-looking electrical contraptions clutter the floor. Wires coil across a table. A standing lamp looms in the corner. “Watch this,” says Anderson, as excited as a five-year-old setting fire to a box of tissues. He points a mysterious black cone at the lamp and turns a dimmer switch to activate the bulb. Slowly, the lamp illuminates, and a sound fills the room: a low buzz at first, but growing painfully high-pitched as the light reaches full brightness. This really is white noise.

Remarkably, what Anderson is demonstrating isn’t an instrument of torture but a “photo-synth”, a device that converts light into sound. It’s a key element of the Photophonic Experiment, a bizarre, potentially fascinating collaboration between Anderson and like-minded musicians Pram and Kirsten Reynolds that tours the UK from next week. And if the people of Ceinws think Anderson is odd, they should hear what his associates get up to.

Pram may look like a conventional band, but they’ve spent the past 15 years using anything from a home-made theremin to toys and kitchen whisks to bring layers of strangeness to their music. Reynolds, meanwhile, is one half of Project Dark, a sound-art duo who have performed DJ sets using seven-inch singles constructed from biscuits and chunks of carpet, and turntables powered by fireworks.

It was when Reynolds began investigating whether it was possible for a stylus to receive visual information from a record, rather than touching it to produce sound, that the photo-synth was born. She and Anderson – who have worked together on several group projects – are full of such peculiar ideas. It makes you wonder whether they ever think what they do is plain bonkers. “Sort of,” Reynolds admits, “but you have to not worry about it, because if you always thought, ‘It’s too silly,’ you’d never do anything.”

For Anderson, avoiding seriousness is crucial. “It’s very difficult for me, when I come to the workshop, not to rewire things, not to mend things, but to explore them in a playful way,” he says. “Children do this naturally, but you lose the ability as you get older.”

For this reason, Anderson has deliberately not acquired more electrical knowledge than he needs to. He and Reynolds rely on the expertise of Graham Calvert, Blissbody’s electronics engineer, and Mike Harrison, an “obsessive maker of weird, dangerous things” (his mind-boggling website, electricstuff.co.uk, indicates just how weird), to help them bring their designs to life. Harrison meanwhile is responsible for another centrepiece of the Photophonic show: the spark-o-phone, a kind of tilted xylophone that cracks and flashes as a 10,000-volt charge jumps between its eight glass tubes. He also helped Anderson create his first Jacob’s ladder, a glass vase containing two metal rods, between which an electric charge will flame and purr seductively as it climbs from bottom to top. Some day, Anderson hopes, he’ll have an entire orchestra of these babies.

Of course, such sounds won’t be music to everyone’s ears. Anderson and Reynolds are aware that what they do could come across as mere noise, and are keen to avoid that reaction. Besides, Anderson says with a laugh, “we value our hearing. I don’t mind a certain amount of grrrrawwwwl noise as long as it’s not intense. In terms of the Photophonic sound spectrum, we want it to range from something that can be quiet and subtle, to something that roars like an electric storm.”

For Reynolds, such contrast is essential if they’re to hold an audience’s attention. “I hate shows that are an hour of exactly the same sound, because after a while it’s almost like it’s not there, it may as well be silence,” she says. Her aim with the Photophonic Experiment is to “display all the ways you can think of sound as music, from it being almost noise to it being very organised and totally in tune”.

And the emphasis, unusually, is on “display”. “Although Photophonic is a sound piece,” says Anderson, “Kirsten and I want to make it visually interesting, so that if you’re sitting in the audience you have a reason to listen to what is potentially an unpleasant sound.” Anderson’s collection of fluorescent tubes is a case in point: the sound of these lamps coming to life is hardly attractive, yet when Anderson controls the amount of electricity they receive, they crackle and flash beautifully, and make you feel that you’re witnessing the most dazzling of lightning displays.

Then there is the set of tiny flashing toys that Anderson and Reynolds use with the photo-synth to create a series of snarls and whirrs. On stage, they’ll have a video camera trained on them, and pictures of the multicoloured lights will be magnified on a big screen. “It’s not just glittery for the sake of it – the presentation is integral,” says Reynolds. “It’s not a DJ with a video playing, it’s not a soundtrack to a film, it’s not a visual to music: it’s something that makes both together.”

The drawback of instruments that respond to light is that they are susceptible to sources other than those intended by the musicians. Anderson, who usually works on outdoor projects (”I find it quite disorientating being in a theatre for hours,” he says, “I actually prefer being up a tree in the pouring rain.”), was shocked to discover that safety regulations prohibit complete blackout in theatres. What worries him is that the photo-synth will pick up light from around the auditorium and he and Reynolds will find themselves “playing the exit signs rather than our instruments”.

Nor is it the only logistical nightmare threatening the Photophonic Experiment. The array of instruments is so complex that setting up the show can take several hours – three, says Reynolds optimistically; more like six, thinks Anderson. The instruments are fiendishly temperamental, too. “It’s not like a piano, where you’re completely in charge,” says Reynolds. “The machines almost have a personality: you have to be quite intuitive with them, because they’re never going to do exactly the same things twice.”

That’s why, after weeks of debate, the collaborators settled on calling their show an experiment. “We’re not quite sure how all this will happen and work together, and each night will be different,” says Anderson. He and Reynolds may be controlling the spark-o-phone, the Jacob’s ladders and the photo-synths, but even they feel that they are participating in something wholly mysterious. Chances are, their audiences will agree.

The Photophonic Experiment is at the MAC, Birmingham (0121-440 3838), on October 28, then tours.

Coming to cast a giant shadow across your fuzzy warbles on the May 8th. The progression that runs from Scott 4 to Nite Flights to Climate of Hunter to Tilt is here continued in a quite extraordinary manner, leaving Scott looking down on the rest of the music world from very rarefied heights indeed. Impossible to describe although Momus does his best here. Think of Coil jamming with Penderecki or something. The cover art is very apt, this is a journey across a rusted landscape into darkness.