Tag: Laurie Anderson

Weekend links 25

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A commemorative Borges coin.

He says, “Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment’s objectivity or the individual’s psychic history.” There, of course, he sums up all of realism, no? “Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision.” That’s Borges.

• The Borges Behind the Fiction: Colin Marshall talks to translator Suzanne Jill Levine. Related: The Garden of Forking Paths.

• From The Quietus: Blondie in Conversation with William S. Burroughs by Victor Bockris, 1979; An Interview with Laurie Anderson by Robert Barry, 2010.

In 962 Abd-er Rahman III was succeeded by his son Al-Hakim. Owing to the peace which the Christians of Cordova then enjoyed […] the citizens of Cordova, Arabs, Christians, and Jews, enjoyed so high a degree of literary culture that the city was known as the New Athens. From all quarters came students eager to drink at its founts of knowledge. Among the men afterwards famous who studied at Cordova were the scholarly monk Gerbert, destined to sit on the Chair of Peter as Sylvester II (999–1003), the Jewish rabbis Moses and Maimonides, and the famous Spanish-Arabian commentator on Aristotle, Averroes.

Entry for The Diocese of Cordova from The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917).

• Professor Newt’s Distorted History Lesson. A riposte to the ignorance of the wretched Gingrich. Related: the Mezquita de Córdoba.

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Jorge Luis Borges and a cat. Via.

• Joseph and His Friend—A Story of Pennsylvania (1870) by Bayard Taylor, America’s first (?) gay novel. Related: 20 classic works of gay literature.

• Elegies For Angels, Punks and Raging Queens at the Shaw Theatre, London, from 10–28 August 2010.

• Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony is released later this month. Café Kaput’s first release, Electronic Music in the Classroom by DD Denham, appears in September.

• “Just relax and enjoy it.” k-punk on the ambition and vision of David Rudkin’s Artemis 81.

• Chris Watson explores Alan Lamb’s The Wires: three audio recordings to download.

• Jonathan Barnbrook: Tuxedomoon fan, 1988, and Tuxedomoon designer, 2007.

• Rob Young’s Electric Eden reviewed by Michel Faber.

• Brian Eno gets the Warp factor.

• No Tears (1978) by Tuxedomoon; Atomic (1979) by Blondie; Everything You Want (1980) by Tuxedomoon; Next One Is Real (1984) by Minimal Compact; Hologram (2010) by These New Puritans.

William S Burroughs: A Man Within

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The Ticket that Exploded. Cover design by Thomi Wroblowski for a John Calder edition, 1985.

William S Burroughs: A Man Within is a feature-length documentary by Yony Leyser, and is, so the makers say, the first posthumous documentary about the always essential writer. Howard Brookner’s 1983 film, Burroughs, is probably definitive where the biography is concerned since Brookner was fortunate to get most of the key surviving Beats, family members, and allies while they were still around. Leyser’s trailer looks interesting, however (I’m hoping the film isn’t merely a parade of celebrities and soundbites), and it’s things like this which pass on the message of Burroughs’ continued importance to a new generation.

The film features never before seen footage of William S. Burroughs, as well as exclusive interviews with his closest friends and colleagues including John Waters, Genesis P-Orridge, Laurie Anderson, Peter Weller, David Cronenberg, Iggy Pop, Gus Van Sant, Sonic Youth, Anne Waldman, George Condo, Hal Willner, James Grauerholz, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, V. Vale, David Ohle, Wayne Propst, Dr. William Ayers, Diane DiPrima, Donovan, Dean Ripa (the world’s largest poisonous snake collector), and many others, with narration by actor Peter Weller, and soundtrack by Sonic Youth. 

Release is slated for later this year. Meanwhile, there’s another trailer on YouTube for a Burroughs’-inspired short, The Japanese Sandman, based on WSB’s quest for the drug yage in the jungles of Panama. For an explanation of the title, consult the Reality Studio.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The William Burroughs archive

Poe at 200

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Poe by Harry Clarke.

Happy birthday Edgar Allan Poe, born two hundred years ago today. I nearly missed this anniversary after a busy weekend. Rather than add to the mountain of praise for the writer, I thought I’d list some favourites among the numerous Poe-derived works in different media.

Illustrated books
For me the Harry Clarke edition of 1919 (later reworked with colour plates) has always been definitive. Many first-class artists have tried their hand at depicting Poe’s stories and poems, among them Aubrey Beardsley, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson and Edmund Dulac; none complements the morbid atmosphere and florid prose as well as Clarke does. And if it’s horror you need, Clarke’s depiction of The Premature Burial could scarcely be improved upon.

Honourable mention should be made of two less well-known works, Wilfried Sätty’s The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe (1976) and Visions of Poe (1988) by Simon Marsden. I wrote about Sätty’s collage engravings in Strange Attractor 2, and Sätty’s style was eminently suited to Poe’s work. Marsden’s photographs of old castles and decaying mansions are justly celebrated but in book form often seem in search of a subject beyond a general Gothic spookiness or a recounting of spectral anecdotes. His selection of Poe stories and poems is a great match for the photos, one of which, a view of Monument Valley for The Colloquy of Monos and Una, was also used on a Picador cover for Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

Recordings
These are legion but among the outstanding one-off tracks I’d note two poems set to music, Dream Within a Dream from Propaganda‘s 1985 album, A Secret Wish, and The Lake by Antony & The Johnsons. The latter appeared on the landmark Golden Apples of the Sun compilation and also on Antony’s own The Lake EP.

Among the full-length works, Hal Willner’s 1997 2-CD collection Closed on Account of Rabies features lengthy readings set to music from a typically eclectic Willner line-up: Marianne Faithfull, Christopher Walken, Iggy Pop, Diamanda Galás, Gavin Friday, Dr John, Deborah Harry, Jeff Buckley (one of the last recordings before his untimely death) and Gabriel Byrne. Byrne’s reading of The Masque of the Red Death is tremendous and the whole package is decked out in Ralph Steadman graphics.

Antony Hegarty appears again on another double-disc set, Lou Reed’s The Raven (2003), a very eccentric approach to Poe which I suspect I’m in the minority in enjoying as much as I do. An uneven mix of songs and reading/performances, Reed updates some Poe poems while others are presented straight and to often stunning effect by (among others) Willem Defoe, Steve Buscemi, Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, Amanda Plummer and Elizabeth Ashley.

Films
Once again, there’s too many films but The Masque of the Red Death (1964) has always been my favourite of the Roger Corman adaptations, not least for the presence of Jane Asher, Patrick Magee and (behind the camera) Nicolas Roeg. I wrote last May about the animated version of The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA. That adaptation, with narration by James Mason, is still on YouTube so if you haven’t seen it yet you can celebrate Poe’s anniversary by watching it right now.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA
• William Heath Robinson’s illustrated Poe
• The art of Harry Clarke, 1889–1931

Shadows at Compton Verney

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The Candles by Christian Boltanski.

The Shadow is an exhibition at Compton Verney from Saturday 30 June–Sunday 9 September, 2007. I’d been considering a post about shadows in art for a while so this has forced my hand. There’ll be some follow-ups in the coming week, work permitting. I’m busy with a big new piece of Lovecraft-related art at the moment, among other things. More about that later.

Shadows carry with them a range of associations. Whilst the shadow exists as a scientific phenomenon, its presence, from the Greek philosopher Plato through to JM Barrie’s children’s story Peter Pan, reflects the values and beliefs of society as well as an expression of psychological states.

The Shadow is the first extensive group show of its kind to look at an ancient theme that continues to emerge particularly in the work of contemporary artists. The exhibition will provide the viewer with a series of atmospheric encounters where sometimes the source is revealed but frequently the shadow exists independently, often revealing a presence outside the space represented.

The exhibition includes painting, sculpture and video by international contemporary artists such as Doug Aitken, Laurie Anderson, Christian Boltanski, Ceal Floyer, Mona Hatoum, Gary Hill, Tracey Moffatt, Anri Sala, Fiona Tan, Andy Warhol, William Wegman and Francesca Woodman.

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The Choirboy (A Young Singer) by Georges de La Tour (1640s).

To compliment The Shadow exhibition, Compton Verney will present a number of key candlelight works by the French artist Georges de La Tour (1593–1652).

La Tour was born in the Duchy of Lorraine and influenced by the work of Caravaggio. His works have been attributed to a number of artists and it is only since 1915 that a group of his signed paintings were linked and attributed conclusively to La Tour.

It was not until 1972 when all his surviving works were brought together in a major retrospective exhibition at The Orangerie, Paris that he came to the attention of a wider public. This exhibition will represent a rare opportunity for British audiences to view La Tour’s paintings and will focus on a number of powerful works, mainly from La Tour’s late period, which concentrate on the effect of light on the human figure.

• Georges de La Tour at ARC