Weekend links 43

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From the video for I See, So I See So by Broadcast.

RIP Trish Keenan of Broadcast. Tributes here and here. The Broadcast/Focus Group collaboration …investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was The Wire‘s album of the year for 2009. Joseph Stannard interviewed Trish Keenan and James Cargill in October of that year.

Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring, a new pay-what-you-please Arthur mixtape. Also at Arthur, Sunday Lectures by Freeman House here, here, here and here.

• Cormac McCarthy’s description of American pioneers in Suttree (1979) kept coming to mind during the past week:

Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark’s total restitution could appease.

Born This Way: “A photo/essay project for gay viewers (male and female) to submit pictures from their childhood (roughly ages 4 to 14), with snapshots that capture them, innocently, showing the beginnings of their innate LGBT selves. It’s nature, not nurture!”

Mischievous street art characters. Chris Marker wouldn’t want us to forget Monsieur Chat. Speaking of Chris Marker, there’s Plato’s Cave as Kino: Owl’s Legacy Excerpt & Becoming Imperceptible.

With the point of a knife Dr. LeBaron took from the little round box a small quantity of a dark, greenish-colored gum, which, as it was passed from one to another for inspection, gave off an agreeable, aromatic odor. Then, as he was engaged in filling two capsules from the box, he explained:

“As le docteur read from ze book of Monsieur Richet, ze favoreet méthode in ze Orient ees to take ze Haschisch by ze smoke in ze Persian pipe—ze hookah, ze nargileh. But zey also take eet in ze great varieté. Ze principal kind zat come to ze market of Europe, ees zat I show you—ze Haschisch, an’ ve take eet like ze dose of quinine,” said he, as he handed a well-filled capsule to both Smith and Arnold.

Throwing back his head, Smith bolted his dose without ceremony, and Arnold immediately followed his example.

Haschisch: A Novel (1886) by Thorold King. Related: Haschisch Hallucinations (1905) by HE Gowers.

• Dan Hill’s personal report from the drowned world of Brisbane. Related: Hayley Campbell recalls swimming in the city’s hazardous floodwaters when she was a wild child. Also: Canoeing in McDonald’s.

Cabinet Card Backmarks, florid advertisements from Victorian cabinet photos. Callum James made a post on the subject in 2008 and has a Flickr set showing his discoveries.

• The Brothers Quay made a public information film about AIDS in 1996. (Now deleted from YouTube…boo!)

The secret stories of book inscriptions. Related: The Book Inscriptions Project.

• Ani, Turkey: City of 1001 Churches, all of them abandoned and ruined.

Vulgar Army: Octopus in Propaganda and Political Cartoons.

• Designer John Gall makes collages in his spare time.

Phantasmaphile at Tumblr.

Witch Cults and I See, So I See So, both by Broadcast & The Focus Group.

Heaven and Earth Magic by Harry Smith

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Harry Smith’s hour-long collage film is one of the filmmaker’s major works and it can now be viewed in a rather rough form at Ubuweb. Smith made the first version in 1957 then tinkered with it for the next five years. If its effects seem rather primitive today it should be borne in mind that Smith was a pioneer of this kind of cinema which predates the more familiar work of Terry Gilliam and others by a decade. Also at Ubuweb there’s Early Abstractions (1941–1957) and Late Superimpositions (1964).

In addition to filmmaking Harry Smith was (among other things) an artist, ethnologist and the compiler of the landmark Anthology of American Folk Music. The Harry Smith Archives has biographical details and more.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Harry Smith revisited
The art of Harry Smith, 1923–1991

Arcades panoramas

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Norwich Royal Arcade.

More arcades and more panoramas from that favourite haunt of mine, 360 Cities. The Norwich Royal Arcade is an Art Nouveau-styled affair by George Skipper which features the inevitable coffee shop among its offerings. The Milan Galleria, meanwhile, is probably the most ostentatious arcade in the world but its expensive fashion houses have to deal with a McDonald’s in their midst. 360 Cities regularly updates its views so this may become an ongoing series.

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Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan.

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Galerie de la Reine/Koninginnegallerij, Brussels.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Arcades

Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #2

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Continuing the delve into back numbers of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, the German periodical of art and decoration. Volume 2 covers the period April–September 1898 and, as before, this issue can be downloaded in a variety of formats at the Internet Archive. This edition opens with a feature on the Wertheim department store, Berlin, design by Alfred Messel. Like many examples of Art Nouveau architecture, the store suffered damage during the Second World War and was eventually demolished.

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This number also has a lengthy feature devoted to artist Hans Christiansen whose work was appearing regularly in issues of Jugend magazine at this time. The colour panels below are Christiansen’s work.

Continue reading “Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #2”