John – Page 951 – { feuilleton }

Trinity rendezvous

The thundering virtuosity of Chris Corsano’s drums lured me out again this evening. The venue this time was the old Sacred Trinity Church in Salford which has been deconsecrated (heathens that we are) and turned into a space for music and other events. A very good space it was too, with subdued lighting and decent sound. Corsano was on magnificent form, playing another storming improvised set; Mick Flower of the Vibracathedral Orchestra provided chiming drones of unknown provenance. (I still haven’t worked out what peculiar string instrument it is that he plays.)

The photo above is another blurry product of my poor old Canon as it struggles with low light conditions and no tripod. But even in good light I’d challenge any photographer to adequately capture Corsano’s performance. The stuttering incoherence of this picture goes some way towards showing how it feels to watch him play.

Update: Gav advises that the church is still consecrated and that Mick Flower plays a shahi baaja or, as he prefers (after Klaus Dinger), a “Japan banjo”.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Chris Corsano again
• Chris Corsano

Glen Mitchell

Photography by Glen Mitchell.

Perfume: the art of scent

I’ve yet to see Tom Tykwer’s film of Patrick Süskind’s novel, Perfume—The Story of a Murderer, and remain reluctant to do so; it’s a rule in cinema that good books make bad films and vice versa. Perfume is a good book and a favourite of mine which makes the prospect of film adaptation even more worrying. (As an aside, Tykwer dispels the persistent rumour that Stanley Kubrick dismissed Perfume as an unfilmable novel.)

Reservations apart, I’ve been listening to the tremendous soundtrack all week after a recommendation from a friend (hi Philip!). The music is credited to Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek and the director, and features the near unprecedented involvement of conductor Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, an orchestra that rarely stoops to the level of the film soundtrack. This prompted speculation about the distinct challenge Süskind’s book presents to a designer: how best to represent the entwined strands of Grenouille’s career as a perfumier and a murderer of young women?

Continue reading “Perfume: the art of scent”

The art of Stephen Aldrich

Take Me to Your Leda (2000).

The City at the End of Time (2005).

I wrote about the history of the engaving collage in Sandoz in the Rain: the Life and Art of Wilfried Sätty, an article for Strange Attractor #2 (2005). I hadn’t come across Stephen Aldrich’s work at the time, if I had I would have mentioned him as being one of the artists continuing in this style after Sätty. You can see more of Aldrich’s work at the Foley Gallery, New York, and on Artnet.

Stephen Aldrich was born in Westfield, MA in 1947. In 1989 Aldrich began to explore the possibility of making collages from 19th Century illustrations and (Fredrick) Sommer, always one to “master the advantages”, asked Aldrich to cut engraved illustrations from text books in anatomy. This made it possible for Sommer to create hundreds of collages, and the medium became his principle form of artistic expression throughout the last decade of his life. During that time Aldrich continued to make his own collages with Sommer’s enthusiastic support and encouragement, and joined in a collaborative partnership with photographer Walton Mendelson to produce “collagraphs” (collages photographed) which were first exhibited at Turner/Krull Gallery in 1992. The partnership with Mendelson ended in 2002.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Shinro Ohtake

Tygers of Wrath

ImageTexT is an excellent web publication produced by the English Department at the University of Florida whose objective “is to advance the academic study of comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons”. The subject of the latest edition is “William Blake and Visual Culture” and to this end includes my written and visual account of the Tate Gallery’s William Blake event from February 2001. That evening of song and performance featured Alan Moore and Tim Perkins’ piece about Blake’s life (with my video accompaniment), a work that was later released as the Angel Passage CD. ImageText 3-2 also includes an essay by Roger Whitson, Panelling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of William Blake and Alan Moore.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Of Moons and Serpents
• Watchmen
• Alan Moore interview, 1988