Weekend links 18

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Rogomelec (1978) by Leonor Fini. Via.

Moving Through Old Daylight: A recording of Mark Fisher, Jim Jupp and Julian House of Ghost Box Recordings and Iain Sinclair in conversation at the Roundhouse, Camden, London, 5 June 2010. Topics under discussion included Nigel Kneale, TC Lethbridge, John Foxx, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, alchemies of sound, the homogenisation of culture, imagining space and the impersistence of memory.

The Surreal House, “a mysterious dwelling infused with subjectivity and desire” at the Barbican, London.

Ars Homo Erotica at the National Museum of Warsaw. Related: “(Gothenburg) Museum stops exhibition about homosexuality in religion“.

• A lot of people still arrive here looking for art by Zack aka Oliver Frey. Bike Boy, 96 pages of Frey’s exuberantly homoerotic comic strips, is published in August by Bruno Gmünder.

• “EM Forster was a virgin until the age of thirty-nine, when he had his first ‘full’ sexual experience (a ‘hurried sucking off’, Wendy Moffat informs us) with a passing soldier on a beach in Alexandria.”

• JG Ballard’s archive is accepted by the British Library, or “saved for the nation” as they rather grandiloquently describe the process. Samples from the documents to be preserved at the BBC and the Guardian.

• Shades of Ballard’s singing sculptures, Sun Boxes is a solar-powered audio installation by Craig Colorusso. There’s more at Designboom.

• Nathalie visited the MAXXI, Rome’s new museum of contemporary art designed by Zaha Hadid.

Stephen Pinker wants everyone to stop fretting over the alleged distractions of electronic media.

• “It basically comes from love”: John McLaughlin in conversation with Robert Fripp, 1982.

• More collections of print ephemera: Agence Eureka and Ephemera Magica.

The Serpent and the Sword, an Alan Moore rarity from 1999.

Gulliverovy Cesty (1968) at A Journey Round My Skull.

Within the Without: a new Thombeau Tumblr.

The Hidden Posters of Notting Hill Gate.

The Letters of Sylvia Beach reviewed.

• It’s Kubrick Season in St Albans.

Riot In Lagos (1980) by Ryuichi Sakamoto still sounds futuristic thirty years on.

The specimens of Alex CF

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Artist Alex CF makes beautifully detailed—and very authentic—cases for cryptozoological specimens. I think I’d seen examples of these before but not the Lovecraft exhibits like this collection which presents samples and studies retrieved from the Mountains of Madness. Among other Lovecraftiana there’s also a case devoted to artefacts from R’lyeh. These would have been ideal additions to the Lovecraft show at Observatory which (as a reminder) opens this Friday.

Via ~Wunderkammer~. (I think. If it wasn’t, it should be…)

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Previously on { feuilleton }
At the Mountains of Madness
Walmor Corrêa’s Memento Mori
The art of Ron Pippin
Custom creatures
Cryptozoology
The Museum of Fantastic Specimens

Passage 13

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Ed Jansen writes again with news that no. 13 of his Dutch-language web magazine Passage is now online:

Number 13 of Passage contains stories about the Buddha Machine, a strange little box that emits music, then there is ‘Escape from the dollhouse?’, which is about the art of Hans Bellmer, surreal and strangely erotic, ‘The Skeleton that Climbed in Through the Window’ tells the equally strange and sad story of the life of Unica Zürn, companion of Bellmer and ‘Nomads of the Timestream’ is of course about the work of Michael Moorcock. This collection begins and ends with two sides of a story about the version of the visit of Odysseus to the Underworld, by Ezra Pound.

The customary eclectic mix, in other words. The Buddha Machine section is a nice overview of recent ambient music machines. I love the ad art for Zhang Jian’s Short-Wave of Bengal Bay.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
Passage 12
Gristleism
Passage 11
Buddha Machine Wall
Passage 10
God in the machines
Layering Buddha by Robert Henke

Three Heads Six Arms by Zhang Huan

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A new sculpture by Chinese artist Zhang Huan which was officially dedicated in San Francisco’s City Hall Plaza last week. The photo is by Flickr user David Dasinger and similar views can be found in this Flickr pool. Huan’s copper figures may be intended to evoke Buddhist serenity but I can never see that plaza without remembering the horrible ending of Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Three Heads Six Arms is part of a series of monumental works depicting the fragmented extremities of Buddhist statues. The series was inspired by Zhang’s discovery of religious sculptures that had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution for sale in a Tibetan market. (More.)

Via Erik Davis.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The art of Arnaldo Pomodoro
Sculptural collage: Eduardo Paolozzi
Dead monuments
The art of Igor Mitoraj