{cities} – Page 24 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 21

A poster by Kazumasa Nagai.

• Franco Maria Ricci creates the world’s largest maze. “The former publisher said he first confided his ambition to Jorge Luis Borges, who characteristically told him the world’s largest maze already existed and was called a desert.” Related: Mirror, Mask, Labyrinth, a review of two new collections of Borges’ poetry.

• FACT mix 164 is a dubstep collection by Pinch and a promotion for the Dark Matter compilation which I designed earlier this year.

• One of the monuments of 20th century music, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, is released in another new (and expensive) edition next month by Sony. Nice packaging, and there’s a vinyl edition included, but these things always come across as a cyncial attempt to milk the hardcore fans one more time. And have you noticed how all vinyl releases are now described as “audiophile”? If the big record companies had shown this much dedication to quality in the 1980s when they were jobbing out sub-standard vinyl pressings their reputation might be slightly higher today.

• More Gysin: Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, and the secret life of a building on the Bowery. And Ubuweb’s page of Gysin sound works and recordings.

• Michael Moorcock: “I think I preferred my own imagination”. A two-part interview about the cover designs for Moorcock books.

• The Pansy Project: “Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at the site of homophobic abuse, he finds the nearest source of soil to where the incident occurred and generally without civic permission plants one unmarked pansy. The flower is then photographed in its location and posted on his website, the image is entitled after the abuse … The Pansy Project also marks locations where people have been killed as a result of homophobic attack”

• This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities. Jim Rossignol’s book is available as a free download.

• Lost London. Also, the Victorian Catacombs of South London.

• Dedalus Books had its Arts Council grant reinstated.

• ’Zine Lutefisk: fashion/art/escape.

• Time Will Show The Wiser (1968) by Fairport Convention | She Moves Through The Fair (1969) by Fairport Convention | She Moved Through The Fair (1994) by Jam Nation.

Edinburgh, 1929

2A Arthur Street.

Samples from a collection of photographs by Alfred Henry Rushbrook at the National Library of Scotland’s Flickr pages showing the St Leonards area of Edinburgh. These were taken in 1929 but the age of the buildings and the curiously fogged appearance of the prints makes them seem a lot older. The City of Edinburgh Improvement Trust commissioned Rushbrook to record views of the area before slum clearances took place. In that respect his photos are like a Scots equivalent of the famous views of Paris taken by Atget before Hausmann’s demolition teams set to work.

2–4 Lothian Street and 3–5–7 Potterow.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Old Bunker Hill
• Inondations 1910
• Berenice Abbott
• Jessie M King’s Grey City of the North
• Eugene de Salignac
• Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
• The temples of Angkor
• The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
• Edward Steichen
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
• Atget’s Paris
• Downtown LA by Ansel Adams

Old Bunker Hill

One of a number of photos of the elegantly decayed houses of early Los Angeles by ex-vaudeville artist George Mann. On Bunker Hill is a site dedicated to this vanished area of the city.

These never-before-published color images of old Bunker Hill were originally displayed in 3-D viewers of Mann’s own design, which were leased to various Los Angeles businesses, including Hody’s Drive-Ins, and other restaurants, bars and doctor’s offices. Mann would swap out the photo selection regularly, so if these evocative scenes of Bunker Hill weren’t available, one might peep at Calico Ghost Town, Catalina Island, Descanso Gardens, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Pacific Ocean Park, Watts Towers or Palm Springs. (More.)

There’s more old LA at the Vintage Los Angeles Flickr pool.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Berenice Abbott
• Eugene de Salignac
• Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
• The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
• Edward Steichen
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
• Atget’s Paris
• Downtown LA by Ansel Adams

Weekend links 12

Simulation No. 136 (1973); From the Archigram Revival Project.

• Scientific American looks at DMT: “the only psychedelic known to occur naturally in the human body”. Related: Hofmann’s Elixir: LSD and the New Eleusis, a book from the Beckley Foundation Press.

• “People weren’t quite sure what this guy was doing.” Colin Marshall talks to Eno biographer David Sheppard.

• LA FAN presents its debut group show, Eve in the Garden of Lost Angels, curated by Milla Zeltzer, at Optical Allusion Gallery, downtown Los Angeles, from May 15 to June 12, 2010.

• Masturbation: literature’s last taboo. The words “last” and “taboo” should never be used together; taboos don’t vanish, they migrate.

• Announcing the Text: Development of the Title Page, 1470–1900.

• The Anachronism is an award-wining Steampunk short about two children who discover the wreck of a giant squid submarine on a beach near their home.

• Out There is a brand new, bi-annual, international magazine for gay men and their friends.

• The Big Picture looks at the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull.

• Expo 2010 opens in Shanghai on May 1st.

• (Walter) Benjamin in Extremis.

• Nathalie returns to Bomarzo.

• Acronymic songs of the week: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (1967) by The Beatles; The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice (1967) by The Jimi Hendrix Experience; London Social Degree (1968) by Billy Nicholls; Love’s Secret Domain (1991) by Coil.

Exposition Universelle films

The Exposition entrance at the Place de la Concorde.

Yes, films of the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. This week I’ve been reading Philippe Jullian’s book about the Exposition (more about the admirable Monsieur Jullian later) and it was only when he mentioned early cinema screenings as one of the entertainments that I realised I hadn’t looked for films of the Exposition itself. YouTube has the goods, of course, and those goods are unavoidably primitive given the age of the prints and the infancy of the medium. Quality isn’t the point, however, what matters is the thrill of looking back 110 years to see these fleeting structures and their visitors. Most of the footage seems to have been filmed by the Edison Company and the filmmakers conveniently let us know that it was the month of August. According to Jullian, Paris was suffering from a heatwave at the time but you wouldn’t know it from the way everyone is dressed although most of the women (and some of the men) are carrying parasols. In addition to the period footage, there’s also the channel of a 3D animator who’s been creating computer models of the buildings. I’ve thought for some time that these vanished expositions could be resurrected using 3D modelling so it’s encouraging to find someone doing exactly that.

The films:
• Thomas Edison’s L’ Exposition Universelle de 1900 à Paris | A compilation of the shorts with intertitles.
• Panoramic view of the Place de la Concorde
• Esplanade des Invalides
• Panorama from the Moving Boardwalk
• Eiffel Tower lift
• The Palace of Electricity

Update: The Edison shorts and some other Exposition clips not listed above can also be found in the Edison film archive at the Library of Congress. You need to go to this page and use the search term “paris” to receive a list. They’re still low-res, unfortunately, but at least the files haven’t been put through YouTube’s compression filters.

The Palace of Electricity.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition jewellery
• Exposition Universelle catalogue
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro