A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Film
More psychedelic freakery from American filmmaker Jud Yalkut. Us Down By The Riverside (1966) is short and sweet: three minutes of acid visuals accompanied by a muddy recording of The Beatles playing Tomorrow Never Knows. Groovy. For a very different take on John Lennon’s psych-out, see the penultimate episode of cartoon show, The Beatles.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive
I’m currently reading my way through Rob Chapman’s lysergic doorstop Psychedelia and Other Colours, a comprehensive study of a cultural phenomenon that’s well-represented on these pages. So expect more posts like this one which concerns another gem of abstract/psychedelic cinema. Turn, Turn, Turn (1966) is a collaboration between Jud Yalkut (visuals) and the Us Company aka USCO (sound). The latter receive several mentions in Chapman’s detailing of the early psych scene in San Francisco in the mid-60s; here they put a Byrds song through the mangler while Yalkut’s mechanical and other effects flicker and gyrate. The visuals are reminiscent in places of the film made by László Moholy-Nagy of his Light-Space Modulator, fittingly so when Chapman credits Moholy-Nagy’s machine with being one of the many forerunners of psychedelia in the art movements of the early 20th century.
The YouTube copy linked here has a bonus at the end with a truncated version of a later Yalkut collaboration with Nam June Paik, Beatles Electronique.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive
Relativity (1953) by MC Escher.
Escher’s famous lithograph has a less familiar companion piece in the woodcut below.
Delirius (1972) by Philippe Druillet.
Lone Sloane’s adventure on the pleasure planet of Delirius was written by Jacques Lob, and features this diversion in the Palais d’Escher. Possibly the first fictional use of one of Escher’s prints.
El Hotel Satina (2006) by Oscar Sanmartin.
• Andrew Kötting’s By Our Selves is “a melancholy, maverick film” says David Jays. With Toby Jones following in the footsteps of poet John Clare, Iain Sinclair in a goat mask, and Alan Moore warning about the “vision sump” of Northampton.
• “Shunga means ‘spring pictures’. They depict sometimes spectacular sexual contortions and come imbued with the power of taboo. For years they have largely been out of sight—until now.” Related: shunga prints at Ukiyoe Gallery.
• “Who else could link Smokey Robinson and JG Ballard, Iggy Pop and Josephine Baker, James Bond and Stephen Sondheim, Gary Numan and Johnny Cash, Tricky and Tom Moulton…” Grace Jones is the best, says Joe Muggs.
Ballardian space – what he called “inner space” to differentiate it from the science fiction that concerned itself with distant planets and space rockets – is in fact a fusion of inner and outer space. There is no “out there” totally separate from his characters; just as there is no exclusively private, isolated inner life. His most psychologically fulfilled characters look to transcend their physical surroundings, however hostile, by embracing them.
Chris Hall on High-Rise by JG Ballard
• “In March 1984, Jorge Luis Borges began a series of radio ‘dialogues’ with the Argentinian poet and essayist Osvaldo Ferrari, which have now been translated into English for the first time.”
• “I came up with a couple of tunes, literally in my bedroom. People think of bedroom recordings as a modern, laptop invention. It wasn’t.” Daniel Miller on the accidental success of Mute Records.
• “It was in Prague that I first awoke.” Strange Flowers on Gustav Meyrink’s life in Prague.
• At 50 Watts: Stencilled ornament and illustration by William Addison Dwiggins.
• Mix of the week: The Ivy-Strangled Path Vol. X by David Colohan.
• Wyrd Daze, Lvl2 Issue 4, is free and brimming with the weird.
• Mythology, a new series of drawings by Howard Hardiman.
• Spike Jones is the best, says MetaFilter.
• Peacocks at National Geographic.
• Warm Leatherette (1980) by Grace Jones | Warm Leatherette (1998) by Chicks On Speed | Warm Leatherette (2013) by Foetus
I’ve been reading Thomas Ligotti for the past week so here’s something Ligottian: a short film performed by life-size wooden puppets. Švankmajer’s production from 1969 conveys the Don Juan legend with actors masquerading as traditional Czech marionettes, the proceedings being scored by music from the great Zdeněk Liška. No English subtitles on this one so if you don’t speak Czech or Russian you can either relish the mystery or take it as a prompt to buy a DVD. While we’re on the subject of Ligotti, the new Penguin edition of Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe is published next week. I recommend it.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope
• Two sides of Liška
• The Torchbearer by Václav Švankmajer