{film} – Page 310 – { feuilleton }

Brion Gysin let the mice in

Brion Gysin—autoportrait (1935).

“A shaman to me is always a pansexual being,” says the gay Canadian filmmaker. “These guys all came out of that period where queer was really hardcore, it was part of their radical art — and of course it was illegal.” (more)

The filmmaker in question is Nik Sheehan discussing FLicKeR, his 2007 documentary about artist and writer Brion Gysin. Sheehan’s film is available for viewing at Ubuweb although I haven’t got round to watching it yet so I can’t say much about it. (Reality Studio has a review.) Gysin’s life and work is certainly worthy of study, however, his art and writing—which encompassed novels and experimental poetry—often having been overshadowed by his close association with William Burroughs. He gets a raw deal in Ted Morgan’s curiously bad-tempered biography of Burroughs, for example, despite having given his co-conspirator the cut-up technique, collaborated with him on The Third Mind, and so on. FLicKeR‘s title refers to Gysin’s Dreamachine, the first sculpture which needs to be experienced with the eyes closed, being a homemade hallucination engine which works by flickering light and shadow at a rapid rate on the closed eyelids. I made some Dreamachines of my own in the mid-1980s by carefully studying photos in RE/Search #4/5, and they certainly do work. It’s a shame that 78rpm record players are more difficult to find than they used to be since the original template devised by Gysin and Ian Sommerville needs a high speed in order to create the optimum flicker rate. As you might expect, various psychonauts have since created their own variations such as this one for a 45rpm player.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the New Museum in NYC is staging the first US retrospective of Gysin’s work, an exhibition which they happen to call Dream Machine, and which opens on July 7th. The New York Times ran a piece about Gysin in advance of that. Ubuweb has further Gysin materials, such as this Burroughs piece about Gysin’s invention of the cut-up method, and some recordings of the permutated poems. Finally, if you’re wondering about the title of the post, it’s a reference to this.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Burroughs: The Movie
• William S Burroughs: A Man Within
• Emil Cadoo
• The Great God Pan
• The Final Academy
• William Burroughs book covers
• Towers Open Fire

Peacock couture

Hedy Lamarr strikes a pose in a peacock dress for Samson and Deliah (1949), one of Hollywood’s many tiresome Biblical epics. If the photo isn’t just a promo shot and Hedy appears wearing this it’s no doubt a highlight but it’s so long since I saw the film the only thing I remember is Victor Mature bringing down the temple at the end. Ms Lamarr’s outfit wasn’t the first of its kind, of course, the examples below from dancer Ruth St Denis and film star Betty Blythe have appeared here before, but Hedy’s dress is a lot more extravagant; Aubrey Beardsley would have loved it. I might have said it was the most extravagant but that honour should go to a Chinese wedding dress made of 2,009 peacock feathers which was unveiled last year. Impressive if completely impractical.

Thanks to Thom for the Hedy tip!

Ruth St Denis—The Peacock.

Betty Blythe.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Betty Blythe
• Ruth St Denis
• The Feminine Sphinx
• Alla Nazimova’s Salomé

Weekend links 20

Transfiguration (1952) by Sulamith Wülfing.

• Observatory posted photos of its Lovecraft art exhibition; see if you can spot my pics. Related: Write Club has more photos. Also, A Word From Our Sponsor.

• Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick. Related: Beat Memories—The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg.

• Adam Curtis on BP and the Axis of Evil; how the the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became British Petroleum and helped give Iran over to the Ayatollahs.

• The Quietus interviews Peter Christopherson (TG, Coil, etc) and Dr John.

• The Strange World of Adolf Hoffmeister at A Journey Round My Skull.

• An Artists’ Dialogue On CocoRosie’s Grey Oceans at Stereogum.

• Werner Herzog and David Lynch combine their talents.

• Jon Savage on The Residents versus The Beatles.

• BUTT magazine interviews James Bidgood.

• The Daily Drop Cap.

• The Gay Rub.

• Can on German TV in 1971.

Happy Bloomsday

A page from Ulysses with amendments by James Joyce.

That time of year again and for your delectation Ubuweb has tapes of the soundtrack from Joseph Strick’s semi-successful 1967 film of Ulysses featuring the voices of Milo O’Shea, Barbara Jefford and others. The film is frequently a series of illustrated voiceovers so this isn’t as purposeless as it might seem. Somewhere I have a vinyl recording of Milo O’Shea and Barbara Jefford reading from the Nausicaa and Penelope chapters and somewhere else a reading of passages from Finnegans Wake. For the latter Ubuweb also has Sylvia Beach’s recording of Joyce himself reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jerry by Paul Cadmus
• Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
• Books for Bloomsday

Weekend links 18

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.