Weekend links 135

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Two Grove Press covers by Roy Kuhlman. From Arden Kuhlman Riordan’s Pinterest page collecting her father’s cover designs.

• “When people asked me what boylesque was, I’d say I’m doing burlesque and I have a penis,” said Mr. Ferguson.

Sequence5: 42 tracks of new, atmospheric/ambient music. A free download in a variety of formats.

The trailer for Jimmy’s End, the forthcoming film by Alan Moore and Mitch Jenkins.

As a porn performer, I can say from experience and with confidence that I’ve never been objectified by other performers. Nor have I been objectified by viewers. At least not in a way that seemed to confuse them into thinking I was an object. What happens instead is that I shift in and out of object-hood. Athletes do this too—they engage with their bodies for a specific task. At the end of the game or the shoot, the context changes.

Conner Habib on The Virtues of Being an Object

Secret Weapons (1972), David Cronenberg’s lost TV movie resurfaces.

Joseph Burnett reviews Nude, the new album by The Irrepressibles.

Over a third of e-readers are used just once before being set aside.

The guarded, the cautious, the small-scale, the modest, the well-crafted—such books may be rewarded (in our own time, at the national level), but they are rarely preserved. They are not preserved because guardedness, caution, smallness, modesty, and craft can be replaced in any given generation. What is irreplaceable is excess: Of verbal kinesis, religious intensity, intellectual voracity.

Amit Majmudar on Entertainment and Excess: The Great Literary Audiences

Miniature Book Interviews with Louis Wain Bound by Hand.

A Tour Inside Salvador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Spanish Home.

• Horror fiction should be deep, not cheap, says Nina Allan.

• RIP Peter Kuhlmann aka Pete Namlook

More is More by Alex Trochut

The Useless Web

Lost In The Sea (1992) by Sequential (Pete Namlook & DJ Criss) | Angel Tech (1994) by Bill Laswell & Pete Namlook | Yenlik (Part II) (1996) by Burhan Öçal & Pete Namlook

Arthur Rising

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In which the sorely missed Arthur magazine returns to the world of print after a four-year slumber in Avalon. I was involved with the magazine from the outset so regular readers may recall many earlier posts about America’s most vital cultural bulletin:

After a four-year sabbatical (faked death?), your beloved revolutionary sweetheart Arthur returns to print, renewed, refreshed, reinvigorated and in a bold new format: pages as tall and wide as a daily newspaper, printed in color and black and white on compostable newsprint, with ads only on the back cover(s). Amazing!

In partnership with Portland, Oregon’s Floating World Comics, Arthur’s gang of goofs, know-it-alls and village explainers are back, from Bull Tonguers Byron Coley and Thurston Moore to radical ecologist Nance Klehm to trickster activists Center for Tactical Magic to Defend Brooklyn‘s socio-political commentator Dave Reeves to a host of new, fresh-faced troublemakers, edited by ol’ fool Jay Babcock and art directed by Yasmin Khan. You want a peek at the contents? Sorry, compadre. That would be saying too much, too soon. Wait ’til Dec. 22, 2012: that’s right—THE DAY AFTER THE NON-END OF THE WORLD!

Please keep in mind… Arthur is no longer distributed for free anywhere. Those days are (sadly) long gone. Now you gotta buy Arthur or you won’t see it. Our price: Five bucks cheeeeeep!

Arthur No. 33
Broadsheet newspaper, 15″ x 22.75″
Available Dec. 22, 2012
NOW YOU MAY PRE-ORDER ARTHUR NO. 33 HERE.

The NYT picked up on the news on Thursday. Is re-launching a paper magazine in 2012 a crazy idea? We’re about to find out. A selection of my illustrations for previous issues follows.

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MBV Arkestra (2003).

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The Aeon of Horus (2004).

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Out, Demons, Out! (2004).

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Brian Eno (2005).

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Sir Richard Bishop (2007).

Weekend links 134

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Technological mandala 02 (The beginning) (2012) by Leonardo Ulian.

• The Yellow Magic Orchestra really were the Japanese equivalent of Kraftwerk in 1978. I’d not seen this video for Firecracker before. Same goes for the Technopolis and Rydeen videos. Related: YMO’s synth programmer, Hideki Matsutake, showing off his modular Moog on a Japanese TV show.

Sra is the final book in the Aedena Cycle by Moebius. It’s never been translated into English but Quenched Consciousness has just finished posting the entire book in an unofficial translation.

• “It’s better to have a small amount of good comics, than a big amount of mediocre comics.” Dutch comic artist Joost Swarte interviewed.

• From 2007: The Strange Lovecraftian Statuary of Puerto Vallarta (Thanks, Ian.) Related: More art by Alejandro Colunga.

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A novelty mechanical clock barometer in the form of a steam engine (c. 1885).

The MR-808: a room-size TR-808 drum machine by Moritz Simon Geist with real instruments played by robot hands.

• “Shoot us and dig the grave; otherwise we’re staying.” The women living in Chernobyl’s toxic wasteland.

Hotel Room Portraits 1999–2012 by Richard Renaldi, a new photo exhibition at Wessel + O’Connor.

Lane’s Telescopic View of the Opening of the Great Exhibition, 1851.

• “I’m the target market, and I don’t like it!” A Creative Catharsis.

Brian Eno’s new ambient album, Lux, is released on Monday.

Collages by Sergei Parajanov.

Techno City (1984) by Cybotron | Techno Primitiv (1985) by Chris & Cosey | Techno Dread (2008) by 2562.

European Rendezvous by CTI

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A final post about the releases on Cabaret Voltaire’s Doublevision label. European Rendezvous (1984) was a follow-up to the Elemental 7 release by Chris & Cosey with the pair performing again under their Creative Technology Institute name. As with the earlier release the visuals are a collaboration with John Lacey while the music was recorded live during their 1983 tour of Europe. Once again, I knew this from the soundtrack album (also on Doublevision) and didn’t get to see the video which has never been reissued. Visually this is further impressionistic layering of images à la Elemental 7 but with greater emphasis on Chris & Cosey themselves. Musically, I always preferred the earlier CTI release which worked perfectly well without the visuals so it’s interesting to see that the visuals for European Rendezvous help music which lacks the finesse of their studio recordings. The fifty-minute tape is rounded off with a promo video for October (Love Song).

The YouTube version of European Rendezvous is in great condition compared to some of the other things I’ve been linking to; here’s hoping someone eventually uploads a complete copy of TV Wipeout. Most of the other Doublevision video releases including Tuxedomoon’s Ghost Sonata, Einstürzende Neubauten’s Halber Mensch and Cabaret Voltaire’s Johnny YesNo have since been reissued on DVD.

Previously on { feuilleton }
TV Wipeout
Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo
Elemental 7 by CTI

TV Wipeout

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Another of the videocassette releases on Cabaret Voltaire’s Doublevision label, TV Wipeout was released in 1984 as a “video magazine”. This and Johnny YesNo were the two Doublevision releases I was most interested in, and I did get to see some of the former release when Cabaret Voltaire’s first appearance at the Haçienda in 1983 was preceded by an hour of “Doublevision Presents…”. The most memorable sights from that screening were the weird and scary Renaldo & The Loaf film and the video for Terminus by Psychic TV, a very Wild Boys-esque piece directed by Peter Christopherson. The Cabs’ Stephen Mallinder explained why the contents of the tape tended to be more commercial than other releases on the label:

Q: The next Doublevision was the TV Wipeout video which was a sort of disposable magazine compilation. It contained a fairly wide variety of contributors, from people like The Fall and Test Dept to some more mainstream groups like Bill Nelson and Japan.

Mal: The point was that Virgin Films were quite happy to work with us; they even gave us money in the form of advertising revenue for using some film clips from the Virgin catalogue. We were then able to camouflage them into the whole set-up and make them look as if they were part of the whole nature of the video compilation.

Q: One of those clips was a particularly inane interview with David Bowie. Was its inclusion merely a selling point?

Mal: Yes, it was purely that. There are a lot of people who will buy anything with David Bowie on it. So we said “Fuck it, why not use that as a selling point!” Actually the interview is appalling, it’s terrible. Our including it was almost like a piss-take. We were saying “you really will buy anything with David Bowie on it if you buy this”.

From Cabaret Voltaire: The Art of the Sixth Sense by M. Fish and D. Hallbery

Unlike some of the other Doublevision releases this one doesn’t seem to have been uploaded anywhere but since much of the content was music videos it’s possible to compile an incomplete playlist. The Paul Morrissey films (Heat and Flesh), Eating Raoul and Plan 9 from Outer Space were cult items that weren’t being screened on TV so this was an opportunity to see them outside a cinema. Some of the other selections—the Chel White, Steve Binnion and Space Movie—are still a mystery. Lost Possibilities Of Modern Dreams was footage of a painting exhibition by Phil Barnes soundtracked by the Cabs. The Claude Bessy piece is the only one from the original tape, a short film of the Haçienda’s VJ shot by Ikon Video’s Malcolm Whitehead in the basement of the club.

Bill Nelson: Flaming Desire
Bill Nelson interview
Plan 9 from Outer Space excerpt
Clock DVA: Resistance
Chel White: Industrial Park
Cabaret Voltaire: Just Fascination
Steve Binnion: Mediaevil
Renaldo & The Loaf: Songs For Swinging Larvae
David Bowie interview for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Andy Warhol: excerpt from Heat
The Fall: Live at The Venue (1983) with documentary footage
Space Movie excerpt
The Box: Old Style Drop Down
IKON FCL advertisement featuring various groups on the Factory label
Japan: excerpt from Oil On Canvas
Andy Warhol: excerpt from Flesh
Test Dept: Shockwork
Dieter Meier interview
Yello: excerpt from Jetzt Und Alles
Eating Raoul excerpt
Psychic TV: Terminus
Phil Barnes featuring Cabaret Voltaire: Lost Possibilities Of Modern Dreams
Marc & The Mambas: Caroline Says
Claude Bessy: Operating Instructions

Previously on { feuilleton }
Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo
Elemental 7 by CTI
The Crackdown by Cabaret Voltaire
Network 21 TV