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Weekend links 620

varo

Premonition (1953) by Remedios Varo.

• “Classical mythology, Arcadian idylls, occult speculation, and an interest in cultural curiosities coexisted in the grotto, allowing for the playful exploration of a new tension emerging between Nature and Artifice.” Laura Tradii explores the artificial grottoes of the Renaissance and beyond.

• “Some of the symbols and signs seem like bridges to nowhere, and perhaps Nabokov was lovingly teasing our endless quest to find patterns and generate meaning.” David M. Rubin on writing a response to a Nabokov short story.

• New music: “KMRU & Aho Ssan erupt in post-apocalyptic extremity with Resurgence“. I did the layout for this latest release on the Subtext label but I still haven’t got round to updating my web pages so you’ll have to take my word for it.

• Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus “unleashes a level of eroticism that’s surprising for 1940s British cinema,” says Adam Scovell.

• “Premonitions are impossible, and they come true all the time.” Fiona Sturges reviews The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight.

• Between Hell and Paradise: paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and his followers at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

• At The Collector: Olivia Barrett on the Voodoo Queens of New Orleans.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Astronef Super.

• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 118 by Pan American.

• TMP-01 Vintage Synth TV Series from Benge.

• Vale, A Year In The Country.

• Premonition (1979) by Simple Minds | Premonition (1980) by Cabaret Voltaire | Premonition (Giant Empty Iron Vessel) (1987) by David Sylvian & Holger Czukay

Weekend links 617

Diane (1977) by Mimi Parent.

• Richard Pinhas expounds upon his favourite musical choices for Warren Hatter. The influence of Robert Fripp has always been to the fore in the Pinhas oeuvre—an early track by Heldon is titled In The Wake Of King Fripp—so there was bound to be a King Crimson album on the list. But which one? Click through the selections to find out.

• Vinyl is the product of a toxic manufacturing process, as well as being difficult to recycle without releasing yet more toxins, but you seldom see these issues discussed by today’s quality-conscious vinyl fetishists. Jono Podmore talks to some of the people trying to create an eco-friendly disc.

• “…these Renaissance images shock us because they are so frequently ithyphallic: Christ has risen, but not in the way we have come to expect.” Hunter Dukes on ostentatio genitalium in Renaissance art.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine on those music projects that used to be described as “hauntological”, with an emphasis on The Machinery of the Moment, a new release from The British Space Group.

• “Like Delia Derbyshire jamming with This Heat.” Jesse Locke tours the Broadcast discography.

• 50 Watts announces the birth of 50 Watts Books, a publisher of strange and/or unusual art books.

• “Black lights turn this North Carolina mine into a psychedelic wonderland.”

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Bill Morrison Day.

• Black Lightening Light (1968) by The Shy Guys | Black Light (1994) by Material | Transmission Nine: Black Light (2013) by Pye Corner Audio

Weekend links 615

Tesla does the Astro. Hunter Dukes at Public Domain Review examines the promotion of Nikola Tesla’s ideas via this famous photograph.

• Coming soon from Side Real Press: Kokain—The Modern Revue, a magazine produced in Vienna that ran for five issues during 1925. “Original copies are so rare that it scarcely appears in any of the literature relating to the Weimar period and its contents have remained almost entirely ignored and certainly untranslated. Until now.”

• “Magritte had gotten this far in life by refusing to obey anyone, and in a way his disobedience proved that he understood Surrealism better than the leader of the Surrealists.” Jackson Arn reviewing Magritte: A Life by Alex Danchev.

• “Go as far into your dream as possible and find your own unique voice.” Meredith Monk (again) talking to Elizabeth Aubrey.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley by Phil Baker.

• At Spoon & Tamago: The natural world springs to life in kirie paintings by Tamami Kubota.

• Antonia Mufarech on why sunflowers are Ukraine’s national flower.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Etienne-Louis Boullée’s unbuildable tombs.

• Mix of the week: I Can’t Go For That by The Ephemeral Man.

• New music: Triumph Of The Oak by The Lord.

• RIP Philip Jeck.

• Tesla (1997) by Jimi Tenor | Tesla (2011) by They Might Be Giants | Tesla Coil (2016) by Xhei

Weekend links 607

Jerry (1931) by Paul Cadmus.

• “I wanted to photograph naked young men as opulently and as attentively as those professional ladies appearing in Playboy-type magazines.” RIP James Bidgood, photographer and director of no-budget gay-porn classic Pink Narcissus. Also in the obituary notices this week: Monica Vitti and John Appleton, composer of electronic music and inventor of the Synclavier sampling keyboard.

• “…the Sola Busca deck is limited in its use for divinatory purposes today, and yet, since its enigmatic imagery irresistibly invites decoding, the deck nonetheless beckons twenty-first century cartomancers into a game of high imagination.” Kevin Dann on the mysteries of the world’s oldest complete Tarot deck.

• “This Missouri company still makes cassette tapes, and they are flying off the factory floor.” Jennifer Billock reports.

He attended to his own talent, not in the interest of bombast or self-aggrandisement, but rather like a faithful watchman. He had the fixity of the great and therefore no need of vanity. He estimated that three shillings would be a reasonable price for Ulysses. A tiresome book, he admitted. At the same time he was dogged by fear that the printing house would be burnt down or that some untoward catastrophe would happen. He assisted Miss Beach in wrapping the copies, he autographed the deluxe editions, he wrote to influential people, he hawked packages to the post office. He knew that the illustrati would change their minds many a time before settling down to a final opinion and that many another would know as much about it as the parliamentary side of his arse.

Edna O’Brien on James Joyce

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine on The Secret Glory by Arthur Machen, another novel now in its centenary year.

• At Aquarium Drunkard: It Is Not My Music, (1978) an hour-long Swedish TV documentary about Don Cherry.

• At Bandcamp: The transportive psychedelia of Moon Glyph records.

• Mix of the week: Fact Mix 844 by A Psychic Yes.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Show.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Guitar.

• Mumblin’ Guitar (1960) by Bo Diddley | Electric Guitar (1979) by Talking Heads | Impossible Guitar (1982) by Phil Manzanera

Weekend links 601

The Innocents (1961), one of the great cinematic ghost stories.

• “Out of the many adaptations, Jack Clayton’s [The Innocents] is considered the benchmark. The film celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, having premiered in London on the 24th of November, 1961. Considering the sheer number of competitors to Clayton’s version, it is telling of the film’s qualities that it still stands far and above its many peers. In fact, it is difficult to see James’s story without those stark black-and-white images of the film coming to mind, as well as its stunning central performance by Deborah Kerr. Suffice to say, 60 years on, James’s screen ghosts still haunt.” Adam Scovell on the many adaptations of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

• “I wanted to turn sex into art because art makes sense of life.” Jack Fritscher talks to photographer Rick Castro about gay S&M fetishes, Drummer magazine, Robert Mapplethorpe, and his BDSM porn studio, Palm Drive Video.

• “Fela was a very good human resources manager.” Lemi Ghariokwu, creator of over 2,000 album covers, talks to Nathan Evans about his time working for Fela Kuti.

I’ve been approached several times to ‘make an NFT’. So far nothing has convinced me that there is anything worth making in that arena. ‘Worth making’ for me implies bringing something into existence that adds value to the world, not just to a bank account. If I had primarily wanted to make money I would have had a different career as a different kind of person. I probably wouldn’t have chosen to be an artist. NFTs seem to me just a way for artists to get a little piece of the action from global capitalism, our own cute little version of financialisation. How sweet—now artists can become little capitalist assholes as well.

Brian Eno on the fool’s-goldrush du jour

• At Vimeo: The Snail on the Slope, a film of generative processes by Vladimir Todorovic based on the strange science-fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

• At Dangerous Minds: an exploration of Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies, “one of the most insane pieces of music ever written”.

• “This is how one ought to see, how things really are.” Ido Hartogsohn on Aldous Huxley’s mescaline experiments.

• Always an essential guide: The Wire magazine’s releases of year.

• The end of December brings us Alan Bennett’s diary at the LRB.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Ryoji Ikeda Day.

• Innocenti (1992) by Brian Eno | Innocent Square [excerpt] (2011) by Christian Skjødt Hasselstrøm | First In An Innocent World (2016) by The Pattern Forms