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Weekend links 2

A picture for embittered lovers.

Among other things this week I’ve been working on the design for another CD featuring photos by Liz Eve, a photographer whose pictures are always a pleasure to use. (Our earlier encounters can be seen here, here and here.) The latest set have this anti-Valentine for an eye-popping cover image. I’ll be posting the finished layouts once everything is approved by the label.

• Crash: JG Ballard’s artistic legacy. Iain Sinclair on Ballard and a new art exhibition inspired by the author’s fiction.

• More art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ Artlog is essential reading. Lots of insights into his beautiful work.

• Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges will be released in an expanded edition on April 27th with outtakes, documentary, book and other extras.

• Sonic Youth dude and fellow Arthurian Thurston Moore has a blog.

• “That’s all it comes down to in the end, though, isn’t it? Put it in and jiggle it about a bit.” Alan Bennett & John Fortune discuss sex. A hoot.

• “I wanna walk through Sodom with a boy on my arm / Who’s so damn pretty I don’t know where I am…” A song from 1984 for Valentine’s Day: I, Bloodbrother Be (£4,000 Love Letter) by Shock Headed Peters.

Four today

Good things come in fours: the mighty Kraftwerk performing Numbers on the Minimum-Maximum DVD (2005).

Yes, the day between Darwin Day and St. Valentine’s Day is this blog’s birthday. I continue to be surprised that I’ve kept this going for so long since I never managed to keep a diary. Doing work that chains you to a computer is a help, although the past year was so busy that many entries were little more than picture posts. 2009 saw this site receiving more traffic than ever with the result that the server resources are now regularly overloaded for a couple of hours each day. I’ve been intending to move to a new webhost for a while but doing so is a time-consuming and technically complex business over which the current hectic workload continues to take priority.

The three most popular posts of the last twelve months were the following:

• The gay artists archive. Always a popular page but now it’s the most popular destination by a long margin, helped by continual visits from Stumbleupon users.

• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar. Links on Boing Boing, Trendhunter and elsewhere helped make this year’s calendar a big success. My thanks again to everyone who bought a copy, I’ll be doing a Through the Looking-Glass follow-up in September.

• Alan Moore interview, 1988. Another Stumbleupon hit, this magazine interview was one of my earliest posts and it remains curiously popular, more so than the very long Watchmen round table discussion which followed.

As always, thanks for reading and for all your comments!

John x

Queer Noise in Manchester

A reminder that the Manchester District Music Archive‘s Queer Noise event (for which I designed posters and flyers) takes place this Saturday.

Join us on Saturday 23rd January 2010 at The Deaf Institute for a one-off celebration of gay music in Manchester.

The line-up includes:
DJs: Dave Kendrick (Paradise Factory) • Jayne Compton (Club Brenda) • Philippa Jarman (Aytoun/Homo Electric) • Wes Baggaley (Terrorist)

Live Music: (hooker) • The Manchester Lesbian and Gay Chorus

Discussion: Jon Savage • Dave Kendrick • Liz Naylor • Jayne Compton • Gerry Potter aka Chloe Poems

Tickets are £6 are now available from Piccadilly Records.

ONLINE EXHIBITION
We will follow this event with an online exhibition scheduled for March 2010, curated by Jon Savage. If you have any flyers, posters, photos, footage or info relating to gay music in Manchester from the 1940s onwards, do get in touch at: info@mdmarchive.co.uk

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Queer Noise and the Wolf Girl

Vision Quest

Artwork: Accepting Fear Rather Than Trying to Understand It by Jason Leinwand.

Pam at Phantasmaphile follows last year’s Fata Morgana: The New Female Fantasists show by curating a new exhibition, Vision Quest, at Observatory, Brooklyn, NYC later this month:

…each piece in VISION QUEST explores the archetype of the shamanic voyage, using the tools of paint, pencil, or paper in lieu of fire, flower, feather. Taken together this work represents a full spectrum of what it means to go underground and out of body; to go there and come back again, perhaps just a little bit wiser or, at the very least, more wide awake.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Jesse Bransford • William Crump • Scott Gursky • Juliet Jacobsen • Ashley Lande • Adela Leibowitz • Jason Leinwand • Christopher Mir • Joe Newton • Herbert Pfostl • Christopher Reiger • Christine Shields • Erika Somogyi • Jessie Rose Vala

More details at Phantasmaphile. Meanwhile, a reminder that the similarly-themed Strange Attractor Salon opens this week at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London. It’s looking like I’ll be too busy to attend the opening as the world crawls back to work after the holiday season but many of the other featured artists should be there on Thursday night if you happen to be in the East End.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Strange Attractor Salon
• Fata Morgana: The New Female Fantasists

Calendar sale!

Now we’re into January it’s customary here to reduce the cost of the latest calendar since these things have a limited shelf-life. This year’s Psychedelic Wonderland production has been my most popular so far and can be had now for $17.99, one dollar over the base cost. Thanks again to everyone who bought a copy.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar