According to the notes for Xiang Pu Zhu’s short demo piece, all the shots here are computer generated. Some are more obvious than others but the combinations of liquid and particles are very impressive. The music is by Esther Garcia.
Category: {film}
Film
More Spare things
A couple of Austin Spare-related news items arrive in the same week so it’s worth linking again to Earth: Inferno (2003), a short film by Mor Navón & Julián Moguillansky based on the book by Austin Osman Spare. This is a production I have to damn with faint praise by being pleased that Spare is the focus of the work while being disappointed in the film as a whole. Despite the elaborate costumes, careful tableaux and copious nudity, Earth: Inferno confirms that an occult film needs to be more than a record of people dressing up and gesturing hieratically. If nothing else, occult rituals transform the perceptions of those involved, and this quality should be represented or implied in any film dealing with magical operations. The films of Kenneth Anger and Derek Jarman show different approaches, with the raw image transformed by superimposition, exaggerated grain, accelerated/decelerated motion, and so on. Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and In the Shadow of the Sun are examples to follow. And now the news:
• Lost Envoy: The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare, edited by Jonathan Allen & Mark Pilkington. Out later this year from the fabulous Strange Attractor.
• Surrealism, Austin Osman Spare and the Occult Underground of 1890s and 1990s London:
Nadia Choucha discusses the context and evolution of her ground-breaking book, Surrealism and the Occult, first published in 1991. The book traces the evolution of Surrealist ideas and situates them within the occult currents of fin-de-siècle European culture, revealing how these currents infused the work of various thinkers and artists in their quest for the ‘marvellous’. The work of Austin Osman Spare is also discussed as a way of comparing and contrasting his methods and techniques with those of the Surrealists. With the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book approaching, this evening will also present an analysis of the work as occurring within a unique historical and cultural moment.
Jun 23rd, 6:30 pm–8:00 pm at the Last Tuesday Society, London.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• A Book of Satyrs by Austin Osman Spare
• Spare things
• Dreaming Out of Space: Kenneth Grant on HP Lovecraft
• MMM in IT
• Abrahadabra
• Murmur Become Ceaseless and Myriad
• New Austin Spare grimoires
• Austin Spare absinthe
• Austin Spare’s Behind the Veil
• Austin Osman Spare
TV Wipeout revisited
TV Wipeout, as detailed in an earlier post, was a one-off “video magazine” compiled and released on VHS by Cabaret Voltaire in 1984. This was the fourth title on the Cab’s own Doublevision label which was easily the best of the UK’s independent video labels at the time. Many of the other Doublevision releases have either been reissued on DVD or can be found online but TV Wipeout has remained elusive, in part because it contains material that would offend YouTube’s copyright restrictions. Cabaret Voltaire’s deal with Virgin Records enabled them to pad the running time with music promos and trailers for some of the films on Virgin’s own video label.
Back in 2012 I was able to find some of the more popular items but not the obscurities, a situation that’s now resolved by this YouTube playlist which has uploaded the entire cassette as a series of separate items. Most of the previously missing pieces will only be of interest to completists—some of them are scratch-video creations that look very dated today—but if you’re like me, and have waited over 30 years to see this thing in its entirety, it means your curiosity can now be assuaged. A couple of items by Cabaret Voltaire and Japan are still missing but they’re easily found elsewhere.
Update: As noted in the comments, the Japan clip was missing due to an oversight, and is now in place. I’m still getting a message saying the Cabaret Voltaire video is “blocked in your country on copyright grounds” so that must be UK-specific.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Cabaret Voltaire on La Edad de Oro, 1983
• Doublevision Presents Cabaret Voltaire
• Just the ticket: Cabaret Voltaire
• European Rendezvous by CTI
• TV Wipeout
• Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo
• Elemental 7 by CTI
• The Crackdown by Cabaret Voltaire
• Network 21 TV
Weekend links 263
Dancing Horse (1972) by Tadashi Nakayama.
• The Wounded Galaxies Festival of Experimental Media takes place in Bloomington, Indiana, on October 7–11, 2015. The event is an offshoot of the earlier Burroughs Century, and the phrase “wounded galaxies” is one of Burroughs’ own. It’s also the partial title of Wounded Galaxies Tap At The Window, the most recent album by Cyclobe who will be performing at the festival. Cyclobe’s Stephen Thrower will be in London later this month for the launch of his new book, Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco, and a screening of Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1971).
• Gallery sites showcasing erotic art are often coy about the details of the work they’re exhibiting. That’s not the case with Artists Space, NYC, whose Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play is running from June 14–August 23, 2015.
• “I just loved the songs, and I didn’t mind the age in their voices, and I didn’t mind the fact that they were unaccompanied, it didn’t matter.” Shirley Collins talking to Ben Graham about her love of English folk music.
The more important question is what do we do with psychedelia now? I think the drugs themselves and the experiences they produce in individuals and for society are too important and vital to be pigeon-holed and taken hold of by a bloodthirsty media that always aims to reduce all experience to a few simple straplines for improved consumerism.
Dr Ben Sessa talking to Barnaby Smith about psychedelic drugs. Breaking Convention 2015, the Third International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness, takes place at the University of Greenwich next month.
• “…if someone opens a door or if sunlight falls on them they shoot off the grid and suddenly you have a roomful of what sounds like sick bagpipes.” Will Gregory on the physicality of Moog synthesizers.
• Mixes of the week: The Necromancer-Queens of Neverland, an exotic collection by SeraphicManta, Secret Thirteen Mix 156 by Asusu, and an Ornette Coleman playlist.
• “In 2015, the thought of anything as incendiary as Scum or Made in Britain turning up on TV just seems bizarre.” Danny Leigh on the great Alan Clarke.
• More psychedelia: ‘Art That Transcends‘, my article for Communication Arts, has been posted on the magazine’s website.
• Phantasmaphile recommends Thus Were Their Faces, a collection of short stories by Silvina Ocampo.
• Earth filmed playing live in Brooklyn, NY, September 24, 2014. The full set, and a great performance.
• At Dangerous Minds: “How Far Will You Go?” Meet Smokey, the outrageously gay 70s cult rockers.
• Peter Strickland on six films that fed into The Duke of Burgundy.
• Polly On The Shore (1970) by Shirley & Dolly Collins | The Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood (1972) by Sandy Denny | The Banks of Red Roses (1988) by June Tabor
Simulacra, a film by mustardcuffins
The fragmentations of reality in Simulacra aren’t as radical as the Vortographs but they’re certainly mind-bending. No need to attempt an explanation when you can see for yourself.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• NY, NY, a film by Francis Thompson