{ feuilleton }

Le Dossier B by Schuiten and Peeters

Almost ten years have elapsed since I devoted a week of blog posts to one of my favourite fantastic creations, the Obscure World/Obscure Cities of Belgian artist-and-writer team François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. Schuiten and Peeters’ mythos is a multi-media project with a series of bande desinée albums as its core, a cycle of stories which introduce the reader to some of the cities in the Obscure World (a “counter-Earth” on the opposite side of our Sun), and which are connected by recurrent characters and motifs. Since the completion of the core series, Schuiten, with occasional help from Peeters, has expanded the mythos to encompass other books that flesh out some of the world’s invented history and its connections to our own world, together with other manifestations such as art exhibitions and music releases. Le Dossier B (1995) is a peripheral Obscure World production, a 54-minute TV documentary which entangles the genuine history of 20th-century Brussels with an invented secret society who believe in the existence of a twin city, Bruzel, that intersects with the Belgian capital.

Le Dossier B was directed by Wilbur Leguebe from a script by Leguebe with Schuiten and Peeters. Valérie Lemaître plays the on-camera investigator, “Claire Devillers”, while artist and writer appear in roles that match their personalities. Schuiten is seen in silent footage as “Robert de la Barque”, an artist whose obsession with Brussels’ vast Palace of Justice provides clues to the Bruzel mystery via the eccentricities of its architect, Joseph Poelaert. Peeters appears later in the investigation as “Pierre Lidiaux” the author in 1960 of Le Dossier B (a book which has since vanished), his own study of the connections between Brussels and Bruzel. We first see Lidiaux being interviwed on a TV arts show, then later as the presenter of his own eccentric and unfinished film about Antoine Wiertz, the real-life Belgian painter of vast canvasses on morbid subjects whose museum Lidiaux explores. Aside from the well-realised historical fakery, one of the pleasures of Leguebe’s witty and imaginative documentary is the spotlight it throws on the history and culture of Brussels and Belgium. I hadn’t realised, for example, that the Wiertz Museum is so close to the European Parliament building which was still under construction when the film was being made. Elsewhere there are references to Magritte, Delvaux and Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta, and we catch a glimpse of work by another great Belgian painter, Jean Delville.

The last third of the film is based around the researches of one James Welles (Adrian Brine), a British historian whose book-length study, Shadows in the Night: A Secret Society in Belgium, explores the connections of yet more historical figures with the Bruzel mystery, including the aforementioned Horta and chemist Ernest Solvay. The historian’s surname may be taken as a deliberate choice: Orson Welles was the director of another documentary mixing fact and fiction, F for Fake, while Welles’ appearance as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight provided Schuiten with the model for the central character in La Tour, one of the albums in Schuiten and Peeters’ Obscure Cities series.

Some of this territory is explored in another of the Obscure Cities albums, Brüsel, especially the building of the Palace of Justice and the concept of “Brusselisation”, a pejorative French term for the rapid demolition of historical quarters of a city to make way for new construction. Where Brüsel has the freedom of the comics medium to refashion the capital in a fantastic manner, Le Dossier B uses the material of our world to suggest another city (possibly the one depicted in the album) whose existence we never see. Apart, that is, for the suggestion near the end of the film that the Bruzel of the secret society is the Brussels of today, a city which has overwritten the Brussels of a century ago, just as the invented encyclopedia in Borges’s Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius gradually changes the world at large to match its contents.

Le Dossier B is available on DVD but seems to be sold out for now. Alternatively, it may be watched at YouTube in an unsubtitled copy that’s been uploaded in the wrong aspect ratio. The really determined may wish to do what I did: download the video, grab some English subtitles, then watch it in VLC with the aspect ratio set to 16:10. A lot of messing around but it works.

(My thanks to Brussels resident Anne Billson for the YT link!)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Urbatecture
• Echoes of the Cities
• Further tales from the Obscure World
• Brüsel by Schuiten & Peeters
• La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
• La Tour by Schuiten & Peeters
• La fièvre d’Urbicande by Schuiten & Peeters
• Les Murailles de Samaris by Schuiten & Peeters
• The art of François Schuiten
• Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux

Weekend links 467

~~Artwork by Kuldar Leement (maybe…I’ve yet to see a credit for this).~~ No, it’s the work of Rupert Lloyd.

• In Search Of Hades: The Virgin Recordings 1973–1979, is a retrospective box set comprising 16 CDs and 2 blu-ray discs devoted to the first phase of Tangerine Dream’s output on the Virgin label. For enthusiasts of the group’s Virgin recordings (myself among them) this is very welcome, especially for the albums being given the Steven Wilson remix treatment, and the wealth of rare and unreleased material. In addition to several live concerts the box will include the complete Oedipus Tyrannus theatre soundtrack, the overture of which appeared on a compilation in 1975 but has since been unavailable outside bootlegs. Baroque 2 is a taster of the unheard soundtrack. The box itself will be released on 14th June. Related: Edgar Froese interviewed on a US radio station in 1974. Among the topics of discussion are German music of the time, Tangerine Dream’s dissatisfaction with Ohr Records, and their happiness at moving to Virgin.

• “As the witch-burning begins, the image gradually dissolves into a stroboscopic onslaught of neon colours accompanied by rapid, high-pitched ringing and a thundering drone.” Don’t come to Gaspar Noé for social realism. Lux Aeterna is his new thing.

• An ode to the ultimate camp film: Nathalie Atkinson on Boom!, Joseph Losey’s adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, and (unsurprisingly) one of John Waters’ favourites.

“Adhesive,” a term borrowed from phrenology, was Whitman’s synonym for homosexuality. According to gay studies pioneer William A. Percy, “the term became part of the special vocabulary of the emerging homosexual subculture of the nineteenth century,” which Whitman and his coterie would have understood. Despite Whitman’s private vows to resist temptation, and to be more aloof, he continued to court young men until he died. One of the final photos of Whitman, taken at the Camden docks in 1890, shows the poet with his handsome male nurse Warren Fritzinger. “I like to look at him—he is health to look at: young, strong, lithe,” Whitman told Traubel.

Jeremy Lybarger on Walt Whitman’s boys

• Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots: 8 volumes, over 500 tracks, all free downloads. Hear many of the most popular groups of the late 60s shilling for commercial radio stations.

• Hildur Guðnadóttir used only sounds from a nuclear plant in her score for Chernobyl.

• US museums of the week: Poster House, NYC, and The Moogseum, Asheville, NC.

• “Yes, witches are real,” says Pam Grossman, “I know because I am one.”

• Photos by Chas Gerretsen from the set of Apocalypse Now.

• Geeta Dayal on the brainwave music of David Rosenboom.

• Mix of the week: Self-Titled NE285 Mix by Kevin Martin.

• RIP Roky Erickson

• Boom Boom (1961) by John Lee Hooker | Boom Stix (1962) by Curley & The Jades | Boom! (1992) by The Grid

Bruges in photochrom

Maison du France.

I’ve looked through the Library of Congress collection of photochrom prints many times but somehow never noticed the 20 or so prints of Bruges until now. The Belgian Symbolists recorded their fascination with the Belgian town in paintings, drawings, photographs and Georges Rodenbach’s novel, Bruges-la-Morte (1892). The latter came illustrated by photographs that showed the town’s depopulated streets and empty canals, an early example of a novel using photography to support its text. Rodenbach’s photographs are all black-and-white, of course, and not the greatest quality (see this copy of the book). These photochrom prints may not be strictly accurate in their colours but they date from the same period as Rodenbach’s pictures; they also contain much more detail, and many of them replicate Rodenbach’s views. The ones here show the canals and gates but the library archive includes several views of the squares and the famous medieval Belfry of Bruges.

St. Croix Gate.

Ghent Gate.

Continue reading “Bruges in photochrom”

Weekend links 466

The Simulator (1936) by Dora Maar.

• Surprise of the week for me was the discovery of a new album, Kshatrya – The Eye Of The Bird, by cult French composer Igor Wakhévitch. This had been out for a while but I’d managed to miss the announcements. The music was recorded in 1999 so isn’t exactly new but it’s the first new Wakhévitch release (as opposed to a reissue or compilation) since Let’s Start in 1979. Very good it is too, almost completely electronic but not as discordant as his synth-dominated Hathor album.

• “Popol Vuh is a Mass for the heart.” Gerhard Augustin talks to Florian Fricke about Popol Vuh’s music in a “rare” (lost? previously unseen?) interview. Undated but the City Raga album is referred to as a recent release so it’s probably around 1995.

• Brian Dillon on the voraciousness and oddity of Dora Maar’s pictures. Related: Rick Poynor on The Simulator by Dora Maar.

• The Secret Ceremonies: Critical Essays on Arthur Machen, edited by Mark Valentine and Timothy J. Jarvis.

• Juliette Goodrich on the tale of the Buchla synthesizer, the repair engineer, and a dormant drop of LSD.

• Scott Tobias on Midnight Cowboy at 50: why the X-rated best picture winner endures.

• A Hidden History of Women and Psychedelics by Mariavittoria Mangini.

• Previews of Chords, the new album by composer Ellen Arkbro.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 290 by Mark Stewart.

• “Somehow I became respectable,” says John Waters.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Walerian Borowczyk Day.

• The Bandcamp Guide to Earth.

• Gén #1 by Ray Kunimoto.

• Secret Ceremony (Theme From Brond) (1987) by Scala (Bill Nelson & Daryl Runswick) | Healing Ceremony (1990) by African Head Charge | Ceremony Behind Screens (1995) by David Toop

Into the Vortex

I’m surprised this has managed to evade my attention for the past eight years but better late than never. Into the Vortex is an hour-long music mix by Radio Soulwax whose visuals are one answer to the question of how best to illustrate a diverse playlist, if illustrate you must. The solution, directed by Wim Reygaert, is to recreate with sets, props and a cast of performers every single cover from every record in the mix, with each cover recreation lasting the duration of the piece. Many of the recreations are simple affairs using paint and cardboard but the time and effort involved still boggles the mind. No surprise that the Radio Soulwax motto is “Why do things the easy way?”

The best part for this viewer and listener is that much of the music is drawn from very familiar albums: German electronica or Kosmische music, its French equivalents, and so on. It’s a lot more satisfying (and surprising) seeing the alien head from Interface by Heldon being recreated instead of yet another Beatles cover design. On the musical side, one of the users at Discogs very conveniently put together an almost complete listing of the mix, together with links to the records. Collect the set.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive