A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Film
KraftWork by Seeper is another projection-mapping video where projections of 3d animations onto a building façade bring the architecture to life. Plus points for using the original Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburgh, Germany; minus points for the annoying editing which limits appreciation of the overall effect. Via Dressing the Air‘s weekly bulletin. For more projection mapping, see Apparati Effimeri.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Lumiere at Durham
• Tetragram for Enlargement
Lucifer Rising (1973).
The first time I saw Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising (1983, at a film club) I recognised all the ancient monuments apart from the peculiar group of rocks where we see a line of robed and cowled torchbearers ascending a stairway at night. These shots are intercut with a caped Marianne Faithfull making the same ascent in daytime until she reaches an alcove where she’s given a vision of an Egyptian sunset. It took a few more years to discover the location was the Externsteine rock formation in northwest Germany, one of those singular outcrops which—like Glastonbury Tor—was a focus of pagan ritual before being co-opted by the Christian church.
Photo by Markus Krueger.
360cities.net has a number of panoramic views of the area, the best being the one above which shows Marianne’s alcove as well as allowing views of the surrounding countryside. Photos such as the one below are far more common. While these give some idea of the unusual nature of the site they don’t show just how isolated the rocks are. For an older view, the Library of Congress has this Photocrom print.
Photo by Wilfried Pinsdorf.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Kenneth Anger on DVD again
Fragments are all you get with this one, unfortunately, but how tantalising they are. Lindsay Kemp’s 1975 stage production of Oscar Wilde’s play was probably the queerest there’s been to date, with Kemp himself playing Herod’s doomed daughter under a heap of silks and feathers. These stills from a sequence of Super-8 shots of the performance arrive courtesy of Nendie Pinto-Duchinsky, director of the forthcoming Kemp documentary Lindsay Kemp’s Last Dance, a film whose title echoes Ken Russell’s film of the Wilde play. The connections circulate wildly (so to speak) around Kemp’s production: prior to this performance Kemp had acted for Ken Russell, while two of the other actors went on to work with Derek Jarman (as did Kemp). John the Baptist (above) was played by David Haughton who appeared as Ariel in Jarman’s Jubilee; Jack Birkett’s grinning features (bottom, right) appear in many of Jarman’s films. All the more reason to wish these clips were longer.
The Kemp documentary YouTube channel has a few more items related to Kemp’s stage work, notably another tantalising sequence of stills from Flowers (1974), an adaptation of Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers that also featured Haughton and Birkett.
Update: Thanks to Suzanne in the comments for pointing to her video which includes further film moments including Salomé performing with a live snake à la Salammbô.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Salomé archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mister Jarman, Mister Moore and Doctor Dee
• Saint Genet
Ah, The Telephone Box, or La Cabina, to give Antonio Mercero’s half-hour film its original Spanish title. Made in 1972, I saw what was probably the first UK TV screening sometime around 1980, and for years afterwards was asking people whether they ever saw that film about the guy stuck in a phone box. Eventually I got in on tape following another TV screening and would foist it on anyone who hadn’t seen it. Thom at Form is Void linked to a YouTube copy a while back, and Stephen Gallagher reminded me of it a few hours ago, so here it is, one of those simple but memorable dramas in which a small problem escalates into a nightmare.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Les Temps Morts by René Laloux
Le Faune (1923) by Carlos Schwabe.
• “When I recently attended a conference in China, many of the presenters left their papers on the cloud—Google Docs, to be specific. You know how this story ends: they got to China and there was no Google. Shit out of luck. Their cloud-based Gmail was also unavailable, as were the cloud lockers on which they had stored their rich media presentations.” Ubuweb’s Kenneth Goldsmith on why he doesn’t trust the Cloud.
• “I’m a poet and Britain is not a land for poets anymore.” A marvellous interview with the great Lindsay Kemp at Dangerous Minds. Subjects include all that you’d hope for: Genet, Salomé, David Bowie, Ken Russell, Derek Jarman, The Wicker Man and “papier maché giant cocks”.
• “As early as the 1950s, Maurice Richardson wrote a Freudian analysis which concluded that Dracula was ‘a kind of incestuous-necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in wrestling match’.” Christopher Frayling on the Bram Stoker centenary.
• Björk gets enthused by (among other things) Leonora Carrington, The Hourglass Sanatorium and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s YouTube lectures.
• Before Fritz Lang’s Metropolis there was Algol – Tragödie der Macht (1920). Strange Flowers investigates.
David Marsh recreates famous album covers using Adobe Illustrator’s Pantone swatches.
• New titles forthcoming from Strange Attractor Press. Related: an interview with SAP allies Cyclobe.
• 960 individual slabs of vinyl make an animated waveform for Benga’s I Will Never Change.
• An exhibition of works by Stanislav Szukalksi at Varnish Fine Art, San Francisco,
• Keith Haring‘s erotic mural for the NYC LGBT Community Center is restored.
• The Situationist Times (1962–1967) is resurrected at Boo-Hooray.
• Doors Closing Slowly: Derek Raymond‘s Factory Novels.
• Will Wilkinson insists that fiction isn’t good for you.
• More bookplates at BibliOdyssey and 50 Watts.
• The Top 25 Psychedelic Videos of All Time.
• Flannery O’Connor: cartoonist.
• RIP Adam Yauch.
• Their finest moment: Sabotage (1994) by Beastie Boys.