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Weekend links 152

Light Moves on the Water (2010), a collage by Alexis Anne Mackenzie.

“[She] stated, emphatically and more than once, that pornography cannot and should not be linked to LGBT rights…When a gay man lives somewhere where his identity is threatened, it’s clear how sex – including pornography – and sexuality are intertwined. His sexual imagination, which is criminalized, matches the sexual images of gay pornography (which are also criminalized). Since acting out his imagination through sex would be to risk his life, the access to the images is safer. The images, created by gay men wherever it’s legal to create them, provide empowerment and diminish alienation.” An important piece by Conner Habib who asks “Why are we afraid to talk about gay porn?”

• Florida’s Parallel Universe: “The abandoned Nike Missile Site, surrounded by the Everglades, is a reminder of when humans almost destroyed the world and a warning that we could still lose everything today.” By Stefany Anne Golberg.

• In Search of Divine: A Retrospective by Katherine McLaughlin. Related: Jeffrey Schwarz, director of a new documentary, I Am Divine, talks about Divine’s career, and his film to Polari Magazine.

When Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy was banned in 1958, it was said that a man in a pub asked him how much the book weighed, then offered to bring two thousand copies across the border instead of his usual smuggled butter. We might have called it the Black North, for being dark with Protestants, but when I was a child in the 1960s, Ulster was the place British sweets came from: Spangles, Buttons and, most notably, Opal Fruits. It was across this border that the feminists of “the condom train” staged a mass importation of illegal contraceptives in May 1971. When they arrived from Belfast into Connolly Station, the customs men “were mortified”, Mary Kenny, one of the participants, remembered, “and quickly conceded they could not arrest all of us, and let us through”.

Anne Enright on censorship in Ireland.

• Open Culture posts a copy of Nigel Finch’s 1988 Arena documentary about Robert Mapplethorpe.

• The Fall of Communism Through Gay Pornography: A video by William E. Jones.

• Surrealism Made Fresh: Sanford Schwartz on the drawings of the Surrealists.

• Cult Classic: Defining Katherine Mansfield by Kirsten O’Regan.

• Jonathan Barnbrook (again!) on David Bowie (again!).

• Sydney Stanley illustrates Algernon Blackwood

• 20 Haunting Ghost Towns of the World

• At Pinterest: The Male Form

• The Life Divine (1973) by Santana and McLaughlin | The Rhythm Divine (1987) by Yello feat. Shirley Bassey | Divine (2000) by Antony and the Johnsons

Ugly carpets

The latest work-related research has had me browsing pages of these garish carpet designs. The photos above and below are by Chris Maluszynski, a man who’s spent some time documenting the alarmingly vivid patterns used on the carpets in Las Vegas casinos. Maluszynski spoke to the New Yorker about his project in a piece which also features some speculation as to why they look the way they do:

Christine B. Whittemore, who runs a blog called Carpetology, believes that the carpets’ primary function is psychological. “A lot of the busyness of the patterns may be about keeping people active, as too much relaxing may not inspire gambling,” she said. “You also have to be careful not to use the same pattern on stairs as you do on flat surfaces, because of how the brain processes depth.”

Wired has more examples of the current state of the casino carpet art. Garish they may be but some skill is nevertheless required to create anything this wildly discordant. There are further casino carpet galleries here, including examples of discontinued designs. As for the project of mine that warrants this eye-jangling research, examples will be posted here later in the year.

The art of Joanna Chrobak

Pageant III (2005–2006).

A Polish artist whose paintings have that combination of technical virtuosity and strange imagination I always like to see. She also explores traditional themes such as those below. Her website is in Polish but can be translated easily enough via Google.

Saint Sebastian (2007–2008).

Salomé (2007–2008).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
• The Salomé archive

Brecht and Bowie

While David Bowie is still making the news it’s worth revisiting Baal, an hour-long BBC TV adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht play broadcast in 1981. Bowie stars as the title character, a thoroughly disagreeable poet and café singer who ruins the lives of those around him. This caused a stir at the time more for Bowie’s presence than for the content although Brecht wasn’t exactly a popular choice for evening entertainment. Prior to this most of Bowie’s acting had been in films, with his television appearances being limited to song performances or chat show discussions. The Man Who Fell to Earth aside, I’ve been somewhat dismissive of Bowie’s acting at times, his accent and the sheer weight of his musical persona overwhelm whatever role he’s given, but he’s good in this. He throws himself into the role, and is more convincing than I remember him being a couple of years later in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

For many people Bowie will be the sole attraction in Baal but for me there’s also the presence of the great Alan Clarke as director and co-adaptor (with John Willett). Clarke directed the cult TV play Penda’s Fen in 1974, and was later responsible for a handful of other notable TV films including Scum, Made in Britain, Road, Elephant (1989), and The Firm, all of which are distinguished by a singular intensity and dramatic power the likes of which is usually only found in the best feature films. Compared to those plays Baal is a minor piece, filmed entirely in the studio, and made deliberately stagey to honour Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt. The cameras keep their distance from the performers, and Brechtian distance is also achieved by the use of split-screen, title cards, and Bowie’s direct addresses to the viewer. If this seems like challenging material for a general audience (never mind the singer’s fans) consider that Baal was broadcast in primetime on BBC 1 when there were only three television channels in the UK. This would not happen today.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penda’s Fen by David Rudkin

Terror and Magnificence

Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, in 2001. A photo I took with a disposable film camera.

And so let us beginne; and, as the Fabrick takes its Shape in front of you, alwaies keep the Structure intirely in Mind as you inscribe it. First, you must measure out or cast the Area in as exact a Manner as can be, and then you must draw the Plot and make the Scale. I have imparted to you the Principles of Terrour and Magnificence, for these you must represent in the due placing of Parts and Ornaments as well as in the Proportion of the several Orders: you see, Walter, how I take my Pen?

Hawksmoor (1985) by Peter Ackroyd

*

Bentley had laid down tracks for a shot that would feature the saxophonist and composer John Harle tooting away at his Terror and Magnificence in the setting of Hawksmoor’s church, which was now established, post-Ackroyd, as a cathedral of baroque speculation. Harle, in the notes published with the CD, writes that “darkness beneath the architecture and the very fabric of the stones pushed the idea towards a text.” The language here harks back to Ackroyd, towards privileged notions of place. The church was, in its proportions, a score to be unravelled; an overweening Pythagorean geometry to be tapped and sounded.

Iain Sinclair in Rodinsky’s Room (1999) by Rachel Lichtenstein & Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair first drew the world’s attention (or the minuscule portion of the world that was reading his books) to the strange character of Hawksmoor’s London churches in 1975 with Lud Heat, a book-length poem. Peter Ackroyd a decade later turned Sinclair’s esoteric excavation into a bestselling architectural murder mystery with his novel Hawksmoor, since when Sinclair’s psychogeography (if that term still has any valid currency) has found its way into From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell, where Christ Church dominates the proceedings, and a musical work, Terror and Magnificence, by composer John Harle which takes its title from Ackroyd’s novel.

The short BBC film to which Sinclair refers can be seen on Harle’s YouTube channel. In addition to running through the Hawksmoor mythology we receive some glimpses of David Rodinsky’s abandoned room in the Princelet Street synagogue, a location (and a life) explored in detail in Sinclair’s book with artist Rachel Lichtenstein.

Bob Bentley’s film of Harle, Sinclair and Keith Critchlow was broadcast in 1995. In the same year Harle was commissioned by the BBC Proms to write an opera. The resulting work, Angel Magick, with libretto by David Pountney, advertises itself as “the first Dr Dee Opera”, a subject equally of interest to both Sinclair and Alan Moore, who in Sinclair’s Liquid City (1999) take a walk to John Dee’s home at Mortlake. (“We were a thrift-shop Dee and Kelley cupping our ears for whispers from tired stone.”) In that piece Sinclair mentions having been in on the early discussions for the opera but doesn’t go into any detail. I haven’t heard Angel Magick but you can hear a complete performance of Terror and Magnificence by the John Harle Band, the Balanescu Quartet, and the London Voices, here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mister Jarman, Mister Moore and Doctor Dee
• Compass Road by Iain Sinclair