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Weekend links 106

Gold Head 2 (2011) by Kouji Oshiro.

• Josef Hartwig’s 1922 Bauhaus chess set. Contemporary copies can be bought from Naef Spiele but they’re not cheap. Related: Bauhaus: Art as Life, a major exhibition at the Barbican, London. Related, related: Art as life by Fiona MacCarthy.

• Rattera is a new font by Barnbrook Design for Fuse 1–20, Taschen’s collection of the experimental typography publication. Related: The Fuse poster explained.

• Genesis (1981), video feedback and computer animation by Ron Hays with an electronic score by Ragnar Grippe.

• Deadly Doris, a recording by Malcolm Mooney-era Can from the forthcoming Lost Tapes collection.

• “How did a pop band end up in a museum” Sasha Frere-Jones on Kraftwerk.

• Philip Glass & Robert Wilson on how they made Einstein on the Beach.

• An astonishing aerial photo of post-quake San Francisco in 1906.

• More electronic music: Buddha Machine’s SoundCloud page.

• My Baby, music and video from Julia Holter & Jib Kidder.

• Homotography‘s photos can now be browsed at Pinterest.

• Deviates, Inc., a Tumblr.

• Raoul Björkenheim live: Apocalypso pt. 1 | Apocalypso pt. 2 | 1-2-11 DMG, NYC

Ubu

One last film post for a very busy week. Ubu is a highly-stylised animated adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. This was a British production directed in 1978 by Geoff Dunbar who employs an ink-spattered style reminiscent of Ralph Steadman’s drawings; in place of vocal dramatisation Pa and Ma Ubu shriek horribly and occasionally spit out speech balloons. As a condensation of the play, and a taste of Jarry’s grotesquery, this feels a lot closer to its source than Jean-Christophe Averty’s 1965 film which seems polite by comparison. Ubu took a long time to arrive on YouTube so watch it while you can, it may well vanish again.

• Ubu pt. 1 | Ubu pt. 2

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bring Me the Head of Ubu Roi

Salomé, 1910

A rather crude 9-minute silent drama directed by Ugo Falena which claims to be based on Oscar Wilde’s play. I’m not sure Wilde would have thanked them for cramming his wordy opus into a few brief scenes of gesticulating performers. The colours are a bonus, however, as this is hand-tinted throughout.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Salomé archive

Anémic Cinéma

It’s no doubt up to the viewer to decide what constitutes anaemia in Marcel Duchamp’s 7-minute film. Anémic Cinéma was made the same year as Emak-Bakia with the assistance of Man Ray and Marc Allégret. Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs spin hypnotically alternating with punning epithets in French. The spinning artworks later appeared as Duchamp’s contribution to Hans Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Emak-Bakia
• Un Chien Andalou
• Ballet Mécanique
• Dreams That Money Can Buy
• La femme 100 têtes by Eric Duvivier
• Entr’acte by René Clair

Emak-Bakia

Posts this week will tend towards the brief since I’m spending all my time finishing Reverbstorm.

I thought I’d already posted something about Emak-Bakia, a 16-minute “cinépoème” by Man Ray from 1926, but it seems not. This is another of those short experimental films that proliferated between the wars, and a particularly inventive one with Man Ray throwing together every camera trick he could manage; he even throws the camera in the air at one point, having earlier driven over it. There’s also bits of animation, many shots of revolving sculptures and the artist’s customary emphasis on attractive women. Watch it at Vimeo or download it from Ubuweb.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Un Chien Andalou
• Ballet Mécanique
• Dreams That Money Can Buy
• La femme 100 têtes by Eric Duvivier
• Entr’acte by René Clair