A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Photography
Mr Ayres is a blogger at Form is Void, an occasional commenter on these pages and also a photographer with a keen eye for detail and the occasional outbreak of alarming taxidermy. I especially like the architectural pieces, and I never tire of seeing rusted surfaces and flaking paintwork (one of the best things about growing up in a seaside town). There’s a lot more to be seen here, and at Thom’s Flickr pages.
Manuel Orazi (1860–1934) was one of the best of the many Mucha imitators. An untitled & undated posting at Indigo Asmodel.
The mob now appeared to consider themselves as superior to all authority; they declared their resolution to burn all the remaining public prisons, and demolish the Bank, the Temple, Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Mansion House, the Royal palaces, and the arsenal at Woolwich. The attempt upon the Bank of England was actually made twice in the course of one day; but both attacks were but feebly conducted and the rioters easily repulsed, several of them falling by the fire of the military, and many others being severely wounded.
To form an adequate idea of the distress of the inhabitants in every part of the City would be impossible. Six-and-thirty fires were to be seen blazing in the metropolis during the night.
An Account of the Riots in London in 1780, from The Newgate Calendar.
In a week of apparently limitless bloviation, a few comments stood out. Hari Kunzru: “Once, a powerful woman told us there was no such thing as society and set about engineering our country to fit her theory. Well, she got her way. This is where we live now, and if we don’t like it, we ought to make a change.” Howard Jacobson: “One medium-sized banker’s bonus would probably pay for all the trash that’s been looted this past week.” Meanwhile Boff Whalley complained about the predictable misuse of the word “anarchy” by lazy journalists.
• For further historical perspective, a list of rioters and arsonists from The Newgate Calendar (1824), and an account of the looting in London during the Blitz.
From a selection of works by Max Walter Svanberg (1912–1994) at But Does It Float. There’s more at Cardboard Cutout Sundown.
• NASA posted a gorgeous photo from the surface of the planet Mars. Related: Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet. Obliquely related: Julio Cortázar’s From the Observatory, a prose poem inspired by the astronomical observatories at Jaipur and New Delhi, India, receives its first English translation.
• The Advisory Circle is still in a Kosmische groove. Not Kosmische at all, Haxan Cloak’s mix for FACT has Wolf Eyes, Sunn O))) and Krzysztof Penderecki competing to shatter your nerves.
• The wonderful women (and friends) at Coilhouse magazine are having a Black, White and Red fundraising party in Brooklyn, NYC, on August 21st. Details here.
• Sodom’s ambassador to Paris: the flamboyant Jean Lorrain is profiled at Strange Flowers.
• Empire de la Mort: Photographs of charnel houses and ossuaries by Paul Koudounaris.
• The Craft of Verse by Jorge Luis Borges: The Norton Lectures, 1967–68.
• Jesse Bering examines The Contorted History of Autofellatio.
• Robert Crumb explains why he won’t be visiting Australia.
• The Crackdown (1983) by Cabaret Voltaire.
Mathieu by Jean-Philippe Guillemain.
A collection of male dancers pose beside the usual complement of agency models in the portfolio of French photographer Jean-Philippe Guillemain. Are all European dancers this attractive or does he just have a good eye? See the others on his site.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Danseur Noble
• The tights have it
• Torero
• Eonism and Eonnagata
• Tiger Lily
• Chris Nash
• Peter Reed and Salomé After Dark
• Felix D’Eon
• Dancers by John Andresen
• Youssef Nabil
• Images of Nijinsky
Neutron Drip (2011) by Amrei Hofstätter.
• The Lavender Scare is “the first feature-length documentary film to tell the story of the U.S. government’s ruthless campaign in the 1950s and ’60s to hunt down and fire every Federal employee it suspected was gay”. A film by Josh Howard based on the book by David K Johnson which the author has made a free download here.
• “Annette Peacock, the avant garde American composer, collaborator with Salvador Dalí, friend of Albert Ayler and Moog-synth pioneer, brought this seismically influential session out in 1972…” John Fordham reviews Annette Peacock’s I’m The One which can be purchased here.
• Writer and graphic design historian Steven Heller looks at The Steampunk Bible (edited by SJ Chambers & Jeff VanderMeer) in his column for The Atlantic. He also talks to Galen Smith about the book’s design.
• M John Harrison reveals more about his forthcoming sf novel Pearlent, a partial sequel to Light and Nova Swing. I just re-read Light, and I’m currently In The Event Zone with the follow-up, so I’m looking forward to this one.
• The Raven, a book by Lou Reed & Lorenzo Mattotti (and Edgar Allan Poe). A Journey Round My Skull previewed this in 2009.
• Orson Welles’ Falstaff film, Chimes at Midnight, emerges into the light once more. When do we get a decent DVD release?
• More of the usual concerns: Iain Sinclair’s struggles with the city of London and Erik Davis talks to Alan Moore about psychogeography, John Dee, comic gods, and the art of magic.
• Eddie Campbell takes a tip from Jim Steranko. Related: “Hey! A Jim Steranko effect!”
• Lambshead Cabinet: Win Jake von Slatt’s Mooney & Finch Somnotrope!
• Tilda Swinton is The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
• XXth Century Avantgarde [sic] Books at Flickr.
• Sound sculptures & installations by Zimoun.
• I’m The One (1972) by Annette Peacock.
Chernobyl/Pripyat (2011) by Paul Curry.
Everyone’s favourite irradiated town, Pripyat in Ukraine, has been in the news again now that twenty-five years have passed since the the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This photo of the area by Paul Curry is part of a panorama (with the nuclear plant in the distance) taken from a rootop on a clear day. Most photos of the site show the now-familiar abandoned buildings, empty playgrounds and so on; Curry’s view taken on 29th May this year is remarkable for showing how overgrown the place has become.
Chernobyl has become indelibly twinned with Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterwork of grimy science fiction, Stalker (1979), and the novel upon which the film was based, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, a mesh of connections I explored in an earlier post. Darren Nisbett’s series of photos currently showing at the Rhubarb and Custard gallery, Berkshire, are good examples of how Stalker-like the place is now looking. Nisbett calls his series, many of which are infra-red views, Chernobyl’s Zone of Alienation although there’s no indication of whether he’s alluding to the hazardous Strugatsky/Tarkovsky “Zone”. The photos are on display until the end of this month, and the prints are for sale. The Independent has a gallery feature about the exhibition here.
Update: Simon Sellars from Ballardian alerts me to this blog which is currently running reports from a visit to the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side Of “Stalker”
• The slow death of modernism
• The Stalker meme