Tony Hyde’s original artwork for the front cover of Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music by Hawkwind. The painting is being auctioned later this month.
• At the Daily Heller: Steven Heller reprints his 2012 Atlantic review of The Graphic Canon, a three-volume collection of visual adaptations of works of literature. The collection was edited by the late Russ Kick, and includes my own condensation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Bill Hsu presents…21st Century Nightmares: Dark Animations by Cristóbal León/Joaquín Cociña, Hugo Covarrubias, Christiane Cegavske, John Frame, Saori Shiroki, Joe Hsieh, Phil Tippett, Robert Morgan, Shengwei Zhou.
• At Colossal: In Los Angeles, 70 artists transform a vacant hospital into a sprawling art experience.
What we were doing was rooted in that specific moment, but looking back, it also seems to resonate strongly with the present—particularly in terms of how we understand media, perception, and reality itself. This is something I’ve been thinking about again recently, especially with the renewed activity around Cabaret Voltaire. It brings into focus the extent to which earlier work now reads almost as a form of prefiguration. At the time, though, much of it was intuitive. We didn’t necessarily have a fully formed theoretical framework for what we were doing—we were artists, and we were working instinctively. It’s really only in retrospect that some of those ideas begin to take on a clearer shape and meaning.
Stephen Mallinder talking to Nicolas Ballet about Cabaret Voltaire, the group’s history and working methods
• New music: The Endless Dance by Hannah Peel; Helt by Fjall; Air Signs by Anthéne.
• Adam Rowe is writing a new book about science fiction art.
• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Brutal Types.
• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 135 by Aspetuck.
• Brute Reason (1983) by Bernard Szajner | Let’s Get Brutal (1986) by Nitro Deluxe | Brutal But Clean (1994) by Cabaret Voltaire