Where the wild pirates are
Superhero, pirate and robot supplies (courtesy of Wikipedia)
Pirates, time travel and Captain Najork
Towards the end of March this year the trailer for Spike Jonze’s ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ hit our laptop screens. I immediately scrawled a post with it being a favourite book from my childhood, and since read to my brood, brought my nephews, etc., along with being a fan of Jonze’s work. But I relinquished it to the draughts bin figuring it would be all over the internet already.
With it’s impending release the glossies are again filling with interviews and articles on Jonze, but with no mention of the reason I wanted to write it up. The screenplay is by co-authored with Dave Eggers. And it’s not even that he wrote it. It’s what he has done.
He is a hero, a superhero in fact. And pirate.
I have a pile of his books on my desk that I have brought but never read. So why is he a hero to me? Simple, in 2002 along with Ninive Calegari he founded 826 Valencia – a writing lab to help local students with free one-to-one literacy help. And sell pirate supplies.
The empty premises they rented in which to set up the writing centre and publishers office had only zoning for retail as SimCity as taught me to say: it could only be opened as a shop. So they decided to use the front as a front, selling pirate supplies. What takes this from being a good idea to brilliance is their attention to detail, aside from the fact that what their mission could genuinely be described as awesome, it is also a very splendid pirate suppliers, one of David Byrne’s top five in fact.
Which then inspired the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. or 826NYC, where a secret door between the invisibility potions and cloaks leads you into the writing lab. There’s 826michigan or Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair, 826LA or the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, 826CHI or The Boring Store (which doesn’t have anything to do with spies), 826 Seattle or Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co., and 826 Boston better known as The Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute.
I could rattle on about the inspiring work they do and the fantastic stores they front the labs with but Dave Eggers does a much better job of it, here’s his TED talk on the project:
Or watch it at your leisure over TED –
www.ted.com/talks/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html
The attention to detail and humour does not stop with the physical stores and the produce, each has a wonderful web site too.
www.826valencia.org/store
www.greenwoodspacetravelsupply.com
notasecretagentstore.com
And not to forget the fantastic work they do head over to www.826valencia.org and read up on forthcoming events, then onto onceuponaschool.org to find out how you can help your local school. In case that last part didn’t register: if you don’t live close enough to 826 to donate a couple of afternoons every six months, then Eggers has set up Once Upon A School, an organisation seeded with prize money from TED, offering support to people in volunteering at their local schools.
Don’t worry, I feel shallow and complacent after hearing him talk too.
But there is value in goofing off, fooling around and playing too, which is the moral behind “How Tom beat Captain Najork and his hired Sportsmen” by Russell Hoban, another favourite book of mine supposedly intended for children. Whilst Eggers re-imagined the picture book ‘Where the wild things are’ for adults, Hoban who is an award winning author best known for ‘Ridley Walker’ and ‘Angelica’s Grotto’ also writes childrens’ books, much like Roald Dahl, who also used Quentin Blake’s illustration skills.
His invented language skills seen in ‘Ridley Walker’ comes into wonderful play during ‘How Tom…’ where the protagonist has to eat his greasy bloaters and potato sog under the watchful eye of aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, who wears an iron hat. Highly highly recommended and like Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s ‘The Little Prince’ reminds us that play is as important as any business ethos.Track down a copy via www.abebooks.co.uk, or Amazon if you must.
Feed your inner child. Just not on cabbage and potato sog.
Joy Orbison
Isn’t it great when you hear a new tunesmith whose music excites. Joy Orbison is ticking all my boxes at the moment. Curiously none of the blogs can pigeon-hole the genre, no offense but the dance fan-boys get pretty train-spotter about whether something is UK funky or dubstep or…
But Joy Orbison is confounding labeling, it reminds me of the original Balearic mixes, in the way it mashes together a host of dance styles into something joyous that takes both the feet and the mind on a journey. Ibiza 2.0 seems like a good tag for now.
electrodrone.blogspot.com posted this mix www.mediafire.com/?jkyfyngdain
Playlist triptych
Reading ‘Red Men’ by Matthew De Abiatua – a near future farce on marketing and consumerism – the protagonist is analysed by software and his tastes served up exactly. Whilst user spending profiling is with us, and I don’t want to start getting all paranoid and muttering about living “off grid”, there are some things that algorithms can’t quite pass muster at.
Playlists being one: Genius Bar from Apple, Last.fm and thesixtyone all work quite well but they rely on genre tags, customer also likes and similar. What makes a great mixtape is the throwing in of something unexpected; out of character but which just makes perfect sense. A bridge between worlds. No point in getting too philosophical here, Nick Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’ covers the ground well enough.
8tracks are made by humans (actually this post is a kind of repeat of one a few months a go so I will cut to the chase, to the drop), it’s a great source of discovering new tunes so I felt duty bound to return something to the pool and slung together a triptych of mixes – each a very different flavour. Hope something catches.
8tracks.com/juliobesq/cocktail
Incroyables and Merveilleuses
Johnny Rotten in London, 1976, by Bob Gruen
Checking out the latest Hawk! A Vagrant strip, intrigued by references to the protagonists I Googled them (having missed that lesson at school).
Stolen straight from www.fashionencyclopedia.com:
The Incroyables (the Unbelievables) and the Merveilleuses (the Marvelous Ones) were part of a rebellious youth movement that arose during the 1790s, during the French Revolution (1789–99). The revolution had begun a tremendous upheaval in France pitting the poor and the middle class against the wealthy, and the government was very unstable. The Incroyables (men) and the Merveilleuses (women) were political young people, who were the product of an explosive time in history. They made their political statement by dressing in outlandish fashions that exaggerated and mocked the luxurious styles that had been worn in the court of King Louis XVI (1754–1793), who had recently been executed by the revolutionary government. Though many ridiculed the extreme fashions of the Incroyablesand the Merveilleusesand called them immoral, they did remind people of the time before the revolution, when outrageous fashions had been more than a jest.
There’s more and it’s worth reading. Incroyables and Merveilleuses? They rock.
Mr Rotten from the anthemic tumblr ‘x’
Sub sole nihil novi est
More digressions, but read on for there will be murder, sex and swearing.
Times change, and nothing changes.
I am an advocate of Freecycle and when an attic’s worth of sixties poetry books were put on offer I reciprocated, thinking them a suitable gift for my darling who spins a rhyming pen. Amongst the gems, which included humourous poems for vicars (a niche market), was ‘Other Man’s Flowers’ by Field Marshall Viscount A. P. Wavell, later Lord Wavell, I marveled at the title. That times have changed and such a title would not past muster today without a marketing strategist pointing out that ‘Other Man’s Flowers’ may indeed have homoerotic connotations. As an aside I still marvel at the beautiful typesetting of the title.
Further down the pile lay ‘A Treasury of Ribaldry’ which promised gay and robust reading. Oh the times really have moved on I thought. And took a look inside. To find a song called ‘Frankie and Johnny’, which follows…
Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts, O Lordy, how they could love!
Swore to be true to each other, true as the stars above.
He was her man, but he done her wrongFrankie she was a good woman, just like everybody knows;
She gave her man a hundred dollars to buy himself a suit of clothes
He was her man, but he done her wrongFrankie and Johnny went walking, Johnny in his brand new suit.
“Oh, good Lord” says Frankie, “don’t my Johnny look cute?”
He was her man, but he done her wrongFrankie went down to Memphis, she went on the evening train.
She paid one hundred dollars for Johnny a watch and chain.
He was her man, but he done her wrongFrankie lived in the crib-house, crib-house had only two doors;
Gave all her money to Johnny, who spent it on parlor whores.
He was her man, but he done her wrongFrankie went down to the corner to buy a class of beer,
Says to the fat bartender, “Has my lovingest man been here?”
He was her man, but he done her wrong“Ain’t going to tell you no story; ain”t going to tell you no lie;
I seen your man ’bout an hour ago with a girl named Nellie Bly.
If he’s your man, he’s doing you wrong.”Frankie went down to the pawnshop, she didn’t go there for fun;
She hocked all of her jewelery, brought a pearl-handled forty-four gun
For to get her man, who was doing her wrong.Frankie went down to the hotel, she rang that hotel bell.
“Stand back, all you chippies, or I’ll blow you straight to hell.
I want my man, who’s doing me wrong”Frankie went up to the parlor, looked over the transom so high;
There on the bed was her Johnny a-lovin’ up Nellie Bly.
He was her man, but he done her wrongFrankie threw back her kimono, she took out her forty-four,
Root-a-toot three times she shot right through that hotel door
She was after her man, who done her wrongJohnny grabbed his Stetson, “Oh, good Lord, Frankie, don’t shoot!”
But Frankie pulled the trigger and the gun went root-a-toot-toot.
He was her man, but she shot him down“Roll me over easy; roll me over slow;
Roll me over on my left hand; for the bullet is hurting me so.
I was her man, but I done her wrong”Oh, bring on your rubber-tired hearses; bring on your rubber-tired hacks;
They’re taking Johnny to the cemetery, and they ain’t a-bringing him back.
He was her man, but he done her wrongNow it was not murder in the second degree; it was not murder in the third.
That woman simply dropped her man, like a hunter drops her bird.“Oh, put me in that dungeon. Oh, put me in that cell.
Put me where the northeast wind blows from the southwest corner of hell.
I shot my man, ’cause he done me wrong.”Frankie walked up the scaffold, as calm as a girl can be,
And turning her eyes to heaven she said “Good Lord, I’m coming to Thee.
Her was my man, and I done him wrong.”This story got no moral, this story has got no end.
This story only goes to show that there ain’t no good in men.
He was her man, but he done her wrong
Reading through I was struck by the modernity of it, how they would not sound out of place being spat of the mouth of Nick Cave, who indeed covered Stagger Lee written a few decades later. Perhaps I am being naive but I was surprised to learn that these lyrics were composed in 1850. The song is thought to have been penned about Frankie Baker, no relation. If you haven’t heard it, a word of advice – don’t. It’s awful. I made that mistake and sought a copy to discover it’s a horrendous upbeat clippity clop affair.
Instead create your version, perhaps as the indubitable Mr Cave might croon, below is ‘Obvious is Obvious’ by The Dirty Three. A group featuring Warren Ellis on violin who moonlights as a Bad Seed. If the music appeals to you may I also recommend Cave and Ellis’s instrumental soundtrack to ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’, but I digress. Hit play and interpret a true rendition of Frankie and Johnnie. If it’s a hit remember to invite me to the aftershow party.
Of course I should not have been surprised by the age of this tale of sex and murder, for they have a pedigree and heritage as old as humanity. During a visit to Pompeii I was struck at how little cities have changed in 2000 years – for clearly visible were signage for both bakers and brothels. In fact the Frankie ballad pales into an insignificance suitable only to amuse a vicar in light verse compared to this ditty by Catullus, composed in Latin circa 79 BC
I will bugger you and face-fuck you.
Cock-sucker Aurelius and catamite Furius,
You who think, because my verses
Are delicate, that I am a sissy.
For it’s right for the devoted poet to be chaste
Himself, but it’s not necessary for his verses to be so.
Verses which then have taste and charm,
If they are delicate and sexy,
And can incite an itch,
And I don’t mean in boys, but in those hairy old men
Who can’t get their flaccid dicks up.
You, because you have read of my thousand kisses,
You think I’m a sissy?
I will bugger you and face-fuck you.
If times have not changed, the meaning of the odd word may have, for now if you were offended at being called sissy, which in terms of insults is usually on the gay axis, you probably wouldn’t threaten to bugger them.
Having said that, when I read Catullus’s ode to verse and anal rape on Synthetic Pubes (a wonderful tumblr, whose denizen scours Flickr daily for beautiful erotica: tough work I know but they are doing for us, so be thankful) – I knew it would be a suitable candidate for the Monday morning dirty poem from Bookkake. Moral compunction forced me to email the editor a link, who kindly thanked me and enquired whether I had heard of it via news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8375511.stm.
So, apart from Mr Lowe then. If you are thinking of laying into someone in Latin maybe a different cuss? I recommend www.yuni.com/library/latin.html where I cribbed the post’s title from.
Visit bookkake.com/tag/monday-poem/ to read more poetic filth or subscribe for a start of the working week email literary lubricator.
Speaking of marketing strategists and book titles I am surprised no-one raised their hand during the publishing meetings for this.
And the picture of Billy the Kid has no real relevance to any of this, I just think it’s rather superb.
Bow
Curves are just
exceptionally
beautiful lines
Perfect.
I read this line in a tumblr belong to Ashley MacLean, who along with Traci Matlock run an empire of blogs, aside from being a phrase well rounded in thought, it gives me the excuse to post about their work.
I have mentioned them before in passing, but I feel I owe them a bow of gratitude, an admittance, an acknowledgement. I discovered then through their collaborative Flickr stream, which contains the image that set me on the path I am currently traversing. Though perhaps better described as orienteering.
"Light that keeps existence particular," by Ashley & Traci
Like Martin Hannet’s production for the Joy Division opus ‘Unknown Pleasures’ it speaks of the spaces, the unsaid. That an image can be erotic without revealment. That there is power in undisclosure.
It sparked the desire to create imagery on lust, ritual and appetite. I decided not to cheapen these words by working in a pun regarding the dual pronunciation and instead offer a simple bow of thanks for the curves.
Hawk! A vagrant
Comics and comic writing are practically always the reserve of boys. Not so with Hark! A vagrant. Luckily for us Kate Beaton draws the strips and it features amongst others dandies, The Bronte Sisters and Goethe. What’s not to love.
Shunt, the night the music died
Shunt, Saturday 14th November 2009
For the last three years under the arches at London Bridge Station, Shunt Theatre have been hosting an incredible repertoire of performance and art, and at the weekend the sort of parties where you felt you were in a film. It was a privilege to show my work there, and better still, to dance into the early hours.
The construction of the Shard of Glass has forced them to shut the doors on our beloved lounge, and on Saturday those who cared came to party and say goodbye. There were tears, bagpipes and fireworks. As Roots Manuva rang out in the final minutes of the lounge the mic was handed to an audience member who toasted our love, the Djs spun ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’ and it was over.
The lounge may be gone but Shunt continue with their play ‘Money’ and will return with a new venue.
Carlo Mollino
I feel I’ve come to the party too late. And what a fantastic party it would have been. Until June there has been an exhibition of Carlo Mollino’s work here in London. And I found at about him last weekend.
Chatting at the lab about lo-fi erotica with fellow rock Holgist Brian from www.letthemeatcoal.com, waiting for our clip tests to develop, he asks if I like the work of Mr Mollino. Ignorance. Google to the rescue.
Carlo Mollino is a well renowned furniture designer and architect, noted for his lavish interiors with attention to handcrafted detail, as well as respected photographer. But beyond that he lived a life with an sybaritic exuberance that reads like a Scott Fitzgerald playboy.
Here’s a quick round-up of his endevours aside from the above: winning the 24-hour race at La Mans is a car of his own design; writing a book on his own techniques for downhill skiing; aviator and engineer of airplane parts; publishing a thesis on photography, using extensive retouching techniques to match the photographic reality to his mind’s fantasy. He wrote…
Everything is allowed, imagination is always saved
He had built an elaborate room to die in and hence be carried on into the afterlife, other sources suggest he was an occultist, drug user and sex addict but these have only ‘internet substantiation’ so far. But the icing on the tiered cake for me is, when the executors of his will started clearing his house they uncovered hundreds of erotic polaroids and photographs shot over twenty years.
The polaroids must have given him a freedom to pursue this private pastime as the imagery gets bolder. He hired local Turin prostitutes to pose in meticulously posed scenarios, using new models for each shot. Their beauty and pathos I think emerge from the fact that although this were clandestine and risque, he was not capturing them as pornography to masturbate over, nor as trophy photos of conquests; they were shot intended as erotic art if just for his personal audience of one. The non-professional models bring a voluptuousness and honesty that only heightens his aspirations.
Carlo Mollino, quite a card.
Further reading:
www.postmedia.net/06/mollino.htm
www.designboom.com/world/mollino/photos/index.html
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023355/
ambushstudio.blogspot.com/2009/06/carlo-mollino.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Mollino
www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/6374/carlo-mollino-interiors-at-sebastian-and-barquet-london.html
www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/fashion/04iht-design4.html
www.colectiva.tv/wordpress/lang/en-us/las-polaroids-de-carlo-mollinocarlo-mollinos-polaroids/
All polaroids shot by Carlo Mollino
Barbed Wire Love
Blasted by your booby traps
I felt the blow in both knee-caps
Your eyes did shine
Your lips were fine
And the device in you pants was out of sight
All you give me is barbed wire love
All caught up in barbed wire love
Tangled up in barbed wire love
Throw my leg over barbed wire love
Barbed wire love snags my jeans
Fantastic.
Thirty years a go Stiff Little Fingers released ‘Inflammable Material’, featuring their incendiary paean to teenage lust ‘Barbed Wire Love’: a raw marriage of punk and doo-wop.
Both musical movements share another legacy, that of prolific reproduction. Punk with it’s do-it-yourself aesthetic and a fan base centred around live gigs with direct contact to the groups, spawned for a short while a huge number of record releases. Anyone who saved enough money from their Saturday job could put out a record. And with Geoff Travis deciding to form Rough Trade to wrest control of distribution away from the majors anyone had a chance too.
But independent record production has an unsung birth, in the vocal harmony groups of the 40s and 50s, a genre which became popularised as Doo-Wop. Across America in black neighbourhoods groups of friends would gather and vocal harmonise together. With no musical instruments and need for overdubs or mixing levels these groups found it simple to to pitch up at a recording studio, complete their song in a single take, and purchase a pressing of perhaps a hundred records. It is estimate that over it’s 25 year span Doo-Wop gave birth to 30,000 songs. Shaaa-bop!
The 70s saw a revival in vocal harmonies (Manhattan Transfer anyone?) and Stiff Little Fingers ripped the pastiche apart from the inside and hurled it into present. Their blue print lay dormant for thirty years till Glasvegas picked up the mantle.
Punk was largely posturing and the main players sang of revolution but it was SLF coming up from the streets of belfast who gave anger of revolt it’s true voice. Buy the album from www.slf.com and listen to the righteous paint-blistering anger of Suspect Device. And then there is their finest moment…
People occasionally cover a Bob Marley song, and usually with a ‘why bother’ result. To equal Saint Bob is something, but to better him…? SLF take Rita Marley’s ‘Johnny Was’ and transpose the senseless shooting of the protagonist from the electoral violence of Jamaica’s Kingston to the occupation and civil war in Northern Ireland. Shedding along the way any pretense of authenticity of reggae and playing it out it a white heat of guitar noise. Still, when Jake Burns rasps “a single shot shot rings out in the Belfast night” the hairs on my neck stand on end, thirty years on.
Is it that good? Buy the album and see for yourself.
3 days of Lomoporno
The internet is both a blessing and a curse. But you knew that. Whilst allowing the easy publication of ideas and work that would never reach us in the mainstream media it offers one major drawback: it’s a little too easy to get lost in it’s flows and eddies when you should be working.
Lomoporno is a new venture from www.flashglamtrash.com, one of the destinations I stop off out to see what’s new in the world. A world where diamonds in the gutter come wrapped in suspiciously stained flyers from Studio 54 perhaps. Not always not safe for work.
Not sure they would want to be called nice people, so I shall just say those people at Lomoporno published a selection of my photographs. And now I discover it’s going off line because The Lomographic Society object to the site’s name. How often do you type ‘porno’ by accident instead of ‘graphy’? I understand protecting a brand but I find it a touch ironic given rule 10 at www.lomography.com/about/the-ten-golden-rules.
No hard feelings, and you might like to know The Photographers Gallery sells Holgas at £25, same price as eBay.
(Untitled)
The above is from the trailer for ‘(Untitled)’, a new comedy directed by Jonathan Parker (who I have never heard of before) set in the world of modern art.
I had a genuine laugh out loud moment when I saw the label. Then I thought why hadn’t I thought of that. Pure brilliance.
If it has just one other joke as good then the price of admission is money well spent. (The title doesn’t count).
Mythical creatures venn diagram
Given my fascination with all things metaphorical that can be found lurking in the shadows of The Jungian Wood, I am much taken with this venn diagram of mythical creatures from Jim Unwin’s Flickr stream. See it BIG.
I feel a Manticore coming on.
Bottle of wine
This is quite old now but I didn’t catch it until a couple of weeks a go. I really like it.
(And it answers that nagging question: what would Belle and Sebastian sound like if Liam Gallagher fronted them?)
It’s by Pigeon Horse Sex Tennis, you can download it for free from www.bottleofwine.org
Health warnings on airbrushed photos
A group of 50 politicians want a new law stating published images must have bold printed notice stating they have been digitally enhanced.
Campaigning MP Valerie Boyer, of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, said the wording should read: “Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person’s physical appearance”.
Read the full article “French MPs want health warnings on airbrushed photographs” at The Telegraph.
We live in a world that has become so inured to enhanced images that a sub-industry has sprung up revealing the real life flaws of celebrities’ appearance. Whilst we are being presented more and more with unrealistic body images do we want to allow government the right to judge them? I am racking my brains for a pithy line about airbrushing out where we should draw the line…
Bum Bum go for 2010
For the last week and a half I have been rehearsing secret acts at a secret location deep in London’s East End. The fantastic You Me Bum Bum Train were awarded a research and development fund from The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust to showcase a new production, with an eye to winning a grant for staging a major show in 2010.
Regardless of winning the new scenes feature some of the best experiences yet, so yesterday evening with trepidation but satisfaction at a job well done the cast retired to a nearby snooker club, awaiting news after the founders had given the judges a post-train presentation.
With news of the winner coming through by text within hours, the atmosphere in snooker hall went what I can only describe as “ape shit”. There were tears and hugging, high fives and air punching, there was roaring and screaming. So much so that I could still hear the cheering from two streets away after I left . No exaggeration. Bum Bum won by the way.
So keep your eyes peeled in 2010 for announcements of the next show. Yes it is that good, is it an oxymoron to say that I wished I had never seen it so that I could again feel the exhilaration of taking that first unknown ride?
Congratulations You Me Bum Bum Train, thank you the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust in your wise judgement, and most of all congratulations lucky you, as the ride is on for next year.
“What has been one of London’s more obtuse treasures looks set to become one of Great Britain’s proudest moments” – Dazed and Confused, June 2007
The longest way
Nothing beats doing a simple idea done well. Except doing a simple idea fantastically well.
More about Christoph Rehage at his site www.thelongestway.com.
My thanks to Party Nice for alerting me to this.
Ewan Morrison interview at 3AM
Photo by Paul Harkin
3AM have an in-depth interview with Ewan Morrison where he is surprisingly candid about his formative years, aligns himself with Houellebecq, and discusses his new novel “Ménage” (I stopped reading here as I don’t want to risk spoilers).
But if you’re a fan of his you probably know about this already. I wonder sometimes about posting links to current news. But in case you don’t it’s worth reading.
Chanson Brel
Twenty years later Nick Cave is about to have his second novel “The death of Bunny Munroe” published. A slacker you could say bar the fact of his output in-between.
The synapse wiring in my subconscious connects Cave with Brel. I’m sure St. Nick would approve. So consider that reason enough to post chanteur extraordinaire Jacques. The first clip has embedding disabled but no matter; take a few minutes out and watch it on Youtube full screen. You don’t even have to have the volume up to catch the emotions. The face of all humanity. Breathtaking.
Pursue the narrative by watching Bas Jan Ader cry.
There are translations of Brel’s songs on the site to view afterwards, but let his expression tell all before becoming distracted by subtitles.
And finally because it’s good to leave of where you started watch Nick Cave read excepts.
Taking versus making
Without a camera I should have been writing, instead I have been thinking about not having a camera, and what having one means in terms of art.
I came across this quote
why do we talk of ‘taking’ a photograph rather than ‘making’ a photograph
in the flickr stream of the-g-uk. In itself a good question, and the best answer I could give myself is a word that keeps appearing in these posts – intention. I had wanted to lead onto another quote I saw regarding the mild controversy and debate surrounding Esquire magazines ‘moto’, but I failed to bookmark the web page containing it and instead merely made a mental note, a much more fallible approach to documentation.
First the quote out-of-context and paraphrased
it depends on wether you think photography is merely the art of pressing the shutter at the right moment, or wether the photographer’s preparation and intent count for anything
That word again, intent, which divides snapshots from photographs: it isn’t the act of clicking at the correct time but in deciding that there should be a button press. In setting out to create the image the shutter release is simply one mechanical part along the path from mental concept, through stages of organisation and decision, leading to the resolution of a final image.
The photo that accompanies this post sits on the borderline for me, in that there was no intent to take it, but there was a deliberate act in taking the camera with me that day, in seeing the potential of the cropped or framed image. Abstract painters don’t have this issue, pigment can lead to more pigment that completes a painting, whereas authors can not apply words they like the sound of to create a narrative; photography sits betwixt the two. Charles Harbutt in his essay ‘I don’t take pictures; pictures take me’ says this
Photography is not art; it is something totally new in human experience, something people have not been able to do before the last century or so. Photography is not art because the basic impulse of the photographer is diametrically opposed to the basic impulse of the artist at least in one large respect. The artist tries to bring into existence something new that never had concrete existence before. The photographer tries to bring into existence something new that preserves something that already has concrete existence but will cease to exist in just that way in the next moment or day or year…
Before returning to motos, a more personal aside. In the last couple of years I have radically reworked my view on photography and instead of mocking what is seen as an oriental approach is taking snapshots, namely always having people in front of landmarks, I now mainly eschew the landscape photo and instead focus upon the person.
Harbutt’s quote works particularly well for landscape but could be recontextualised for portraiture, in that the photographer is not trying to capture how the sitter appeared at that moment but how it felt to be in their presence.
The portrait photographer’s skill lies not in capturing the magic moment, but in making the subject feel relaxed, comfortable enough that they act without preconception and in doing so reveal a part their un-staged self.
Which would be a good way of looking at motos, a horrible compoundment of motion and photo. Debate arose surrounding the use of a RedOne video camera by Chase Davis when he shot a cover for Esquire magazine. In essence he filmed Megan Fox and then ran the footage through video editing software and chose a frame as the final ‘photograph’, thus by-passing the ‘decisive moment’ that marks a great photographer. Up till now at least.
The camera is just a tool, a stage, that sits between the interaction of the photographer and photographee. (And the possibility of motos in a world of plasma screens opens up new aesthetics, moving us one step closer to Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age).
But tools are decisions and therefore integral to the creative process, here’s two quotes from the sidebar of tokyocamerastyle.com, a blog documenting urbanites and their vintage cameras
I don’t think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day
William Eggleston
If you want to change your photographs, you need to change cameras. Changing cameras means that your photographs will change. A really good camera has something I suppose you might describe as its own distinctive aura.
Nobuyoshi Araki
Pillow talk with Miranda July
I love Miranda July. In the literary rather than literal sense of course. She brings an incredibly humanistic touch to everything she casts her hand over. Should you be unaware of her wonderfulness, catch up with her book “No one belongs here more than you”, her film “You me and everyone we know” (buy it), her website mirandajuly.com, her online project “Learning to love you more”… caught up?
Ms July has produced a limited edition of pillow cases in her handwriting
“Here you will dream of endless kissing”
“Here you will dream of people you admire exposing your fraudulence”
Available from thirddrawerdown.com. Please note the restraint in not using headlines like go to bed with Miranda July…
Kinky lolly
I had to make sure. With scant regard for NSFW perils I threw “kinky lolly” into Google and hit gold in www.thoseweleftbehind.co.uk. Fab. In so many ways.
Sky ray lolly
Sympathy for the art gallery alerted me to the work of Dutch photographer Qiu Yang and his series based upon the common symbolic props used by Playboy between the 50s and 70s
This work is a visual study of the iconographic value of certain objects and items, which would repeatedly appear in Playboy centerfolds between the years 1950 and 1970. I focused exclusively on the constructed language of the recurring use of them and restaged these details. Each photograph is titled after the month of the original centerfold.
Ice creams, obvious. The apple being the original icon of sin. What surprises me is the omission of the rocket lolly, or the be exact the Sky Ray 3, a 70s classic from Walls. You may not have ever licked one but when you think about suggestive lolly sucking, in your mind you are seeing a Sky Ray. In much the same way that when asked to draw a tap, it will have the classic cross handle design, even though you probably haven’t used one in years. I would have thought that Qiu given the chance would have photographed one so I can only surmise that Playboy didn’t favour it’s phallic flavour. (Actually it’s raspberry, orange and lemonade). But their loss is my gain, for no prizes in guessing my next series of photographs.
See what I mean? But the potential of the Sky Ray lolly is perhaps most famously enthused by the poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley, who indeed named her debut collection and the title poem after it. I was brought a copy of it for valentines a few years back. I just googled it hoping to find a copy of it online with a creative commons license and not only is there one, but serendipitously it is published as part of a collection by Salt Publishing, whom I eulogistically urged everyone to buy a book from as part of their JustOneBook campaign two posts previously. So why not make it “Selected Poems”.
Sky Ray Lolly
A toddler on a day out in Herne Bay,
on seeing an ancient, civil-servant-type,
I held my Sky Ray lolly — red, yellow
and green striped, pointed, dripping down between
my legs and walked bandy. My Ma and Pa
(old-fashioned innocents like Rupert Bear’s)
just didn’t notice this and ambled on,
that is, until they saw the old man’s face,
jaw dislocated in surprise. They grabbed
that Martian’s willy from my little hand.The world still sees me as a nasty kid
usurping maleness. A foul brat to be
smacked down by figures of authority.
All things most natural in men, in me
are vice — having no urge to cook or clean,
lacking maternal instincts.And they would take my pride, my rocket
of ambition, amputate my fun and geld
my laughter, depriving me of colour.
And smirk to see my little lolly melt,
me left with a stick.
Copyright Fiona Pitt-Kethley, reproduced (with permission I hope) from Salt Publishing. Back to serious matter of ice cream (yes, it is serious, I’ve spent the last week perfecting my caramel chili recipe) and the erotic potential of confectionary, the 70s must be halcyon days even without even Cadbury’s Flake advertising. The astute eyed will spot in the adverts below that Walls had a variant called the “Kinky”.
Our modern age is not without it’s frozen thrills, may I recommend a Daniel Craig swimwear scene lolly, no, seriously.
Dogs by Ewan Morrison
Holidays are traditionally a time for reading, and since I have broadband whilst away, the less popular pursuit of sorting out my plethora of unreviewed browser bookmarks. Now I am able to combine both these past times in a single post…
Ewan Morrison’s new novel Ménage was published a month a go, I mention this for two reasons. First, he was perhaps the final contributing factor in starting me writing, but secondly and more importantly for the world at large, he has contributed a short story to the online lit-zine Dogmatika.
Read ‘Dogs’ by Ewan Morrison here:
dogmatika.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/dogs/
Things to see and do
Two things that have pipped on my radar, I shall be away on summer holidays for both of them but that’s no reason not to pass them on. Both look well worth attending.
Dominoes 2009
Station House Opera are after volunteers to help topple 10 miles of concrete breeze blocks dominoes style on July 26th. It’s a four hour stint to help lay out, topple and then collect up the blocks. After marshalling and clearing away a section of the route, participants will receive an invitation to the private party in Greenwich that evening.
The official blurb reads…
Station House Opera’s commission for CREATE09 takes as its starting point the simplest of ideas… a line of dominoes.
On Sunday 26th July, thousands of concrete blocks will be used to create a moving sculpture unfolding over the course of the day.
At mid-afternoon the blocks will begin their journey in the middle of Mile End Park – a quiet, unobtrusive begining on their long journery through East London. On paths, through parks and even on water, the domino line will wend its way southwards, linking the diverse communities of the areas it passes through in a symbolic as well as physical chain of cause and effect.
Eventually the line will cross the Thames, concluding in a performance at dusk in the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.
Sign up at www.dominoes2009.com
Flood Tide
Flood Tide is a live musical performance composed by John Eacott and is generated from the flow of the Thames. Data collected using a sensor in the river is processed with custom computer software into notation read on computer screens. An ensemble of six musicians read the notation as it appears in real time as the tide flows. The result is a live sonification of tidal flow.
Flood Tide is being performed as part of the Royal Observatory’s Moon Weekend, a weekend of lunar-themed events to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
Flood Tide
Meridian Line courtyard, Royal Observatory Greenwich.
3.30 pm Saturday 25th July 2009
3.30 pm Sunday 26th July 2009
Flood Tide Talk
The Discovery Space, Royal Observatory Greenwich.
2.15 pm Saturday 25th July 2009
John Eacott (composer of Flood Tide) and Simon Boxall (from the National Oceanography Centre Southampton) discuss ideas behind Flood Tide.
The artist’s studio
I recently learnt that three of my tiny fictions are to be published in web lit-zine, this should enthuse me to put fingers to keyboard and yet I find myself unable to tear my enthusiasm away from the Holga. I feel I am somehow cheating, that writing is facing the creative rock wall – the proverbial white sheet. While photography has that little leg-up, pointing the camera at something that is in itself already visually arresting.
I justify it with a modern art rationale – it’s the intention that makes the art, not the form. The reasoning that setting up a photograph is akin to writing out a scene. An internal bickering forever in the back of the mind. Guilty feelings that it is laziness stopping anything new being written. Having spent the weekend fooling around with a new ring flash and some hundreds and thousands this snippet I read recently throws a different light on such musings…
“Writers always envy artists, would trade places with them in a moment if they could. The painter’s life seems less ascetic, less monkish, less hunched. Instead of the austere mess of the desk there is the chaos of the studio: dirty coffee cups, paint-smudged cassette decks, drawings of the artist’s girlfriend, naked, on the walls… In the age of the computer the writer’s office or study will increasingly resemble the customer service desk of an ailing small business. The artist’s studio, though, is still what it has always been: an erotic space. For the writer the artist’s studio is, essentially a place where women undress.” Apparently quoted from ‘Out of Sheer Rage’ by Geoff Dyer.
Hard to argue with that isn’t it. Although I know I need to devote some time to my chosen partner writing, the mistress of photography still lures me: the shots failed from the Holga and a digital image has been resorted to, temporarily. It irks me that it doesn’t resemble that in my mind’s eye, and I am keen to reshoot.
(This paragraph will only of interest to those Googling Holga, diopters and ring flashes. The Holga normally suffers from under-exposure, but it seems that a ring flash throws out a lot more light that it’s built-in version, and combined with a close-up lens the glare bleaches everything out. Film rated at 100ASA is massively over-exposed. A test roll is needed pulling 50ASA stock back a stop). After I’ve put pen to paper of course.
I found both the quote and the marvelous picture of George Dyer, boyfriend of British painter Francis Bacon (shot in his Reece Mews Studio by an uncredited photographer in 1964), on the excellent ‘Sympathy for the art gallery’. Given that Dyer senior was gay I suspect that Geoff and George aren’t related, but it is serendipitous that their pairing should illustrate so aptly why I find myself drawn to photographic portraiture when I know I should be honing my writing.
Neville Brody interview by Deezen
The pecha kucha I gave at David Gale’s Peachy Coochie Nights and BAC’s Burst festival gave a brief history of type in twenty fonts and ended with Neville Brody’s Insigna. Commenting along the lines that Brody’s faces and the fact he cut them from red film or a rotraring pen suddenly opened up the world of type design. With a call to the barricades his work gave me and a generation of graphic designers the confidence to create typography without thinking we needed to serve an apprentice with a foundry. With a Mac suddenly the graphic world was ours.
So I watched with great delight Nevile Brody talking about topics close to my heart including punk, London, t-shirts and fashion during an interview by Deezen for the Design Museum’s ‘Super Contemporary’ exhibition.
Watch it at www.dezeen.com/2009/06/10/super-contemporary-interviews-neville-brody/
Interviews and confessionals
Many years ago a good friend told me that he considered everyone to be capable of telling you a great tale, that everyone had lived through something astounding, something moving. That there lurked in everyone amazing stories.
I was once again reminded of this conversation on seeing David Lynch’s new project – Interview. A camera crew take an odyssey across the flat lands of America interviewing whomever they met on the way. As a project it draws on classic Lynchian road movie motifs and is perhaps also provoked by his film The Straight Story, based on a true tale of Alvin Straight’s journey on a tractor across the States to visit his estranged brother before he dies.
Interview has a new episodes every three days, not all contain exceptional tales, some a trifle sombre, I think the adage that everyone contains a great story also relies upon timing. You must catch a person at the right moment to hear an intimate confession.
Alex Chadwick used not a road trip but a trestle table and 50 cents to lure passer-bys into giving a brief interview. Lynch’s candidates so far seem akin to supporting characters in one of his films whilst Chadwick’s urban locations seems to give a wider spectrum of the population, but it is early days yet for the Interview outing, and there’s no detraction even if it were to concentrate on outsiders. Stories straight from the heart.
I find hearing ordinary people talking about what they hold dear to be endlessly engaging, vox populi suddenly turning poignant or uplifting. A fine example is Fifty People One Question, a beautifully simple idea: “Go to a place. Ask fifty people the same question. Film their responses”. Within the brevity of the responses a great deal of the orator’s character and aspirations are revealed.
These are all confrontational projects in respect of having an interviewer cast direction, the flip side is creating a space for people to leave their thoughts, and more intriguingly those that can only be uttered aloud confidentially. Fragments of a life story that have a confessional aspect to them.
The internet is of course an ideal medium for confession booth and listening post. The first use of technology that I’m aware of for secular confession must be Allan Bridge’s ‘The Apology Project’, a 1980 conceptual art project where callers could leave their confessions on his answer phone. Just before his accidental death in 1995 he was considering moving the project to the internet, having amassed over 1000 hours of recordings.
Not Proud launched in 2000 as a confessional web site, allowing participants to get their secret of their chest. In itself a valuable resource and saves one from drunken misgivings with a bartender. Adding a form of recompense is Group Hug allowing readers to give a confessors a hug, secular forgiveness or a show of understanding. They can shrug as well; which throws up questions about the voyeuristic nature of reading these sites.
I see nothing wrong in the voyeurism, the confessions have been left to be read, to share, a been-there-too, know-how-you-feel, actually-my-life-aint so-bad-after-all pool. And the hug system offers support for those who are still perturbed by their past, but a like/dislike system forces these personal moments into the realm of entertainment. Potentially becoming a ‘did I like this one’ rather than did it bring a sense of release or relief to someone. That said Group Hug is a wonderful site and service, a window into our psyche, and the work of a single person – Gabriel Jeffery – hats off Gabriel.
Allan Bridge’s original community art aesthetic is alive and flourishing under Post Secret, a blog accepting postcards where the image and message disclose a secret.
SecretTweet updates the medium for the social web generation, authenticity forsaken for immediacy; Group Hug has a long validation process before publishing. One Sentence publishes true stories in, yes, one sentence via Twitter, here humour and the mundane nestle with the confessional.
Social media with it’s soundbyte ethos has brought a wealth of sites dealing with real people aspirations and fears, I particularly like Someone once told me and Before I die I want to. The micro-blogging approach has reduced Interview’s remit to 400 words and even Six Word Memoirs.
All this guilt is good business or at least one start-up thinks so, Truu Confessions attempts to seize advertising revenue from the voyeuristic. If you find the stock photography disengaging your empathy, you could remind yourself that ordinary people can tell extraordinary stories, as Leo Rosten said ‘Truth is stranger than fiction, become fiction has to make sense’, by reading Paul Auster’s ‘True tales of American life’.
Glad I’ve got all that off my chest.
(The image is from Bill Drummond’s The 17 project, used to symbolise ordinary people, and because I like The 17. They are 17 book lovers from Derby)
Self pleasure
A beautiful ceramic dildo. I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, and having not seen it turn up elsewhere in the blogsphere decided the time is right. It’s was created by furniture and lighting designer Davy Grosemans at Das Ding and the design studio Oooms.
For me the first thing to discuss is the quality, Das Ding (apart from having a logo like a butt plug) are high-end award winning product designers, it’s manufactured by the European Ceramic Work Centre – a centre of excellence for artists to explore work in ceramics. Neither of these companies are normally involved in the sex trade. Oooms, who make a very droll memory stick from real sticks have produced a great range of dildos and exciters before, so it could be argued they have a touch of under the counter about them.
It’s a sumptuous object or at least looks it (I can’t afford one at the moment to vouch for this) and seems very well designed, I’m presuming the cork allows it to be filled with warm water on a winters evening. It’s certainly not under the counter in sensibilities, and in fact the description on the Ooom site suggests that it would be a talking point if you left it out on the mantlepiece. Exactly. It is not an object made to be hidden away and yet it is unlikely many people will display it as they would any other piece of Delftblue pottery. For the simple reason it’s used to masturbate with when not being admired.
Bringing us to the second topic – self-pleasure – one assumes practically everybody does it and yet there is very little public acknowledgment of the practice. (Girls are way ahead on this one with their Anne Summers parties, but I’m thinking of a more general public admittance). One can buy sex toys as a couple and mention you watch ‘porn for couples’ but nobody really admits to ‘spending a few quite moments with oneself’.
For instance on Amazon there are book reviews by customers, and furthermore there are erotica books whose only purpose to aid a little nighttime under-the-duvet relief, but are there many reviews of these titles by people using their real names? No, not really, although they are a few brave types who have – I salute you! Obviously one is using euphemisms here, after all we’re talking about, not writing filth. Although a review of ”…made me cum in buckets really quickly” may be accurate, a simple “very effective” will suffice. It’s the admittance, or rather the public lack of, that I find intriguing, not being explicit about it, after all it is a matter that occurs in private much like visiting the toilet. Now with the latter subject some people show no hesitation or restraint in discussing the finer points, something I’ve never quite understood.
Before reaching closure with my final aside I should put my money where my mouth is. I particularly enjoyed the ‘Wicked Words’ short stories from Black Lace, let’s just say it doesn’t matter too much that the stories are short.
When I originally saw the Milkmaid with it’s connotations of admittance and display, it led me to thinking about literature, which prides itself in tackling taboos and thorny subjects head-on. And yet there is very little mention of masturbation in books outside of erotica. I don’t mean descriptive passages, just a character during the course of a novel indulging in some self relief. Authors will go to great lengths describing the preparation of a breakfast meal, or the choosing of a jacket, but very rarely will a protagonist masturbate to relieve stress for instance, which could show a side to their character as much as other plot devices. When it comes to sex writers show no abounds, but it’s always sex between two or more.
I’ve been trying to think of books where masturbation is used within the plot, and so far I’ve come up with ‘The Illuminatus Trilogy’ by Robert Shea and Robert Anton and Geoff Ryman’s ‘253’. There must be more? For instance ‘The colour of memory’, an excellent tale of friendship amongst ennui by Geoff Dyer features plenty of aimless drug smoking, staring out of windows and general realistic trivia of modern life yet no-one has a wank in it. A friend mentioned that they thought Madame Bovary might have masturbated but alas I haven’t read it.
Is it because masturbation is seen as a sign of failure? Not managing to have sex with someone, and having to do it on your own. I’m married and enjoy sex as often as I can but every now and then a bit of self pleasure brings it’s own rewards, a lie-in with a hangover is vastly improved with a wank, being stuck on your own in hotel room can always be enlivened with some self indulgence, and if you’re on the continent you might even find a television program you don‘t get at home to inspire you.
Its seems very odd to me that something so enjoyable so be seen as failure, even the new trendy sex shops play to the couples angle, I have only seen the marvelous Coco de Mer suggest solo pleasure with a series of fantastic adverts showing people’s facial expression during a petit mort. I would love to photograph a series of portraits like these, the mask drops away, but I will be very surprised if any of my friends would volunteer.
So…note to self, need to make sure any future stories I write allow for non-gratuitous masturbation within plot lines or character development, and to photograph my own orgasm portrait – a self-portrait perhaps, would anyone agree to photograph me at the point of release? (discreetly under the covers of course).
It’s a bit of a shame that www.beautifulagony.net isn’t simply a gallery of faces enlarging full-screen into a truly beautiful celebrations of the self, shining through in that single second of ecstasy, and instead delves into videos and ‘confessions’ becoming something much more voyeuristic. Any brave souls out there who fancy exchanging camera duties? And if you know of a novel that features masturbation do leave a note…
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