A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Drugs
Students at the University of Heidelberg take a
break from their studies while smoking opium.
From Before Prohibition: Images from the preprohibition
era when many psychotropic substances were legally
available in America and Europe.
Via Boing Boing.
America’s most vital cultural bulletin. Free PDF download.
How nature droners GROWING found their flow. By Peter Relic. Photography by Eden Batki.
Swiss anthropologist-author JEREMY NARBY talks with Jay Babcock about what hallucinogens like LSD and the Amazonian drink ayahuasca have to teach us in the 21st century. Introduction by author Erik Davis, with a full-color illustration by Arik Moonhawk Roper.
How columnist DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF learned to stop worrying about current events.
Why power duo Al Cisneros and Chris Haikus reunited to make the meditation-suitable
heavy metal sound of OM.
‘Do the Math’ columnist David Reeves on the main reason why the USA should seal its border with Mexico.
The life, work and astounding impact of North Indian vocalist PANDIT PRAN NATH, guru
to Western minimalists La Monte Young and Terry Riley. By Peter Lavezzoli.
‘New Herbalist’ columnist Molly Frances on Lord Byron’s secret elixir and the Prophet Muhammed’s top condiment: VINEGAR.
How to recognize—and use—OCCULT FORCES, by the Center for Tactical Magic.
Notes from Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 2006 by the intrepid Gabe Soria.
Comics by Vanessa Davis, Chris Wright and PShaw.
Scenes from ArthurBall 2006, featuring Joanna Newsom, The 5:15ers (Joshua Homme & Chris Goss) and Moris Tepper and Polly Harvey.
Bull Tongue columnists BYRON COLEY & THURSTON MOORE review Richard Youngs, Pink Mountaintops, Parts & Labor, Oneida/Plastic Crimewave, Ex Models, Mouthus, The Bummer Road, Idea Fire Company, Taurpis Tula, Spykes, Ong Ong, Carson Cistulli, Starbird, 2673, Ladderwoe, Tovah Olson, Pan Dolphinic Dawn, Gastric Female Reflex, ANP Quarterly, Matt Chambers, The Colonial, Mineshaft, Little Claw, Black Lips, Zaat, Mystical Footprints of Asia, Whysp, The Story, Skarerkauradio, Jerusalem & the Starbaskets, Noise Nomads, The Nightjar Review, Shannon Ketch, Jeremy Rendina, Carousel, Quantum Noise, Lambsbread, Carlos Batts, Trenton Doyle Hancock, S.M.S.R., Tchernoblyad, Narrowmind, Sudanstrain, Blod, Sharon’s Last Part, Mnem, Edwidge, The Rita, Mania, Ashtray Navigations, Evenings, Septic Sores, Bottom Dweller, Paul Metzger, Tombi and Glass organ.
C & D riff into the dawn on Marvin Gaye’s The Real Thing: In Performance, 1964-1981 dvd plus new albums from Gnarls Barkley, Rufus Harley, The Black Keys, The Raconteurs, Eagles of Death Metal, The Cuts, Future Pigeon, The Aggrolites, The Fiery Furnaces, Espers, Josephine Foster, Scott Walker, Fred Neil, Belong, Boris and Howlin Rain. Plus: Peter Relic’s Book Corner spotlights new poetry collections by Alex Mitchell and John Tottenham.
And more…
ANNOUNCING THE AKASHIC RECORD DVD SERIES – A BASTET EXCLUSIVE
“THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA” DVD FEATURING “BRAIN DAMAGE” & “FROM THE MYLAR CHAMBER” SLIDESHOW
BASTET, in collaboration with SATURNALIA and THE IRA COHEN AKASHIC PROJECT, is proud to announce the launch of THE AKASHIC RECORD DVD SERIES.
Celebrated internationally for more than 40 years, and screening this Friday, March 17 as part of the “Day for Night” program at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Ira Cohen’s THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA director’s cut DVD is now available for pre-order exclusively through BASTET / ARTHUR magazine.
Ira Cohen, director: “It was in 1968, the year before Woodstock, between the giant bottle of liquid mercury Tony Conrad found in a doorway on 42nd St. and the Mylar chamber, we experienced a shared voyage conceived in three parts: The Opium Dream, Shaman and Heavenly Blue Mylar Pavilions, an alchemical journey born of out common consciousness – culminating in the akashic bindu drop swirling in the sky’s reflected azure. No minimalism here, but a maximalist adventure…”
Metamorphosis of Hitler’s Face into a Moonlit Landscape with Accompaniment (1958).
Impressions de la Haute Mongolie (1976/Salvador Dali/José Montes-Baquer/Germany)
In any list of films I’d currently most like to see but can’t due to lack of availability, this bizarre “documentary” collaboration between Salvador Dalí and José Montes-Baquer would be near the top of the list. I saw it once, probably shortly after it had been made, when the BBC screened it as part of their Omnibus arts series in the late seventies. By this time I was already very familiar with the Surrealists, Dalí, Magritte and Max Ernst especially, so it was great to see Dalí himself declaring a supposed mission to explore Upper Mongolia in a search for giant hallucinogenic mushrooms. This premise aside, I remember few other details, the whole film was as delightfully confusing as might be expected. The most distinct memory was of the painting above being shown, then the camera pulling back some distance to reveal the full extent of Hitler’s face which is only hinted at in the original. Happily, a web review now provides us with some more details:
Homage to Impressions d’Afrique (1909), is a free-associative poem written by Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), even though he never visited Africa. The film is dedicated to this French author, forefather of the Surrealists, who developed a formal constraint system to generate inspiration from dislocative puns.
Dalí does the very same thing with this chimerical pseudocumentary leading us to the mysterious realm of High Mongolia where a gigantic white soft mushroom grows, many times more hallucinogenic than LSD! From his studio-museum in Cadacès (Spain), he proceeds to report on the alleged scientific expedition sent out by himself to retrieve this precious treasure, with newspaper clips and newsreel. Childhood memories (like the picture above) are the opportunity to explain more thoroughly the source of his inspiration. This bucolic landscape is in fact a close up of Hitler’s portrait (his nose and moustache) turned to the side!
Wholly Dalíesque, this film experiment pieces together astonishing combinations of superimposed images, fading in and out, switching scale with odd perspectives. Dalí invents a filmmaking process and applies his very language to cinematic purposes, bending the rules to serve his desperate need for originality. Travelling through a microscopic close up of paintings or rough surfaces, his voiceover commentary gives sense to the landscapes taking form under his eyes.
Impressions of Africa was also the title of a Dalí painting from 1938, of course:
It’s probably too much to hope that this will turn up on TV again, so for now I suppose I’ll have to look forward to it appearing on DVD at some point in the future. How about it José?
Update: Ubuweb has a copy!