{psychedelia} – Page 60 – { feuilleton }

Passage 14

It’s that time of year again when my good friend Ed Jansen unveils the latest edition of Passage, his Dutch-language webzine:

The 14th issue of Passage contains articles about language, the dreamachine of Brion Gysin, the collaboration of Gysin with William Burroughs and Ian Sommerville (The Third Mind), a recently discovered photograph of Arthur Rimbaud’s presence in Aden, lots of photos of exhibitions and performances of artists in and around The Hague, about the experiences of Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the First World War and the latest novel of Michel Houellebecq. The purpose behind everything we write and make is to give the reader a sense of direction towards the unknown, towards the North-West Passage that leads to a new world.

The cover picture is a photo of the audience at a Dreamachine-inspired presentation by Matthijs Munnik about which we’re told:

In my performance I also make use of the flicker effect, but I have more control over it. In my performance, the audience wears white plastic masks, this way they look into a ganzfeld, a totally white field during the performance. In my set up, I use beamers, projecting light on the audience’s masks, completely immersing them in the light and colors of the projection.

I play an 8 minute live composition, based on the varying effects of different frequencies of flicker, colour, binaural beats and sound. During the performance every spectator will see something different, varying patterns and colours, created within their own brains.

And speaking of the Dreamachine, Nick Hydra left a comment in an earlier post with the news that visitors to the Wellcome Collection’s High Society exhibition in London have the opportunity to trip out with one of Brion Gysin’s flicker machines until the end of February.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Brion Gysin let the mice in
• Passage 13
• Passage 12
• Passage 11
• Passage 10

Weekend links: New Year edition

Flower Me Gently (2010) by Linn Olofsdotter.

• “Many of Moorcock’s editorials are published here, and they still make exhilarating reading. Then, as now, Moorcock set his face against a besetting English sin: a snobbish parochial weariness, an ironic superiority to the frightful oiks who have started filling up the streets. You can almost hear, behind the languorous flutter of the pages, Sir Whatsits sniggering to Lady Doo-Dah. It still goes on, and it’s usually the same flummery in different clothes. Moorcock not only would not go to the party: he threw the literary equivalent of explosive devices into the Hampstead living rooms.” Michael Moorcock’s Into the Media Web reviewed. And also here.

• “Beefheart channeled a secret history of America, the underbelly of a continent and a culture that has now all but vanished along with one of its greatest poets.” Jon Savage on the life and work of the late Captain.

• Miniatures Blog, in which musician Morgan Fisher works his way through each of the fifty one-minute tracks on his extraordinary Miniatures compilation album, with details and anecdotes about the artists and the recording of each piece.

• Look at Life: IN gear (1967). A Rank Organisation newsreel about Swinging London. Sardonic commentary and some great colour photography showing how the often shabby reality differs from the caricature. Many of the shots are familiar from documentaries about the era but this is the first time I’ve seen them all in one place.

Predator (Self-portrait) by Linn Olofsdotter.

• Lewis Carroll’s new story: The Guardian‘s review of Through the Looking-Glass from December, 1871. Related: My Through the Psychedelic Looking-Glass 2011 calendar is now reduced in price.

• The United Kingdom and Ireland as seen from the International Space Station, December, 2010. Related: Spacelog, the stories of early space exploration from the original NASA transcripts.

• The “Big Basket” Fraud, 1958: “…there seems to be a limited segment with a one-track mind interested in seeing an exaggerated masculine appendage.”

• “Ancient arena of discord”: a billboard for King’s Cross by Jonathan Barnbrook. Related: Vale Royal by Aidan Andrew Dun.

• The inevitable Ghost Box link, Jim Jupp is interviewed at Cardboard Cutout Sundown.

• Amazon is still playing the random moral guardian at the Kindle store.

• Antwerpian Expressionists at A Journey Round My Skull.

• Salami CD and vacuum packaging by Mother Eleganza.

• Paris 1900: L’Architecture Art Nouveau à Paris.

• Bill Sienkiewicz speaks about Big Numbers #3.

• Philippe Druillet illustrates Dracula, 1968.

• Aesthetic Peacocks at the V&A.

• Well Did You Evah! (1990), Deborah Harry & Iggy Pop directed by Alex Cox.

Weekend links 39

The Divine Punishment (1986) by Diamanda Galás. Design by Paul White/Me Company.

What the Catholic League and certain members of the House presumably wish to remove from their consciousness is thirty years of death sentences handed down to their parishioners and citizenry, who were told not to wear condoms, and the mistreatment of those stigmatized as miscreants and sinners by their viral status and/or homosexuality and/or status as drug addicts.

• Diamanda Galás responds in her usual forthright manner to the censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s film (and her music which accompanied it) by the Catholic League and members of the House of Representatives earlier this week. Related: Demonstrators gather to protest removal of Wojnarowicz art from NPG | Is the censored David Wojnarowicz video really ‘anti-Christian’? | Vengeance is hers: a conversation with Diamanda Galás.

• Update: Hide/Seek: Too shocking for America. One of the exhibition curators speaks out against the censorship.

“Their attitude is: ‘Next time you think of writing about sex, don’t,'” said Susie Bright, who was the editor of the Best American Erotica anthology series for 15 years. “I can’t think of any other fundamental human experience that writers would be encouraged to keep to themselves.” Melissa Katsoulis, a literary reviewer for the Times of London, certainly seemed to conform to Bright’s impression when asked to comment on the award by the BBC: “Sex is a subject best avoided altogether,” she said. “If I was writing a novel, I wouldn’t attempt to write it except in the most Victorian and prim way, because it’s awful. It’s a cliché, but the moments of genuine frisson in books are when hardly anything happens.” Speak for yourself, missy.

• Laura Miller dissing the Literary Review‘s annual Bad Sex Award. Good to find more voices being raised against this drivel and the admission of failure which it implies.

• The latest offbeat experiment from filmmaker David Lynch: pop singles. He gets crazy with the vocoder here. Related: David Lynch talks new music projects.

Scena Illustrata (1914). Cover by Ezio Anichini (?). Via this set of magazine covers from 1880–1920.

• Tumblrs of the week: Heart Killer and Pretty Pictures from the Paleo-Future Blog.

• The Big Picture’s 2010 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.

• National Geographic‘s Best Underwater Views of 2010.

• A seasonal gift from a famous Northampton resident.

• Paris versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities.

• This is your browser on drugs.

• Double-Barrel Prayer (1988) by Diamanda Galás, with a video directed by the late Peter Christopherson.

Bindu Shards by James Turrell

Dhatu (2010).

The intensities of colour found in some of James Turrell’s light works might warrant the description “psychedelic” at times, although “transcendental” is probably more apt when it comes to his immersive environments. Dhatu is one of the latter, a new installation at the Gagosian Gallery, London, where a room filled with changing shades of light has been named after a bodily element from Buddhism. The gallery says of the work:

Light like this is seen rarely with the eyes open, yet it is familiar to that which can be apprehended with the eyes closed in lucid dream, deep meditation, and near-death experiences.

Bindu Shards (2010).

As for Bindu Shards, also at the Gagosian, the name refers to a kind of cosmic singularity in Hinduism and for this Turrell has created a bathysphere-like chamber which visitors are required to enter one at a time in order to experience its light show. This one really does sound psychedelic if Jonathan Jones’ frothing description is anything to go by:

Then I see a cityscape of vertiginous skyscrapers, with no earth below. All these forms and volumes that pulse and metamorphosise are defined by colours that change convulsively – the most intensely saturated greens and reds you can imagine, colours that seem solid, then burst into microscopic patterns of oranges, blacks, gold and misty white; all these colours bubble and whir at breakneck speed, as if you were in a particle accelerator. (More)

And a frothing description is all that’s available unfortunately, now that visiting sessions are fully-booked, but the other Turrell works will be on view until December 10, 2010.

• Greeting the Light: An Interview with James Turrell
• Other Turrell works at Flickr

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Colorscreen
• New Olafur Eliasson
• New work from James Turrell

Through the Psychedelic Looking-Glass: the 2011 calendar

Looking-Glass House.

So here it is at last, this year’s much-delayed calendar design, the sequel to last year’s well-received Psychedelic Wonderland. I’ll get the business stuff out of the way first: would-be purchasers should go to the CafePress shop ~~here~~ while for a better preview of all the artwork look here.

Update: This calendar is now available again.

Jabberwocky.

“Seeing Alice’s adventures through the psychotropic prism of the late Sixties showed me the way into Wonderland,” I wrote last year, “What’s needed now is to do the same next year for Looking-Glass Land.” Where the first design was a pleasure to work on—and somehow only took me three weeks—this one turned into a considerable chore. It was my fault, I got started too late, hadn’t really thought what I was going to do (although the earlier design was completely improvised) and, worst of all, was trying to get this done whilst engaged with a stack of far more important work at the same time. As a result it’s a relief to have finished it at all since I nearly abandoned things on more than one occasion.

The Garden of Live Flowers.

Another problem was the nature of the two Alice books. Wonderland is a lot easier to illustrate than Looking-Glass although I didn’t quite realise this until I’d begun. The chapters of the first book are very distinctive scenes, each with a differing flavour from those that precede them. The second book either repeats settings—there are many woodland encounters since the chessboard across which Alice moves is a landscape—or the chapters are wholly confused, as in Wool and Water which begins in a train carriage, switches to a shop then ends up in a rowing-boat. As you’ll see below, I opted to illustrate the boat.

Looking-Glass Insects.

Excuses and complaints aside, I’m very pleased with a couple of these pictures; the Jabberwock came out better than I expected considering I was working at a rate of knots while the Wasp in a Wig (from the book’s lost chapter) could be given a Whistlerian title like Arrangement in Yellow and Black. As with the previous calendar design, the Alice figures change dramatically since they’re all taken from 19th century illustration or advertising art. And I’m now rather tired of looking at insipid pictures of Victorian children… If I do a calendar next year I think I’ll return to compiling earlier work unless inspiration and free time miraculously coincide. For now I hope that everyone who enjoyed the earlier calendar appreciates this one to the same degree.

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