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Language of the Birds: Occult and Art

Astrological Ouroboros (1965) by Paul Laffoley.

Language of the Birds is an occult-themed art show at 80WSE, New York University, that opened this week and runs to 13 February, 2016. Curator Pam Grossman has assembled a stunning collection of work by artists, occultists, and occult-artists old and new:

Kenneth Anger * Anohni * Laura Battle * Jordan Belson * Alison Blickle * Carol Bove * Jesse Bransford * BREYER P-ORRIDGE * John Brill * Robert Buratti * Elijah Burgher * Cameron * Leonora Carrington * Francesco Clemente * Ira Cohen * Brian Cotnoir * Aleister Crowley * Enrico Donati * El Gato Chimney * Leonor Fini * JFC Fuller * Helen Rebekah Garber * Rik Garrett * Delia Gonzalez * Jonah Groeneboer * Juanita Guccione * Brion Gysin * Frank Haines * Barry William Hale * Valerie Hammond * Ken Henson * Bernard Hoffman * Nino Japaridze * Gerome Kamrowski * Leo Kenney * Paul Laffoley * Adela Leibowitz * Darcilio Lima * Angus MacLise * Ann McCoy * Rithika Merchant * William Mortensen * Rosaleen Norton * Micki Pellerano * Ryan M Pfeiffer & Rebecca Walz * Max Razdow * Ron Regé, Jr. * Rebecca Salmon * Kurt Seligmann * Harry Smith * Kiki Smith * Xul Solar * Austin Osman Spare * Charles Stein * Shannon Taggart * Gordon Terry * Scott Treleaven * Panos Tsagaris * Charmion von Wiegand * Robert Wang * Peter Lamborn Wilson * Lionel Ziprin

El Nigromante (1950) by Leonora Carrington.

More details for lucky New Yorkers may be found here. In addition, there’s an Occult Humanities Conference that runs through the weekend of February 5th.

Neutron designs

The Bowie overload this week had me thinking again about Derek Jarman’s unmade science-fiction film, Neutron, an apocalyptic work that would have starred David Bowie if the finance had been forthcoming. Jarman’s description in an earlier post about the film remains tantalising:

There are six published manuscripts of Neutron, which zig-zag their anti-heroes Aeon and Topaz across the horizon of a bleak and twilit post-nuclear landscape. ‘Artist’ and ‘activist’ in their respective former lives, they are caught up in the apocalypse, where the PA systems of Oblivion crackle with the revelations of John the Divine. Their duel is fought among the rusting technology and darkened catacombs of the Fallen civilization, until they reach the pink marble bunker of Him. The reel of time is looped—angels descend with flame-throwers and crazed religious sects prowl through the undergrowth. The Book of Revelations is worked as science fiction.

Lee [Drysdale] and I pored over every nuance of this film. We cast it with David Bowie and Steven Berkoff, set it in the huge junked-out power station at Nine Elms and in the wasteland around the Berlin Wall. Christopher Hobbs produced xeroxes of the pink marble halls of the bunker with their Speer lighting—that echo to ‘the muzak of the spheres’ which played even in the cannibal abattoirs, where the vampire orderlies sipped dark blood from crystal goblets.

This is one of those great what-if projects along with Jodorowsky’s film of Dune, Nicolas Roeg’s Flash Gordon, and others, so it was a surprise to discover a handful of recent designs for Neutron produced by students at the Wimbledon College of Art. The video here is a short collection of stills by Jonny Blackmore. There’s another of his pieces here, and further designs by Gabrielle Cole here and here. I’m guessing that these were part of a college assignment but if anyone knows otherwise please leave a comment. As to the original Neutron, some version of the script must still exist (Jon Savage was apparently involved in later stages) as must Christopher Hobbs’ designs. Maybe we’ll see them in a book one day.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Derek Jarman’s Neutron

Cracked Actor

This is one of those TV documentaries that it’s tempting to think everyone must have seen by now, but if it’s over-familiar to me it’s undoubtedly new to others. Cracked Actor: A film about David Bowie was broadcast by the BBC in their Omnibus arts strand in January 1975. Director Alan Yentob followed David Bowie around the US during the Diamond Dogs tour, and while it’s good to see some of the numbers from that album being performed live, I’ve always found it odd that Bowie’s stage persona is that of the Young Americans album, all big hair and padded shoulders; it’s a look that doesn’t work with Diamond Dogs‘ theme of dystopian futurism. Despite Yentob’s directorial coup this was one of many BBC documentaries that were screened once then not shown again for a long time, so that viewers such as myself who saw the original broadcast would be left to reminisce about memorable moments.

The most significant moment for me was Bowie demonstrating his own application of the cut-up method as he applied it to lyric writing, a sequence that was not only my first exposure to William Burroughs’ writing techniques but also my first introduction to Burroughs’ and Gysin’s names. Subsequent viewings confirmed that Bowie was as drug-addled as people claimed at the time (confirmed by the man himself in later years), especially in the limousine scenes which prefigure those in The Man Who Fell To Earth.

The amount of music in this film attracts the attentions of the YouTube copyright police so the upload linked here may not be around for long. Watch it while you can.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Strange fascination

Strange fascination

Another single sleeve (and missing the “?” in the title). Released 22nd June, 1973.

Music reinforces memory, and an enduring memory is of discussing the lyrics to Life On Mars? with a friend in the blissful summer of 1973, when the song was in the charts after being released to capitalise on Bowie’s success with his Ziggy Stardust persona. “Blissful” here isn’t rose-tinted nostalgia, that summer gave us two months of heat and sunshine, something British summers don’t always manage; you can see the evidence in the sunlit evening shots of DA Pennebaker’s film of the final Ziggy Stardust concert, and in the field scenes in Penda’s Fen which was being filmed at the time for broadcast the following year. (And while we’re forging links, Penda director Alan Clarke later directed Bowie in the TV production of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal.)

Weather aside, the summer of 1973 was particularly enjoyable for being the one that separated my last year at junior school (which I enjoyed) with my first year at secondary school (which I loathed); in that respect it was the last perfect summer of childhood after which my home and school life went down in flames. I spent most of July and August with friends: climbing trees, playing on bits of waste ground, and going on long bike rides. I don’t remember much about the bike excursions apart from the one I made with Martin C to Skippool Creek, a tributary of the River Wyre outside Blackpool where old boats are moored. This was the occasion of the Life On Mars? discussion, and it was the discussion that lodges the event so persistently in the memory, an unresolved puzzling over the strangest lyrics we’d ever heard. I mark this moment as the first time I began to regard music as a vehicle for a quality of strangeness that I’ve been pursuing ever since. And I still think of that afternoon when we went to look at the boats every time I hear the song.

Some links:
• 50 David Bowie moments
• Some thoughts by Momus
• The Magic and Mystery of David Bowie by Peter Bebergal

Single sleeves

A septet of 7-inch single sleeves from Eastern Bloc Songs, a small but well-selected repository of sleeve art from the record labels of the Eastern Bloc. I’d looked at the album art before but had missed the singles, some of which feature more impressive designs than their 12-inch counterparts. Of special interest are designs that show how the psychedelic styles of the decadent West were transmuted for a Communist audience. The Nautilus sleeve above dates from 1969, and uses the lettering adapted by Wes Wilson from a much earlier design by Alfred Roller. Elsewhere the generic sleeves from venerable Czech label Supraphon stand out for their modish graphics. (Via Record Envelope and Things Magazine.)

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