Allan Kausch – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 702

The Great Bear (1933) by Marjorie Miller.

• New music: “Lo-fi no-fi post-fi fragments of disparate SCATTERBRAIN thoughts scrapbooked together using industrial glue discretely purloined from building site tea-break opportunities to fully form the definitive SEPIA PUNK AMBIENT (?) statement of assiduous apathy intent ~ hextracted from SEPIA CAT CITY (GEpH017LP) available via moonwiringclub.com areet now TA.” Nobody writes product descriptions like Moon Wiring Club.

• “Both the Harry Smith and the Sun Ra books were hard sells, because they were virtual unknowns who had pretty much given their life for art. In each case only about two publishers were interested in either one of them. The editors said either that they hadn’t heard of him, or else they had heard of him and didn’t want to hear any more.” John Szwed talking to Raymond Foye about the mercurial Harry Smith, and the problems of writing biography.

• At Public Domain Review: Max Beerbohm’s A Christmas Garland (1912), a collection of seasonal parodies of well-known writers of the day. As with any such work, the success of each piece depends upon familiarity with the author being parodied, but Beerbohm’s prose is always a delight.

• Mirrorshades (1986), the cyberpunk story anthology edited by Bruce Sterling, is currently available for reading or e-text download at Rudy Rucker’s website. The book is still in copyright but I’m guessing this has been done with the agreement of the contributors.

• “…the richness of terrestrial creatures which at points are capable of sounding utterly extra-terrestrial.” Daryl Worthington explores the history of birdsong and its influence on human music.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: Listen to the centre of the Milky Way translated into sound or look at yet more photos of the aurora borealis. (Or do both at the same time.)

• At Wormwoodiana: Through the Golden Valley to the Dark Tower. Mark Valentine and friends go on a book-buying expedition.

• 14 x 14, a collection of Oulipo poems by Ian Monk, translated by Monk and Philip Terry, with collage cover art by Allan Kausch.

• “I am fascinated by electromagnetic waves.” Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) discussing art and creativity with Max Dax.

• Secret Satan, 2023, the essential end-of-year book list from Strange Flowers.

• Spice Islands Sea Birds (1957) by Les Baxter | Trippin’ With The Birds (1997) by Stereolab + Nurse With Wound | Strange Birds (1999) by Coil

Weekend links 580

The Collective Lie We All Live By, a cut-paper collage by Allan Kausch from Maintenant 15, A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art.

• “It’s unusual that an album manages to be at once so much of its moment, yet so much outside it. Time was unmistakably a response to the electronic and synth waves that rose in the wake of punk. It was also a concept album about time travel, which couldn’t have been more pre-punk had it been focus-grouped that way.” David Bennun on Time (1981), ELO’s masterwork of science-fiction pop. The first song on the album, Twilight, is a thundering piece of synth bombast that prefigures Trevor Horn’s equally bombastic productions, and was used to memorable effect in the copyright-infringing animation made in 1983 for the opening of Daicon IV.

• New music: Disciples Of The Scorpion by The Rowan Amber Mill, and Shade by Grouper.

• “Psychedelic spirituality: Inside a growing Bay Area religious movement“.

• “It’s time to farewell this project,” says Ballardian.

• At Wormwoodiana: the seven greek vowels.

• A playlist for The Wire by Douglas Benford.

• Norman Blake‘s favourite albums.

• Astronomia Playing Cards.

• RIP Dusty Hill.

• Time (1973) by David Bowie | Time (1976) by La Düsseldorf | Time (1992) by Lull

Weekend links 562

Teenage Lightning (Les Éclairs au-dessous de quatorze ans) (c. 1925) by Max Ernst.

• “There has never been another director who has lain in wait for us with the same wrath or disgust. He is so complicated that finally he became the very thing he was nervous of admitting, a true artist best measured in the company of Patrick Hamilton, Francis Bacon, or Harold Pinter. He saw no reason to like us or himself.” David Thomson on why Alfred Hitchcock’s films still feel dangerous.

• New music: “Habitat, an environmental music collaboration by Berlin based composer Niklas Kramer and percussionist Joda Foerster, is inspired by the drawings of Italian architect Ettore Sottsass. Each of the eight tracks represents a room in an imaginary building.”

• “You could describe Lambkin’s work as a rich sort of ambient music, but largely without the synthetic textures that ambient music often possesses.” Geeta Dayal reviews Solos, a collection of recordings by Graham Lambkin.

• Tom of Finland: Pen and Ink, 1965–1989 is an exhibition at the David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, which runs to 1st May. The website includes a virtual tour.

• More revenant gay art: Bibliothèque Gay reviews a new Spanish translation of Baiser de Narcisse by Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen.

• Introducing Ark Surreal: “Surreal collages by Allan Randolph Kausch. Some cute and sweet, others dark and intriguing.”

• At Artforum: Albert Mobilio on Extra Ordinary: Magic, Mystery, and Imagination in American Realism.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Shizuoka is installing monuments inspired by their plastic model industry.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Jordan Belson Day.

• Museum of Everything Else

• RIP Bertrand Tavernier.

• Teenage Lightning 2 (1991) by Coil | Teenage Lightning (1992) by Skullflower | Teenage Lightning (Surgeon Remix) (2001) by Coil

Death and the maiden

Allan Kausch sent me his collage contribution to Maintenant 14: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art last week (thanks, Allan!). I don’t know if this was meant to be a comment on current events but it’s difficult to avoid such an interpretation, especially regarding the USA where people continue to behave like children while the corpses pile up around them.

By coincidence, Strange Flowers notes today that the First International Dada Fair was staged in Berlin 100 years ago this week. The efflorescence of Dada was a brief one thanks to contradictory impulses, conflicting personalities and a hostile social reaction, so the participants might be surprised that their ethos lives on in magazine form a century later. They might also be satisfied that the site of the First International Dada Fair is now an empty plot in a rebuilt street. What better memorial for the Death of Art than a hole in the ground?

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The original Cabaret Voltaire

Weekend links 503

Rabbit Man with Skull Lady (1998) by Allan Kausch.

• “They were the first generation that said, ‘Fuck it, we’re not going to be intimidated.’ They weren’t going to make specifically pro-gay statements, but they were the first generation to really live that out. If you look at the Alternative Miss World, it’s a kind of gender-fuck, it’s almost like the English version of the Cockettes.” Jon Savage speaking in a piece by Alex Petridis about “Them” (Kevin Whitney, Luciana Martinez de la Rosa, Duggie Fields, Derek Jarman, Zandra Rhodes, Andrew Logan et al). Related: Andrew Logan in Andrew’s Adventures in Loganland.

• Sex, Satanism, Manson, Murder, and LSD: Kenneth Anger tells his tale. “Anger rarely if ever veers from the script as he is a man who has carefully controlled his myth and reputation for decades,” says Paul Gallagher.

• “Don’t even think about operating heavy machinery while listening to this mix.” The latest Dave Maier collection of recent ambient drift, drone-works and beatless atmospherics.

It is by no means easy to track or trace relationships between women, past or present. Women’s relationships with other women are often disguised: by well-documented marriages to men, by a cultural refusal to see what is in full view or even to believe such relationships exist. In a world built by and for men and their pursuits, a woman who loves women does not register—and is not registered, i.e., written down. Reasons for this layer one upon the other: A lesbian purposely hides her identity and remains closeted. A lesbian refuses to call herself a lesbian, disidentifying from the term and its associations for reasons personal or political. A woman does not know she is a lesbian—because she does not ever have a relationship with another woman, or because she is not aware that the relationships she engages in could be called lesbian. I didn’t call myself one for several years. Or, as in Carson’s case, her own self-understanding and identification are difficult to determine because of the efforts of those who outlived her and pushed her into the closet.

Jenn Shapland on the closeting of Carson McCullers

• At The Paris Review: The Collages of Max Ernst. Related: Kolaj: A directory of collage books.

• Adam Scovell on the deathly hinterlands of Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face.

• When Dorothy Parker got fired from Vanity Fair, by Jonathan Goldman.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: The Proto-Psychedelic Art of CG Jung’s Red Book.

• The abstract, single-stroke paintings of Daigoro Yonekura.

• Adam Gopnik on the seriousness of George Steiner.

• Caligula MMXX

• The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker (1987) by Prince | Lotus Collage (1979) by Laraaji | Death Collage (1992) by Snakefinger & The Residents