Phantasmaphile – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 225

Still from The Shaman-Girl’s Prayer (1997), a video piece by Mariko Mori. This page has pictures of Mori’s futuristic/cosmic performances, films & environments.

• Time Out of Mind (1979) was a BBC TV series about science fiction writers, five short films concentrating on Arthur C. Clarke, John Brunner, Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey and an sf convention. I was only interested in the Moorcock film at the time, not least because it featured a short clip of Hawkwind playing Silver Machine, and inserted scenes from the film of The Final Programme (1973) between the interviews. The Moorcock episode is less about his books than about New Worlds magazine and the so-called New Wave of sf in general, so you also see rare footage of M. John Harrison in a Barney Bubbles “Blockhead” T-shirt talking then ascending a limestone cliff, and bits of interviews with Brian Aldiss and Thomas Disch. Ballard isn’t interviewed but is present via a scene from the Harley Cokeliss film Crash! (1971) in which Gabrielle Drake slides in and out of a car while someone reads Elements of an Orgasm from The Atrocity Exhibition.

• “…there happened to be a book on Ritual Magick that talked about John Dee and summonings and Dr. Faust and all that kind of stuff. So then obviously at that age, too, I read HP Lovecraft and then Michael Moorcock and what they call fantasy literature. Through HP Lovecraft I discovered Arthur Machen, and I think that sort of percolated down inside…” Dylan Carlson of Earth talking to Steel for Brains. The Wire has the vinyl-only track from the new Earth album, Primitive And Deadly, and a track from Carlson’s solo album, Gold. Related: Artwork by Samantha Muljat, designer/photographer for the new Earth album.

• Phantasmaphile has details of the next two issues of deluxe occult magazine Abraxas. Issue 6 includes a major feature on Leonora Carrington while Luminous Screen is a special issue devoted to occult cinema.

• More Broadcast: Video of a performance at Teatro Comunale di Carpi, March 2010 (part 2 here), and “constellators and artifacts” at A Year In The Country.

• “Petition demands return of ‘Penis Satan’ statue to Vancouver.” There’s an uncensored photo of the contentious statue here.

• Literary Alchemy and Graphic Design: Adrian Shaughnessy on James Joyce’s writings among graphic designers.

• Frank Pizzoli talks to John Rechy about “the gay sensibility”, melding truth and fiction, and his literary legacy.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 127 by Roberto Crippa, and FACT Mix 459 by Craig Leon.

• Alan Moore has finished the first draft of his million-word novel, Jerusalem.

• Crazy pavings: Alex Bellos on Craig Kaplan’s parquet deformations.

• Noise Not Music: “Live recordings, obscure cassettes and more…”

• Pylon of the Month

• Zoot Kook (1980) by Sandii | Rose Garden (1981) by Akiko Yano | Telstar (1997) by Takako Minekawa

Weekend links 218

The End of a Thousand Years (2014) by Hilary White. Via Phantasmaphile.

• It’s taken a while to shamble into the world but A Mountain Walked, an anthology of Cthulhu Mythos stories edited by leading Lovecraft scholar ST Joshi, will be published by Centipede Press next month. The publisher’s page for the book shows that my contribution will be facing Joshi’s introduction which is something I wasn’t aware of until this week. It also says the 692-page limited edition is sold out, although book dealers often buy collectible volumes such as this to sell on after adding their own markup. Be warned that it was listed on Amazon at $160 so if there are copies available anywhere they won’t be cheap.

• It’s not such a surprise to hear that magic mushrooms were an inspiration for Frank Herbert’s Dune. David Lynch’s film of Dune receives passing mention in this profile by Jeremy Kay of Lynch and the Twin Peaks film/TV series.

• “Whitechapel station is one of Giambattista Piranesi’s imaginary prisons, colonised by frantic electrical engineers and watched over by CCTV.” Will Wiles on the chaos and tangled energy of modern cities.

The word perfume comes from the French root “fume”—smoke—and where there’s smoke, there’s fire! I think most people are turned on sexually by scents and smells. Certain body odours can be very sexually stimulating. We purposefully chose certain ingredients for my Obscenity perfume that are associated with occult or religious rituals, including vetiver, labdanum, and oud, and others that are considered aphrodisiacal, including patchouli and sandalwood. The point of Obscenity is that there is no conflict between the religious and the sexual, and in fact they should be completely complimentary. The fragrance is meant to stimulate you sexually, but it also literally contains water from Lourdes, so it also has religious notes and perhaps even healing properties!

Bruce LaBruce talks to Kathy Grayson about his new fragrance, Obscenity

• The Baffler, “a journal of iconoclastic wit and cultural analysis” relaunches with full access to its archives from 1988 to the present.

• Pineal, the new album by Othon, is dark and “properly, brilliantly queer,” says David Peschek.

• At Core77: How to improve the audio quality of vinyl records with wood glue.

• P. Adams Sitney interviews Kenneth Anger on WNYC’s Arts Forum (1972).

• At BibliOdyssey: Le Bestiaire Fabuleux by Jean Lurçat.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen mix 123 by Evol.

• Meawbin the Creepy Cat

• Perfumed Metal (1981) by Chrome | Fragrance (Ode To Perfume) (1982) by Holger Czukay | The Perfume (2006) by Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, Tom Tykwer

Weekend links 212

Poster for the recent Ballard-themed Only Connect Festival of Sound in Oslo. Design by Non-Format.

• Bulldozer by Laird Barron was my favourite piece in Lovecraft’s Monsters, the recent Tachyon anthology edited by Ellen Datlow that I designed and illustrated. So it’s good to hear that Nic Pizzolato, writer of the justly-acclaimed HBO series True Detective, is among Barron’s readers. True Detective, of course, created a stir for referencing Robert Chambers’ weird fiction in a police procedural. The series is out now on DVD and Blu-ray, and I can’t recommend it too highly.

• Citation-obsessed Wikipedians don’t believe Hauntology is a genuine musical genre, a sentiment which will probably surprise some of its practitioners. Whatever the merits of the argument, I rather like the idea of a musical form that resists strict definition.

• “This year, in order to do things differently, I will make a conscious effort to separate the man from his writing.” Giovanna Calvino, daughter of Italo Calvino, remembers her father.

With ideology masquerading as pragmatism, profit is now the sole yardstick against which all our institutions must be measured, a policy that comes not from experience but from assumptions – false assumptions – about human nature, with greed and self-interest taken to be its only reliable attributes. In pursuit of profit, the state and all that goes with it is sold from under us who are its rightful owners and with a frenzy and dedication that call up memories of an earlier iconoclasm.

Alan Bennett delivers a sermon.

• Zarina Rimbaud-Kadirbaks, aka Dutch Girl In London, reviews the Chris Marker exhibition that’s currently running at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

• Exteriorizing the Inner Realms: Christopher Laursen talks to Phantasmaphile and Abraxas magazine‘s Pam Grossman about occult art, past and present.

• The Beast is back: Erik Davis talks to Gary Lachman about his new book, Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World.

• The body as factory: anatomy of a New Scientist cover image. Rick Poynor on the recurrent use of a familiar visual metaphor.

• Mix of the week without a doubt is FACT Mix 445 by Stephen O’Malley, a three-hour behemoth.

• Jennifer in paradise: Photoshop developer John Knoll on the story of the first Photoshopped image.

• The trailer for Grandfather of Gay Porn, a documentary about Peter de Rome by Ethan Reid.

• Giorgio’s Theme is a new piece of electronic music by Giorgio Moroder.

• Agender, a series of androgynous photo-portraits by Chloe Aftel.

• RIP Little Jimmy Scott

• Evil Spirits

• Chase (1978) by Giorgio Moroder | Call Me (1980) by Blondie | The Apartment (1980) by Giorgio Moroder

Weekend links 182

Mirror of Water (1981) by Reika Iwami.

• The week in comics: Paul Gravett interviews Enki Bilal. | Paul Kirchner’s wordless and inventively surreal strip, The Bus, was republished in France last year but it’s been out-of-print for years everywhere else. Read it online here. | Bill Watterson has made the entire run of Calvin and Hobbes available for free.

• “…seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” Leland de la Durantaye reviews Italo Calvino: Letters 1941–1985.

• Artist Charles Ross says “My interest in science is related to how mysterious it is.” Ross Andersen visited Ross’s Star Axis, “a masterpiece forty years in the making”.

There is a satirical intent at work here, as well as mordant humour, a potent mix that reminds one more of the absurdist fictions of the French jazz musician Boris Vian than of anything in the SF canon. Science fiction is not central in Harrison’s work – not even as a target of his sharp wit – and it is a mistake to regard him as being chiefly interested in demolishing a genre that is only one of several he has mastered.

John Gray on M. John Harrison’s Kefahuchi Tract trilogy. This week Harrison posted a new piece of fiction on his blog.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 091 by Sugai Ken, and Bride of the Abominable Marshman, an early Halloween mix by Hackneymarshman.

• Clive Hicks-Jenkins on Schandmasken (masks of shame), and the clay visage of Paul Wegener’s Golem.

• A version of Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express by Chicago band Disappears.

• Postcards to the Curious: MR James-themed artwork by Alisdair Wood.

• Clive Barker: Why I Once Gave Up Horror Movies Entirely.

• Artist Melinda Gebbie at Phantasmaphile.

• Fragment, a new video from Emptyset.

• 38 photos of airships through the ages.

• This Much I Know: Kenneth Anger.

• Trans Europe Express (2000) by Señor Coconut Y Su Conjunto | Trans Europe Express (2007) by Receptors | Trans Europe Express (2012) by Daniel Mantey

Weekend links 147

Bestia Apocalypsi (2000) by Konstantin Kalynovych.

• A funding page for Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Maria Paz Cabardo’s documentary film about the late comic artist and illustrator.

• Phantasmaphile’s Pam Grossman has declared 2013 to be the Year of the Witch.

• At WFMU: The Space Ghost Coast To Coast Sonny Sharrock Tribute Episode.

I think that mass culture is idiotic. I always have. Even things that are the sort of trendy new whatevers, it’s always about money and sex and nothing else.

Laurie Anderson on music for dogs and Obama.

• It’s that…thing…again. Clive Hicks-Jenkins on his new Mari Lwyd designs.

• Rick Poynor’s Dictionary of Surrealism and the Graphic Image.

• “Why do gay porn stars kill themselves?” asks Conner Habib.

If you’re staycationing in Scarfolk this year you’ll be pleased to hear the town now has 20% less rabies. Above: The 1972–73 prospectus for scarecrow and wicker man biology at Scarfolk Technical College. Related: A Day At The Seaside. I guessed the source even without the cryptic comments. Can you?

• Laurie Spiegel designed a T-shirt for The Wire magazine.

• Julia Holter covers Chiamami Adesso by Paolo Conte.

• Strange Attractor has two new Austin Spare prints.

• Forgotten Women Designers and Illustrators.

• RIP Alan Sharp, a sharp screenwriter.

• “Can You Pass the Acid Test?”

• Sonny and Linda Sharrock live at WKCR 03/21/74 | Many Mansions (1991) by Sonny Sharrock | Ghost Planet National Anthem (1993) by Sonny Sharrock