Category Archives: miscellaneity

Introducing A Journey Round My Skull

I’ve briefly mentioned the Anglophone litblog A journey round my skull in my previous post[1]. Today is the day to give this wonderful blog[2] a proper introduction.

The occasion is the blog’s recent post[3] on Xenos Books‘ translation of the 1932 Scarecrow & Other Anomalies by Argentine poet Oliverio Girondo.

The blog takes its name[4] from Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy‘s autobiographical novel A Journey Round My Skull (which reminded me of Maistre’s A Journey Around My Room) and is self-described as an “unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature.” Cult fiction and experimental literature receive encyclopedic treatment. This encyclopedism does not preclude lack of actual experience. Like myself, Will (the first name of its author), is in the habit of posting about books he has not yet read but is investigating for future reference:

“I haven’t read all the books I’m listing on this blog (including this one and Karinthy‘s Grave and Gay …). I realized that I gather a lot of information about books before I buy them, but never record this research. Writing about books in my collection is forcing me to research them again. This time I’ll have a record. When I do finally get a chance to read the book, I’ll re-post the entry with my comments.”[5]

The blog features information on cult fiction from the likes of Gilbert Alter-Gilbert[6], Marianne Thalmann[7], Clemens Brentano[8], Roger Caillois[9], Jean Paul[10], Robert Walser[11][12][13], Marcel Schwob[14], Johannes R. Becher[15], P.F. Thomése[16], Julien Gracq[17] and Joao Guimaraes Rosa[18], as well as informative profiles on French science-fiction[19], erotica[20] and cheap avant garde books[21].

The blog leads to ubiquitous connections …


[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

The book above, with an interesting preface by Xenos Books:

“The crazy thing is so spectacularly original that even though alerted by my advance notice you are still going to be more surprised by Scarecrow than by anything else you have ever read in your life, even if you are ninety-five and have spent every free moment fiendishly consuming all of the most fantastic symbolist, futurist, cubist, surrealist, expressionist, anarchist, dadaist, existentialist, creationist, ultraist, vanguardist, magical realist, modernist, postmodernist and every other -ist compositions that you could lay your hands on, plus the farthest-out non-ist compositions as well, including Lucian‘s True Story, Rabelais‘ Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel and Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s Bobok. There is no way that you can prepare for the experience of coming face to face with Girondo’s scarecrow.” –from the Anti-Preface of Karl Kvitko

… leads to a film it inspired in 1994:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PokBvBXrT3U]

The Dark Side of the Heart (1994), directed by Eliseo Subiela.

(Spanish language, but be sure to watch until the end)

See previous Jahsonic introductions.

Introducing Barry Burman (1943-2001)

Beham, Hans SebaldTartan_Ribbon, the first colour photographBarry Burman
Which one is Burman? Click.

Salome by British artist Barry Burman (1943-2001)[1] via Trevor Brown[2] . Trevor notes Burman’s work as a personal inspiration after reading Peter Webb‘s The Erotic Arts and makes a comparison to the work of Graham Ovenden. Burman committed suicide in 2001.

Notes of the previous days:

2008 August 1

Valter of Surreal Documents has written the first post in a series devoted to Stefan Jaworzyn‘s exploitation film fanzine Shock Xpress. These posts will present to you YouTube videos of the films featured in the three books which collect the fanzine’s best articles. He starts with biographical information on Jaworzyn.[4]

The previous thematic outing of Valter was centered around Exotica by Toop[5].

2008 August 2

Web 2.0 is slowly becoming a reality. WordPress, Flickr, YouTube, Last.fm, Del.icio.us, LibraryThing and Facebook made me realize that. I need an API-driven platform that can integrate the aforementioned, with my wiki as backbone. Things such as Spinlets which let you create “mashups“. Something as easy to use as the defunct Hypercard, which was my first hypertext experience, in the pre-internet days. It would allow Amazon.com integration for my Wiki too.

2008 August 3

On the difference between nakedness and nudity .

I am sceptical that Leiber and Stoller wrote “Hound Dog“. They probably heard it in an African American Vernacular English version in a juke joint (I heard a version not so long ago which went “you ain’t looking for a woman, you just looking for a ho“), bowdlerized it and released it in a version palatable to the WASP crowd. Cfr. Elvis‘s “One Night (song)” and Cole Porter‘s “I Get a Kick Out of You“. The latter had its drug reference “I get no kick from cocaine,” changed to “I get perfume from Spain,” for radio airplay, the earlier was first titled “One Night of Sin.”

Most therapists have knowledge of psychology but too many of them are at a loss when it comes to philosophy. Most culturati look to philosophy and sociobiology rather than psychology for an answer to “meaning of life.” Contemporary therapists who wish to cater for a sophisticated crowd should watch I Heart Huckabees, read about existential humanism and existential therapy, and study Emmy van Deurzen and others on the Passion Paradox.

See also, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

Saw Demonlover, my second and hopefully last film of Assayas. The previous one was Irma Vep … just as terrible. The only redeeming element Demonlover was the introduction of the concept of Hellfire Club. Even the SY soundtrack is barely audible. Glad I got to see Chloë Sevigny, aka miss Brown Bunny.

2008 August 4

The Fold is a new web-based film series written by husband-and-wife writing team, Ray Sawhill and Polly Frost. It will be viewable at http://www.thefold.tv as from now. It is an erotically-based science fiction series.

Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dies

Elsewhere #12

Australian blogger Gary Sauer-Thompson on hauntology[1]. Thompson, relatively new to the hauntology arena, concludes that hauntology is the counterpart to the ‘nostalgia mode’ of Fredric Jameson (the supposed cultural homogeneity of late capitalism) as described in Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. So hauntology is the new avant-garde? Read a wikified version of Thompson on hauntology here.

Excuse my focus on hauntology, but basically the word is a neologism, the struggle of which to enter the real world (it was only accepted at Wikipedia in August 2007) I am recording.

French publisher Léo Scheer has issues[2] regarding Wikipedia notability, after his dismay that his neologism rétropublication (reverse publishing) did not get passed Wikipedia notability criteria.[3]. He has high hopes for Knol. (I don’t) Here [4] Scheer can be seen at the Prix Sade 2007, from Alex Jestaire‘s YouTube channel. With music by Jahsonic fave Miss Kitten. I wonder what Prix Sade 2008 has in store.

Robert Hughes had a verbal exchange with Albert Speer in the late 1970s in which Speer said that architecture was certainly one way to unite a people, but that if the Nazis had had television, there would have been no stopping them. NYT, 2005

A friend came back from Denmark, where he visited the Museum Erotica and bought the DVD of Ole Ege Pornography film, with a soundtrack by Dexter Gordon (recorded at the Jazzhus Montmartre)… they call it a musical …, but on that same DVD came A Summer Day, that most infamous film of the sexual revolution in Scandinavia. That last film is set to the tune of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the film itself is silent. Bodil Joensen has the gaze of a ghost-ancestor of Nina Hagen or Lene Lovich.

New Byrne and Eno imminent: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. —John Coulthart

Elsewhere #11

  • Revolt of the Mannequins (original French: “La Révolte des Mannequins”) is a new production by Royal de Luxe, and follows their famous “Sultan’s Elephant” show that was performed in several cities worldwide from 2005 to 2007. In the Revolt of the Mannequins, 13 shop fronts in the city center are transformed into theater stages, where the mannequins perform a 10-day play. Every night, the Royal de Luxe team changes the positions of the mannequins, making the story jump to the next episode. 10 days, and 10 episodes per shop front, lead up to the final Revolt. The show took place in Nantes from October 1st to February 10 2008 and plays in Antwerp on the Meir as De opstand van de Paspoppen for Zva from July 11 to July 20.

Erotická revue

Erotická revue 1

Erotická revue 2

The Erotická revue[1] was an arts journal launched by Czech surrealist Jindřich Štyrský in 1930. It is also the name of the blog of American author Evie Byrne[2].

From Evie Byrne’s blog come:

Pompeii bedroom scene

Pompeii bedroom fresco

Sarah Goodridge, Beauty Revealed (Self-Portrait), 1828

Work by Sarah Goodridge

Emmanuel de Ghendt (1738-1815), Midday Heat, an engraving after Baudouin

Emmanuel de Ghendt (1738-1815), Midday Heat, an engraving after Baudouin

Speaking of Czech surrealism, I just found some Svankmajer clips at YouTube. Some of his best work: Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), which shows Arcimboldo-like heads gradually reducing each other to bland copies (“exhaustive discussion”[3]); a clay man and woman who dissolve into one another sexually, then quarrel and reduce themselves to a frenzied, boiling pulp (“passionate discourse”[4]); and two elderly clay heads who extrude various objects on their tongues (toothbrush and toothpaste; shoe and shoelaces, etc.) and use them in every possible combination, sane or otherwise (“factual conversation”[5]). Follow the links to see more of Jahsonic fave Svankmajer.

Last minute, it’s Trevor Brown day[6] over at Dennis Cooper‘s blog.

Anecdotal nightlife histories and erotic dictionaries

Histoire anecdotique des Cafés & Cabarets de Paris (1862) Alfred Delvau

Histoire anecdotique des Cafés & Cabarets de Paris is a book on Parisian cafés by Alfred Delvau with illustrations by Gustave Courbet, Félicien Rops and Léopold Flameng.

Delvau also wrote Dictionnaire érotique moderne (1864):

This edition printed by Gay et Doucé in 1876 for the members of the “Biblio-Aphrodiphile Société” with an engraved frontispiece by Chauvet after Félicien Rops. With a “Glossaire érotique” by Louis de Landers (= August Scheler). The volume was also published by Editions 10/18.

Jello Biafra @50

Happy birthday Jello Biafra, former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys. In the late 1980s, the band was embroiled in an obscenity trial in the US over the 1985 Frankenchrist album, which included a “biomannerist” poster with art that depicted penises, “Penis Landscape“[1] by H. R. Giger, a work in the same vein as jahsonic fave Yoshifumi Hayashi.

Interviewed by Jools Holland:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVrTW7AUkoM]

There is a very good Afro-Caribbean “mix tape”

There is a very good Afro-Caribbean “mix tape” [1] (by DJ Geko Jones [MySpace] and a track listing here) over at Wayne and Wax. Other music blogs I am currently subscribed to include the Simon Reynolds, Swen’s blog[2], WFMU, Mixtuur, The Wire‘s The Mire[3] and Phinn. Woebot is still missed.

Needless to say, I cannot agree with Sebastian Horsley (Dandy in the Underworld ) when he angrily says:

I’ve had enough of this shit[4]. The internet is for those who lack the flair for conversation. A blog is what you write for after being rejected by all the reputable publishers. It is Loser Central. The last refuge of the refuse.

Where else but on blogs can I read, watch and listen at the same time. The only off-line media I still follow are Focus Knack (a Belgian general interest arts and culture mag), an occasional newspaper and occasional snippets of televised and radio-broadcast news.

Can you live without off-line media?

P.S. From that mixtape:

Eres para mi Julieta Venegas

Eres para mi Julieta Venegas

World music classic #43 and 44

 

“Make it Last Forever”

Donna McGhee is an American singer who released one album on Red Greg Records, produced and arranged by Greg Carmichael and Patrick Adams. The track from that album, “Make It Last Forever,” was covered by Loleatta Holloway.

Greg Carmichael (“Barely Breaking Even”) and Patrick Adams (“In the Bush” and “Keep on Jumpin’) produced at least 50 tracks which transcend disco as genre. They are in many ways the auteurs of disco, more so than Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons or Tom Moulton, who were primarily involved in post-production. The only one to rival Adams and Carmichael was Arthur Russell, but his story is altogether different.

One more by Patrick Adams (“My Baby’s Got E.S.P.” notice the similarity of Patrick Adams’s trademark: the string arrangements and slow beats).

“My Baby’s Got E.S.P.”

Elsewhere #9

An Almeh by Gerome

An Almeh by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Notice the enticing quality of the semi-transparent voile. Voile is French for veil.

  1. New or newly discovered blogs dedicated to individual artists: Jean-Léon Gérôme [2] and Odilon Redon [3]
  2. The anglophone film blog Flickhead[1] quits.
  3. Trevor Brown reports[4] on a friendly letter received by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye after Trevor had caught him plagiarizing his work in Delvoye’s tattooed pigs project[5].
  4. To start your Monday musically, here is the video[6] of “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” just a quick reminder that I like (some) of my black music funky (in its original meaning, smelly and dirty) as well as dangerous-sounding. “Crank Dat” has the most original use of the steel pan since Mad Professor‘s[7] use of it in the early 1990s (I can’t remember the name of that album). Since its release in 2007 “Crank Dat,” which epitomizes the gangster sound, sold over three million copies.

Click legend: all text links are internal, numbers are external.