Category Archives: subversion

New Babylon (1929) and the Paris Commune

New Babylon (1929)

Image sourced here

Novyy Vavilon (Eng:New Babylon) (1929), is a film directed Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. A black and white silent film (120 minutes in its original version and 93 minutes in its 2004 restored version). The propaganda film in the expressionist tradition of the early 20th century deals with the Paris Commune of 1870 and is largely set in a fantastic department store. We follow the encounter and tragic destiny of two lovers separated by the barricades of the Paris Commune. Some interesting IMDb user comments here[2]. Footage from the film was used in Guy Debord‘s The Society of the Spectacle.

New Babylon is also a concept by Dutch philosopher-artist Constant Nieuwenhuys.

Icons of counterculture

The Death of Socrates (1787) by Jacques-Louis David

I’ve started reading The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton and the book starts out with Socrates and his trial:

The trial and execution of Socrates was the climax of his career and the central event of the dialogues of Plato. According to Plato, both were unnecessary. Socrates admits in court that he could have avoided the trial by abandoning philosophy and going home to mind his own business. After his conviction, he could have avoided the death penalty by escaping with the help of his friends.

But he didn’t avoid the trial or flee. This makes him an icon of countercultural history.

I, Galileo, kneeling before you

Galileo’s recantation

On June 22, 1633 – a memorable date in the history of counterculture – Galileo was forced to recant his scientific theory that the earth moves around the sun. The Inquisition had threatened the astronomer and mathematician with torture on the rack if he did not retract his “heretical” ideas. Torn between wanting to fight for the truth and not wanting to offend the Church, Galileo recants:

I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before you, Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals, Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity throughout the entire Christian commonwealth, having before my eyes and touching with my hands, the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by God’s help will in the future believe, all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But whereas — after an injunction had been judicially intimated to me by this Holy Office, to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the world, and moves, and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine.

After the trial, Galileo is sent to his villa outside Florence, where he will be confined for the remaining 9 years of his life, supposedly frequently muttering “e pur si muove!“

What a humiliation!

Eurotrash philosophy

In a controversial article titled An Oasis in the Desert of Eurotrash Philosophy published in the The Chronicle of Higher Education of January 23, American literary critic Carlin Romano praises Pierre Hadot and lambasts European philosophers for their views on 9/11:

“In the infancy of the 21st century, Eurotrash philosophers give European philosophy a bad name. Like Eurotrashers at trendy clubs, the philosophical species lives for the moment, spouts from the top of its careerist head, and makes little sense.
…We think of Jean Baudrillard, the Eurotrash patron saint, a man whose mastery of argument falls somewhere between that of Kim Jong Il and the Raelians, and his ugly, exploitative little 9/11 “book,” The Spirit of Terrorism (Verso Books, 2002).
…We think of the laughable French “urbanologist” Paul Virilio, whose works read as if a nasty wind blew his notes in the air, then haphazardly bound them into a book. (Ground Zero, Verso Books, 2002).
…Of course, you don’t have to be French to be a Eurotrash philosopher. Consider Slovene Slavoj Zizek, the Roberto Benigni of corrupt intellectual discourse, a tiresome court jester always happy to walk across the chairs of any American university willing to meet his salary demands. To this often English-challenged jet-setter, in his Welcome to the Desert of the Real (Verso Books, 2002), the collapse of the WTC towers was “the climactic conclusion of 20th-century art’s ‘passion for the Real,'” and “the uncanny satisfaction we got from it was jouissance at its purest.” —Carlin Romano, An Oasis in the Desert of Eurotrash Philosophy, The Chronicle, January 2003

Aaahhhhhhhhhh!

 

The Museum Tinguely presents the most extensive exhibition hitherto on the Situationist International that was founded on July 28, 1957. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its foundation, 400 exhibits will illustrate this last important avant-garde movement that counted 72 artists among its members, with sections in Germany, Holland, America, North Africa and elsewhere, rescuing it from oblivion.

More visuals of the book here.

The title of the exhitibion, In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni is a 1978 French language film by Guy Debord. This film, which was meant to be Debord’s last one, is largely autobiographical but begins with a thorough and pitiless critique of the spectator.

The title of the movie is a palindrome known as “the Devil’s verse.” It is Latin for “We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire”, and was said to describe the behavior of moths. It is likely from medieval rather than ancient times.

 

 

Introducing Surreal Documents

Valter’s Surreal Documents is an excellent blog on subversive surrealism as professed by Georges Bataille and the Acéphale group. Recent subjects have included Alice Coltrane, Coffin Joe, books acquired and Nico. The blog can now be accessed from my blogroll.

I quote from the Acéphale post:

… the Jean Rollin who participated in this issue of “La Revue Acéphale” is of course not Jean Rollin, who was born in 1938 and couldn’t possibly have contributed any articles to this “La Revue Acéphale” (I just corrected the error in Wikipedia).

In fact, it was the filmmaker’s father who contributed to the publication. The father was also called Jean Rollin. Jean Rollin’s mother, Denise Rollin-Le Gentil, had an (extramarital) relationship with Georges Bataille from october 1939 to the end of 1943.

Tohill and Tombs’ “Immoral Tales. Sex & Horror Cinema In Europe 1956-1984” suggest that years later Jean Rollin (the filmmaker, that is), would remember the bedtime stories that Bataille told him, about ‘Monsieur le Curé’, a wolf dressed in the robes of a priest.

How I would like to have heard those stories!

More on Denise Rollin-Le Gentil:

On 2 October 1939, [Georges Bataille] meets Denise Rollin-Le Gentil, who is 32 and married with a young son, Jean. Surya writes, ‘She was beautiful, a beauty that would be described as melancholy if not taciturn. She spoke little or, for long periods not at all’. She joins him at his flat in October; thereafter, Bataille will spend time in her flat at 3 rue de Lille.

[In 1945, Maurice] Blanchot commences an apparently largely epistolatory affair with Denise Rollin, which will continue until her death in 1978.–Spurious and more at Google books.

From Surreal Documents’ first post which features a photograph by Boiffard and Valter’s manifesto:

This blog has been inspired by my visit to the exhibition “Undercover Surrealism” at the Hayward Gallery in London. The blog is intended to contain doctrines, fine arts, ethnography, variety. Expect dusty things, ethnographies of one-man-Cthulhu Cults, confused concepts, black and blackened musics, untruths.

Checking Valter’s blogroll (show me your blogroll and I will tell you who you are) you will find Jim Woodring, Monster Brains, the Wooster Collective, Esotika Erotica Psychotica, Giallo Fever, Groovy Age Of Horror, Mutant Sounds, Video Watchblog and the recent newcomer Ombres Blanches.

To conclude, some Coffin Joe:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXuVaA63Hbk]

Headpress Guide to the Counter Culture

Headpress Guide to the Counter Culture : A Sourcebook for Modern Readers (2004) – Temple Drake, David Kerekes [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Subject matter will appeal to a broad cross section of interests, and includes cult film, outsider music, graphic art, photography, adult comics, fiction, eroticism, crime and the occult.

This is a collection of zine and book reviews that previously appeared in the Headpress zine during the nineties. Most of the material was familiar to me. Some pleasant surprises were Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Google gallery, and this, his work is similar to fellow American Charles Burns), mentions of Colin Wilson, a portrait of the work of Roy Stuart, (Google gallery who put narrativity back into erotic photography by making use of vignettes).

Most of the books/mags reviewed are from the nineties and early 2000s.

I am very much intrigued by this:

Bechamp or Pasteur: A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology (1997) – Douglas E. Hume
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

This book claims that virtually every serious and minor ailment known to humanity has been linked to vaccine damage, and there’s an “unaccountable” connection between the AIDS epidemic in Central Africa and the massive vaccination campaigns that occured there. — Mikita Brottman via Headpress Guide to the Counter Culture (2004). See also anti-vaccination.

And thankful for turning me on to this:

The Art of the Nasty (1999) – Nigel Wingrove, Marc Morris
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] […]

Conclusion: I liked the non-fiction reviews the best. In that field, Adam Parfrey (Apocalypse Culture) is somewhat a central figure.

If you like Headpress you may also enjoy Dalkey Archive Press – Atlas Press – Jörg Schröder – John Calder – Sylvia Beach – Creation Books – Edmund Curll – Lawrence Ferlinghetti – Maurice Girodias – Glittering Images – Grove Press – Eric Losfeld – Headpress – New Directions – Obelisk Press – Olympia Press – Jean-Jacques Pauvert – RE/Search publications (V.Vale and A. Juno) – Barney Rosset – Taschen and Semiotext(e).

Headpress elsewhere: at giallo fever.

 

Trevor Brown’s fantasy land

Following on my previous post on Venetian Snares where I mentioned Trevor Brown, some more about the latter:

Artwork by Trevor Brown

My Alphabet (1999) – Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Li’l Miss Sticky Kiss (2004) – Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Though presently living in Japan, Trevor Brown is an British artist whose work explores paraphilias, such as pedophilia, BDSM, and other fetish themes, with unusual wit.

Important career motivating friendships include French artist Romain Slocombe (the pioneer of “medical art”) and William Bennett (leader of the notorious electronic-noise band Whitehouse.

Trevor Brown’s art has been featured in Adam Parfrey’s Apocalypse Culture II, and in Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! zine, as well as a variety of other publications. His work has been featured as cover art for a number of bands, including Deicide, Whitehouse, GG Allin, Kayo Dot, and Venetian Snares.

He is often compared with Mark Ryden in that he is known for child-like characters in various states of distress. However themes in his work extend to car crashes, (reminiscent of J.G. Ballard’s Crash), abattoirs, and Japanese pornography. His art is close in spirit to the Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst or Jake and Dinos Chapman.  —[1]

Trevor Brown illustraded CDs by Merzbow, Venetian Snares and Whitehouse (here, here, here and here).

Related: Google gallery 1 – Google gallery 2 – fetish art – grotesque art – hyperrealism – perversion in art – erotic art – transgressive art – British art

Articles: Trevor Brown interviews Masami Akita – Trevor Brown on Japanese bondage, Kinbiken and Chimou Nureki

Erotomaniac and countercultural historian Bouyxou given carte blanche

Unidentified photograph of Bouyxou
Sourced here.

For those of you living in Paris, or visiting Paris, the cinémathèque has given Jean-Pierre Bouyxou carte blanche to run a retrospective of “his kind of cinema“. Bouyxou (born 1946 in Bordeaux) is an erotomaniac and a countercultural historian. Most recently, Mike of Esotika … reviewed his film Satan bouche un coin. I also added some Bouyxou products to my Flickr account here and here as well as a cover of his magazine Sex Star System here. Some other magazines Bouyxou contributed to were Vampirella, Zoom, Métal hurlant, L’Echo des savanes, Penthouse, Lui, Hara-Kiri and Paris Match. He was editor-in-chief of Fascination (thirty issues from 1978 to 1986).

Bouyxou belongs to that European tradition of eroticism which is represented in Italy for example by the people of the Glittering Images publishing house to which Bouyxou is a contributor. For a review of one of the products of this publisher, see this and this blog entry at K. H. Brown’s Giallo Fever.

Thanks to Harry Tuttle of Unspoken Cinema for the notice.

Here is the program:

  100% SEXUEL, 100% EXPERIMENTAL… – 2007 – 110’  
  Vendredi 16 Mars 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, José Bénazéraf, Yves-Marie Mahé		  
  ANDY MILLIGAN, QUELQUE PART… – ANDY MILLIGAN – 2007 – 85’  
  Vendredi 30 Mars 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou
  AUTOUR DE W.S. BURROUGHS – 2007  
  Vendredi 25 Mai 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou
  AVANT-GARDE JAPONAISE – 2007 – 147’  
  Vendredi 27 Avril 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Sébastien Bondetti
  ECCE BOUYXOU – 2007 – 116’  
  Vendredi 25 Mai 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou
  MARXISME, TENDANCE RAVACHOL – 2007 – 140’  
  Vendredi 13 Avril 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Tobias Engel
  LE PARAPLUIE ET LA MACHINE A COUDRE – 2007 – 140’  
  Vendredi 13 Avril 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  L’UNDERGROUND EN FRANCE… – 2007 – 95’  
  Vendredi 16 Mars 2007 – 19h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Philipe Bordier, Raphaël Bassan, Gérard Courant, Gérald Lafosse, Marie-France O’Leary		  
  VERTIGES ONIRIQUES – 2007 – 101’  
  Vendredi 30 Mars 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Stéphane du Mesnildot
  VOYAGES AU BOUT DE LA FOLIE – 2007 – 97’  
  Vendredi 11 Mai 2007 – 21h30 – SALLE GEORGES FRANJU
En présence de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou

The subversion of American civilization

Perversion for Profit (1965)

“Through this material, today’s youth can be stimulated to sexual activity for which he has no legitimate outlet. He is even enticed to enter the world of homosexuals, lesbians, sadists, masochists and other sex deviants.”

Perversion for Profit is a 1965 American propaganda film. A vehement diatribe against pornography, the film attempts to link explicit portrayals of human sexuality to a Communist conspiracy and the subversion of American civilization.

Video:

Perversion for Profit Part I and II at Google video. And check the YouTube clip which also has a segment on drugs. Parts of the propaganda film were also featured in a ‘Sims’ bootleg version of Justin Timberlake’s 2006 clip ‘Sexy Back’. Here is a cutup/détournement version of that same propaganda film.