Forest Xylophone is a giant musical instrument built for a 2011 commercial for a cellphone with a wooden casing. The xylophone is operated by a simple wooden ball and plays Bach’s “Cantata 147”.
The contraption and the music it produces are both extremely likable.
It is reminiscent of The Way Things Go (1987) by Fischli and Weiss which I elected World Art Classic #463[1] last year.
I wonder if it’s still there? Anyone?
More philosophers in film, Monty Python’s The Philosophers’ Football Match (1972).
Brilliant.
Prompted by my previous post on Nietzsche in film, here is an interesting film on the life of Immanuel Kant, more particularly on his last days.
The film, Les Derniers Jours d’Emmanuel Kant is based on The Last Days of Immanuel Kant by English writer Thomas De Quincey.
In the film, Kant approaches the end of his life, which is entirely punctuated by habits acquired over many years. The leaving of his butler Martin Lampe will upset this well planned routine.
In the scene above, Kant reads a letter asking for help. It is a letter by Maria von Herbert, sent in August 1791.
The letter was also mentioned in La vie sexuelle d’Emmanuel Kant, about which I have written here.
Like so many philosophers, Kant was not sexually active. For all we know, Immanuel Kant died a virgin. I find this very interesting.
So did Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Genealogy of Morals he says on married philosophers:
So did Jacques Derrida.
I’ve taken an interest in biopics.
Researching Nietzsche I stumbled upon the film Beyond Good and Evil (1977) by Liliana Cavani, which follows the intense relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche, Lou Salome and Paul Rée.
The film features the scene in which Lou Salomé reins Nietzsche and Rée in front of her cart[1] (above) as well as the horse scene in Turin [2](Nietzsche saw a horse being flogged, embraced it and collapsed and lived ten more years in a vegetative state).
Another interesting film appears to be Days of Nietzsche in Turin[3], a 2001 Brazilian film.
Referring to the horse incident, the film The Turin Horse[4] asks “what happened to the horse?”.
In director Béla Tarr’s introductory words:
Marcus Belgrave (1936 – 2015) was a jazz trumpet player from Detroit, born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He recorded with a variety of famous musicians, bandleaders, and record labels since the 1950s.
His “space jazz” composition “Space Odyssey”, originally released on Gemini II (1974) was included on the anthology Universal Sounds of America (1995) and was reprised on The Detroit Experiment (2003, above).
“Space Odyssey” is on the Caribou 1000 but I have not included it on the Jahsonic 1000.
“Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) is a short story by Herman Melville famous for its dictum “I would prefer not to,” uttered by the reluctant clerk Bartleby.
Many existentialists and absurdists have regarded the story as a prescient exploration and embodiment of their concerns.
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote an essay on the text titled “Bartleby, or, the Formula” (1989).
Above is the Encyclopædia Britannica film adaptation of 1969.
RIP Peter Gay, 91, American psychohistorian.
Peter Gay (June 20, 1923 – May 12, 2015) is the author of more than twenty-five books, including The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, a multi-volume award winner; Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968), a bestseller; and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988).
Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968) – Peter Gay [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (1995) – Peter Gay [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Chris Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture, and installation art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE5u3ThYyl4
Video: Shoot (1971), in which Burden was shot by a rifle in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters, an early example of body art.
His later work is less harsh.
I finished reading The Possibility of an Island a week ago.
Some recollections:
There is a great and almost childish emphasis on the bliss of the insertion of the phallus in the vulva.
The most misogynist joke ever is in the novel:
“How do we call the fat around the vagina? Woman.”
Another dictum:
“The sexual life of man can be broken down into two phases: the first when he prematurely ejaculates, and the second when he can no longer manage to get a hard-on.”
Above: a clip from the film based on the novel, directed by Houellebecq himself. It show the bikini contest at the beginning of the film. The film has the meager IMDb score of 3.5. Nevertheless I’d very much like to see it.
The Possibility of an Island is very much a philosophical novel, as is most of Michel Houellebecq‘s fiction. In this particular novel Houellebecq juxtaposes Plato’s soulmate theory to Saint Paul‘s ‘one flesh’ remark in the Epistle to the Ephesians, remarking that this ‘love craving’, this need for emotional symbiosis is the origin of much unhappiness.
In the words of Houellebecq:
Below is Plato’s soulmate theory in which Zeus split the four legged and four armed primeval humans in two parts, giving birth to creatures who are forever searching for the other half, the soul mate, to reunite their flesh:
And this is Saint Paul’s remark in the Epistle to the Ephesians:
