Category Archives: underground

Connect the dots

An article by Hannah Neumann for The Fed on erotic connect the dots. She mentions Benjamin Stout’s lithographs for The Lustful Turk and Les Flagelants Féminins. I was unable to find more info on Stout.

“Connect-the-dots (contemporarily known as ‘cunny constellations’ or ‘points d’amour’) were conceived as a method of bypassing obscenity laws in eighteenth-century Britain. Although they were commercially successful, the belief that their distributors were immune to arrest and seizure by the police was quickly proven false. As William Lazenby, a contemporary publisher of illegal erotica recalled, “We hadn’t reckoned on the coppers’ numeric acumen. T’was not long ‘fore we’d nary a tuppence earn with the rise in confiscations.” By the mid-1880s, erotic connect-the-dots had been abandoned in favor of less cryptic illustrations.” —Hannah Neumann

Rare films

If you like the writing of Mike over at Esotika, please help him locate the following films. There’s one film, Hyper Erotic Art: Hayashi, on the list so rare that it’s not even listed at IMDb, I’ve been lucky enough to see it and Hayashi has been one of my top 10 erotomaniacs ever since.

Another item on Mike’s list are the films of Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes, reviewed at this at first site excellent blog hands-tied. More from that blog here. Related to hands-tied are nitrato-lirico and visionary-film.

Death of the underground

After the death of the author and the death of the avant-garde comes, according to Simon Reynolds, the death of the underground:

“The web has extinguished the idea of a true underground. It’s too easy for anybody to find out anything now, especially as scene custodians tend to be curatorial, archivist types. And with all the mp3 and whole album blogs, it’s totally easy to hear anything you want to hear, in this risk-less, desultory way that has no cost, either financially or emotionally.” Simon Reynolds via woebot via factmagazine

Sex beats

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXiAMfjybx4&]

“Yesterday in 1981, Gun Club released their debut single, “Sex Beat“. It was backed by “Ghosts On The Highway“. Both songs appeared on their debut album, Fire of Love. The Los Angeles band went through numerous personnel changes. At various points in their career, they had Patricia Morrision (ex-The Bags, later Sisters Of Mercy and The Damned), Rob Graves (ex-The Bags, future 45 Grave), Terry Graham (ex-The Bags) and Kid Congo Powers (future The Cramps).” On this date in 80s music history.

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).

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

Make it my thing

Screen capture of French television series Dim Dam, Dom

Rose Hobart (1936) – Joseph Cornell

In recent comment exchanges between Andrej ‘Ombres Blanches’ Maltar and myself, we stumbled upon some Youtube footage I do not want to withhold from you, dear reader.
Joseph Cornell’s ‘film remix’ Rose Hobart [Youtube]
Ado Kyrou directed some episodes of Dim Dam Dom though not this one [Youtube] starring Gainsbourg. But one senses definitely his influence. Other director’s of this series were Eric Kahane (Girodias’s brother) and Jean Loup Sieff. –Andrej Maltar
“When watching a film I inevitably perform an act of will on it, hence I transform it, and from its given elements make it my thing, draw snippets of knowledge from it and see better into myself… I could not begin to explain the reasons why since, contrary to Duchamp’s objects, I am not at all sure that these films, generally extremely bad ones, can have an objective value; or then I would have to work on them, make some changes in the montage, cut, accentuate, or tone down the soundtrack, finally interpret them before my subjective vision could be objectified.”–Ado Kyrou
The Dim Dam, Dom video extracts were posted by Youtubian SpikedCandy who also treats us this superb piece of schmaltz.
“This is the dialectic — there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” –Douglas Sirk’s nobrow quote via Andrej Maltar

Hippies, modsters and other long haired youngsters

Sourced here is a cover of Dutch underground magazine Hitweek, depicting Frank Zappa. Of which Dr. Vinyl says:

Legendary Dutch underground music magazine. The first year was only available in Amsterdam ( 1965-1966) but the later issues also in other big Dutch cities. The was THE magazine for hippies, modsters and other long haired youngsters. Not like commercial magazines such as Muziek Expres or Muziek Parade HITWEEK was the magazine were you could find articles and pictures of obscure US, UK and Dutch bands such as THE OUTSIDERS, THE PINK FLOYD, Q65, THE CREATION, LAZY BONES, THE MOTHERS, VELVET UNDERGROUND + many many more. HITWEEK was also famous because of the artwork , especially the years 1967-1969 had GREAT psychedelic drawings and pictures. HITWEEK can be compared to the UK underground magazine IT!

The magazine’s editor was Willem De Ridder, who is connected to Jim Haynes, the Dutch Provos, the Fluxus art movement, Suck magazine and the whole late of sixties underground/counterculture Europe.

Do not confuse De Ridder with Bernard Willem Holtrop of Hara Kiri magazine.