John Cage is the new Alphonse Allais

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yybn6iKmYdQ

While I was listening to Late Night Lab by Bart Vanhoudt, Bart posted his show on Facebook, I pressed the play button and heard “these sounds are in no sense accidental” like I always do, since it is the intro of the programme.

This phrase comes from the interviewer of the popular TV show I’ve Got a Secret who announces “Water Walk” (January, 1960), the title of a performance by John Cage.

This performance is, in a way, more important than  “4′33″.

“4’33″” was about high art.

“Water Walk” is nobrow.

Sorrentino is the new Fellini

Just saw Youth. Paolo Sorrentino is the new Fellini, albeit a much more likable one. I’ve always found the films of Fellini a bit pretentious and theatrical (see for example’s Fellini’s contribution to Boccaccio ’70, “The Temptations of Doctor Antonio”).

Not so with Sorrentino. This is what I want from cinema. Reveries and emotions. A mix of high and low culture. Laughter and tears. Lots of philosophy. And buckets of beauty.

P.S.: I recently saw another film on old age, by Haneke, Amour. How I hated that film, despite that Haneke has made some of the best films of the 2000s.

Chantal Akerman (1950 – 2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx2RNzl-p3Q

Chantal Akerman‘s debut film “Saute ma ville” (1968, above) turned out to be quite prophetic. Akerman committed suicide last week. Suicide continues to fascinate me. Sometimes, I get a strange feeling of comfort when yet another person commits suicide. It reminds me that I am not doing that badly. I may, at times, be unhappy, but not that unhappy.

There’s no doubt that some of the images are quite disturbing …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irlpvtwu1Rs&

The Secret World of Lewis Carroll

The “disturbing images” in question are photos taken by Lewis Carroll. Click [1] to see them in book format.

The Secret World of Lewis Carroll uncovered a photo of Lorina Liddell[2] in the archives of the Musée Cantini.

As you can see above, the photo in the BBC programme only uses the top half of Lorina.

Click here[3] for the whole picture.

The photo sheds new light on the “was Lewis Carroll a pedophile” question.

Forest Xylophone (2011)

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?

Kant in film, and, the sexual lives of philosophers

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:

“the philosopher shudders mortally at marriage, together with all that could persuade him to it—marriage as a fatal hindrance on the way to the optimum. Up to the present what great philosophers have been married? Heracleitus, Plato,Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer—they were not married, and, further, one cannot imagine them as married. A married philosopher belongs to comedy, that is my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates—the malicious Socrates married himself [to Xanthippe], it seems, ironice, just to prove this very rule.”

So did Jacques Derrida.

Asked what would he like to see in a documentary on a major philosopher, such as Hegel or Heidegger, Derrida replies he would want them to speak of their sexuality and ‘the part that love plays in their life’. He criticizes the dissimulation of such philosophers concerning their sex lives – ‘why have they erased their private life from their work?’

Nietzsche in film

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:

“In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, ‘Mutter, ich bin dumm!’ [‘Mother, I am stupid!’ in German] and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.”

See Friedrich_Nietzsche#Depictions