Pina Bausch died on Tuesday, aged 68, less than a week after being diagnosed with cancer. Dozens of eloquent and heartfelt obituaries honoring the Queen of Tantztheater and her incalculable influence on modern dance are going up all over the web. Mark Brown’s eulogy over at The Scotsman contains some especially incisive remarks:
She was one of a select few modern artists - such as James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Ingmar Bergman and Samuel Beckett - whose work can be truly described, in the most profound sense, as transcendental.
Bausch’s immense influence extended - and will continue to extend - far beyond her fellow dance and theatre makers, into film making and the visual arts. She was described so often as a “revolutionary artist” that the term became almost a platitude. Yet there is no other phrase which quite captures the impact of her deeply intelligent, humane, fearless and iconoclastic aesthetic.
Hell to the yes. It’s very rare to find an artist (in any medium) who strikes such a perfect balance of craft, grit, and grace; laughter, tears and squirminess. That lame fucking “Pornography of Pain” label bestowed derisively upon Bausch by the New Yorker years ago may have stuck, but considering the emotional commitment and complexity of her work, it just doesn’t ring true.
Photo via the AFP.
Obviously, I’m no expert, but based purely off my own intuitive response to her stage and screen work, I’d call Bausch’s vision one of compassionate absurdity. Life and death, male and female, joy and grief, discipline and abandon are all presented with courageous honesty. She didn’t just break down boundaries between the mediums of theater, dance and film; she challenged our perceptions of performance itself. Stanford lecturer Janice Ross nails it:
In a Pina Bausch dance, the invisible divide between the real person and the stage character seems to collapse so that one often has the sense of watching barely mediated real life events. This isn’t art rendered as life so much as living rendered as art.
I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a shame that Bausch died when she was still so actively, splendidly creative. What a tremendous gift that she was ever here at all! In her honor, I’ve added “Revolutionary” to the list of Coilhouse category tags. Long may her dance live on.
Funereal excerpt from Wuppertal’s Die Klage der Kaiserin.
I found this image completely by accident on some car restoration site that was last updated in 2005. I don’t even remember how I got there; I think I was doing a Google image search on vintage hair dryers. The image above appears in the following context:
Any vintage automotive electrical system can be a real challenge, especially if it’s been partially burned up due to modifications that got ugly or a voltage regulator that went into fricasse mode. Just about every tatooed Isetta wiring harness we’ve seen had ignition problems of some form or fashion with the blue and green ignition wires vying for first place in the Meltdown Category.
Dude. I don’t know what any of the above means, but it’s pure poetry.
Issue 01 contributor/photographer Taslimur and Ash
Last Thursday, Coilhouse staff photographer Allan Amato threw a crossdressing party at his studio/loft. For various reasons we ourselves couldn’t make it, and now that we’re seeing the party photos from that night, we’re twice as sad that we weren’t there. To me, these spontaneous, messy party photos are just as powerful as Allan’s most pristine, carefully-composed fashion masterpieces. This series, intended to be only a private gallery for the party attendees until I begged him to let me post it here, is honestly one of my favorite things that Allan’s ever done.
Click after the cut for lots and lots more photos. I identified people where I could, but wasn’t sure of everyone’s name. If you were there, identify yourself in the comments!
There’s not much I can say about Ballard that hasn’t already been said. He was definitely a Coilhouse patron saint. Because so much has been written about Ballard’s influence on everything from cyberpunk (check out this rich article, which buzzes with the excitement of the genre’s earliest memories of itself) to modern music (as this article asserts, Ballard could be credited for having “inspired the entire genre of industrial music”), I’m going to make this obituary very subjective and leave you with my favorite Ballard memories.
The first one was watching Empire of the Sun with my parents. I didn’t know at the time that this movie, starring a 13-year-old Christian Bale, was actually based on Ballard’s autobiography. But I remember that even then, watching that film, I wondered: how would this kid, with his confused Stockholm Syndrome identification with the Japanese who kept him prisoner, his fetishization of aircraft and explosions, turn out later in life? Later, a friend helped me put 2 & 2 together, and I found out exactly how he turned out. He wrote Crash. And it all made perfect sense. Here’s Young Ballard in Empire of the Sun; haunting to re-watch on this day:
My second favorite Ballard moment is actually a famous quote of his. This was his response to a question in Re/Search 8/9 on October 30, 1982:
I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again… the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.
Suburb of the soul. It still makes me shudder.
Post your favorite Ballard memories/impressions/quotes in the comments. We honor his influence, and we will miss him.
A ruff and a space helmet - two great tastes that taste great together! This is the work of Chenman, a 20-something Beijing photographer. Her work’s been published in fashion magazines around the world, and though she already has campaigns for MAC, Chanel, Sony Ericsson and Canon under her belt, I have a feeling that she’s just beginning to pick up speed. Chenman’s web presence consists of a portfolio website and a blog. The latter’s in Chinese, but there are still plenty of images to enjoy.
90% of Chenman’s portfolio consists of pristine commercial images, but a good look at the personal portfolio on her site her site reveals the weirdo lurking underneath. You can tell just by looking at her picture that this chick’s got spunk and a sense of humor. Any high-end fashion photographer who tells a model to stick a tissue in her nose & hold that pose is OK in my book. I love her ongoing preoccupation with Mickey Mouse ears. One to watch! More favorites after the jump. [Thanks, monk3y!]
The Matrix turned 10 last week. It debuted March 31, 1999, though us plebs had to wait til April 2 to see it.
It’s easy to forget, in the wake of two disastrous sequels and equally lackluster (except for the Animatrix) tie-ins, exactly how radical and groundbreaking a pop culture artifact the first movie was.
Try, for a second, to look at the original trailer. Imagine you know absolutely nothing about the movie inside:
Pretty f’in cool, no?
To date myself, I was 16 at the time and came out of the theater utterly energized. I wasn’t the only one. William Gibson dubbed it “an innocent delight I hadn’t felt in a long time.” Darren Aronofsky raved that it heralded a new age in sci-fi. Neil Gaiman and Poppy Z. Brite wrote stories to fill out the movie’s universe.
It became a phenomenon, immensely successful and influential beyond anyone’s expectation. Hell, conservative scolds even blamed the movie’s anarchistic heroes for the Columbine massacre.
The Matrix worked because it managed to blend philosophy, allegory, action and fashion into one glorious, fun package.
Go ahead. Read it. Just don’t send me your psychiatric bills.
-from the Analog review of Antibodies
Welcome back, dear Coilhaüsers, to All Tomorrows. This time we’re going a bit outside of our usual Deviant Era range to take a deep, long (yeah, you’ll never forgive me) look at David J. Skal’s 1988 novel Antibodies. A little later than the usual works, yes, but if anything gets captures the guts of Deviant Era’s transgressive glories, it’s this pitch-black wallow on the wrong side of Transhumanism.
Skal, mostly a horror historian, wrote only a handful of science fiction novels, and this was the last. It’s not hard to see why. Antibodies is a horror tale in future clothing: a detailed examination of how nasty it gets when humans try to permanently scrap flesh for metal, and how easily believing plebs are still led to the slaughter by their puppet-masters.
I’ve recommended a lot of disturbing books in this column and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon, but I will warn you right now: Antibodies is not for everyone. It is a deeply disturbing, brutally unsparing book. The anonymous reviewer from Analog wasn’t fucking around. This is a tale with no mercy and no illusions. You’ve been warned.
It’s been a strange week for TV commercials. First, this asinine “Mow the Lawn” ad for a women’s shaver made me sad, prompting me to spend some quality time with my friends Feministing, SocImages and Genderfork. Then, there was this bizarre Thai toothpaste spot. The debate rages on as to whether this ad is racist or merely a comment on racism, but everyone agrees on one thing: it’s even sadder than The Red Balloon. By Friday I was just about to swear off any ad viewing for at least a week because it was bringing me down, but then the gem of a clip above appeared before my eyes. My favorite store in the world made an ad that Copyranter actually approves of? Oh my god. Oh my god. It’s a lunar eclipse. Everybody watch.
Guys, there’s good news and bad news. Bad news first: our Coilhouse shirts just came back from the screen-printer, and we have a huge problem. The ink had not dried yet when they started folding them. There are smudged, silvery blobs all over all the shirts. O NOES! We don’t feel comfortable mailing these out, and we can’t afford to get another batch printed. With sincere apologies to everybody who ordered a shirt last month, we are unable to fulfill your orders at this time.
The good news is, everyone who ordered a shirt will instead be receiving a limited edition item from our upcoming line of sexytime-themed merch: this embossed tin of exclusive Coilhouse condoms! These actually cost more to manufacture than the shirts did, so you’re getting a great deal. The tin features the original Coilhouse poster child, Stratosphere Messenger, drawn by Zoetica. Our intrepid cyber swashbuckler is carrying a very important message to the boys and girls of Coilhouse: be safe! Use protection! Don’t end up like some people, because this is what will happen to you. Inform, Inspire, but don’t Infect!
I/I/I rubbers are just the first item from CH’s upcoming line of adult-themed swag, which will debut in conjunction with Issue 03. We know our hot readers are gettin’ some AND BY GOLLY, WE WANT TO BE A PART OF IT. We’re thrilled to offer you a line of products as stimulating as they are socially conscious.
Actually, this is all a subliminal plot to make you associate sex with Coilhouse, goading a Pavlovian impulse to buy every time we put out a new issue. Sshhh.
Make sparks fly with our Tesla Coil “Cog” Ring. Tickle your prostrate with the pointy end of one of our Ethics Butthurt anal plugs, (each inscribed with the most asinine comments from certain threads on this blog that just won’t die). We’re developing a line of silicone tentacle dildos, because hey, that’s one fetish we all seem to have in common, as well as restraints made from space age metals, absinthe-flavored latex dental dams, and Shibari bondage rope woven from hair harvested directly from Mer’s scalp.
This range is still being developed, and we’re taking requests. Please post suggestions for products we should carry in the comments. Sorry again about the shirts. We promise, what we’re mailing you instead will be much more fun to wear.
Kermit coat by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, “ready-to-wear” outfit by Lie Sang Bong. Below: Pepi’s-inspired hair action by fashion students from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana.
NBC has pulled together a lovely gallery consisting of 100 crisp, large-sized images from various recent fashion shows, titled: “Would You Wear It?” I love finding outlandish new designs, but quickly tire of sifting through hundreds of dull runway photos on places like Style.com in order to find them. So these kind of galleries - which usually have names like “Looks You Won’t Be Caught Dead In” - are extremely helpful. All the images in this post are from the NBC gallery except for the muppet one - that I found here. I also enjoyed NBC’s crystal-clear Gaultier and McQueen galleries. I’d seen photos of both these collections before, but the photography here is the best. The makeup in the McQueen collection is terrifying!
Uber-hot mask by Lydia Delgado. Imagine wearing that with these shoes! And nothing else.
