Today, in remembrance of the late Malcolm McClaren, who died this week at the age of 64, the FAM presents 2000’s, The Filth and the Fury. Directed by Julien Temple it is considered a response to Temple’s earlier film, The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, filmed in 1978 and released in 1980. Swindle tells a fictionalized version of the rise and fall of the seminal punk band the Sex Pistols from the point of view of McClaren, who presents himself as an all powerful puppet master, using the band for his own ends. Filming began before the bands disintegration making the final product a disjointed — albeit entertaining — mess, with lead singer John Lydon and original bassist Glen Matlock only appearing in archive footage.
I’ll apologize then to those who have not seen it, as I could not find the film in its entirety to embed here. Instead, we have the film above which, as previously mentioned, represents a rebuttal to that 1980 release, specifically the band’s response. It’s a fascinating story but it also highlights the friction between the two parties, especially between McClaren and Lydon the two men at war over who harbored the creative spark that was responsible for this piece of music history.
The truth, no doubt, lies somewhere in the middle, and regardless of McClaren’s other achievements in fashion, film, and music, the Sex Pistols define his career in the minds of many. Whether he was a genius or a scoundrel depends on who you’re willing to believe.
We’ve been going through the Coilhouse Readership Survey responses. They’ve made us laugh, think, and feel incredibly grateful. We’ll be tabulating the results over the weekend, and posting our findings (and maybe even a few choice quotes) early next week.
Some of you made requests in the comments, ranging from “can we have a mailing list to notify us when a new issue has been released?” to “more porn.” Just so you know, we’re all reading every single comment. This particular post is dedicated to the lone responder who requested more fashion. It’s true, with a handful of blogs now doing an incredible job of covering dark/bizarre/futuristic fashion and indie designers (Twisted Lamb, Haute Macabre, Dirty Flaws being my Top 3 faves), we’ve eased up on the fashion coverage here quite a bit. Your comment made me realize that I miss uncovering new designers, so I present you with Japanese label Somarta, the brainchild of designer Tamae Hirokawa. Hirokawa is known for her use of machine-made lace, a common thread through many Somarta collections. “Making full use of advanced Japanese textile technology,” wrote the Japan Times of a recent collection, “Somarta presented designs of which some were made with the aid of specially created knitwear computer programs and devices. Squinting past the blinding crystals, it was possible to pick out exquisite ’20s-inspired black- and nude-lace dresses.”
Some of Somarta’s designs, such as the ones above, can be found in Somarta’s online shop or another store called nuan+. If you have Japanese friends who could help you out with site navigation/shipping, Somarta’s tights can be yours for about $179, and the top for about $200. Pricey, but beautiful. The look for less would definitely be these cute $12.50 “Aristocrat Lolita” tights on Ebay. More favorite images from Somarta, after the jump!
Some more Serious Journalism from my time in Japan (see also: cat cafes). I previously mentioned Yaso Magazine in a post about Neon O’Clockworks – as promised in that post, here are some snapshots of Yaso for you to see! It’s a beautiful, hefty magazine with themed issues, published and distributed almost exclusively in Japan. I took some photos of three issues with the following themes: Vampire: Painful Eternity / Heartrendingness, Victorian: Influences & Metamorphoses of Victorian Culture in Today’s Japanese Sub-Cultures, and Sense of Beauty: Japanese Aesthetic. Other themed issues I didn’t get my hands on: Svankmajer (yes, an entire Svankmajer-themed issue), Gothic, Monster & Freaks [sic]. I also had a fourth issue called Doll, but gave it away to Ross because he is a doll fancier before I got a chance to snap some photos.
It’s a stunning magazine. Paging through it feels like like falling into a paper-fetish world that’s at once completely alien and intimately familiar.
The small pictures don’t do it justice, so click on through to the Coilhouse Flickr Set to see the full, annotated collection of images. This magazine cost around $15 in Japan, but I’m only finding it priced at $35 for those of us living in the US or in Europe. I’ve even seen copies appear and disappear for about $45 on Ebay. The magazine is almost entirely in Japanese, as is their site.
We are so inspired to see others publishing the kinds of things that we love, all over the word. We don’t know the people who do Yaso, but we are so, so grateful for them.
In the age of ultra-polished music videos featuring flawless human specimens in various stages of aggressive air-humping, we oft forget the common man. What about that guy behind 7-11, who claims to be a sailor, smells of fish, and gives you the stinkeye? What of uncle Merv, whose gravy-encrusted beard and consistent belligerence have become an almost-comforting staple at family gatherings? I for one, am tired of steely abs and tits on my screen [there are so many, all the time]. In the VonSwank-directed video below, justice is served as Josh Heironymous* represents the intrepid proletarian to the tranquil sound of “Into the Holes” by Lily Fawn. Sit back, relax, get your zen on and enjoy three minutes of a Real Man giving his all to the camera, the way you’ve always dreamed of.
*I note, not without triumph, that Joshua and I shared a Chicago apartment during my one year of college. I got to watch him do this all the time.
All but her belly buried in the floor;
And the lewd trounce of a final muted beat!
We flee her spasm through a fleshless door…
Then you, the burlesque of our lust — and faith,
Lug us back lifeward — bone by infant bone.
— Hart Crane, “National Winter Garden,” (1930)
“Jo Boobs” Weldon is Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque, whose home at The Slipper Room is just a few blocks from where Lydia Thompson’s “London Blondes” brought burlesque to America and a stone’s throw from where Minsky’s original National Winter Garden made burlesque part of the American vernacular. Minsky’s notoriously established Gypsy Rose Lee as an icon synonymous with striptease, and launched the careers of Abbott and Costello, Phil Silvers and Robert Alda before being closed in the name of public morality.
Houston Street Burlesque by Mabel Dwight (1928)
Is burlesque – a word which refers to turning things upside down – still able to subvert morals and mores? In a popular culture where the use of sexuality to sell consumer goods is banal, pornography of nearly every stripe is freely and instantly available, and sympathetic gay and lesbian characters are commonplace, is the self-conscious performance of gender merely campy fun or does it still have a liberating capacity? Can sex work, titillation, gender play and masturbation undermine heterosexual monogamy? Whose moralities and identities might they challenge?
Catherine MacKinnon argues that sexualized depictions of women in patriarchal societies reinforce misogyny to the point of constituting a form of violence. Do sexualized performances by women lead to their individual and collective debasement? Is stripping a phenomenon where women who appeal most to men are degraded whereas burlesque liberates women who stand outside the norms of beauty as prescribed by male desire? Considering stripping and prostitution, I ask whether everyone sells their bodies at every job? Further, when men pay a high premium to be with a woman or just to look at one, whose body is exploited? More specifically, does it make sense to import 20th century standards of judgment to a 21st century United States whose educational system produces more female post-graduates than male and whose career women earn 94.2% of the income of their male counterparts? Despite shifts in income and status, why do so few straight males study burlesque or work as strippers?
Jo Boobs and I met at the basement headquarters of her school on the coldest evening in recent years to explore questions of gender, activism, and whether she and her ilk are gender traitors or gender busters. She even stripped down to fighting gear for an intimate performance caught by our unblinking digital eyeball. (See above!) In June 2010, Jo will publish The Pocket Book of Burlesque (with a forward by Margaret Cho), a volume whose slender design can slip under the inspector’s prying gaze. The New York School of Burlesque is in sympathetic affiliation with Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque in Seattle and Michelle L’Amour’s Burlesque Finishing School in Chicago as well as programs in Washington, D.C and elsewhere. When will someone open a campus in Tehran?
COILHOUSE: How does burlesque differ from stripping? JO BOOBS: To understand the difference, look at it from the audience’s point of view. If someone goes to a strip joint, they usually go in whenever they want, they pick the performer they want, they negotiate how they interact with them, they interact one-on-one, and they leave. When they go to a burlesque show, the show starts at a [predetermined] time, they pay a cover (not the performers), they watch the show, there isn’t usually any one-on-one interaction, and they leave when the performance is over.
In the past, I’ve talked about how, with a few bright exceptions, the term “fetish photography” has pretty much become an embarrassment in the past decade, about the pornographic banality that eventually killed risk-taking publications like Skin Two. In an alternate universe, Skin Two No. 64 just came out, and this was the cover. Balanced, graphic, authoritative – not too dissimilar from Irving Penn and vintage Vogue. Image by Fräulein Ehrhardt, modeling by Koneko.
These Nomi-inspired pieces were created by Hungarian designer Eva Nyiri. Her first collection, a slick robotic-samuri affair titled “Black on Black,” sparked awe on blogs such as Haute Macabre earlier this year. Nyiri’s work represents a new breed of sophisticated, grownup-goth Eastern European fashion designers, along with fellow Hungarian Dora Mojzes (Nyiri’s best friend of 10 years), Serbian-based Marko Mitanovski, and Slovenian prodigy Tea Bauer.
This week, German photographer Madame Peripetie – who you may remember from the impossible-shoe Insectarium series – published her new collaboration with Nyiri, titled “Warriors in the Dark.” The full shoot consists of twelve images, and can be found in the latest issue of Nico Magazine. More images from the shoot can be seen at the Larapixie blog. Expect more great things from both Peripetie and Nyiri in 2010!
The Coilhouse crew makes no bones about being paper fetishists. (Mmm… the texture of pulp against thumb, the perfume of ink and fresh card stock, the printed tome as art object. Purr.) Because of this bias, I’m skeptical when discussing the ability of e-tablet technology to bridge more tactile, primal gaps between my print and digital reading experiences. However. The London-based BERG design consultancy is blowing my puny mind with their Mag+ prototype:
This could be a readable art object in its own right.
Unlike previous e-tablets I’ve seen, the Mag+ technology would run articles in scrolls rather than as “flipped” pages (an abhorrent digital gimmick, if you ask me), and placed side-to-side in what BERG is calling “mountain range” format. It’s a far less literal translation. More organic. Readers page through by shifting focus, tapping pictures on the left of the screen to peruse content, then tapping text on the right to hone in. Magazines are still presented as compartmentalized issues, without that sense of incompleteness created by an infinite webfeed. It’s… cozy, somehow. BERG says:
It is, we hope, like stepping into a space for quiet reading. It’s pleasant to have an uncluttered space. Let the Web be the Web. But you can heat up the words and pics to share, comment, and to dig into supplementary material.
The design has an eye to how paper magazines can re-use their editorial work without having to drastically change their workflow or add new teams. Maybe if the form is clear enough, then every mag, no matter how niche, can look gorgeous [and] be super easy to understand.
Watch the demo; it’s fascinating. I’m eager to see where they go with this. There’s a discussion board over at Bonnier R&D Beta Lab, if you want to give them direct feedback.
Student team’s CG “Wall of Knowledge” design proposal for the Stockholm Library. (via)
On a related note, the press is saying 2010 will be “The Year of the E-Reader”. We’ve never really discussed e-books here, have we? What has your experience been –if any– with portable tablets like Kindle, Nook or the Sony Reader? So far, bibliophiles I know have had really strong and varied reactions to them. My more tech savvy (also, dare I say, somewhat more jet-setty and affluent) friends have embraced the digital format as a new and freeing medium. Other, more traditional bookworms reel in horror from the concept of spending yet more time staring at a pixelated screen. [edit: although, as Mark Cook just pointed out in comments, ideally, an e-book screen does not look pixelated.]
You’d think that after the past, oh, six years on the internet, an image of human flesh mingling with cephalopods would scarcely register with a seasoned browser. It seems that time has finally proved that even the most devout of C’thulhu enthusiasts occasionally reach a tentacle limit. However, my deep, personal fear of web frigidity was dispelled with but a glance at the painting below.
Yes, I can still feel.
Monica Cook, a painter from Georgia, started out as a self-portraitist, moving on to other subjects several years into her career. Her earlier work is relatively sober, with solitary female figures peering and gesturing enigmatically from their canvas quarantines. 2009 marked a period of transformation for Monica, when she created a series of sexually-charged paintings for a solo show at Marcia Wood Gallery, titled Seeded and Soiled. Showcasing mostly-nude, slimy women in glimpses of bacchanalian orgies and a more commanding brush stroke, these paintings are in quite a contrast to the self-reflecting maidens of Cook’s earlier work.
Delightfully energetic and fetishistic, Seeded and Soiled covers everything from power exchange and food play to asphyxiation and foot fancy. Click the jump for two more pieces from the series and two bonus cephalo-phallic images by Monica Cook.
