Reader Jarem Morrow has sent over a link to an interesting little community on LJ called design_history. A must for any design junkie! In particular, there’s an interesting post about an all-but-forgotten art magazine from Germany called Die Schönheit (Beauty). Poster Nekokaiju on the community has unearthed some covers, and has this to say:
“Die Schönheit was a German magazine that ran through the years 1902-1936. It dealt mainly with the emerging Nacktkultur, Nudist movement. But also featured articles on modern artists, science fiction and sexual aids. It became well known for it’s racy classifieds section. Needless to say, it didn’t last too long after the rise of Nazi Germany.” I couldn’t find much more information on it online, but a book search reveals that Die Schönheit was also one of the first to publish the work of Erich Maria Remarque.
Yesterday, our friend Warren Ellis posed an interesting question: “why doesn’t alt culture exist?” In his weekly column, The Sunday Hangover, Warren points the finger in the same direction as our mission statement, blaming the rapacious mainstream. However, Warren goes a step further, fingering another culprit:
We’re in Reynolds’ “anachronesis” — living in a time of constant, delusional recursion, in a limbo of a dozen different pasts. Re-enactment, like living as a medieval soldier for a never-ending Renaissance Faire. Being Lenny Kravitz. Being the White Stripes. Record collection bands. People who like Amy Winehouse. Reynolds again: “Things under the sway of anachronesis are just nothing. You might as well be dead.”
Here’s another theory: perhaps anachronesis is not the retardant of a burgeoning alt culture, but its catalyst. After all, every subculture has always been a mediated response to the mainstream: punk culture’s rebellion grew out of a disillusionment with the rewards promised by white-collar mobility; Rastafarianism was a subversion of the white man’s religion; both the riot grrls of the 90s and the flappers of the 20s adopted certain styles to reject – or reclaim – certain conventions of womanhood. What, then, is the mainstream culture that today’s alt puts under the microscope?
Musician/filmmaker Joshua Zucker is one of very few folks whose tastes I trust implicitly. Episode 13 of his thematic Roadside Picnic podcast just went up. As always, it’s an astonishing mix of sounds and genres, lovingly and seamlessly compiled. Put on your best pair of headphones, and drift.
Fall! Autumn!! Sort of. While I go to sleep each night wishing to wake up freezing, it hasn’t really hit LA yet. In any case, I’m dressing the part. More black, grays, browns, olive, deep purple and dark cherry tones – all on my radar when selecting dailywear stuffs. I’ve dyed my hair a deeper violet-blue, even.
Of late I’m especially fond of loosely draped items combined with fitted ones, and various combinations thereof. To be honest, half the time I just feel like wearing boots, a sheet of fabric pinned creatively, topping it off with a ridiculously priced jacket and calling it a day. I imagine popular fashion’s retro currents haven’t reached the days of alterna-togas just yet, and you’d all roast me. So here is a facsimile! Just know I’d rather be wearing a sheet.
Yes, you read that headline correctly. The Bloody Digusting News website reports: “last night at the 2007 Scream Awards Paris Hilton was nearly booed off the stage once again, but by the time they finished showing the first ever footage from Darren Bousman’s Repo! The Genetic Opera all of the boos had turned into cheers.” This rock opera about organ repossession takes us to the year 2056, in which a worldwide epidemic causes organ failure on a massive scale, enabling a biotech firm called GeneCo to begin renting out genetically-perfect organs to those who can afford them. The nature of the program is similar to a car lease, and the firm sends out a repo man if the recipient can’t make payments. In addition to Paris Hilton and Nivek Ogre, other talents involved in the project, on and off the screen, include singer Poe, Daniel Ash from Bauhaus, Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan, Bill Mosely and Sarah Brightman. Ogre plays Pavi, the younger son of the evil mastermind behind GeneCO, and Hilton is cast as Amber Sweet, a “sexy aspiring opera diva and scalpel-slut will stop at nothing to get her moment in the spotlight.” Is this to be the Rocky Horror Picture Show of our generation? I sure hope so!
“Before you know it, some weak-chinned chippy in a stovepipe hat and goggles will turn up on Martha Stewart’s Living to show everyone at home how to hot-glue clock gears onto their toaster oven/tea kettle/labial folds.”
Thus Meredith poignantly described the slow demise of the Steampunk aesthetic in this thread. Pictured above, an eerie and all too real display of how true her words ring, but in an industrial tone [I think?]. Below, the same concept executed well, for contrast.
Hear me, and hear me well – we love you, but the first person to glue cogs/clock arms/vintage keys/etc. to their face gets a raygunnin’ straight to HELL.
At this very moment, in my hot little hands, I hold a copy of 80s scream queen Linnea Quigley‘s ineffably rad “Horror Workout” video.
Much to the disappointment of B-movie fans everywhere, this pinnacle of home fitness instruction has yet to be made available on DVD. The VHS cassette sells for anywhere between 50 and 100 clams online.
Here’s a taste of what you’re missing…
EDIT 05/29/2009: Good news, boys and ghouls! You can now buy an autographed DVD-R of Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout on the scream queen’s website, www.linneaquigley.net.
The last issue of Mondo 2000, featuring Nina Hagen on the cover.
I’m obsessed with dead magazines, especially ones that crossed over into the mainstream. The history of such magazines often sounds like a VH-1 Behind the Music special; first the group’s idealistic creation rises to fame on account of its originality, then comes the inevitable collapse due to in-fighting under the conflicting pressures of appeasing a wider audience, a set of advertisers and the project’s own artistic aims. More often then not, the problem is simply that such a magazine is way ahead of its time. This was the case with Mondo 2000, yet I’m grateful that it existed precisely when it did.
So, what made Mondo 2000 so special? It was, in my opinion, the best alternative culture magazine that America ever had. They wrote about smart drugs, brain implants, virtual reality, cyberpunk, Cthulhupunk and cryogenics. They covered Laibach and Lydia Lunch in the same issue. The pantheon of writers was a force to be reckoned with: Bruce Sterling, Robert Anton Wilson, and William Gibson all lent their talents, and there was even a Burroughs vs. Leary interview face-off. Then there was the famous U2-Negativland interview, in which Negativland, disguised as reporters, interviewed U2 into a corner to reveal the band’s hypocrisy over their lawsuit against Negativland over sampling. All in all, the magazine took risks. “The good dream for me and Mondo,” said editor R.U. Sirius in an interview with Purple Prose, “is overcoming the limits of biology without necessarily leaving sensuality or sexuality behind.” Issue after issue, Mondo 2000 threw a sexy dystopian bash and invited the decade’s best thinkers.
“Blind Love” is one of my favorite pieces ever by artist Paul Komoda. The piece features Courtney Claveloux, sales one of the main characters in Paul’s stories. I don’t want to give too much away about what kind of person Courtney is or what she and her friends get up to, but you can tell she likes the tentacle action. She also likes fuzzy stuffed animals. More on Courtney soon.
I work as a photography coordinator and photographer at suicidegirls.com. The fashion merecenaries among you might know I have a mostly-weekly fashion feature there called What’s Zo Wearing? [so named by a former lead editor]. I say “feature” instead of “column” because the amount of writing I do varies week to week. Occasionally I get verbose, but, more often WZW is a collection of outfit photos and tips on where to get these or similar items.
There are some hits and there certainly are some unfortunate moments, especially in retrospect of over a year, but hopefully there is something for all to dig. Coilhouse will be syndicating What’s Zo Wearing? every Sunday, 2 am Pacific.
To give you an idea of what to fear each Sunday I’ve included some of my favorite outfits behind the jump, and a few more in our Flickr stream.
