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.
Ah, New York Public Access TV. Nothing quite like it. You got your mimes on skates, your free “math and educational skills” and everything in between. One day, there’s going to be a huge Coilhouse feature celebrating the golden age of pre-Internet Public Access. Today is not that day.
No, today, a Public Access treasure from the current century: the psychic show of one CB Walker. Real or fake, it doesn’t matter; whether CB is a comedian, a performance artist or a true crackpot visionary, the result is still hilarious. CB uses his psychic abilities to heal, comfort and advise. Suspicious of your lover’s fidelity? He’s got some advice for you. Do you have a deep, dark secret that you’ve never revealed? He knows what you did. Are you 19 years old? Do not call!
The best C.B. Walker clips appear on his YouTube channel, and above is my favorite one of all, in which C.B. gets accosted by non-stop prank callers. Whether CB is “fake,” the prank callers are definitely real. It gets funnier every time you watch! [Thanks, Kelly]
No, not that Nick Cave. This is the work of a Chicago-based Nick Cave, whose soundsuits, seen here, focus on the fusion between fiber textile art and modern dance to create manifestations of the wearer’s physical energy. Cave’s shamanistic soundsuits have been described in the Boston Phoenix as “lavish, strange, beautifully-crafted outfits resembling mash-ups of African tribal ceremonial dress, Ku Klux Klan robes, Roman Catholic clergy vestments, yetis, Star Wars aliens, plumed and sequined carnival costumes, and fabulous drag queen gowns.” In an interview with Greg Cook, Cave poignantly describes the moment he created his first soundsuit:
When the Rodney King incident happened. I was reading in the paper about how the police sort of brought description to him. You know they were talking about, I can’t remember exactly what it said, but they were talking about this big, black, male figure that was bigger than life, that was mammoth-like. And I just started thinking about these words that were describing this human being, and I was like, “This is just fucking insane to me.” And I realized at that point I needed to take a different responsibility, I need to recognize that this is the platform that I need to be delivering, to work on.
And my first “Soundsuit” was a twig-suit. Which I didn’t even know it was a “Soundsuit.” I was just sort of making a piece in response to that situation. So I gathered all these twigs in the park and made this suit. I wasn’t even thinking that I could get into it. That wasn’t even on my brain. And then I made it and then I put it on. And I was just like, “Oh. My. God.” And at that point I knew that I had, you know you just know when you’ve found it. And I just knew. And I thought, “Oh, God, am I ready to take on all of this right now.” Because I just knew that it was a sculpture, it was again this suit of armor, it was this sort very unfamiliar sort of territory that I wasn’t really quite sure what it meant. Still don’t know really. Then there was performance. So it’s all of these sort of things. In order to be heard, to have a voice, you need to be an activist.
Left: Durova as a noble lady. Right: Durova as a soldier in uniform.
When she was an infant, her father placed her under the care of a soldier after her abusive mother threw her out of a moving carriage. Growing up, she memorized all the standard marching commands, and her favorite toy was an unloaded gun. A noblewoman by birth, Nadezhda Durova wanted nothing more than to don a uniform and defend Russia against Napoleon. At age 24, she did just that. “With firmness so alien to my young age,” she wrote in her memoirs, “I was wrecking my brain about how to break free from the vicious circle of natural and customary duties assigned to us, women.” In 1807, disguised as a boy, she left home on the back of her favorite mount, Alchides, and enlisted in a Polish uhlan regiment. “At last I am free and independent. I had taken my freedom, this precious, heavenly gift, inherently belonging to every human being!”
Durova’s service in the military earned her distinguished honors, and throughout her career she was, by all accounts, revered by everyone in her chain of command. A few officers knew her secret, but most did not. Tsar Alexander I, aware of her true identity, awarded her a cross for saving a soldier’s life and gave her permission to join the regiment of her choice. He gave her a new male surname, Alexandrov (after his own name). Durova continued crossdressing after retirment from the military. She died at age 83 and was buried dressed as a man, with full military honors.
In 1962, the Soviet Studio MosFilm released a musical called Gusarskaya Balada(“Hussar Ballad”) based on Durova’s life. In what’s certainly a complete misrepresentation of Durova’s complicated existence, the musical paints Durova as a young patriotic woman in love with a male soldier, eager to win him over on her terms, as a fellow fighter. The film is without subtitles, but has enough colorful characters, costumes and music that I think a non-Russian-speaking audience would appreciate the clip above, which showcases Durova’s character first dressed as a woman, then dressed as a man. I love actress Larisa Golubkin’s confident, homoerotic swagger in the second half of the clip.
It’s difficult not to revel in the fabulousness of Gusarskaya Balada, but I wish that someone would make a textured, compassionate film that dug deeper into Durova’s life. There are many different ways for this play out, for many facets of Durova’s identity are still debated to this day. On the topic of her gender identity, Wikipedia states that “some readers interpret her as a cisgendered woman who adopted celibacy and male clothing to achieve professional freedom,” while others believe that Durova was transgender. Similarly, Durova’s sexual orientation remains a mystery. She eloped with a man when she was young, against her father’s wishes. However, she omitted her marriage (and any description of attraction to men or women) from her memoirs. When it comes to her relationship with women, one biography notes, “Durova felt uncomfortable around other women. On at least two occasions women recognized her true identity and addressed her as ‘Miss.’ Her fellow officers often joked that Aleksandrov was too shy and afraid of women.”
The deeper I dig, the more fascinating scenes I find. Beyond the obvious allure of wartime crossdressing, there are many odd tidbits, like Durova’s powerful connection with animals. As a child, she “frightened her family by secretly taming a stallion that they considered unbreakable.” Later in life she provided shelter to stray cats and dogs that she rescued, and she passed on her animal-taming abilities to her descendants, circus legends and founders of the Durov Animal Theatre in Russia. Then, there’s her horrible mother, who only wanted a boy, and seemed to punish Durova for being born a girl by making her spend countless hours doing monotonous “women’s work” like sewing and crocheting. That’s a whole other story itself, right there.
Hopefully, one day soon, someone will make a serious film about Durova. Until then, enjoy the song and dance.
Good afternoon, Coilhaüsers! This post is to inform you of three things:
We’ve finished printing the T-Shirts, and we’ll begin mailing them out tomorrow. They came out lovely; thank you again to everyone who ordered.
Issue 03 is progressing, but we’re still in lockdown. We’ll probably come out of it soon, start posting again, and go into lockdown about a month from now again. Or something like that. The process for putting together 03 is slightly different from how we’ve done it in the past, so we’ll see how it goes.
The beginning of this week’s been too hectic to even post the next installment in the series of Agent Double Oh No interviews that we’ve been running. To fight off the tumbleweeds that threaten to start rolling over this blog, I am posting this image. I have no idea who made it; the site that it comes from is all-Japanese. Anyone who can identify the artwork here gets a free box of thrift store douche. Found via Audrey Kawasaki’s ffffound, which you can get lost in for hours.
Overseas readers, the video should work for you now.
The video above is what the Coilhouse “Stroke Material” tag was made for. No other tag needed. It’s a music video directed by Arno Bani, featuring a very androgynous-looking model with the incredible name Ugne Andrikonyte. Say it with me: UGNE ANDRIKONYTE! The music, however, is not recommended. So turn down the the YouTube clip, put on some Massive Attack or something, make sure no one walks in on you, and enjoy. As a bonus, here’s a photo from Bani’s site, done in a similar style as the video above. [Thanks, Finn]
Note: I don’t know why our last post had commenting turned off. Whoops! Must’ve clicked something by accident. Fixed it, so that comments are possible.
Comics illustrator Renee French has a blog where she posts doodles on a daily basis. Some are as detailed as the image above, others are simple line drawings. The subjects of her drawings can be completely unexpected, but the themes that come up consistently include creatures, houses, animal traps and kids dressed in very warm winter clothing. The more pages you go through on her blog, the more you feel like you’re being sucked into the universe of these pictures, questioning what you see less and less.
Renee’s blog is updated every day, but she also has an old website where you can see the books and comics that she’s published, including Grit Bath on Fantagraphics and a book called The Soap Lady.My favorite comic on this site. My favorites short comic stories on the site are Duck and ZZZ.
Portrait by Ann-Eve. More from this set on Flickr.
Rescue Ink is awesome for two reasons. One, they rescue puppies and kittens. As their mission statement says:
“We’re not a gang, vigilantes or a social organization, but we do have that certain “in your face” style when it comes to animal abusers. You may find us hanging out together at a hot rod show, tattoo parlors, or even hitting up the blacktop together on our bikes for a little road trip, but the main thing that brings us together is our love of animals. We met because we were all doing the same thing on our spare time: rescuing and finding homes for abandoned and abused animals.”
Some entrepreneurial reality-TV scouts probably have this Long Island-based, multi-ethnic band of do-gooders in the crosshairs, ready to pounce on them with a condescending TV contract (“stipulation: you must team up with hot biker chicks, who will actually be actresses that we provide”). But in and of itself, the endeavor feels charmingly genuine. The other reason why the existence of Rescue Ink warms my heart is that one of the group’s most active members, Batso, is 74 years old. 74! That’s the kind of life I wanna be living when I’m his age. Riding around on motorcycles (or in Mer’s optimistic vision of the future, “prune fart-powered jet packs”), looking bad-ass, making the world a better place for fluffsters of all stripes.
You can’t go wrong with preserved shit in jars. You just can’t. It’s like a secret handshake. You like shit in jars, you’re on my team. We bond over Mütter mystique. I liked Alien: Resurrection, you hated it, but I know how we both felt about that scene.
And that is why Creature Feature is a site for sore eyes. I’m sure that there are many more modern, fluid ways to locate images of these types of “creature-infused” wines from Indo-China; for example, I just tried typing “scorpion wine” into Flickr, and got 192 crisp (and probably crispy!) results. Still, there’s something precious and ordered about the musty pre-CSS presentation of Creature Feature that draws me. I like looking at that ancient HTML table, reverently stacked with aged Seahorse Wine, Centipede Wine and Toad Wine, the same way I like drifting away into a Joseph Cornell piece. I love stumbling across pages like this, pages that feel like they’re from another Internet that’s totally gone. We should preserve them.
Tilt-shift miniature faking is a technique for making images of real-life lanscapes look like tiny scale models by manipulating the focus and shooting from a specific angle. Keith Loutit a master of this craft; he’s shown us beaches, harbors and a monster truck rally from the point of view of a giant child. His latest video of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is the most fascinating of all. The disco candyland we see here is the straight out of the religious right’s worst nightmares about where the world is heading. Watching this felt like someone crammed Dziga Vertov and Zombie Zombie into one sparkling mini-masterpiece. Enjoy! [Thanks, Kelly]
