The prices for Courteille’s diamond-encrusted bijoux range in the average of $10,000. Why use real diamonds? Gross! Nevertheless, there are a couple of baubles on Courteille’s site that I covet, and I include them here for your viewing pleasure.
(Yeah, we know. This is already yesterday’s poos. Don’t care. Must blog for sake of prost… er… posterity.)
Via the Nainamo Daily News (and ten gazillion other websites): “A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.”
A strong gust of wind carried the gargantuan pile of crap several hundred yards from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it touched down again on the grounds of a children’s home, where it broke a window. No word yet on whether or not the home’s inhabitants have been traumatized for life. Museum director Juri Steiner claims the piece of art has a safety system which normally makes the cacadoody deflate during stormy weather, but something went wrong.
Model wearing one of René Cigler’s apocalyptic adornments.
Sad news from BoingBoing: artist René Cigler has passed away. Cigler’s many talents included illustration, sculpture, costuming, toy design and running her own shop, Strange Monster, with partner Cameron Smith in Portland. My favorite works by Rene were always her apocalyptic costume designs, many of which were worn by dancers in Ministry’s stage performances, as well as in the film version of Tank Girl.
Cigler does a great job of creating a strong field, a believable fiction, around her work. Even though this type of industrial/post-apocalyptic/Road Warrior art has been done to death, René’s work still seems fresh and interesting. One saving grace is that her sculptures have a sense of humor – they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously … hub cap necklaces, hats made out of barbecue grills, purses made out of cereal boxes and rubber car mats. This is the kind of high fashion one might imagine wearing after the world has run out of oil, the rainforests are gone, and the local supermall offers nothing but mountains of rubble (fashion accessories?) and lurking blood-thirsty mutants.
Among her many publications (which ranged from Penthouse to People to Heavy Metal), there is one very striking cover:
Above is Kenneth Anger‘s 1954 film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in its entirety. A film critic friend pointed me to it, with the simple statement “it’s weird, you’ll like it.” This came up along with news that Anger, 81, is terminally ill.
In some ways this seems a film out of time. It presages ’60s psychedelica (and would be re-released in a “sacred mushroom” version in 1966), yet the style is enmeshed in the occult revival of the fin de siècle. Watching it the first time, I couldn’t but see it as a glimpse into an alternate universe where the silent film era never ended and Aleister Crowley took the world by storm instead of dying in a flophouse.
With its lush array of images and allusions, Pleasure Dome is made to be unraveled – and indeed, there’s plenty of theories about it out there. Filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain sees communion, and writes “the movement of the film is essentially the passing of the gifts from one guest to another as they advance into a state of transpersonal ecstasy.” But film critic Doug Pratt perceives a hollow heart in the same revels: “an appropriately decorated Hindu-like myth re-enactment, with its spiritual core utterly rotted away; a disturbed revelry of desperate souls clinging to the outdated fashions and orgiastic memories of their lost time.”
Which is it? The absurdity’s there. Yes, that’s Anais Nin with a birdcage on her head. Yes, the Scarlet Woman gets her cigarette lit in the middle of the damn thing. Yes, jewelry gets guzzled in copious amounts.
But like any good ritual experience, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Turn the lights off, watch deeply, let the images pile up and hear Janá?ek’s Glagolitic Mass swell in the background: the whole scene takes on a strange, unexpected power.
Her cell phone is ringing, but the display is turned off. She lightly pushes a small dot on the skin on her left forearm to suddenly reveal a two by four inch tattoo with the image of the cell phone’s digital display, directly in the skin of her arm. She answers the call by pushing a tattooed button on her arm. While she’s talking, the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller. When she finishes, the tattoo disappears.
Now imagine yourself sipping something exotic and maybe reading on a rooftop. Suddenly, the face of a dear friend [presently in Shanghai, for instance] emerges through the skin on your forearm. A long-overdue conversation begins. Not a bad prospect, mm?
Body modification may be a somewhat neglected topic here at Coilhouse, but every once in a while something truly unique catches our collective eye. Take this render of a blood-fueled subcutaneous cell phone implant, for instance. Revealed by Jim Mielke at Greener Gadgets Design Competition, this is not an actual phone with keypad, earpiece and mic, but rather a thin touchscreen – a silicon and silicone pad which runs on your very own fuel! Myriads of tiny spheres change from clear to black during calls and can be seen through your skin, digital video of the caller coming into view once a call begins.
Only a concept at the moment, this is a mod I’ll be signing up for just as the option is available, provided there is a way to turn the thing off. Via Psyorg.
Her Modesty is a Muslim Fashion blog that will soon be a print magazine.
I’ve been reading Her Modesty, a Muslim women’s fashion blog. The project has a lot in common with Coilhouse: both Coilhouse and Her Modesty are blogs that will soon launch in print magazine format, both extoll the virtues of being covered vs. letting it all hang out (you may have noticed our obsession with covered necks, loosely-flowing clothes and total body coverage), and most importantly, both Her Modesty and Coilhouse are interested in the tenuous relationship between the “mainstream” and the “underground,” and where one stops and the other begins. They’re two different “undergrounds,” but the concerns are largely the same.
Primarily a fashion blog, Her Modesty’s main purpose is to display “how sisters can be covered but yet still feel good about themselves and how they look.” The blog author, Kima, obsessively catalogues her new favorite trends as inspired by street wear and the runway, follows the appearance of the hijab-inspired styles in Western fashion magazines, and offers readers tips on how to create the “modest version” of various popular styles. My favorite is this outfit, which in the author’s opinion walks the line, though her readers seem to love it.
Haute Hijab from the Her Modesty blog.
Kima’s writing tone reminds me of the sweet and upbeat Gala Darling, and similarly to Gala, Kima also challenges the readers by briging topics for discussion into the fashion mix. In one post, Kima posts a loose leopard-print D&G dress that resembles an abaya (the loose overgarment that’s worn by many Muslim women), and asks her readers, “would you rock it with a shiny red bag, black pumps, and a hijab?” In another post, Kima engages the readers in an interesting debate about the female “fashion police” in Iran. Similarly to my obsession with goths in TV commercials, there’s a post about a hijab-wearing girl in a Sunsilk TV ad. The most profound post, one where I almost felt like a voyeur when reading the impassioned comments, is the post where Kima asks readers if they’d still dress modestly if Allah didn’t will it.
But the best part are the hilarious Muslim Fashion Dont’s! Here they are, after the jump.
The late Sydney Guilaroff was Hollywood’s most beloved and trusted hairdresser. Credited with making the unforgetable Lucille Ball a redhead, he was friend and confidant to some of the biggest stars in history.
In Roy Del Ruth’s Du Barry was a Lady Gularoff is reunited with Ball, indulging in all that is glorious and flamboyant with sky-high powdered wigs. His talents coupled with Gile Steele‘s costuming prowess produce some enticing and hilarious hair concoctions, tricorn hats, ostrich feathers and all.
In Paige’s kitchen, outmoded cutlery and vintage postcards abound.
Oh, I love trash!
Anything dirty or dingy or dusty!
Anything ragged or rotten or rusty!
Yes, I love TRASH!
–Oscar the Grouch
Artist, dancer, muse o’ Brooklyn, Paige Stevenson has lived in her sprawling Williamsburg loft for almost twenty years. Every last nook and cranny is filled with artfully displayed found objects. Nicknamed the Hip Joint (after Paige yoinked that specific prosthetic human body part from an abandoned asylum hospital) once upon a time [EDIT 05/11: and now called The House of Collection] the place is legendary; sort of an unofficial Town Hall for the last stubborn gasp of New York’s bohemian art collective. Paige has hosted hundreds of performances, benefits, discoteques, tea parties, rehearsals, photo sessions and film shoots there.
Even after seven years of fighting litigation to try and kick her out of the rent-controlled space, Paige’s enthusiasm for collecting and sharing this vast array of discarded treasures remains boundless. “I guess my relationship to trash is one of aesthetic appreciation on a daily basis, because one could define the decoration of my house as Trash Decoration. It’s something that I live with every day, and enjoy, and actually love.” In this recent interview for The Garbage Collection, Paige discusses site specific pieces she’s rescued from the rubbish heap:
“The collection has accrued over the years from scavenging unloved objects. It seemed very sad to me that these things, because they were no longer used, had become garbage, landfill, trash… It’s my way of holding on to a little bit of the past.”
Everything that designer Freyagushi makes is a bit kinderwhore, prescription a bit medical, viagra and all pink. Many alt designers today try to present themselves as something more than what they actually are, embarrassing themselves in the process by doing things like erroneously adding the word “Couture” to the end of their business name. There’s no effort on Freyagushi’s part to look professional at all; she’s just like, “come into my zany world!” The result is honestly fun.
The designer is also the model in some of the pictures above (that’s her with the pink circuitry tattoo!). For her next trick she’s doing the Animal Hospital Fashion Show at the Torture Garden.
Artist Soomi Park from Seoul has created a set of LED eyelashes that light up in the dark. In an interview with We Make Money Not Art, Park describes the motivation behind her design:
I tried to project Korean’s obsession to big eyes, and how this fetishism is interpreted into excessive plastic surgery done on the eyes among Korean women. I really thought the obsession with big eyes can be represented through media design, because both yearning for bigger eyes and projecting the look through lights can be done by distorting the representation and creating new images. The LED Eyelashes have a mercury sensor that controls the light on the face. When wearing the LED eyelashes, you look embellished as if you were wearing a piece of fashion jewelry.
Politicized wearable art that invokes cybernetic technology? Marry me! In truth, you had me at “light-up lashes.” Read the article for more about the eyelashes and about Park’s compelling Digital Veil projet. The article mistakenly refers to Soomi as a boy, but she corrects the misconception in the comments. The interview is excellent nonetheless.
