There is no disputing that much of Ok Go’s success stems their inventive and often complex videos. The video for their new single “Last Leaf” is no exception. Animated using 2,430 pieces of toast in lieu of celluloid, it makes for a finished product just as flammable but an order of magnitude more delicious.
Halloween is over and, having finally awoken from a glucose induced stupor, the FAM returns with a new offering, devoid of the supernatural thrills that occupied this space for the past two weeks. Today we present In the Realms of the Unreal, the 2004 documentary directed by Jessica Yu about famed outsider artist and reclusive crazy-person Henry Darger. Darger, born on April 12, 1892 was a janitor in Chicago who occupied a second-floor room on Chicago’s North Side, at 851 W. Webster Avenue, for forty years, beginning in 1930 until his death on April 13, 1973. It was only then that his landlords discovered what he had been up to all those years.
It turns out that Darger spent most of his free time writing and drawing. His magnum opus, and the work that would gain him the majority of his posthumous fame, is entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, a mammoth work comprised of 15,145 single-spaced, typed pages, several hundred illustrations, and a number of scroll-like paintings, all of which employ extensive use of images taken or traced from magazines and children’s books and an obvious transgender streak — the children found therein not only largely unclothed but also many in possession of male genitalia. This work was in addition to a 5,084 page autobiography entitled The History of My Life (which, incidentally, spends 4,672 pages on the fictional account of a tornado named “Sweetie Pie”), 10,000 handwritten pages of a second fictional work called Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago (featuring the same Vivian sisters from Realms and placing them in Chicago during the same time period occupied by Realms), and a number of journals including a daily record of the weather over a span of ten years.
Realms itself is not easily summed up, though Wikipedia does a fairly good job:
In the Realms of the Unreal postulates a large planet around which Earth orbits as a moon and where most people are Christian (mostly Catholic). The majority of the story concerns the adventures of the daughters of Robert Vivian, seven sisters who are princesses of the Christian nation of Abbieannia and who assist a daring rebellion against the evil John Manley’s regime of child slavery imposed by the Glandelinians. Children take up arms in their own defense and are often slain in battle or viciously tortured by the Glandelinian overlords. The elaborate mythology also includes a species called the “Blengigomeneans” (or Blengins for short), gigantic winged beings with curved horns who occasionally take human or part-human form, even disguising themselves as children. They are usually benevolent, but some Blengins are extremely suspicious of all humans, due to Glandelinian atrocities.
The impetus for Realms, according to his autobiography, was the loss of a photograph of all things. Darger was a lifelong hoarder of magazine and newspaper clippings and one of the most important it seems was a portrait from the Chicago Daily News from May 9, 1911 of five-year-old girl named Elsie Paroubek who disappeared on April 8th and was found a month later, murdered. When it went missing, Darger believed it was among a number of clippings he suspected were stolen from his work locker. The loss of the photograph upset him so much that he used it as inspiration for the assassination of child labor leader Annie Aronburg, which would spark the main conflict of Realms.
This, finally, brings us to the feature. Yu’s film does an admirable job of covering Darger, especially considering the roadblocks involved in trying to document the life of a recluse. Considering there are only three known photographs of the man, she gets the most mileage by animating scenes from Realms with voiceover. There are a few interviews with neighbors, but the majority of the film are found in these segments and they are endlessly fascinating. In fact, considering the number of sources we have, Yu’s effort is likely to be the best anyone is going to be able to produce about the man. Depending on one’s viewpoint this may be a best or worst case scenario. At best all that is left is one’s art, there is no personality to explain or influence opinion; the viewer is given only the product of the artist’s creativity. On the other hand, the subject matter is so strange that the viewer may spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to discern the mindset of the creator. In the case of Darger, I would say that for most (and I would probably include myself in this) it is the latter and for that reason In the Realms of the Unreal can be as frustrating in its limitations as it is compelling.
“Wishery” is the newest track from sample magician Nick Bertke a.k.a. Pogo. Using Walt Disney’s 1937 classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Bertke expertly chops it to bits and constructs a mesmerizing trip-hop soundscape. Absent for the past year due, it seems, to a contract with Disney, it’s good to see the man who brought us “Alice” return, especially in such spectacular fashion.
Made popular by the trailers for The Social Network, the Scala & Kolacny Brothers’ Choir’s cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” gets a suitably disturbing video by Alex Heller. Using a Nikon D60 to take 1554 pictures, Miss Heller gives us the story of four, malevolent Barbies and the chubby outsider who wants more than anything to be just like them.
Via Kuriositas : The Daily What
Graham Annable (previously featured on Coilhouse) presents his new short, “Performance”, an incredible recreation of Meredith Yayanos’s stage show in his signature, animated style.
Previously featured by Zo on Coilhouse, Monica Cook‘s art is consistently visceral, textural, and… juicy.
Via Wurzeltumblr.
Conceived and animated by Cook, with music by Martín Capella, the short film, Deuce, “portrays an awkward encounter between a man and a woman that triggers their individual fantasies.” As usual, Cook succeeds in presenting a putrescent sensuality that’s simultaneously off-putting and mesmerizing.
I admit I know nothing about Flying Lotus but the video for their song “Kill Your Co-Workers” caught my eye. Featuring the digital madness of Mike Winkelmann, viagra it depicts a joyful parade that goes horribly, horribly awry. Mr. Winkelmann has made the models open source and available for download for those with an artistic bent.
Well, here’s something you don’t see every week:
The Simpsons team has celebrated a long history of poking fun at themselves for outsourcing to South Korea. Even so, it’s surprising to see the famed street artist, Banksy, taking this sweatshop couch gag to such darkly humorous depths.
Craig Welch’s short, animated, silent film from 1996 is the story of a strange, reclusive man obsessed with the mechanics of winged flight who one night receives a mysterious visitor in his dark and empty abode. Always in Welch’s animation benefits from a distinct, Edward Gorey inspired look which complements the strange and macabre subject matter quite well. Welch’s protagonist, as well as being enamored of wings, is also someone who has created around him a sphere of perfect and utter control. There is no aspect of his existence that has not been meticulously planned, going so far as to force this exacting mastery over other living creatures that make their way into his world. Whether or not his mysterious guest meant him any ill will is left unspoken but regardless she proves to be his undoing. Indeed it may be that she is more cipher than anything — a metaphor for that which he hopes to attain through all his miniature, bio-mechanical tinkering. However you interpret it, it remains a short journey well worth taking.
I have only a rudimentary grasp of the work of Benoît B. Mandelbrot. In fact, what I know is basically that through the use of complex mathematical formulas it is possible to create some kick-ass desktop wallpaper. This does, no doubt, a great injustice to the man’s work, but there it is. Krzysztof Marczak, obviously, understands the aforementioned mathematics better than me and has, with the help of a program called Mandelbulber, produced a hypnotic rendering of a flight through a fractal cube. It’s really great and you should go to the YouTube page to watch it in high def. I bet it would make a kick-ass screensaver.