These images are part of a traveling solo exhibition titled The Architect’s Brother, created by artists Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison. These images have been around for over ten years, but this is the first time I’ve stumbled across them by way of Mickael Ivorra. From the Environmental Graffiti blog:
Could fixing clouds, pollinating a barren earth, making wind and patching up the sky ever be turned into almost humorous subjects? In “The Architect’s Brother,” a series of 42 photographic images by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, we follow a determined and optimistic Everyman who does just that – and rewards viewers with new details the longer they look.
The ParkeHarrisons are a husband-and-wife team whose photographic work, “The Architect’s Brother” is concerned with the state and possible fate of the Earth. The exhibition has travelled from 2002 to 2007 through the United States, Canada and Germany and is probably the artists’ most publicized work. According to its official description, ParkeHarrison “conjures a destiny in which humankind’s overuse of the land has led to a spent and abandoned environment, inhabited by one indefatigable spirit (portrayed by ParkeHarrison).”
More images can be seen here and here. A hardcover book of photos is available on Amazon. More images, after the jump!
Some of the images remind me of a striking shot from the never-completed Worst Case Scenario, a Dutch Horror film in which zombie Nazis descend into the Netherlands on decrepit steampunk air balloons. Click here for the trailer. It’s… amazing.
This Thursday, deceaseGallery 1988 in Los Angeles will host the reception for The Ghost of Delilah and Other Stories. Conceived by the mystical brain[s] of Travis Louie, illness the unique show will feature paintings and drawings by Travis with Craola, Chet Zar, Lola, Fred Harper, Molly Crabapple, Dave Chung, Ewelina Ferruso, John Park, Lisa Gloria and yours truly.
Kim Boekbinder as The Impossible Girl by Travis Louie
Travis Louie collaborated with each artist to create drawings that merge different styles and concepts in a sort of exquisite corpse format. The result: playful, distinct graphite amalgams unlike anything any of these folks have done before.
Travis working on his section of the collaboration with Ewelina Ferruso, Phelps Dreams of Being a Rabbit
Yesterday, Peter Martin Christopherson, a.k.a. Sleazy, died suddenly in his sleep. He was 55. A founding member of Throbbing Gristle and Coil, as well a solo artist in his own right, Sleazy leaves behind an incredibly rich musical legacy and a great deal of gutted friends and fans. This shocking news comes just a month after the remaining members of Throbbing Gristle announced their regrouping under the name, X-TG, following Genesis P-Orridge’s departure.
Sleazy’s contributions to music and culture are immeasurable. From naked stage antics with Throbbing Gristle as one of the founding fathers of the industrial genre back in the mid-70s, to starting Psychic TV with Genesis P-Orridge and forming the intense, dark, trailblazing Coil with his partner, Johnn Balance, in the 80s, Sleazy has always been a fervent innovator. He designed iconic album covers, built his own instruments, created countless radical videos, spoke out against homophobia, and when Balance passed away after they spent over twenty years together, Sleazy held it together and started The Threshold HouseBoys Choir – a music project featuring computer-generated vocals and video. He continued creating until the very end.
In one of his most recent interviews, Sleazy said:
If I can die knowing I’ve helped put a few of us outsiders in touch, helping one another, particularly helping pass on what we know to other new people, and encouraging each other to be more proud of who they are, I will be a happy man.
Coming from such an educationally backwards country I appreciate this brief history of the USSR told with the aide of LEGO mini-figs which explains that much of the Soviet Union’s establishment was the product of a strong desire for kisses. Likewise, “Everybody was afraid of him because of his moustaches that were tickling.” really helps put the brutal regime of Joseph Stalin into perspective.
Devoted and cultish readers extol John Allison as “a rare gem in the often hard-to-navigate web comic underbelly.” Though you may not presently be reading John Allison’s current endeavor, Bad Machinery, chances are that you are perhaps already familiar with him through his older works,Scary Go Round (2002-2009) or Bobbins (1998-2002), or as an artist/chum linked to through one or more of his contemporaries.
Marked by clever, peculiar dialogue, absurdist humor, dotty characters (and delightful ladies fashion!), mysterious happenings and hi-jinks, and a dense mythology (though compelling and completely addictive, to which anyone who has begun to peek through his archives can attest) – John Allison’s story-telling genius is unmistakable. And in a medium where visuals are the reason most viewers show up in the first place, the exquisitely charming, highly stylized art is “as big a draw as the comedy”.
Scary Go Round, “Bulgaria”
Described as “postmodern Brit horror”, Allison’s previous comic, Scary Go Round followed the hapless denizens of Tackleford, a fictional British town beset by all manner of supernatural activity including, but not limited to: zombies, space owls, the devil, and portals to other dimensions. Though Scary Go Round ended in 2009, a few of his beloved characters have moved on to Bad Machinery, which picks up in Tackleford 3 years later. The focus is on an entirely new cast of sleuthing schoolchildren attending Griswald’s Grammar School, whose well-intentioned energies may be causing more problems than the mysteries they solve – but they throw themselves into it all with much vigor and aplomb.
Bad Machinery Flyer Art for Thought Bubble
Coilhouse recently caught up with John Allison about his new endeavor; see below the cut for our Q&A in which John talks about the transition between old stories and new, the state of web comics today, and the meaning behind the monsters.
VICE Magazine’s short, riveting documentary on Japan’s Aokigahara forest (also known as The Sea of Trees), perhaps the country’s most popular location for those wishing to end their own lives (and reported to be the second most popular location in the world behind the Golden Gate Bridge. The forest’s popularity is often cited as being due to Seichō Matsumoto’s 1960 novel Kuroi Jukai, which features two lovers committing suicide there, but the forest has a history of being associated with suicide and death in general before its publication. In the 19th century families would practice ubasute (literally “abandoning an old woman”) a tradition in which an elderly or infirm family member was brought to a place and left to die, exposed to the elements. In recent years, the rate of suicides has been on the rise:
[…] people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year. The site holds so many bodies that the Yakuza pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses. The authorities sweep for bodies only on an annual basis, as the forest sits at the base of Mt. Fuji and is too dense to patrol more frequently.
It’s a very well done piece. Azusa Hayano is, perhaps, the perfect tour guide. It would seem that a geologist would be completely out of his element combing the woods for corpses but he makes for a peaceful and truly compassionate Virgil; managing to keep the horror of the surroundings from being completely overwhelming. His ability to retain some hope amidst such profound sadness is, perhaps, the film’s greatest gift.
I can’t stop looking at pictures of Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned. This should come as no surprise to long-time readers of the blog, given both my love of chic politician Yulia Tymoshenko (obsessively chronicled here and here) and interest in Islamic fashion blogging, its tensions between faith, religion, fashion, and personal style.
In the image above, Mozah (51, mother of seven, the second of the Emir’s three wives) looks like she just killed James Bond. (And I say that with perfect love and awe. Because Bond is such a douche.) Mozah’s bio in the Forbes Top 100 Most Powerful Women list reads:
The wife of the Emir of Qatar has used her growing influence to promote education and development in the Arab world and in her country, home to gas-rich reserves and Al-Jazeera (owned by her husband). This past May, Sheikha Mozah toured the U.S. giving speeches on Western misconceptions of Muslim women and the need to combat violence by eradicating poverty and hopelessness. Sheikha Mozah recently announced the creation of the Arab Foundation for Democracy with a $10 million endowment from the emir. The foundation will encourage the development of a civil society and freedom of the press, among other things. Sheikha Mozah already promotes free speech through the Doha Debates, monthly forums of controversial topics featuring guest speakers like Israeli president Shimon Peres. One of her biggest achievements is Education City, a 2,500-acre campus outside of Doha that is home to branches of Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Commonwealth universities.
Blogs such as HuffPo and ONTD have already caught on to Mozah’s fierceness, and equally fascinating are her presence and drive. In the clip below, she discusses one of her biggest projects, Education City. (By the way! In keeping with her sharp personal style, Mozah’s Education City has some incredible, futuristic architectural designs, worthy of a blog post of their own). She’s the kind of person who inspires me to write characters, research cultures, make stories. What’s it like to be her? What would be like if you added a little fiction to it? Like… maybe some science fiction? More images of Mozah, after the jump. [Via Holly Jones].
Warning to any coulrophobics or pupaphobics who may be a part of our readership: This video may not be for you; containing, as it does, both puppets and clowns and, in fact, a clown puppet. For the those of you without such qualms: Prepare yourselves for the bizarre traipse through a miniature forest that is the video for Chris Garneau’sDirty Night Clowns, a delightfully dark composition with some decidedly insidious undertones. The video, directed by Ryan Gibeau, is unsettling but beautifully realized. Puppetry has the ability to both undercut and magnify disturbing themes in equal measure with its cartoonish, exaggerated qualities, and that is on full display here. They also have a great behind-the-scenes feature for those who are interested.
Madame Peripetie does it again. The Polish-born, Dortmund, Germany-based photographer, whose Insectarium shoot and collaboration with Eva Nyiri were featured on Coilhouse in 2009, has released a surreal, colorful new collection titled Dream Sequence. Some of the images can be seen here, and more can be found on her site.
Set against a stark, hazy black background, the dreamlike characters in these images appear to evoke haunted forests, chrome spaceships, traveling circus shows, and early ’90s NYC club culture. In almost every image, you can find a spray of brightly-colored wildflowers decorating the otherwise synthetic-looking subject, recalling these images of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa by Hans Sylvester. Many more images, after the jump.
While everyone else in the world is giving face time to the over-exposed (but, admittedly, awesome) cephalopod, Mark Garro prefers to branch out; immortalizing the less glamorous of sea creatures, like Malcolm L. O’Clam, a bagpipe playing oyster. Mr Garro’s imaginative paintings are showing at Corpro Gallery in Santa Monica through December 4th for those who wish to get a look at Malcolm up close.
