(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.
As we recharge and make our way through hundreds of party photos, allow me to draw your attention to a few worthwhile endeavors worldwide. Art, music and costumes galore await!
A night at Dr. Sketchy’s, as envisioned by Molly Crabapple
An international whirlwind of glitter, booze, babes and art can only mean one thing: Molly Crabapple has taken Dr. Sketchy’s on the road. Tonight’s festivities take place in Edinburgh at And The Devil May Drag You Under. On Wednesday, our London readership can welcome this juggernaut of a lady to Madame JoJo’s. You’ll be treated to salacious burlesque, an opportunity to draw expertly [un]dressed cabaret beauties and even prizes! Hosted by comedy heartthrob Dusty Limits and Molly herself, this is sure to be a spectacular night. Next up – Berlin and Helsinki! More information about the cabaret-meets-art phenomenon here.
DoV denizens
Certainly you’ve noticed our weakness for beautiful men in makeup, flamboyancy of Rococo fashion and high tales of adventure. Even my blackened heart goes pitter-patter at the rustle of a masterfully layered crinoline. Throw in a dress-up picnic and we’re in heaven. If you’re in or traveling to New York this month you can expect just that. Dances of Vice has cooked up a truly decadent spread for August 22 through 24. A nuclear blast to the senses, this event’s lineup boasts live music, fencing, theater inspired by time travel, Münchhausen and Marquis de Sade, art exhibited and performed, absinthe, and, god yes, a picnic at the New York Botanical garden. Damn right I’ll be there, taking part in the fashion extravaganza. If you’re an undercover dandy, courtesan or just a filthy strumpet in search of a good time, this is the ultimate place to be in two weeks.
On a completely different note, as the Olympics rage on in Beijing, my Flickr stream is being flooded with new photos from Kris Krug. He’s been on location for a while now, uploading huge batches of wonderful images, some of which I have a feeling you’ll enjoy.
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:
It is time! We’re happy to announce Coilhouse Magazine’s Launch Party and Art Exhibit.
Held this Saturday at Hans Haveron Studios this event will be stuffed full of excellence. Look forward to:
Art, photography & fashion exhibit
Refreshments, with Mer’s “special” Electric Lemonade
Incredibly strange music
Photo booth with weird medical props, straight from Zo’s cave
Wall projections of Issue 01 art
Your first glimpse at the actual magazine!
Enjoy art. Become art via expert lenses of Polaroid superstar Lou O’ Bedlam and Zo! Style Technician’s own Andrew Yoon. Dress your snazziest and bring your friends. Everyone’s invited!
Venture below the jump to see work by the exhibiting artists.
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.
I used to work as a receptionist at a chiropracter’s office. I was in it for the swag: spine keychains (used for assembling an elaborate multi-tiered choker necklace), spine lamps (OK, ours weren’t as cool as the Mark Beam version), and one incredible metallic spine chair that looked like it belonged at a Giger bar… which I coveted, but never got to own. Discovering Bjorn Johansson’s lovely spine-inspired letters on the beautiful I Love Typography blog this morning took me back to those glory days.
It’s not a full font, just the designer’s experiment for creating type. Like my Becher font experiment, only a few letters exist. It wonderful to one day see them all. It would look nice paired with Value Pack, don’t you think?
This here’s a scan of a wet proof of the cover of Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 1. What is a wet proof, you ask? It’s a magazine prototype made using offset printing plates, with exactly the same inks, on paper with exactly the same thickness and finish as your entire print run. We didn’t know this term when we jumped into the process of printing. There were many such new terms – exotic publishing/typographic words like “ozalids” and “boustrophedon”. But we learned them all, and much more, in the process of putting together Issue 1. There were epiphanies, mistakes (to our high-school readership: math and geometry class are important), and magical 3:00 a.m. moments when it all came together.
Until the launch date, our lips are sealed regarding Issue 1’s content. The number of pages, the design, the art, the stories, the texture… all will be revealed. For now, we offer but a sneak peek in this “Behind the Scenes” post. Take a stroll through the hot dog factory with us!
Nadya works closely with an illustrator on a concept for a music feature.
When we first began this process, the entire staff sat down over milkshakes and batted around various ideas for Issue 1. Sifting through one another’s proposed articles, we gradually determined what to keep and what to discard or save for a future issue. After that meeting, we worked independently to develop the content, collaborating closely with our contributors.
Zoetica rescues an unfinished layout in the 11th hour.
We hit a snag when our original designer jumped ship. To the venerable List of Craig we went! Our search for a replacement – wherein we naively inquired after fellow lovers of Tschichold and Lissitzky – nearly induced epilepsy as we were forced to endure one blinking Flash website after another. Finally, we found a diamond in the rough: Cecilia Melli, a stylish Italian who understood what we were doing and was willing to work for what were, in retrospect, slave wages considering the amount of work that she did. In the end, even she couldn’t finish all the layouts, and in certain cases we were forced to take matters into our own hands.
He said that he wanted to find a way to recycle everything, and that life was fleeting. Hence the dinosaurs. John Payne turned prehistoric and poetic terrors into lifelike (and eerily inhuman) machines he dubbed “kinetosaurs.” Then he’d let children take the controls, or leave the beasts to shock unsuspecting passerby strolling through his studio.
But life is fleeting. I was shocked and saddened to find out that on July 17, Payne died tragically at the age of 58, following a massive stroke. A deeply thoughtful, compassionate man and one of the founders of Asheville’s arts community, his work was capable of conveying incredible energy or sublime peace.
I met Payne once in passing when he was showcasing his work in his studio, located in The Wedge, the old industrial building down by the river that he bought and turned into a warren of rooms for artists of all stripes. He’d come there after stints in Chicago and the Northeast (the kinetosaurs had formed the core of museum exhibits in Chicago and Pittsburgh). I’d been drawn in by the mechanical dog that suddenly sprang up and nipped at my heels before shaking itself and settling down for a nap.
Inside was the full menagerie. I marveled as The Crow struggled to escape its perch and The Raptor leered. I felt about five years old, stepping in to some great adventure. The kids in the place were naturally ecstatic. Watching him play at the controls, I could see the same feeling.
Theremin-soaked electronica duo Zombie-Zombie cites John Carpenter and Goblin as two of their biggest influences. Appropriately, the “unofficial” music video for their Goblinesque tune “Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free” is a surprisingly complex re-enactment of Carpenter’s The Thing. It features stop-frame animated G.I. Joe dolls wandering stoically through carefully lit, finely crafted model sets, confronting one unearthly horror after another.
I was genuinely creeped out! And suddenly I’m deeply nostalgic for low-budget 80s horror flicks. Time to bust out The Stuff.
Zoetica’s solo art show (and birthday! woo!) takes place in Toronto this Thursday. The event unveils a new series of gorgeous monochrome ink and digital drawings, which began with our jetpacked Coilhouse poster girl and spiraled off into a new mythology. The subjects of the series – a team of “off-world cloud hunters” – posses high-altitude breathing devices, candy-shaped gravity-defying hairstyles and futuristic clothing that’s remeniscent of Plastik Wrap, the host of the gallery event. Adriana from Plastik Wrap and Zoetica previously collaborated on several fashionshoots, my favorite one taking place at the Bradbury Building in Downtown LA (most famously captured as J.F. Sebastian’s apartment building in Blade Runner). More information about this event can be found on Zo’s personal blog.
Just in case you can’t make it, here’s a cloud hunter – and three more after the jump.
