Left: Lucy from Dracula. Right: Ruff by Junya Watanabe.

Ruffs! Why are they so intoxicatingly awesome? It’s just a ruffle of fabric on a drawstring, but whenever I see one, it still evokes an instant Pavlovian response. A ruff turns a person into a character: a creature that’s decadent, aristocratic, maybe even a little tragic. I marvel at ruffs the way I marvel at lush cake icing and delicate origami, and while there’s something very sensuous about the wrapping, ruffs also make people look very strong, armored, untouchable.

“Virginqueen” photo shoot by Viona.

In celebration of my tender relationship with ruffs, I present to you my favorite manifestations of these sumptuous adornments in fashion, photography, music and film. The list is by no means complete, so please feel free to chime with your own ruff finds! One of the images and some of the links below may not be SFW, but most are. The Romp through Ruffs begins with the work of photographer Tina Cassati:

Felt animals! They are so cute! The images above come from Chika Photography, where adorable felt squirrels, doves and elephants await you. You can get your own felt feline and simultaneously help out a person in need over at Kittyaid, and if you want to make one of your own, there’s a great Flickr tutorial that will show you how to make any kind of monster you want. Need more specific instructions? Here are some more little DIY felt projects:

• How to make a Felt Penguin
• How to make a Felt Donut
• How to make a Felt Cupcake
• How to make a Felt ‘Eggie the Chick’

And if text-and-photo instructions aren’t enough, here’s some time-lapse footage from indie/experimental/noise band Deerhoof to help you. Featuring Satomi Matsuzaki, the clip is called “Stuffed” and I love it because she’s just making the weirdest shit. You get to see her create a log, a video cassette, and a nippled jock-wearing bear:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/gcHmv21Ddvk" width="400" height="330" wmode="transparent" /]

Incidentally, Deerhoof is playing tomorrow (Monday) night in LA at the Avalon (details here), with our girl Mer opening for them as part of Faun Fables, the same band that she toured Europe with last month. See you there?

Hey guys, I’m back from my super-secret Coilhouse mission to Belgrade/Ljubljana. I can’t tell you what I did there; I’ll only mention that it has something vaguely to do with stags and light beer. You will love it!

My jet-lagged brains really got a good rattle when I read Abstraction by Shintaro Kago, sent to us by Lucylle. Not safe for work! Don’t click it, mom! Lucylle describes Abstraction as “a short story in manga style, featuring an extremely creative approach to panel division/story continuity.”

I didn’t think I’d like it at first – the first few panels seemed so flat, so sparse, so lifeless. I thought, “this is why I think most manga is so boring.” But before I could finish thinking that sentence, my eye scrolled down to the page and something happened. The panels got weirder and weirder, and began to take a shape of their own. I felt like I’d been sucked into some sort of bizarre, claustrophobic fishbowl of dysmorphia, sex, awkwardness and pain, and most unsettling thing I felt as I kept on reading this was horror at how many of the completely anatomically-impossible, disjointed panels gave me an “oh shit, been there” kind of feeling. Ah, young love.

Internet addict Barbie. Neglected children sold separately.

Okay, who didn’t make their Barbies do obscene things at some point? But The Subversive 11½ Inch Fashion Doll takes it to all new levels of wrong.

The author of the site, alt model Theda B, describes the effort as “awful things I did to my old toys in a fit of boredom” and presents the Mattell-made dolls, dubbed “Bobbie” and “Ben,” in some hilarious, completely un-PC scenarios that draw on politics, illness, subculture, deviant sexuality and criminal behavior. And a good time is had by all! My personal favorites are Pretentious Performance Artist Barbie, Bobbie Christ (or the “I’m Going Straight to Hell” doll) and Trench Coat Mafia Ben. Collect them all!

The site hasn’t been updated in 3 years, which is a shame. It would be interesting to see what kind of new dolls people would submit to the site today. My own contributions would be Internet-Famous Bobbie and Sadistic TSA Agent Ben.

I came across Katsuya Terada’s work by pure accident, when I haphazardly discovered that the apartment where I’d been staying in Tokyo was directly underneath Mandarake – a multi-story manga and anime shopping mecca. While shambling disoriented from all the STUFF, through Mandarake’s hallways, I saw a glossy image of a girl staring from beneath a helmet intersected with pipes, tubing and other such hardware. As “WANT” scrolled across my brain-monitors, I was already inside pointing at the display and paying a ridiculously low $40. It was a hard cover edition of his art book “Cover Girls” and I was enthralled.

 As I later found out, Terada, also known as Terra, has been around for quite some time working on big projects like Blood: The Last Vampire and Virtua Fighter 2, but it’s still his cover girls that I love most. He renders these women with a sense of humor, young and fierce in spite of their partial nudity. Even the most vacant gaze seems to glimmer. They’re geared up, ready for battle, and remind me of Tank Girl a little. The costuming is a huge highlight; there is so much, often gritty, detail that goes into the armor and headdresses to counterbalance all that exposed flesh! It’s this costuming that really plays with the imagination and engages the viewers, inviting them to create their own backstories for all these characters.

How on earth have I lived in ignorance of the existence of Theo Jansen’s kinetic “beach animals” until now? Heart-achingly beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5GgZ-RfpD8

From Wired News:

“Jansen is evolving an entirely new line of animals: immense multi-legged walking critters designed to roam the Dutch coastline, feeding on gusts of wind. Over the years, successive generations of his creatures have evolved into increasingly complex animals that walk by flapping wings in response to the wind, discerning obstacles in their path through feelers and even hammering themselves into the sand on sensing an approaching storm.”

Four names immediately spring to mind: Leonardo DaVinci, Mark Pauline, Hayao Miyazaki, and Lee Bontecou. Theo Jansen, the father of Animaris Percipiere and Animaris Rhinocerous, has just joined those venerable souls on my shortlist of creators who deserve to have glorious temples and shrines, even cities, built in their honor.

Big love to Justin for the elucidation. More images and comprehensive article links under the cut.

We often have a code among ourselves and those we identify with. Nadya recently mentioned certain people’s common love of tentacles, and for me between the ages of 15 and 18 this code was Gift. It was an art film made by Perry Farrell, likely at the height of his creativity, with his then-wife Casey Niccolli and released after Jane’s Addiction initially broke up in 1992. The plot is loosely woven around a fictional overdose and death of Casey, and grief-stricken Perry’s reaction. Stream of consciousness storytelling combined with concert footage, spoken word, and iconic imagery made an enormous impression on me. Soon I demanded every person I met watch this film. I’d observe their reactions and attempt to decipher whether they were My People.

Comrade Lev has left on a special Coilhouse mission for about a week. While obligations prevent me from saying more, site rest assured it is a task of high caliber!

Now, in conjunction with this post, let us dwell for a moment on Polish artist Maciej Osika. Osika has dedicated several years of his photographic career to portraying himself as a beautiful feminine creature. These stirring images are a combination of digital and film work, intended to display beauty that is other, beyond standard queues of male or female. Exposed shoulders and silk combined with closely cropped hair in the image below are a good example of this, devoid of dramatic makeup and hair typically associated with cross-dressing. Maciej says of these portraits: “This does not mean that I want to be a woman at all costs: all I really want is to show that by photographs I can be beautiful for at least a moment. But the beauty contained in my portraits is merely a play of light and shadow…and I decide whether in the given situation I will be beautiful or ugly.”

• Maciej Osika on ArtMargins
• Polish article and a few images
• A multitude of images and an essay from Osika

Yesterday I got two emails, one right after another, from two completely different people, both about Survival Research Laboratories.

Paul Komoda shares a link to a YouTube video entitled Weird Weapons of WW2, which aired on the History Channel. The video discusses psychoacoustics, air cannons and other unusual Nazi attempts at weaponry from WW2. All of these machines were abandoned or dismantled, but Mark Pauline appears to demonstrate how some of them worked using SRL recreations. It’s funny to hear the History Channel people describe SRL in that gee-whiz History Channel voice. Also from Paul, a link to A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief, “an almost Quay-like film” featuing SRL machines.

Mark Jennings sends along news of the approaching Blue + Green Ball, a Todd Blair benefit happening this Saturday in San Francisco. Todd Blair is a member of SRL who suffered a head injury during a recent SRL performance in Amsterdam. Todd has a long road of medical bills, living and rehab expenses, and a community of artists and performers has joined to help him by putting together this show. Activities include music, belly dancing, dada percussion, art auction peices by Stelarc, SRL, Lynn Hershman, Eduardo Kac and others, hot dogs steamed by the Neverwas Steam Car, and more.

This image came from a storybook I had as a child. Whenever I look at it now, my heart still jumps up to my throat. In this image, Vasilisa the Beautiful, wandering through the forest, comes to the hut of Baba Yaga. The hut surrounded by strange lights, lights that emanate from the skulls of Baba Yaga’s victims. Vasilisa picks up one of these and uses it as a lantern, guiding her way as she walks on the dark path.

You can read the entire story here, complete with all of the amazing illustrations by the artist, Igor Bilibin. My other three images from the same storybook are the following three:

• The White Horseman
• The Red Horseman
• The Black Horseman

Taken from Old Russia, an amazing resource page of Bilibin’s Art and the stories that accompany it. Bless this person for taking the time to translate all of it.

More on Ivan Bilibin