Jillian Mayer is a visual and performance artist exhibiting her work across the US and internationally and is part of the permanent collection at the Frost Art Museum and the Girl’s Club Collection. Last year, Mayer’s experimental musical “Mrs. Ms” was commissioned by the Miami Light Project, premiered at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, FL. Mayer’s latest video work has been screened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art and at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in NY, Bilbao, Venice and Berlin.
Mayer has recently been commissioned to create a performance-based television art show at the De la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space for Basel 2011. Mayer will develop and produce several live segments of a conceptual variety show in a cable access-styled television program, which will survive as a cultural time-capsule under the guise of animal fascination. World Class Boxing is also commissioning Mayer to create a new video work for the gallery for Basel 2011. Recently, the Borscht Film Festival commissioned Mayer to create short film told entirely through installations by Mayer which features legendary Luther Campbell (Uncle Luke of musical group 2 Live Crew). The film is a modern Miami adaptation of the 1962 French short film “La Jetee”, “The Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke”.”
Allrighty! Definitely one to watch. (Perhaps with a mixture of glee, revulsion, and kinship.) Plenty more Mayer mayhem at her website, and on her Vimeo channel. (“Scenic Jogging”‘s especially intriguing.) Click here to read a great Interview Magazine Q&A with this burgeoning OMGWTFBBQ multidisciplinary art star.
Some of Moebius’ concept sketches for Jodorowsky’s Dune
For decades it has remained one of sci-fi cinema’s greatest might-have-beens. In 1975, during that magical time when studio heads willingly gave nigh-unlimited piles of cash to visionary directors, Alejandro Jodorowsky signed on to film Frank Herbert’s Dune, with a who’s who crew of alt culture royalty then-famous (Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, Orson Welles) and up-and-coming (H.R. Giger, Dan O’Bannon, Moebius).
H.R. Giger concept design for Dune
The effort collapsed in pre-production amid bizarre rumors, massive budget overruns and plenty of mutual blame. Jodorowsky remained silent on the matter for years, and later penned a revealing account that told his side, but left a lot unsaid. The complete story of this tantalizing effort has remained a mystery, with the only the occasional glimpse to fuel our imaginations. That will soon change.
Now a new documentary by Frank Pavitch aims to finally reveal what really happened with Jodorowsky’s attempt to bring to life a work he believed divinely bestowed on humanity via Herbert.
Over at Blastr, they’re ecstatic, and with some cause (though Jodorowsky’s Dune, if made, could have ended up a fiasco as easily as a masterpiece). The glimpses that have for years sent Dune fans minds spinning are just the tip of the iceberg, and I can’t wait to see what else Pavitch has managed to uncover. The fact he’s wrangled interviews with many of the key participants is encouraging. We may finally know the full tale of this brilliant, doomed effort to fit galactic transcendence onto a movie screen. In the meantime, there’s always the activity books.
To promote his new David Lynch Signature Cup Organic Coffee, the film auteur made this insane or absolutely brilliant video of a conversation he has with a Barbie doll about the coffee. The video consists of a relentless four minute close-up of Barbie’s head firmly clenched in Lynch’s hand as he provides all the dialogue, making very little attempt to distinguish between his gravelly voice and Barbie’s.
Yep, you just watched four straight minutes of one of the most influential filmmakers of all time making small talk and flirting with a doll head. Intrigued? Befuddled? Creeped out? Laughing hysterically? Irritable? Delighted? All of the above? Let’s talk about this.
What happens when dialog taken from MTV’s “Jersey Shore”, the nadir of current American culture, is filtered through the lens of Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest wits the world has ever seen? Magic, that’s what. Playbill — with the help of Santino Fontana and David Furr, current cast members of Wilde’s most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest — presents a grand experiment: “Jersey Shore” Gone Wilde. This is, perhaps, the best thing I have seen this year.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Arizona desert, it’s… NIGHT OF THE LEPUS.
Bunnies have risen! (Truly, they have risen!)
MGM laid this rotten egg in 1972 to a flurry of bad reviews and barely stifled laughter. Based on the 1964 science fiction novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit by Australian pulp writer Russell Braddon, the film depicts the valiant struggle of Arizona townies who are unexpectedly forced to defend their homes against an onslaught of deadly, gargantuan, carnivorous fwuffy wuffly bunneh wabbits. Daawww:
Shot on location in Bumblefuck, Nowhere, Arizona, the best/worst scenes from Night of the Lepus show soft, cuddly domestic rabbits “rampaging” through miniature model sets with what appears to be ketchup liberally smeared on their muzzles and paws. There are also some golden moments featuring shrieking, ensanguined bunny hand puppets, and several instances of human actors dressed in matted shag-rug rabbit costumes flailing their way through poorly choreographed attack scenes. Plus? Janet Leigh reading off cue cards. And? DeForest Kelley with a sexy porn ‘stache. Yusss.
“Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, was a New York city freelance news photographer from the 1930s to the 1950s. Here he talks about his career and gives advice to those wanting to become news photographers.”
Weegee’s a phonetic version of Ouija. The cigar-gnawing Fellig earned his nickname “because of his frequent, seemingly prescient arrivals at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were reported to authorities.”
Crassly manipulative at times, and an unapologetic opportunist, Fellig also claimed (as heard in the interview above) to be a humanist at heart. As questionable as some of the paparazzo’s methods might have been, the human pathos of his imagery, whether it features tenement fire survivors, public drunks, murdered gangsters or smooching space cadets (seen below) is unquestionably powerful indeed.
“Things take an unpleasant turn at the end of Orson Welles’ interview with Jim Henson and Frank Oz… and stay tuned for Miss Angie Dickinson!”
Not really sure what’s happening, here, or whether this footage –all presumably taken from the unaired pilot for Orson Welles’ prospective 1978 talk show– has been doctored or edited in any way. (Does anyone who’s seen the bootleg have more info on it?) Whatever’s going on, though, watching these three geniuses sharing such a sublimely awkward moment has gotta be the best thing since sliced breadfrozen peas.
At thispoint I’m probably in danger of turning Coilhouse into a Graham Annable repository, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, lest any of our faithful readers forget or, perhaps, for new readers who may not have had a chance to delve into the archives. His newest is The Smartest Dog in the World which, as the title suggests, is the tale of the world’s most intelligent canine, told with Annable’s Gorey-esque flair for dark humor. If you dig this, you can see more at the links provided earlier and, of course, the Grickle Channel on YouTube. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to resist the urge to post everything he has produced here.
Welcome one and all to the Friday Afternoon Movie for this, the day after St. Patrick’s Day, 2011. Exciting. Today the FAM presents Exit Through The Gift Shop the 2011 Oscar Nominee for Best Documentary directed by street artist Banksy that is probably not a hoax but could be. Maybe. Who knows. It doesn’t really matter.
The film follows the exploits of one Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant who runs a vintage clothing store in Los Angeles. He also has a habit of filming everything and everyone he sees with his video camera. On a trip to France he discovers that his cousin is a fairly well-known street artist, who goes by Invader. Guetta falls in love with the medium and begins to film a vast network of artists, telling them he is making a documentary. This eventually leads to him meeting the enigmatic Banksy, which eventually leads to Guetta becoming an artist in his own right, calling himself Mr. Brainwash.
Exit Through The Gift Shop impressed me most in how it was able to change, almost effortlessly, my perception of it’s subject. The first three quarters of the film really felt laced with narcissism, which I admit may not be entirely fair. I often find it hard to separate the artist from his art, which is to say that, if in a film by Banksy, the narrator of said film refers to Banksy in some hyperbolic way in regards to his fame and acumen, I can’t help but think that Banksy knew that was going into the movie. He may have written it himself. That kind of thing rubs me the wrong way. It may not be true, it may not have been the intent, but it struck me that way.
Guetta’s overnight success, seemingly built on the works and words of the people he was filming, then eclipses any of that in the last quarter. He emerges from the other end of Exit… as a fraud and a con man, quite the journey from the likeable, if eccentric, man he starts out as. Banksy emerges as simultaneously bemused and distraught at what he has inadvertently created. It’s a trick that only works once perhaps, subsequent viewings appear littered with warning signs when forearmed with this knowledge, but I found it an extremely capable one nevertheless. Regardless of your feelings about his work, I found myself agreeing with Banksy’s opening remarks. It really is a fascinating story.
Oof. The world continues to feel like an extra brutal place this week. We’re all finding it a bit difficult to concentrate over here, for many reasons. Also, by now, many of you will have noticed that Coilhouse is experiencing technical difficulties due to some sort of EPIC HOSTING FAIL that’s not in our immediate control. Big thanks to those of you who have kindly told us “psst… your slip is showing, honey!” Queries have been logged. Hopefully it will get fixed soon.
Meantime, I’m gonna go ahead and live vicariously through this guy:
