Morning! While it’s true that Coilhouse’s BTC category probably already has one-too-many Twin Peaks posts, this one’s just WAY too good to resist:
Japanese Georgia coffee ads directed by David Lynch! (Discovered on Julie In Japan‘s blog while researching that post about Bunny Island.) DAMN fine advertisements.
The Michigan Theatre. Photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.
Yesterday, having recently seen links about them in a couple different places, I tweeted: “Haunting, tragically beautiful photos of derelict Detroit by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre: http://bit.ly/fwDwPg [from the UK Guardian]”
They really are breathtaking images. A lone copy of Marchand and Meffre’s (rare?) book The Ruins of Detroit is currently on sale at Amazon, if anybody with a whopping $237.94 to spare is interested.
The ruined Spanish-Gothic interior of the United Artists Theater in Detroit, and Light Court, Farwell Building. Photos by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.
Here’s the thing, though: in American cities like New Orleans, the Salton Sea, and (most vocally) Detroit, frustrated residents who see scores of photojournalists touring their neighborhoods just to take pictures of the sexy devastation and leave again have started calling these sorts of de-contextualized photo series of their backyards “ruin porn”.
“Here in Detroit, we’re sick of how the ruin porn runs rampant around the world, and everybody loves to use it to show how things have degraded here. Know what? There is a big resurgence happening here, and things are getting better.” That’s a quote from Ryan Cooper, a Detroit resident reacting to Dangerous Minds’ coverage of the Ruins of Detroit photobook.
Only I hadn’t read that, yet. I’ll admit it: when I linked out to the Guardian feature, I’d never even heard the term “ruin porn” before. About an hour after I aired that tweet, someone in Australia called datacorrupt responded bluntly with: “Detroit Thrives.” And a link.
Photo by Jon DeBoer. Mural by Philip Lauri, founder of “DETROIT LIVES!“
Clicking through to Palladium Boots dot com, I promptly had my ruin porn-disseminating ass handed to me by the following half-hour documentary featuring not just several of those same sprawling abandoned spaces that captivated Marchand and Meffre, but also a rich variety of local entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, urban farmers and prodigal shopkeepers of Motor City who have been steadily reclaiming and reviving substantial portions of the urban grid, creating robust communities in a crumbling realm that was:
“Once the fourth-largest metropolis in America–some have called it the Death of the American Dream. Today, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. They are creating the new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity. We put our boots on and went exploring.”
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Williamsburg anymore…
Product-shilling and Johnny Knoxville-yukkstering aside, Detroit Lives is an inspiring point of entry into the tenacious world of modern DIY Detroit. After watching the doc, I spent several more hours online exploring other links and sites (several of which are listed below). These kids are making and growing and building and yes, thriving. They seem committed, fierce, and in fucking earnest. Check ’em out.
Any Detroit badasses reading? Please forgive me; I… I still love my ruin porn. Can’t help it. But in all sincerity, I love what you are doing far, far more. I’m surely not alone in that. Long may you thrive. Please come say hello if you like. We would love to hear more from you, and about you.
Detroit revival links:
Other Coilhouse posts of possible interest:
Between 1929 and 1945, Okunoshima Island (located in Takehara, part of the Hiroshima Prefecture) was a chemical warfare production site for the Imperial Japanese Army that produced over six kilotons of mustard gas. Mainichi Daily News reports that Okunoshima was even “once erased from the map of Japan for security reasons. […] The poison gas produced at the site took the lives of many people in China and other battlefronts, and former facility workers are continuing to suffer from health ailments caused by the gas.” The moldering husks of the Imperial Army’s power plant and other long-abandoned facility buildings remain standing to this day. In 1988, The Poison Gas Museum was established on the island “in order to alert as many people as possible to the dreadful truths about poison gas.”
Photos of the abandoned Imperial Army poison gas factory on Okunoshima Island via Wiki and JulieInJapan.
But now, Okunoshima Island is becoming better known as “Usagi Shima” (meaning Rabbit Island), a “bunny paradise” where robust leporids numbering in the hundreds roam freely and fearlessly. According to the Mainichi paper’s reportage, it’s believed that the rabbits were first introduced to the island in 1971 when an elementary school in Takehara dumped several of the animals there after being overwhelmed by the responsibilities required to keep rabbits at school. However, many other sources state that the rabbits of Usagi Shima island are direct descendants of lab animals (upon which the Imperial Army’s poisonous gases were tested) set loose by factory workers at the end of WWII.
In either case, the original bunnies of Okunoshima and their successive generations of offspring appear to have thrived in their predator-free environment, grazing on wild greens that grow in abundance all over the island, and accepting food from an ever-increasing stream of enchanted human tourists. The Kyukamura Okunoshima resort hotel located on the island has recently seen a steep increase in visitors to the island thanks to the spread of knowledge of the island via the internet “Many visitors […] are bringing their cameras to take photographs of the rabbits, next year’s zodiac animal, for their New Year’s greeting cards and personal blog sites.”
Photo via aPike.
Blogger Julie in Japan sums up the island’s appeal very well: “Okunoshima has a great message of peace, a chilling history, adorable rabbits, incredible abandoned buildings to take pictures of, and a lot of nature with no crowds. For those reason, I’d recommend going there.” Although, chances are there will be more crowds now, due to the increase in press. Hopefully all of this attention won’t upset the bunny balance!
(Story via my own dear Bunny, natch.)
From Joseph Nanni and friends (the same twisted souls who brought us that Necronomicon infomercial) comes this important, potentially lifesaving message about Elder Sign:
Sure, this clip has been circulating on the internet for a while, but as everyone knows, flying polyp infestations are most rampant during the holiday season. If you suffer from “an overwhelming sense of dread brought on by the realization of your own insignificance in the universe” that’s possibly being compounded by Seasonal Affective Disorder, rancid egg nog or overexposure to Glenn Beck-parroting (read: polyp ridden) in-laws, you need Elder Sign now more than ever.
And possibly some *cough* stocking stuffers from the HPLHS Bazaar:
(ElderWear™: “Because you don’t want Shoggoths in your pants.”)
The superbly-designed website SpaceCollective dedicates itself to study of topics such as transhumanism, robotics, experimental architecture, and pretty much anything else that one can equate to “living the life of science fiction today.” Most of the site’s activity centers around blog posts and collaborative university projects, but one of the most stunning portions of the site, dense with complex, inspiring visuals and information, is the gallery.
There are six pages of scienctific psychedelia – a absorbing mixture as varied as Googie architecture, macro shots of hydrozoa, renderings of magnetic structures, jellyfish automatons, microchip embroidery, concept art from sci-fi films, and much more along the same lines. Two random images from this gallery may not have much to do with each other, but all together, they make a surprisingly cohesive whole. Quotes from the likes of Verner Vinge, Buckminster Fuller and Jorge Luis Borges cycle between the imagery, and most images are hyperlinked out to further sources. Enjoy!
Neck not supporting head? Eyes won’t focus? Daily grind? Sausage grind? Welcome, sons and daughters. Welcome to the machine. Specifically, the infamous Bagger 288:
0:47 = tragically accurate visual metaphor for the author’s current state.
Yep. An internet classic. When in doubt (or too sleep deprived to think straight), Joel Veitch to the rescue!
Any form of inquisition into the meaning of this will be fruitless. Favour me, an’ you will, with eternal confinement in a gaol, and everything that I now relate will be repeated with perfect candour.
Again I say I do not know anything at all about it, which is probably why I am making it the subject of this narrative. It is true that I have been for 18 years his closest friend and that we have been seen by reputable witnesses near Greenwood, NY, Sleepy Hollow by the Hudson, Mt. Auburn, Cambridge, Mass., and Grant’s Tomb, Manhattan, but that we possessed tastes mutually morbid or a predilection for graveyards I must strenuously deny.
I seem to remember a weird evening in November. The place was, of course, a cemetery; over the fence peered an inquisitive, waning, crescent moon, and on the fence a vulture and his vulturine, a raven and a couple of cormorants remained couchant.
Thus opens Falco Ossifracus, a short, witty H.P. Lovecraft parody written by fellow amateur journalist Edith Miniter. Published under the nom-de-plume “Mr. Goodguile,” the piece first appeared in Miniter’s zine, The Muffin Man, in 1921. The piece lampoons Lovecraft’s meandering, loquacious writing style and obsession with the macabre, though sadly it is not a parody of Cthulhu Mythos, and the setting remains confined to a graveyard. Lovecraft described the effort as “a highly amusing parody” in his memoir of Miniter, in which he also credited her as the source of the Whipoorwill legend from The Dunwich Horror while praising her “sharp insight, subtle wit, rich scholarship, and vivid literary force.”
Of their relationship, Lovecraft scholar Chris Perridas wrote, “one suspects a pre-Sonia romantic attachment by HPL of Miniter, though obviously never acted upon.” But if this hubristic letter to a friend in which Lovecraft brags about the ladies in his life (“Hell, how the cats fight!”) is to be believed, the affection appears to have been entirely one-sided.
Falco Ossifracus can be found in the Miniter short-story anthology Dead Houses, available from Hippocampus Press. Reprinting the entire story would be copyright infringement, and getting the book is recommended. Several more choice quotes, below:
For a more modern take on the H.P. Lovecraft parody (of which there’ve been several throughout the ages), see @_hp_lovecraft_ on Twitter.
“Trailer for the documentary La Santa Muerte (Saint Death), directed and produced by Eva Aridjis, narrated by Gael García Bernal, distributed by Seventh Art Releasing. Film synopsis: In Mexico there is a cult that is rapidly growing- the cult of Saint Death. This female grim reaper, considered a saint by followers but Satanic by the Catholic Church, is worshiped by people whose lives are filled with danger and/or violence- criminals, gang members, transvestites, sick people, drug addicts, and families living in rough neighborhoods. “La Santa Muerte” examines the origins of the cult and takes us on a tour of the altars, jails, and neighborhoods in Mexico where the saint’s most devoted followers can be found.”
Whoa… the DVD was only officially released on October 7th, but quickly checking Amazon, I see the distributor’s already run out of stock! Hopefully they’ll have it back in, soon.
A preface for the unfamiliar, potentially aghast reader: the English Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter was, according to all accounts, a gentle and kindhearted man. (Read more about him here, and here.) All the animals Potter used in his work were said to have died of natural causes. Apparently, he never harmed any creature presented in his displays. Rather, he arranged to take carcasses off the hands of a local farm and veterinarian. Additionally, as his reputation grew, the community he lived in began to donate expired critters.
Bride from “Kitten’s Wedding”
Today, many perceive his elaborate anthropomorphic dioramas –featuring various dead animals: kittens, puppies, rabbits, ducks, squirrels, frogs, etc, imitating domestic human life– as grotesque, but bear in mind that at the time they were made, and for many decades following, the creatures in Potter’s vast collection were well-admired as an elegant source of “Victorian whimsy”.
Long after Potter’s death, crowds still came to view his thousands of creatures at the Potter Museum in Bramber, Sussex, England. (Then, later, at Cornwall’s Jamaica Inn.) However, sensibilities change. By the end of the 20th century, fewer and fewer devotees were making the pilgrimage to see Potter’s body of, well, bodies. The vast collection was finally dismantled and sold off in bits and pieces in 2003, to a wide array of buyers, for roughly £500,000.
“Rabbit and Hen”
“It caused outrage when John and Wendy Watts split up and sold the historic dioramas. […] Artist Damien Hirst, a huge fan of Walter Potter’s work, said he would have paid £1 million to keep the collection together.” Now, eight years later, many of the pieces have been reassembled in an exhibition at the Museum of Everything in Primrose Hill, London. Co-curators James Brett and Peter Blake did their best to retrieve as many of the dioramas back on loan as they could. Opening today, the gallery showing includes several of Potter’s most famous pieces: “The Death of Cock Robin,” The House that Jack Built”, and “Happy Families”.
“A Friend In Need”
Unsqueamish Coilhouse readers in the UK/Europe, don’t miss this rare opportunity to see Potter’s fascinating work in person! (It runs through December.) Please be sure to report back. Several more images after the jump.
In 1977, a Boston Globe article revealed an interesting tidbit about Edward Gorey’s television watching habits:
Edward Gorey watched television for the first time this summer, or so he claims, and in the process, the 52-year-old artist became a Star Trek fan. He watched the science-fiction program re-runs twice a day, five times a week, and once on the sixth day, and despite the faithful viewing has yet to see the show’s most famous episode, ‘The Trouble With Tribbles,’ which is about these little furry creatures in outer space, or so he says.
Having discovered this information in 2007, cartoonist/writer Shaenon K. Garrity ran with it, imagining what could’ve been had the beloved macabre illustrator taken his fandom one step further. The full result is after the jump, and can be seen at a larger size here. [via Grey_Area]
