Passions ignite at The Crucible foundry in Oakland, CA.
Down by the West Oakland Bart station, often late into the night, one may observe mysterious flickering lights accompanied by loud explosions. If it ain’t gunshots, you can be sure some welder, sculptor or pyrotechnics whiz at the Crucible foundry is burning the midnight oil.
Founded by Michael Sturtz in 1999, this nonprofit educational hub of fine and industrial arts has attracted a highly motivated group of artists, artisans and students from all over the country. “From cast iron to neon, and from large-scale public art to the most precise kinetic sculpture, The Crucible is fast becoming the best-equipped public industry & arts education facility on the West Coast.”
Ballet star Tina Bohnstedt cruises in a vintage Pontiac (Firebird, natch).
Photo by Gary Wilson
Last year, audiences were astounded by the collective’s incendiary production of Romeo and Juliet. Their second annual “benefit fire ballet”, a decidedly ballsy interpretation Stravinsky’s Firebird, opens tonight:
[A] unique fusion of classical ballet, aerialists, acrobats, fire performers, break dancers…paired with fire and industrial arts. It’s definitely ballet with an industrial edge provided by Crucible artisans, a cameo appearance by a Pontiac Firebird, and a ballerina’s graceful pas-de-deux with a motorcycle stunt rider.
The production’s running every night through the 12th, with additional shows on the 16th, 17th and 19th. Proceeds from ticket sales will go directly towards supporting the Crucible school. All shows are expected to sell out, so if you’re thinking of going (and I know folks as far away as San Diego and Portland are making the trip) get your tickets in advance.
Each furby has 4 controls: mute, crash, loop and reset. The handle turns 8 cams which operate corresponding microswitches to create interesting rhythmic patterns. Part of the ‘setting up’ section at the beginning has been fast forwarded. Please commission me to make lots more of these machines!
Hang in there ’til the furbies gets revved up. It’s actually rather beautiful.
Thanks for the heads up, Jhayne! (If you haven’t been over to Whitechapel’s filthy and absurd “Things That Should Not Exist” thread, go now. Bring wet naps.)
Left: the original Lil Soap by Jess Fink. Right: the Hot Topic rip-off.
Jess Fink, troche an illustrator and creator of dirty comics published by Fantagraphics, created the shirt design on the left, dubbed Lil Soap, and sold it through her Threadless.com shop. Hot Topic distributed the shirt on the right soon after. Jess wrote to the company that made the eerily-similar shirt for Hot Topic, and the presidents of the company (which is named New Breed Girl) responded with the following:
“It is my poiicy (sic) to encourage freelancers to use the free Getty photo images as reference points & we also use sketches from the Japanese free clip art books, which have inanimate objects with cute faces & legs etc. which are also very similar to the soap.”
Hmmm. Jess plans to take up the matter in court. In the meantime, friends have banded together to show their support by making parody images which include some hot soap-on-soap slash. It was way too early in the morning for me to behold this Harry Potter image (NWS?).
Friends of Jess have shown their solidarity by making images such as this.
“The only real depression is a depression of individual ingenuity.” -George Daynor
The exploits of George Daynor read like the synopsis of a Coen Brothers flick. As the story goes, Daynor was a former gold prospector who’d lost his fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Hitchhiking through Alaska, he was visited by an angel who told him to make his way to New Jersey without further delay. Divine providence had dictated that Daynor was to wait out the Great Depression there, building a castle with his bare hands.
Daynor had only four dollars in his pocket when he arrived in Vineland, NJ. He used the money to buy three swampy acres of land that had once been a car junkyard. For years he slept in an abandoned car on the mosquito-infested property, living off a steady diet of frogs, fish and squirrels while he built his elaborate eighteen-spired, pastel-hued Palace of Depression out of auto parts and mud. His primary objective? To encourage his downtrodden countrymen to hold onto their hope and stay resourceful, no matter what. Daynor opened his homemade castle to the public on Christmas Day, 1932, free of charge (he started charging an entrance fee after someone made fun of his beard), and proved an enthusiastic, albeit eccentric tour guide.
“The Palace Depression stands as a proof that education by thought can lift all the depressed peoples out of any depression, calamity or catastrophe; if mankind would use it. The proof stands before you my friends. Seeing is believing.”
Daynor held back his wild red hair with bobby pins, wore lipstick and rouge, and enjoyed dressing alternately as a prospector or a Victorian dandy. Legend has it he kept his common-law wife, Florence Daynor, locked up in one of the Palace’s subterranean chambers during visiting hours. He offered his “living brain” to the Smithsonian for experiments (they declined). His Palace of Depression, a.k.a The Strangest House In the World, quickly became a popular tourist destination for folks on their way to Atlantic City.
Hooo boy. I’ve been sitting on my hands for weeks, not knowing if/when I’d be allowed to say anything, but I just got the go-ahead from Nils. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD.
“Look out, you’re dead like us. Dead like candy.”
photo by Katherine Copenhaver
For really and truly. The four core members of one of the most unclassifiable, unbelievable underground bands of the 80s/90s met up in Oakland late last month to get reacquainted and talk shop. They’re currently in the studio recording the final tracks needed to complete an album left unfinished since 1998, and they have tentative plans to do some live reunion shows as well. A bit of background on the band from the Idiot Flesh wiki entry:
Known to tour the US in a converted city bus with [member] Rathbun as the driver/mechanic, with the windshield destination banner of “HELL.” Besides their “rock against rock” attitude, they were also known to defy classification with marching band routines, performing puppet shows, and playing household items as instruments (in tune).
“Idiot Song” video directed by Annmarie Piette
If you’re already a rabid cult follower, chances are you are doing an exuberant wiggle dance right now. If you’ve never heard of Idiot Flesh, try to place their sound, guerilla theater tactics and spookylicious attire in the context of the 80s and early 90s, before Tim Burton’s aesthetic became quite so zeitgeisty. While they often draw comparisons to Mr Bungle (and there’s merit in that, seeing as both groups formed in 1985, wore obfuscating costumes and displayed frenetic, mathrock/metal/funk shredder chops), Oingo Boingo, Crash Worship and other unhinged California weirdos from that time period, Idiot Flesh and their roving pack of Filthy Rotten Excuse Chickens inhabited a world all their own. Their influences range from the Residents and Zappa, to SWANS, the Art Bears and Henry Cow, to T.S. Eliot and John Kane. The band’s live act –which places emphasis on audience participation and non sequitur antics– is the stuff that Dadaist wet dreams are made of.
In Paige’s kitchen, outmoded cutlery and vintage postcards abound.
Oh, I love trash!
Anything dirty or dingy or dusty!
Anything ragged or rotten or rusty!
Yes, I love TRASH!
–Oscar the Grouch
Artist, dancer, muse o’ Brooklyn, Paige Stevenson has lived in her sprawling Williamsburg loft for almost twenty years. Every last nook and cranny is filled with artfully displayed found objects. Nicknamed the Hip Joint (after Paige yoinked that specific prosthetic human body part from an abandoned asylum hospital) once upon a time [EDIT 05/11: and now called The House of Collection] the place is legendary; sort of an unofficial Town Hall for the last stubborn gasp of New York’s bohemian art collective. Paige has hosted hundreds of performances, benefits, discoteques, tea parties, rehearsals, photo sessions and film shoots there.
Even after seven years of fighting litigation to try and kick her out of the rent-controlled space, Paige’s enthusiasm for collecting and sharing this vast array of discarded treasures remains boundless. “I guess my relationship to trash is one of aesthetic appreciation on a daily basis, because one could define the decoration of my house as Trash Decoration. It’s something that I live with every day, and enjoy, and actually love.” In this recent interview for The Garbage Collection, Paige discusses site specific pieces she’s rescued from the rubbish heap:
“The collection has accrued over the years from scavenging unloved objects. It seemed very sad to me that these things, because they were no longer used, had become garbage, landfill, trash… It’s my way of holding on to a little bit of the past.”
Don’t call them stylists – the term is “hair entertainers.” Today a hair show with a circuit of about 10 major American cities, Hair Wars began in 1991, and originates from nightclub events put on by one DJ Hump the Grinder. Today the event features some of the most multi-layered, hyper-detailed hairstyles I’ve ever seen. From haute-couture hair architecture to silly, surreal takes on everyday objects, images from this event convey artistry, humor and kitsch, all of which constantly flow into one another.
Photographer David Yellen has created a series of portraits of the hair show participants, which he published this past fall. Perhaps equally as fascinating as the hairstyles are the people wearing them. There are no fashion models here, just ordinary people having fun. They are young and old, male and female; many project the air of having been through a lot in their lifetime. There are little mysteries in each picture, such as in the image above, where the model has a visible scar on her neck. How did that happen? She could’ve hidden it with a scarf or a neckpiece (or with hair!) – but she didn’t, and the image is more powerful for it.
A good selection of images form this series can be seen on his site, and a further selection can be seen on Radar Online.
I never thought I’d ever see my two favorite music scenes, riot grrrl and industrial, intersect more than than when I saw Bonfire Madigan open for Laibach in 2004. There she was, pink hair in pigtails and stripey socks and her screeching cello, with ominous black banners of gear-contained NSK crosses hanging on either side. But that very special industrial-meets-riot-grrrl moment was matched (if not surpassed) when I received a link from a group called Experiment Haywire this morning:
Does that sound like Kathleen Hanna’s long-lost EBM project or what? It’s not polished, but neither was riot grrrl, and that’s exactly what made it charming. The musician behind Experiment Haywire, Rachel, has also started a record label called machineKUNT. While I’m not crazy about the name (I just hate that spelling! I hate it!), the idea is great. Their first release, a compilation called “Extreme Women from the Dark Future,” features various female EBM musicians. It’s a nice contrast the dumb, misogynistic “Shut Up and Swallow” bullshit of bands like Combichrist.
The idea of women in industrial music isn’t new; they were there from the very beginning. Most female EBM musicians who came before, such as Shikhee from Android Lust, deliberately made their gender a non-issue in interviews. That was a powerful and positive statement of a different sort, but it’s interesting to see someone, perhaps for the first time, make gender the primary focus of their industrial/EBM project.
And just because I love it, since we’re on the topic of riot grrrl, here are Jem and the Holograms performing Le Tigre’s Deceptacon:
Thanks to everyone for your responses to the Mix Tape Post. We’ve received some incredible submissions of mix tapes for the print magazine so far – keep them coming! Here’s a great example of what we’re looking for: The Yellow Tape, cialis sale sent by Mishel Cobb. During her first year of college, Michel had a long-distance relationship with an art student from Texas; they sent each other letters, packages and mix tapes by mail. “He’d make them in colours. Each tape had a theme based on that colour, and the music on it suited the colour – at least, in his mind. Even the tape itself would be painted.” Here is The Yellow Tape from this series.
For publication in the magazine, send us scans of tapes with interesting themes, interesting artwork or a story to tell. The deadline for having your tapes in the print magazine is January 20th. The email address to send submissions to is [email protected].
“Wait, he didn’t burn you a CD, he made you a tape? Aww, that is so romantic!” – Lee, Tarantino’s Death Proof
I have nothing left of some people other than a little cassette. This may not seem like much, but for anyone who’s ever engaged in the mating ritual of mixtape-swapping, it’s possible to extrapolate someone’s entire personality out of the mix that they made you. Song pacing and order convey temperament, a sense of humor; tape artwork gives hints about sloppiness/neatness/artistic ability, and so on.
Mix tapes used to be my primary means of flirting; many of my relationships can be measured by the miles of magnetic tape that accumulated between us. There were sad tapes and happy pop tapes; tapes with themes like Seven Deadly Sins; mixes intended to indoctrinate, communicate and seduce.
It was always so ritualized. As you recorded, mulling over every song, doodling around your track list, maybe even collaging together some cover art, you imagined your intended recipient taking the music in for the first time. Would they feel what you had felt when you first heard that song? Would they feel jarred by a certain song combination? The final product involved sound, sight and touch (and smell and taste, if you were really creative!). A gift that was half narcissism and half generosity, it always begged for a response.
Did you make mix tapes too? Did someone give you a tape that changed you? Slap it on the scanner, scan every piece, and send it to us. Or make a brand-new tape, for other Coilhouse readers. But don’t just send a playlist, really make it! Think up a new theme (here’s some inspiration), decorate the the tape/stickers/box/track list, scan the whole thing and submit the images. The most creative mix tape art will be published in Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 1! You don’t actually have to mail a tape, but I will seek out everything on your mix and listen, in the exact order that you intended.
Top Image: “Don’t Take My Word For It Mix” by Jonathan Marx from the band Lambchop. Published Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture by Thurston Moore.
