Remember the Coilhouse ode to ruffs? And the slightly shorter ode to digital artist/photographer Natalie Shau? Well, here we have two great tastes that taste great together. I could easily see this image, titled Dominion, on the cover of Elegy. I love the colors, the wallpaper, the texture of the ruff. The waist is maybe a bit too Ralph Lauren-ish – if you’re going to make it that small, I feel like it should look obviously cinched, like Mr. Pearl – but I love everything else about it. Go Natalie! For more new work, check out her site.
Two photos from the series “Marcell” by Polish photographer Roksana Mical. I love this set, seemingly a chronicle of a plague doctor’s leisurely stroll through the woods or perhaps, more mysteriously, a record of some strange, elusive bird-like creature as it stalks through the desolate countryside. Mical’s photo’s all have a wonderful grain to them that helps to ground the images in reality which, in this case, only serves to accentuate the outlandishness of the subject.
On a purely philosophical level I have never been down with the title of “Better Than Coffee”, for coffee holds a wondrous and special place in my heart; and anything that might replace coffee as a superior means of jolting me into stubborn wakefulness strikes me as decidedly unpleasant like a cattle prod to the groin, or opening your eyes to a dozen clowns surrounding your bed, leaning over to peer down at you, or looking in the mirror and discovering that sometime, while you slept, you had turned into Ann Coulter. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We are here, so to speak, so we should get this show on the road. Your usual host has come down with gnomes, which is unsurprising considering her current locale. We all warned her that, unlike chicken pox, you don’t get gnomes once and that’s it. Your body develops no tolerance to gnomes. Poor girl didn’t listen.
5 Second Films is a brilliant idea that harks back to the likes of Earnest Hemingway and his famous, six word story “For Sale: Baby Shoes – never used.” born from a society whose attention span has diminished to almost nothing. At a time of the day where my ability to concentrate is on par with my Jack Russell Terrier this sort of delivery is ideal and functions, in a way, to mirror my own creative process, in which I will oftentimes write short, nonsensical stories of no more than a sentence or two for random photographs I find on the internet in order to jump start my brain.
There are a few clunkers here, to be sure, but the ones that work, like “Never Switch a Switcher” are a testament to both brevity, and the hammy overacting that only helps to carry the story. Check out a few more after the jump.
The Compagnie Philippe Genty is widely regarded to be one of the most accomplished and gutsy performing arts troupes currently working on the world stage. Their elaborate productions defy easy categorization, using a mixture of puppetry, mime and dance in conjunction with elaborate costuming and props. The narratives and meanings behind their productions are even more difficult to nail down; usually there’s no coherent, linear plot. Surreal, sometimes nightmarish vignettes play out like Freudian wet dreams:
Translating roughly from the French on their website, Philippe Gentry calls their story-building process one of free association.”The company is intent on exploring a visual language that reveals and plays upon conflicting aspects of human nature. When a scene takes place in the subconscious, following neither linear narrative nor the psychology of traditional characters, there are no hard and fast laws of causality. Instead, the performances resonate with our inner landscapes, provoking the emergence of these unspoken and insane hopes, these fears, these shames and desires… these shared, unlimited spaces.”
All that deep and somber explication aside, sometimes the troupe’s output is just downright hilarious:
Director Andrzej Zulawski’s 1981 arthouse horror film, Possession, is a fail-safe litmus test. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you’ll drop this movie’s name in casual conversation only to be met with a sunny, uncomprehending stare, or “oh, you mean that Gwyneth Paltrow movie?” Far fewer and further between will be those times when you watch a slow-dawning, complex expression of kinship and mental anguish creep over a person’s face: “oh my god, the subway scene,” they’ll murmur, or “that poor ballerina…” or “remember the squid baby?”
While Zulawski’s vision of hysterical woman-as-monster isn’t quite on par with [edit: or rather, I should clarify, isn’t quite as coherent as] those put forward by Cronenberg, Polanski, or Lynch, some of the scenes are absolutely mind-blowing. This is an experimental film where a young woman’s intense anxiety and hormonal imbalance causes her –literally– to give birth to a Lovecraftian lover (designed by the dude who crafted E.T. ), with dire consequences. Demonizing like that just doesn’t happen every day! (Apparently, the film was inspired by Zulawski’s recent divorce. Go fig.)
Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill
In particular, spooky boho art school chicks really seem to bond over Possession. It’s like our Thelma & Louise. I’m pretty sure our fascination has to something to do with all of the unrestrained freakouts, blood, and tentacle sex. There’s just something strangely comforting about watching a cool, porcelain beauty break through the fourth wall and then break down, howling, in a puddle of bodily excretions. It’s like, no matter how “psycho” I get when I’m “ragging out”, I know I haven’t hit rock bottom.
Rock bottom is Isabelle Adjani in that subway tunnel in Possession.
“It was a terrible, indescribable thing… a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light.” – H. P. Lovecraft
Many thanks to Paul Komoda, ever the friend of Coilhouse, for pointing out the eerie similarities between this 1952 advertisement for vegetable-flavored salad Jell-O, spotted in a SocImages post discussing “how tastes are shaped by history” (see also: “The Social Construction of Prunes“), and this 1936 cover of Astounding Stories for Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness.”
When I look at Ewelina Ferruso‘s art, one thing pops into my mind: “this is what lowbrow art is supposed to look like”. Like Nadya, I’ve grown a little weary of the pre-teens in distress and bloody bears barraging the genre over the past few years; my brain simply doesn’t respond to spooky imagery as it once did. Ewelina stands apart because she manages to capture the very essence of childhood’s dreamy, happy haze and fears alike without dipping into that same old collective symbol pool. And let’s not forget her keen technical skill – I’ve seen a couple of these pieces in person and have to say that hers is some of the most impressive workmanship I’ve encountered this year. What I especially dig about Ewelina’s painting style is the way she integrates textures with smooth gradients – each shiny little blob carefully considered and attended to, each stroke blended to perfection.
Above, likely my favorite of Ewelina’s pieces. When I look at this I see yellow flowers pictured from below, as they would look to a child lying in a sunny meadow on a warm summer afternoon. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the enchanted wonderment most of us don’t indulge in nearly enough.
Below, Ewelina describes her evolution and the direction of her new work to Coilhouse.
EF: “My intention is to chronicle a personal spiritual journey. We are the storytellers, fable fibbers, truth seekers, elaborators of dreams and embracers of muses and magical things that others are consciously or unconsciously drawn towards. As artists, we are the magnets of beauty. We bring unlikely particles together in orgasmic connections. Thus, it is in a sense, fireworks in the making as I see it.
I work on a deep inner plane coming from a place of an accumulation of experiences, meditations, mid-night visions, psychic revelations, appreciation of the unseen and a profound passion to evolve. The earlier pieces were centered in childhood and express a certain innocence in play and discovery. I allow myself to be immersed in mystery and often find that the work reveals to me what the mystery is in due time. And so, I expand and demand more mysterious phenomena. The current revelation of work is unraveling itself now as a thorough digging within the denied realms of this soul. I pose the question, ‘How can one fully share their lightness, if one does not embark on a quest to know their darkness?’ It is within this yin and yang that a true woman unfolds. There will be a shedding of old skin and an unlocking of doors.”
Caption: “The Germans weren’t very afraid of the mechanical bears.”
There’s a great column at Russia! magazine titled Live From LJ. Every week, intrepid blogger Marina Galperina wades through the radioactive cesspool of the Russian blogosphere (which “conveniently, if bafflingly, revolves around LJ.”) This week, Marina discovers this incredible gem:
Ru-Lj community fail_art apologizes for their legacy of humorous-to-obscene scribbles left in textbooks by former students (or possibly, modern day forgeries), adding some “context” to the dull old pastorial and wartime pictures with ridiculous nudity, blood, peasants with nun-chucks and various insults to the Russian army. Response: “My eyes and stomach hurt.” Ditto. [Link, NSWF]
A selection of hand-picked personal favorites, after the jump!
It’s been a long, long day. When you haven’t been in meetings you’ve been at your desk alt-tabbing between solitaire and Excel, rearranging your budget so that you’ll be able to afford those sweet zebra-print seat covers you saw on Jalopnik the other day. Well, just stop it. You’ll never be able to afford them and Jalopnik was being ironic anyway. Also, anyone can win at solitaire if they pull one card at a time. Yeesh, have some self-respect. Close Excel and prepare for Friday filmage.
Today: Jesus Camp, a documentary about the now defunct “Kids On Fire School of Ministry”, a Pentecostal summer camp in North Dakota. It follows three children who attended the camp in 2005 where they are taught how to become part of God’s army. A lighthearted tale of willful ignorance and homeschooling, this is the film to show your atheist friends if you wish to see them become apoplectic and jittery with spittle-flecked rage. Or to pass the time while avoiding the siren call of compulsive spending.
Seriously, zebra-print isn’t going to make that ’89 Camry any cooler.
Compulsively watchable, this simple video will give you a happy-sad feeling. It features my favorite British actor, Mark Heap. Heap got his start as a street-performing juggler, and many will recognize him from his roles in the shows Spaced (where he played Brian), Jam (where he played characters so demented, there’s a Coilhouse Jam appreciation post all of its own), Spine Chillers (as a gothic landlord with a dark secret), Big Train, Green Wing, Brass Eye and many others. Heap is one of the greats of British surrealist comedy, co-writing many of his sketches and instilling his most memorable characters with a brilliant lunacy that seems to emanate from a very genuine place.
The music video above is not that new, it goes by very fast, and always puts me in a good, though vaguely wistful, sort of mood. A brief description of what you’re about to see, by music reviewer Ryan Dombal:
The entirety of the day-in-the-life short focuses on Heap’s head as he falls down bus stairs, see-saws with his toddler daughter, and finally sinks into a soothing bath. Ostensibly wearing a camera harnessed to his person (the same magnetizing technique recently employed to great effect by Pi director Darren Aronofsky), the whole thing is a fascinating face study with the middle-aged thespian’s worn creases and bluish bruises giving the camera gobs to work with. Heap manages to convey the heartbreak of a divorced dad, the workman’s daily grind, and, lastly, the song’s titular relieved expression with startling believability, making his nameless centerpiece a rare music video character worth caring about.
Perhaps this week more than others, seeing the red double-decker buses and London streetcorners in the background of the video adds to the mild nostalgia induced by this clip. See, everyone’s been asking me “Hey, Nadya! How’s London?” In a nutshell, the move fell through. To make a long story short: one day after I arrived to the UK, finally completing the relocation that had been carefully planned for more than a year, our London office was shut down (for economic reasons). I was forced to return the US. Luckily, my company was generous enough to offer a relocation package to any US city where we still had an office. I chose San Francisco. I’m excited. No use in crying over spilled milk, right? London will always be there, and one day I’ll return. In the meantime: Yay Area, here I come!
But back to the amazing Mark Heap. Enjoy the video! I’ve posted some more theatrical, fun and deranged moments from various points in Heap’s acting career after the jump.
