Untitled, by Zdzisław Beksiński. 1980.

A while back, Coilhouse covered the bleak, beautiful art of the late Polish painter, Zdiszlaw Beksiński. Beksiński’s star has been steadily rising over the past decade, thanks largely in part to increased exposure on the internet, and a phenomenal volume in the Masters of Fantastic Art series published by Morpheus Press.

This coming Thursday at 7:30pm, Beksiński’s long time friend and agent, Valdemar Plusa, will be joined at the Egyptian Theater in LA by several heavy-hitting horror directors: Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Stuart Gordon, Mick Garris, and William Malone. They’re gathering together to chat about Beksiński’s life, art and influence on film. After the talk there will be a screening of William Malone’s latest project, Parasomnia, which prominently features Beksiński’s art as CG dreamscapes (honestly, I’m not completely sold on that concept, but who knows…it could be amazing).

All proceeds from the event will go to the American Cinematheque and MOCA’s Art Education Programs for children in Los Angeles. More info here.

Ebay has been a great source of vintage photos and daguerreotypes for years. A haven for those interested in ghostly figures gazing out of time-worm scenes from over a hundred years ago, it’s still got it! This listing features an interesting group portrait – an entire family gathered merrily around a dead girl curled up with her favorite toys. From the description:

This is one of the strangest photos I’ve ever seen. And I can’t believe it’s a post-mortem, what with the smiles on some of the family’s faces. I think it must be a joke of some kind. I really think they’re kind of mocking the post-mortem ritual of showing a deceased child with their beloved toys…but I could be wrong.

I’m not an expert, but I have done my share of googlative research, back when I was still in the stuffing-my-place-to-the-brim-with-vintage-ephemera phase. While this photo is a bit unusual in terms of how many people are gathered around the body, the rest adds up. Children were usually pictured with their toys and family members in post-mortem shots. Really, this photo weirds me out far less than, say, this one:

Imagine being 7 and asked to pose with your dead brother. Guhh.

While I find the Victorians’ acceptance of death as part of life healthy [even if forced by the high death rates of the time], the concept of propping up a corpse to look life-like still gives me the stomach-churnies. However, this doesn’t stop me from continuing to adore post-mortem photos, in all their absurdity! A few links on the topic for you perusal:

• Death in the Victorian Era
• Extensive collection of post-mortem images
• Post-mortem photos at Thanatos [membership required]
• Group Revives Victorian Custom of Post-Mortem Portraiture
• Gild your dead, Harlem-style

Way back in November, loyal Coilhaüsers, we reported on animator Nina Paley’s struggle to get Sita Sings the Blues, her brilliant, beautiful retelling of the Ramayana set to Annette Hanshaw’s immortal jazz standards, released.

Well, that struggle has been won and now, through the public television program Reel 13, you (or anyone in the world with an internet connection) can see the entire movie.

Sita is a full-length film, produced by a single artist working on a shoestring budget, on her home computer and backed almost entirely by the film’s enthusiastic audiences around the world. Paley and her allies have now overcome the considerable hurdles, including archaic copyright laws put in place to keep exactly this sort of truly independent, eclectic art from standing on its own two feet.

Get some popcorn. Click. Watch. Enjoy. This is a bold day: something big just changed.

P.S. –  Also, for y’all television-watching Yankees out there, it will be broadcast in the NY area on Channel Thirteen/WNET at 10:45 pm on Saturday, March 7.

Check out Ron’s awesome O RLY face at 33 seconds!

This incredible clip of Sparks appearing on TOTP back in ’74 speaks for itself. I have very little to add beyond mentioning that the entirety of Kimono My House is desert island playlist worthy, that I know I can’t be the only pervert who wouldn’t mind being the meat in a Mael brothers sandwich, and that I actually met douchebags in Williamsburg, Brooklyn who would chug the beverage SPARKS* ironically while simultaneously listening to the band Sparks and snorting coke off one another’s asses.

I still say we take off and nuke Bedford Avenue from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

*SPARKS the drink has been banned. Sparks the band is still going strong. Good job, cosmos!

Pictures of last Valentine’s Skate Massacre, from the Wumpskate site.

You’ve not truly experienced the goth/industrial scene until you’ve experienced it on roller skates. The lights, the music, the fashion… at five times the speed, with bone-crunching pain! It sounds like the beginning of that surreal dream that always ends with you driving an ice cream truck in a sexy panda outfit, but here in LA, it’s real. And it’s called… WUMPSKATE (by the way, I’d pay about a million dollars to see Wumpscut’s Rudy Ratzinger on skates). Wumpskate happens once a month, and leaves you energized for weeks to come. The event is held at the ghetto-nouveau World on Wheels, where, for 6 bucks, you get admission and a pair of skates. There are two basic rules: dress up but don’t wear sharp spikes (duh), and don’t get so drunk before showing up that you can’t skate. For pussies who are afeared to step on the rink, there are old-skool arcade games, air hockey and rows upon rows of candy machines.

The best thing about this event is the could-not-give-a-shit attitude. Goth clubs are known for drama, but there’s no time for drama when you’re crashing your ass into the wall at what feels like the speed of light! Everyone is just there to have a blast. Every month, Wumpskate puts on a different theme. We’ve seen Pirateskate, Ninjaskate, Cyberskate, Steampunk Skate, Antigoth Skate, Road Warrior Skate… even SARS Skate (!!!). This upcoming Monday, get ready for… Valentine’s Skate Massacre.

Coilhouse readers in LA, break out your LOLLERSKATES and join us for an evening of excitement and adventure this coming Monday night. The current list of attendees is shaping up to be quite the Issue 01 reunion. The event is all ages, from 9 PM – 1 PM. We’d better see you there!

• Wumpskate’s Site
• Wumpskate FAQ
• Map & Driving Directions

“Like a caged beast, born of a caged beast, born of a caged beast, born of a caged beast, born dead and then…” –Samuel Beckett

Stills from Olivier de Sagazan’s 1998 sculptural performance work, Eye and the Chair.

Joe Haskins just alerted me to this astounding piece of performance art by a man named Olivier de Sagazan, titled Return to Close:

Clayface, for real.

Olivier de Sagazan has an appropriately unsettling site with a wide array of stills and clips from his live installations, as well as an image gallery of sublimely horrific sculptures. There doesn’t seem to be much web content on him written in native English. If any of our French (or is it Belgian?) speaking readers have information about this fascinating fellow available, it’d be wonderful to discover more about the man and his singularly beastly, loamy work!

If you’ve always wanted to recreate this creepy deleted scene from Alien, here comes your chance! Latex blog 3XL reports that London-based company d.vote has created an inflatable bondage ball shaped like the terrifying eggs from the seminal space horror film. At a price of £950.00, the Alien Egg promises to deliver “the ultimate sensory deprivation experience.” Check out the jazzy animated gif and description from the manufacturer’s site:

The Alien Egg is made from two ‘skins’ of rubber. The outer layer is made of thick 0.8 mm rubber whilst the inner layer is made of medium 0.5 mm rubber. Each skin can be made in different colour to give the Egg the maximum visual effect. It has a British Respiratory Gas Mask inside which has a double length corrugated tube going to the outside for breathing

You enter the Alien Egg and put on the respiratory mask which connects to the exterior through a tube. The four full length zips quickly close the Alien Egg holding your entire body inside its rubber walls. When inflated, the Alien Egg restricts all movements from within and isolate you perfectly inside its shell.

My favorite selling point: “In d.vote’s Alien Egg… No one can hear you scream!” Well, if you’re going to get yourself one of these happy places, why not go all the way and transform yourself into a complete rubber monster? For another €1037.50, you can get the heat-sensitive, color-changing Jelly Fish Corset with “inflatable hip lips” that’s pictured above right, and then the alien experience (and possibly, your whole life) will be complete. Disclosure: for all my poking fun at latex price tags in this post, I should note that a few years ago I had the pleasure of photographing the exact corset pictured above, and I can say that to the discerning collector/fetishist, it’s worth every penny. I see it more as a sculpture than a garment, and hope to see Pressure creator Siba Kladic produce more pieces, though she’s been quiet on the web for years. Like Kariwanz, Siba’s work transcends the raunch of run-of-the-mill rubberwear and enters a far more sublime, uncharted sex/fashion landscape. For more tentacular creations, visit her site, Pressure Corsets.

Photo by TruShu on Flickr: “With smiles like that they must be … stoned. Bada-bum!

Aww, look at those toofs. I kinda wish these three guys would start bobbing up and down and singing me a happy tune. I wish I could have these three on my bedside, ready to talk when I really need some guidance. They look like they’d give really, really good advice, don’t they? These were crafted by 51-year-old Hirotoshi Ito. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Ito’s bio at the the Keiko Gallery site:

After graduating from the distinguished Tokyo National University of Fine Arts, Mr. Ito was destined to take over his father’s masonry business in his hometown of Matsumoto City in Nagano Prefecture. He works out of his studio at home, creating his sculptures, while attending his family business.

Hirotoshi Ito continues to find new and original ways to create sculptures that people would touch and feel the unexpected softness and the warmth of them. He would be honored if his work would add laughs and smiles to people who come in contact with them.

What I love about these sculptures is the idea of a secret life. Since I was old enough to understand adventure stories (shout-out to Mio, my Mio), I was enchanted with the idea that the right string of words could make a door appear when there wasn’t one before, that every object (the more mundane, the better) had an alternate purpose, revealed only to those who could see the world in a different way. It’s rare to find something on the net that reaches me on such a tactile level, but I can almost smell the roasted coffee beans, mixed in with the scent of cold moss and stones. It makes me wish, as I believed with all my heart was possible as a child, that my hands could know the secret to unlocking any object they touched.

• Hirotoshi Ito’s Official Site
• Hirotoshi Ito’s Blog (in Japanese)
• Hirotoshi Ito on Flickr
• Hirotoshi Page at Keiko Gallery (read this lovely writeup of Ito’s work by William Thrasher)

While one might think LA is a constantly-bumping party, culture and art zone, this isn’t always true. There are dry spells, unless you’re into the Sunset Strippin’, bar-hopping scene. This weekend, however, promises to be rather eventful. At 8 pm on Friday, The Machine Project [got my membership card in the mail last night!] has a lecture by Mark Allen on the topic of How Molecules Move Electrons – hardcore! And Saturday there is an art walk in Chinatown and, and, AND! A screening of Bill Morrison‘s short films at the at the Silent Movie Theater. You might remember this post by Mer showcasing Bill’s heart-stoppingly beautiful film, Light is Calling.

Still from Light Is Calling

The forgotten becomes unforgettable in the exquisite 35mm shorts of justly celebrated filmmaker Bill Morrison, known for his groundbreaking feature Decasia. Resisting the lures of kitsch, nostalgia and winking sarcasm, Morrison’s found footage films could be described as seances or invocations, playing on the idea of the motion picture as a kind of spiritual lost-and-found. Works like Light is Calling and The Mesmerist, which draw from damaged nitrate prints, let time perform its own commentary on the image. The Highwater Trilogy, a response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, looks at the representation of disaster through beautifully scarred archival clips. In these hauntological shadowplays, figures vanish into the flood of history, only to reemerge as ghostly apparitions and unreal visions. Also on the program are The Film Of Her and Outerborough.

The Silent Movie Theater can be found at 611 N Fairfax Avenue, LA. The tickets are $10 and the magic starts at 7:30.

Still from Decasia

Orlando (5”x5”x4”). Antique brass findings and hardware, leather, velvet, wood, tacks, cast/painted plastic, glass eyes.

Damn you, Hollyweirdos! You get to have all the Joslin fun. *shakes fist* As I write this, the astounding Madame Jessica J. (featured extensively in Coilhouse Issue 01) is over at the Billy Shire Gallery prepping a cavalcade of her Wunderkammer critters for the show’s opening reception tomorrow (Saturday).

Lambert & Salvia (8″x10″x22″) Antique hardware and findings, bone, brass, beads, leather, velvet, trim, coat hook, model cannon, glass eyes.

Trying to picture the Joslin lovebirds mounting a show is always a bit dangerous for me, prompting ardent fantasies of Jessica and Jared donning drum major uniforms and marching their whimsies down the street and through the door in step to a demented chiptune rendition of “76 Trombones” before shooing various characters onto pedestals, canvases and placard hooks. (There’s usually some whip-and-chair action in there as well, but… uh… I digress.)

Anyhoo. Jessica’s been working on these “Clockwork Circus” beasties for months now. They’re as winsomely exquisite as anything she’s crafted yet. If you’re in the area, go get acquainted.

Aster (27”x19.5”x10”) Antique brass findings and hardware, bone, leather, antique vestment trim, velvet, brass bullet casings, chain, silver, snakeskin, glass eyes.

Click below to view a couple more of Jessica Joslin’s “Clockwork” creatures.

[EDIT] Oh! One more thing! I’m sure Jessica wouldn’t mind us mentioning this here… Heads up, Phillyfreaks! If you’re not already all swoony and spent from Laura Kicey’s reception (or even if you are) and you’re feeling piney for something to do tonight (Friday), you probably shouldn’t miss the Mutter Museum “Disco Inferno Dance Party” for ANYTHING IN THE WORLD. What better way to celebrate the museum’s 150th anniversary than some inspired booty-shaking amidst the bones and tumors? Go, go, go!