Ah, the 1800s were a simpler time. Before that whole Civil War mess, America was in the throes of the Second Great Awakening, with the Northeast so thoroughly scorched by religious fervor that a swath of New York was dubbed “the Burned-over district.”
Amidst this, Spiritualism was all the rage, too, so it didn’t initially attract much notice when John Murray Spear, a middle-aged Universalist pastor in Massachusetts, claimed to be receiving messages from dead men. Sure, it was somewhat strange that instead of talking to a deceased relative for comfort, he claimed that a “Band of Electricizers” made up of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others, had chosen him to bring a messiah into the world. But, in a twist fitting a new era, this savior was a machine, one that would, Spear relayed, “revolutionize the world and raise mankind to an exalted level of spiritual development.”
Those who already knew anything of the man might have figured he had simply snapped. Spear’s outspoken views on abolition and women’s rights, among other topics, led a number of churches to drive him out, and, in 1844, after a particularly vigorous denunciation of slavery, he was beaten and left for dead in Maine.
A picture of Spear, and the title page of a tome of the Electricizers’ revelations.
He recovered, and, in 1851, with the Electricizers’ plans dancing in his head, quit the ministry. Two years later, he began his work on the machine, with a result stranger than fiction.
An admission of hypocrisy: Up close and personal, fungi kind of gross me out but put them in a painting and I’m all over them. I know, it makes no sense. It may be that, in a painting, they still portray a a sense of decay and fluidity without the moist, musky, oozing mucilage found in reality. Everything in a painting is blessedly dry, I suppose is what I’m saying. And while I realize that the appearance of a viscous sheen can be recreated I also know that if I were to touch it I would not draw back a hand coated in a vile mucus.
Enter these paintings by Dhear One, portraits of creatures on alien worlds, enveloped by otherworldly fungi, turning everything into a landscape — stalks and tendrils reaching up into the air seemingly in defiance of gravity, if there is any present. They are snapshots of worlds overrun. This is what happens when nature takes back the Fantastic Planet.
Here’s a widely unknown, but interesting example of intercultural influence exchange: Hans Bellmer can be easily called the godfather of Japan’s thriving puppet scene. In fact, the majority of currently active Japanese doll designers graduated from the famous Ecole de Simon. Its founder, Yotsuya Simon, was the originator of the now thriving dollmaking scene.
In 1965, a young artist nicknamed Simon (because of his love for jazz, especially Nina Simone) learned about surrealism and avant-garde theater, which would influence him for the rest of his life. Soon after, he became a member of Jokyo Gekijo (Situation Theatre), which was considered one of the most progressive art movements in Japan at that time. Simultaneously, fascinated by Bellmer, Simon began to create his own ball-jointed dolls.
His most famous works – the Narcissisme and Pygmalionisme series – appear to be studies on the ambiguities of the human body. The life-like, waifish, pale bodies, surgically opened and exposed to the spectator’s eye, bear a mark of complete sadness, leaving the observer with a feeling of acute unease. One might raise the subject of ambivalent eroticism here: it’s remarkable that one of Yotsuya’s past exhibitions was named Dolls of Innocence.
Striking, innovative photography is, apart from chocolate and comics, Belgium’s national treasure. Even the Royal Family themselves once commissioned Dirk Braeckman – an expert in depicting murky, disturbing interiors and their mostly undressed inhabitants – to take a series of portraits with a goth feeling. How appropriate for a country which gave us Les Disques Du Crépuscule and Front 242.
Another sensational creator of wondrous Belgian photograph is Koen Demuynck, who reveals very little about himself, letting the pictures express his uncanny imagination. His daring, surrealist approach to commercial photography quickly made Demuynck every art director’s dream associate and one of the busiest advertising photographers of today.
The heavily manipulated, weird landscapes and the most unbelievable juxtapositions make one curious to take a look inside his mind. Seeing gnomes constantly tripping on acid there wouldn’t be a surprise at all. Cats watering plants? Check. The secret of Stonehenge revealed? Check. A dog sorry for peeing on your house’s wall (how cute!)? Check.
On an altered yet recognizable version of our neighbouring planet, we find a world populated solely with two women. We do not learn their names nor how and when they came to Mars, but we observe their wanderings in a desolate landscape which they attempt make navigable and habitable with an amalgam of high-tech components retrofitted to found artifacts and monuments that appear to be the remnants of a long-gone civilization. The remains of massive stone listening devices are littered about the landscape, leading us to wonder: is this a colony that has collapsed and lost touch with earth? How did its occupants become stranded? Or are these the nocturnal imaginings of two post-apocalyptic survivors?
The book can be viewed and purchased on Blurb. The artists write on Tumblr, “the ideal book we designed for the series, 12”x12” hardcover, 80 pages, available now through blurb online only, until a publisher daring enough picks it up. A full preview of it is on the website.” $108 may seem somewhat pricey, but that’s actually because Blurb is expensive for people to use, not because they’re trying to make a huge profit. If a real publisher picked up this book, it would be more affordable. Fingers crossed.
Described as “a David Lynchian fever dream on Beatrix Potter terrain”, Christiane Cegavske’s exquisitely-crafted stop motion tale Blood Tea and Red String is a macabre delight and a labor of love that was 13 years in the making. The film, a dialogue-free, avant garde “fairy tale for adults” follows two groups of anthropomorphic creatures in fancy costumes -the aristocratic White Mice and the rustic Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak – and the “struggle over the doll of their heart’s desire.” This struggle, notes one critic, is so fascinating because the actions and emotions of these bizarre creatures “so uncannily resemble warts-and-all human behavior”. We find a “disturbing comfort” in these unconventional characters, and we see ourselves in this magic world that Cegavske creates.
This beguiling, nightmarish, deceptively whimsical world extends far beyond the phantasmagoric fable that is Blood Tea and Red String. Cegavske, also responsible for the animation in Asia Argento’s The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, began dabbling in film making and animation at an early age (5th grade!) with an oddly satisfying-sounding claymation short about trick-or-treaters whose candy is stolen. Not only is she an extraordinary film maker, but a talented artist in several mediums and a self professed “Creator of Many Things” with an Etsy shop full of delightful oddities as well.
See below the cut for our recent tête-à-tête with Christiane in which we parley on the subjects of muses and myths, future dreamscapes, and fancy edibles.
Polish designer Katarzyna Konieczka first made an appearance on Coilhouse this past July, but these newer photos of her medical fashion are too wonderfully twisted not to share. Above is a new image of her previously-featured Elephant Man-inspired ensemble, shot by Maciej Boryna. After the jump, two dreamlike masks, photographed by Marcin Twardowski. Definitely one to watch.
The first, seven episode season of Showtime’s Short Stories features an eclectic mix of mostly animated shorts, but these two may be my favorites and they could not be more different. “Wisdom Teeth” is another brilliant piece of unnerving nonsense from Rejected animator Don Hertzfeldt. It’s a cautionary tale about stitches and the pratfalls of trying to remove them too early. On the other end of the animated spectrum is PES’s ridiculously beautiful and serene “Deep” which details a deep sea community of fish made from compasses, pliers, wrenches, and trumpets. This one really blew me away with both its imaginative use of tools, flawless animation, and haunting atmosphere. Simply lovely. Be sure to check out the other five shorts.
Enter the Void is Gaspar Noé ‘s third feature film. Enter the Void is Tokyo on LSD, DMT and MDMA. Enter the Void will get you high.
It’s also your mom.
All of these things are true. It’s fairly taxing to neatly wrap up and present a film as ambitious, sprawling and simultaneously simple as Enter the Void. At its most basic, the film has us following the adventures and revelations of a freshly-disembodied soul in Shinjuku via a jaw-dropping array of techniques and effects, including first-person POV, woosh-through-walls-and-above-Tokyo overhead shots, 3D imaging and massive amounts of other enhancements. At its most potent, Enter the Void‘s combination of a simple plot & predominantly amateur actors with flawless use of exceptionally difficult techniques creates a viewer experience so unique and powerful, it’s bound to spawn a cinematic movement. It better. Because this bombastic, gorgeous spectacle is also a vehicle that plugs you in and allows you to [almost subconsciously] impart your own meaning over a minimal framework of ideas through the use of repetition and lulls in the narrative.
Of course, this also explains the split reaction of the critics: with a running time of 161 minutes, Enter the Void was often too long for seekers of pure entertainment, and too obnoxious for lovers of traditionally-cerebral cinema. But this was the film Noé set out to create when he first started making movies, and after years of waiting for the freedom and money to do so, he left no stop unpulled:
I tried to get very close to an altered state of consciousness. Or, I tried to, in a cinematic way, reproduce the perception of someone who is on drugs. And there are moments in the movie closer to a dream state, and through that, many people have told that they felt stoned during the movie, and felt they had gone on an acid trip. And there are people who are comfortable with that. But maybe for the people who don’t enjoy losing control of their perceptions, maybe that is where they get annoyed with me. For example, people who have done acid in their youth or whenever, they say they feel like doing acid again after the movie. But people who have never done drugs, or only smoked marijuana, they say to me, “After watching your movie, I know what drugs feel like… but now I will never never never do them.” [laughs]
Through the movie, I wanted to wash myself free of expectations, I was not trying to upset people, but I don’t care if they are. I did the movie for myself and my friends. You work in cinema, you might consider what a director you respect thinks of your film.
80-percent of Enter the Void is a traditional narrative movie. I suppose it’s more similar to Jacob’s Ladder or Videodrome than it is to Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome by Kenneth Anger, which is very experimental. It’s the other 10% of 20% that reminds you of the language and glamour of dreams.
Instead of reading a laundry list of potentially offensive concepts and imagery in Enter the Void, consider this: 1. If you remember that Noé’s previous film featured a 10-minute rape scene, this one is kind of a cakewalk. 2. The only way to Enter the Void is with a mind wide-open and all aversions on Pause. After you’ve watched the film [ideally the original, un-cut version], take a look at this discussion over at Factual Opinion, and thesetwo interviews with Noe. The trailer and the much-talked-about opening title sequence, below.
Jean Michel Rollin Le Gentil, French film director fantastique and “gentle poet of sensual horror”, passed away yesterday (December 15, 2010) at 72, after a long illness.
Much beloved by his fans and horror connoisseurs, lauded for his bizarre genius and the unique, intensely personal vision he brought to his films, Rollin leaves a legacy brimming with uncanny beauty and perverse, morbid delights.
Though his works contained elements of horror cinema, Rollin insisted he did not make horror films; instead he prefers the label fantastique, which he described as “the opposite of the supernatural”. His story telling, marked by “surreal sensibilities” and a “narcotic narrative drive”, made for mysterious (and at times maddening) viewing; but the imagery, oh, the imagery. Languid and melancholy, romantic and doom-laden, the dreamy atmospheres Rollin crafted were truly like nothing else in cinema: “…hermetically sealed worlds of desolate chateaus, solitary vampires and violent seduction”.
According to Rollin’s son Serge, who spoke with Fangoria shortly after his father’s death, “Jean was surrounded by his friends, and was looking at the photos of his two granddaughters when he died.”
Rollin was calmly uncompromising and self-assured to the very end. The filmmaker’s own words about his work and perceptions of criticism are as fitting a closing statement as any:
“Honestly, I don’t care [what people call me]. Some people say I’m a genius, others consider me the greatest moron who ever stepped behind a camera. I have heard so many things said about me and my films, but these are just opinions.
I am perfectly happy with what I do, because it has always been my choice.”
