As longtime readers will have surmised by now, Coilhouse has an excruciating artcrush on the entireJoslin clan. Gah! Hurts so good!
Just a quick head up to our readers in California: Jared Joslin’s latest exhibition, The Illusionists, opened tonight at George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles. Channeling 1930s circus and carnival imagery, the ghostly allure of abandoned amusement parks, and the dusty stillness of velvet draped parlors, Jared’s series of new paintings conjure the conjurers.
Jared’s wife, Jessica, whose own work was our biggest feature in Coilhouse Issue #01 (and who has since joined our staff roster, YIPPEEEEE) has been raving about this series for a while now:
This man is a magician. I’ve watched as each of these images has emerged, piece by piece, out of a pure white canvas. Once the eyes appear, they seem to take on a breathing life of their own. When they are finished, I can almost smell the air. In Shooting Gallery, it’s candied apples, popcorn, sawdust and the sharp tang of gun powder. In Fortune Teller, it’s incense and fading flowers, with a whiff of hay from a distant circus on the wind. Each piece brings you to a world that is seemingly of the past, yet so vividly rendered that it is timeless in its emotional resonance.
Mmmrrr. I’d give anything to see these in person. The Illusionists show also includes Carol Golemboski’s dreamy black and white photographs, and the mysterious photo montages of Liz Huston’s. Catch it between November 7th and December 19th at George Billis Gallery. Congrats, Jared!
It’s been what, a couple weeks since we last mentioned how fantastic Archive.org is? Just in time for Halloween, here’s another choice bit o’ public domain from their vaults:
Click Teh Debbil (performed by Häxan director Benjamin Christensen himself!) to be taken to the downloading page.
Häxan (a.k.a. The Witches or Witchcraft Through The Ages) is a lavishly strange Swedish/Danish silent film which, upon its release in 1922, received critical acclaim in its homeland and moral outrage just about everyone else, thanks to the many graphic depictions of nudity, torture and sexual depravity. Yum! An inspired mixture of documentary and lurid dramatization, it wouldn’t be too far off the mark to name Häxan as one of cinema’s first “shockumentaries”.
For all its butts and boobies and devils, Häxan is actually quite a rational study of how superstition and medieval ignorance of mental illness led to the the hysteria of the European witch hunts. Director and writer Benjamin Christensen plotted much of the film around his personal study and criticism of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century German guide for inquisitors. You can see echoes of Christensen’s blunt, cavalier, often darkly humorous first-person narrative style in the documentaries of Werner Herzog. Luis Buñuel applauded its fractured “WTF is going on” cue-less edits.
In addition to being a bit of a mindfuck, much of the film’s imagery is just drop dead stunningly beautiful. From the Criterion release feature notes:
Under any title and with any modifications, Häxan endures because of Christensen’s tremendous skill with lighting, staging, and varying of shot scale. The word “painterly” comes to mind in watching Christensen’s ingeniously constructed shots, but it is inadequate to evoke the fascination the film exerts through its patterns of movement and its narrative disjunctions. Christensen is at once painter, historian, social critic, and a highly self-conscious filmmaker. His world comes alive as few attempts to recreate the past on film have.
Apparently, there was a version released in 1967 that featured a narration by William S. Burroughs and a jazzy score led by percussionist Daniel Humair and featuring violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. Any of you guys happen to have a copy of that?
Three cheers for Oakland-based photographer Neil Girling! Longtime readers may recall his beautiful work from this 2007 post about California’s thriving underground circus scene. More recently, Neil braved scorching temperatures and hoards of cheerfully chafing, corseted quaintrelles to bring Coilhouse the following photo essay about the second annual Handcar Regatta. A tip o’ the topper to you, good sir, and thanks again. ~Mer
September 27th saw the second installment of the Great Handcar Regatta, an afternoon of nonsensical anachronism, whimsy and ingenuity in Santa Rosa, CA. Though temperatures burned hot in the triple-digits, many thousands of spectators and participants flooded the Railroad Square historic park, perusing vendors, sipping refreshments, seeing live music, and — of course — watching the races.
Rock*N*Roll Sunday School Fixed Gear, powered solely by running, crosses the finish line.
Official MC Les Claypool provided commentary to the thronging crowds, which were said to have reached nearly 10,000 (a keen-eyed friend said Tom Waits was among them), many of whom were dressed appropriately old-timey for the occasion.
Some excellent detective work by Ghoul Next Door has uncovered the origins of this 101-year-old photo. The stunning image was brought to our attention by guest blogger Angeliska, who writes, “I’ve become totally obsessed with this carte de visite depicting Maria Germanova of the Moscow Arts Theatre, costumed for her role [as the fairy] in Blue Bird. She is my perfect style icon, now and forever.”
Unfortunately, the photographs of the actors are all that remain of this 1908 premiere of Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird, produced by Stanislavsky. A descriptive play-by-play of the performance can be found in the 1920 book The Russian Theater Under the Revolution by Oliver Sayler (thanks, Google book search!), but all other images of this art noveau-inspired production have been lost to time, despite Sayler’s valiant attempts to preserve more for posterity, recounted in the book:
I asked Stanislavsky eagerly for photographs of scenes from “The Blue Bird” or else for the original designs of the scenic artist so that I might have them copied… the photographs, I was told, were not available – except those of the players themselves – for the originals had been made by Fischer, a German, and had been destroyed in the pogrom at the beginning of the war in 1914. And in the difficult times Russia has undergone since then, no others have been made. When I pressed my point and asked about the orignal designs, the firm, square but kindly face of my host carried a passing glance of embarassed modesty and then admitted that there were no designs. He had conceived them himself and had personally directed the artist, V. E. Yevgenoff, in the execution of the settings.
Yep, 1908 is definitely going to the top of my “If I Had a Time Machine” list. Craving more images after discovering Germanova’s fairy, I did a bit of searching on the Russian web and uncovered the images below (from an Ogonyok article about Blue Bird). After the jump, a full-body shot of Germanova looking like a pre-Raphaelite sorceress.
We can’t all be Cherie Priest on the first try. But if the storyline of your latest dystopian/retro-futuristic tour-de-force has got you stumped, insert one thrupenny bit into the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000, and watch inspiration emerge from the æther. Three early attempts the got me the following tales:
Your title is: “The Blackpunks”
In a leather-clad set from Road Warrior, a young brooding loner stumbles across an exiled angel which spurs him into conflict with computer viruses made real, with the help of a sarcastic female techno-geek and her closet full of assault rifles, culminating in a heroic sacrifice that no one will ever remember.
Your title is: “The Chronotrons”
In a VR-simulated Victorian Britain, a young student of metaphysics stumbles across a magic diadem which spurs him into conflict with a profit-obsessed corporation, with the help of a tomboyish female mechanic and her welding gear, culminating in a philosophical argument punctuated by violence.
Your title is: “The Cybermancers”
In a neo-noir one-way spaceflight, a young farm boy with dreams stumbles across an encrypted data feed which spurs him into conflict with murderous robots, with the help of a shape-shifting female assassin and her wacky pet, culminating in authorial preaching through the mouths of the characters.
If you wish to see the guts of the machine, there’s an attractive diagram – the Wondermark Fiction Generator – on which the above engine is based. Written/designed by the super-talented David Malki, and coded by Liam Cooke.
Gorgeous design (reminds me of the Dollar Dreadful), and a fun way to get the gears turning when it comes to new fiction, despite (or because of?) the obvious critique that’s going on here. [Via Milly, thanks!]
Cherie Priest is one seriously inventive fiction/alternate history/sci-fi author who pens books about witches and voodoo and airships and sea monsters and zombies and ghosts and werewolf-hunting nuns. Needless to say, me likes her lots! She has a new novel out today, called Boneshaker, which BoingBoing just aptly described as a “zombie steampunk mad-science dungeon crawl family adventure novel” and which I cannot wait to get my grubby hands on. A brief description from Publisher’s Weekly:
Maternal love faces formidable challenges in this stellar steampunk tale. In an alternate 1880s America, mad inventor Leviticus Blue is blamed for destroying Civil War–era Seattle. When Zeke Wilkes, Blue’s son, goes into the walled wreck of a city to clear his father’s name, Zeke’s mother, Briar Wilkes, follows him in an airship, determined to rescue her son from the toxic gas that turns people into zombies (called rotters and described in gut-churning detail). When Briar learns that Seattle still has a mad inventor, Dr. Minnericht, who eerily resembles her dead husband, a simple rescue quickly turns into a thrilling race to save Zeke from the man who may be his father. Intelligent, exceptionally well written and showcasing a phenomenal strong female protagonist who embodies the complexities inherent in motherhood, this yarn is a must-read for the discerning steampunk fan.
“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.”
OK, it’s official. For the first time since relocating my base of operations to the southern hemisphere, I’m homesick:
Right now just about all of my talented fabricator/maker/builder chums back in California are gearing up (hurr hurr) for the second annual Santa Rosa Handcar Regatta, which takes place Sept 27th. That’s exactly a week from now. From the Handcar Regatta’s “Philosophy” page:
The railcar races at the center of the Regatta highlights Innovation and Human-Powered Ingenuity to devise cheaper, viable, and hitherto undreamed of methods for bizarre transport beyond the standard notions of today. Additionally, commuter rail transport is highlighted in our era of rising fuel costs. Together with an emphasis on biking, the Regatta provides a platform for playfulness and sustainable concerns within the realm of human-powered alternative transportation.
Tinkerers, artists, and eccentrics both young and old are invited to participate in Artistic and Mechanical Innovation upon a playful and inspired mixture of fond remembrance for a stylized industrial railroad past remixed with progressive styles and technologies of today.
The elegantly feisty Hennepin Crawler, winner of the Erasmus P. Kitty Honorary Award at the 2008 Handcar Regatta.
If you live in the area and appreciate thoughtful, gonzo DIY fun on a massive scale, you will not want to miss this. Indie vendors, circus and dance performances, yummy foodstuffs, live music and multiple geekgasms await you. More info here. Have fun at the races, comrades.
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!
Have I mentioned lately that Archive.org is the sh…
…aving cream? It really is. You could stand to spend more time over there, trust me.
Avid listeners of Dr. Demento will recognize this song by Benny Bell. I’m too young to boast that I listened to Dr. D back in the day, when he first brought about the Jewish-American singer/songwriter’s revival. However, I was lucky enough to live down the block from one Mister Goodman, a charming alcoholic widower with a portable record player. On balmy late summer afternoons, he’d sit on his front porch nursing a tall glass of “ice water” and playing old LPs. Naturally, Benny Bell’s relentlessly juvenile double-entendres were a huge hit with the neighborhood kids.
Mr Goodman was more than happy to play us classic Bell ditties like “Without Pants”, “A Goose For My Girl” and “My Grandfather Had a Long One” over and over again, provided we promised never to sing them in front of our parents. We were more than happy to hang out on his lawn for hours, sipping cans of 7-UP and shouting “SSSSSHHHHHAVING CREAM” at appropriate (and inappropriate) intervals until Mr. Goodman fell too far into his cups and started muttering darkly about Korea. At which time we’d all claim we heard our mothers calling and head home for dinner.
