Paddy Hartley Project Facade, originally uploaded by Coilhouse.

It’s tempting to look at the uniform sculptures of artist Paddy Hartley’s latest endeavor, Project Facade, and exclaim “that’s hot/haute/oh-so-uber.” It’s easy to enjoy the images on this level and bypass their true meaning. In reality, the true message of this series is much more horrific and visceral; it’s painful to explore, and profound to experience.

Project Facade tells “the personal and surgical stories” of servicemen who sustained deforming injuries during World War One. The site displays the uniform sculptures as components of thoroughly-researched case studies that include the name, face and injury catalogue of each soldier, presenting a sculpture that’s unique for each man’s story. The most detailed case studies belong to Sea. AJ, Fai. W, and Top. V, though all are worth examining. Warning: there are images of facial deformities here that are not for the weak of heart!

Some uniforms are fragmented with blood-red stitching reminiscent of shrapnel wounds, others are inscribed with writing that conjures medical records or letters from loved ones, and many uniforms are complemented by stiff masks that project power and authority while hiding a the personal horror of a face literally erased by war. The project is two-fold: in addition to examining the history of facial/body reconstruction with the aforementioned uniform sculptures, Hartley also investigates modern techniques by creating Bioactive Glass Facial Implant sculptures, comparing today’s technology to the surgical techniques that Sir Harold Gillies pioneered in the early 1900s.  The result is a powerful artistic response to the history of facial reconstruction, as experienced both by the patient and as the surgeon.

Alphaville, originally uploaded by Coilhouse.

made in 1965 by French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard, this futuristic film noir became an instant favorite for me.

Darkly satirical, set in an Orwellian alter-reality Paris and filled with collages of stark dystopian imagery throughout, it had me hooked at totalitarian robot-controlled city.

Filmed on Godard’s conservative budget, Alphaville makes its financial limitations known with bypassing flashy special effects in favor of brazen heavy-handed symbolism i have no choice but to adore.

Political oppression, brooding super-detective, eerie villains, style, an awkwardly disjointed romance and nods to a variety of classics – impossible to resist!

Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world.

“We order that the poets’ rights be revered:

• To enlarge the scope of the poet’s vocabulary with arbitrary and derivative words (Word-novelty).
• To feel an insurmountable hatred for the language existing before their time.
• To push with horror off their proud brow the Wreath of cheap fame that You have made from bathhouse switches.
• To stand on the rock of the word “we” amidst the sea of boos and outrage.

And if for the time being the filthy stigmas of your “common sense” and “good taste” are still present in our lines, troche these same lines for the first time already glimmer with the Summer Lightning of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-sufficient (self-centered) Word.”

— 1917 David Burliuk, salve Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Victor Khlebnikov. From A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, one of the few non-Italian authored Futurist manifestos.

One simply cannot have a Coilhouse without mentioning Nick Knight, one of the greatest photographers of our time. This image is as inspirational to me now as it was when I first saw it in Torture Garden’s Body Probe book, back when I was wee. Thank you, Nick, for warping my mind.

He’s got a blog, by the way.

nuclear holocaust, treat originally uploaded by Coilhouse.

Beautiful + eerie photo by Pavel Lagutin.
Nuclear holocaust, sure – but who needs pants?