A wee bit o’ cheer, courtesy of Marlon Riggs and the Institute of Snap!thology…

… that’s spurring me to write up an overview of something far deeper and more complex. This “Snap Diva” sequence is one of the more lighthearted scenes from Tongues Untied, a powerful independent film by activist/educator/filmmaker/author Marlon Riggs. The clip was sent to me earlier today by an old friend as an offhandedly affectionate “haaaay”, but it ended up triggering intense memories of watching Riggs’ films on PBS over a decade ago. I was bowled over by them at the time; I’m overjoyed to be reminded of them again.

Riggs died of AIDS in 1994 while still struggling to complete his final film, Black Is…Black Ain’t. An intensely personal, well-researched examination of the diversity of African-American identities, Black Is…Black Ain’t was completed by Riggs’ colleagues after his death, and released posthumously in the mid 90s. “His camera traverses the country, bringing us face to face with Black folks young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight, grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contested definitions of Blackness.” [via]

Riggs was a giant of public television during the late 80s and early 90s, and a truly inspiring force for positive change. Via glbtq:

Riggs’ experience of racism began in his segregated childhood schools but continued even at Harvard, where he studied American history, graduating with honors in 1978. He then earned an M. A. in 1981 at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he later taught documentary film courses.

Riggs first gained recognition for writing, producing, and directing the Emmy-winning, hour-long documentary Ethnic Notions (1987), which explored black stereotypes and stereotyping. The film helped establish Riggs’ career as a contemporary historical documentary producer.

But most of his later films and writings probe the dichotomy Riggs perceived between the strong, “Afrocentric” black man and the black “sissy” gay man. As a “sissy” himself, Riggs felt deeply his status as a pariah within the black community.

Tongues Untied (1989), Riggs’ most famous film, is an extensively reviewed and critically acclaimed documentary that met with controversy in conservative circles when it was aired on public television. Funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant, it figured in the cultural wars over control of the NEA and the Public Broadcasting System.

Today, Oakland-based electronic/world music trio Beats Antique released their third album, Blind Threshold. Zoe Jakes, David Satori and Sidecar Tommy are pushing into uncharted sonic territory once again. Their new record is rich with contributions from various performers, namely our very own Mer, whose violin and theremin work is present on several tracks, including “Vardo“, “Rising Tide“, “Grandstand” and “Miss Levine“. That last song is a haunting tribute to the band’s friend Breanna Levine; she unexpectedly passed away a few months ago.

The 14 tracks on the self-released album include, in the band’s words, “vaporous violins and Danny Elfman-esque dementia; glitchy, laser-guided harmonica provided by Blues Traveler frontman John Popper; and two very different vocal tracks that range between restless pop hooks provided by singer songwriter LYNX, to the vibrant Eastern European folk melodies of New York vocalist Eva Salina. All wrapped up into an intricate collection of orchestral textures, heavy beats and sub bass. The new album was mastered by the great producer TIPPER with art and design by Andrew Jones and photography by Sequoia Emmanuelle.”

Preview the entire album below, and download it here.

Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s 1956 piece ‘Gesang Der Junglinge’ (Song of the Children) analysed song verses into their elementary phonetic components and deployed electronically generated aperiodic sound – more commonly known as ‘white noise’. The Disabled Avant-Garde also generate white noise in this piece by varying the syne-waves produced by a loudly whistling boiling kettle. As with Stockhausen, a vocalist intones ‘inside’ the white noise (but using a different song – something by Roy Orbison). The total effect produced is to provide the listener with no idea whatsoever of what it must sound like to be profoundly deaf’.

That is the official description for Disabled Avante-Garde’s video “Stockhausen”. I must say, however, nothing may encapsulate the internet better than image of a disabled little person in a wheelchair, plastered in heavy makeup, accompanied by a tiny, confused dog and a conveniently placed broom, giggling gleefully as a man waves his posterior in front of her — all set to the tones of a screeching tea kettle.

Rise and shine, comrades. Time to face another Monday morning. You know what might help? A hot shower. With Stephen Shellen. In a pair of tighty-whities:

“Oh gawd I’m getting all tingly.”

Gimme An ‘F’ was the slimy, raw Meatballs-textured afterbirth that slid out of the ass end of 1984 while Footloose and Flashdance were still showing at drive-ins. Kudos to Katrina Galore for toilet-plunging its most memorable scene up from the depths. (Katrina, delightful pervert that she is, just made it known that she’ll be co-editing an upcoming anthology of Dystopian Erotica. They’re currently calling for submissions. Go git ’em!)

Hot and steamy mini-documentary action on today’s FAM in the form of The Return of A Clockwork Orange, Film4’s look at the controversial film 30 years after director Stanley Kubrick banned the film’s showing in the UK. I’m going to assume that if you have any interest in this you are familiar with both the film and the book it was based on, so I’ll not go over them here.

Even with a working knowledge of Clockwork Orange it is difficult, I think, for modern audiences to understand why a film like this would cause such an uproar, saturated as we are with films that go way beyond Kubrick’s film in terms of graphic depictions of violence, both physical and sexual. The Return of A Clockwork Orange does an excellent job, then, of painting a picture of the political and social climate of England in the early 70s, giving a much clearer for the context for the furor over this film. Released in the same year that saw Ken Russell’s beautiful, bloody The Devils and Sam Peckinpah’s shocking Straw Dogs it was the crescendo in an increasingly heated debate on whether films should be allowed to portray such extreme behavior — a debate that continues today mostly concerning those video games the kids seem to love so much.

The end result is a short but well-informed look at a war between a nation and one of film’s greatest visionaries.

Addendum: Apologies for the inferior quality of this video. This version features much clearer visuals but the audio gets completely out of sync by the second part.

Paleokostas being taken to prison. Captions by Teacher Dude’s BBQ.

Here at Coilhouse, we’ve covered all manner of crackpot visionaries: mathematicians, authors, filmmakers, taxidermists, conspiracy theorists, culture jammers and other cognitive dissidents. But you know what we’ve been missing in this category? Straight-up hardcore CRIME. And thus we present the tale of Vassilis Paleokostas, a well-intentioned Greek bandit who kidnapped politely, gifted ransom generously, and accomplished the miraculous double rainbow of prison breakouts: two escapes from Greece’s toughest penitentiary, spaced three years apart, by helicopter both times. Take the highly entertaining Badass of the Week write-up excerpted below with a grain of salt, but note that most of the facts below have been confirmed by multiple news sites:

Vassilis’ story starts back in the early 90s, when he went on an insane crime spree of delicious armed robbery, blackmail, extortion, and kidnapping.  Basically, his modus operandi was to kidnap a super-rich bastard, hold him for a ridiculous ransom, and then sell him back to his stupid family in exchange for giant piles of cold, hard cash.  Then, he’d take that bling, keep a small percentage of it for himself, and distribute the rest of his newly-acquired wealth to impoverished farmers of the tiny rural province in which he grew up.  The dude quickly made a name for himself as the Robin Hood of Greece, and was beloved by fans of badassery, the people of the lower classes, and pretty much anybody else he wasn’t in the process of robbing or extorting for money.  Shit, even the fucking people he kidnapped came out later and said that he was very polite and respectful to them while they were in captivity, and that it was pretty much the most pleasant kidnapping they’d ever experienced… he also made a vow never to harm a member of the public in his criminal escapades.  He’s been true to his word.

Paleokostas was eventually caught, arrested, and hauled off to a “federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary known as Korydallos Prison,” one of the harshest prisons in Greece: “a mix between Andersonville, Oz, and that stupid plastic box they keep Magneto inside in the X-Men movies.” No one who went inside Korydallos ever came out, except for Vassilis Paleokostas:

In June 2006, Paleokostas’ older brother (another pathological criminal who is now serving jail time on 16 counts of armed robbery) commandeered a helicopter, and landed it right in the middle of the fucking exercise yard of the prison in broad daylight. The armed guards at Korydallos, not expecting to be subjected to such an unbelievable display of gigantic steel-plated testicles, assumed that this chopper belonged to the warden or the Chief of Prisons or something, and instead of investigating it they all decided to make sure their shoes were appropriately spit-shined so as not to incur a citation from their wrathful bosses. Vassilis (who had orchestrated the entire operation from the beginning) … simply walked up to the helicopter, hopped inside, and lifted off.  By the time the guards got their heads out of their asses and started firing their guns at the bird, it was already too late. Paleokostas had escaped.

After his escape, a nationwide manhunt was declared. Paleokostas evaded the law for two and a half years, hiding in the mountains and orchestrating another high-profile kidnapping, “snatching a powerful jackass CEO industrialist, ransoming him for a huge wad of cash, and once again distributing the loot to local farmers and families.” He was then caught by the Greek police, and once again sent to Korydallos prison, where he awaited trial. Except that the second day that he was at Korydallos…

ANOTHER FUCKING HELICOPTER showed up in the skies.  It flew over a large tower of the prison, lowered a long rope ladder, and Vassilis Paleokostas and Alket Rizai climbed up into the chopper.  As the helicopter flew off into the sunset, the prisoners of Korydallos cheered. Greek police opened fire on the chopper as it flew off, but a woman returned fire with an AK-47 assault rifle… the police eventually tracked down the helicopter, and found that it had ditched on the side of the road outside Athens with a bullet hole in the gas tank.  According to the pilot, Paleokostas and his associates left the chopper and drove off on totally sweet motorcycles to an undisclosed location.  They also popped some totally bitchin’ wheelies while doing so.

After this incident, the Greek authorities fired the country’s Chief of Prisons, the Inspector-General of Prisons, the warden of Korydallos, and three prison guards. Paleokostas remains at large.

[via raindrift]

BBC’s Horizon is a philosophical and scientific series that still runs today. Its opening episode in 1964 featured Coilhouse patron saint, Buckminster Fuller, along with the program’s mission statement:

The aim of Horizon is to provide a platform from which some of the world’s greatest scientists and philosophers can communicate their curiosity, observations and reflections, and infuse into our common knowledge their changing views of the universe.

Later that year, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was invited to share his visions of the future. Some are scary, warning us of the world becoming a giant suburb – right up there with the terror of Idiocracy, which still gives my nightmares. Some are encouraging, though yet-unrealized. My favorite speculations include: domed communities on icecaps, holidays under the sea, planetary engineering, and my top favorite remains recording directly onto the brain [please, yes?].

Though we’re running out of time to camp on either of the Poles, who’s to say at least some of us won’t be vacationing on the Moon in a fifty years? After all, Clarke’s prediction of us communicating instead of commuting was dead on, cryogenics are in full swing, and The Replicator exists, if only as 3D printing and spimes, for now. Watch the segment below in two parts, then see also:

• Mark Roth Talks About Suspended Animation
• David Forbes’ All Tomorrows posts
• Ray Bradbury (Reluctantly) Sells Prunes of the Future
• Fashion – 2000 A.D.

[Thanks, Disinfo]

Samuel Cockedey’s time-lapse of Tokyo has been making the rounds, and many of you may have already seen it, but it deserves to be enshrined here. Set to “Paradigm Flux” by Paul Frankland, aka Woob, it’s just the right thing for a quick afternoon break.

via Pink Tentacle

Tonight, I can’t stop thinking about one of the more influential, yet relatively obscure artists at work during the post-Happenings decade. Ana Mendieta:

From Ana Mendieta’s “Body Tracks” series, 1970s.

It’s all too easy to scoff at raw, bloody, chthonic feminist performance art these days. Hell, it’s all too easy to scoff at just about anything that whiffs of pussy power. After all, this is 2010! No need for histrionics, right? We’ve been liberated, reborn. We’re fierce and comfortable, right? We’ve seen it all a hundred times before… rrrriiiiiight?

Then again, what Alice Miller said about scorn holds a lot of sway: “Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings.” In light of that assessment, whether one chooses to roll their eyes or not, Mendieta’s (earth-)body of work, and the circumstances under which she died, resonate as much right now as they did in the 1970s and early 80s. (Although, come to think of it, there were plenty of eye-rollers then, too.)

In any case, on the 15th anniversary of her mysterious death, I’m lighting candles for Ana Mendieta and wondering what comes next.

Second-hand Tang Poem, Maleonn’s series from 2007, is only a small sample of a portfolio overflowing with surrealistic delights, but it is among my favorites. These black and white dioramas tell the story of a mystical, far off land — a tale both somber and silly. It’s a dichotomy seen throughout his work and he uses this balancing act to great effect. His work isn’t on exhibition in the US at the moment, but he does have a show at Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong.