word from a friend / Satan bouche un coin

Today I got an email from my friend Mr. Stereotype, who is now pursuing his musical interests a little more intensively [reach him also @ his Myspace page]. He included a link to what at first seemed an interesting and provocative [film] short. It did live up to my expectations but it also proved a rare surreal document.

It is falsely posted on Youtube simply as Satan while the whole title reads Satan bouche un coin. It was shot in 1968 in France. Directed by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou [Bouyxou was also the writer] and Raphaël Marongiu, my first thought while watching and knowing nothing about it [someone missed his Esotika Erotica Psychotica classes, I came by this entry only after having completed my post here] was, I can see Molinier and Aktionismus here. Well I couldn’t have been closer to the truth. Pierre Molinier is the mysterious androgynous figure of the picture. Surrealist photographer and pioneering body artist, whose ‘Bellmeric’ works are full of ambiguous eros and transgendered fetish visions. Scenes in the movie actually look like Bellmer lifeforms, while others like pieces from Muehl or Nitsch Aktion films. Kenneth Anger hints are eminent.

Images of death towards the end and the introducing along with the final scene of an ass give to the disturbed tale even more perverted twists [necrophilia and scatology (?)]. Necrophilic references [if any] may also be a wink to the alleged Molinier’s sexual intercourse with his dead sister [When Molinier's sister died in 1918, he is alleged to have had sex with her corpse while left alone to photograph it. "'Even dead, she was beautiful. I shot sperm on her stomach and legs, and onto the First Communion dress she was wearing. She took with her into death the best of me."]. The accompanying lugubrious music is actually working in funny ways during the film, adding falsely joyous strokes making for an even more decadent feel. Transgressive and unsettling this piece of celluloid is an obscure shard of surrealism history and aesthetics.

Mr. Stereotype thank you very much for your great suggestions and recommendations and for your kind words about merzbau in your blog.

hint: check comments in Esotika Erotica Psychotica post

Berlin museums + museum shops, part 1

The title may sound a little strange but museum shop is in many cases the place to make some wonderful discoveries of special editions and more.

Starting and proceeding chronologically

Neue Nationalgalerie

Within the area of Kulturforum, close to Potsdamer Platz and Sony Center, Neue Nationalgalerie [...the famous "temple of light and glass" designed by Mies van der Rohe...] was my first museum experience in Berlin, a city with dense museum network. Now on exhibition the new collection where everyone and everything in modern art from Kokoschka to contemporary abstract art, through the likes of Dix [his was some of the best pieces in the collection], Schwitters and others, has its place. Divided in art movements Neue galerie is a sure call for modern art lovers.

Museum shop: Alphabetically arranged monographs and a nice selection of art books plus the ordinary museum paraphernalia. Outside the main shop’s space there are two tables stocked with sale items, but be warned that some of these titles are available elsewhere even cheaper.

Pergamonmuseum [Museumsinsel, first take]

Inside Pergamonmuseum lies an amazing collection of antiquities [a part of this collection is housed in Altes Museum] many of them of Greek origin [finds from excavations in Olympia, Samos, Pergamon, Miletus, Priene, Magnesia, Cyprus and Didyma]. Inside museum’s halls visitor can admire the world renowned magnificently opulent structure of Pergamon Altar as well as a really big collection of Classic, Hellenistic, Roman and late Roman antiquities. Two more collections of great interest and importance found within Pergamonmuseum are the Islamic Art and the Ancient Near East one.

Museum shop: Many books covering the thematic of the museum and its collections can be found in its shop. Unfortunately the majority of them, including some not-permanent exhibitions’ catalogues, are only available in German. There is a rather big collection of jewelry also in the shop and here you can find the perfect gift for many occasions.

photos:

Medizinhistorisches

Housed in Charité [the largest university hospital in Europe] hospital complex, Medizinhistorisches museum is a thrilling and strange experience. More than one collections were on display, but I am unsure which of them where running exhibitions and which of them permanent. One that was [almost] for sure ongoing was a showcase of face casts presenting a variety of optical and dermatic [always concerning face] pathologies. Another that was quite haunting was a selection of medical cases spanning the last 3 or 4 centuries, presented in text along with any relating instruments of each time and a handful of personal belongings of the suffering person. Given the fact that all of them were tormented and dead, I couldn’t help but remember John Saul’s Blackstone Chronicles. The view from a nearby window was Psychiatric Clinic, as the label next to it read.

The core of the museum is the medical collection of deformities, curiosities, damaged internal organs, sick skin, dead foetuses and so on preserved in formaldehyde [?], exhibited in a big hall. Part of this collection is an awe-inspiring megacolon, stored in a huge jar. The day we visited the museum was bleak and rainy. Searching for the hospital bookstore [we didn't find one, probably misinformed] we ended up taking a walk in the hospital gardens between and around buildings and clinics. Everything was unnaturally still and quiet, and probably somewhat unsettling.

This visit was a mind-altering experience highly recommended to anyone interested in medical history and/or medical curiosities. Definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Museum shop: Much to my disappointment [although probably expected] there was just a rudimentary [book]shop featuring a handful of titles, only in German. One or two seemed interesting to my non expert eyes. If anyone knows of any catalogue of this museum’s collection [or similar books, except from the Phantom Museum and a couple of editions on Mutter museum] please leave a comment or send an email.

flyers:

more on Berlin museums soon

dmtls reporting from Berlin part 2.

transgression, decay and the Avant-Garde

History Of Beauty is an interesting book, while On Ugliness [both by the great Umberto Eco] is an excellent one, not it terms of ‘execution’ [see writing] but as a subject. Studying the ever-shifting and changing standards of beauty can prove useful and entertaining. Beauty and how we conceive it plays a key role in understanding society and art. This also applies to ugliness despite the fact that most of the times, ugliness is pushed out of focus and to the darkest corners. It is of critical importance to note that it is rather unsure whether beauty exists and is defined as the opposite of ugliness or vice versa [These thoughts are addressed also by Eco].

Depicting what is not visually or mentally [everything is in the brain(?)] attractive, not strictly as a means of threat or propaganda, is a barrier-smashing concept in art. Disturbance in art accounts for many powerful and of great depth masterpieces. Steadily avoiding the mainstream ‘evil’, ‘wicked’ and ‘ugly’ popster hype, difference, para-normal, perverseness, the displeasing mark a widely uncharted territory deep within human psyche capable of the next chef-d’oeuvre or a disgusting monstrosity. Appealing and appalling sound and spell conspicuously similar.

What lies beyond death [physically] is rot and decomposition. The ultimate transformation, the passage from life to death is one of the biggest taboos. But what about the literally ultimate transformation/passage, decomposition? Dealing with subjects like this probably categorizes as transgression but that is what avant-garde is all about. Avant-garde and ‘extreme’ [extreme here stands for all practices, art forms and expressions considered abnormal and/or over-provocative] meet again on the grounds of transgression. Greenaway deals extensively with decay in his Zed & Two Noughts, while also rot and putrefaction are returning themes in Cannibal Corpse’s releases, both visually [artwork] and lyrically, while generally being a favourite concept of fellow death metal and grindcore bands.

Ravenous waves attack,
drawn by the scent of life
Fever for our blood

Instinct rules this mass, ruthless living sea
Devouring

Countless vermin gnashing at my face
Tear meat from my skull
Swarming, rabid, features are erased
Unrecognizable
Body covered, rat filled innards
Shred internal organs
Heart and lungs consumed from inside but my
pain doesn’t end
I have not died

Devour, cesspool of vermin
Devour, bloodthristy rabid
Devoured by vermin

Ruthless gnawing vermin - feed
Cleaning off my bones while I breathe
Stenching greasy rodents - swarm
My body is losing its form

[Lead - Owen]
[Lead - Barrett]

Devour, cesspool of vermin
Devour, bloodthristy rabid
Devoured by vermin

Lyrics of Devoured by Vermin, Vile [1996], see numerous other examples.

Decomposition is also the subject of Sam Taylor-Wood’s work A Little Death.

It can be described as ‘meta-still life’ [sic] imagery, probably better classified as vanitas. Still life by convention, as it fails to meet the definition of …[a work of art] depicting inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, plants and natural substances like rocks) or man-made (drinking glasses, cigarettes, pipes and so on) in an artificial setting. In A Little Death subjects are certainly not inanimate. We witness a slow, almost ritualistic procedure [made frantic in order to fit in 4 and a half minutes of film] that ‘performs’ the final transmutation to the mortal body [Memento mori]. This is not Ars Moriendi, preceding death and the inevitable subsequent results are presented ‘as-are’, there is no ethos, like in nature, making our spectacle even more disturbing.

An alteration of forms is taking place in this video. A passage from form to deformity, resulting in an almost abstract and all-together different final outcome [the apple remains unaltered (plastic?), probably to work as a connecting factor between the phases] with a distinct artistic value per se [?].

Días sin luz [Days without light]

An old acquaintance of merzbau readers, Jaume Balagueró. Días sin luz [1995].

Electric Girls | The Body Electric

The introduction of illuminated balletgirls has greatly added to the attractions of the spectacular stage. Girls with electric lights on their foreheads and batteries concealed in the recesses of their clothing first made their appearance a year ago… reads a New York Times article. It’s 26th of April 1884, Wednesday and on the fourth page of the newspaper is featured an article with the strange title [even for nowadays, exotic for these times] Electric Girls counting 719 words, describing some new elegant and apparently trendy, eccentric practice of hiring ‘illuminated girls’ dressed in filament lamps for everyday use from dusk till midnight - or as much later as may be desired, to luminate a dinner, to help the troubled by the flicker of his gas light student in his studies and so on. Marriage of techno-progress and male fantasy, a spectacular retro-futuristic vision, although probably strange to today’s social standards, bearing also the heavy symbolic meaning of female-as-divine-light.

Read the full original article here. Useful references/resources [a.k.a. further reading] here and here.

Check also citations [137] and [137-138] of the book
When Old Technologies Were New : Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century by Carolyn Marvin

[137] {tesla, electricity, tesla coil, performance} Tesla was well known for a visually spectacular trick of passing hundreds of thousands of volts through his body “while flames flashed from his limbs and fingertips” by means of a special induction coil named for him.

[137-138] {electric girl lighting company, female, gender, body, electricity, clothing, wearable, 1884, 1840s, tesla} In 1884 the Electric Girl Lighing Comapny offered to supply “illuminated girls” for indoor occasions. Young women hired to perform as hostesses and serving girls while decked with filament lamps were advertised to prospective customers as “girls of fifty-candle power each in quantities to suit householders.”

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Now playing: Robert Ashley Automatic Writing (edit)
via FoxyTunes

Joel-Peter Witkin - L’image indélébile (1994)

A portrait of American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin at last presented as a whole [all the 56 minutes]

Check also Witkin’s part in Vile Bodies series [1 /2]

and also former merz post on the subject

just an observation [a little upon titling]

While listening last night to Midnight Cowboys From Ipanema, by Sun City Girls, I read @ RYM one pretty much useless but nonetheless interesting observation referring to this record. “Anoter one of those albums that frighteningly does sound like their title.” Wow! It is some time I am into SCG and their out-of-this-world work and I have never realized how much I did enjoy their titles. It is really hard work to pinpoint, using a few [or not so few] words, creations of abstract / surreal / freaked-out nature that tend to defy any rational explanation and conventional classification. And there is always the prominent danger of skidding to over-pretentiousness, a case unfortunately concerning many artists [whether visual or sonic].

It is a certain thin line marking a circle of precise description. Bull’s eye title. There is even the possibility of title giving a whole new meaning or aspect to the work. Not guiding [bad word when paired with art] but giving a hint of what is going on in the artists mind, enabling the audience to reach a ‘higher [or deeper?] level of enjoyment’. Another band [this is a post limited to music] that comes in mind, when thinking of song and album titles, is Nurse With Wound. Just a look at vinyl etchings on run out grooves of NWW [and related] records and their song titles will reveal the magnificence of dada and the imposing beauty of absurd humor. The perfect company for their soundscapes. And don’t forget Zappa, Residents, Zorn, Acid Mothers Temple, Merzbow, Negativland, AMM, Smegma…..[the list goes on]. Indulge yourself with the great music of artists and bands who seem to have a Collège de ‘pataphysique degree. Dig in if you dare.

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Now playing: Sun City Girls - Sweet City Woman
via FoxyTunes

Gottfried Benn

Although my visits to supervert are rather often, I somehow managed to overlook this particular entry under electronic library category, Gottfried Benn’s poetry, morbid and disturbing.

…his early Expressionist verse — particularly the Morgue cycle — is matchless for its economy, precision, and irony. Walter Kaufmann, the famous translator of Nietzsche, wrote that its “shocking power,” which was “far greater than that of most beatnik poetry,” was due to the “brutal honesty of an unprecedented perception.”

Read Morgue & Other Expressionist Verse

Thank you Dave for this suggestion.

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Now playing: Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink - Dogmeat
via FoxyTunes

Street of Crocodiles

Street of Crocodiles by Stephen and Timothy Quay.

The Street of Crocodiles is a piece of unsurpassed filmmaking. Aside from the delicate and disturbing movements of this ghetto’s inhabitants, it demonstrates the Quays’ reflexive approach to the process of animation itself. Often referred to in articles and interviews as the liberation of the mistake (for example, in Suzanne H. Buchan’s “The Quay Brothers: Choreographed Chiaroscuro, Enigmatic and Sublime”), the brothers developed a range of visual strategies which not only seek to complicate the physical space in which the characters move but also to extend the mise en scène of the narrative. The Street of Crocodiles develops their use of the camera as “the third puppet” (9) by creating a parallel between the protagonist and the camera itself. Through a combination of macro lenses, shallow focal planes and fast pans, the majority of the images within the film appear as point of view shots. By allowing the camera to become the protagonist’s vision, the environment and its inhabitants slowly shift into uneasy forms, where the furtive glance of the camera echoes the protagonist’s sharp turns, catching glimpses of occurrences that hover on the edges of the frame: unsure of his – and, by implication, our – position within this darkened warren, the film has a palpable paranoia that recalls the subtle unease of This Unnameable Little Broom and acts as a precursor to Institute Benjamenta.

As if to make this connection of seeing, or the act of seeing, more apparent, the Quays place considerable emphasis on the characters’ eyes. As Jonathan Romney explains, the eye, the act of seeing and the cinematic device that is the camera is central to the Quays’ narratives:

A major discovery for the Brothers – in The Street of Crocodiles – was the glass doll’s-eye, which by its presence or absence implicates the viewer in the film’s scopic dramas. The petrified glare of that film’s desiccated doll-hero is parodically returned by the tailor dolls he encounters, whose china heads have empty sockets illuminated from within. The myth of the eye as window to the soul could hardly be more remorselessly defused.

the rest here

part 1 /2

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Now playing: Otto Kentrol - At The Water
via FoxyTunes

Entre Vues [Between Views] by Frank Horvat

Interviews by Frank Horvat, about photography, with photographers Édouard Boubat, Robert Doisneau, Mario Giacomelli, Hiroshi Hamaya, Joseph Koudelka, Don McCullin, Sarah Moon, Helmut Newton, Marc Riboud, Eva Rubinstein, Jeanloup Sieff, Joel Peter Witkin.
Work published by Nathan, Paris, in 1990.

Introduction [2002]

Between 1983 and 1987, I had serious problems with my eyesight. This gave me the idea of “photographing with my ears”, i.e. exploring reality with a taperecorder, somehow as I had done with a camera.

I decided that my first subject would be photography itself - as a creative process, more than as a technique. Hence the idea of “talking shop” with a few fellow photographers whom I admired. The hardest was putting those records on paper - which in my analogy was the equivalent to editing and printing.

In the following years, my eye problem was treated and my eyesight sufficiently restored to allow me to return to the camera.

The result of this experience has been a book, “Entre Vues”, published in Paris, in 1990, by Éditions Nathan. Translations into japanese and chinese came out in the following years. The french edition was sold out, but not reprinted. An english publication never took place (don’t ask why, publishers have their reasons).

In spite of this relative commercial failure, “Entre Vues” had a certain impact. Antiquarian copies still pass from hand to hand, and people approach me in the hope of finding one. Unfortunately I cannot be of any help - which is why I decided to publish this work on the net.

I wish to remind the reader that fifteen years have passed since these interviews. Édouard Boubat, Jean-Loup Sieff, Robert Doisneau, Mario Giacomelli and Hiroshi Hamaya are no longer among us. My other partners have evolved, one way or another. My own ideas and my own style of photography have changed. Last not least, photography itself has gone through the digital revolution and has become very different from what it was.

The attentive reader will take these circumstances into consideration.

Frank Horvat, November 2002.

Read it here

Merzbau quick picks ['Quick picks' serve as pointers to references of immediate interest to merzbau. The whole 'book' is worthwhile, read it if you have the time]

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Now playing: Doxa Sinistra - 09 The other stranger
via FoxyTunes