Thursday 31 March 2011

A Trash Humpers Dialogue with Ryan Weir and Ben Robinson





Wow, lucky you! The use of degraded VHS tape to film Trash Humpers really gives it a unique look. But yeah, I think being engaged by or attracted to someone or something for which there isn't an easy explanation is a common occurrence and it's definite Harmony Korine territory. The characters wear these outfits with such lurid colours. It's maybe not conventional beauty but it's captivating, and quite possibly sexy. Tracksuits in fucshia and lime that the recording technology heightens to eye-wateringly intense levels, and it presents the world in a new, startlingly different way. It reminds me of being around 11 years old and fooling around with some friends in the wooded area behind my house. For example, during the film I left to go take a piss. We came across a set of photographs in proper Boots packaging in the middle of a path but the pictures inside had clearly not been developed in Boots. The water in my toilet is bright blue, but the bleach was turned to green on contact with my urine. They were essentially 'dirty pictures' of various girls on swings or on chairs, breasts and vaginas exposed, but their faces were hidden because of the lighting and some of the images ran from one photograph to the next. The scene was framed by my bright red slippers and it was just an intensely beautiful experience. None of the girls were particularly attractive but you can imagine this nonetheless sent all kinds of crazy feelings rushing through our scrawny bodies. Werner Herzog was an early champion of Korine's work. It wasn't just the naked girls but the whole question of their origin and the illicit nature of their production that enthralled me. During a 1997 article for Interview magazine he famously said, "What I like about Gummo are the details that one might not notice at first.” We were all fighting over what to do with them and how we could divide them but already I had decided if I alone couldn't have them then no one could. “There's the scene where the kid in the bathtub drops his chocolate bar into the dirty water and just behind him there's a piece of fried bacon stuck to the wall with Scotch tape.” And so I swiftly deposited them down the nearest drain, much to the bemusement of my friends. “This is the entertainment of the future." It wasn't even the pictures I couldn't bear sharing but the whole experience; the packaging, the moment, the thrill of the found object. I think that's a good way to approach Trash Humpers, to look out for those "fried bacon and Scotch tape" moments of artistic clarity. Hours later I returned to that drain alone and in the dark but they were gone. During the film I believe there are many such moments.

The film really brings home how Korine is an artist who is able to capture a specific place. Well I think looking at it that way certainly gives you more in terms of something you can take from the film but it's not really up for giving anything away too easily. Just as the paintings of Ed Ruscha define a vision of California, a vision of billboards, empty spaces and gas stations, so Korine sees the landscape of Nashville. Living outside the major cities, the abandoned trailers and deserted car parks are instantly recognisable symbols of the banality of life and I suppose Korine is happier in the repressed south because it's modern life stripped to the bare bones, no more or less worthy a setting than the back alleys of New York, just more fun and interesting for what it leaves out. Trash Humpers sees his vision taken to its logical conclusion with a renewed emphasis on destroying the landscape. But yeah, I don't think Korine read the newsletter about art having a contractual responsibility to provide wholesome entertainment to the masses. Smashing TV screens with hammers, throwing a stereo up in the air then watching it crash to the floor, this is what the end of the world will look like.

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Yuck 'n Yum summer 2011 deadline

I made a flyer to advertise the next Yuck 'n Yum deadline, and here it is:

Sunday 27 March 2011

Yuck 'n Yum spring 2011 launch 27.03.11

To the Hannah Maclure Centre today for the launch of the Yuck 'n Yum spring 2011 issue. The zine will appear online very soon, but for now I took a few photos and here they are:


Hot off the press


Anna consults the Salmon of Knowledge


Chaka Can't does it like this


Scott and Gil consult the Salmon


Assorted punters




Ben 'Jack Your Body' Robinson rocks a Sunday afternoon set

Saturday 26 March 2011

Zazou @ Kage nightclub, Dundee 25.03.11

To the Kage last night for the inaugural edition of Zazou, a club night purveying "obscure and bizarre disco abstractions, minimal synth experiments, clanking space age machine laments spanning the 70s, 80s and the infinite reaches of the very cosmos itself".


The name of the club is Zazou








People, dancing





Friday 25 March 2011

ridiculous



Extract from Jill Fell, Alfred Jarry (Critical Lives):

Jarry finds relief from his illness by writing letters. He says as much to Saltas, calling it a 'cure by correspondence'. His most colourful and unguarded letter of all is written to Rachilde on 28 May, when he believes he is dying and that these will be his last words:

Dear Madame Rachilde
Père Ubu is not writing in a state of fever this time. (This is beginning like a last will and testament, but that is taken care of.) I think that you will have understood that he is not dying (sorry, that word slipped out) because of drink and other orgies. That was not his passion, and he has immodestly had himself examined from top to bottom by the merdics. He has no flaw, either in the liver, or the heart, or the kidneys, or even in the urinary tract! He is simply run down, (a curious case for one who has written Le Surmâle), and his boiler is not going to burst but just go out. He is going to come to a stop quite gradually like a worn-out engine... And no treatment designed for humans, however faithfully he may follow it (laughing to himself all the while), will be of any use. His high fever perhaps comes from the fact that his heart is trying to save him by sending his pulse rate up to 150. No human being has ever held out that long. For the last two days he has been of the Lord's Anointed and, like Kipling's trunkless elephant, is filled with an insatiable curiosity. He is going to retreat a little further back into the night of time. In the same way as he would carry his revolver in his hip pocket, but has had a gold chain put round his neck, for the sole reason that this metal does not oxidize and will last as long as his bones, just in case he meets any devils. This gives him as much fun as going fishing... Note that if he doesn't die after all, it will be grotesque to have written all this... But we reiterate that this is not written under the influence of fever, He has left such beautiful things on the earth, but is disappearing in an apotheosis like this
[...]
Père Ubu has had a shave and has laid out a mauve shirt (no connection with you intended!) he will disappear into the Mercure colours... and he will set off still consumed with an insatiable curiousity. He has a feeling that it will happen this evening at five... If he's wrong he'll look ridiculous and that's that. Ghosts are ridiculous after all.
So saying, Père Ubu, who has earned his rest, is going to try to sleep. He believes that the brain, in the process of decomposition, carries on working after death and that its dreams are what we think of as Paradise. Père Ubu, and this is conditional - he would so much like to return to his Tripod - is perhaps going to sleep forever.
ALFRED JARRY
[...]
PS I am opening my letter to say that the doctor has just arrived and thinks he can save me.

(Alfred Jarry, Euvres complètes vol. III)

wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Jarry

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Yuck 'n Yum - Guest Zine Project

Everybody's favourite art zine about town Yuck 'n Yum will shortly be embarking on an exciting new project, and more details will be announced very soon. For now I've designed a flyer, and here it is:

Monday 21 March 2011

receipts

I recently bought a bunch of stuff and well, here's some pictures of it:


Jill Fell - Alfred Jarry (Critical Lives), £4.60


Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies, £1.99


Angelo Badalamenti - Blue Velvet soundtrack CD, £3.22


John Holloway - Bach: The Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo CD, £11.09


Kate Zambreno - O Fallen Angel, £13.56


Derek Raymond - The Crust On Its Uppers, £0.01


Derek Raymond - The Hidden Files, £1.36


Lester Bangs - Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, £1.44


Acanthus - Le Frisson Des Vampires soundtrack CD, £9.01

Saturday 19 March 2011

Manfred Pernice - déjàVu @ DCA 19.03.11

Back to the DCA today for another look at the Manfred Pernice show. I took a few more photos and here they are:


Tutti


Tutti


Tutti


Tutti


Tutti


Apart. 2-4


Apart. 2-4


Sonderausstellung: living Platform


déjàVu


déjàVu

Friday 18 March 2011

Kelly's editorial cartoons



Yes, this is from The Onion. Is it supposed to be a joke? because it's so close to a republican cartoon that is indistinguishable from one, if it is.
Poor Mojo's Two Minute Hate



Ward Sutton is an American illustrator, cartoonist and writer born in Minneapolis and based in New York City... He also illustrates and writes a cartoon for The Onion under the pseudonym of 'Kelly', depicting the far-fetched Republican and Fundamentalist Christian one-panels of a middle-aged cartoonist. According to Onion President Sean Mills in an interview with Wikinews, the cartoon has generated "a lot of heat. He has a very unique take on what is going on in the world," said Mills, "and it does tend to upset some people, but that’s the job of an editorial cartoonist, to be a provocateur."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Sutton



If good pornography is a you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of thing, good parody is exactly the opposite: A parody succeeds when large numbers of people don't recognize the thing as a parody. By that standard, Ward Sutton's "Kelly" cartoons for The Onion are 24-carat fool's gold. Their wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels layers of lampoon and self-reference make it nearly impossible to tell the dancer from the dance.
LA Times



I did a double-take the first time I came across Ward Sutton‘s “Kelly” editorial cartoons in The Onion a couple years ago.
Globatron.org



Full archive of The Onion's editorial cartoons

Thursday 17 March 2011

Stefan Blomeier - Popular Electronics II / Radio Astronomy



Last year I wrote a story for Yuck 'n Yum about an enigmatic maths genius by the name of Stefan Blomeier. Now he has a limited edition 7" for sale at the online record shop Boomkat, and you can order yourself a copy of it here.

Tuesday 15 March 2011

Yuck 'n Yum spring 2011 launch



Yuck ‘n Yum would like to invite you to join us for High Tea on Sunday the 27th of March from 2:30 to 5 when we will be launching our Spring 2011 edition. Come join us at the Hannah Maclure Centre to peruse our first edition with new cover artist Ross Hamilton Frew and be entertained by special guests Chaka Can’t and the Salmon Of Knowledge.

LINK

Friday 11 March 2011

@ Leeds: Phronesis live 10.03.11


To the Brudenell Social Club last night, to see some live jazz from a trio called Phronesis.