Today is Andy Warhol’s birthday and here’s a little something I think Andy would have appreciated - a video game in which the player takes on the role of Valerie Solanas.
“I Shot Andy Warhol” (a mod of Nintendo’s “Hogan’s Alley” made by Cory Arcangel) is a perfect example of a Warholian appropriation of pop culture. But instead of just watching, we get to participate in the process of the modern world eating itself. We have the choice of missing our target and keeping Warhol alive for eternity in our gaming consoles.
An exhibition of artwork by comedian Harry Hill, has opened at the Edinburgh Art Festival.
Called My Hobby the exhibition includes Hill’s paintings of TV celebrities, such as Philip Schofield and Chris Tarrant, trapped in bizarre, nightmarish landscapes, which Hill described tin an interview with the BBC as:
‘...depicting a parallel universe where nature, celebrity and surrealism collide.’
Some of the work is reminiscent of artist David Shrigley, who encouraged Hill to have the exhibition.
Best known for his multi-award-winning series TV Burp Hill claims he paints as a means of ‘winding down’, and has been painting in secret for 20-years. Over that time, Harry had amassed so many of his own artworks he thought it was time to get them out of the house.
My Hobby runs at White Stuff, 2nd Floor, 89 George Street, EH2 3ES, from 4 August – 2 September 2012, and includes a newly filmed interview between Shrigley and Hill.
Here is a selection of Harry Hill’s art, including some on show in Edinburgh.
A few more peaks at harry Hill’s art, after the jump…
An extraordinary essay by Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonikovoy has appeared on the Free Pussy Riot website. You can follow a blow by blow description of what is taking place at the Pussy Riot trial on Twitter. Kafkaesque? It’s that in spades, see for yourself. I thought it was important for this to be read by as many people as possible, so I am reproducing it here in full (but not block quoting it, because it would be a mile long)—RM
Art and the Human Manifesto of Nadya Tolokonnikova
The punk band Pussy Riot, which I belong to, is a musical group that conducts unexpected performances in different urban spaces. Pussy Riot’s songs address topical political issues. The interests of the group members are: political activism, ecology, and the elimination of authoritarian tendencies in the Russian state system through the creation of the civil society.
Since its origin in October 2011, the band played concerts in the subway, on the roof of a trolleybus, on the roof of the detention center for administrative detainees, in clothing stores, at fashion shows, and on the Lobnoe Mesto on Red Square. We believe that the art should be accessible to everyone; therefore we perform in diverse public spaces. Pussy Riot never means to show any disrespect to any viewers or witnesses of our punk concerts. This was the case on the roof of the trolleybus and on the Lobnoe Mesto, and this was the case at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
On 21 February 2012 Pussy Riot band performed its punk prayer “Hail Mary, Expel Putin” at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. In the early March 2012 three members of the group were imprisoned because of the music and political activism. The themes of our songs and performances are dictated by the present moment. We simply react to what is happening in our country, and our punk performances express the opinion of a sufficiently large number of people. In our song “Hail Mary, Expel Putin” we reflected the reaction of many Russian citizens to the patriarch’s calls for vote for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin during the presidential election of 4 March 2012.
We, like many of our fellow citizens, wrestle against treachery, deceit, bribery, hypocrisy, greed, and lawlessness, peculiar to the current authorities and rulers. This is why we were upset by this political initiative of the patriarch and could not fail to express that. The performance at Cathedral of Christ the Savior was committed not on the grounds of religious enmity and hatred. Equally, we harbor no hatred towards Orthodox Christians. Orthodox Christianity worships the same as we do: mercy, forgiveness, justification, love, and freedom. We are not enemies of Christianity. We care about the opinion of Orthodox Christians. We want all of them to be on our side - on the side of anti-authoritarian civil society activists. That is why we came to the Cathedral.
We came with what we have and can: with our musical performance. During this performance we intended to express our concern: the rector of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church - the patriarch - supports a politician who forcefully suppresses the civil society, which is dear to us.
I would like to emphasize the fact that, while at the Cathedral, we did not utter any insulting words towards the church, the Christians, and the God. The words we spoke and our entire punk performance aimed to express our disapproval of a specific political event: the patriarch’s support of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who took an authoritarian and antifeminist course. Our performance contained no aggression towards the audience, but only a desperate desire to change the political situation in Russia for the better. Our emotions and expressiveness came from that desire. If our passion appeared offensive to any spectators, we are sorry for that. We had no intentions to offend anyone. We wish that those, who cannot understand us, would forgive us. Most of all, we want people to hold no grudges against us.
Scottee’s a bit of a legend in British performance art and cabaret circles, even though he’d hate to admit it himself. The 26-year-old writer/performer/director has already worked with some of the biggest names in this field and won a host of prestigious awards, not to mention a bunch of notoriety and some serious critical acclaim.
While there’s more than a hint of Leigh Bowery to Scottee’s persona, he denies seeing himself as a “drag queen,” even if that’s how the staff at Marks & Spencer refer to him. What Scottee Scottee is, beyond the messed-up make up and torn stockings, is a performer, as his involvement with London’s Duckie collective, and his own Eat Your Heart Out troupe, proves. From his own website:
He has broken limbs, been questioned by Police and lost 100’s of pairs of high heels in his determination to please and challenge his audiences. Scottee has been critically compared to variety and music hall greats with his unique practice of light entertainment.
…
His brash, clumsy and obnoxious approach to performance has left audiences confused, annoyed & covered in glitter. Whatever you think of Scottee - he probably won’t care.
But still, all this is not enough. Scottee wants more.
His latest project is called Follow and traces his efforts to attract more followers to his Twitter account. The end goal is for Scottee to have more followers on that social network than the British TV psychic Russell Grant, tho whom Scottee bares a passing resemblance, and often gets compared (it’s those sweaters, dear).
So far, so self-indulgent, I can hear you thinking. Well, yeah. All performance art is self-indulgent. What’s more important is what the viewer takes from the experience, and what light the artist can shed on cultural, and political, phenomena. And surprisingly, a project about attracting more Twitter followers is actually pretty good in that respect.
Who is real? What is real? Why should that really matter? Are online relationships as valid as real-world contact? Even if it’s with a robot? If they’re not as valid, then why not?
Scottee is open in proclaiming that social networking is the best invention in the history of humankind, and he makes for a compelling voice on our journey through Twitter’s seamy underbelly. Here is part two of the ongoing Follow video series, but if you’d rather watch Follow chronologically, part one is here:
Follow is running in conjunction with the Abandon Normal Devices festival, and you can follow Scottee Scottee on Twitter here.
In the early 1960s, Alejandro Jodorowsky, in collaboration with Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor, produced theatrical happenings that were part Grand Guignol, part Theater Of Cruelty and, in the case of splatterfests like Melodrama Sacramental, something like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre on peyote. Calling themselves the Panic Movement, the three provocateurs attempted to shatter the fourth wall with more than just words and gestures - they were going for something more visceral: blood and guts - anything to close the distance between spectacle and spectator and to wake and alert the audience to the suffering, inequality and untruths engulfing them in this modern world gone mad. Yes, life stinks and so should art. The Panic Movement put the “fart” in artsy fartsy - a steaming turd in the cosmic punchbowl.
Jodorowsky and company’s sacramental melodrama was staged in Paris, May of 1965, the same month and year that the largest Vietnam teach-in was held (May 21–23, 1965) at UC Berkeley, one of the seminal events in the history of the American anti-war movement, the first rumblings of a protest movement against the Vietnam war that would grow to a deafening roar. Was Jodorowsky’s “happening” also a a mirroring of the savagery of war and a metaphor for the lives being sacrificed in Vietnam? Were the prophets of peace in synch and sending signals to each other from two epicenters of radical change?
In Melodrama Sacramental we see images that would be repeated in Jodorowsky’s epic mindfucker El Topo, another nightmare ode to man’s inhumanity to man.
On the soundtrack we hear Allen Ginsberg reading from his poem “Lysergic Acid,” written in San Francisco in 1959.
Immortalize your happy little seedling forever with a 3D-printed replica of your fetus encased in white resin. Japanese engineering company Fasotec are behind this “Shape of an Angel”—that’s what they called it—product.
According to Geekosystem the “process of making the 3D-printed replica is fairly simple as far as 3D printing goes. The fetus is photographed using an MRI, then run through 3D imaging software and sent to the 3D printer.”
I’m not necessarily sure how one is supposed to display the “Shape of an Angel,” but it sure looks like it would make an interesting paperweight.
Designer Sam Edkins’ “Anatomically Correct” chairs are “luxuriously over stuffed offering a Bourgeois comfort, borrowing from the look of Victorian parlor furniture.” They retail for £595.00 on the Cavaliero Finn website.
They would really remind their owners to sit up straight!
Via Like Cool
Roger Ballen’s haunting black and white photographs of people and places in South Africa possess some of the same dark poetry as those of Diane Arbus’s New York City photos and Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachian portraits. They’re beautiful and disturbing - rich with stories real and imagined. The empathetic eye of the photographer keeps the shocking nature of many of the photos from being exploitation. Within the squalor and twisted flesh, souls are revealed like a punch in the face.
Ballen’s photographs have inspired and influenced the imagery that appears in the videos of Die Antwoord. The look of the video for “I Fink U Freeky” is particularly informed by Ballen’s art and in this short film the photographer addresses the connection between his work and that of Die Antwoord’s.
Chris Marker the influential French artist and film-maker has died aged 91. Marker died on his birthday, July 29th, which oddly reminded me of the time traveler in his 1962 film La Jetée who returns back in time only to see his own death at Orly Airport.
La Jetée is Marker’s best known work, which questioned the form of cinema, and the role within it of image, sound, editing and script. The film consisted of a series of still images, and one film sequence, which told the story of a post-apocalyptic world where a time traveler returns to the past to change the future. The film was the basis for Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, and original conceit for James Cameron’s Terminator. Today, French President Francois Hollande led tributes to Marker, saying La Jetée “will be remembered by history.”
Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve on July 29th, 1921, Marker was vague about his biography, preferring to mislead and fictionalize elements of his story. He variously claimed he was born in Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and Outer Mongolia. Marker never gave interviews, and refused to be photographed, though in later years pictures were secretly taken.
Marker was studying philosophy when the Second World War broke out, he served with the French Resistance, after the war he wrote a novel, Le Coeur Net (1949), joined the left-leaning magazine Esprit, contributing to poems, stories, and co-wrote the film column with André Bazin. He then wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma, before starting the globe trotting that would continue for the rest of his life, photographing and documenting his many excursions.
Marker’s first experimental film was a documentary on the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. He then worked with Alain Resnais on Les Statues Meurent Aussi, a hugely controversial film dealing with colonialism and art, which was banned in France on the grounds it attacked French foreign policy. Marker was a Marxist and his politics informed much of his work. However, Marker could be critical of Soviet Russia as he was of the west. In Letter from Siberia (1958), he famously critiqued Soviet and Western propaganda by showing the same piece of film three times, reporting it twice through East/West propaganda, and finally, ‘telling it like it is.’
Durng the 1950s, he also started a series of photographic books, one in particular on Korean women, developed Marker’s idiosyncratic style of mixing image and text, which possibly inspired the form of La Jetée.
Marker followed La Jetée with the less successful Le Joli Mai (1962), a 150 minute film made up from almost 60 hours of interview material on the lives, loves and politics of Parisians. He was then involved in establishing Société pour le Lancement des Oeuvres Nouvelles (SLON), which made collectively directed films and documentaries. Their first film was on Vietnam, and continued with the style of documentary Marker had devised with Le Joli Mai.
During the 1970s, Marker seemed to lose his way, making films about the politics of previous generations rather than the issues of feminism, sex, and personal liberty, that were central to the decade. It wasn’t until the 1980s that Marker returned to form with the cinematic essay, Sans Soleil (1983) and AK (1985), a documentary on Akira Kurosawa, making his epic movie Ran.
Marker continued working through his seventies and eighties and began developing a more personal and intimate style of film-making, focussing on his pets and zoo animals, creating his own bestiary.
Chris Marker wrote with the camera - his best works told cinematic essays that mixed the personal with the social and political.
Chris Marker (Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve), July 29 1921 - July 29 2012
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Chris Marker: ‘Bestiare’ from 1990
