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Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Autumnal Equinox Ritual: A magickal working in light and sound
09.16.2019
04:35 pm
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but who knows, this weekend in Los Angeles might be your last chance ever to bask in the Luciferian legend that is filmmaker Kenneth Anger. He is, after all, 92 years old at this point. He might have another good decade in him, but you never know, so why take that chance? (The same could be said, of course, about his old chums the Rolling Stones who are about 15 years younger.)

This Saturday, September 21, Spaceland and Lethal Amounts present Anger and Brian Butler in a rare appearance as Technicolor Skull:

On the occasion of the Autumnal Equinox, Kenneth Anger and Los Angeles-based artist Brian Butler will perform at the historic Regent Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. A selection of Anger’s iconic films including Invocation of My Demon Brother, Lucifer Rising, and Scorpio Rising will be presented along with a conversation on the occult forces which drive these two visionary artists. The presentation will climax with the shattering ritualistic spectacle of magick, sound and light; Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull.

According to VICE: “Anger and Butler’s act employs guitars, a theremin, and a 60,000 watt sound system—the type of stuff normally associated with such trivialities as mere music—in combination with visuals and stagecraft, to plunge audiences into a kind of ecstatic nightmare. If you’ve ever seen Anger’s Lucifer Rising, you’re at least partially ready for this magick ritual of light and sound.”

I saw the Technicolor Skull performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles a few years back, during Anger’s big show there. It’s quite extraordinary: with Anger’s films projected behind them, Butler plays a Flying V guitar with a E-bow making a diabolical noise while Anger plays the theremin as if he is fisting it with manic glee (lest you think I am exaggerating for comic effect, first off, we are talking about Kenneth Anger here and second, he pointedly rolled up his sleeve before sticking his fist through the theremin’s… hole.)

Saturday, September 21 · Doors 8:00 PM / Show 9:00 PM at The Regent Theater. Buy tickets HERE
 

 

Above, Floria Sigismondi’s “72 hours in André Balazs’ Chateau Marmont with Kenneth Anger.”

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.16.2019
04:35 pm
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Kenneth Anger Resort Collection: New ‘Golden Scarab’ lightweight Lucifer Rising jacket for Summer
07.05.2016
04:43 pm
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In recent years underground filmmaker, author and occultist Kenneth Anger has added fashion maven to his multi-hyphenate resume with his tee-shirts and clothing endeavors. Now he’s taking his designer apparel to another level: Witness Anger’s new lightweight “Resort Collection” Lucifer Rising jacket, “ideal” he claims

“...for a midsummer night’s sorceries. The deluxe “Golden Scarab Edition” jackets are made with large embroidery on a vibrant satin material, as if they’d gone through a time machine more than a few times—landing someone in the next century.”

The jackets are the latest release from Anger and LA-based artist Brian Butler’s Lucifer Brothers Workshop:

Although the satin ‘souvenir’ bomber has come into vogue recently with labels such as Louis Vuitton, Valentino and Saint Laurent, Kenneth Anger’s original design tops them all. Featuring a palette known locally as Hodos Chamelionis, or the Path of the Chameleon—the colors of the forces which lie beyond the physical universe, happens to be the Lucifer Brothers Workshop’s house mascot. Here, they are flitted over gold and black satin in a limited edition of 333 with labels signed by Kenneth Anger himself.

Re-imagined in black and gold satin this lightweight edition of the iconic Lucifer Rising jacket is now in Anger’s online store and available to order.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.05.2016
04:43 pm
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Kenneth Anger unveils unseen occult art masterpieces by Marjorie Cameron and Aleister Crowley


 
Underground film legend Kenneth Anger has seen a huge wave of interest in his work since his acclaimed “ Magick Lantern Cycle” films became widely available to a new generation on DVD over a decade ago. The now 88-year-old director and author has made several new films in recent years, venturing into music with the Technicolor Skull project, and even the world of fashion, shooting a campaign for Italian fashion house Missoni and producing a limited edition reproduction of the iconic rainbow “Lucifer” baseball jacket from his film Lucifer Rising. Archival prints made from high resolution frame scans from his movies sell for top dollar in art galleries in New York, Paris and Tokyo.
 

 
And now, Anger is branching out into the world of retail, debuting a hybrid pop-up art gallery/store at the Art Los Angeles Contemporary art fair. Produced in collaboration with Anger’s longtime associate Brian Butler, the Lucifer Brothers pop-up shop will be selling original art, as well as some reasonably-priced signed limited edition prints, Kenneth Anger tee-shirts and the above pictured Lucifer Rising baseball jacket.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES, CA 1/28/2016

The Lucifer Brothers pop-up art gallery and store is the culmination of Kenneth Anger’s lifelong obsession with the occult. In 1955 Anger was the first to revisit Aleister Crowley’s former temple in Cefalù, Sicily. With the help of Alfred C. Kinsey, Anger painstakingly restored Crowley’s otherworldly murals which spilled across the inside walls of the villa, removing layers of whitewash to reveal the nightmares underneath. Prior to this Anger connected with Marjorie Cameron, the widow of famed JPL rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons, casting her in his classic film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in 1956. Recently the art world has taken great interest of Cameron’s body of work, with her esoteric art—or what remains of it—included in the popular museum exhibit “Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle” and in recent solo career retrospectives of her work in Los Angeles and Manhattan.

After attending the Cameron exhibit at MOCA and a follow up showing at Jeffrey Deitch’s gallery in New York, Anger lamented that Cameron’s most powerful occult works remained unseen. Through his web of arcane connection’s Anger now unveils Cameron’s monumental life-sized portrait of a demon entitled “Blue Prophet” which was inspired by visions Cameron experienced during her marriage to Jack Parsons and her part in the infamous Babalon Working ritual that included Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Other works by Australian artist Rosaleen Norton (aka “The Witch of Kings Cross) whose powerful paintings are seldom encountered in the US, British occultist Aleister Crowley and Anger himself will be made available to the public for the first time.

Kenneth Anger is lauded as an influential experimental filmmaker, actor, and author of the infamous Hollywood Babylon gossip books. His films, which include Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1964) and Lucifer Rising (1980) have inspired filmmakers as disparate as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and John Waters.

The Art Los Angeles Contemporary event—and the Lucifer Brothers pop-up gallery—opens this evening. On Saturday January 30th at 3:30pm Anger will make a special appearance onstage at the ALAC Theatre, which will be set up at the Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, where the fair is being held.

I saw Kenneth at the opening of the Marjorie Cameron retrospective at MOCA in the museum’s annex at the Pacific Design Center in 2014. Ken’s normally quite gracious and a lovely guy to converse with, but that night he was PISSED OFF, alleging that the museum was exhibiting something that was stolen from him in the early 1960s, a rare first edition of Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth, which is worth several thousand dollars today. All 200 original copies of that lavishly published Moroccan leather-bound edition of The Book of Thoth were signed and numbered by Crowley’s hand, and although the book was being displayed locked under glass, Anger was positive that he knew exactly what number this particular book was and demanding that the case be unlocked to prove that it was his stolen property. He even brought along an FBI officer as his guest to the event! I don’t know what ultimately became of the situation, but it was an interesting evening to be sure. I’ve always wanted to see Anger get, er, Anger-y and even at his age, his performance didn’t disappoint.

The press release makes mention of “what remains of it” regarding Cameron’s art. Cameron herself destroyed nearly ALL of her paintings and sketchbooks, burning them in an act of “ritualized suicide.” What you can see below, in Curtis Harrington’s extraordinary portrait of the artist, Wormwood Star, is perhaps the sole surviving documentation of that work (outside of the astral plane…). I don’t think more than two of the pieces seen onscreen below still exist. Maybe only one of them.

So very few pieces by Marjorie Cameron have survived—some smaller watercolor paintings and some pencil sketches, one large oil painting that the late Curtis Harrington had owned—and so the one that Anger is unveiling at his Lucifer Brothers pop-up gallery, titled “Blue Prophet” (see above) is a real coup for the Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair. I’ve seen this large watercolor in person, twice, and it’s a truly weird and mind-bending thing to behold. Most of her work is on the small side, but this one is about the size of a door and at least 2x to 3x larger than most of Cameron’s extant work that I’ve ever seen. To my mind, it’s one of the very best ones.
 
Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.28.2016
12:38 pm
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The Unholy Grail of ‘Lost’ Films: Kenneth Anger’s ‘Lucifer Rising’ with Jimmy Page soundtrack
04.17.2014
11:05 am
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Tonight a lucky audience in downtown Los Angeles, seated in the opulent setting of the theatre at the Ace Hotel (once the original United Artists Theatre co-owned by Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford) will be treated to a number of Kenneth Anger rarities that have been recently rediscovered and restored by Anger’s producer/manager/collaborator filmmaker Brian Butler. Among them are alternate versions of The Magick Lantern Cycle films and the mind-blowing, but ill-fated collaboration between Anger and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, both famously devotees of Aleister Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema.

The story of their falling out has long been a foundation of the Led Zeppelin mythos: Anger had been living in Page’s Tower House abode in London, editing Lucifer Rising on the same film equipment used on The Song Remains The Same. While Page was on tour with Led Zeppelin, his girlfriend suddenly kicked Anger out, not even allowing him to get his things. A few days later, the mercurial Magus of Cinema threw a hissy over not getting an additional five minutes of music he needed to complete Lucifer Rising when he wanted it, phoned the Swan Song office and “fired” Page—who was in America and apparently mystified by the whole exercise—from the project. Anger did his patented “curse” routine very publicly, going so far as accusing Page of being a mere “dabbler” in the occult and a rich, lazy junkie. Rock journalists at the time began to speculate if Anger’s curse had worked when a succession of tragic events ended Led Zeppelin’s reign as the world’s biggest rock group.

Pages’ Lucifer RIsing score is wonderfully perverse: a languid but steadily building Middle Eastern-sounding drone, festooned with chanting, tabla, screaming mellotron, a sonically shifting low frequency, foreboding ambiance and shimmering 12-string guitar work. It’s a mad, diabolical symphony of beautiful evil; a fascinating piece of unconventional aggressively avant garde music from one of the rock era’s most mysterious living legends. Married to Anger’s imagery, it’s an exquisite aesthetic and spiritual experience.

The world’s two most famous, most artistically high-level Thelemite magicians collaborated for several years and frustratingly, the fruits of that effort have been seen by very few people. And not for four decades at that.
 

 

Over email, I asked Brian Butler a few questions.

How or where did you locate this print?

Brian Butler: I got a call from a storage facility who told me that they had found an “aberated” print of Lucifer Rising. They asked if they should throw it away or if we wanted to keep it. This was a year ago. I was so busy that I didn’t think much of it and put it in storage. Gradually as I started to inventory Kenneth’s archive I found old press clippings and film programs. I found it interesting how meticulous he was in curating a unique experience for the audience. In 1966 he began screening his films as The Magick Lantern Cycle and designed a thirteen-page booklet with a different color for each page. He also recut Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome as the “Sacred Mushroom Edition” for this occasion. In the audience notes were included specific instructions on when to take LSD (still legal at the time) to time it for that film.

I started to notice how The Magick Lantern Cycle evolved in the early 1970s with different versions of Lucifer Rising. It’s seems he began including this in the program as he was shooting it—“Lucifer Rising Chapter One” was shown in 1970—and he experimented with various soundtracks including Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother.

Eventually Jimmy Page came onboard in 1973. For someone of the stature that Jimmy Page had reached in 1973 it was quite radical to do an avant garde soundtrack strictly as an artistic endeavor, although Mick Jagger did the Moog soundtrack for Kenneth’s Invocation of My Demon Brother in 1969. They worked together for several years with at least two different versions being produced, one in 1974 and one in 1975.

Which one is this?

Brian Butler: After a lot of research, I found it to be the 1975 version—the most developed of four versions known to exist. It ends with “To be continued” and was obviously a work in progress.

In one interview I found, Jimmy Page refers to when he screened Lucifer Rising in his room hotel room on the sixth floor and seemed delighted that his haunting score terrified guests up on the twelfth floor. He also mentions making a special trip to a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to be sure the music was synced up correctly. The Anger/Page version was exhibited to the public at least a few times, and also privately, for potential investors.
 

 
The Films of Kenneth Anger” will be introduced by the filmmaker and is a co-production of Kenneth Anger, Brian Butler and Cinespia. The former United Artists Theatre is one of the most opulent movie palaces ever built in America. For a while it was owned by freaky TV minister Dr. Gene Scott and basically closed to the public for more than two decades. The Ace Hotel has restored and preserved all the original decorations, murals and mirrored ceiling and Anger’s films will be projected on the theatre’s big screen beneath ornate columns, a soaring gold ceiling and walls in the style of a Spanish Gothic cathedral. (I was there once to see Dr. Gene Scott and even then it was pretty impressive. Restored it should be pretty incredible.)

More information here and tickets here. Apparently it’s nearly sold out, so if you snooze, you’ll lose, be warned.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.17.2014
11:05 am
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David Lynch Foundation Television’s portrait of occult filmmaker Brian Butler
10.08.2013
06:13 pm
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Brian Butler’s collaboration with actress Paz de la Huerta, “Babalon Working” premiered last month at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) here in Los Angeles. It was shot on location in Prague at the site where sixteenth-century alchemist Edward Kelly worked the Enochian system of magick. Blondie’s Chris Stein provided the no-wave synthesizer soundtrack.

“It’s between a dream and being awake. It’s a state just between those two. And if you can stay there, then you can channel something otherworldly, nonhuman,” says Butler of his hypnagogic cinematic practices.
 

Brian Butler’s “Babalon Working” on MOCAtv
 

 
After the short film was screened, there was a ritualistic performance art piece. Paz de la Huerta sat in a chair that was itself a work of art, facing the audience, making direct eye contact and sort of writhing and undulating around slowly, touching herself in a kind of sexy yet insane way that would be difficult to describe in any more detail than that. Extremely powerful strobe lights flashed around her.

Ashtar Command’s Chris Holmes did his Eno-thing on a laptop while Brian made stomach-churning low frequency oscillations on an analog synth. Then it was over.

Oddisee Films, in conjunction with David Lynch Foundation Television, have produced a portrait of Butler where he describes his meditational working methods. Eagle-eyed occultniks will note his interesting selection of book props: Znuz is Znees, Memoirs of a Magician by obscure Crowley acolyte C.F. Russell.

I appreciated that. For me, it’s all about the details.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.08.2013
06:13 pm
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‘Babalon Working’: Brian Butler’s trippy occult odyssey with Paz de la Huerta
09.18.2013
12:37 pm
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Brian Butler’s new film, Babalon Working, featuring actress Paz de la Huerta (Enter the Void, Boardwalk Empire) will be premiering tomorrow evening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

From the press release:

MOCAtv is pleased to present the world premiere of Brian Butler’s Babalon Working, a visually arresting journey of consciousness featuring Paz de la Huerta. The exclusive screening will be followed by Butler’s unearthly performance, Transmigration, further exploring the film’s abstract concepts with a high level of intensity through the use of Orgone generators, stroboscopic lights, low frequency sound waves, and geometric formations.

A glimpse into Butler’s forthcoming feature film King Death, Babalon Working uses symbolist imagery to communicate experientially with the viewer and to explore the layers of ecstasy, madness, and creativity that mediate man’s voyage between life and death. The footage was shot on location in Prague at the site where famed sixteenth-century alchemist Edward Kelley pioneered the system of Enochian Magick. Enochian Magick, which would later be expanded by the Golden Dawn, was cited by Jack Parsons as the inspiration for the ritual he entitled the Babalon Working.

Chris Stein of Blondie recorded a manic no-wave synthesizer soundtrack for the film.

The Babalon Working screening will begin promptly at 8pm, doors open at 7pm at MOCA’s Grand Ave location.
 

 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.18.2013
12:37 pm
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Love in the Old Days: James Franco’s ‘Satanic’ music video starring Kenneth Anger
03.19.2013
08:36 pm
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People love to love James Franco and they seem to love to hate him, too. I think it must be because he does absolutely everything. The prolific multi-hyphenate’s latest project is a music video for a song titled “Love in the Old Days” by Daddy, his musical enterprise with artist/musician Tim O’Keefe.

When producer Ted James remixed one of Daddy’s songs, “Love in the Old Days,” Franco cast Kenneth Anger in the music video, presiding over a masked bacchanal based on Anton LaVey’s lycanthropic “Das Tierdrama” ritual (which was, in turn, based on The Island of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells).

Alexandria Symonds of Interview magazine asked Franco a few questions about the short film and working with the notoriously mercurial—and appropriately monikered—Ken Anger:

Alexandria Symonds: How did Kenneth Anger react when you approached him with this concept? Or was it more collaborative—did you come up with the idea together?

James Franco: This is the first time I’ve worked with Kenneth. But I’ve been very influenced by his work before this. I met one of his close collaborators, a guy named Brian Butler, and Brian and I have been talking about various projects for a while, and we just haven’t been able to do any of them yet. Brian has a movie that he wants to direct, and he wants me to be a little part in. And then when I learned that he did a lot of stuff with Kenneth, I couldn’t have been more excited.

So Brian set up the meeting, and Kenneth is a—[laughs]. He’s a nice guy, but I think he’ll admit, he’s a very strange guy. So the conversation was very weird. We met at the Chateau Marmont, Brian was there. I’d have this whole conversation with Brian, because Kenneth was really quiet, and I’d ask Kenneth something, and it was like he wasn’t even listening—but then, he’d kind of become aware. And he’s very smart, he’s been through so many different kinds of experiences, and was a part of so many different things, traveling with the Rolling Stones at the end of the ‘60s. So at times, if you can get him to talk, he’s very knowledgeable and informative. But at other times, it feels like he’s just thinking about other things.

Alexandria Symonds: What about on the set? What was it like to direct him? Did you basically just let him do his thing?

James Franco: Right. So, I read this book called Sway, that’s a fictional novel, but it uses Kenneth and the Rolling Stones, and this guy, Bobby Beausoleil, who was part of Manson’s group, as characters. I don’t know how true any of it is, but I’m sure the writer did research to make a lot of it at least based on fact. In that book, he has the character of Kenneth Anger making the films—the films that Kenneth actually made. And there were certain approaches that he had to these films, where he would shoot a lot of things kind of documentary-style, just people doing their regular routines. Or sometimes, he would stage these basic rituals, but in the editing, turn them into something much more energetic and artistic than they were when they were just filmed.

I guess I used whatever was in that book as kind of a guide about how to work with him. All I really needed was this basic ritual of, I guess you would call it, “The Marriage of Hell.” And we had imagery that was people in animal masks, that was based on certain images that Kenneth’s friend Brian had shown me. I always saw Kenneth as the Priest of Darkness; his films have strangely fused art and weird, kind of religious rituals. And I knew in one of his performances he plays that weird instrument called the theremin. So, if I just had him kind of preside over the wedding and play the theremin, I knew I could shoot it similarly to the way he shot his movies, and then edit it, and make it into something even more.

Brian Butler—who recently moved into the former Hollywood Hills home of Donald Cammell, he tells me, “for inspiration”—was the creative director for the piece. Butler will soon commence production on a feature film called King Death (this is the project Franco alludes to in the Interview interview). He’ll be appearing in Berlin on Saturday night at the Mindpirates space showing some of his short films with a musical performance.

Read the rest of the James Franco interview at Interview

Below, Daddy’s “Love In The Old Days” (Ted James 1999 Remix):
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.19.2013
08:36 pm
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Aleister Crowley’s ‘Bartzabel Working’: Video documentation of Brian Butler’s ritual performance
12.17.2012
08:31 pm
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Photos and video from Brian Butler’s performance of Aleister Crowley’s “Bartzabel Working,” a ceremonial evocation of the spirit of Mars, first written and performed in London in 1910 by the Great Beast 666.
 
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The ceremony was performed at the west coast branch of L&M Arts in Los Angeles on December 4.

The ritual was part of the gallery’s current “For the Martian Chronicles” exhibit and employed custom robes made in the original A∴A∴ (Crowley’s magical order) designs and a circle, altar and triangle fabricated in Thelemic colors.
 
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Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.17.2012
08:31 pm
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James Franco and Brian Butler to perform Aleister Crowley ritual in Los Angeles art gallery

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Three magi: Kenneth Anger, James Franco and Brian Butler

Occult artist / musician / filmmaker Brian Butler will be performing Aleister Crowley’s “Bartzabel Working” tomorrow night, Tuesday, December 4, at the L&M Arts gallery space in Venice Beach, CA. This occult ceremony is part of the gallery’s current “Martian Chronicles” theme exhibit and will employ custom robes made in the original A∴A∴ (Crowley’s magical order) designs and a circle, altar and triangle fabricated in vivid colors. Actor James Franco and Noot Seear from Twilight: New Moon will also participate in the ritual.

In conjunction with the current exhibition For the Martian Chronicles, L&M Arts is pleased to present The Bartzabel Working, a performance by filmmaker and artist Brian Butler. Based on a ceremonial evocation of the spirit of Mars, first written and performed in London in 1910 by the famed British occultist Aleister Crowley, the ritual later became part of Los Angeles history in 1946 when Jet Propulsion Laboratory rocket scientist and Crowley protégé Jack Parsons conducted his own version of this rite, with the intention of placing a martial curse on a pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard.

For his reinterpretation of this historical performance, Butler will conjure Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, evoking the site that was once home to the late sci-fi author Ray Bradbury and currently comprises L&M Arts. The ritual will have Butler as Chief Magus, leading a cast drawn from his upcoming feature film King Death and featuring Henry Hopper as Assistant Magus, Noot Seear as Magus Adjuvant, and James Franco as Material Basis, the vessel though which the spirit of Mars manifests.

The performance will take place on Tuesday, December 4th at 8:30pm, followed by a reception with tunes courtesy of DJ & artist Eddie Ruscha.

Butler’s work has been shown at LAXART, in Portugal, Greece and in China. He recently performed with Kenneth Anger at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles as Technicolor Skull. www.brianbutler.com

“The Martian Chronicles” exhibit, honoring the work of sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, runs through January 5, 2013

L&M Arts, Los Angeles, 660 South Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA, 90291, 8:30 - 11:30 PM

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.03.2012
06:45 pm
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‘Occult Program’: Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull, live in Paris
09.25.2012
11:51 am
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Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler‘s ritualistic “anti-rock” project, Technicolor Skull, live at L’Étrange Festival 2012’s “Occult Program” in Paris on September 8th.

A limited edition blood red vinyl-only pressing of the Technicolor Skull album can be acquired at the Technicolor Skull website.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.25.2012
11:51 am
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Magick in Cinema
04.02.2012
06:20 pm
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Northwest Film Forum in Seattle presents: Magick in Cinema with Brian Butler this Thursday night featuring some rarely seen occult-themed films. The films will be followed by a lecture and ritual performance by Butler.

Films include Brian Butler’s “Night of Pan” (2009), “Death Posture” (2011) and his latest “Union of Opposites” (2012);  Kenneth Anger’s documentation of the paintings of Aleister Crowley “Brush of Baphomet” (2009); Ira Cohen’s “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda” (1968); Harry Smith’s “No. 11: Mirror Animations” (1979); and Curtis Harrington seldom-seen visual poem about Marjorie Cameron, Wormwood Star (1955), where you can see dozens of her amazing paintings, most which she sadly destroyed.

Brian Butler’s films have screened at the Tate Modern and the Cannes Film Festival. He recently had his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at LA ART and performed in collaboration with Kenneth Anger at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).
 The Seattle event is co-presented by the Esoteric Book Conference.

Magick in Cinema with Brian Butler, Thursday, 7:00 pm April 5th
Northwest Film Forum 1515 12th Ave. E. Seattle Tickets are available at www.nwfilmforum.org or by calling 1-800–838-3006

Below, an excerpt from Butler’s “Night of Pan” short:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.02.2012
06:20 pm
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Union of Opposites: Aleister Crowley meets performance art
01.19.2012
01:30 pm
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Dangerous Minds pal artist/filmmaker/musician Brian Butler will be premiering an ambitious live performance art piece this Saturday, January 21 in Los Angeles at the Ruskin Theatre in Santa Monica. His muse, Annakim Violette (daughter of rockstar Tom Petty) will be at the center of this black magic occult ritual.

From the press release:

Union of Opposites is an experiment in ritual magick, combining the use of sound and light with the intent of creating a collective out-of-body experience. A film screening will transform into a live performance in which the artist and his team execute an occult rite inspired by Aleister Crowley’s mysterious Ritual of the Mark of the Beast. In this incantation, Butler explores ideas of reversal and the use of geometric figures as channels of occult power. The work will feature a spontaneously improvised soundtrack that experiments with the effects of sound frequencies and rhythmic chanting on our chakras and mental state.

Butler’s interest in expanded cinema will fold the performance space into the work. He views the film, performance and musical accompaniment as a singular entity, where the performers will “expand from two dimensional screen to three dimensional existence” as themes of astral projection and projective geometry interplay with the auditory and visual stimuli.

Butler—who has communed and consulted with occultists and magicians from Europe to South America—explains that “magick is an art unto itself. In a sense, is the art of living in a creative and free way.” Influenced by the work of British arch-occultist Aleister Crowley, Butler believes that magick is conducive to and “complements” all manner of creativity, helping practitioners access different parts of the mind as well as spiritual realms. Butler explains: “The occult is defined as the hidden levels of the mind or the hidden information about how things work…A really intense performance is like hypnosis. You go to a certain state of mind and your presence brings those around you to the same place.”

A part of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, in the Ruskin Theatre at the Santa Monica Airport, 3000 Airport Ave, 5pm. Produced in conjunction with Annie Wharton Los Angeles.

Below, Butler’s 42-second film “Night of Pan” from the OneDreamRush collective show, featuring Kenneth Anger, Vincent Gallo and Twiggy Ramirez.
 

 
Thank you Susan von Seggern!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.19.2012
01:30 pm
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Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull
11.18.2011
10:29 pm
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A reminder about the Kenneth Anger opening party (which is confusingly being held a week after the exhibit actually opened to the public) tomorrow night at MOCA. Featured will be a live musical interlude via Anger and Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull project.

Technicolor Skull performs their first West Coast appearance at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles on November 19, 2011, as part of the opening reception for Kenneth Anger: ICONS. This exhibition will showcase the films, books, and artwork of one of the most original and enigmatic filmmakers of post-war American cinema. This coincides with the release of Technicolor Skull’s self-titled recorded debut, a one-sided, bloodred 180 gram 12” vinyl LP limited to 666 copies.

Technicolor Skull is an experiment in light and sound, exploring the psychic impact of a magick ritual in the context of an improvised performance. With Brian Butler on guitar and electronic instruments, and Kenneth Anger on theremin, their collaboration is a performance contained inside a ritual of unknown origin, tapping into occult stories that extend musical language into initiation. Hidden messages escape through gesture and light, manifesting as a one-time-only event.


The record will be available directly from www.technicolorskull.com and at the MOCA store.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.18.2011
10:29 pm
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Kenneth Anger at the Museum of Contemporary Art
11.09.2011
05:51 pm
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Yet another reason why I love the City of… Angels(!) so very, very much…

MOCA presents Kenneth Anger: ICONS, a showcase of the films, archives, and vision of one of the most original filmmakers of American cinema, on view at MOCA Grand Avenue from November 13, 2011, through February 27, 2012. A defining presence of underground art and culture and a major influence on generations of filmmakers, musicians, and artists, Anger’s films evoke the power of spells or incantations, combining experimental technique with popular song, rich color, and subject matter drawn equally from personal obsession, myth, and the occult.

MOCA’s exhibition centers on Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle of films—Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Rabbit’s Moon (1950/1979), Eaux d’artifice (1953), Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954/66), Scorpio Rising (1963), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), and Lucifer Rising (1970-81)—presenting the work across multiple projections in a unique gallery installation of red vinyl, designed in close consultation with Anger.

Complementing the films is an archive of photographs, scrapbooks, and memorabilia from Anger’s personal collection that illustrates the filmmaker’s unique vision of Hollywood’s golden era. The inspiration and source material for the filmmaker’s infamous celebrity “gossip” books Hollywood Babylon, (1975) and Hollywood Babylon II (1984), the collection centers on stars such as Rudolph Valentino and Greta Garbo, as well as now lesser-known icons like silent-film actress Billie Dove. Anger grew up in Hollywood. His grandmother was a costume mistress, and he is claimed to have appeared as a child actor in the Warner Brothers production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935). The world of the classic studios and the mystique of its major figures radiates throughout the photographs, press clippings, letters, and memorabilia on display, which Anger has gathered across many decades.

Technicolor Skull, a multimedia collaboration featuring Kenneth Anger on Theremin and Los Angeles artist Brian Butler on guitar and electronic instruments, will perform for the first time in Los Angeles at the exhibition opening on November 19. Technicolor Skull is a magick ritual of light and sound in the context of a live performance. The project premiered at Donaufestival in Austria, in April 2008, and has subsequently toured throughout Europe, performing at the National Museum of Art, Copenhagen, and the Serralves Museum, Portugal, and recently at the Hiro Ballroom, New York, for the Anthology Film Archives benefit.

Opening: Saturday, November 19, 7–10pm, Technicolor Skull will perform at 8pm.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.09.2011
05:51 pm
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Black Lips: ‘Modern Art’ video
04.06.2011
07:06 pm
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Weirdo Atlanta GA-based “flower punk” group, Black Lips have claimed the inspiration for their insane live shows from the like of Viennese Actionists and death rocker G.G. Allin. If this doesn’t sound like your cup of vomit… or urine, then it’s probably best to stay clear of the front rows.

For their latest single, “Modern Art,” Black Lips tapped Dangerous Minds pal Brian Butler (we posted about his “Night of Pan” film with Kenneth Anger and Vincent Gallo here) to direct this quirky, off-kilter hoodoo clip. Co-starring “a human skull, a rooster, a bomb blast, and more fun than you can manage.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.06.2011
07:06 pm
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