Abstract non-narrative filmmakers deserve all the attention they can get, if only because so many of their techniques are absorbed into more conventional films. Moviemaker Jeff Keen only started making his own 8mm films in his late 30s, as his native Britain entered the adventurous ‘60s. His work was soon discovered by art journalists and ended up in the National Film Theatre, garnering funding support for his activities into the ‘80s.
Now in his late 80s, Keen lives in Brighton and is actively creating, although he’s reportedly sick with cancer. Thankfully, the British Film Institute released the Blu-Ray collection GAZWRX: the Films of Jeff Keen last year as a lasting document of his work. Below is his 1967 short film Marvo Movie, in which Keen backs his rapid-fire, Kenneth Anger-cum-Stan Brakhage romp through the areas of nature, decay, consumption and pop culture with a soundtrack that resembles the early chant-work of British occultist group Current 93.
John and Yoko - $1200 John Cage and Merce Cunningham - $800 Harold and Maude - Sold
Here’s a fantastic collection of wedding cake toppers by seattle based artist Mike Leavitt. It’s totally worth a look. From Mike Leavitt’s website:
No longer shall little random plastic people rule the top of your cake. Why suffer the cruelty of impersonal sculpture poisoning the cake frosting you lick from your fingers? Weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, retirement, online bingo… The cake topper figurines can be of any person in any style. Some ‘cake toppers’ aren’t even the bride and groom, just plain loved ones. The finished figures are protected and sealed from any frosting surface damage. For further protection, they aren’t posable with the multiple body part pieces like the action figures. These are finely crafted sculptures that will be enjoyed as long as the union of love that they honor.
Following up on Brad’s post on butoh, my gifted illustrator friend Michael Wertz notes that Antony Hegarty (of the Johnsons) has written the obituary for Kazuo Ohno—one of the stark dance/performance form’s originators—who died on June 1 at the age of 103.
Ohno and fellow choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata created butoh in the ‘50s as Japan roiled in young, tortured energy, and the proliferation of butoh groups throughout America and Europe since the late ‘70s speaks to their legacy. Check out Edin Velez‘s excellent film Butoh: Dance of Darknesshere.
You can see butoh’s influence on Western avant-garde pop on both the Virgin Prunes live clip and the excerpt from ½ Mensch, Ishii Sogo’s 1986 film of Einsturzende Neubauten, below.
Looking every bit like a Jodorowsky film made out of clay, well known psychedelics enthusiast and Gumby creator, the late Art Clokey’s little seen 1964 psychedelic masterpiece Mandala is a truly wonderous thing to behold.
“Well, we shot that in our basement in Topanga. We had an 1100 square foot basement in a A-frame on a hillside. It was perfect for our needs. My whole family worked on it, my daughter and Gloria’s daughter. That was our second marriage for both of us. She had a daughter and I had a daughter. They were both artistic, and my son and Gloria worked with the camera. So it was a family effort all in clay.”
Art explained that the goal of Mandala was to communicate “the idea of evolving our consciousness from primordial forms to human form, and then beyond the human to the spiritual and eternal. The theme was the evolution of consciousness: we begin in the mud and we just go out and up.”
The film shows lots of masks and tribal images. “The masks were symbols of the condition that we live in where we are all behind the masks and the whole process of life is to discover who it is behind that mask,” Art told us. “Who are we? Who is that guy behind the mask we’re holding up there? That ‘s the purpose of all religion. You just have to find out who that guy is behind the mask.”
“The Mashin’ of the Christ,” an amazing short film set to Negativland’s “Christianity is Stupid.” Made by Negativland, i.d. and Heath Hanlin. From the Our Favorite Things DVD. (I just bought it today, it’s awesome.)
Want to know more about the preacher on the song? Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Some artists, like Picasso and Dali, were discovered when they were young and their talents grew to maturity before the public eye. Sometimes, however it takes,,, well, dying before the art world sits up and takes notice of you, This has certainly been the case with Brion Gysin, the Canadian/British painter and author who has long stood in the shadows, figuratively speaking, of William S. Burroughs, his lifelong friend and collaborator. Burroughs once said that Brion Gysin, the inventor of the Cut-Ups literary technique was the only man he ever truly respected.
Gysin is an artist whose work must be seen in person to be truly appreciated. This is said about every artist’s work, but it’s particularly true with Brion Gysin. What might appear to be random chicken scratch calligraphy when reproduced in a book, becomes ALIVE when seen in person. Seemingly careless hash marks become scenes of hundreds of people around a bonfire or a crowded Arab marketplace when you’re staring right at it.
The man was a master. And he left an awful lot of work behind. Although there were various Gysin gallery exhibits in New York while he was still alive—I recall being astonished by some large works on paper in a great 1985 show at the Tower Gallery—there has never been a museum level retrospective of Gysin’s work in the United States until now:
“Brion Gysin: Dream Machine” will be the first US survey of the work of Brion Gysin (b. 1916, Taplow, UK; d. 1986, Paris), an irrepressible innovator, serial collaborator, and subversive spirit who continues to inspire artists today. The exhibition will include over 250 drawings, books, paintings, photo-collages, films, slide projections, and sound works, as well as the Dreamachine—a kinetic light sculpture that utilizes the flicker effect to induce visions.
In 1959, Gysin created the Cut-Up Method, wherein words and phrases were randomly collaged to unlock unknown meanings, culminating in The Third Mind, a book-length collage created with his lifelong collaborator William S. Burroughs. Transferring the idea of the Cut-Up to magnetic tape, Gysin became the father of sound poetry. Throughout his life, Gysin was a collaborator and an inspiration to artists, poets, and musicians, such as John Giorno, Brian Jones, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Genesis-P-Orridge, and Keith Haring.
More than two decades after his death, his work continues to attract the interest of a new generation of artists drawn to Gysin’s radical inderdisciplinarity, including Rirkrit Tiravanija, Cerith Wyn Evans, Trisha Donnelly, and Scott Treleaven. The exhibition is curated by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator, and will be on view in the New Museum’s second-floor gallery. It will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue co-published with Hugh Merrell, Ltd. which will include scholarly essays and appreciations by contemporary artists, musicians, and poets.
Video below, a trailer for FLicKer a Canadian documentary about Gysin directed by Nik Sheehan, in which I make a brief appearance.
Using animation, sounds warping and time shifts, this video runs forwards and backwards looking for forgotten details, mimicking the way memories are replayed in the mind.
LoopLoop is made from a sequence captured in a train going to Hanoi in Vietnam. I filmed the houses boarding the railroad. The 1000 images of this sequence have been stitched into one long panoramic image. Into this long still image, I integrated other moving elements and built smooth transitions over it.
film made out of clay, well known psychedelics enthusiast and 
creator, the late Art Clokey’s little seen 1964 psychedelic masterpiece Mandala is a truly wonderous thing to behold.
with theme song by the Supremes !
DVD. (I just bought it today, it’s awesome.)
