jeudi 25 février 2010

Evidence - New York 30's Police Photography





Bellocq's Olympia






"Ernest J. Bellocq was born in 1873 in a wealthy white Creole family in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He became known locally as an amateur photographer before setting himself up as a professional, making his living mostly by taking photographic records of landmarks and of ships and machinery for local companies. However, he also took personal photographs of the hidden side of local life, notably the opium dens in Chinatown and the prostitutes of Storyville. These were only known to a small number of his acquaintances. In the latter part of his life, he lived alone and acquired a reputation for eccentricity and unfriendliness. According to people who knew him in late life, he showed little interest in anything other than photography. In his early days, he was something of a dandy."

"All the photographs are portraits of women. Some are nude, some dressed, others posed as if acting a mysterious narrative. Many of the negatives were badly damaged, in part deliberately, which encouraged speculation. Many of the faces had been scraped out; whether this was done by Bellocq, his Jesuit priest brother who inherited them after E. J.'s death or someone else is unknown. Bellocq is the most likely candidate, since the damage was done while the emulsion was still wet. In a few photographs the women wore masks. It is likely that the faces were scraped out for the same reason that masks were used - to hide the identities of the women."

Obviously Joel Peter Witkin's mentor ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._J._Bellocq

mercredi 24 février 2010

Alfred Kubin 's Curiosity Cabinet





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kubin

samedi 20 février 2010

- Clovis Trouille - Eros et Psyché -




+ Santa Carne +






Morning of the Magicians

Le Matin des magiciens was a book written by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in 1960 or in October 1959.[citation needed] It was first published in English in 1963 with the title The Morning of the Magicians. A German edition was published with the title Aufbruch ins dritte Jahrtausend (Departure into the third Millennium).

The book is a general overview of the occult and the works of Charles Fort. Le Matin des magiciens was highly influential[citation needed] in the way it presented occult subjects to a popular audience and spawned many books imitating its style.

The English edition, The Morning of the Magicians, became an international best seller, with over 800,000 copies sold worldwide.[citation needed] The book was a collaboration of ideas spanning a wide variety of subjects from Nazi occultism to supernatural phenomena and the place of mankind in the universe relative to traditional philosophical positions.

Wiki Curiosity - Icelandic Phallological Museum





" The Icelandic Phallological Museum (Icelandic: Hið Íslenzka Reðasafn) in Húsavík, Iceland (formerly in Reykjavík) is a museum devoted to phallology. As of September 2009, the museum houses 272 specimens from 92 species of animals displayed, like hunting trophies, embalmed in formaldehyde, or dried in display cases. The museum attempts to collect penis specimens from every mammal in Iceland, including several species that are endangered or currently extinct in Icelandic waters.

Sigurður Hjartarson, a former teacher of history at an institute in Reykjavík, is the founder and current director of the museum, which also exhibits a few specimens from mammals not living in Iceland, as well as folkloric specimens (alleged elves, trolls, sea monsters, etc.) and penis-themed art.

Although the museum does not yet have a Homo sapiens specimen, in the interest of advancing phallological knowledge, a patron (Páll Arason, born in 1915 and currently 94 years old) has donated, presumably posthumously, an affidavit for his penis."

samedi 6 février 2010

Beastly Boys - True killers go DJs




SOME of Britain's most dangerous killers and rapists are learning to mix music like superstar DJs in a hi-tech studio at Broadmoor Asylum.

Five patients at the top security hospital have splashed out thousands of pounds of taxpayers' cash on the latest professional equipment.

The budding DJs - who receive up to £80 a week in benefits - even have a music teacher to help them spin discs in the plush "sound suite".

A Broadmoor insider said: "They ought to be in here to face the music - not make music.

"You cannot believe the equipment they have bought from saving up their benefits and pocket money.

"They can add it to any wages they get for working in here or any private money they have stashed and get it all brought in by mail order. It's state-of-the-art stuff."

The group, dubbed Beastly Boys after US stars the Beastie Boys, are all classed as highly dangerous and have severe personality disorders.

As well as killers Anthony Joseph, William Jaggs and Jamie Limbrick, the group includes Alex Candiotis, 24, who tried to murder a Broadmoor nurse last year by slitting his throat with a CD case.

He has ordered Numark headphones and turntable equipment. Schizophrenic Barrington McKenzie, 25 - who stabbed a stranger to death in a MUSIC STUDIO - has ordered hip-hop CDs to mix in the education centre at the hospital near Crowthorne, Berks.

The source said: "It is up to them how often they do it. They are encouraged to socialise.

"When you look at what they have done to their victims, it hardly looks like they are paying the price.

"But Broadmoor is an NHS hospital and everyone inside is classed as a patient rather than a criminal so they're treated with kid gloves.

"God only knows what sort of music they come up with.

"Surely there is something a lot more beneficial they could be doing to help the community."

But a Broadmoor spokesman said: "Social activities - particularly those involving music or other creative arts - are a vital part of recovery and risk management.

Found on The Sun website, 2 fev 2010

" I know where Syd Barrett lives "



My beloved James send me this yesterday night

Unpsychedelic Syd Barrett in the 90', apparently blue jean addict.

it reminds me of that :

vendredi 5 février 2010

Sparagmos


Sparagmos (Ancient Greek σπαραγμός) refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual in which a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of limbs from the body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the Dionysian Mysteries.

Examples of sparagmos appear in Euripides's play The Bacchae, which concerns Dionysus and the Maenads. At one point guards sent to control the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their hands. Later, Dionysus lures his cousin, king Pentheus, into a forest after he bans worship of the god where he was attacked by Maenads, including his own mother Agave. The reference of his mother tearing apart his limbs is sparagmos. Similarly, Medea is said to have killed and dismembered her brother whilst fleeing with Jason and the stolen fleece in order to delay their pursuers (who would be forced to collect the remains of the prince). The Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini staged a sparagmos ritual as part of a long sequence near the beginning of his film Medea (1969), before dramatising the episode in which Medea kills her brother in a similar way. In Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly, Last Summer, Sebastian Venable is killed in an episode of sparagmos and omophagia.

thanks a lot wikipedia

The shakers " gift drawings" and "gifts songs"





The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing — called "Shakers" — originated in England in the mid-eighteenth century and soon centered around the person of Ann Lee (Mother Ann, or Mother Wisdom, or simply Mother), who became "the reincarnation of the Christ Spirit … Ann the Word … Bride of the Lamb." The group practiced communal living and equality of the sexes, along with a reputedly complete abstention from sexual intercourse. After persecutions and jailings in England, Ann brought them to America in 1774, where for many years they thrived on conversions, reaching a maximum size of 6,000 before their demise in the twentieth century.

Between 1837 and 1850 ("known as the Era of Manifestations") the Shakers composed (or were the recipients of) "hundreds of … visionary drawings … really [spiritual] messages in pictorial form," writes Edward Deming Andrews (The Gift To Be Simple, 1940). "The designers of these symbolic documents felt their work was controlled by supernatural agencies … — gifts bestowed on some individual in the order (usually not the one who made the drawing." The same is true of the "gift songs" and other verbal works, and the invention of forms in both the songs and drawings is extraordinary, as is their resemblance to the practice of later poets and artists.

N.B. "To be sure, the term drawing is a misnomer, because the Shakers did not use it themselves when they were referring to these works. In the few Shaker documents in which the gift drawings are mentioned, they are typically referred to as sheets, rolls, signs, notices, tokens of love, presents, rewards, hearts — sometimes prefaced by the adjective sacred. This definition focuses on the function of the works as gifts from heavenly spirits, rather than on the form in which the gifts were materialized. In fact, the gift drawings often include titles, captions, inscriptions, and extended texts, in English as well as in scripts written in indecipherable tongues, that place them on an uninterrupted continuum with other manifestations of belief, such as inspired writing, ecstatic movement, and spontaneous speech, especially in the form of song." (Thus: France Morin, in Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, The Drawing Center, New York, and UCLA Hammer Museum, 2001 — a book packed with generous examples, from which those shown here have been extracted.)

thanks a lot Ubu web

http://www.ubu.com/ethno/visuals/shaker.html

James Ensor







was at the Musée d'Orsay this winter , and you missed it ... sad


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ensor

Meat hats








http://www.hatsofmeat.com/frame.html

OneDreamRush - 42 seconds for the crust of Subersif Sinema in Beijing

Kenneth Anger
Asia Argento
Abel Ferrera
David Lynch
Larry Clark
Joe Coleman
Rinko Kikuchi
James Franco
Niki Caro
Harmony Korine
Jonathan Caouette
Gaspar Noe
Jonas Mekas
etc ...





"le voyage alchimique " Burensteinas Superstar

my favorite alchimist master in the world, Patrick Burensteinas , joins Mr Combe to an hermetic promenade in differents sacred locations ...

cheesy film ? impossible to download for free... but if you understand french, try to find the radio podcast from burensteinas 's talk on radio Ici et Maintenant ...