Woodcut by Joseph Crawhall, Newcastle wood engraver (1821–1896)
The Vapours
Art
Keep your eye on the doughnut…
“Everything’s relative. They say keep your eye on the donut not the hole. Work is the donut and fame is the hole - it can be a deep hole, too, and you can get pretty screwy if you spend too much time in it. Getting stuck in the hole can be dangerous because it can make you forget what got you there in the first place.”
At home with David Lynch, March 1999.
From Book Of Changes - Interviews by Kristine McKenna, Fantagraphics, 2001.
Dumkopf! They saved Hitler’s brain again!
Item not won: Adolf Hitler’s head shaped candle.
A man was arrested yesterday for decapitating an wax effigy of Hitler in Berlin’s Madame Tussauds.
Possible motive:
World War II is over, and Nazi officials remove Adolf Hitler’s living head and hide it in the fictional South American country of Mandoras, so that they can resurrect the Third Reich for the future. It fast forwards into the 1960s, and the surviving officials kidnap a scientist in an attempt to keep Hitler alive. Various intelligence agencies, aware of the evil plot, recruit secret agents to bust the Nazi officials.
-They Saved Hitler’s Brain (synopsis), 1963. Dir. David Bradley.
Comment:
This is a rare reactionary attitude to German history in the capital (of all places) as Germany is internationally recognised as a nation which has confronted its past ‘head-on’ and benefited as a result. You only have to walk around Berlin to see that the remenants of the Reich have not been concealed or glossed over.
Consider the term: Trauerarbeit - Ger. meaning: mourning or grieving, literally translates as ‘healing work,’ (which importantly denotes an active process) used by seminal artist Joseph Beuys during postwar period to describe his modus operandi which included didactic lectures, social sculpture and founding the Green Party in Germany. He is said to have been a Luftwaffe pilot, shot down over the Crimea and nursed back to health by Tartar nomads, hence his autobiographical output. Beuys saw himself as shamanic figure who sought to put a plaster on every wound that he found, no matter what the size. More…
Remember: Two (W)Wrongs do not make a (Third)Reich.
Story
Trade autocracy for Shangri-La?
Robert just wants Morgan to be his friend.
But Morgan feels Robert is a bully who doesn’t
know how to be friends.
Robert chews on Morgan’s face.
Morgan gestures to push him away.
The well has long since dried up.
Image: Ant Macari
Link: here
The Center for Vampire Research
Dr. Steven Kaplan, appearing on the AP Radio network program “Calling
Ed Bush” last week, discussed his studies, partially funded by the US
Government, of more than three hundred self-admitted vampires. Dr. Kaplan, director
of the Vampire Research Center in Elmhurst, has published some of the
results of his studies in a book entitled “Vampires Are…”, and claims
that there are “at least” three hundred vampires in the continental US, most of them
in California, although some he interviewed worked
as hookers in Baltimore, exchanging sexual favours for blood.
According to Dr.Kaplan, vampires live exceedingly long lives, some he
interviewed claiming to be more than 125 years old, while appearing to be
about fifty. Because of this, they tend not to develop long term
relationships, and rarely marry or stay in one place very long. They tend,
he said, to work at many different trades in the course of their lives.
“When you give blood for blood tests,” said Dr.Kaplan, “you never know
whether someone is drinking it in the next room… you know, they always
take more than is needed for the tests.”
If you would like more information, or—if you are a vampire—help with your condition, write (as I plan to) Dr.Steven Kaplan at:
The Vampire Research Center
PO Box 252
Elmhurst, NY 11373 USA
Enclose a self-addressed stamped evelope with your letter and Dr. Kaplan
will return literature he has prepared for those interested in vampirism.
Further reading: David Reed’s Vampire Study Centre
The Delicious, a short by Scott Prendergast
The Delicious
The Delicious pt.II
Running time: 16 minutes
Shot in August of 2002
Completed in November of 2002
Shot in Brooklyn, NY
The Delicious, has played at over 40 film festivals worldwide, was shown on the Sundance Channel, was distributed through Hypnotic, and is now available on the premiere edition of Wholphin, the new DVD magazine from McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern.
This film is part of a trilogy.
An Extract For Alasdair
During my first month working for the Newcastle Library and Archive Service, I was assigned the task of counting all works of modern fiction that had not been borrowed in 25 years. Approximately 10,000 unpopular books that had been relegated from the open library shelves to a pitch dark warehouse the size of an aircraft hangar.
One of the titles was a collection of original writing and review work by a man named Alasdair Paterson. A flimsy 28-page pamphlet printed in Newcastle, possibly by Alasdair Paterson. Badly misfiled. Not borrowed once in 25 years.
from At The Institute: A Cigarette Card Collection
“3. A Film Critic
As the soundtrack began I found myself remembering an occasion, quite long ago, when I sat in a darkened cinema, waiting for the start of a film I particularly wanted to see. To my annoyance, a man who was obviously and noisily drunk sat down a few rows away, just as the screening began. ‘Shot of the waves!’ he shouted. We protested, he was told to keep quiet, but the opening shot of the film did show waves breaking against a deserted beach.
‘She’s riding in a carriage!’ he cried. And indeed, the heroine appeared immediately, being carried along the coast road in a horse drawn carriage.
‘Her father has an underwater paradise!’. And then a merciful silence, which indicated that he had passed out.
All during the film, though, we felt the pulse and promise of that underwater paradise, while the action took its mysterious course; beyond the banal crypts and halls of the decayed palace through which the heroine moved, we heard the sound of distant waves. This sense of expectation transformed the film; only at the end, when everything ended in flames and falling beams, did we realise that there had been a mistake, that the man’s fuddled mind had mixed up two stories. As the cinema lights went on, many accusing looks were cast in his direction, although I remember thinking that it might be profitable to consider using such an approach elsewhere- proceeding in false expectation through a novel, possibly through life itself, and watching for the transformations.
But whatever we felt, the man slept on, impervious, dreaming no doubt of the red and silver of sea gardens, where no accomplishment is superfluous. The sea has more voices than the shells record.”
Alasdair Paterson, 1982
1998: The Golden Year of Hip-Hop Photoshop
Trick Daddy - www.thug.com (1998)
This may not be in the classical style of early-Photoshop era rap albums, but i feel that taken as a whole it presents a distillation of what was going on during this new, exciting movement. People were beginning to have regular access to the internet, and with a few right clicks, drags and drops an album cover, nay, an entire album concept could be created.
Juvenile - 400 Degreez (1998)
Everything you need to know about the artform is here. The layout, the literal representation of the album’s title, the font effects, the bizarre posturing, some fire. Consider this one the blueprint.
Master P - MP Da Last Don (1998)
Master P’s No Limit label, often referred to as No Talent, is considered by scholars to be the major player in the Photoshop album cover game, with memorable efforts for Soulja Slim, The Hot Boys, C-Murder, and some of the albums pictured below. Particularly noteworthy here is the strong work on the ‘large hand/foreground’ effect.
Silkk Tha Shocker - Charge It 2 Da Game (1998)
More vintage ‘large hand/foreground’ creativity from No Limit.
Capone N Noreaga - The War Report (1998)
The east coast gets involved here, as the ever-present sinister undertones conveyed by fire, smoke, and in this case waves of heat continue. For me, this is classic in it’s close resemblance to the SNES game; Probotechtor - Alien Rebels.
Snoop Dogg - Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told (1998)
Whereas pre-’98 Snoop album covers featured cartoon drawings of dogs and pimps, the PS-era Snoop album (for which he briefly signed to No Limit) carbon copied this style directly to the Photoshop format, paradoxically resulting in an image even more reminiscent of a comic book.
Dr Dooom/Kool Keith - First Come, First Served (1999)
Although this album dropped a year outside of ‘98, Keith expertly apes the genre with all the giant hand/font/posture techniques pitched alongside a couple of different species of simian, a cockroach, and a burger with a mouse in it. The sad conflict of this work is that it stands as both a death toll to 1998’s Hip-Hop Photoshop creative outburst, and a final classic example of the artform in it’s own right.
Tractor Production up 300%
It appears not everyone was quite as overjoyed with the arrival of Cuban socialist activists in Newcastle as the ‘revolutionary communist party’ (who apparently organised their jaunt to the Star and Shadow Cinema) would have liked:
(click on photos to expand)
Photos: A.Gilhespy
