DUSDIN MISC.

vastandgrand: Flannery O’Connor’s bedroom. This looks about...

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:43:10 -0400

vastandgrand:

Flannery O’Connor’s bedroom.

This looks about right.

The other night I told someone that I think Flannery O’Connor is my favorite American writer and I don’t feel too dumb a couple days later for saying that.

Andrei Tarkovsky would have turned 80 today. I can’t...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:55:52 -0400

Andrei Tarkovsky would have turned 80 today. I can’t think of another artist that has had a more significant impact on my aesthetic values.

Stills from his movies:

Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

Andrei Rublev (1966)

Solaris (1972)

Mirror (1975)

Stalker (1979)

Nostalghia (1983)

The Sacrifice (1986)

Moonface - “I Headed For The Door” With Siinai:...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:04:00 -0400

Moonface - “I Headed For The Door”

With Siinai: Heartbreaking Bravery (2012)

I love this album. I’ve been a fan of Spencer Krug since I first heard “You Are A Runner…” back in like ‘05. So excited that he’s using my work on his new album cover.

vastandgrand: “House Shape” by Mount Eerie from Clear Moon

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 14:20:00 -0400

vastandgrand:

“House Shape” by Mount Eerie from Clear Moon

Criterion is releasing Letter Never Sent, a 1959 film by M....

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:41:58 -0400

Criterion is releasing Letter Never Sent, a 1959 film by M. Kalatozov. It has some of the most amazing shots I’ve ever seen.

Good emancipation of women day! I helped curate a show at...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:21:00 -0500

Good emancipation of women day!

I helped curate a show at Stanford a few years ago that had an original of this poster and a couple others by Strakhov. They’re so cool.

l-amour-a-trois:

Adolf Strakhov: poster for International Women’s Day, 1920

via

This is an amazing film (he’s only made three) by one of...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:48:06 -0500

This is an amazing film (he’s only made three) by one of the best filmmakers.

You can watch the whole thing on Youtube.

fernsandmoss:

still from El sol del membrillo (1992) by Víctor Erice

Such a great way to leave the Mormon church! I’m going to...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:41:41 -0500

Such a great way to leave the Mormon church! I’m going to look for this book.

linnheidi:

Olive Oatman was kidnapped from her Mormon family in the Gila River (present-day Arizona) by the Yavapai Indians, while her family were traveling across the South West of America in 1851.
Most of her family were murdered but her and her sister, Mary-Ann were kidnapped by the Yavapai. After receiving harsh treatment by them for a year she was ransomed by a band of Mohaves. Olive went on to be accepted into the Mohave lifestyle and spent four years living with them. This was most famously acknowledged with her blue chin tattoo.
Mohaves considered tattoos to be a form of identification in the afterlife. The tattoo was secured by pricking the skin in small regular rows with a cactus pine until the skin bled freely. The cactus spikes were then dipped in weed juice and blue stone powder which was then applied to the pinpricks on the face. These chin tattoos indicated that the woman was ready to embark in adult tribal life.
Chin designs with the Mohaves were chosen by the tattooists and were based on the shape of the face. Narrow faced people usually wore designs of narrow lines or dots to accentuate the length of the face. Patterns for broad faces tended to have wider lines and cover more of the chin, making the face look even broader.
Olive was ransomed in 1856 by the United States Government at Ft. Yuma. On her discovery she was apparently found in nothing but a skirt made of bark which fueled suspicions of debauchery and sexual exploits. Considering her puritanical upbringing, Olive’s experience was deemed as outrageous. An ambitious Methodist minister named Royal Byron Stratton wrote a scandalous book about her story which was named Olive and Mary Ann. The book sold 30,000 copies, a huge best-seller for that era. Rumours of her mothering two children by the chief’s son circulated but she denied this thoroughly.

Her story gripped the country so much that in the 1880′s, the “tattooed captive” became a popular circus theme. Their stories turned provocatively, on the notion that people of colour could transform whites into people of colour ethnically and decoratively, as a means of exploitation and degradation.
Images and stories of Oatman’s tattoo fed the new America’s fear and ignorance’s towards the First World. In many ways Olive’s tattoo has captured a rather colonial view of the First World as terrifying primitives. Rather than a rather uplifting story of acceptance of this new culture and lifestyle bestowed upon her. Olive often proclaimed her love for the Mohaves in interviews and her brother indicated that she would weep night after night after leaving them. It has been said that she was the first white woman in America’s recorded history to have a tattoo.
Much material written about Olive appears to be confused and sensational but a comprehensive book, The Blue Tattoo has recently been written about Olive’s life.

Wow. Nice job Ryan. Can’t wait to hear the...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:27:00 -0500

Wow. Nice job Ryan. Can’t wait to hear the rest.

sonlux:

This morning Pitchfork premiered the first track and cover art of the forthcoming Beak & Claw EP by s / s / s (Serengeti, Sufjan Stevens, & Son Lux).

P4k is right that Sufjan sings through The Auto-Tune and that Geti raps. I also sing a lot—not through The Auto-Tune, it is important to note!—but through a Pitch Shifter (listen for the “O-oh O-oh O-oh” part). I also sing directly into a mic like a castrato in stacked harmony toward the end. And, alas, on the topic of who does what with their voice, I also sing like normal croaky Son Lux on the “we are re-coloring” hook (Sufjan sings that with me, but NOT through The Auto-Tune).

Other stuff: piano, bowed glass, mod’ed boy-choir mellotron with the portamento engaged, strings, chopped noise, drum kit, bass, and i think some other things.

Pre-order HERE.

Carolyn showed me this movie a couple years ago. It’s...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 11:58:38 -0500

Carolyn showed me this movie a couple years ago. It’s really so good!

orgasms:

La Planète Sauvage 1973

Leon Theremin playing his instrument, 1924. (hi Sean)

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:23:00 -0500

Leon Theremin playing his instrument, 1924. (hi Sean)

danielshea: Malevich, 1915 Don’t overlook the one hung...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:40:00 -0500

danielshea:

Malevich, 1915

Don’t overlook the one hung in the corner. There’s a thought behind that.

Angel Olsen - “Some Things Cosmic” Strange Cacti...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:41:01 -0500

Angel Olsen - “Some Things Cosmic”

Strange Cacti (2010)

This whole album is really powerful.

Werner Herzog - The Dark Glow of the Mountains What other...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:55:00 -0500

Werner Herzog - The Dark Glow of the Mountains

What other filmmaker is so consistently great at what he does??

govus:
best thing i’ve watched in a while

A portrait of Vsevolod Meyerhold reading Chekhov’s The...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:12:21 -0500

A portrait of Vsevolod Meyerhold reading Chekhov’s The Seagull in 1898.

What is the sexual function of nakedness in reality? Clothes...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:13:00 -0500

What is the sexual function of nakedness in reality? Clothes encumber contact and movement. But it would seem that nakedness has a positive visual value in its own right: we want to see the other naked: the other delivers to us the sight of themselves and we seize upon it – sometimes quite regardless of whether it is for the first time or the hundredth. What does this sight of the other mean to us, how does it, at that instant of total disclosure, affect our desire?

Their nakedness acts as a confirmation and provokes a very strong sense of relief. She is a woman like any other: or he is a man like any other: we are overwhelmed by the marvelous simplicity of the familiar sexual mechanism.

We did not, of course, consciously expect this to be otherwise: unconscious homosexual desires (or unconscious heterosexual desires if the couple concerned are homosexual) may have led each to half expect something different. But the ‘relief’ can be explained without recourse to the unconscious.

We did not expect them to be otherwise, but the urgency and complexity of our feelings bred a sense of uniqueness which the sight of the other, as she is or as he is, now dispels. They are more like the rest of their sex than they are different. In this revelation lies the warm and friendly – as opposed to cold and impersonal – anonymity of nakedness.

One could express this differently: at the moment of nakedness first perceived, an element of banality enters: an element that exists only because we need it.

Up to that instant the other was more or less mysterious. Etiquettes of modesty are not merely puritan or sentimental: it is reasonable to recognize a loss of mystery. And the explanation of this loss of mystery may be largely visual. The focus of perception shifts from eyes, mouth, shoulders, hands – all of which are capable of such subtleties of expression that the personality expressed by them is manifold – it shifts from these to the sexual parts, whose formation suggests an utterly compelling but single process. The other is reduced or elevated – whichever you prefer – to their primary sexual category: male or female. Our relief is the relief of finding an unquestionable reality to whose direct demands our earlier highly complex awareness must now yield.

We need the banality which we find in the first instant to disclosure because it grounds us in reality. But it does more than that. This reality, by promising the familiar, proverbial mechanism of sex, offers, at the same time, the possibility of shared subjectivity of sex.

The loss of mystery occurs simultaneously with the offering of the means for creating a shared mystery. The sequence is: subjective – objective – subjective to the power of two.

We can now understand the difficulty of creating a static image of sexual nakedness. In lived sexual experience nakedness is a process rather than a state. If one moment of that process is isolated, its image will seem banal and its banality, instead of serving as a bridge between two intense imaginative states, will be chilling. This is one reason why expressive photographs of the naked are even rarer than paintings. The easy solution for the photographer is to turn the figure into a nude which, by generalizing both sight and viewer and making sexuality unspecific, turns desire into fantasy.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing.

Little Wings - “Black Grass” Black Grass...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:04:00 -0500

Little Wings - “Black Grass”

Black Grass (2011)

I’m a big fan of Kyle Field. He gives a great dramatic performance in Wise Old Little Boy.

And, do I sense a subtle melodic homage to Jewel’s “Intuition” here? (Just kidding.)

proustitute: From Andrei Tarkovsky’s working diary for...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:42:00 -0500

proustitute:

From Andrei Tarkovsky’s working diary for Mirror

I took my dad and his wife to watch Mirror at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley back in 2003 or so. It was an attempt to “be open with him” and “show him the kinds of things I was really into.” When it was over he giggled a bit and said “Ok………….what was that?!?” Which is the best possible question — if you really mean it — to ask about any film.

And there’s really no good way to answer that question. But what a beautiful film!!

snowce: Phil Elverum I’ve posted some of his stuff here...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:20:36 -0500

snowce:

Phil Elverum

I’ve posted some of his stuff here before, and here’s another.

I love his music, but I’m even more inspired by his photographs.

Organizing some stacks of polaroids from the last couple years.

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:25:21 -0500

Organizing some stacks of polaroids from the last couple years.