DC's

Studio Drift
Shen Shaomin
Julien Berthier
Nils Guadagnin
Marie Lorenz
Marc Quinn
Žilvinas Kempinas
Tomas Kleiner and Marco Biermann
Robert Breer
Ebru
Mungo Thompson
Andrea Zittel
Thom Kubli
A.A.Murakami
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Trevor Plagen
Misha Kahn
Martin Creed
Ahmet Ögüt
Robert Smithson
Desmond Leung
KATSU
Vincent Leroy
Object Design League
Ichiro Endo

 

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‘Studio Drift‘s Drifter is an installation consisting of one floating concrete block. The sculpture floats and moves at slow speed on a controlled three-dimensional path. With great accuracy, it creates a performance in its space.’

 

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‘Shen Shaomin‘s Withdrawn from the fish market presents an abundant fish stall selling numerous carp. Produced in large numbers by teams in his studio, each fish is hyper-realistically painted, fitted with glassy eyes, and animated by a small internal mechanism that mimics breathing. Shaomin has shown this body of work numerous times. Just like their living counterparts, Shen wants his carp to migrate, multiply, and infiltrate new environments, appearing in galleries, museums, and art fairs across countries and contexts.’

Watch it here

 

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‘Artist and designer Julien Berthier has been sailing around the globe in “Love Love”, a weird ship that looks like it’s about to sink. He actually cut a sailboat in half, sealed it with fiberglass and fitted it with two motors, which make it fully functional, despite its capsizing look. The 35-year-old says his ever-sinking sailing craft is perfectly safe and easy to maneuver, especially in calm waters. He admits he has put the coast guard and harbor masters on full alert a few times, after people alerted them about a sinkings ship. Berthier, who says he “wanted to freeze the moment just a few seconds before the boat disappears, creating an endless vision of the dramatic moment”, has sailed his sinking boat on many trips through famous harbors like London’s Canary Wharf, and France’s Normandy.’ — Propaganda

 

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‘French artist Nils Guadagnin’s “The Hoverboard” is a project born in 2008 for an exhibition named “Back To the future”. This work is a copy of the hoverboard from the movie Back to the Future II. Integrated into the board and the plinth is an electromagnetic system which levitates the board. A laser system stabilises the object in the air. “In the making of this work, I was thinking about different ways of presenting sculpture. In fact it’s a reflexion on the multiple possibilities of how to give a sculpture full spatial autonomy,” explains Guadagnin.’ — newslite.tv

 

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‘The first thing that comes to mind when you walk into Marie Lorenz’s exhibit Flow Pool at Recess in SoHo is a very neglected backyard pool. The pool is covered with a black tarp and the water is teeming with debris — things Lorenz found at the Jamaica Bay. According to the press release by Recess, “Flow Pool is a two-month long project that proposes the titular structure as a site of investigating questions ranging from the practical to the poetic.”’ — Not Your Chelsea Art

 

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‘marc quinn’s immense artwork “planet” 2008) is a seven month old sleeping child fabricated from painted bronze and steel, designed to give the impression of being weightless and suspended in mid-air – despite the fact it weighs seven tons and 10 metres in length, rendering it an engineering feat.’ — designboom

See it installed here

 

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‘Somehow, the air currents created by two industrial-strength fans turn the two loops of videotape in Žilvinas Kempinas’s Double O into a living, dancing sculpture, performing tirelessly for hours. Double O is very much a drawing in space, a mass of lines activating the real world rather than a two-dimensional surface.’ — MoMA

 

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‘Unterwasserlebensentwurf (2018) is a 7 day lasting live performance of Tomas Kleiner and Marco Biermann, living in a water filled container.’

 

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‘”The Floats”—or motorized mollusks—that artist Robert Breer took up producing again at the end of the 1990s, emerged in 1965. Primary shapes, neutral colours and, for the most recent, an industrial aspect, the Floats were then made with polystyrene, foam, painted plywood, and, more latterly, out of fibreglass. At first glance, these simple structures appear immobile. In fact, they are moving, imperceptibly, within the space they inhabit. They glide unbeknown to the visitor, following random paths that are interrupted by the slightest obstacle that they encounter. The Floats produce what should be named ”mechanical uncertainty”.’ — Musee d’art contemporain de Bordeaux

 

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The PLAY Current of Contemporary Art (1969)

 

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‘Ebru (water marbling) is the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing color pigments on a pan of oily water and then transforming this pattern to paper. The special tools of the trade are brushes of horsehair bound to straight rose twigs, a deep tray made of unknotted pinewood, natural earth pigments, cattle gall and tragacanth. It is believed to be invented in the thirteenth century Turkistan. This decorative art then spread to China, India and Persia and Anatolia. Seljuk and Ottoman calligraphers and artists used marbling to decorate books, imperial decrees, official correspondence and documents. New forms and techniques were perfected in the process and Turkey remained the center of marbling for many centuries. Up until the 1920’s, marblers had workshops in the Beyazit district of Istanbul, creating for both the local and European market, where it is known as Turkish marble paper.’ — turkishculture.org

 

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Mungo Thompson Levitating Mass, 2012
4th of July Parade Float

 

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‘In Yona Friedman’s project Imagine, Having Improvised Volumes ‘Floating’ In Space, Like Balloons, Friedman was looking for design methods that would enable the inhabitants to participate in a trial and error planning process and the adaptation of housing structures to their needs. “I am against any preplanning,” he stated in an interview with Archdaily; “It is the trial and error process that pushes forward in any technology … A plan conceived on paper may be a good idea, but that’s all it is. Everything needs to be tested and improved all the time.”

 

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“Dancing on the Ceiling: Art & Zero Gravity” is a unique group exhibition where contemporary artists explore and recreate the condition of weightlessness on earth. During this year’s event, Berlin-based sound artist Thom Kubli exhibited his new work called “FLOAT! Thinktank 21,″ which allows the users to experience zero gravity by soaking in salt water and listening to a new audio piece by Kubli for 5 minutes. This process is followed by 40 minutes of soothing silence. The installation piece features an egg-shaped flotation with a custom underwater sound system that plays audio recordings. According to Kubli, “Zero gravity can be read as a condition where prevailing reference models are suspended. “The condition of zero gravity might be evoked by willingly refusing a social and political model.”‘ — bornrich.com

 

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‘Known for their sensory-rich installations, A.A. Murakami‘s Floating World explores the connection between humanity and nature, often working with ephemeral and unpredictable elements such as light, fog, scents, and plasma, as well as generative codes. Their work draws inspiration from ancient cultures, where they sought to emulate and honor the natural world, evoking a deeper awareness of the transience of human existence.’

 

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‘In Rafael Lozano’s “Tape Recorders”, rows of motorised measuring tapes record the amount of time that visitors stay in the installation. As a computerised tracking system detects the presence of a person, the closest measuring tape starts to project upwards. When the tape reaches around 3m high it crashes and recoils back.’ — bitforms gallery

 

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‘Trevor Paglen’s $1.5 million satellite has been lost in space—and Donald Trump’s 35-day government shutdown in January 2020 could be to blame. The pioneering artist and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient successfully launched his ambitious installation, Orbital Reflector, into space at the end of last year, but prolonged radio silence from the government during the unforeseen shutdown meant that engineers missed the window to complete the deployment of the work, a 100-foot-long diamond-shaped mylar balloon that could be tracked from earth.

‘Officials at the Nevada Museum of Art, which helped produce the work, confirmed in a statement that the work cannot presently be tracked.

‘The ambitious installation was in development for 10 years. It was launched into space in early December 3 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, along with 64 other satellites that had various utilities. The plan was for it to be delivered 350 miles into the thermosphere—one of the layers of Earth’s atmosphere—before inflating the balloon.

‘It was intended to inflate Orbital Reflector once it drifted away from the cluster of satellites it was released with in order to avoid collision. After that, it was meant to orbit Earth for a few months, where it would be visible from Earth, before being burned up by the atmosphere. A statement from museum officials explains that two unexpected events occurred early on in its journey. The first was that the US Air Force was unable to distinguish between the satellites because there were so many of them, so it was unclear when the package containing Orbital Reflector would be cleared to inflate.

‘The second was that the Federal Communications Commission “was unavailable to move forward quickly due to the US government shutdown.” Before the shutdown, the museum had been working with the FCC to release the balloon at the exact right time for a safe trajectory. Museum officials were waiting for a green light from the federal agency but all communications halted during the shutdown and, by the time communications resumed, the museum’s engineers had lost touch with the satellite.’ — artnet

 

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‘The Bellyflop Collection features Misha Kahn’s interpretations on poolside and outdoor entertaining accessories. With the Bellyflop Pool Float, playful meets, well… functional. If you’re into 10/10 bellyflops, that is (hint: we are). The PVC pool float with dichroic film was designed in New York, and made to create a splash everywhere.’ — ProspectNY

 

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‘Ahmet Ögüt takes the socialist history of Ghent as the starting point for his contribution to TRACK, which is entitled ‘The Castle of Vooruit’. He concentrates on the Vooruit, the cooperative where the working-class people of Ghent assembled from the end of the nineteenth century until the early 1970s and which ran both a centre for festive occasions and a newspaper. Making reference to ‘Le Chateau des Pyrénées’ (1961) by the Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte, Ögüt is sending up a gigantic helium balloon in the shape of Magritte’s floating rock, launched near the Vooruit Arts Centre. He is replacing the mysterious castle on top with a replica of the Vooruit building. Ögüt captures the traces of a set of utopian social ideas in a single surreal image.’ — AOW

 

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‘In Half The Air In A Given Space, Martin Creed shows balloons, each with a diameter of 40cm, which as an installation fill half of the gallery space. The gallery can only be entered by uncovering a path, which results in a certain disorientation. Even gallery staff familiar with the architecture can only move intuitively within the exhibition. The spatial perception, especially due to the very limited view of walls, ceiling or floors, leads on the one hand to a location awareness of the viewer within the floating balloons and on the other hand to a claustrophobic restriction.’

 

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‘The island of Robert Smithson was formed over about a week, in a ragged-looking barge yard on Staten Island, shaped by a public art group, a landscape architect, a contractor, an engineer, a project manager and various other dedicated conceptual art workers using a 30-by-90-foot flat-decked barge, 10 trees, 3 huge rocks, a bunch of shrubs, rolls of sod, a whole lot of dirt and even more ingenuity.

‘The result, which will began a brief period of daily travels in 2005 along Manhattan’s shores, was much more than just a week’s work. It was the culmination of more than 30 years of sporadic efforts to build the ambitious floating artwork that Mr. Smithson sketched out in a rough drawing three years before he died in a plane crash in 1973, an image that showed a tiny, forested, man-made island being towed by tugboat with the city’s skyline in the distance.

‘Mr. Smithson tried to find backers to build the project, which he called “Floating Island,” during his lifetime but had no luck. In the years after his death, other admirers and artists also tried unsuccessfully to get the project going.

‘The Whitney Museum, which sponsored, “Floating Island” described it as a kind of “anti-‘Gates,’ ” referring to the saffron-colored extravaganza by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that had wound through Central Park during the previous winter.

‘In part this is simply because of the modest scale and cost of the island project – about $200,000, compared with the $21 million said to have been paid to create “The Gates.” It is also because, as public artworks, “The Gates” and “Floating Island” are like a split personality: “The Gates” invited public interaction and was, in effect, completed by it; the island, reflecting Smithson’s intellectual and generally chilly aesthetic, floats off at a distance, inaccessible, inhabited by no one.’ — NYTimes

 

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‘Visitors to Art Central can see Desmond Leung’s VR ink painting titled The DAWN of INNER REALITY at the Parkview Gallery stand. The work uses VR technology in a painterly fashion to expand the concept of a technological singularity – a vast artificial intelligence that will change humanity beyond recognition.’ — Sedition

Watch a simulation here

 

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‘Developed by New York graffiti artist, KATSU, who rose to fame in the 1990s by peppering the streets with his iconic skull tag, a spray-paint wielding drone is the latest step in his pursuit to paint bigger than anyone else in the city.

‘“Drones allow me to do what I had always yearned to do,” he told Bard College’s Centre for the Study of the Drone. “I’ve always looked at a building or looked at a canvas and stretched my arms out with my eyes. My eyes have always been able to reach it but my limbs have never been able to touch and reach these spaces.”

‘Lacking go-go-gadget arms, in the past he has used fire extinguishers to blast vast quantities of paint across huge areas, obliterating rivals’ puny tags with building-sized letters. Now he hopes his pet paint-spraying drone will let him get to places others can only dream of reaching.

‘“I have this little video game-inspired fantasy of lying in my bed, sending my drones out my bedroom window,” he said, “having them render my tags all over the city and then flying back home to me, like, in my bed.”’ — The Guardian

 

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‘The ‘Pebble’ installation, created by Vincent Leroy, is a sensory experience. With the mirror effect, Vincent Leroy slows down time. The ground and the horizon slowly disappear. The inflatable structure’s mechanism, uses slow-rotating steel cables.’ — wordless Tech

 

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‘The Balloon Factory functions as a workspace and spectacle at once. Through it, the Object Design League explores methods of producing objects for consumption in a direct way, collapsing fabrication, distribution and purchasing into one space. The designers are replicating a hidden manufacturing process, but more importantly, taking ownership of it. Specially shaped formers dipped into liquid latex, hand-painted, and dried to create unique balloons—a portion of these inflated with helium was given to the public. By making a product by hand that is only known to be made industrially, they locate their practice on the fringes of mass production.’ — domus

 

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Ichiro Endo To the future (2009)

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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks. Julian Cope vs. Nico, I’ll check that out. Cope seems like he’s been quiet for quite a while? Great about the workshop. Tuesdays, nice. So good that your artistry is taking its rightful place in your life again. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I saw Nico live once in a small club in LA around the time of her album ‘The End’. It was mesmerising and gloomy as hell. So you’re free. Max out your freedom while it’s yours to keep. B’day lunch was nice. No mozzarella sticks. I had a bagel w/ cream cheese instead. Not quite the same thing. Yeah, I felt like ‘TEoOS’ had all the ingredients to be a lot of fun, but it just seemed kind of inert. Very strange. Oh well. ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ looks to be awfully fun, dinosaur-wise. Love wondering if you’re excited that there’s a new My Chemical Romance album in the works, G. ** Carsten, I’ll always prefer the ‘Fight Club’ in my head where I was not forced to accept that the protagonists looked and acted like Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Again, whatever you think is best re: the post. The film: Our producer is approaching the first possible investor, who apparently really liked ‘Room Temperature’, which is a hopeful sign, and she and we will talk with her next week. The Pope will shut down my neighborhood no matter what, so the only question is how interesting that will be. ** Steve, Nice about the upgraded Currents section. Dennis Lim is cool. No, no sign of ‘Naza’ opening here yet. No, festivals, at least in North America, increasingly use filmfreeway to filter their submissions, and ff sends you a notice when you’ve been accepted or rejected. Festivals are pretty pro for the most part. It’s the screening and distribution people who more than occasionally think blowing you off is a legitimate answer. ** laura w., Freud loyalists seem like they’re in a cult, and not an interesting cult. The French being the French, I’m guessing the Catholic contingent is pretty reserved. But French futbol guys can certainly go wild, so maybe. I’m so sorry about the orthopaedic stuff. What’s the situation, if you want to say? ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi, buddy. Give that cocoon a hard kick as you walk away. Gosh, you sound great. Marty, okay. Nickname for Martin. Or do people name their kids Marty? Why not, I guess. That person’s effect has a beautiful glow, even all the way over here. I wish winter was still winter over here, but it’s just a little colder now. But the sky is ever more full of surprises. Love you too, excellent weekend or least day. ** HaRpEr //, I have a number of friends who were friends with Greer, and they say I met her, but I can’t remember that. ‘The Marble Index’ is probably her peak, right? Although I do really like ‘The End’. Her singing ‘Das Lied der Deutschen’ is an eternal nerve rattler. Ugh, terrible about that performance. I can feel that. ** Okay. Floating is your thematic for today. See you tomorrow.

* (restored)
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1. No one
“No one loved Nico and Nico loved no one . . . she was just alone . . . she couldn’t bear for anyone to touch her . . . Nico had sex with no one.” — Carlos de Maldonaldo-Bostock

‘In the documentary Nico Icon, friends and relatives of the singer, model and actress Nico describe her as “crazy,” “terrifying,” “a freak,” “a junkie” and “desperate.” But they also call her a “dreaming,” “boundless” “pure beauty” and “goddess.” Which raises the questions: Just who was Nico? And, in the 49 years she lived, did anybody really know her?

‘Born Christa Paffgen, Nico appeared in such films as Federico Fellini’s Dolce Vita in 1960 and Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls in 1966. She recorded a handful of spooky and singular solo albums that are as revered today as they were pitifully unheard and sidelined in her time. She was romantically — and, in most cases, creatively — involved with some of the late 20th century’s most important artistic figures: Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Alain Delon, Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Brian Jones, Iggy Pop, and Jeanne Moreau among others. But she remains best known for singing in the influential rock group the Velvet Underground at the behest of Warhol. It wasn’t her voice that got her the job. It was her presence: tall, icy, Teutonic and beautiful. But her singing — deep, mechanical and heavily accented with long-drawn-out consonants — soon grew as striking as her looks.

‘Apparently Nico was like the Kelippot, empty human shells in cabalistic mythology. Many people in the documentary say there was nothing beneath her surface: no love, no interests, no cares. There was only a wish to annihilate the one thing that attracted everyone to her: her beauty. And that she succeeded in doing, with years of heroin addiction and self-abuse.

‘”I have no limits,” she says in an interview in the movie, referring not just to her future but to her changeable past. She spent the half-century she lived trying not to be known, fabricating her background and making wildly contradictory statements to interviewers and friends — that is, when she talked at all. By simply existing as a silent German beauty, Nico became a blank screen for those around her, allowing them to project their own images onto her emptiness.’ — Neil Strauss, NYT

 

2. 1972
“Nico spoke no language — not articulately, at least.” — Carlos de Maldonaldo-Bostock

Nico interview 1972

destroymichael: Would anyone happen to know what she is saying in english?
Luna2548: she explains how she met lou and J.cale, that she was really impressed and it was the most beautiful day of her life, that she met andy at castel where she went dancing and then i don’t really understand what she means by marquis de sade dances, perverted dances she says !? lol Then she is speaking about la cicatrice intérieur… Before speaking about the movie, the journalist tell her that apart from the vu album, c.girls and the two other albums, she didn’t record anything else so he ask her if she intented to release another album and she answers you think it isn’t enough? Also, she says she would like to play at the opera one day, that when she makes music she thinks about theatre and cinema and she thinks her music is very visual. it’s not a very clear interview, but not only because of Nico, she speaks french very well…sorry for my english…
dragnpop: when she speaks of Marquis de Sade dances and perverted dances, she referrs to Gerard Malanga, who was performing something known as the “whip dance” – a dance with a whip – during Andy Warhol’s EPI – exploding plastic inevitable.
esquibelle: I idolized Nico for years as a goddess, adored her voice and unique songs. Then I met her, to do an interview for a music paper, and was sorely disappointed! She was nothing like I’d imagined! She was not too nice, bumming money for drugs, food, etc. from fans. Brown teeth, strung out, condescending and surly. She mocked her fans. She was a tragic figure, struggling with regrets, because she knew she could have done so more with her life.
girlsdocry: I would say he’s asking questions expecting a precise answer, which she never gives, such as in the end. He also implies that she is lazy and have done nothing interesting lately. But you have a point : he is very rude and unrespectful, especially when he assumes she hasn’t done anything since she left the VU. If I was her, I would have reacted more violently, but she just seem to be above all that, like a queen talking to an annoying servant.
tooboredforwords: she sounds like a man no offence ppl
Rosarie0: How suitable French is for her. It’s all so smooth. She’s telling him to get fuc–d, so smoothly.
kutkrap: This guy speaks to her like she’s some kind of retard or a kid on a tv show, it’s really weird..reallt rude, i’d say. But she is luminous…

 

3. Songstress
“Heroin does make you a colder and a meaner person . . . not so much Nico because she had always been different.” — Lutz Ulbrich

‘Chelsea Girls’ live in the Chelsea Hotel

‘I’m Not Saying’

‘Winter Song’

‘Heroes’ live

‘These Days’

‘All That is My Own’

‘Afraid’ live

‘My Heart is Empty’ live

’60/40′ live

‘Le Petite Chevalier’

‘My Funny Valentine’

 

4. Superstar & actress
“Nico had no inner life, or what inner life she did have was kept strictly inner . . . there was nothing to talk to Nico about because she had no interests.” — Viva

Nico in Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita’

Between 1970 and 1979, Nico made about seven films with French director Philippe Garrel. She met Garrel in 1969 and contributed the song “The Falconer” to his film, Le Lit de la Vierge. Soon after, she was living with Garrel and became a central figure in his cinematic and personal circles. Nico’s first acting appearance with Garrel occurred in his 1972 film, La Cicatrice Intérieure. Nico also supplied the music for this film and collaborated closely with the director. She also appeared in the Garrel films Anathor (1972); the silent Jean Seberg biopic, Les Hautes Solitudes, released in 1974; Un onge passe (1975); Le Berceau de cristal (1976), starring Pierre Clementi, Nico and Anita Pallenberg; and Voyage au jardin des morts (1978). His 1991 film J’entends Plus la Guitare is dedicated to Nico. — Wikipedia

‘La Cicatrice Intérieure’ (Excerpt)

‘Le Lit de la vierge’ (Excerpt)

Andy Warhol: ‘[Nico] called us from a Mexican restaurant and we went right over to meet her. She was sitting at a table with a pitcher in front of her, dipping her long beautiful fingers into the sangria, lifting out slices of wine-soaked oranges. When she saw us, she tilted her head to the side and brushed her hair back with her other hand and said very slowly, ‘I only like the fooood that flooooats in the wiiine.’

‘During dinner, Nico told us that she’d been on TV in England in a rock show called Ready, Steady, Go! and right there she pulled a demo 45 rpm out of her bag of a song called I’ll Keep It with Mine that had been written for her, she said, by Bob Dylan, who’d been over there touring. (It was one of a few pressings that had Dylan playing the piano on it, and eventually Judy Collins recorded it.) Nico said that Al Grossman [Dylan’s manager] had heard it and told her that if she came to the United States, he’d manage her. When she said that, it didn’t sound too promising, because we’d heard Edie telling us so much that she was ‘under contract’ to Grossman and nothing much seem to be happening for her… We were still seeing Edie, but we weren’t showing her films anymore…

‘Nico had cut a record called I’m Not Sayin’ in London (Andrew Oldham, the Stones’ producer had produced it), and she’d also been in La Dolce Vita. She had a young son – we’d heard rumors that the father was Alain Delon and Paul [Morrissey] asked her about that immediately because Delon was one of his favorite actors, and Nico said yes, that it was true and that the boy was in Europe with Alain’s mother. The minute we left the restaurant Paul said that we should use Nico in the movies and find a rock group to play for her. He was raving that she was ‘the most beautiful creature that ever lived’.’

Nico in Warhol’s ‘I, a Man’ (watch it here)

Nico in Warhol’s ‘Chelsea Girls’

Nico discusses Andy Warhol

Nico’s complete filmography

 

5. Jim Morrison
“I like my relations to be physical and of the psyche. We hit each other because we were drunk and we enjoyed the sensation. We made love in a gentle way, do you know? I thought of Jim Morrison as my brother, so we would grow together. We still do, because he is my soul brother. We exchanged blood. I carry his blood inside me. When he died, and I told people that he wasn’t dead, this was my meaning.” — Nico

Nico discusses Jim Morrison

Nico sings Morrison’s ‘The End’

 

6. John Cale *
“Being a living legend is such a precarious livelihood. It’s like being a bar of soap in a shower which doesn’t have any water in it.” — John Cale

… covers Nico’s ‘Frozen Warnings’

‘Backstage at the Roundhouse, Nico sits alone on a flight of wooden steps that lead up to the stage. A black velvet cape over her shoulders, one leg up and the other extended, her chin resting on her hand resting on her knee. Under empty beams and open blue lights on Sunday night. Waiting until it is time.

‘John Cale left the Velvet Underground two and a half years ago. Nico left before he did. Until a week ago, the only way to hear these people together was on the first Velvet Underground album. Separately, John is also on the second and his own album, Vintage Violence. Nico has made three albums, Chelsea Girls, The Marble Index, and the latest, Desertshore. And then, last week, a small announcement in a hip London magazine said: “John Cale – Nico, Roundhouse, Sunday.”

‘Nico goes on stage first, before a large and noisy crowd packed in to see Pink Floyd, who will follow. “I don’t know what mood you’re in”, Nico says to the audience in her unreproducible voice. “I suppose you’re in a very peace-loving mood.” She begins with “Janitor of Lunacy” from her new album, pumping away steadily, her legs in high leather boots on the harmonium pedal, her shoulder bag hanging from her chair. John Cale plays viola in the background then switches to piano. The combination of her voice, syllables stretched to madness and dropped, and the cavernous repetition of the harmonium slow the Roundhouse crowd down. The stage goes all black except for soft purple and green spots high above her head. The light show flickers down to a single picture, all grainy and glowing. The people stop talking. A great hall becomes a mediaeval cathedral. “I’m glad you like it,” Nico says, after some applause. “If I had a back-up group now, I would do the old songs like ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’. I don’t think I would do ‘Femme Fatale’. “I haven’t that much of a sense of humor. Back then it was all right. It was a part I was playing. My hair was blonde and I…” She stops and looks at the audience. “It has changed. Now. I don’t know what part I’m playing.”.’ — Rolling Stone, 1971

*Nico’s second album The Marble Index (1969) was arranged by John Cale. He produced her third and fourth albums, Desertshore (1970) and The End (1974). On Desertshore, Cale plays most of the instruments. Nico wrote the music, sang, and played the harmonium. On The End, Cale plays a wide range of instruments including xylophone, synthesizer, acoustic guitar, and electric piano. Cale and Nico reunited in 1985 when he produced her final studio album Camera Obscura.

 

7. Death
“For one whose life was bedecked with musty glamour, Nico died an absurdly ungracious death. No one knew who she was — just another junkie looking for drugs in the sun.” — Pat Gilbert

‘On 18 July 1988, she went for a bike-ride on the isle of Ibiza.  She was visiting again, a bike rider of a healthy-living woman, almost clean of her narcotic past. People found her unconscious by the side of her bike, and took her to the Cannes Nisto Hospital. She was incorrectly diagnosed as suffering from exposure, and she died the next day. X-rays later revealed she had suffered a minor heart attack while riding her bike, fallen and struck her head, causing a severe cerebral hemorrhage that led to her death. Not the thing we expected from the woman who always was living in places the sun couldn’t reach.  She remained in fact where she was, her whole life a mystery! Her ashes were buried in Berlin, in a small cemetery in the Grunewald Forest, at the edge of the Wannsee, in to her mother’s grave, Margarete Päffgen (1910-1970) on 16 August 1988, with a few friends playing a song from Desertshore on a cassette recorder …’ — from The Nico Website

 

8. Fashion model (1952 – 1967)
“After leaving school at 13, Nico started selling lingerie and soon was spotted by fashion people. She later moved to Paris and worked for Vogue, Tempo, Vie Nuove, Mascotte Spettacolo, Camera, ELLE, and other fashion magazines until the mid 1960s.” — mog.com

See many more Nico fashion modeling photos here

 

9. Ari (Christian Aaron Boulogne)
“My mother died of too much sun.” — Ari

‘In 1962, Christian Aaron Boulogne – Ari was his nickname – was born from a short-lasted relationship between Nico and French actor Alain Delon, who denied paternity for many years. Maternal responsibility wasn’t Nico’s strong suit. She supposedly took LSD while pregnant (can you imagine the unborn child hallucinating in the womb?) and dragged the child with her in her nomadic bohemian lifestyle. His infancy was spent in New York with his mother, in Andy Warhol’s Factory, as a mascot for the Velvet Underground. At the age of four he emptied the drinking glasses of Bob Dylan, John Cale and Paul Morrissey, and sucked on amphetamine pills, mistaking them for candy. Ari became Warhol’s youngest star when he appeared with his Nico in the film ‘The Chelsea Girls’ in 1966.

‘When Alain Delon’s mother, Edith Boulogne, saw Ari’s photograph in a French newspaper, she was instantly convinced it was her son’s child. Edith Boulogne [Alain Delon’s mother]: ‘I said to myself, that’s my son’s child. We went to see her [Nico], her and the baby. The kid was about two years old. He came running into my husband’s arms. We were so moved. I saw my own son in him. And I truly believed that my son would accept him… When he heard about it two years after we had taken the baby, he had his agent tell me that I had to choose between the baby and my son. My husband said, ‘Your son can feed himself, but Ari can’t raise himself.’ So we kept him. Think about it, he was so little. Before we took him, she [Nico] dragged him around everywhere. He ate nothing but french fries, in train stations, hotels, airports. They lived like bohemians. She came to see him once in three years. She brought him something from America. Guess what? An orange. My husband and I looked at each other, speechless. We took the orange and thought, she’s really not like other people… but I still liked her. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen’.

‘Delon’s mother adopted the child, giving him his last name: ‘Boulogne’. At the age of 17, Ari ran off from his adoptive parents, joined Nico and became a heroin addict – turned on to the drug by mother. After Nico died in 1988, Ari spent his much of his life in and out of detoxication clinics and psychiatric hospitals. In 2001, at the age of 38, living in Paris, he fathered a son and wrote a book about his relationship with his mother called “L’Amour N’Oublie Jamais” (Love Never Forgets).”‘ — Valter, Documents

 

10. The Velvet Underground
“And with the Velvets come the blonde, bland, beautiful Nico, another cooler Dietrich for another cooler generation.” — from the linernotes of The Velvet Underground and Nico

… rehearsing

‘Femme Fatale’ (live)

‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ (live)

‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ are two songs that are very identified with you. How did it come out that those songs were performed by you ? I mean listening to that first LP I imagine that ‘Venus in Furs’ or ‘Run Run Run’ could well have been performed by you. How did you, did you have an affin … did you have a good feeling for those songs, or did Lou say “Look, these are for you, Nico.”, how did it come about the Velvet new songs ?
We just agreed upon them.
They just seemed right ?
Yes it seemed right. We never thought, about, you know analyzing every little thing.
Alright.
Er, it just happened, and, or it didn’t, because, three songs is all I sang in that group.
It’s remarkable, isn’t it ?
Maybe for, except for improvisations.
Were the live performances that you were involved in different than the ones that were recorded on that LP ? Was that the sound of the Velvets made live or was it …
No, there was, there was more improvisation.
Mm. And …
There was not only noise, but er, the kind of music you can hear when, when it’s storm, a storm outside, or that you can hear in, in elementary violence like it.
Andy Warhol’s name is on the cover as producing that record.
I mean Moe was the best drummer ever. I just heard her on that song at the hotel that we played before.
Alright.
She had the best drums sound.
She’s actually done a good LP of her own, too, sort of a garage record, she plays all the instruments, in recent times. It’s really good. ‘Louie Louie’ and all these old rock songs.
I don’t know that record. I saw her three summers ago in Los Angeles and she was married to this woodcutter, that’s how he looked like. And she had grown her hair, and she didn’t look like a boy anymore.
Right, yeah, ’cause some of the cover photos of those LPs were pretty deceptive, weren’t they, Moe Tucker, and er …
And she’s not a good singer. She’s only good on that one song ‘When you close the door’ .
Mm. Yeah, well, she’s rough, but she’s good. Well, er …
The tapes she gave me weren’t so good, that’s what I mean.
—-

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Hey. The story of him adds a bunch to what he did. One of those artists. You’re such a great resource for things I always trust in advance that I’ve never heard of before. ** Dominik, Hi!!! No problem, pal. Yep, this Saturday. I plan to wander about and find out what hardcore Catholic people are like. Prayers (for real) that you met the deadline with no qualms. Did you? Not summer, a little bit warmer than it would be under normal circumstances, but nothing that would pry open the sweat glands. And I think it’s fall-like again today. Hands across the cool air. I would be happy to be love’s accomplice in that particular kidnapping. Love heading off shortly to a birthday lunch for his friend Ange at Breakfast in America and hoping they have mozzarella sticks on the menu and, if so, that they’re not just hot dog shaped containers with a little mozzarella-esque humidity inside them, G. ** Carsten, I have to disagree with you and even Chuck that the ‘FC’ film is better than the novel. Your idea for the ‘welcome’ post sounds fine. I’m always down with people being creative with the posts’ usual expectations. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yep. Dude, that’s so great to hear about the Print Workshop experience. So, what’s the plan? How often will you be going there? Fantastic! ** daphne, Hello, daphne. Thank you so much for coming in and for the amazing work you’re doing with Organ Bank. I’d love to get your new books. I guess I’ll send you an email with my coordinates? Thank you, thank you, and much respect! ** Dev, It’s strange that my mom was into Nichols & May because she wasn’t the world’s most sophisticated wit or anything. Yeah, I’m lucky with the publishers even if my sorely overtaxed bookshelves would disagree with me. Thank you! You’ll be in LA at Halloween! But only for two days. I’ll be putting up my annual Best SoCal Home Haunts post soon in case you have a free evening and feel like tromping through one. All the luck today. 24 hours, yikes. Enough coffee to make unconsciousness totally unappealing? ** laura w., Well, yeah, but I do think he was probably rather complicated, of course. Like you and me, I mean. ‘Pickpocket’! All kinds of theories out there about the intentionality or not of eroticism in Bresson’s work, but the theories do tend to have a conspiracy theory vibe about them, and I don’t think we’ll ever really know. As someone who almost only works with non-actors, yes. If you haven’t watched ‘Mouchette’, that’s my favorite b&w Bresson, I think. Yes, I’m a big fan of the ‘Resident Evil’ games. I haven’t played the latest one yet, but they’re almost always very ambitious and super fun. My favorites are ‘Resident Evil 4’ and ‘Village’, I think. ** HaRpEr //, Oh, for sure. It’s the same and even worse with film programers and distributors and so on. It literally takes three second to type ‘No thanks’ and hit send, but 80% of them won’t. Greer Lankton is great. There seems to be some of revival of their work going on right now, which is obviously very welcome. ** Steve, Wow, 7 is quite healthy. As usual I kind of doubt any of those films will actually get distributed or even maybe shown, over here at least. The Pompidou is doing a retrospective of Alain Gomis’s films next month. I don’t believe I’ve seen one. How was ‘Dao’? Didn’t see all that much of the metro underworld, just a few grungy tunnels and walkthrough caves. But they helped one imagine. ** Right. It being Halloween season, and Halloween being all about attractive gloom, I thought I would take the opportunity to restore an old post that was made for this blog by a Nico aficionado named Jane Bogaert. Jane, if you’re still out there somewhere, thank you again. See y’all tomorrow.