The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Author: DC (Page 353 of 1086)

Enivrant *

* (restored)

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‘Chloroform’s characteristically sweet odour isn’t irritating, although inhalation of concentrated chloroform vapour may cause irritation of exposed mucous surfaces. Chloroform is a more effective anaesthetic than nitrous oxide. The metabolism of chloroform in the body is dose-dependent; it may be proportionally higher at lower levels of exposure. A substantial but variable percentage of chloroform from inspired air is retained in the body; it is extensively metabolized by the liver. Metabolites of chloroform include phosgene, carbene and chlorine, all of which may contribute to its cytotoxic activity. Prolonged administration of chloroform as an anaesthetic can cause toxaemia. Acute poisoning is associated with headache, altered consciousness, convulsions, respiratory paralysis and disturbances of the autonomic nervous system: dizziness, nausea, and vomiting are common. Chloroform may also cause delayed-onset damage to the liver, heart and kidneys. When used in anaesthesia, insensibility was usually preceded by a stage of excitation. This was followed by loss of reflexes, diminished sensation and loss of unitary consciousness.’ –– general-anesthesia.com

 


Gameboy boy


Thoroughly Modern Millie


Guy friends


Buffy

 

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After Dinner We Take a Drive into the Night

We are watching for someplace to eat. We feel we are prey

for the insane scavengers of the air. We cannot make up our minds

and race five hundred miles away from our hosts.

I begin to feel passion.

I walk back and forth and it is a slow movie,

without the interest of acting, only walking.

Far from my prying eyes she strips off her clothes.

Oh for the wings of a bird.

The record slows down;

sweat falls on the instruments;

the musicians are bored.

A hand comes from the clouds to give me a poem.

I accept it and we shake hands.

The incident with the hand haunted me for the rest of my life.

I began to gasp. It is time to sing the death song,

clearing the tops of the trees, hearing the glass

from the window and the traffic from the street.

Each year is a supermarket; no, each year is captured by a word,

repeated with nostalgia, overwhelmed by ineptitude,

dropping to the ground and rolling down the bowling alley of the sky.

— Tony Towle

 

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Derelict aquatic park on Mars

‘The above first image offers a clean wide area view of this anomaly site without the distracting clutter of arrows and labels. I’ve done this because this site is otherwise busy with anomaly evidence and pointing it all out tends to make things get very crowded. Despite the above scene initially looking like there is little anomalous evidence in it, this is a very important site both from a surface water and civilization evidence point of view. The water and civilization evidence here is my fourth and last report to be drawn from the NASA-JPL-MSSS official MGS MOC M02-00163 narrow-angle image strip. As previously reported, this strip has produced the most numerous anomaly evidence so far for me of any single strip I’ve yet encountered in the official science data.

 

 

‘What we’re looking at here is a huge entertainment park sporting a aquatic theme but on a massive monumental scale and quite different looking than anything seen here on Earth. Further, this park has been subjected to some disastrous calamity leaving a portion of it in wreckage and some of the rest of it appears to have essentially been abandoned and allowed to become at least partially derelict and in ruins. Certainly, at the very least, this place is no longer operational as to its initial intended purpose.

‘One of the first things you should be aware of is that there is a very bright glow area producing a lot of light in this scene pointed out with an arrow and label. Whether this is a highly reflective spill area or an intense glow produced from within and/or on the ground is unclear because no amount of darkening will allow a sufficient view into this bright glow spot. At ground level immediately adjacent to and just a little to our right of the flow area is the terminating end of a huge skeletal bridge system coming in from further to the right. It has twisted and dangling girders at the glow area indicating a massive failure of the bridge right at this its largest point.

‘I strongly suspect that this bright glow area is something residual and possibly still active representing some catastrophic failure of something at this point in the past that helped create the sudden failure of this facility and its abandonment. This is also probably why it remains abandoned and not a candidate for reconstruction.

 

 

‘Imagine yourself now traveling across the trestle over the river from our right to our left and into the mid area of the still existing part of the bridge before getting to the terminating end but in the days when this site was fully operational. To your left you would see the giant shark like monument with its head area towering and appearing to hang over you dwarfing you and even the bridge system. Seen under the raised shark like monument’s front-end and behind it would be the lower profile mollusk like monument. In those past times, these two giant monuments would have probably been seen in standing open liquid water as though the creatures the monuments represent were alive in the water.

‘As large and dwarfing as these aquatic creature monuments are, on the opposite side of the bridge to your right from the same spot you would have seen a far larger far more massive colossal size clear conical shaped dome the size of a small mountain dwarfing everything. This clear dome would have been full of water and probably very large live creatures in that water appearing suspended in the air towering over you. Imagine the psychological impact as you leaned back to take in the monstrous height of this great massive pillar of water towering above you. The clear dome is still there, empty of course of water, and it appears intact and undamaged.

‘Imagine the great technical power it would have taken back when this was built to have constructed such a dome strong enough to withstand the outward pressure of all that mountain of water and its occupants even on a planet with a lesser gravity well. This clearly demonstrates just how technically advanced who ever designed and built this was or is and just how tough these clear domes on Mars can be amounting to heavily armored immensely strong constructs. Try as I have, I can’t detect any breach in the dome or that its shell has been damaged either.

 

 

‘The above image presents an enlarged even if very grainy look at the two giant creature monuments. We can see these at all only because of their huge size. Their location on the other side of the bridge from the bright glow area, their huge size, and their probable solidity as monuments probably shielded them from any real damage in the calamity that otherwise destroyed a portion of this show case park as to its intended purpose.

‘The monument on the left in the above image clearly represents some kind of fish type aquatic creature. The fairly clear head, nose, mouth, and eye visuals at the left end of the object with sunlight reflecting off of this area and with the head area elevated above and a little over the bridge structure as well as the general body shape indicates that this is probably a shark like creature.

‘The monument on the right in the above image appears to possibly represent some kind of mollusk or clam like creature. On the left end of this object nearer to us, you will note that this broader proportioned end’s leading edge is ragged and irregular. This is all typical of invertebrate bivalve type aquatic creatures as is the narrowing taper of the body to the probable hinged rear end you also see here. What is not so typical is the dorsal fin structure starting in the mid part of the bivalve’s upper back area and extending straight back in a narrow dark line to and wrapping around and under the bottom of the creature’s rear end.

‘This is not likely to be some ancient dead ruins subjected to a long span of time of weathering and exposure. Rather, it is more logical that either this evidence’s disaster was of relatively recent date not giving sediment enough time to build up or someone is currently and actively maintaining part of this facility or both.’ — Joseph P. Skipper

 

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‘Your smell is intoxicating’

 

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Stylish French women in the Soviet Union

 

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The Promotion

I was a dog in my former life, a very good

dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being.

I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer

guarding and herding his sheep. Wolves and coyotes

tried to get past me almost every night, and not

once did I lose a sheep. The farmer rewarded me

with good food, food from his table. He may have

been poor, but he ate well. And his children

played with me, when they weren’t in school or

working in the field. I had all the love any dog

could hope for. When I got old, they got a new

dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade.

He quickly learned, and the farmer brought me into

the house to live with them. I brought the farmer

his slippers in the morning, as he was getting

old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a

time. The farmer knew this and would bring the

new dog in to visit me from time to time. The

new dog would entertain me with his flips and

flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just

didn’t get up. They gave me a fine burial down

by the stream under a shade tree. That was the

end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so

I sit by the window and cry. I live in a high-rise

that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises.

At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak

to anyone all day. This is my reward for being

a good dog. The human wolves don’t even see me.

They fear me not.

— James Tate

 

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iDoser: Gates of Hades

‘iDoser is an application for the playback of proprietary audio content that uses binaural sounds to produce an effect similar to using certain drugs like LSD, marijuana and cocaine. It’s supposed to be perfectly safe and it’s 100% legal.

‘Research into the neurological technology behind I-Doser is sparse. Peer-reviewed studies exist suggesting that some specific binaural beat mixes can affect aspects of mental performance and mood, act as analgesic supplements or affect perceptions, but there have been no formal studies of any effects of mixes particular to I-Doser.

‘I wasn’t really interested in those that simulate drugs but there’s one that caught my attention. It’s called Gate of Hades. Gates of hades is a musical beat and series of sounds designed to make you feel particularly disturbing emotions. Specifically, it’s supposed to make you feel like you are falling into hell at infinite speeds. It’s iDoser’s strongest product and ideally it should scare you to death. This is what description says:

‘”Expect nightmares, near death experiences, and strong onset of fear.”

‘And I don’t expect any less since it costs $200.’ — Mayhem Makes Runescape Pure Clan and Community

 


Nichlas


German boy


Friend


Luke


Clint

 

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Muse

from Pepi’s Symposium

‘Raymond Radiguet was born on June 18th, 1903; he died, without knowing it, on December 12th, 1923, after a miraculous life. The literary tribunal has found his heart arid. Raymond Radiguet’s heart was hard, and like a diamond it did not react to the least touch. It needed fire and other diamonds, and ignored the rest. Do not accuse fate. Do not speak of injustice. He belonged to the solemn race of men whose lives unfold too quickly to their close. “True presentiments,” he wrote at the end of The Devil In The Flesh, “are formed at a depth that the mind does not reach. Thus they sometimes make us do things that we misinterpret….A disorderly man who is going to die and does not know it suddenly puts his affairs in order. His life changes. He sorts his papers. He rises and goes to bed early. He gives up his vices. His friends are pleased. Then his brutal death seems all the more unjust to them. He would have lived happily.” For four months Raymond Radiguet became meticulous; he slept, he sorted, he revised. I was stupid enough to be glad of it; I had mistaken for a nervous disorder the intricacies of a machine that cuts crystal.’

Here are Radiguet’s last words:

‘”Listen,” he said to me on December 9th, “listen to something terrible. In three days I am going to be shot by the soldiers of God.” While tears choked me, as I invented other explanations: “Your explanations,” he continued, “are not so good as mine. The order has been given. I heard the order.” Later, he said: “There is a colour that moves and people hidden in the colour.” I asked if he wanted them sent away. He answered: “You cannot send them away as you cannot see the colour.” Then, he sank. He moved his mouth, he called us by name, he looked with surprise at his mother, at his father, at his hands. Raymond Radiguet left three volumes. A collection of unpublished poems, The Devil In The Flesh, a masterpiece of promise, and the promise fulfilled : Count d’Orgel. One is frightened by a child of twenty who publishes a book that cannot be written at that age. The dead of yesterday are eternal. The author of Count d’Orgel was the ageless writer of a dateless book. He received the proofs in the hotel room where his fever consumed him. He intended to make no alteration to them. His death robs us of memoirs of his development; three short stories; a long appendix to The Devil In The Flesh; Ile de France; and Charles d’Orleans, an historical picture, imaginary in the same way as the false autobiography of his first novel. The only honour that I claim is to have given to Raymond Radiguet in his life the illustrious place won for him by his death.’ — Jean Cocteau

‘Raymond Radiguet was born in Saint-Maur, a Parisian suburb, in 1903. He read much and began writing poetry in his mid teens, He abandoned his studies in favour of journalism and to leap into the Parisian literary circles where he mixed with Picasso, Stravinsky and Jean Cocteau who became his mentor and lover although their relationship was always difficult. In 1921 he completed The Devil in the Flesh and also published a collection of poems. The first version of Count d’Orgel’s Ball was finished in 1922 and revised in 1923, just a few months after the publication of The Devil in the Flesh and before he died of Typhoid at twenty, on the 12th December 1923 and was interred at Le Pere Lachaise in Paris.

‘Raymond Radiguet was a prodigy. The precocious boy wrote as if he had the experience of a much older man. However he said of himself:

“These premature prodigies of intelligence who become prodigies of stupidity after just a few years! Which family does not have its own prodigy? They have invented the word. Of course, child prodigies exist, just as there are extraordinary men. But they are rarely the same. Age means nothing. What astounds me is Rimbaud’s work, not the age at which he wrote it. All great poets have written by seventeen. The greatest are the ones who manage to make us forget it.

“When posed the question “Why do you write?” in a recent survey, Paul Valery answered “Out of weakness.”

“On the contrary, I believe that it would be weak not to write. Did Rimbaud stop writing because he doubted himself and wanted to take care of his memory? I do not think so. One can always do better. Timid writers who do not dare show their work until they have done better should not find in this an excuse for their weakness. For, in a subtler way, one can never do better and one can never do worse.”

 


Jean Cocteau

 


unknown

 


Picasso

 


Man Ray

 


Juan Gris

 


Jacques Lipchitz

 


Roger de la Fresnaye

 


Hugo Valentine

 


Math Tinder

 


Jean Cocteau

 

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‘There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.’ — Antonin Artaud

‘Being sober on a bus is, like, totally different than being drunk on a bus.’ — Ozzy Osbourne

‘The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.’ — Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘All the mistakes I’ve ever made in my life have been when I’ve been drunk. I haven’t made hardly any mistakes sober, ever, ever.’ — Tracey Emin

‘It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.’ — Walt Disney

‘People don’t deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them.’ — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

‘Perversity is the muse of modern literature.’ — Susan Sontag

‘My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication–it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness–it is all that I have.’ — Franz Kafka

‘The obese is in a total delirium. For he is not only large, of a size opposed to normal morphology: he is larger than large. He no longer makes sense in some distinctive opposition, but in his excess, his redundancy.’ — Jean Baudrillard

‘Oh! the little fly drunk at the urinal of a country inn, in love with rotting weeds, a ray of light dissolves him!’ — Arthur Rimbaud

‘I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.’ — Hunter S. Thompson

‘Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.’ — Edgar Allan Poe

‘I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.’ — Salvador Dali

‘Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious.’ — Friedrich Nietzsche

 

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‘Many years ago, my then-8-year-old friend Spencer asked a prominent jazz musician for an autograph, but when he was given the usual signature, he scolded, “Not your name… Mine!” Following his lead, I’ve been asking writers, artists, politicians, and movie stars to sign my John Hancock, er, Paul Schmelzer. So far more than 70 have agreed…’ — Paul Schmelzer

 


Mikhail Baryshnikov

 


Jimmy Carter

 


Charlie Daniels

 


Dan Castellenata

 


Ed Ruscha

 


Errol Morris

 


Fats Domino

 


Frank Gehry

 


Mr. Rogers

 


Isabel Allende

 


Jeff Tweedy

 


Barbara Kingslover

 


Kweisi Mifune

 


Laurie Anderson

 


Matthew Barney

 


Naomi Klein

 


Robert Wilson

 


Thurston Moore

 


Wim Wenders

 


Wolfgang Puck

 


Yoko Ono

 

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The Hotel

The two knights suggest to the king that he take the hero

into his confidence. The pantomimes are spaced to accommodate them.

It is a work of great beauty. It is night. Four boys

remain on the scene. They choose four girls. This is what happens:

Her beauty and her brains work like fire. She is shocked

by his remark that he cannot spend too much time. We see grace of

body and mind being torn to pieces. Now begins the bitter aftermath.

Now the prayers of Orpheus are answered. It is the ancient

myth of Orpheus. Orpheus cannot console himself with his own song.

The song of the lyre is inadequate to his bereavement. Now he finishes

the song. Everything is green. Everything is splashed with color.

— Tony Towle

 

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Vicious Coffee

‘A cup of iced coffee at an Adelaide, Australian cafe called Vicious Coffee boasts 80 times more caffeine than a shot of espresso and 50 times more than a regular cup of coffee. That amount of caffeine is half the amount of a lethal dose.

‘It is recommended you take your time drinking a large, which should you should sip over four hours. Otherwise? RIP. The “high” will last you 12-18 hours. According to the USDA, a fluid ounce of espresso has 64 milligrams of caffeine and 95 milligrams in an 8-ounce cup of coffee. Vicious coffee, however, has 5 grams of caffeine.

‘According to the owner of the cafe, Steve Benington, “Some people love it and some are broken by it.” — Elite Daily

 

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Chocolates

 

In 1934 a woman was charged with killing two children with strychnine laced chocolate.

In 1976 suspected terrorist, Wadia Haddad, died after allegedly being fed poisoned chocolate for six months by Mossad agents.

In 2006 a man killed his parents by serving them a chocolate mousse containing poison.

A woman fought with husband over a chocolate cake. She claimed she attempted to leave with the cake but her husband objected. They quarreled and she settled it by stabbing him to death.

In 1990 a man was charged with killing a 3-year-old girl by force-feeding her a chocolate cake. She choked to death.

An 82 year old man was attacked and robbed by thugs posing as chocolate salesmen. A week later he died of a heart attack.

A 75 year old heart patient was thrown to the ground by a drug addict. The addict was running with a box of stolen chocolate bars when the collision occurred. A month later the man died.

In 2008 a young man confronted a teenager who threw a partially eaten bar of chocolate into the window of his sister’s car. The confrontation escalated into a fight. The man later died from a head injury he received during the brawl.

In 1910 a young woman dies while trying to share her chocolate with her co-workers. She attempted to cut the bar in pieces and instead slipped and cut an artery in her leg.

In the 1960’s iron pills were chocolate coated. They resembled and tasted so much like candy that many young children ate them. None of those kids didn’t survive.

A man, dropping blocks of chocolate into a cauldron, died after falling in.

An employee of the South Bend Chocolate Company was found dead in a company machine.

A 19 year old man was found dead by his fellow employees. He had become submerged in a giant tank of molten chocolate.

A senior citizen left the Sydney hospital to buy a chocolate bar. His body was located a week later.

A 60 year old man’s body was found in the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland. The old gent was carrying a box chocolates. The police think he might have been going to visit someone when he died.

A man with an eating disorder crammed an entire Mars bar in his mouth and choked to death.

A girl choked to death on a chocolate swiss roll. Unfortunately she suffered from a congenital problem that made swallowing difficult.

Chocolate eggs containing toys caused the choking deaths of at least three children.

 


Inhalable chocolate

 

 


Stephen Shanabrook “Chocolate Box : Morgue”

 


Chocolate Karl Lagerfeld boyfriend

 


Chocolate boat

 


Chocolate larvae

 


In an Osaka brothel, you can have snuff sex, whatever that means, with this chocolate prostitute for the equivalent of $10,000.

 


World’s largest chocolate bunny

 


Chocolate ammo

 


Chocolate-Avocado Cake

 


Julia Drouin ‘Disco Ghost’ (2013)

 


Chocolate Grace Jones

 


Frantz Kobe Sweets ‘Chocolate City’

 


Pink and white chocolate fountain

 


Chocolate covered peeps w/ strange chemical reaction

 


Michele Micha

 


Chocolate anus

—-

 

*

 

p.s. RIP Claes Oldenburg ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, and it’s going to be 41 degrees here today! We have this rather pathetic air cooler unit thing in the apartment that keeps one alive (so far) if one sits next to it but barely alive. Yeah, with blockbusters, I’m admittedly weird, but the less cogent and believable the characters are and the less coherent and realistic the storyline is, the more fun they tend to be for me. Are seaweed smoothies delicious? I’ve never had one. I bet I could probably find one out there, but I think I’ll be too busy hugging my pathetic air cooler unit today. Eek. Love making this heatwave as uninterested in Budapest as a vampire  is in someone who’s holding a cross in one hand and a wooden stake in the other, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Marc Blitzstein is pre-Leonard Bernstein? Wow. Clearly I know too little about him. Especially if he did an adaptation of ‘Threepenny Opera’. I’ll find him. ** Robert, Hi! Wow, cool, not even I have ever dreamed about this blog. Although I almost never remember my dreams, so who knows, I guess. You made it to Chicago. I don’t know the city well at all, but I could ask my friend Zac for tips ‘cos he went to university there. Man, I hope fun of some sort rears its non-ugly head, like, today. Did you figure out the MUBI issue? Which Tarr were you aiming at? I’d send you a hug but I’m too sweaty, and, trust me, it would not help. ** Jack Skelley, Skelletorinoville! Thanks for intro’ing me and Taylor. He’s great, I had really nice hangout with him. Oh, great, about the Bamberger thing. I’ve been thinking about Kenward (and reading) him a lot. Everyone, The great and very undervalued genius poet and writer Kenward Elmslie died recently, and the excellent scribe/thinker W.C. Bamberger has written what looks to be an excellent memorial piece about him, and the sleuth Jack Skelley found it and passes it along to us here. Jack! It’s going to be 106 degrees in Paris today! In motherfucking Paris! Help! Dying breath love, me. ** Bill, There are some Banks things online, as you saw in the post, all very worth watching, but not many, unfortunately. The problem is getting from apartment to a movie theater. It was so hot yesterday that a lot of the metros broke down, and people had to walk through the tunnels to get out, and it’s going to be even more broiling today. ** Nightcrawler, Hi. Yeah, it’s funny. The fragmentary thing is largely because he never finished it, so it devolves into his notes and plans, and becomes, accidentally, the first real experimental novel ever as a result, and that’s what excited me to death about it when I discovered it. Anyway, rock your day! ** Steve Erickson, I’m saving my debut of your album until my head isn’t almost literally melting, which, to believe the forecast, means as soon as tomorrow if I’m really lucky. Happy to have made a successful introduction of Banks’ films to you. No, I haven’t heard about Joshua Drummond’s project, but I’ll seek it out, thanks. Everyone, Steve has reviewed the documentary ‘My Old School’ here. ** Thrill, Ah, so it was already an escort name. I lose track. Yeah, the rate at which I gather those dudes and the putting together of those rather labor intensive lists does cause details to slip my mind sometimes. Hopefully not hugely often. I do have an interest in the combination of sex and a nihilistic viewpoint towards sex, it sure seems like, yes. Bon day. Don’t melt! ** Right. I reconstructed today’s post from the ruins of my dead blog because I always kind of liked it, and that’s the deal. You too maybe? See you tomorrow.

Robert Banks Day

 

“My process is that I like to resurrect what is not there. I find something that doesn’t have purpose and I give it purpose. I recycle things.” — Robert Banks

‘Robert Banks is a walking film encyclopedia; his interest in film was fostered by his father Robert C. Banks’ own love of the camera. It is because of his father that Robert Junior took an early interest in learning about photography and filmmaking. After high school and some college, Banks did a stint in the military in 1986-88, training in Texas and Mississippi, before serving abroad in South Korea and at RAF Bentwaters in England. His military career ended shortly after his father died in 1987. Robert Banks, Jr., was honorably discharged in 1988, returning home to the same house in Hough, but to a different family, absent his father. He became even closer to his mother, Nellie D. Goolsby Banks, now age 95.

‘Steeped in 35mm film technologies, techniques, the intersections of avant-garde film and music, Banks is global resource. Six years ago, when Alaskan artist Michael Walsh was in Cleveland for Zygote Press’s Rasmuson Artist Residency, he was looking for a projector to screen the 35mm works he made while in town. Like Banks, Walsh alters the film, “manipulating the physicality of the medium.” At Zygote, this meant printing ink on the film. Scene quoted Walsh in a piece on his culminating event: “If I can get my hands on a 35mm projector before the screening, I will show an excerpt of what I’ve been doing while at Zygote.” Banks showed up with the projector and threaded that messy, printed film through the machine.

‘The recent WAC purchase of his 1997 Motion Picture Genocide and the online exhibition of his and Checefsky’s films together signal a deserved interest in artists who remain committed to film as physical object, and a technology to make moving images with light on screen. Banks’ works from the 1990s, especially MPG and the 1992 critique of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, titled X: The Baby Cinema, are meta-analyses of film narratives about Black men onscreen, using the historical tropes and images that are collaged together on transparent 35mm. The earliest works are moving collage-punk-bricolage.

‘At the start of the new millennium, Robert Banks was making the short film, Embryonic, which was screened at the 2000 Cleveland International Film Festival. This film, which featured at least a dozen actors, signaled a shift to making scenes, props, and characters as intensely colorful and chaotically poetic as films of the previous decades. As actor in scenes by Lake Erie, I learned that the artist’s process also reflects the ethos of intuition that surrealist de Boully wrote of in Hypnos: one blue-sky night in the summer of ‘99 we met at Upper Edgewater Park; I got dressed in my car, donning the 1960s sea-blue dress and silver pumps that we costumed at a vintage shop earlier in the week. In one scene I perch on a rock (the green-blue water behind me backlit by sunset over Lake Erie), curiously, then treacherously, examining an ostrich egg. In a second scene, I stand offering the enormous egg to the viewer, as if to say to him: “You want this responsibility? Have at it.” Other women smash eggs with clunky punk rock shoes, roll them against the ground under placenta-like netting, move like defiant strutting hens, and birth clean white eggs from their mouths. His vision: an agitated homage to female reproductive power in its creative and destructive forms. Robert Banks doesn’t speak for the feminine, he observes, honors, and celebrates it. Like many queers and other feminists in Cleveland, I modeled for Robert because he models for life drawing students. He knows the roles of both subject and object; as female actor, I was subject, not object, not objectified.

‘Robert honors the mother, the planet, his mother. It is she that he references through the ubiquitous female and/or feminine bodies, particularly those from the first ten years of his career. The character-tropes are complicated and always evolving. Robert Banks sees himself in all of them—the white women, the black men, the rowdy kids, Lake Erie, the light from sunsets, which he still celebrates as often as possible at the same breakwater at East 72nd Street. Banks’ new life began in the wake of mourning. His films have subsequently centered on amplifying the power and what is unseen in the mundane amid the magic: a city where liquid-gold water meets concrete block, rusty steel.

‘Robert’s films have a fluidity about them that reflects our Lake Erie and, simultaneously, the decay Cleveland knows just as well. Changeable, powerful, vulnerable—his subjects, the characters in his stories, are universally human. Likewise, the stark reality of our physical environment–where deer roam overgrown industrial lots 55 blocks east of downtown–is always overshadowed by Lake Erie and its wildlife, lake effect snow, wind, and surf. Cleveland is resilient; we find beauty in grit.’ — Gabriel X. Bly

 

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Stills















 

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Further

Robert Banks@ Wikipedia
Robert Banks @ instagram
Robert Banks @ Open Sewer
Robert Banks @ IMDb
Robert Banks Is A One-Man Movie Studio
Robert Banks @ Handmade Cinema
Cleveland’s hardest working filmmaker
Robert Banks and Dexter Davis present Color Me Boneface
Robert Banks, Jr. Interview, 03 December 2008
WAKE UP AND SMELL A NEW MILLENNIUM
Robert Banks: The Last Cleveland Filmmaker
Indie filmaker offers insight at Wexner

 

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Robert Banks: We’ll Talk About That Later (2022)

‘The feature-length documentary Robert Banks: We’ll Talk About That Later follows the challenges and setbacks that face world-renowned experimental filmmaker Robert C. Banks, Jr. as he produces his first feature-length film, PAPER SHADOWS. His short films, including the controversial “X: The Baby Cinema,” have explored topics of artistic expression, identity, race, and gender, and challenge traditional narratives and viewpoints. Robert Banks: We’ll Talk About That Later is a candid and intimate portrait of Robert’s decade-long journey to make his film with limited resources and funds while still staying true to his vision and anti-establishment principles.’


Trailer

 

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Extras


Robert Banks | PODCASTALAKIS EPISODE 2


Filmmaker Robert Banks Needs Your Help


Robert Banks at CreativeMornings Cleveland, February 2017

 

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Interview

 

SPIN: These types of films don’t get made anymore. And I’m talking about the entire process: shot on film, processing a negative, cutting on a flatbed editing machine all with a makeshift or even no crew at all. This is a handmade film.

Robert Banks: I didn’t set out to make an experimental film. I wanted to make an essay using elements of non-linear aesthetic, without having a traditional plot structure.

I got bad news for you: say any of those things at the Netflix offices and they will quickly validate your parking and kindly show you the door.

Unless you’re David Lynch. Or it’s couched inside a Marvel production, like Wandavision. That’s the new subversive cinema. When I first showed Paper Shadows to people, they kept making David Lynch comparisons. I was like, “This is nothing like Lynch.” But they see black and white photography, ethereal soundtrack…that’s all they know. I love David Lynch, but there were people around long before him doing this type of stuff.

Like who? Give me some of the inspirations for this film.

Ingmar Bergman. Jack Smith, Maya Deren, William Greaves, even Orson Welles, and, of course, Jean-Luc Godard.

I noticed a slight nod to Robert Downey Sr., too. There’s a great absurd scene inside a boardroom where the executives have brought in a tarot card reader to guide them through their decision process.

That’s definitely a nod to Putney Swope. [Laughs.] The great Bob Downey. He would never get a movie made today. The whole idea of that scene…if you knew the hoops you have to jump through with the panels that approve arts grants…you might as well engage in some mysticism or pagan rituals. When I submitted Paper Shadows for a grant, I was told by the panel that nobody could shoot a feature film on celluloid for $20,000. So they shot me down. And that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

Give me an elevator pitch of this movie.

[Laughs.] How LA of you… OK: I have an idea for a film, there’s no plot, however, you get to see some cute girls, a bunch of naked people. some trippy music. In fact, this is a film where you can just sit back, smoke a joint, and indulge yourself. At the same time, there’s a message about gender equality, racism and classism, and how we bond together and fight the system to create pure art. What do you think?

Honestly, that might actually play well out here. When did you actually start filming this movie?

January 1, 2011. I had the germ of the idea for this film in my head for years. One day I got a call from a friend who works at NASA, he told me they had all these boxes of expired 35mm Tech Pan film. It’s a gorgeous film stock. He brought it to me, all factory sealed, and I thought, “I gotta do something with this stuff.” I knew that I wanted the film to resemble pen and ink drawings, something that could transport the viewer to another world. So we were ready to go. I was writing the script on the fly, calling up actors, seeing who was available.

The bulk of this film was shot in 2011. Then the derailments started happening, including equipment constantly breaking down, equipment being lent out and never returned, actors and crew flaking out on me…it goes on and on. Plus, I have a job as a teacher. So, we had to stop shooting and didn’t pick back up till 2013, and even then we were still off and on. Production wrapped in late 2016. Post-production took another three years.

Most people would’ve cursed the gods and given up. What kept you going?

Making Paper Shadows was my masters program. I put myself through the wringer. When I hear people say they want to be a filmmaker I say, “you don’t know jack shit about filmmaking because you haven’t done it. Until you get on your hands and knees and bust your ass in ways you never even comprehended before, you know nothing about filmmaking.”

 

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9 of Robert Banks’s 37 films

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Paper Shadows (2018)
Paper Shadows is an experimental feature film project shot on 35mm B&W Film using anamorphic optics for the 2:35.1 aspect ratio for presentation. The running length will be under 70 minutes. The film will focus on 4 main characters. The Central Characters are an widowed African-American Vietnam Vet who works part time as a Janitor at an Art College. The Female lead is a Young White Middle Class Female Undergrad Student completing her final year at school. The Two main Characters also represent Cultural, Class and Generational Gaps in society which are rarely contrasted in mainstream narrative films. The film uses traditional & classic experimental film methods and techniques to provide the viewer with odd metaphoric symbols indicating the social frustration and emotional angst brought upon from the supporting characters. The cinematic visual style is very Eastern European with an original music soundtrack and manipulated found sounds. The finished film will be a 35mm film print optically printed by myself and hand processed in Black & White chemistry. A Pure Analog method of traditional Filmmaking soon to be lost in the Digital World of Modern Cinema.’ — Robert Banks

Watch a teaser here

 

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w/ Jamie Babbit, Eric Swinderman, Mark Pengryn, Sage O’Bryant, Tony Hartman, Amy Tankersley Swinderman, Cigdem Slankard Made in Cleveland (2013)
Made in Cleveland is a 2013 anthology film consisting of 11 short films featuring the work of seven different directors and five screenwriters. The short films all relate in some way to the subject of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness in Cleveland, Ohio. The film was written, directed, produced largely by people with connections to Cleveland, and it stars a cast and crew consisting predominantly of current or former Clevelanders, including Shaker Heights native Jamie Babbit and Cleveland natives Eric Swinderman and Robert C. Banks, Jr.’ — IMDb


Trailer

 

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A.W.O.L. (2003)
‘Following Outlet (2000), this is the second in a series of military-based experimental tableaux based on director Robert C. Banks’s experience in the United States Air Force.’ — IMDB


the entirety starts at 32:41

 

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Goldfish & Sunflowers (1999)
‘A riot of shots, sounds, colors, and camera angles, and often scratched-on or painted-on.’ — Expcinema


the entirety starts at 23:22

 

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Outlet (1999)
‘What do women subject themselves to in order to maintain the image that society dictates they have? Outlet is an intense, skeptical look at cosmetic beauty and the potential havoc it can wreak on one’s persona. Outlet premiered at the 1999 Cleveland International Film Festival. Shot on film, manipulated by hand, edited on film, it’s a great example of award-winning director Robert Banks’ early work — no Photoshop or Final Cut here!’ — Zepie


the entirety

 

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MPG: Motion Picture Genocide (1997)
MPG: Motion Picture Genocide uses handmade techniques to critique the vast history of screen violence inflicted upon African American bodies. An opening image of a hand-painted, yolk-colored circle gives way to more painted frames of purple and cerulean. Banks tells audiences unfamiliar with his cinematic abstractions to “just think about it as graffiti that moves.”36 Toggling between the painted and drawn images (some of which were composed with permanent highlighters) and a panning shot of a young Black man, shirtless, apparently dead on a street, the film quickly adopts the tone of an older horror film. By directly addressing the spectator through text, while juxtaposing bright painterly gestures with murdered Black bodies, Banks attempts to allow his audience to see familiar images of violence with new eyes.’ — Handmade Cinema


Excerpt

 

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Jaded (1996)
‘In some ways a precursor to Outlet, Jaded is a complex, harsh and visually intense film. Present here are the beginnings of some of the film-manipulation techniques that have become a characteristic of much of Robert Banks’ recent work. Shot on film, manipulated by hand, edited on film.’ — Zepie


the entirety

 

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Femme Fatale (1993)
Femme Fatale is dark, silent, morose — one of award-winning director Robert Banks’ earliest works. It is more narrative in content than some of his recent endeavors and a good base from which to observe the evolution of his filmmaking technique. Shot on film, manipulated by hand, edited on film.’ — Zepie


the entirety

 

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X: The Baby Cinema (1992)
X: The Baby Cinema is a blistering mixed-media essay about the commercial appropriation of Malcolm X’s image, a direct response to the big-budget Warner Brothers biopic.’ — Spin


the entirety

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, I forgot about that scene. And almost about that film. I know the name Marc Blitzstein, I cant remember from where. ** Nightcrawler, I would say the majority of the time even. I hope ‘Juliette’ sits well. I would say in advance, in my opinion at least, ‘120 Days’ is by far his best. It’s sort of everything he did rolled into one conducive package. ** Misanthrope, There was a period when Leonard Cohen only ate meat because he thought plants scream when you pull them out of the ground. Not sure about the logic there since animals certainly don’t take getting killed lightly. Anyway, it was a short period. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It might not be best season to wear a bunny costume — I say that because it’s going to be 39 degrees here today — but, even so, it’s still a good idea. Oh, that’s sad. I loved the ‘Jurassic World’ movie. But I bow to the always superior tastes of Love. Love causing me to sweat 1000 euro bills today, G. ** Anal Del Rey, I’m amazed that I haven’t come across an escort with your name yet. Sure, what do they say … quality over quantity. Mm, both Del Rey and Eilish and dark and moody, and escorts are probably dark and moody dudes deep down? I have friends who love LDR. Her thing is not really my thing, but I get the quality therein. I guess when escorts are especially into BE or LDR, it signals that they’re hooked into the zeitgeist of their generation and are relatively normal dudes or something? I, of course, am more interested in the ones who are into, say, Black Metal. I like my escorts alienated and nihilistic and psychologically tortured, I guess? ** Gus Cali Girls, Hi! Yeah, I think they’re about to reinstitute the indoor mask mandate in California? Here they’re talking about maybe requiring masks on the metro again, but that decree has not come down yet. France has adopted a very casual, wtf attitude towards Covid of late, but we’ll see if it lasts. I’m not the world’s biggest Kris Kristofferson fan either, to be honest. Ha ha ha, yeah, there were droves of walk outs at the Benning screening I saw, even though the person introducing it told people to wait for a surprise at the end, which seemed a little chickenshit, but, yeah, walkouts galore. Still, the screening was packed to begin with, and that made me feel proud of good old France. At least until the walkouts. Cool, exciting, that you’re ready to lay down the vocals. My ears and fingertips are peeled. Have a good day. I hope it’s scalding hot like mine. ** _Black_Acrylic, I know, I know, I should. Right after I buy my Switch, which I’ve been procrastinating on buying for years now. ** Bill, Hi. No real reason to watch the A&F doc. It’s very predictable. I think the ‘Lost Highway’ restore is getting a mini-theater release here. I’ll be there, if so. ** Steve Erickson, I think you would have to go back in a time machine at least a few months to get even a little rich from foisting NFTs. And it’s alive! Everyone, drum roll, clarion of trumpets … here’s Steve Erickson: ‘My new album HEAD FULL OF SNOW is now out. At the risk of blowing my own horn too much, this is the project I’ve spent the most effort mixing, planning sound design and re-working, rather than my earlier practice of finishing a song in a few hours. When it sounded too pretty to me, I didn’t want to make it noisier, but I tried to introduce elements of distortion and disruption, like electronic bubbles during piano chords. (The very first sound on the album is a sample of someone pissing.) Excited to hear it! We have an ideal start date for the shoot in mind but we need to check with the crew and figure out if that date works with the location and equipment rentals and so on, but hopefully we’ll nail it down very soon. Zac and I will go to LA a few times before the actual shoot because there is a ton to do that can only be done in person. So, yeah, it’ll be a lot of back and forth starting probably in late August. ** Okay. Robert Banks is a singular and fascinating filmmaker with whom I’m guessing many of you are unfamiliar. I hope you’ll use your local portion of today to get to know his really worthy works. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

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