The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Category: Uncategorized (Page 12 of 1085)

Chris Kelso presents … VANTABLACK

Vantablack is the sonic cross-frequency brainchild of Chris Kelso, Nick Hudson, and Stuart Dahlquist. It is dedicated to the invisible obstacle within all of us. An album for the amputated. Featuring the voices of Elle Nash, Timothy Jarvis, Graham Rae, and Brian Evenson.

NICK HUDSON – COMPOSITION, PIANO, PERCUSSION, CIGAR BOX SETAR, VOCALS, PROGRAMMING, STRING AND HORN ARRANGEMENTS, PRODUCTION
CHRIS KELSO – TEXTS, CONCEPTION, PSYCHOPOMP
STUART DAHLQUIST – BASS, ANCHORAGE, BOWED ENTITIES, ARRANGEMENTS, RECITAL, FIELD RECORDING AND MANIPULATION OF THE VIBRATION OF AN AGING WASHINGTON STATE FERRY
CHRISTOPHER MANNING – ALL HORNS
LIZZY CAREY – ALL STRINGS
KIANNA BLUE – ISSA A THANG
ALISTAIR CATTER – ADDITIONAL RECORDINGS

JOE REDTREE, POLINA KOVAL, PASHA KOVAL, CHRISTOPHER MANNING, NICK HUDSON – UNHOLY CHOIR OF THE SEPULCHRE, BATS.

MIXING – NICK HUDSON
DIGITAL MASTER – TOBY DRIVER
VINYL MASTER – GREG HENDLER

COVER ART – CARMEN PALTH
BOBBY LAFOLETTE – INT ART/VOIDHEADS ARTWORK
ART LAYOUT – ENT.DESIGN

 

 

Links
Bandcamp – https://vantablack-eternal.bandcamp.com/album/vantablack
Merrigold Independent – https://www.merigoldindependent.com/vantablack
Edging on Death/Bobby Lafolette art – https://www.edgingondeath.com/
Nick Hudson – https://nickhudsonindustries.bandcamp.com/
Stuart Dahlquist – https://www.discogs.com/artist/482964-G-Stuart-Dahlquist?srsltid=AfmBOorGK3TKkFOF0w5dNN3oczbndwFwfE8wYzadE_vU8TziVtvhb0q9
Chris Kelso – www.chris-kelso.com
Voidheads extract – https://apocalypse-confidential.com/2023/05/25/voidheads/
Voidheads comic/novella – https://schismpress.tumblr.com/neuronics

 

 

After creating his Black Square painting in 1915, Kazimir Malevich couldn’t eat or sleep for a week. Based on a previous iteration for an opera of poet Velimir Khlebnikov, Malevich’s black square represented the year zero: the destruction of all modern values. Paradoxically, the work was also embryonic and opened him to all future possibilities, an infinity of night. In June 2014, a laboratory known as Surrey NanoSystems, unveiled a new super-black coating known as Vantablack, one of the darkest pigments ever released. The paint gave three-dimensional objects the appearance of two-dimensions or void space.

What is void space? Entering this tenebrous space are Vantablack, a cross-pollination of Sunn O))) bassist Stuart Dahlquist, composer Nick Hudson, and writer Chris Kelso. On their first self-titled release for Merigold Independent, the trio inject soundscapes with nightmarish fragments from Kelso’s novel V0idheads, published last year on Schism Press, and read to striking effect by guest vocalists Elle Nash, Timothy Jarvis, Graham Rae, and Brian Evenson. V0idheads tells the story of a group of adolescents with an amputation fetish and feels reminiscent of the queasy worlds of Charles Burns’ Black Hole or Junji Ito’s dizzying Uzumaki. At one point Nash describes how, “He knelt with his jeans tight over his thighs, exposing gaping void hole to trapped girl,” before bursting into laughter. These blistering ero guromoments take one to something like the recently reissued Love, Emily; Kathy Acker’s spoken word collaboration with industrial band Nox. Total annihilation.

Vantablack opens with lush strings and choral chanting, Hudson utilizing a Tbilisi choir to haunting effect. His compositions feel ritualistic and expansive. Serpentine horns weave throughout creating a chaotic, jazz-like tapestry. Often melancholic, he peppers the soundscapes with chiming percussion and bells, before Dahlquist’s stygian bass drops everything down into a smoke-filled Lethe, liquid swamp of reverb and broken vocals. Burroughs-esque, a voice intones: “Black body pulsed on streets of this town, absorbing electromagnetic radiation with hunger and black bat jackal.” Pipes shudder prettily over obscene descriptions of bodily mutilation. Another voice describes a colonoscopy and seeing, “the fluttering pink islands floating inside us.” On the beautiful artwork from Carmen Palth, a teenager cradles a kitchen knife. The album crawls through the butchered bodies of its adolescents who explain with dry humor, “The more body parts you shed, the more popular you became.”

On the second side of Vantablack, a narrator briefly describes Cartesian dualism: the separation of the material and non-physical. He sees intestines as, “a palpitating nest of worms.” The album builds towards its monolithic endpoint as Dahlquist’s guitar pushes on, pulsating and hypnotic, before splitting into a thundercloud of electronic pulses. The bass returns once more for its sombre epilogue but soon nothing remains except fog. As nocturnal explorers Coil once declared, the universe is a haunted house. Malevich’s Black Square was originally conceived as a coffin of the sun. Where does the internal meet the external? What are the entrails of the sun? Vantablack captures a collective investigation into gaping darkness, similar in collaborative spirit to works like the 1980s no wave compilation A Diamond Hidden in the Mouth of a Corpse. Vantablack’s many players approach a hole in the wall that eats and eats, the sun devoured beneath a black lake. Its many pleasures manage to emulate the seduction of a darkness one can never escape, or as Nash explains, “Whole color spectrum of light lived in this void space, each shade dragged to their darkest gradient, spectrum or radiance. Total light colonization.”

— Review by Matt Kinlin, Foxy Digitalis

 

Music Video Stills

 

Interview

Chris K – I’ve wanted to get involved in music for ages. Having been in and out of bands since I was 15, there was always an itch there, or a sense of unfinished business. I actually wrote an album called Influence that was set to be released by Poet Pop records (Ragged Lion) back in 2019. Unfortunately, the head of the label, Edwin Sellors, tragically passed away a week before the album was due out. The label folded shortly thereafter and the album was never formally released. I spent the next few years focusing on writing books, but when I came across Nick’s work I knew he was someone I wanted to work with in a cross-disciplinary way. Nick is as talented a writer as he is musician, and he was able to approach the literary/spoken word side of the project with a refined, critical eye. He maybe even cares as much about writing as he does creating music, which is a really rare gift. It was really just a question I asked him and before I knew it he had started assembling this wonderful troupe of musicians to start building the soundscape (Stuart Dahlquist, a bonafide rock god, being one of them). It went from 0-30 so quickly.

Nick H – Chris and I had been talking frequently since I reviewed his book on early David Cronenberg works and talk inevitably led to collaboration. I’d finished recording my most recent solo record Kanda Teenage Honey in Tbilisi and was eager to compose/record something formally unrelated to “songwriting” in the lull between recording and releasing that album. Chris proposed a series of his startling texts and I set about composing sequence blocks of music geared around their specifically coloured intensities. As I was doing so I started assembling a dream cast of players based on the vague shrieks of abjection coalescing in my mind’s ear. I’d had the first ten seconds of Side One in my head for around a year – the frenzied massed string run hijacked by a thunderous clanging. Was cathartic to get that lunacy out of my system. As someone who’s habitually “the singer” it was emancipating to have Chris’ texts as the “frontman” of the band and to edit and knead the audial sinews into a fleshy miasma befitting of the nuances of the spoken word recordings.

Stuart D – I’m not sure how it happened. Nick (I think it was Nick) must have included me in an email, and a week later Chris kindly sent me a copy of the book. I thought it sounded pretty open ended, like anything thrown into the mix could be utilized. I had some field recordings I’d done that seemed to sit well with the rough music drafts. I’d been rehearsing for a funk thing and was pretty deep into that sound and tried to integrate a bit of pocket into the bass aspect. A few months before Vantablack came along I’d finished work on an as yet unreleased spoken word project with Russell MacEwan (The Atrocity) so the idea of composing over spoken word wasn’t outside of my wheelhouse. Vantablack is a comingling of instrumental voices, hence a much different approach.

How would you describe the Vantablack sound? How is it unique to other projects you’ve been involved in?

Nick H – One aspect that’s unique is that it was composed for the format – two sides of 10” vinyl – meaning each piece would be approximately ten minutes in duration. I collaborate with Stuart in his incredible project Asva, and also work a lot with Toby Driver of Kayo Dot (and always learn a lot while doing each) – so I’m not a stranger to durational or experimental forms, but Vantablack feels *especially* dark, demonically psychedelic and upsetting – I also used many non-obvious instruments in its construction – a bespoke Russian cigar-box setar, a Soviet church bell from a Tbilisi flea market, lots of foley, even the kick drum is in fact me abusing the sustain pedal of an old piano. I know Stuart used his koto on these tracks too and I think some sheet metal? I think I was definitely trying to conjoin frequencies that would have a visceral effect upon the listener. And Stuart’s bass tone and writing is gloriously pulverizing within that remit. Shout-out to the choir of Christopher Manning, Polina Koval, Pasha Koval and Joe Redtree here too – we recorded the choir as a live section in a huge Soviet apartment where a revolutionary Georgian poet had killed himself in the early 20th Century. Christopher also played all the horn parts. Lizzy Carey all the strings. Kianna Blue forged a nauseatingly crunchy digital drone for both sides. And all the readers delivered sheer excellence. Likewise, Carmen Palth’s artwork is fucking amazing.

Stuart D – Vantablack fits nicely into my head. It’s a challenging listen, not unpleasantly so but there’s a lot to hear. It is unique to just about anything I’ve ever heard, much less been involved in. The urge was to provide sounds on the subtle side of the palate, but in this case I kind of let ‘er rip.

Chris K – I agree with Nick and Stuart, the darkness literally has a voice. Much like seeing a film adaptation of your work, Vantablack gives a new layer of depth to the book that’s fuelling it. In a way this feels like the definitive expression of the themes in Voidheads.

What are your plans for the future of the band?

Nick H – I think we’d all very much like to continue issuing Vantablack EPs in volumes and to continue stretching the form. And as Stuart mentioned – if we can invoke the resources and finances to manifest this material in concert form that would be absolutely killer. And I’ve got a video for Side One to finish editing – the shoot of which made my dad’s garage resemble Buffalo Bill’s basement for a few weeks.

Stuart D – I hope we’ll be making another recording, more than just one more. Playing live, now would be quite a thing and I’d love to see Nick and actually meet Chris and the other people involved. Living stateside is kind of shitty when the people you’d love to be working with consistently are so damn far away.

Chris K – We’re already discussing the embryonic stages of volume 2. I’m also hoping to contribute more to it in a musical capacity.

 

 

(extract from Vantablack side 1)

Let us start with a boy. Darkness has been animated for him. When he closes his eyes the night becomes a hope-sucking vacuity, motivated and alive. Because, to him, the night is actually broken light vomiting out gamma, resenting the glow from any living thing. To some darkness is just an inanimate metaphor. But not to him. It is living and its heart is vantablack. It lives in the people he loves. Distorting everything. Even in himself. Yet his heart is also haunted by afterimages of light. He has not lost track of hope or the living. Because he knows he can move beyond the body. Escape the darkness imprisoned within.

 

 

(Excerpt from Voidheads)

Black body pulsed on streets of his town, absorbing electromagnetic radiation with hunger of black-backed jackal.
—-Man crept into cellar like an aphid shambling into elaborate torture towers of an Amazonian ant. Man had all his limbs intact – veritable icon of flax-haired, strong-boned wellbeing. But he’d been warned not to go near cellar because according to his mother there was an evil-fucking-hell-monster living down there. She seemed pretty serious about it. In fact, hia mother had mental breakdown about it. His older brother had started mutilating his own body in name of an immortal status that the man tried his best to comprehend, so had most people in his High School. People were having legs and arms and genitals surgically removed by v0idspace and it seemed more body parts you shed, more popular you became. It was ritual accomplishment to achieve partial self-enforced paraplegia.

 

 

(Side one – Excerpt from Voidheads, unpublished/edited out of final manuscript/read by Elle Nash)

Now he was staring down tunnel of raw doom-flesh that led to nowhere. Portal into nothingness. Beast was simply v0id. Starving sentient misanthropic hole in wall. What brought me to this location no one knew, but I would not vacate until I had nourished myself to satisfaction. Vanity of future, eclipsing body. All it would cost was your consciousness and your mortal soul. All I would leave behind were headless corpses of child princes. He would submit to me and he would gather more food.
—-They seemed to walk in silence for around half an hour until two teens got to neighbourhood of single-floored slum shacks. Gun reports cracked in near distance. Trashcan lids clattered. Faint screams echoed into night air like coil of woodsmoke. He stopped outside one of camelback homes, dilapidated dwelling that ran flush with sidewalk. Shack was haphazardly painted aqua green and presented canvas of chipped wooden brackets and rusted cast iron vents. There were relics of effluence and neglect strewn across front yard. An oil drum throning mound of slag. Trash crunched underfoot. An overpass arced above gables and charged evening air with angry exhaust fumes. Place stank of acrid burning and ozone.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Today writer and other genre maestro Chris Kelso gives you a formal introduction to a music project in album form that he has co-created with Nick Hudson and Stuart Dahlquist plus the vocal stylings of Elle Nash, Brian Evenson and others. Richness has naturally resulted, but don’t take my word for it. Investigate the proceedings and enjoy yourselves appropriately. And thank you, Chris, for thinking of this venue. ** Dominik, Hi!!! No, thank you. Ah, good old Iggy before he became everybody’s favorite loveable, harmless pre-punk grandpa figure. Today love is going to let himself have shitty tastes in music long enough to say … Shaggin’ in the elevator (Whoa), Lingerie second floor (Whoa, yeah), She said, “Can I see you later” (Whoa), “And love you just a little more?” (Whoa, yeah), I kinda hope we get stuck, G. ** Misanthrope, Actually, I didn’t ask him, but he probably doesn’t in fact want to read it. He’s very busy. Au revoir with a passionate French kiss to that snow. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think that was him rocking the hat. You know your hats, that’s one thing for absolutely sure. The TP second season has a bit of a lull in the middle when Lynch backed off for a bit, but then he came back and it gets … whoa. ** Darbz, Oh, dude, it’s no problem at all. Don’t sweat it. Anyway, being confused is possibly my favorite state of mind, so I should thank you. And in fact I will or, rather, just did. I do miss having gotten your Rimbaud thoughts if you don’t mind spilling them again, but no pressure at all. You’re the best. Hugs, pal. ** James Bennett, Oh, wow you found that Akerman film. That’s amazing. I’ve been jonesing to rewatch it. Thank you a lot. Everyone, One of my favorite Chantal Akerman films, ‘Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels’, which I had thought was nigh impossible to see, has been discovered by James Bennett semi-hiding in the realms of the great archive.org, so, if anyone ever wants to try it, it’s here. Have you read Foster-Wallace’s non-fiction? If not, I would highly recommend ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’. It’s great, and it’s not a demanding read. Thanks so much! xo. ** Steeqhen, Eight hours of sleep and recurring double espressos while you’re upright? You are in the running for the most busy person I have met in my life at this point, I think. I wear the same schlumpy clothes all the time, but I admire people who use clothing and their hair to present themselves as someone they wish other people would believe they are. But you know I’m very into failed ambitions. Submit, yeah, why not, and the necessary external luck from me. ** jay, Happy Valentines Day. I assume you’re celebrating given you’re in the so-called city of love astride your beloved. Hm, that’s a dilemma, yeah. Historically, I found playing just at least the slightest bit hard to get can keep love burbling longer than constant proximity? My Valentines Day definitely needs lacing, so whatever strength will be valued. And, what do you know, I suddenly want to eat some chocolate, so it’s working already. Thank you. I’m guessing your VDay needs no outside interference. ** James, Yep, like clockwork. Orange ideally. My blog sees your fist bump and gives you two of them. Eventually you’ll know yourself to a T because that’s how aging works, and then you’ll miss wondering and worrying at least a little. I love peanut butter. Smooth preferably. On the most basic slice of white bread possible. No jelly, thank you. I wonder if when it was Stephen people pronounced it Stee-fffun. That might’ve gotten old. GbV is super swell live, yes. Unfortunately you’ll probably never the chance IRL because Pollard hates Europe. He says it’s because the beer over here sucks, but I’m sure there are other reasons. My VDay will be highly non-loveydovey, but that’s the way I like it. So if yours is loveless, you’re not alone. ** Charalampos, I started my GbV adjacent life with ‘Fast Japanese Spin Cycle’, so I went backwards to ‘Propellor’. Um, I think I used some lyric excepts from a song or two in ‘Guide’, but I can’t remember. It has some of my all-time favorite GbV songs on it: ‘Quality of Armor’, ‘Exit Flagger’, ’14 Cheerleader Coldfront’, ‘On The Tundra’, a.o. I’m solo today too. Well, I’m seeing a friend, but he’s just a friend. I guess it both makes sense and is crazy too, like most good things. Paris has your back. ** Lucas, Whoop! I like your poem. It has kind of Alice Notley feel and build, but differently sharpened. Kudos. Playing basketball seems like it could do a decent job of erasing stress and discomfort? I have no idea, but that’s the vibe I’m getting. Paris awaits your possible soonish appearance. ** Steve, Always the big problem with cults, yeah. They’re like Goth music. I know people who think they’re fulfilling their artistic needs by doing things like that, but time and the critical establishment and ultimately the art market will tell. The Bejar sounds exciting. I think I can get it today. I’ve never been able to get with Father John Misty. He just sounds like a threadbare Elton John to me. ** HaRpEr, Holy shit, your film is finished! I’m used to my own filmmaking tempo, and that’s fast! Whoa! I’m obviously excited to watch it post-haste. Everyone, the great HaRpEr has made a film, and you can even watch it. It’s called ‘Twink Death Gorgeous’ and it is five minutes long. HaRpEr cautions that it’s an experiment, but experiment is a holy term around this place, so … without further ado, watch ‘Twink Death Gorgeous’ right here. See you over there telepathically. So cool! I’ll share my take, of course. I stupidly only bought, like, three of the Hanuman books back then because a friend of mine was the person who ran the press, and I thought he would give me copies, but he didn’t! Motherfucker! They’re reprinting some of them, but they’re still pretty expensive. ** Uday, I think, and I think you probably know, that your friend probably just wants to have intimate company while he’s having his problems, so I feel sure that whatever you’re doing is a help. Kristof should help too. What is the literary society? What does being its president entail? Congrats, btw. ** Justin D, My pleasure, of course. I really like the way ‘Mouthwashing’ looks at first peek. Cool graphics and vibe. Thanks. I’ll go find out where it lives and maybe knock on its door, or I guess I mean pick its lock. My day was alright. I’m headlong into revising the script of Zac’s and my new film, so I’m largely preoccupied with that these days, and it’s tricky, but I think I’m nailing it. How was VDay? ** Corey, Hey, Corey, Good to have you back too. That P. Adams Sitney book is great, yeah. He’s terrific. And his films are interesting too. I did a Day about him ages ago that I should restore. Everyone, courtesy of Corey, P. Adams Sitney’s great book ‘Visionary film: the American avant-garde, 1943-2000’ is available to be read on archive.org if you’re interested. Here. Me? As I just typed above, I’m working on the script for Zac’s and my new film mostly, and doing prep work for ‘Room Temperature’s’ upcoming premiere. That’s largely me. We submitted ‘RT’ to Crossroads too. Good luck to us both. You do sound quite fired up. Awesome! All of it. And possibly dancing to boot. Your whole body is on fire inside and out. Whoa. ** nat, Glad you think you like Jacobs. Hm, well, upping the vampire connection would probably have an immediate reader eye-focusing effect? It’s going well, so, yeah, trust that. Calamari is great. Derek White, its boss, should get some kind of major prize or grant or something. I can believe The Bible is well written. I know smart fellow atheists who say so. I don’t know why my schools never assigned it. Those two are titans, and currently kind of overlooked titans, and those readers should be really worth your time. Actually maybe I’ll get the Davenport one, come to think of it. ‘Zenless Zone Zero’ is a game where you ‘beat up people with gambling characteristics’? Did I get that right? How odd. Potentially good odd. Thanks for the alert. ** Bill, He’s well worth visiting. I think Escobar might be the first Bo Huston Prize winner? I’m not totally sure. Here it won’t stop raining. I’ve never liked the sun as much as I theoretically do right now. ** Right. Your invitation/task for today has already been explained to you at the top, so be here accordingly, thank you. See you tomorrow.

Ken Jacobs Day *

* (restored/expanded)

 

‘A pioneer of the American film avant-garde of the 1960s and ’70s, Ken Jacobs is a central figure in post-war experimental cinema. From his first films of the late 1950s to his recent experiments with digital video, his investigations and innovations have influenced countless artists.

‘A New Yorker by birth, Jacobs graduated from City University to find himself in the midst of the downtown art scene of the 1960s, which included artists Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; and the experimental theater troupes of Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer. Although Jacobs had studied painting with Hans Hoffman, he quickly gravitated to film, finding kindred spirits in radical filmmakers such as Jonas Mekas and Hollis Frampton. An early friendship with Jack Smith yielded several collaborations, including the seminal underground films Blonde Cobra (which Jonas Mekas dubbed “the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema”) and Little Stabs at Happiness, as well as a Provincetown beach-based live show, The Human Wreckage Review.

‘Jacobs has long been a cinema activist. He was an integral part of Manhattan’s burgeoning alternative film scene, which included venues such as the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and The Bleecker Street Cinema (which notoriously premiered Blonde Cobra with Smith’s Flaming Creatures) as well as his own loft, where the Kuchar brothers first screened their 8mm work. In 1966, he and his wife Flo founded Millennium Film Workshop, and he was a cofounder of one of the country’s earliest departments of cinema, at Binghamton University.

‘Jacobs has always been interested primarily in the act of viewing, rather than in textual decoding or analysis. As he points out, “my work is experiential, not conceptual. I want to work with experiences all the time.” In this respect, his breakthrough was Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son (1969-71). A landmark work of appropriation, the film takes as its source material a ten-minute short from 1905. During the course of Jacobs’ two-hour film, this fragment from the dawn of cinema is subjected to extensive and varied re-photography, including manipulations of speed, light, and motion, as well as the minute examination of abstractly enlarged areas of the frame. A masterpiece of cinematic deconstruction, Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son is, in its total concentration on the formal and material properties of the medium, perhaps the quintessential work of 1970s structuralist filmmaking. It was also an indication of the direction in which Jacobs would proceed, wherein actors and narrative would fall away, replaced by a concentration on the rigorous pleasures of the cinematic unconscious. As he has suggested, “there’s already so much film. Let’s draw some of it out for a deeper look, toy with it, take it into a new light with inventive and expressive projection. Freud would suggest doing so as a way to look into our minds.”

‘In later films such as Perfect Film (1986) and Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896 (1990), Jacobs continued to explore his pioneering appropriation strategies. His interest in performance has never waned, however, as evidenced by Nervous System, a live show incorporating two film projectors, a propeller, and individual filters through which audience members view the double image. Writes Jacobs: “The throbbing flickering is necessary to create ‘eternalisms’: unfrozen slices of time, sustained movements going nowhere and unlike anything in life.” Jacobs’ recent video work, such as Flo Rounds A Corner (1999), have successfully transferred the “eternalisms” effect to the digital realm.

‘Jacobs’ insistence on cinema as a “development of mind” can be seen, despite his protestations to the contrary, as a conceptual approach to art-making practice, one that has yielded groundbreaking work across media. In his activism, film, performance, and video, he has consistently expanded the practice of the avant-garde moving image. Whether undertaking archaeological journeys to the birth of cinema, or scrutinizing the interstices of new digital technologies, Jacobs’ work investigates, provokes, and draws power from the mysteries of the nature of human vision.

‘Ken Jacobs was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. He has received numerous awards, including the Maya Deren Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts. In 1969, with the help of Larry Gottheim and Gottheim’s students (one of whom was J. Hoberman,  senior film critic for the Village Voice), Jacobs began the Cinema Department at SUNY Binghamton and taught there until 2002. His films, videos and performances have received international venues such as the Berlin Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the Hong Kong Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the American Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was a featured filmmaker at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2004.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix

 

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Stills


















































 

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Further

Ken Jacobs @ IMDb
Ken Jacobs on Vimeo
Ken Jacobs @ Filmmakers Cooperative
Ken Jacobs @ Ubuweb
Ken Jacobs @ Lightcone
Ken Jacobs on The Polar Express, 3D, and Religion
Interview with Ken and Flo Jacobs. Part 1: Interruptions
KEN JACOBS: THE DEMIURGO OF THE MOVING IMAGE
Tony Pipolo on Ken Jacobs’s The Guests
Star Spangled To Death Site
Paracinéma, Flicker et 3D : entretien avec Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs @ PENNSOUND
Ken Jacobs and the Perverted Archival Image
An Interview with Ken Jacobs
NOT EVEN ACTING WITH KEN JACOBS
A PRIMER ON EXPERIMENTAL FILM LEGEND KEN JACOBS
KEN JACOBS IN 3 DIMENSIONS!
Ken Jacobs @ Senses of Cinema
Ken Jacobs @ mubi
Artifact Bonfire: Ken Jacobs and Reichstag 9/11
Paracinema, Flicker and 3D. Interview with Ken Jacobs
The Nervous Art of Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs: Digital Revelationist
Optic Antics: The Cinema of Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs: A Matter of Life and Depth
“Movies are All People Know” An Interview With Ken Jacobs
AN INTERVIEW WITH KEN JACOBS
KEN JACOBS / An Email About Jack Smith (and the Cheap Shoes)
Three essays by Ken Jacobs

 

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Extras


Ken Jacobs: A Pioneer of Avant-Garde Film


KEN JACOBS – FROM ORCHARD STREET TO THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (Trailer)


Jonas Mekas on Ken Jacobs


Conversations with History: Ken Jacobs

 

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Interview

 

Julie Hampton: How do you see your films as being different from what we have come to expect from cinema?

Ken Jacobs: Well, most films are about problems. They don’t pose problems. They’re not immediate experience. They’re vicarious experience. Well, that’s not entirely true . There are lots of films that are designed to offer you very strong immediate experiences and at the same time they occupy you with what’s going to happen to somebody else we are identifying with.

JH: Yes. We’re living through them.

KJ: But there’s a lot of work that exists other than mine where you’re having the immediate experience. You’re confronting something. You’re going into the temple of doom.

JH: In cinema?

KJ: No, I mean in art. When we talk about film we mostly consider the movies. We mostly consider photoplay film theater with actors. There are a lot of other things where you meet up with the problem of the work and you surmount it and hopefully you are rewarded with a new way of receiving pleasure.

I should go back to the beginning and tell you that initially I was torn between the formal development of art and film and needing to do something effective socially. And I only released myself from this second obligation a few years ago.

JH: Is this the beginning of your Nervous Systems work then?

KJ: Yes I think it is. I think that Bi-temporal Vision: The Sea is the clearly in the realm of the abstract. That’s not to say it is without meaning for me. It absolutely is a film about crises. It’s absolutely about “to be or not to be” for me. These words abstract are really not satisfying for me because they sound utterly cerebral which these works are not.

JH: As intangible.

KJ: When we talk about abstract we talk about a kind of removal from the immediate but these works are all very, very experiential. They’re very involved in the immediate for me. They really rise out of crises. As in …Did you see The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ?

JH: Yes. It was very beautiful.

KJ: I was very unhappy with the number of lights that were left on in the auditorium. Energy is very central to my work, energy excited by pounding extremes: black/white, light/no light. Using the flicker elicits energy. In painting when you try to paint absolute polarities of light and dark in the world, the only way to get close to that with paint is by placing black next to white to make the white seem whiter and visa versa. Compared to actual black and actual white in the world they’re jokes. They’re somewhere in the middle of the gray scale. So one exacerbates and creates an optical mental impression of much more light and vibrancy by smashing the polarities together. So because of this and for other reasons I need a black room and a bright reflective screen which I didn’t get at that auditorium.

JH: It was a bit hard to see in some ways. Is this what you mean?

KJ: No. The work goes through sections of very low light levels and it builds at certain points a rich effulgence of light. The moving along and lowering and lifting of light levels is very, very important in this piece. The screen was very light absorbent so I lost a lot of light in that screen. I had to use low light levels so where before it demands the audience to make an effort to see and reach across to really see what’s going on, I’m afraid that it might have just submerged because of all the other light competition.

JH: The fact that I was seeing figures that were dissolving into each other depends on the nature of the light?

KJ: In this particular incidence the low light levels change the temperature of the projection bulbs. And when they change the temperature they change the color. So these very elusive strange shiftings of color take place in normally what would be called black and white film. I’m making use of different color temperatures coming from the bulbs. So it’s very, very subtle. Using the low light levels changes the character of the relief. A whole array of changes take place by adjusting the light level. There is no way of getting away from it if I want to do this piece.

JH: What does it mean that the brain is registering , while viewing your work, phantom chroma? Is this chroma that we think we are seeing that is really temperature?

KJ: I think it’s partly that. Instead of having local color you have color fields and they are not identical color fields coming from the two projectors which in turn set up reciprocating complementary colors in the brain which you wouldn’t be able to see if it was local color with everything brightly lit and everything separated by it’s own color. Oranges looking orange etc. So the overall color sets up complementary colors that the brain supplies. Then they begin working with the colors that are there.

JH: That’s great. It’s quite an amazing depth that you are involving the viewer in.  How long have you been working with these kinds of techniques?

KJ: Well, I always have. What’s new for me is rejecting the obligation to answer to social problems. I always was involved with making a formal work.

JH: By formal you don’t mean conceptual, do you?

KJ: No my work is experiential, not conceptual. I want to work with experiences all the time. I don’t even understand most conceptual work. I don’t get it. In that way I do relate to the movies that want to offer you some kind of visual experience. Except you’re the protagonist. You’re entering the temple of doom; a new kind of growth. You have to find out what is in this thing for yourself and I’m offering it. What happened for me three years ago was a heart bypass operation. I haven’t done works of social comment or inquiry since. Even though these works were about what was going on they were always enfolded in a formal development and offered experience, they were never posterized. I never sacrificed the idea to make a musical work of some sort of cinematic development.

JH: So you were always working on that and now you’re thinking about your life and trying to get the most out of it while you are here.

KJ: That’s right…life/death. I’m not in argument with it. I’m not Captain Ahab fighting the white whale. I’m just confronting it.

 

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18 of Ken Jacobs’s 42 films

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Orchard Street (1955)
‘This short film documents the daily life of the goings-on on Orchard Street, a commercial street in the Lower East Side New York City.’ — Letterboxd


the entire film

 

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Little Stabs at Happiness (1959)
‘Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100′ rolls timed well with music on old 78’s. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy was our achievement, as well as breaking out of step.’ — Ken Jacobs


the entire film

 

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Blonde Cobra (1963)
‘This legendary film features artist Jack Smith in what Jacobs calls “a look in on an exploding life, on a man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable lower East Side deprivation and consumed with American 1950’s, 40’s, 30s disgust. Jacobs did little of the shooting himself, instead drawing on two unfinished films shot by Bob Fleischner. With its dissociative editing strategies, wild costumes, and scraps of music and voiceover, this baroque portrait deserves Jonas Mekas’ recommendation as “the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema.’ — Manufacturing Intellect


the entire film

 

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Window (1964)
‘The moving camera shapes the screen image with great purposefulness, using the frame of a window as fulcrum upon which to wheel about the exterior scene. The zoom lens rips, pulling depth planes apart and slapping them together, contracting and expanding in concurrence with camera movements to impart a terrific apparent-motion to the complex of the object-forms pictured on the horizontal-vertical screen, its axis steadied by the audience’s sense of gravity. The camera’s movements in being transferred to objects tend also to be greatly magnified (instead of the camera the adjacent building turns). About four years of studying the window-complex preceded the afternoon of actual shooting (a true instance of cinematic action-painting). The film exists as it came out of the camera barring one mechanically necessary mid-reel splice.’ — K. J.


the entire film

 

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Tom, Tom, the Pipers Son (1969)
‘Cinematography ass’t., Jordan Meyers. Negative-matching assistance by Judy Dauterman. Original 1905 film shot and probably directed by G. W. ‘Billy’ Bitzer, rescued by Kemp Niver via a paper print filed for copyright purposes with the Library of Congress. Reverently examined here, a new movie almost incidentally comes into being. Ghosts! Cine-recordings of the vivacious doings of persons long dead. The preservation of their memory ceases at the edges of the frame (a 1905 hand happened to stick into the frame. . . it’s preserved, recorded in a spray of emulsion grains). One face passes ‘behind’ another on the two-dimensional screen. The staging and cutting is pre-Griffith. Seven infinitely complex cine-tapestries comprise the original film and the style is not primitive, not uncinematic, but an inspired indication of a path of cinematic development whose value has only recently been rediscovered. My camera closes in only to better ascertian the infinite richness (playing with fate, taking advantage of the loop-character of all movies, recalling and varying some visual complexes again and again for particular savoring), searching out incongruities in the story-telling (a person, confused, suddenly looks out of an actor’s face), delighting in the whole bizarre human phenomena of story-telling itself and this within the fantasy of reading any bygone time out of the visual crudities of film: dream within a dream! And then I wanted to show the actual present of film, just begin to indicate its energy. A train of images passes like enough and different enough to imply to the mind that its eyes are seeing an arm lift, or a door close: I wanted to ‘bring to the surface’ that multi-rhythmic collision-contesting of dark and light two-dimensional force-areas struggling edge to edge for identity of shape. . . to get into the amoebic grain pattern itself-a chemical disdispersion pattern unique to each frame, each cold still. . . stirred to life by a successive 16-24 f. p. s pattering on our retinas, the teeming energies elicited ( the grains! the grains!) then collaborating, unknowling and ironically, for form the always-poignant-because-always-past illusion. Important: this film MUST be projected BIG and BRIGHT and IN FOCUS’. — K. J


the entire film

 

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Perfect Film (1986)
‘The story goes that Ken Jacobs‘ 1986 work Perfect Film is literally a found film: the experimental filmmaker came upon the reels at a shop, bought them, made a print, tweaked the volume, and released the piece as a raw untouched document (consisting of—in this case—footage of news interviews following the death of Malcolm X). A possibly satisfactory example of that always suspicious term “pure cinema”, Perfect Film is Jacobs’ humbled gesture towards the integrity of the cinematographic image, resurrecting a discarded arbitrary artifact to not simply present what it was…but to establish what it is and what it can be.’ — The Seventh Art


the entire film

 

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The Georgetown Loop (1996)
‘First screened as part of Jacobs’ “Nervous System” film performance, The Georgetown Loop is based on an archival film from 1903, which Jacobs pairs with its mirror double to produce a kaleidoscopic two-screen projection. The original film depicts a journey shot from the cab of a train passing through the Colorado Rockies, and, in this hypnotic new form, comes to suggest the movement of consciousness itself. Writes Jacobs: “I’ve called it the first landscape film deserving of an X-rating, and that it is, yet its secret subtitle is — I must whisper — (Celestial Railway).”‘ — EAI


the entire film

 

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Circling Zero: We See Absence (2002)
‘Jacobs offers a stream of silent, digitally simplified shots of the collapsing towers and the surrounding metropolitan area—a far cry from the counterpointing sound clips in his previous treatment of September 11, Circling Zero: We See Absence.’ — Reverse Shot


the entire film

 

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Star Spangled to Death (2004)
‘Almost 50 years in the making — filming began in 1956 — Ken Jacobs’s 440-minute avant-garde epic was named the best film of 2004 by J. Hoberman of The Village Voice. A history of 20th-century politics and culture communicated through a crazy quilt of found film, including a dancelike performance by Jack Smith (Flaming Creatures) as The Spirit of Life but Not of Living and sustained rants by the downtown character Jerry Sims as Suffering, it’s the ultimate underground movie, subversive and frequently hilarious.’ — The New York Times


the entire film

 

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Celestial Subway Lines / Salvaging Noise (2005)
Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise, the DVD version of a live multi-media collaboration between Jacobs and musicians John Zorn and Ikue Mori, strives for the aesthetic purity and symbiotic balance that Bute describes, although it does so independent of the film medium. For the visual component of the work (patched together from four separate performances at the Anthology Film Archives in New York), Jacobs utilizes a modified version of the 19th century Magic Lantern, a device used to project still images like the modern slide projector. By spinning the shutter (as opposed to moving a strip of celluloid), Jacobs creates a phantasmagoric effect as bizarre and fantastic as the filmic manipulations he achieved in works like Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son. And unlike experimental filmmakers as divergent as Stan Brakhage and Ernie Gehr, Jacobs does not value the primacy of image over sound. “Vast spaces ache to be inhabited, for sound to enter,” says Jacobs. “Indeed, for this transcendent Lower East Side-imbued ramble, they call specifically for Zorn and Ikue.’ — Manufacturing Intellect


the entire film

 

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Krypton is Doomed (2005)
‘In his 5th floor walk-up on NY’s pre-fashionable Lower East Side, Jack Smith was determined to complete the beautification of his kitchen cabinet. AIDS was pressing. His friends pitched in, accepting slave status. Jack demanded this and Jack demanded that but because he wanted it perfect (as he had wanted his films to be perfect), and because perfection proved elusive, the remodeling finally had to be abandoned. Each friend going her or his own sad way. Jack’s friends failed to convince him to make a will. ‘Why bother?,’ he asked. ‘To protect your work in the future.’ ‘The future?,’ Jack replied. ‘The future will be worse.” — K.J.


the entire film

 

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Capitalism: Child Labor (2006)
‘In Capitalism: Child Labor Jacobs digitally animates a Victorian stereoscopic photograph of a 19th-century factory floor, crowded with machinery and child workers. Jacobs isolates the faces of individuals and details of the image, as if searching out the human and the particular within this mechanized field of mass production. Space appears to fold in on itself as Jacobs activates the stereograph; the agitated image flickers and stutters, but the motion never, in fact, progresses.’ — letterboxd


the entire film

 

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Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World (2007)
‘RAZZLE DAZZLE The Lost World is an early Edison shot cut off at its head and tail and along its four sides from the continuity of events like any camera-shot from a bygone day; no, like any camera-shot, immediately producing an abstraction. Duration 92″, 8″‘ — K.J.


Excerpt

 

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Return to the Scene of the Crime (2008)
‘At its most immediate and thrilling level, Ken Jacob’s new video Return to the Scene of the Crime is engaged in cinematic archeology. With a great deal of embarrassment I admit that I don’t know what Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son, the filmmaker’s 1969 film using the same 1905 silent short as its source material, did with its over 60 year-old subject. But now 103 years after it was originally made, Jacobs digs the short up again from silent cinema’s treasure trove of forgotten and unseen films for us to bask in its multitudinous sense of life, drama, theater, humanity, crime, and cinema itself.’ — mubi


Excerpt

 

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Seeking the Monkey King (2011)
‘Suggestion: Please see ‘Another Occupation’ before ‘Seeking the Monkey King’ WARNING: contains flicker like many of my works; avoid if you have epilepsy or other unusual brain conditions. Music: JG Thirlwell’. — K.J.

Watch the film here

 

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The Green Wave (2011)
‘3D film, does not require spectacles.’ — K.J.


Excerpt

 

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The Guests (2014)
‘Ken Jacobs has been concerned with the exploration of stereoscopic phenomena since the mid 1960s. He has experimented with a number of 3D techniques, and has developed ways to infuse his 2D work with heightened illusions of depth. The Guests, which has existed previously as a slide installation and an anaglyph video, will be presented tonight in its final incarnation: as a digital 3D spectacle. Continuing the work started with Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son, Ken Jacobs revisits an early Lumière Brothers film, Entree d’une noce à l’église (1896). As we watch the congregation mounting the steps of a Parisian church, our attention is drawn to the smallest of details: from the grain of the image to the facial gestures of the long-dead guests to the city landscape behind them. Ken Jacobs does more than extend the time (and space) of the original footage: he invites us to see in a way that we have never seen before.’ — LA Film Forum


the entire film

 

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Day and Night (2011)
‘In Day and Night, Jacobs teases out and toys with the ability of digital video to be infinitely and seamlessly manipulated, as well as its capacity for keeping reality just beyond the viewer’s grasp. Here he uses images of nature as his source material, applying exacting technical effects to create a stunning fusion of the organic and the digital.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix


the entire film

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** PL, Hey. I messaged him, waiting to hear back. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool, and, of course, my pleasure, and I would imagine Joshua’s too. Ah ha, love found a way to publicise his love affair with My Chemical Romance! Love in a void, it’s so numb, Avoid in love, it’s so dumb, Love in a void, G. ** Misanthrope, When poets make paragraphs, the likelihood that they’ll be good is high. Speaking of Yury, he works in real estate, as I may have mentioned, and he’d probably be happy to read that text for you if he wasn’t so busy. I’m supposed to feel sorry for you that you got 8 inches of snow? Can’t do it, dude. ** Charalampos, Yes, I remember your fondness for ‘Propellor’, and of course I understand. Walker’s ‘Vox Lux’ score is very good. He did his best to help. An early Valentine from Paris’s misbegotten resident. ** James, I think it’s probably better to know thy self than to let others fill in thy blank. I hope J. Escobar was reading that. Bows from the peanut gallery aka me. Okay, so you know about the tiny Pac-Men, and we’ll speak no more about them. Stephen, right, seemingly, nice thinking. How can you listen to all those albums in one day? You’re a GbV sieve. Even I’m impressed. It’s true that songs simply do not and cannot get better than ‘Gold Star for Robot Boy’. No argument, even if it competes with about 30 other GbV songs for my favorite. Cold here too. I’d close the window, but my roommate has a shit fit if he even imagines he’s smelling cig smoke in our apartment, so freeze I do. Are you going to give anyone a Valentine tomorrow? ** _Black_Acrylic, You’re looking on the positive side of things. That’s the way to go. My LA friends are all excited because baseball season starts now, and I’m going to try to join in. ** Sypha, Hi. You’re right, I can totally believe you’ve read all those books. I forget, is the medieval research for something you’re writing or planning to write? Or just a random, understandable, untethered obsession? ** Steeqhen, Victoire! Thats one hell of a mix you’ve got in your head there. When I first read your comment I thought you wrote Nu-Metal, and I was going to suggest you take it very easy on that genre, but never mind. I can only imagine re: academic writing. I wouldn’t where to start. No, fortunately my broken tooth is my secret unless I open my mouth really wide to guffaw, but I don’t guffaw. Right, those jeans that look like you pissed in them are flying off the shelves I understand. ** Steve, Ooh, you should do a post about AI cults. Or I should, I guess. I haven’t heard the new Destroyer yet but I totally trust him. Electronics are a relatively newish mode for him, and, if he’s shaking it up, I like that in theory at least. I love his New Pornographers songs. ** James Bennett, Hi. Akerman has a lot of great films. Gosh, let’s see … I love ‘Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels’, but that one’s really hard to see. ‘Je, tu, il, elle’ is great. Her final film, ‘News from Home’ is really great. Really, there’s a lot. She’s a good one to do a deep dive into. xo. ** Tyler Ookami, Well, yes, you’re right, of course. I fear if some author did actually transport all of that into novel form it would end up being just some wacky Haruki Murakami kind of thing. Great comment, btw, speaking of complicated things being ushered into prose. ** Darby☏, It’s possible that I’ll see ‘The Brutalist’, but surely only on a long plane flight I’m desperate to consolidate. Well, Williamsburg is just a few subway stops away from NYC, so … you could pop over there, right? If you want? Unless you mean a different Williamsburg. ** HaRpEr, She’s ancient, but her brain is still fully functioning. She says she’s doing what Robert wanted, and she probably is. He did not want anything but the films themselves to be out in the world, but supposedly there’s lots of non-official things hidden away that hopefully will get out if she hasn’t destroyed them like he destroyed all of his paintings, for instance. I know the script of his never made last film, ‘Genesis’, exists because I talked to the main ‘actor’ in ‘Four Nights of a Dreamer’ and he has a copy that Bresson’s widow forbids him from showing to anyone. The Quick! Oh, I loved them so much, and their great later work was never properly recorded, which is such a tragedy. Steve Hufsteter, Quick’s mastermind and guitarist, was a real genius. He quit writing pop songs after The Quick, and I don’t know why, but it was a big loss. Totally agree about wit’s essentiality in songs. All of my very favorite bands — GbV, Sparks, Cheap Trick, Wire, Chic, and on and on — are always very witty no matter what else they’re going for. People who guilt trip, especially if they’re parents, should be hung by the neck and left to rot in public. Well, maybe not your dad, but otherwise … ** Lucas, Hi! Yay! Technology has caught back up with you! No more lopsided interactions! I’ve basically forgotten about my broken tooth, so I guess it’s okay? I look forward to poring over your poem. Everyone, Lucas has a new poem available for your delectation. Go here. ** Uday, Hey! I’m happy to her that Cloudflare was only having a little outburst. Happy the book of yesterday interested you. I’m not doing VDay so yours can have all the magic power of mine, should such a power exist. I would probably wear my shoes until they completely dissolved into mush if it didn’t rain. Hm, I’ll take Thors-day, I don’t know why, thank you! So you can have Jupiter all to yourself. ** nat, Hi. Well, I’ll be happy to read you. ** Okay. Today I pull an old, lost post out of the archives to offer you another opportunity to explore the work of the great American experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and I hope you will accept. See you tomorrow.

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