Category: Uncategorized (Page 711 of 1102)

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Official

‘Originally formed in 1970 by Los Angeles brothers Ron and Russell Mael, Sparks’ music is often accompanied by intelligent, sophisticated, and acerbic lyrics, and an idiosyncratic, theatrical stage presence, typified in the contrast between Russell’s wide-eyed hyperactive frontman antics and Ron’s sedentary scowling. Starting with their masterwork, Lil’ Beethoven in 2001, the band began performing their albums in their entirety. 2008 saw the band perform all 21 of their albums in successive nights at the Islington Academy and Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London.

‘Though the band’s long career has seen them successfully pioneer many different musical genres; including glam pop, power pop, electronic dance music, mainstream pop and most recently chamber pop, Sparks have created their own unique musical universe. While achieving chart success in various countries around the world including United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the United States, they have enjoyed a cult following since their first releases. Sparks have been highly influential on the development of popular music, in particular on the late 1970s scene, when in collaboration with Giorgio Moroder (and Telex subsequently), they reinvented themselves as an electronic pop duo, and abandoned the traditional rock band line up.

‘Their frequently changing styles and visual presentations have kept the band at the forefront of modern, artful pop music. They are held in esteem by such peers as Morrissey, Kurt Cobain, Franz Ferdinand, Arcade Fire, MGMT, Sonic Youth, Ramones, Bjork, Depeche Mode, New Order, The Pixies, Ween, Suede, New Pornographers, Morrissey, and Radiohead, who all cite Sparks as a major influence.

‘On August 14, 2009, the band premièred the radio musical The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, commissioned by the Swedish public radio (SR) and featuring the Mael brothers themselves and Swedish actors Elin Klinga and Jonas Malmsjö, both of whom worked with Bergman in his lifetime. The musical, partly in English, partly in Swedish, tells the story of Bergman’s supposed relocation to Hollywood after his breakthrough with Smiles of a Summer Night (1956), and the surreal and discomforting encounter with the movie capital. The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is currently being adapted as a feature film by Canadian avant-garde director Guy Maddin.’

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Personal

‘Early on we thought that what we were doing was something unique, and that the term rock wasn’t essential to what we were doing. It was just we had a special way or viewpoint of pop music and music in general. So we always had the kind of aspiration not to be going down the straight and narrow path of pop music. We’re concerned with creating something that is less specific and maybe harder to figure out where it’s coming from. It’s something we are proud of, the fact of being able to create music that doesn’t really fit neatly into any specific genre.’ — Russell Mael

Sparks is indisputably one of my two or three favorite bands and makers of music in general of all time. They have an excellent official website, including streamed chunks of all of their videos, mp3s, games, galleries, shops, a members only fan club, and a worthy recounting of their 35 plus years of existence.

Five favorites

‘The Rhythm Thief’ (2002)

‘At Home At Work At Play’ (1974; performed live in 2009)

‘Music That You Can Dance To’ (1986)

‘Happy Hunting Ground’ (1975)

‘Mickey Mouse’ (1982)

 

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There are certain countries in the world where Sparks are appropriately considered to be major artists. One of these countries is France, where they’ve had a number of huge hit songs and albums, and one of its many cultishly loved pop stars who owe Sparks a huge debt is Lio. Ron and Russell Mael rewarded her devotion by writing the lyrics for the English language version of her first album.

Les Rita Mitsouko & Sparks ‘Singing in the Shower’ (1987)

Lio ‘Le Banana Split’ (1984; lyrics & music Sparks)

Gran Popo Football Club ‘La Poesie cést fini’ (2000; music & lyrics Sparks)

 

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Sparks w/ fan Desi Arnaz

‘Igor Stravinsky was always such a big fan of Sparks and our use of tonality. Especially in the later albums.’ — Russell Mael

Hardcore Sparks fans tend to have high IQs, poor or overly developed social skills, and suffer from bouts of bitterness and agony that the band has never been sufficiently appreciated by mainstream audiences and critics. Typical in some way of these fans is this guy.

‘The Story of Little Russ’

THE ALMABOOBIES – This Town’s Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us

Sparks – Russell Mael Interview (Generation 80)

 

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Jacques Tati w/ Sparks

‘We were supposed to be in Tati’s film Confusion, a story of two American TV studio employees brought to a rural French TV company to help them out with some American technical expertise and input into how TV really is done. Unfortunately due to Tati’s declining health and ultimate death, the film didn’t get made. If we had to pick the greatest disappointment of our entire career, all thirty-seven years, with all its ups and downs, it would be not doing the film with Jacques Tati.’ — Ron Mael

Just before he died, the incredibly great French film director Jacques Tati was in talks to collaborate on a film with Sparks tentatively entitled Confusion, a project so theoretically perfect and mouthwatering that its demise is still painful. Tati may be dead, but he has a wonderful website.

Reconstruction of Tati’s ‘Villa Arpel’

 

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‘Sometimes people tell us we could have a career in litigation. We could sue Queen for copying my vocal style on Bohemian Rhapsody and The Pet Shop Boys for, oh … almost everything. They say that so we don’t get the law-suit against us, but I have to agree. We once thought about pursuing a class action against the entire New Wave movement. It would be: ‘Sparks versus The New Wave your honour’. All of the bands would have to answer the charges. I josh.’ — Russell Mael

In their early years, Sparks were contextualized within the Glam Rock genre where, at least in the eyes of the public and some rock critics of the day, they functioned as a kind of thinking person’s Queen. But they were much more.

Sparks in Concert 1974, part 1

Sparks in Concert 1974, part 2

Sparks in Concert 1976

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‘In retrospect, Ron’s moustache was probably another mistake. He probably regrets it. When he did it, he was quite naive – he thought he was copying Charlie Chaplin. We went to France to do a TV show and the presenter refused to go on with us so we had to pull out. At that point he changed it to a pencil-style one. We like controversy and provocation but not in that way.’ — Russell Mael

Sparks’ work and publicity have always made much of Ron Mael’s Hitler-esque moustache, including this slight, somewhat diverting, amusing, flash-requiring little visual puzzle.

Ron Mael shaves his moustache

Ron Mael tap dance

Ron Mael’s snowglobe collection

 

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‘Working with Giorgio opened up new ideas for us. For one thing it showed we weren’t tied to the guitar, bass and drum format and it showed you could work in other ways in a non band context. Although it was commercially fulfilling and we really liked the album, it was critically tough at the time cos people thought it was puzzling for Sparks to be doing what they perceived to be Disco. We saw it as an electronic album where the synths had replaced the aggression of guitars, and really that album was about the songs.’ — Russell Mael

In the mid-70s, Sparks coopted Euro Disco for a short time, producing the excellent and groundbreaking albums No. 1 Song in Heaven and Beat the Clock with the cooperation of disco schlockmeister Giorgio Moroder.

‘The Number 1 Song in Heaven’ (1979)

‘Beat the Clock’ (1980)

‘Modesty Plays’ (1982)

 

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‘We were always more accepted in Europe than the US. Maybe, maybe it was because of the art rock side of our work, but also things are transmitted around Europe in a more centralised kind of way and things get disseminated in Europe much easier. In America it’s more fragmented, there’s no centralised radio to cover the whole country so it has different things.’ — Russell Mael

Sparks has never had the popular success and critical acclaim in the US that they have achieved in Europe and Asia, but they got the closest with a string of albums in the early 1980s including the great Whomp That Sucker and Angst in My Pants, and the less great Sparks in Outer Space, the last of which, thanks to guest vocals by a member the then-hugely popular Go-Gos, launched their biggest American hit, the subpar (for Sparks) song and music video ‘Cool Places’.

‘Tips for Teens’ (1981)

‘Upstairs’ (1981)

‘I Predict’ (1982)

 

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‘Our recent music has been a reaction to everyone else’s lack of adventure. Everyone else is very safe and very reflective. It’s all too tame. We wanted to do an album that is for the people who like Sparks and new fans that would be jarring and genre-defying. We hope it elicits a reaction from people – even if they don’t like it. We’re tired of people following pop conventions and clichés. You listen to songs and after two bars you know where the song is going because it follows so many conventions.’ — Ron Mael

I defy anyone to name another musical artist or band who have been putting out records since 1970 and are doing their best work now as evidenced by 2002’s brilliant Lil Beethoven and the superb more recent albums Hello Young Lovers and Exotic Creatures of the Deep (2008).

‘My Baby’s Taking Me Home’ (2002)

‘Sherlock Holmes’ (1982)

‘Waterproof’ (2006)

‘Perfume’ (2006)

‘Lighten Up, Morrissey’ (2008)

‘Photoshop’ (2008)

Sparks’ 10 favorite songs
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thanks. Well, Robbe-Grillet wasn’t included because he wasn’t a visual artist, and, yeah, I’ve done a few posts about him and his work. The hysteria gripping far and wide in the USA is well known to me, yes, and I do not miss being there right now one tiny bit. ** Ferdinand, Hi. Quite a start for your porn viewing ‘career’ there. Mine would have been a magazine as that was the only home porn back then, although you could buy super8 films sometimes, it’s that long ago. Hope you got something out of that Dumont. I do know and like Eric Random, but I’m much more familiar with his early stuff from the 80s — even that track you linked to, which I have somewhere — than his more recent things, which I should/will investigate. Thank you, man. ** Misanthrope, I’m sure there must be books written about the psychology of online ‘over-sharers’ and ‘selfie’ addicts by now, no? I will titilatedly await those old theme park + you pix. All eyes on the hellhole aka FB. I used to go camping a fair amount as a teen weirdly. It was a thing amongst the sub-hippie set. Mostly to do psychedelics in peace. Great news about your mom. Giant relief! Whew! ** Tosh Berman, Thanks, Tosh, I’ll go find that book. It’s probably gettable here, at Shakespeare & Co. if nothing else. I suspect today’s post is up your alley. Well, a lot more than suspect. As I was saying to George, there must be academic books about the selfie addiction thing by now. Many, no? I’ll go have a hunt. I like looking at people too, but there’s something about needing to own everything they do by stamping their faces and bodies on it that has the opposite effect than intended. I eat almost the exact same thing every day. Which might be interesting in a kind of structuralist way or something. It’s true that I would be most interested to see pix of what you eat, and I don’t even know why. Have you ever thought about doing ‘Tosh Talks and Eats’? ** elle nash, Hi, elle! How nice and cool of you to come in here. Yeah, I know/follow you on Facebook with great pleasure. I still haven’t seen ‘Shirley’, but I’ll pass on my thoughts when I do. Thank you for the really kind words about my books. Advice … sure. This isn’t a good place to give it ‘cos I have to keep moving through the p.,s, but, to start, I never thought about a career, for one thing. Naive of me maybe. I was and still am very romantic about writing and being an author. And I guess I have some kind of deep self-confidence that survives the blows and confusion that comes along with the immediate reaction stuff — reviews, publishers, sales, etc. It’s impossible not to get anxious about those things, but I always think long term. I always try to think about how long books live, basically forever, and how they really gradually find their way to people. I mean, like you. ‘Closer’ is from really a long time ago, but you discovered it just recently. It tends to go that way with my books, and it probably will with yours too. I never thought about the literary establishment and being recognised by it. Just the word establishment is enough to make not take such an idea seriously. The establishment is largely occupied by people who write conventional literary novels or whatever, and it’s a lot about preserving their own reputations by making sure to support new writers/books that will keep their books at the center of contemporary literature. The establishment is not interested in originality and innovation and daring because an actually exciting book becoming a success risks upending the apple cart, as it were. And unless a writer wants official acclaim and success and so on, why even care? But I never thought about my books needing to earn me a living, and they never have. I have to do other things to get by. And basically every writer I respect does that too whether it’s having a non-writing job or teaching or whatever. Blah blah, basically I’m saying that if you really want to write and you really enjoy it and believe in doing that and get positive feedback from people you respect, that’s all that matters. Kind of general advice there, but I think it’s true. Take care. Come back any time obviously. ** Bill, Hi. Thanks, B. Yeah, the Clough is cool. I thought it would make a good closer. Oh, it’s on Roxie streaming? I’ll try to see it today. I still haven’t been sent a copy of ‘Wrong’ even though people seem to be having it. Irked. ** cal, Hi, Cal. Always great to see you! Thanks, man. I’m doing just fine. What about you? Oh, yes, I saw your email this morning. Thank you a billion about the post. I’ll go open the email and get back to you! Awesome! And very interested to read your post, and I’m happy you’re back in the blogging fold. Everyone, The very fine writer Cal Graves has newly returned to the world blogging, and he starts it off with a short bit of writing called ‘a short piece, topiccal’. Cal is always very worth reading, to say the least, and I prompt you to have that pleasure via here. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I did know that about ‘A Clockwork Orange’. I don’t know, but I would think Allen Jones must kick himself a bit for saying no to that. ** Dominik, Hi, D!!! Really glad you liked the post and found new things. Ultimately it was great to move to Amsterdam and stay there. I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, maybe I would do a wee bit less drugs, ha ha. Fingers very crossed that Anita can land a job there. What kind of job is she looking for? My weekend was fine, low key, working on stuff, getting out. Zac and I decided to celebrate the reopening of amusement parks next weekend by buying tickets to Futuroscope, which is about an hour+ train from Paris. Very excited for that. Otherwise, mm, it was okay. Was Monday fun? Whoa, CatDog is a cool weirdo. I didn’t know it/them before. Here’s a love dance for you from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, xo me. ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks, T! Happy it pleasured you. Yes, we’ve been in touch via email, so we’re on the money, whatever the hell that means. Great news! Excited! ** Steve Erickson, Good news about the pleasantness upgrade. I saw that the curfew got murdered. Oh, cool, yeah, interesting, yeah? ‘Filmworker’. Vitali’s dedication is unbelievable. And I hope that doc made his heavy contribution more present to the Kubrick lionising set. ** Okay. This post is quite old and out of date re: Sparks’ newer things, but it seems like it has some hutzpah, so I decided to bring it back anyway. All hail the greatness that are the Maels! See you tomorrow.

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Monica Bonvicini Never Again, 2005
Galvanized steel pipes, black leather, black leather men’s belts, galvanized chains, clamps 350 x 1600 x 1100 cm

 

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Genevieve Belleveau Pressed, 2018
‘To be sealed is to be fixed in place, with both the pleasure of certainty—here I am—and the fear of death (has the device been set up properly?). The video Pressed elaborates on this spectrum of experience. From an aerial perspective, the camera repeatedly moves away from a series of human Ikebana in widening circles, expanding into a topographic view of an LA neighborhood, a man-made geography with a network of houses, freeways, and choking smog.’

 

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Nayland Blake Various (1988 – 1994)
‘Take Blake’s early sculpture Restraint Chair (1989), for instance. To a sleek Breuer chair – the classic coil with two taut pieces of black leather for one’s back and buttocks – Blake attaches extra leather restraints, presumably to hold the sitter’s arms and legs. Rope hangs below the base of the chair for another user or play partner. Blake conflates Bauhaus minimalism with restraint play, turning sleek modernist design into an erogenous zone of sexual enactment. The work articulates their private preferences concerning sexual behaviour while also functioning within a porous public space – that of the gallery – as a realization of possibilities originally created within queer spaces. As Blake writes in a 1995 essay about Tom of Finland’s drawings of well-hung, half-naked men, these works provide ‘the props for the viewer to hang a fantasy on rather than a specific person for the viewer to be aroused by’.’

Restraint Chair, 1989
Breuer chromed metal, leather, chains, steel cable and mirror, 84 × 61 × 62 cm.

 

Work Station #2 (Restraint), 1988
stainless steel, rapier, galvanized iron and leather, 30 x 39 x 48 inches

 

Restraint: Ankle, Wrist, Ankle, 1988
metal, leather, 54 x 8 x 8 inches

 

Satanic Ritualized Abuse, 1994
two stuffed bunnies, wood, leather, rope, plastic knife, birthday candles and plastic bell, 31 × 31 × 24

 

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Emma Sulkowicz The Ship Is Sinking (2017)
‘For Sulkowicz’s new work,, titled The Ship Is Sinking, she wore a white bikini adorned with the Whitney logo. An S&M professional who goes by “Master Avery,” playing a character called “Mr. Whitney,” bound Sulkowicz tightly and hung her from the ceiling on a wooden beam, periodically whipping and insulting her. As Sulkowicz explains below, the piece was meant as a multilayered exploration of ideas surrounding sex and consent, societal standards of female beauty, the personal nature of making and sharing art, and the art world in the age of Donald Trump.’

 

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Xu Zhen Rainbow, 1998 & Play-Expectation, 2014
‘Xu Zhen came to prominence at the 49. Biennale di Venezia with Rainbow, a visceral video performance of his back being slapped, turning red, with hand marks visible but never the hands.’

 

 

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Catherine Opie O, 1999
‘Opie created the dreamlike O series in 1999 as a reaction to Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio, which focused on the gay S&M community in 1970s New York. O, the title of the series was meant to engage with Mapplethorpe’s X series to form the colloquial X-O, meaning hugs and kisses. O could also represent various orifices, or stand in for Opie, as the artist often places herself in her work. She sees O as being more inclusive than Mapplethorpe’s series, which focused almost exclusively on gay men. “Mine is about the whole queer community,” the artist said about the series.’

 

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Taietzel Ticalos While the Future Unfolds, 2018
‘How does technology shape the way we perceive sexuality? Talking about VR sexual experiences, the use of deep learning in porn movies, tech-domination and gray areas of sex work, Romanian digital artist Taietzel Ticalos focuses on findom – financial domination – an online BDSM niche. For her latest work While the Future Unfolds, she developed the 3D character Cherie Pie to artistically examine how an online environment influences fetishization and sex work differently.’

 

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Tom of Finland Various (1968 – 1988)

 

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Tiona Nekkia McClodden Various, 2019

‘THE FULL SEVERITY OF COMPASSION (20190 is made of a manual cattle squeeze chute similar to those used by animal scientist and autism advocate Temple Grandin to calm cows before slaughter. The piece ties together McClodden’s interest in ideas of security with the diagnosis she received earlier this year that she falls somewhere within the Autism Spectrum.’

 

‘In this work, titled ‘SORT OF NICE NOT TO SEE YOU BUT TO FEEL YOU AGAIN’ (2019), a Bauhaus-style leather chair is punctured by a razor blade. “Quite frankly, I consider the S&M community to be the intellectual powerhouse of the LGBTQ+ community in terms of the development of literature, thought, practice, engagement in space, etc.,” the artist told ARTnews earlier this year.’

 

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ADI 3 APRILE, 1479
‘Two female figures, standing on either side, were holding the arms of a blonde child (a young Christ, a child-saint, or a puer sacer, a sacred and mystical infant, I really couldn’t say). The kid was being tortured by two young men: each holding a stiletto, they were slicing the boy’s skin all over, and even his face seemed to have been especially brutalized. Blood ran down the child’s bound feet into a receiving bowl, which had been specifically placed under the victim’s tormented limbs. The child’s swollen face (the only one still clearly visible) had an ecstatic expression that barely managed to balance the horror of the hemorrhage and of the entire scene: in the background, a sixth male figure sporting a remarkable beard, was twisting a cloth band around the prisoner throat. The baby was being choked to death! What is the story of this fresco? What tale does it really tell?’

 

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Jeanelle Mastema Various (2008 – 2009)
‘Jeanelle Mastema is a Mexican American experimental body and performance artist from Boyle Heights, in Southern California. Mastema incorporates ritual into her work through play piercing, hook suspensions, urination and sacred objects. She performs internationally solo and with groups often acting as a medium for group intentions or a symbolic altar for channeling energy. Through performance Mastema enters into a meditative head space to disconnect from mundane consciousness.’

Trust Us, 2008

She Walks The Streets, 2008

AMF Korsets, 2009

 

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kenji siratori Deviations from Code on Geographic Hardweb (2020)
‘corpse state only internal head acid hyper crazy world gram recognition infectious genome body chemical technocrisis emulated convergence and consciousness at the location of script code plug-dog nightmare protocol is a medium-sized dna omotya error hunting mechanism that causes in human cities to break down into apoptotic water mania disease chromosome killing that does malice to the sun virtual horizon of the memory of the memory of the man horizon of the flesh of the man is opened streaming to her mitochondria of world absolute vagina space of the inherited boy breaks the body inoculated endosporoid embryo ecstasy and state brain form hive already shortens the planetary abolition of regional natural system scope of the definition is < grotesque abandoned brain odor artificial down:::abolishes intercourse meat with accelerated brain boy down gene general suck emulated performance artificial nightmare then bit break speed chloroform black roid break secondary acidhuman silence her asphalt embryo bio fly stage of techno suicide eyeball drug pupil herself achieved life of growing pupil retro nature down animal chemical browser acid storage code sec machine down and plug emulation apoptosis tear storage heart penetration nightmare dog …’ (cont.)

 

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Will Munro from Inside The Solar Temple of the Cosmic Leather Daddy (2010)
‘The center-piece is a bum sex sling! You usually see that in a bathhouse, or sex club. You don’t see it in an art gallery or a living room. And you don’t see it with these bright and cheerful colors. I think the colors and the spider plants in macramé holders do create an intimate vibe, but then there’s the leather sling! I made those macramé plant holders myself, and all my friends really helped with the building of the sling and putting all the elements together. My friend Rick constructed the structure and his wife first thought I was making a macramé hammock. It’s not exactly a hammock, but you can lie in it!’

 

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Nancy Grossman Heads (1971 – 1975)
‘Nancy Grossman has been making art for more than fifty years and is best known for her leather-wrapped sculptures of heads, which the artist made from the late 1960s through to the 1980s. This exhibition brings together fourteen sculptures, highlighting the formal and expressive range within the series. While Grossman regularly refers to the heads as self-portraits, they are not made to resemble the artist herself. They speak to the malice and subservience of both psychology and worldly conflict. Though the works are often rendered blind and mute, they still allude to the role of the silent witness amid cruelty and disorder. The creation of the sculptures was inspired in part by the liberation movements of the late 1960s and the Vietnam War, responding to the violence and social upheaval of the era. Today, Grossman’s heads continue to address the anxiety and turmoil that weigh upon the individual and contemporary society. Each head was carved from a block of wood and overlaid with sections of found leather-often sourced from articles of clothing or even boxing gloves-which are sewn, nailed, or zippered together. The life-size sculptures are startling for what they obscure as much as for what they expose. Eyes, ears, and mouths are typically covered, bound, sewn shut, or otherwise restrained. Some heads incorporate found objects that result in horns and other protrusions. The unsettling works have been a source of inspiration for her fellow artists and those of younger generations, and have been notably photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe and Richard Avedon.’

 

 

 

 

 

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Miss Meatface Various (2017)
‘Using BDSM as a healing ritual, artist Kat Toronto aka Miss Meatface, presents a body of work that evokes cinematic visual poetry. Her performance-based images explore cultural ideals of feminine beauty and the objectification of women. By toying with the push and pull of dominance and submission, and the act of revealing and concealing, her artwork presents a voice that uniquely addresses her fantasies and unravels her performance with equal doses of drama and mystery. Miss Meatface recalls the past while celebrating the present through the juxtaposition of contemporary and historical references.’

 

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Toni Schmale waltraud, 2016
‘Vienna-based sculptor Toni Schmale has been thinking a lot lately about ‘transitional objects’, the term coined by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in 1953 for the items that young children seize as tools for psychological comfort: dolls, stuffed toys, even blankets. She has created her own ‘family’ of ‘transitional objects’, she explains. It’s a punishing constellation that reaches out to the inner machine. Schmale’s objects dissolve the last vestiges of industry – a language of pulleys, racks, levers – into their simplest elements, rearranging them into compositions that invoke, in equal measure, exercise and BDSM equipment, finished with a military-black polish.’

 

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Wong Ka Ying Various (2014 – 20190
‘Wong Ka Ying has graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013. Because of her young age and her constant desire to provoke her viewers, the focus of Ka Ying’s works has always been quite explicit and radical. She likes to shock and she wants to have a conversation with her audience. Teachers don’t like me, my father doesn’t like me either. I always got fucked up by boys. I hate men the most! Is there anyone out there who would keep me as concubines?, Ka Ying wrote on one of her social media profiles. She maintains an active profile on Behance network, where her most popular pieces are available.’

Buy Feed Me I Am So Cheap I Am So Low, 2016

 

And you are now a star and I’m still no one, 2014

 

Ain’t No Your Fortune, 2019

 

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John Waters Bill’s Stroller, 2014
‘Not only is Bill’s Stroller built to be baby’s first bondage buggy, but the stroller also features fabric covered in the logos of former sex clubs in New York and San Francisco. It’s never too early to teach your baby about Blow Buddies! As John Waters explained in ArtForum, Bill’s Stroller was inspired by Provincetown’s Gay Family Week, commenting on the drive of many in the gay community to conform to normative middle class values. In recent years, the mainstream gay community has exchanged sex clubs for play dates, tubs for kiddie pools and slings for strollers. As Waters himself described to ArtForum, “I’m trying to pay tribute to the passing of time for an outlaw minority that is now eager to be middle class.”’

 

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Hajime Kinoko Various (2010 – 2018)
‘Hajime Kinoko is a Japanese bondage/shibari artist and a photographer, now considered the leading modern rope artist of Japan. Japanese bondage is usually perceived as erotic, but Kinoko prefers to interpret it as “pop” and endeavors to sublimate it into art.’

 

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Brendan Fernandes Restrain (2019)
‘Fernandes uses his knowledge of the human form to remove its pains and pleasures from public discourse. With bronze, leather, walnut, and steel, Shibari bondage sculptures symbolize resistance, pain, pleasure, and freedom. Through the absence of a physical body, Brendan seeks to highlight the marginalized queer communities and demonized BDSM practices.’

 

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Nolan Lem Tentacle, 2017
”Tentacule’ is a site-specific sound machine that houses ten speakers which are mechanically driven by Velcro extrications that occur on top of the speakers’ paper cones. The kinetic dynamics of the Velcro becoming hooked and unfastened is transmitted through large plastic tubes that resonate and transfer the acoustic energy into different parts of the space. The imposing cephalopodic presence of the black machine suggests a cyborgian instrument somewhere in between an organ, a music box, and a Luigi Nono noise machine. The installation examines the sonic materiality of Velcro as it is situated within the ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and BDSM (bondage, dominance, slave, master) communities. This “BDSMR” object complicates our awareness of sound and sensuality by casting materiality as an erotic fetish, one that derives from our darker, more lurid impulses.’

 

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Shawné Michaelain Holloway Target Practice (2017)
‘I believe we are all attracted to certain things we don’t immediately have access to whether that’s physically or intellectually. The power of newness and desire mixed with responsibility and/or fear is really powerful. It fades in and out of being a form of self-reflection. It’s clearest when this “protective distance” becomes absolutely necessary to be able to make room for observation and decision making for or against interacting with the desired object. In some ways, and perhaps this what keeps many maintaining the distance instead of breaking through it, it is safety from the active escalation of that desire. Sexually, that’s the foundations of taboo. Protective distance has a lot to do with restraint and restraint is a very desirous quality to be able to maintain. It is my fundamental belief that restraint is the basis of all taboos, all desires, and all pleasure. If we see restraint as in service to itself, it is either the letting go or the maintaining of it that is foreplay in pursuit of a desire. That’s why the separation between screen and reality is so powerful.’

 

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Allen Jones Hatstand, Table and Chair (1969)
‘Hatstand, Table and Chair are three fibreglass sculptures of women transformed into items of furniture. They are each dressed with wigs, and are naked apart from their corsets, gloves and leather boots. Each is slightly larger than life-size. For Chair the woman lies curled on her back, a seat cushion on her thighs and her legs acting as a back rest. Table is a woman on all fours, with a sheet of glass supported on her back. For Hat Stand the woman is standing, 1.85 metres (73 in) tall, her hands upturned as hooks. Each fibreglass figure was produced from drawings by Jones. He oversaw a professional sculptor, Dick Beech, who produced the figures in clay. The three female figures were then cast by a model company, Gems Wax Models Ltd, who specialised in producing shop mannequins. Each figure was produced in an edition of six. Jones explained that they weren’t illustrations of scenes, but rather that “the figure is a device for a painting or a sculpture. It’s not a portrayal of someone – it’s a psychological construction.”‘

 

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Deyson Gilbert Questão de Ordem (2019)
‘In Questão de Ordem, Deyson’s dubious physical game of fitting and unfitting; of fragmentation and alienation in body representation; of textual directives and invectives; of the fairly superficial figuration of so-called ‘non-conventional’ sexual practices reveal — not without irony — the dimension of literality typically associated with minimalism: a sort of pornography of form. The same happens with the use of materials: the slippery movement of his monochromatic leather surfaces simulate the scrolling of LED screens; the incessant buzz of a background engine exposes the compulsive mechanics of feeds, posts, and tweets; the tactile appeal of leather conveys the objectively fetishist sociability in which screens offer themselves to the touch: as if skin to the eyes.’

 

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Jim Dine My Angel, 2006
enamel on wood

 

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Ultraviolence BDSM Is Extra, 2013
Harsh Noise and Databending video

 

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Jacques-Andre Boiffard Various, 1920 – 1943
‘Jacques-André Boiffard (1902-1961) was a French photographer, born in Epernon in Eure-et-loire. In the mid-1920s, Boiffard decided to dedicate himself to research in the Bureau of Surrealist Research. Preferring photography to literature, he served as Man Ray’s assistant from 1924 to 1929. During the 1920s, he took portraits of the English writer Nancy Cunard and photographs of Paris which Breton used to illustrate his novel Nadja. In 1928, Boiffard was abruptly expelled from the movement for taking photographs of Simone Breton. He co-founded a studio, Studio unis, with photographer Eli Lotar in 1929, although the studio went bankrupt in 1932. From 1929 onward, Boiffard was closely associated with Georges Bataille and the circle of writers involved in Documents, in which his best-known work was published, illustrating articles such as Bataille’s “The Big Toe” (1929, issue 6), Robert Desnos’ “Pygmalion and the Sphinx” (1930, issue 1), and Georges Limbour’s “Eschyle, the carnival and the civilized” (1930, issue 2). In 1930, he contributed to Un Cadavre, a pamphlet that attacked Breton.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Peter Clough Peter (you are what you eat), 2017
Digital ink-jet print, acrylic, wood, electronics 60” x 74” x 14”

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. ‘JF’ is very good, yes, I agree. Everyone, Today FaBlog adds a self-explanatory post called ‘Rand Paul Supports Lynching’, and here’s where it is. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Yes, well, that film will certainly be an interesting test of your family dynamic. ** Tosh Berman, I haven’t read her novels, no. I didn’t think any were translated, but you say there is at least one in English? I asked friends here, but none of them have read her fiction. But, as you probably know, her novels are well regarded here. One of them won one of he big literary prizes, I forget which one. Anyway, I’ll try to hunt her books. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Yeah, I mean, LPS is at an age where that kind of shit, or being caught for it, which is pretty inevitable, can really fuck his life up. And it’d sure be better if he realised that he can’t sweet talk his way out of trouble in adulthood like he could as a young’un before he figures that out ‘the hard way’. Good luck, man. I’ve definitely learned to be a master of scrolling thanks to FB where one’s state of mind’s survival depends on hopping and skipping. I just can’t get into the mindset of people who endlessly post photos of themselves every time they change their clothes or when their hair looks slightly different or when they buy a new something-or-other or who recount every minor shift in their mood in detail with the seeming assumption that their ‘friends’ just need to know. But then most of my close friends either aren’t on social media or just rarely post things that they’re interested in or unusually doing. But an FB post as psychiatrist’s couch? I don’t get it. That said, I in fact do think you should do an FB photo album of those EF pix because that’s actually interesting and you rarely share personal stuff on there, so please go for it. ** chris dankland, Hi, Chris! Oh, okay, about how Zoom worked with your classes. That sounds pretty interesting, actually. That does sound crazy about the potential open-up school scenario, but it does sound doable at least. And very sci-fi. I hope you get there. I have extremely little faith in the anti-pandemic measures the US is doing, and I fear it’ll be ages before I can safely take an LA trip that doesn’t make me self-quarantine the whole time, but, hey, I hope I’m wrong. France is divided into troubled and less troubled areas. I’m, of course, in the troubled area because it’s Paris. In most of the country, schools are reopening now. In our area, probably not until the fall except for kindergartens, which are open again. I’m not sure what the methods will be. But France has handled this thing very precisely and carefully, and the infection/death rate keeps falling even as we open more and more, so I trust they’ll do school reopenings in a very rigorous way. Things are relatively great in Paris. It’s kind of blissful. It feels almost normal except with masks and hand sanitising all the time. We just got cafes and restaurants back, but only outdoors seating, so they’ve closed a lot of streets and let restaurants set up in the streets themselves, which is kind of beautiful. Museums are gradually opening. We get movie theatres back in a couple of weeks. Amusement parks reopen next week. Not sure when music/theater will reopen, maybe in July. It feels great, really, and people are behaving and following the rules, and there’s just a very upbeat vibe here. I’m glad AZ wasn’t so hard hit. Here’s highly hoping. My bad dreams and I are lifelong friends. I’m cool with it. No, I really don’t think there’s any relationship between my dreams and my life/art at all. They’re like two different universes. I have a very vivid imagination when awake, as I guess is obvious, ha ha, and maybe that’s partly why my dreams are just kind of gray and stuck in place or something. Why, does your dreaming have a relationship with your work? Thanks, glad you liked the Black Metals post. Have a super fantastic weekend, my friend. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I just got hooked up with a new free/illegal films site, mostly very mainstream and not very useable for me, but I think ‘Shirley’ is there, so I’ll see if it actually is and watch it if so. I watched ‘Filmworker’ yesterday. You see that? About this young actor who gave up acting to become Stanley Kubrick’s 24/7 slave (in effect). Pretty interesting. The laxity with which people ing the US are treating the reopening stresses me out. Here everyone pretty much is following the rules and having a perfectly active, fun life at the same time. I’ll go get the new Armand Hammer, thank you. ** Right. Well, here’s a weekend post for you that needs no introduction. See you on Monday.