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The blog of author Dennis Cooper

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Jim Jarmusch Day

 

‘Back in the mid-80s, Jim Jarmusch was the last word in cinema chic, the coolest kid on the independent-movie block. Sixteen years and seven feature films later, Jarmusch stands as the last of a dying breed, defender of the purist faith. His newer films are packed with the genre tricks and mordant humour that have characterised all his output. But after drifting, unloved and unappreciated, in a cinematic limbo for most of the 90s, the world has started, once again, seeing things Jarmusch’s way.

‘His appearance only adds to the effect. Now 47, Jarmusch is practically identical to the Ohio-born, NYU-educated hipster who used his $12,000 film school scholarship money to make his first low-budget feature, Permanent Vacation. His second, Stranger Than Paradise, cost even less.

‘Jarmusch’s trademark upswept silver hairdo is perfectly in place; keen eyes ever eager to communicate some heartfelt idea; slow voice measuring out the words. “One thing that flipped me out,” he says, “when we made Stranger, we were very conscious that it was 1982. Though it was post punk, style was still very rock’n’roll. We lived in that milieu in New York, but we wanted characters who weren’t connected with that. We wanted them to look more like guys you’d see at the racetrack. And then two years later everyone started dressing like that. It’s funny how things happen.”

‘Funny, indeed. Between 1984 and 1989, Jarmusch spearheaded the independent film movement, alongside Spike Lee and Michael Moore, with a trilogy of perfectly executed, thoroughly individual films. Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, and Mystery Train all shared a three-part structure, a wistful nostalgia for American pulp culture, and a downbeat, low-key narrative style borrowed from European and Japanese models. Jarmusch – in contrast to Lee’s playful promotion of African-American consciousness, and Moore’s self-help political radicalism – definitely occupied the high end of 80s alternative film-making, purveyor of an unflappable existential world-weariness that heralded the rise of a new wave of American auteurism.

‘These days, however, Jarmusch is reluctant to dwell on past glories. “I don’t look back,” he says. “Especially not at my own work. I don’t know why. It’s not healthy for me. Looking back, in work and in life, is something I’m hesitant to do. I try not to. It’s funny, though, I’m transferring all my films to digital masters, for future DVD release, and it’s really excruciating for me to watch them again. Down By Law, or whatever. I leave really depressed.”

‘Jarmusch began the 90s with Night on Earth, his most ambitious film to date, boasting a pedigree cast that included Winona Ryder and Gena Rowlands, and a tricky five-city schedule. Despite Night on Earth, however, Jarmusch’s career stubbornly refused to take off – unlike Lee, who was gearing up to make Malcolm X for Columbia. “My films are hand-made in the garage,” says Jarmusch, “so it takes me a little while to get them together. My friend Aki Kaurismaki calls me the world’s slowest film director, after Kubrick. My rhythm is my rhythm, and – how can I say this? – I’m not ambitious, and I’m not career-orientated in that way. If I were, I’d make different kinds of films. I’m lucky and happy and want to keep making work, but I have no desire to be more prolific. But then I see someone like Aki, who works in the same way, or Claire Denis. They make films more often than I do. But I’m always telling them to slow down. I want them to be happy and healthy; they worry me because they get stressed out by working too much. I’m happy with my rhythm, slow as it may be. It’s how I talk.”

‘Despite the fact that Jarmusch’s work instantaneously became the pet subject of graduate theses, he’s as keen as ever to point up the collaborative nature of his film-making. “To me, the auteur thing is a lot of bullshit, because you collaborate on a film in every way, with everyone – even with whoever’s stopping traffic. But I’m contradictory, because I’m a control freak to the point that I want to know every prop, every ashtray, every colour, everything that’s in the set. But at the same time I’m collaborating with other people, who are helping me find those things. I would like to work in a more free way, but I don’t have that luxury because I don’t have that kind of budget.”

‘If nothing else, Jarmusch’s long run demonstrates that you get what you give, that the love you take is equal to the love you make, that – indeed – what goes around comes around. And it’s just as well he’s content with his lot. “I don’t want to be mainstream,” he says. “I like being in the margins. I’m happy where I exist. The things that inspire me I find in the margins. I’m not consciously trying to be marginal, it’s just where I end up and where I live. There’s a gift in there for me and I’m happy to have that gift.” — The Guardian

 

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Stills




























































 

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Further

The Jim Jarmusch Resource Page
Jimjarmusch.com
Jim Jarmusch @ IMDb
Jim Jarmusch @ The Criterion Collection
Jim Jarmuch’s Twitter
Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Invisible Jukebox’ @ The Wire
Jim Jarmusch & SQÜRL Interviewed
‘Jim Jarmusch Outs Himself As A Mycophile’
Jim Jarmusch Discography
‘Jim Jarmusch’s Notes for a Ghostbusters Sequel’
Jim Jarmusch interviewed @ Interview
French Jim Jarmusch Fan Page
Jim Jarmusch bio @ film.factory
‘The Auteurs: Jim Jarmusch’
‘The Loneliness of Jim Jarmusch’
‘Every Jim Jarmusch Film from Worst to Best’
Heck Yes Jim Jarmusch

 

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Documentary
‘Filmed in Sevilla during 3 days on the set of The Limits of Control, Behind Jim Jarmusch (2009) is a rare behind the scenes glimpse into the process of this American auteur. Director Léa Rinaldi unveils an exquisitely personal glimpse into the relationship between Jim Jarmusch and his impressive ensemble cast, including Isaach De Bankolé, Tilda Swinton, Billy Murray, and John Hurt. For one of the few times in his career, the author of Stranger than Paradise and Dead Man has allowed a camera, during three days to breach into his creative arena. From the labyrinthine alleys of Sevilla to its orange-tree shaded squares, or to a bunker-like studio, the young French filmmaker leads us into the set pulse. It’s an initiation to Time, the time it takes to make a movie.’ — collaged

 

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Extras


Jim Jarmusch, Bradford Cox and No Age perform Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer”


Jim Jarmusch in Bored to Death


Fishing With John Episode 1 – Montauk with Jim Jarmusch


Jozef Van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch “Etimasia”


SQÜRL ( Carter Logan, Jim Jarmusch, and Shane Stoneback) “Pink Dust”

 

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Jim Jarmusch’s 5 Golden Rules
from Moviemaker

Rule #1: There are no rules. There are as many ways to make a film as there are potential filmmakers. It’s an open form. Anyway, I would personally never presume to tell anyone else what to do or how to do anything. To me that’s like telling someone else what their religious beliefs should be. Fuck that. That’s against my personal philosophy—more of a code than a set of “rules.” Therefore, disregard the “rules” you are presently reading, and instead consider them to be merely notes to myself. One should make one’s own “notes” because there is no one way to do anything. If anyone tells you there is only one way, their way, get as far away from them as possible, both physically and philosophically.

Rule #2: Don’t let the fuckers get ya. They can either help you, or not help you, but they can’t stop you. People who finance films, distribute films, promote films and exhibit films are not filmmakers. They are not interested in letting filmmakers define and dictate the way they do their business, so filmmakers should have no interest in allowing them to dictate the way a film is made. Carry a gun if necessary.

Also, avoid sycophants at all costs. There are always people around who only want to be involved in filmmaking to get rich, get famous, or get laid. Generally, they know as much about filmmaking as George W. Bush knows about hand-to-hand combat.

Rule #3: The production is there to serve the film. The film is not there to serve the production. Unfortunately, in the world of filmmaking this is almost universally backwards. The film is not being made to serve the budget, the schedule, or the resumes of those involved. Filmmakers who don’t understand this should be hung from their ankles and asked why the sky appears to be upside down.

Rule #4: Filmmaking is a collaborative process. You get the chance to work with others whose minds and ideas may be stronger than your own. Make sure they remain focused on their own function and not someone else’s job, or you’ll have a big mess. But treat all collaborators as equals and with respect. A production assistant who is holding back traffic so the crew can get a shot is no less important than the actors in the scene, the director of photography, the production designer or the director. Hierarchy is for those whose egos are inflated or out of control, or for people in the military. Those with whom you choose to collaborate, if you make good choices, can elevate the quality and content of your film to a much higher plane than any one mind could imagine on its own. If you don’t want to work with other people, go paint a painting or write a book. (And if you want to be a fucking dictator, I guess these days you just have to go into politics…).

Rule #5: Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

 

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17 of Jim Jarmusch’s 29 films

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Permanent Vacation (1980)
‘Rootless Hungarian émigré Willie (John Lurie), his pal Eddie (Richard Edson), and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) always manage to make the least of any situation, whether aimlessly traversing the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland, or an anonymous Florida suburb. With its delicate humor and dramatic nonchalance, Jim Jarmusch’s one-of-a-kind minimalist masterpiece, Stranger Than Paradise, forever transformed the landscape of American independent cinema.’ — Criterion Collection


Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
‘A downbeat pastoral just this side of sentimental, Stranger Than Paradise is a celebration of hanging out, bumming around, and striking it rich—American (pre)occupations as deep-dyed as they are disreputable. The film, which plays the [New York] Film Festival this weekend and the Cinema Studio thereafter, is a stringent road movie cum character farce, with a trio of lumpen bohemians—a teenage immigrant from Budapest, her Americanized cousin, and his affable buddy—boldly emblazoned upon a series of gloriously deadbeat landscapes (the Lower East Side, the outskirts of Cleveland, the anonymous Florida coast). It’s very funny, and it’s pure movie. No one will ever mistake this deadpan whatsit for a failed off-off-Broadway play.’ — J. Hoberman


Trailer


Excerpt

 

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Down by Law (1986)
Down by Law, released in 1986, was Jim Jarmusch’s third movie. Unlike its predecessors, Permanent Vacation (1980) and Stranger Than Paradise (1984), it did not take off from a semi-documentary view of downtown Manhattan. It was shot entirely on location in Louisiana, which in the context of low-budget independent New York City film­making was exotic, even more so than the previous picture’s forays to the forlorn outskirts of Cleveland and whatever derelict stretch of highway stood in for Florida. Here, the location is announced and front-loaded during the credits. New Orleans and its surroundings pass in review, from left to right, etched in crystalline black and white by Robby Müller’s camera: mausoleums, wrought-iron balconies, low-slung housing projects, shacks on stilts. After that, scenes unfold amid semitropical architecture and in the bayous; you hear Cajun accents and Irma Thomas singing, but for all the flavor of filé gumbo, the actual setting is no more Louisiana than the setting of Macao is Macao. Down by Law takes place in the land of the imagination, in the province of the movies.’ — Luc Sante


Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Mystery Train (1989)
‘I am equally moved by that moment in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train when the young Japanese couple arrive in the train station in Memphis only to encounter what appears to be a homeless black man, a drifter, but who turns to them and speaks in Japanese. The interaction takes only a moment, but it deconstructs and expresses so much. It reminds us that appearances are deceiving. It made me think about black men as travelers, about black men who fight in armies around the world. This filmic moment challenges our perceptions of blackness by engaging in a process of defamiliarization (the taking of a familiar image and depicting it in such a way that we look at it and see it differently). Way before Tarantino was dabbling in “cool” images of blackness, Jarmusch had shown in Down by Law and other work that it was possible for a white-guy filmmaker to do progressive work around race and representation.’ — bell hooks


Trailer


Opening scenes


Screamin´ Jay Hawkins in Mystery Train

 

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Night on Earth (1991)
‘Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth is an agreeably flaky comedy built around a surefire hook. Each of the film’s five segments consists of a single extended taxicab ride through a different city; the idea is that each excursion is taking place at exactly the same time. Jarmusch starts out in Los Angeles, then moves to New York, Paris, Rome, and, finally, Helsinki. (Why Helsinki? As far as I could tell, so that the movie could end at sunrise.) Night on Earth’s cosmic title may lead you to expect a spiritual overview of the state of the world, but the joke is that these cabbies and their passengers all speak a universal language of disconnectedness. Before long, the taxis themselves begin to feel cozy and familiar. The movie is like a hipster’s ramshackle version of traveling around the world and never leaving the Hilton.’ — Owen Gleiberman


Trailer

Night on Earth – Paris

Night on Earth – New York

 

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Tom Waits: I Don’t Wanna Grow Up (1992)
‘Film director Jim Jarmusch used to consider music videos as a movie in miniature until he got into a fight with Tom Waits over the making of the one for this song. Jarmush explained to Uncut magazine: “He wanted me to cut it differently, and I said, that ‘it’s like a film I’m making, Tom,’ and, and he said, ‘no, it’s a commercial for this song. If people are watching TV, I don’t want them changing channel. If you can pop this crazy image in the earlier, it would help this, that, blah blah blah.’We had a big fight in which I dropped him in an enclosed parking lot behind a metal door in LA in the middle of the night,” Jarmush added. “He was pounding on the door. I vividly remember the insult, which no one has ever said to me again. He yelled through the door, ‘God dammit, Jim, I’m going to glue your hair to the wall.’ At which point I let him back in. It was a fight between friends. We reconciled.”‘ — Jim Jarmusch

 

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Dead Man (1995)
Dead Man is likely Jim Jarmusch’s most stunning achievement. A period piece, and what’s more, one that draws directly upon a genre (the western), the film stands apart from Jarmusch’s other work categorically as well. Johnny Depp plays William Blake, who ventures westward by train to the dystopian town of Machine in search of work. While there, he meets Thel (Mili Avital), whose boyfriend (Gabriel Bryne) catches them in bed. The violence that ensues causes Blake to scramble across the wilderness with a bullet in his chest. Pursued by savage bounty hunters, his journey is an extended death scene—he avoids one meeting with mortality before encountering another.’ — Zach Campbell


Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Year of the Horse (1997)
‘The film, directed by Jim Jarmusch, follows a 1996 Neil Young concert tour and intercuts footage from 1986 and 1976 tours. It’s all shot in muddy earth tones, on grainy Super 8 film, Hi Fi 8 video and 16-mm. If you seek the origin of the grunge look, seek no further: Young, in his floppy plaid shirts and baggy shorts, looks like a shipwrecked lumberjack. His fellow band members, Billy Talbot, Poncho Sampedro and Ralph Molina, exude vibes that would strike terror into the heart of an unarmed convenience store clerk. These seances are intercut with concert footage, during which the band typically sings the lyrics through once and then gets mired in endless loops of instrumental repetition that seem positioned somewhere between mantras and autism. The music is shapeless, graceless and built from rhythm, not melody; it is amusing, given the undisciplined sound, to eavesdrop later as they argue in a van about whether they all were following the same arrangement.’ — Roger Ebert


Trailer

 

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Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
‘A more crowd-pleasing exercise in fathomless cool than its predecessor, Ghost Dog is an impeccably shot and sensationally scored deadpan parody of two current popular modes—the hit-man glorification saga and the Cosa Nostra family drama—and is predicated on the clash of at least as many behavioral codes. The hired gun known as Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is introduced reading the 18th-century samurai manual Hagakure. His lips don’t exactly move, but the text thereafter serves as the major indicator of his consciousness: “The samurai is as if dead.” Like the Parisian hit man who is the antihero of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Le Samurai (which, no less stylized, opens with a quote from the invented Book of Bushido), Ghost Dog is an ascetic loner who must ultimately wreak vengeance on the employer who betrays him. Cowled like a monk in his hooded sweatshirt, the urban samurai leaves his rooftop shack, complete with pigeon coop and Shinto altar, to glide unseen through the nighttime streets of his derelict neighborhood (a seeming mixture of Brooklyn and Jersey City).’ — J. Hoberman


Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt

 

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Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
‘Jim Jarmusch has been working on Coffee and Cigarettes for so long that when he started the project, you could still smoke in a coffee shop. The idea was to gather unexpected combinations of actors and, well, let them talk over coffee and cigarettes. He began with the short film “Coffee and Cigarettes I,” filmed in 1986, before we knew who Roberto Benigni was (unless we’d seen Jarmusch’s Down By Law). Benigni the verbal hurricane strikes the withdrawn Steven Wright and is so eager to do him a favor that he eventually goes to the dentist for him. There’s no more to it than that, but how much more do you need? A few minutes, and the skit is over. None of these 11 vignettes overstays its welcome, although a few seem to lose their way. And although Jarmusch has the writing credit, we have the feeling at various moments (as when Bill Murray walks in on a conversation between RZA and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan and exchanges herbal remedies with them) that improvisation plays a part.’ — Roger Ebert


Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Broken Flowers (2005)
Broken Flowers relies on Bill Murray’s persona, but it also turns that persona back on him. Instead of maintaining the satirical distance that made it easy to laugh at heartland eccentrics in, say, Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt, Jarmusch’s film avoids caricature, and Murray’s poker face melts. Don feels a bittersweet regret at becoming exn his self-effacement has achieved high comic art, and he collaborates with Jarmusch at a point in his career when he’s trying to be something more than hipster-serene. Both succeed, by committing to the notion that a yearning to be reborn within a hopeless, brittle soul is worthy of drama—as well as a deeper, gentler humor.’ — Ken Tucker


Trailer


Excerpt


DVD Extras

 

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The Limits of Control (2009)
‘The effect of the new Jim Jarmusch film, The Limits of Control, is to prove that, however gracefully you groom a shaggy-dog story, it won’t stop roaming. Isaach De Bankolé—originally from Ivory Coast, and a Jarmusch regular, in works like Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes — plays a man with a mission. That sounds decisive, but the man is a nameless itinerant, and you can no more explain his mission than finish a jigsaw under water. Clad in a succession of silk suits, he flies to Madrid, takes a train to Seville, then takes another into rural desolation. In each place, the same thing happens, with minor variations: a contact approaches, launches into a discussion of art, music, drugs, or whatever, and trades matchboxes with our guy. Each box contains a cipher on a slip of paper, which he reads and eats. The tale is constructed with infinite care, and shot with an almost aching clarity by Christopher Doyle. (Whole theses could, and probably will, be written on its use of blood-orange red.) The cast, too, is so hip that it makes your gums hurt, with cameos for Gael García Bernal, John Hurt, Bill Murray, and a white-wigged Tilda Swinton, whose deployment of a transparent umbrella as a parasol is a typical gesture of stylized futility.’ — The New Yorker


Trailer


Archival Talks: Jim Jarmusch, “The Limits of Control”

 

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Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
The Thin Man with blood cocktails, an ode to hipsterism through the ages, a mainline shot of cool and a playful tribute to artistic fetishism, Jim Jarmusch’s vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive is an addictive mood and tone piece, a nocturnal reverie that incidentally celebrates a marriage that has lasted untold centuries. Almost nothing happens in this minor-key drift through a desolate, imperiled modern world, and yet it is the perennial downtown filmmaker’s best work in many years, probably since 1995’s Dead Man, with which it shares a sense of quiet, heady, perilous passage.’ — Hollywood Reporter


Trailer


Title sequence


“Only Lovers Left Alive” Q&A;: Jim Jarmusch, Tilda Swinton

 

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Paterson (2016)
‘In Jim Jarmusch’s thirteenth feature, Paterson, Adam Driver plays a bus driver named Paterson who also happens to live and work in Paterson N.J. And like an earlier Paterson resident, physician-poet William Carlos Williams, he writes poetry in his spare time. During coffee and lunch breaks, and in the moments before he begins his route, Paterson writes poems inspired by everyday things. For example, a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches sparks a meditation on the pure, quiet love he feels for his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), a charming, stay-at-home DIY dynamo. Jarmusch, too, loves poetry. He’s a fan, in particular, of Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, members of what’s commonly known as the New York School of poets. (The poems in Paterson, in fact, were written by New York School poet Ron Padgett.) Jarmusch has drawn on that love, and more, to make a picture that shows how art—maybe even especially art made in the margins—can fill up everyday life.’ — Stephanie Zacharek


Trailer


Excerpts

 

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Gimme Danger (2016)
‘“It’s June 9. We are in an undisclosed location. We are interrogating Jim Osterberg about the Stooges, the greatest rock and roll band ever.” So begins Jim Jarmusch’s affectionate, thorough documentary – a film in which violence is swift and random, household objects are employed during the making of music, Wimbledon provides an unlikely recording location and John Wayne cameos alongside David Bowie, Art Garfunkel and Nico. One anecdote involves a tab of mescalin and a shovel. For the first gig, the singer was made up in white face, wearing an aluminum afro wig and a maternity smock and played a vacuum cleaner on stage. There are drugs, chaos, more drugs. Death, redemption, riffs are all present. As Iggy notes dryly, “It ain’t too easy being the Stooges sometimes, you know?”’ — Uncut


Trailer


Excerpt


Jim Jarmusch & Iggy Pop | ‘Gimme Danger’ Q&A

 

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The Dead Don’t Die (2019)
‘Jim Jarmusch’s style is so singular and versatile that if you fall in love with it, as some of us did over 30 years ago with “Stranger than Paradise,” you’ll believe there’s no such thing as a bad Jarmusch picture, because you’ll judge each new film in relation to Jarmusch’s best, not what anyone else might’ve theoretically done with the same material. “The Dead Don’t Die” is far from Jarmusch’s best, but there’s something to be said for its zonked-out acceptance of extinction.’ — Matt Zoller Seitz


Trailer

 

 

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p.s. Hey. So, someone tried unsuccessfully to break into my blog hundreds of times last night using many IP addresses. I’ve upgraded to a higher protection level, and they’re still trying to break in as of 5 minutes ago. Hopefully they’ll give up, but just to say if the blog suddenly goes haywire or dies or something, that’s why. ** Ian, Hi, Ian. People are so squeamish, no? Those Jesus pops certainly could’ve been in an earlier post here, now that you mention it. Good eye. I’ve never read ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They?’. I love the film version. It’s amazing, eh? Okay, I’ll look for it. Thanks, pal. I never met Gore Vidal, no. I was in a restaurant when he was in the same restaurant, and I sort of studied him from afar. I should probably praise cthulhu too, shouldn’t I, just to be safe. Done. (I did it IRL). ** Dominik, Hi!!! I’m glad there were a couple of gods in there who lived up to the hype. Ha ha. Your love seeing the tears in my love’s eyes as his beloved bellbottoms are burning and having a moment of compassion in which he restores the bellbottoms with his magic powers and gives my love a lick of his Jesus pop which they both find so sexy that they log into your love’s OnlyFans account, turn on your love’s laptop’s camera and have sex which, when it finally goes live on your love’s OnlyFans account, is so erotic that word spreads and God hears about it and watches the video and is so turned on that he becomes inspired to create total peace in the world, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Oh, I intend to avoid that WA documentary like the veritable plague. ** _Black_Acrylic, And feeling blessed is the ideal reaction! Thank you! Nice that you got outside. Well, surely they’ll let you have your laptop? Why in the world wouldn’t they? You’re not in prison, right? ** Thomas Kendall, Hi, Tom. Great to see you, my friend! I do like Jenny Erpenbeck, yes. In fact I think I read she has a new book out which I’ve been meaning to score. How are you? So, so excited for your long, long, long awaited novel to bring much needed joy into the world! ** Steve Erickson, Jesus is as annoying as fuck. Yikes. Ah, but I didn’t want to balance out the Slayer track. Fuck the non-black, you know? Balance is for pussies, as Slayer might have said, or at least thought. Spring should have that effect, although in this climate confused world we now live in, who knows? AIDOL will be mine as soon as I can get it. I’m sold. ** alex rose, Mr. Rose! A great pleasure, a great honor, a great … all kinds of other stuff. Sure, I’m totally down to have my stuff in that 7 day New York thing you’re doing. Use whatever you want, carte blanche. I’m thrilled that you asked and that you want include my things. When is it happening? What is it? I want to see, duh. Biggest love and deepest bow! ** Brendan, Hey! I was wondering if you noticed I restored that. I probably should’ve told you. I always like to surprise people, but there’s an assumption there that people will be so attuned to the blog on a micro level that they’ll know on their own, which is kind of gross. Anyway, yeah, the post still had its benevolent assaultive quality. Thank you from the future. You hanging in +? Love, me. ** Sypha, Ah, yeah, William Blake. Everyone, one last God add as proposed by Sypha. Sypha: ‘I think one of my favorite pictorial representations of God is William Blake’s “God Blessing the Seventh Day” (c. 1805). Usually depictions of the Old Testament God come off as looking very stern and humorless, but I kind of like how cheerful and happy Blake’s God looks.’ ** Right. Even though Jim Jarmusch’s films are kind of hit or miss for me — I like a few quite a lot, dislike a few quite a lot, and think most of them are okay — he’s a distinctive filmmaker, and I’ve never done a Day about him, and I thought I probably should, and I did. Jarmusch-y thoughts, anyone? See you tomorrow.

God

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Johannes Kahrs Untitled (god) (2015)
Untitled (god) is the ambiguous title of Kahrs’ portrait of Bill Cosby. Since 2000, the world famous star of The Cosby Show has been the subject of sexual abuse allegations. Kahrs is fascinated by this lawsuit because of the change in the way Cosby is perceived; as the first African-American person with his own television show, he was regarded by many as a role model, while the recent allegations expose him as a monster.’

 

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The Kid “DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?” (2013)
Sculpture in platinum silicone, fiberglass, stainless steel, human hair, oil paint, various materials

 

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Niko Hendrickx Atlas (2019)
‘An Ionic pillar supports a high space. The pillar slowly rotates on its base, transforming its long, straight lines into spirals.’

Watch it twist

 

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God Untitled (2016)
‘Born in France in 1974, God displayed unusual technical facility as an artist even in boyhood. After formally studying art, he became disillusioned with the prevailing schools. Concluding that, Contemporary art as a means of artistic expression – generally avoided the narrative content that he found so compelling in the day to day life of a small french town . In the late 90’s, God without any English language, decided to learn from the world and moved to London where he lived for one year, then moved to New York and to Los Angeles where he lived for 8 years. There, he found the paradoxical nature of these cities (vast wealth and achievement juxtaposed against hopelessness and poverty) to be the prevailing themes in his art. He hopes to add to the eternal amalgam , what he feels is the ongoing dialogue that art strived to shed light on, between artifice and reality, despair and hope.’

 

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Subodh Gupta Hungry God (2005)
Hungry God is made up of a vast number of stainless-steel kitchen utensils stacked in a mound, at an awe-inspiring scale, as a quasi-religious offering.’

 

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Trent Parke The Camera is God (2013)
‘The project, The Camera is God, saw Trent Parke shooting on an Adelaide pedestrian crossing, at the same time of day, every day, for nearly a year. Capturing pedestrians waiting for the lights to change, bustling and jostling, yawning, fighting, shouting. Parke used a shutter release firing constantly at a rapid rate, removing control of the images made from his hands, and in so doing mimicking the omniscience of CCTV cameras around the world: “I didn’t try to control who my camera captured, but let life and chance decide. There are security cameras all over cities now, doing the same thing, watching daily life happen in front of them.”’

 

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Slayer God Hates Us All (Disciple) (2001)
‘Drones since the dawn of time / Compelled to live your sheltered lives / Not once has anyone ever seen / Such a rise of pure hypocrisy / I’ll instigate, I’ll free your mind / I’ll show you what I’ve known all this time / God hates us all / God hates us all / You know it’s true God hates this place / You know it’s true he hates this race / Homicide, suicide / Hate heals, you should try it sometime / Strive for peace with acts of war / The beauty of death we all adore / I have no faith distracting me / I know why your prayers will never be answered / God hates us all / God hates us all / God hates us all / God hates us all / Yeah, he fuckin’ hates me’

 

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Robert Alexander Untitled (Art is Love is God) (1955)
‘Robert Alexander and Wallace Berman first met in 1945, and became fast friends and artistic collaborators—“soul mates,” in Alexander’s words. This collapsible, rough-hewn box pays homage to Wallace Berman through both the photograph and the inclusion of Berman’s constant artistic credo “Art is Love is God.”’

 

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Sebastian Errazuriz Jesus Christ Popsicles (2012)
‘Brooklyn-based designer Sebastian Errazuriz created 100 “Christian Popsicles” made from the “frozen holy wine transformed into the blood of Christ.” As for the blood of Christ, the Chilean artist said the wine was “inadvertently blessed by the priest while turning wine into the blood of Christ during the Eucharist.”’

 

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Jason Asselin Shock video shows ‘Jesus walking on water’ (2016)
‘Was it a ghost? A paranormal activity? Or could it possibly be an apparition of Jesus walking on water? These were the questions asked by netizens after a video clip was posted online showing a mysterious figure on a lake in Michigan, U.S.A. The filmmaker Jason Asselin caught the images while touring the area with country singer Kevin B Klein to make a new video. A couple of viewers couldn’t help but make biblical associations. “Looks like Jesus and Peter out for a stroll, to me,” one commented, while another added: “Looks more like Jesus walking on water. In the Bible passage Matthew 14:22-33, Jesus performed a miracle by walking on water. When Jesus first appeared to His disciples, they grew afraid and even suspected Him to be a ghost. But Jesus told them to “take courage” and to follow Him.”‘

 

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Xie Aige I’m the God of Junior Grade 2 (2014)
Bronze

 

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Doug Keyes The Holy Bible (1950) (1999)
‘Keyes is interested in the ways in which knowledge “stacks upon itself over time, leaving an impression or collective memory.” Attempting to recreate this ephemeral process, Keyes photographed pages in books from his own collection, as well as in texts suggested by his friends. He superimposed the resulting images, producing a version of each book condensed onto a single page. By deliberately manipulating the photographic process, Keyes examines how such commanding, canonical texts as the Christian bible permeate cultural consciousness over time.’

 

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Jim Lambie Vortex (Love Song) (2012)
full gloss paint, and hand-blown glass (Loredano Rosin sculpture)

 

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Ed Ruscha God Knows Where (2014)
‘A majestic mountain top dominates the background of Ed Ruscha’s God Knows Where, 2014, while the painting’s three eponymous words occupy the foreground, devised in crisp-white paint. Typical of Ruscha’s investigation of the relationship between images and words, the composition is an exceptional example of his use of mountainous peaks as visual backdrops, referencing both the naturalistic theme of snow and the Hollywood appropriation of snowscapes. Silhouetted against a matte sky, the large mountain at the heart of the image resembles the cut-out of a movie set, flattening the adventurous potential of what lies beyond. The text applied with a stencil in Ruscha’s emblematic font is, as the artist explains, “one of my own inventions, which I call ‘Boy Scout Utility Modern.’ If the telephone company was having a picnic and asked one of their employees to design a poster, this font is what he’d come up with. There are no curves to the letters – they’re all straight lines – and I’ve been using it for years”.’

 

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Matthieu Gafsou Only God Can Judge Me (2015)
‘Matthieu Gafsou spent more than a year immersed in the lives of drug addicts. His photographs reveal the night, the moral abandon, and an altered reality.’

 

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Berndnaut Smilde Nimbus (2012)
‘Berndnaut Smilde creates fluffy clouds in locations where nature never would place them. The Dutch artist’s sculptures last five seconds—10 seconds tops—before they disappear.’

 

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R. Crumb The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis (2010)
‘It seems nearly impossible to really look at each and every single one of the 207 drawings in the current exhibition: The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s book of Genesis, at David Zwirner, unless you have forty days and forty nights (or at least a few) to spend with it. The herculean feat of Crumb’s illustrating page for page, cell by cell, the entire Book of Genesis of the Old Testament of The King James Bible, cannot really be understood without looking at every cell of every page. The epic narrative unfolds beautifully in Crumb’s epic rendering of it. There are so many grand stories and lasting allegories in the text (Creation, The Fall, The Flood, The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah) and a seemingly equal amount of tedious detail, particularly with the lineage from Adam through Noah to Abraham and on. God is, as they say, in the details, and Crumb ignores none.’

 

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Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung Make It Rain (2015)
‘Think about five fingers. You have one finger, it doesn’t do anything; five fingers, it’s a fist and you can punch something.’

 

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Tiona Nekkia McClodden Holy Land 16mm Film Test (2020)
‘Back in May I took a trip with my lady to this very strange run down amusement park ‘Holy Land’ in Waterbury, CT. It’s a Christian amusement park that has fallen into immense disrepair. I have been testing 16mm film stocks for an upcoming project and took my camera to film the park. When the film was developed and scanned it came back looking scary as all hell. I’ll never go back to that place again to say the least.’

 

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Hikari Shimoda Whereabouts of God (2019)
‘In her portrait series “Whereabouts of God”, featuring other-worldly children adorned with a Chernobyl necklace, children act as a blank canvas for what she describes as countless possibilities; where fantasy meets with reality, past meets future, life meets death, and a world that is yet to be reborn.’

 

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Unknown Untitled (?)

 

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Adam Chodzko The God Look-Alike Contest (1991-1992)
‘In response to advertisements placed by Adam Chodzko in Loot, a classified advertisements newspaper, which requested “..artist seeks people who think that they look like God…” over the course of a year (between early 1991 and 1992) images were offered to Chodzko by members of the public, who, after discussion with the participants, accepted everything submitted and terminated the project once twelve images had been received. The thirteenth ‘portrait’ (a self-portrait) is the advertisement itself.’

 

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Margaret Wall of Man (2009)
‘Here is my shrine that I made my freshman year at an all-girls boarding school. I called it my Wall of Man. I thought I was being deprived of my right to boys by my parents. I’m now a senior and more focused on my interests like photography, acting, literature, and (most important) David Bowie. What can I say?’

 

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Margaret Ernsberger When God Blinks (2013)
‘Margaret Ernsberger was bitten by the writing bug when she was in junior high school. She and her sister rented a second typewriter for a month to try their hand at it. Later their parents gave each one of them their own typewriter. Margaret got a second-hand Underwood, which she still has to this day, and which still still works!’

 

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Mike Kelley God (1984) & They See God (Stained Glass Mattress) (1990)
They See God (Stained Glass Mattress), expresses a manifestation of sexual desire veiled with an idealized representation of Catholicism; the stained glass window. The mattress is an obvious symbol of the corporeal act of sex but Mike Kelley cloaks it in panes of colorful fabric, recalling sacred stained glass windows but subverting this idea with a secular joyful color matrix. In this way Kelley subverts the Church’s doctrine of sex only for procreation and the repression of sex for pleasure by the use of its own symbol.’

 

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Adam Fuss The Space Between Garden and Eve (2011)
‘A daguerreotype is a photo depicted on a polished silver plate prepared with a saline solution. The results are mirror images with a holographic effect that play with our perceptions. The daguerreotypes show a mattress, either empty or covered with slithering snakes or a naked woman. The bed symbolises key moments in life (birth, copulation, death). The photos simultaneously seem to refer to the Biblical myth.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!! He’s great. His novel ‘Autoportrait’ might be the best book of his, push come to shove, but they’re all fantastic. Getting to the juicy part is what it’s all about right now. Ha ha, love is getting so down to earth! Love would be the coolest, sweetest, cutest guy in the world if he wasn’t wearing bright orange bellbottom pants, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I think there was something missing from your second comment? ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, cool, I adore ‘What’s for Dinner?’ as you probably know. Schuyler’s also one of the greatest poets ever. That TC group is ridiculous to the point of seeming kind of scary like a mild mannered but rather odd serial killer. Very ultra-best of luck to your mom and you this afternoon. May you get reliable answers. ** T, Hi, T. Yeah, he’s a fantastic writer. I knew him a little bit. We share the same French publisher. He was a quite intense guy, but no one imagined he would kill himself. Huge shock. Not to mention doing it right after turning in the novel I spotlit. You could try his other novel ‘Autoportrait’ which is less disturbing and possibly even greater. Ah, so the music you’re making with your computer/tech is exactly the kind of music/sound I listen to constantly and love the most. So count me as even more intrigued to hear some someday when you’re ready to put it out here. Super happy to have helped trigger a work spurt. Keep it going. Mm, greatness did not even come close to my vicinity yesterday, but it was a … doable day, I guess I’ll say. Got some stuff done that needed to be done. I hope your next twenty-four are like an exciting countdown to … ? ** _Black_Acrylic, I just keep loving that ‘big cyberpunk boot’. Work it, man. All fingers crossed towards the late week discharge. ** wolf, Hey! Its great, right? I thought so too. Johnson is quite an interesting composer in general, even when his fingers are working it live. I don’t think I ever respond to the second person as being about me. So I guess I’m like you. But you know I read for style and technique, so when I see that ‘you’ I just immediately go, Ah, this writer is going for it and hoping I’ll go for it. Ha ha ha, Corvid-19! That’s a bit of genius right there. Big up, big! ** Shane Christmass, Cool, me too, duh. I’m well, or I seem to be. You too, I hope, I trust. ** John Newton, Hi. I’ve been meaning to watch ‘The Square’ for ages but still haven’t gotten around to it. I’ll prioritise it. I love Ray Johnson. I’m sure you’ve seen that amazing documentary about him, ‘How to Draw a Bunny’. Suicide is very, very difficult. I’ve lost a number of good friends to it, and of course George. His suicide still devastates me more than thirty years later. Thank you for the kind words. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Wow, you hadn’t seen a friend in four months? That’s tough. I did hear about your theaters reopening. Still no restart date for ours. Makes sense that the reopening would feel very daunting. Fear is ugly. I guess just try to be as pragmatic and logical about what’s actually dangerous and what’s a mental block as you can? I find Jon Rafman’s stuff cool and charming and fun a certain amount of the time. I don’t really have developed thoughts about it. It’s sort of one of those ‘what’s not to like’ things for me, I guess. ** Brian O’Connell, Que le soleil brille sur toi, Brian. No, the kind of groundwork right now is not unexciting, but, like I probably said, it’s like a laborious flirtation albeit with an all but guaranteed payoff. So, it’s that kind of exciting. The good thing about assuming your day will be a stressful nothing is that the relief when it isn’t at certain moments could be amazing? Mine … not expecting much, so if there are bonanzas in store, it won’t be hard to notice them. Happy one! ** Okay. God would like have some words and images with you today. See you afterwards aka tomorrow.

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