LOOK: "Albino Mayan," from Glimpses by fucoid

Albino Mayan, Solola, Guatemala 11.16.11 (from Glimpses) by fucoid

LOOK: Bus Terminal from Glimpses by fucoid

LOOK: Bottle Collector from post-Soviet identity project, by fucoid
LOOK: Stockman Sales Clerk from Finnish portrait series, by fucoid

WATCH: Fat mexican rambo sing and dance (badly)

Diego Alione: A Rambo No Le Gusta La Guerra

I like this, sans irony. It's the little things that make living in strange places worth it, example: pop mutations. Ephemeral amalgamations of junk culture speak fascinating langauges. Want to say more, but 1) Pico Iyer exploded that niche decades ago, with some really great books and 2) just watching is almost enough to intuit what I want to write but do not feel like doing right now because I am actually pretty hungry and also need to do quasi-real work and then run to the...¹

1. Lest I generalize the audience, Rambo is a transnational/transgender/transgeneracional brand. So is Mexico.

WATCH: Freakish Soviet horror film, Viy (1967)

WATCH: Soviet animation, Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) by YuriyNorshteyn

WATCH: Surrealist stop motion, Street of Crocodiles (1986) by the Brothers Quay

TRACES #1: Urban campsite, Lviv, Ukraine Spring 2009

Urban campsite, Lviv, Ukraine (spring, 2009: CLICK)

...shot between two decaying apartment buildings, when the snow had first melt and migrant workers from the East were beginning their move into urban construction areas.

FOUND PHOTO: @7 Gogolya St. Lviv, Ukraine
LOOK: Shpytalna Street from Lvivsky Streets, by fucoid
LOOK: Baba 1 from Lvivsky Streets, by fucoid

IMAGE TAPING #4: Old tales

Wherein I add text from random bits of media that I am currently consuming to images that I am working on:

"...an old told tale... another version... a little girl went out to play... lost in the market place... as if half born... then, not through the market place, but through the alley, behind the market place... this is the way to the past. But it isn't something you remember. Forgetfulness..."

---------
IMAGE: Industrial alleyway, by fucoid
TEXT: from Inland Empire, by David Lynch

IMAGE TAPING #1: Soft machinery
IMAGE TAPING #2: Plastic revolution
LOOK: Shpytalna Street by fucoid, from Lvivski Streets

LOOK: "Bus Terminal," from Glimpses by fucoid

Bus Terminal, Antigua, Guatemala, 6.7.11 (from Glimpses) by fucoid

LOOK: Bottle Collector from post-Soviet identity project, by fucoid
LOOK: Stockman Sales Clerk from Finnish portrait series, by fucoid
LOOK: Suburban Princess (2005) by fucoid

URBAN EXPLORATION #3: Lvivsky street kids

It has been ages since I last posted here. Decided to start back again, so without further ado...

Was sifting through some remnants from my time in Ukraine and ran across these, shot from the hip in a dilapidated playground, city center on a weekday afternoon:





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The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.'

-Susan Sontag, on how the camera has become the tool of the flâneur

FOUND PHOTO: @7 Gogolya St. Lviv, Ukraine

LOOK: Shpytalna Street from Lvivsky Streets, by fucoid
LOOK: Baba 1 from Lvivsky Streets, by fucoid

Back from the Dead?

Not Yet. from Svirgh Festival, Ukraine, August 1st 2009

LISTEN: What should have been, c. 1997 (Arabic version)

To my lost friend Hicham, from Casablanca: Why did you not have this dude in your beat down tape collection? Those late night journeys in Tampa would have been that much crazier:

I miss you, you bastard. 

You Must Hear This: Bjork Picks Omar Souleyman

SUNDAY MIX #1: Gary Numan

SUNDAY MIX #2: Lo fi eruption(s)

SUNDAY MIX #3: Indie optimism

WATCH: Katy Perry + Ukrainian polka

Sublime hilarity. Los Colorados dishes, Hot N Cold :

LISTEN: Sunday mix #3, Indie optimism
LISTEN: Sunday mix #6, Lvivski tsymbaly busker
LISTEN: Sunday mix #5, Gypsy invasion

LOOK: Tripped out folk icon, from Kiev

The Blessed Virgin of Pechersk, mid. 19th century

I added this one to the collection today. It is from a Kiev school of folk painters; they used funky curve-linear lines, explosive colors and floral patterns vs. the stolid aesthetics of traditional Orthodox iconography.

...currently researching patterns of fungi ingestion in the region.

LOOK: Naïve artist, Nikolai Nedbailo from Moscow

LOOK: Lvivski cult graphic artist, Bohdan Soroka

LOOK: Naïve artist, Ivan Skolozdra from Lviv

A Hütz homecoming, Gogol Bordello in Lviv

I am into Eugene Hutz and his music. His life story is the stuff of movies. From the Chernobyl evacuation and gypsy wanderings to his performances at Tate Modern, Whitney and the Venice Biennial. What shitty, marginalized band doesn't look up to him? And the music... so rich. 

Last week, Gogol Bordello was in Lviv... Hutz tossed frisbees, broke a few mic stands and spoke Ukrainian to his fans from the homeland. The sets were inspired and it was a great show. From various U-tubers:

Start Wearing Purple, everyone bounces @ 1:51


The beautiful insanity 

Tribal Connection w/extended dub break at 2:10

LISTEN: Sunday mix #5, Gypsy punk invasion

LISTEN: Sunday mix #6, Lvivsky tsymbaly busker

LISTEN: Gypsy Punk 101

LOOK: Warhola returns

...via nationalistic graffiti (Taras Schevchenko, Ukraine's national poet). At Dziga Contemporary Arts Centre, Lviv.

WATCH: Pop legend goes back to the village in Absolute Warhola

LOOK: From Lvivski Streets, by fucoid
LOOK: Abandonded Lvivski palace

SOVIET KITSCH #8: Gymnastics (1953)

Gymnastics (1953) postcard, from street vendor

SOVIET KITSCH #5, The Poem Mountain Vietnam (1972)
SOVIET KITSCH #4, Gardinia (1966)
SOVIET KITSCH #2 Umka (1975)

WATCH: Arthropoda animation, "The Cameraman's Revenge" (1912) by Wladyslaw Starewicz

Killing bugs for the screen

Another regional cinematic obscurity, Russian-born Wladyslaw Starewicz: etymologist-filmmaker and stop motion pioneer.

Yes, bug vs. camera... something had to give for this guy. And his method of animation was pragmatic genius. Stymied by an inability to control his shelled subjects, eureka was found in the form of stop-motioned dead. He in fact removed the limbs of grasshoppers, beetles, dragonflies and the like and then supplemented them with wax prosthetics, which were manipulated between takes. The results were singular, effective and influential (if not more than a little creepy). 

"The Cameraman's Revenge" (1912, 13 minutes) is his first short with a narrative. And it is as cynical as you would expect when having dead bugs as the players: 

"It is about infidelity among the insects, a topic which dare I say has never before or after been attempted on film.

It opens with Mr. Beetle going to town "on business," to stop at "The Gay Dragonfly," a burlesque parlor.

He meets a dancer who he takes to a hotel room... the grasshopper at left wanted her too, though, and he is mad at the beetle's rudeness... he's also got a movie camera!"

-from UbuWeb

There is a shrewd plot twist that I won't reveal:

WATCH: Freakish Soviet horror film, Viy (1967)

WATCH: Soviet animation, Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) by Yuriy Norshteyn

WATCH: Surrealist stop motion, Street of Crocodiles (1986) by the Brothers Quay

WATCH: Giant white glove