Archangel Michael and Saint Barbara, Late 19th Century, from Central Ukraine
Here is a new one. Orthodox figures suited up in folk costumes. Mixing symbols and contexts, subverting tradition and heirarchies... Cossacks: Punk Rock for over 500 years.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Back from the Dead?
from Svirgh Festival, Ukraine, August 1st 2009
...after a season of unbridled debauchery, the blog will live.
Tuesday, July 21, 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:
Saturday, July 11, 2009
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.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
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
Sunday, July 5, 2009
LOOK: Warhola returns
...via nationalistic graffiti (Taras Schevchenko, Ukraine's national poet). At Dziga Contemporary Arts Centre, Lviv.Saturday, July 4, 2009
SOVIET KITSCH #8: Gymnastics (1953)
Gymnastics (1953) postcard, from street vendorSOVIET KITSCH #5, The Poem Mountain Vietnam (1972)
SOVIET KITSCH #4, Gardinia (1966)
SOVIET KITSCH #2 Umka (1975)
Friday, July 3, 2009
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!"
There is a shrewd plot twist that I won't reveal:
WATCH: Freakish Soviet horror film, Viy (1967)WATCH: Surrealist stop motion, Street of Crocodiles (1986) by the Brothers Quay
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Curating the Uncanny #2: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, old and new
Eddie Anderson (1990)
...from hustlers and prostitutes to pole-bound strippers and random wanderes, diCorcia still suspending and crystalizing fringe realities:
Brent Booth (1990-1992)
Ike Cole (1990-1992)
Hannah (2008)
Head #7 (2001)
Andrea (2008)
NEGLIGENT HERO #1: Paul McCarthy, clip from Painter (1995)
NEGLIGENT HERO #4: Tod Browning, wedding celebration from Freaks (1932)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Roots of Digital Technology and Revolution: Tweets, texts and internet in the former Eastern Bloc
The world's first 'Twitter Revolution,' Chisinau, April 2009.
Last night I was talking Iran with some Ukrainians who took part in their own Color Revolution, the 2004 Orange version. Between sips of a bitter local brew, they reminisced about realtime reporting and SMS strategies like they were old school- like, sooo... pre-Twitter.
Overblown as the role of digital technology in protest movements seems to be (vs. will, access, funding, education...), their histories must indeed be instructive for the current moment. And the strategies of this "first online revolution" have been explored in detail by Harvard Internet and Democracy guru Joshua Goldstein, here.
Overblown as the role of digital technology in protest movements seems to be (vs. will, access, funding, education...), their histories must indeed be instructive for the current moment. And the strategies of this "first online revolution" have been explored in detail by Harvard Internet and Democracy guru Joshua Goldstein, here.
Ukraine's elaborate 2004 election protests were among the first to be organized with the help of the internet (photo by Janice Papar).
Protester's now famous Tent City on Kiev's main avenue during the 2004 Orange Revolution (photo by Janice Papar).Meanwhile, five years and a few color revolutions later, Andrew from Romania at Web Upd8 mused, "If you asked me about the prospects of a Twitter driven revolution in a lo-tech country like Moldova a week ago, my answer would probably be a qualified 'no.' Today, however, I am no longer certain."
Twitter was incorporated into the Moldavian protest strategy months before Iran.That was on April 7th, months before the current Twitter-fueled situation in Iran began to unfold. Moldavian reformers had already added to the Ukrainian model. And the results were mixed. More on the role of Twitter, texts and blogs, etc. in Moldova's 2009 insurrection, here. And on strategies and potentials of digital activism in general, here.
The situation in Chisnau has yet to stabilize.Friday, June 19, 2009
WATCH: Pop legend goes back to the village in "Absolut Warhola"
Intimate portraits reduced to decisive line and shade... It was only natural, considering Warhol spent many a morning staring at the neighborhood iconostasis while growing up in a Slavic ghetto of Pittsburgh.
Byzantine icon: Image of Edessa or Holy Mandolion ("miraculous image made without hands")
"he traces the family roots of the American pop artist Andy Warhol back to two ethnic Ukrainian villages in Slovakia. There he finds Warhol’s eccentric relatives, all of whom treat the famous hometown boy with pride even though none of them has actually known him or understands his art. They know so little of him that when Warhol sends original art work to his relatives, they use the art as clothing for children’s toys. With gentle humanism, the film gravitates from the art of Warhol to the lives of his relatives – characters in their own right. We see the “artfulness” with which they come to grips with their everyday lives and the strange outside world. These villagers’ healthy attitude towards art, life and the encroaching modern world makes Absolute Warhol a buoyant documentary."
Byzantine icon: Image of Edessa or Holy Mandolion ("miraculous image made without hands")
Self Portrait (1986) by Andy Warhol (made with hands?)
This fascinating diffusion of cultures is captured in a documentary by Stanislaw Mucha, in which:
"he traces the family roots of the American pop artist Andy Warhol back to two ethnic Ukrainian villages in Slovakia. There he finds Warhol’s eccentric relatives, all of whom treat the famous hometown boy with pride even though none of them has actually known him or understands his art. They know so little of him that when Warhol sends original art work to his relatives, they use the art as clothing for children’s toys. With gentle humanism, the film gravitates from the art of Warhol to the lives of his relatives – characters in their own right. We see the “artfulness” with which they come to grips with their everyday lives and the strange outside world. These villagers’ healthy attitude towards art, life and the encroaching modern world makes Absolute Warhol a buoyant documentary."
The full film can be seen here (then follow the links):
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Curating the Uncanny #1: Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Ralph Eugene Meatyard, orchestrating the known unknown in midwestern backyards and broken buildings with the help of friends and family:
Romance 1962
Lucybelle Crater & her good, good Mertonian friend Lucybelle Crater 1970-72
Lucybelle Crater & her 15 yr old son's friend Lucybelle Crater 1970-72
Lucybelle Crater & Bi-Polar Friend, Lucybelle Crater 1970-72
from The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater 1970-72
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
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