Top, Chris Johanson, Sun Sun Sun, 2011, Acrylic and latex on paper,14 x 16 1/4 inches. Via. Bottom, photograph by Daniel Seung Lee, Vasquez Rocks, 2012. Via.
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Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley. Via.
Found re-shots of Larry Clark, Pregnant Woman Shooting Up, 1971. Printed 1979 Original silver gelatin print, 12 5/8 x 8 3/8 inches.
One of the most haunting photographs of his I saw today at C/O Berlin. Like a degenerated Vermeer, if the man would have had a camera. The exhibition is on view until August 12th.
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I wasn’t in love with her. And she didn’t love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.
Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun, 1992. Via.
![Top, photograph via AFP/Getty, An employee holds a photograph entitled ‘Bee’ by US photographer Irving Penn taken in 1995, which is expected to reach £15,000-20,000 in auction at Christie’s in London, 2010. Via. See also, Irving Penn, Bee. Bottom, uncredited snap of the cover of Interview Magazine, Issue 2 with Lana Del Rey, photographed by Sean and Seng, 2012. Via. See also, Lynch x S&S.
See also, The Beauty Investigator.
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The greatness of Warhol’s work was that he offered an astute response to contemporary culture at the same time that he forever changed its future course. His fetishization of fame and celebrity called out something that was already in the zeitgeist, and made it his bitch. In [Alex] Israel’s funny, harmless videos, you kind of get the feeling that the artist is the bitch; he’s made these awkward little Valentines to celebrity but their biggest draw is still, well, the celebrities.
Carol Cheh, James Franco and Alex Israel: Why Their Obsession With Celebrity Doesn’t Pay Off, for The LA Weekly, May 2012.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4hq329Us81qzo0d3o1_1280.jpg)
Top, photograph via AFP/Getty, An employee holds a photograph entitled ‘Bee’ by US photographer Irving Penn taken in 1995, which is expected to reach £15,000-20,000 in auction at Christie’s in London, 2010. Via. See also, Irving Penn, Bee. Bottom, uncredited snap of the cover of Interview Magazine, Issue 2 with Lana Del Rey, photographed by Sean and Seng, 2012. Via. See also, Lynch x S&S.
See also, The Beauty Investigator.
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The greatness of Warhol’s work was that he offered an astute response to contemporary culture at the same time that he forever changed its future course. His fetishization of fame and celebrity called out something that was already in the zeitgeist, and made it his bitch. In [Alex] Israel’s funny, harmless videos, you kind of get the feeling that the artist is the bitch; he’s made these awkward little Valentines to celebrity but their biggest draw is still, well, the celebrities.
Carol Cheh, James Franco and Alex Israel: Why Their Obsession With Celebrity Doesn’t Pay Off, for The LA Weekly, May 2012.
Left, photograph by Mustafa Sabbagh. Via. And more via his Tumblr. Right, photograph by Nobuyoshi Araki. Via.
More TV screens.
See also, Mustafa Sabbagh x Leonora Carrington.
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Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’en finirai pas de soulever tous ces visages.
Claude Cahun. Via.
Left, photograph by Brea Souders, Mille-Fleurs, from the series Counterforms. Via. Bottom, photograph by Nico Krijno, Honey, 2012. Via.
Left, photograph by Kodachrome, by published by Punto e Virgola, 1978. Via. More spreads here.
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In Arab popular traditions, there’s a belief that if a manuscript were to be submerged in water and its ink were to dissolve, drinking the water would transform the knowledge contained in that manuscript into the body of the drinker and become part of the body’s system.
Anton Shammas, The Drowned Library. Via.
Top, photograph by Carrie Schneider, Burning House (October, afternoon), from the series Burning House, 2011, C-print, 40 x 50 inches. Via. Over the course of 2 years, Schneider built 15 small houses, burning them on an island in a Wisconsin lake in different seasons and at different times of day. Bottom, screen capture from Passion, 1982, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Via.
See also, Andrei Tarkovsky, The Sacrifice, 1986 x Rei Nadal for SHOWstudio.
I woke up from a dream where I was driving through houses on fire, here in Berlin. See also, Ghosts (After the Fire 1), and Ghosts (After the Fire 2).
Top, screen capture from Vertigo, 1958, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Bottom, screen capture from Belle de Jour, 1967, directed by Luis Buñuel. Via.
Kim Novak VS Catherine Deneuve.
Top, screen capture from the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, 2007. Via. Bottom, photograph by Elena Filatova, from the series Ghost Town and Land of the Wolves, 2003-2005. Via.
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The roads are blocked for cars, but not for motorcycles. Good girls go to heaven. Bad ones go to hell. And girls on fast bikes go anywhere they want. (…)
If I was to keep walking all the way to the reactor, I would glow in the dark tonight. Maybe this is why they call it magic wood. It is sort of magical when one walks in with biker’s leather and walks out like a knight in a shining armor. (…)
It is hard to find a partner for a night rides. Every time, I bring someone here, they ask why we crushing frogs in Chernie and not drinking beer in some cafe .. I was telling them that smoking two packs of cigarets in cafe can be more harmful for health then riding to Vilcha, they wanted to get hell out of here in any way. People think, this land is cursed.
Elena Filatova, excerpts from Ghost Town and Land of the Wolves, 2003-2005. More.
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The Zone in the video games is a beautifully dangerous place, bigger and grimmer than Tarkovsky’s, but somehow still appropriate. There are plenty of long, tense walks through damp weather or empty, creaking tunnels. Packs of dogs wander the landscape, ruined farmhouses give shelter from the rain; here and there the ground ripples strangely. Stalkers gather around campfires, bandits take potshots at passersby, and a man lies wounded in a ditch, begging for help. Watching Stalker, one is occasionally brought up short by remembering that it was not filmed in Chernobyl, so perfect an analogue does that event seem for the film’s images of technology and nature, beauty and danger in strange alliance.
Gabriel Winslow-Yost, In the Zone of Alienation: Tarkovsky as Video Game, for The New York Review of Books, May 2012. More. Via.
Top, photograph by Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi, from the series LA Look, Los Angeles River, Glendale, CA, US, March 2010. Via. More. Bottom, photograph by Dennis Hopper, Ferus Gallery Owner Irving Blum and Model Peggy Moffitt, Los Angeles, 1964. Via.
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SECONDS: Do you drive too fast for comfort?
BALLARD: Not at my age. Nor do I have sex in cars anymore, sadly. I think you drive about one mile an hour slower for each year you age. You peak in your twenties as far as sex and cars is concerned and then you taper off. I’m an observer now.
J.G. Ballard interviewed by George Petros for Seconds Magazine, 1996. Via. More.
Found photographs, Stasi operative taking a picture of a CIA operative taking a picture of him, circa 1960, courtesy The Secret STASI Archive, and compiled by Simon Menner. Via.
Some members of the Allied Forces in Germany were allowed to move pretty much freely throughout most parts of Germany - including the GDR. These military missions and other members of NATO nations inside the GDR were always hunted by the Stasi.
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Cell phones are tracking devices that make phone calls. … Facebook is like the Stasi, but crowdsourced. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Jacob Appelbaum interviewed by Sarah Resnick for Triple Canopy. Via. More.
Top, Wilhelm Sasnal, Kraków–Warszawa, 2006, oil on canvas, 55 x 70 cm. Via. More. Bottom, photograph by Marlies Plank, from the series Independent singles. Via.
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I think artists, painters, have various issues with memory. To be able to hang onto a perceptual instant and be able to reproduce it is astounding, and a probably rare condition. While you often work from direct observation, you’re developing your memory so you are not only using direct observations, but using perceptual and conceptual attitudes about what painting is. Representation must include memory as well as perceptual nuances. This back-and-forth is what enriches painting and makes it a kind of small miracle of adjusted responses.
Wayne Thiebaud interviewed by Rick Slater, for The Believer, April 2012. Via.
Top, photograph via NASA/JPL-Caltech, Martian Sunset, May 19, 2005 - around 6:07 in the evening of the Rover’s 489th Martian day. Via. More. Bottom, screen capture from Syntagma, by Valie Export, 1984, 16 mm film. Via.
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Surtout, ne pas laisser penser aux jeunes filles qu’elles pourraient avoir un jour l’outrecuidance de réaliser des films et de gravir les marches du Palais autrement qu’au bras d’un prince charmant.
Fanny Cottençon, Virginie Despentes and Coline Serreau, À Cannes, les femmes montrent leurs bobines, les hommes leurs films, open letter to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. More.
