David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


29 August 2009

MC Hammer

.
The Doors took their name from the title of a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954). That title was in turn taken from a line in a poem entitled "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by the 18th-century artist and poet William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite". (Wikipedia)



Track 1 and the first single from The Doors' eponymous first album was Break On Through (To The Other Side)

Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through
Break on through
Break on through
Break on through
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah


detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

27 August 2009

Held in high regard

.
Edward Kennedy, "the liberal lion", dead at 77.
(Washington Post editorial here.)


detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

24 August 2009

Theatre of the Actors of Looking : Shirin

.

Again a follow-on from the theme of the previous blog, with an emphasis not so much on the given as on the activity of regard. Today the recent film by Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin : our regard of the faces of 113 women as (if) they watch a certain film.

bL
has not yet seen Shirin - it was shown this year at the Sydney Film Festival but not at the Melbourne Film Festival - but has been reading about it. Here are some online articles:



Shirin
as Described by Kiarostami
by Khatereh Khodaei

It may be an odd experience to sit in a dark movie theater, stare at the screen and see fellow audience members watching a motion picture. Personally, I believe the experience of watching a movie in which the sound of the story that we hear is different from the pictures that we watch can be more interesting.

Shirin is the latest feature film by Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami. It features simple close-ups of the faces of 113 actresses who are watching a movie.

After watching the film and talking with Mr. Kiarostami, I found out that the women, whose faces appeared in perpendicular frames in the film were not actually watching a movie at all; a few fixed spots had been installed above the camera and they were acting with Kiarostami’s special improvisational technique.

What makes the experience doubly interesting is to learn that the story was decided on after shooting was over. It is the love story of Khosro, Shirin, and Farhad, a masterpiece by the great Iranian poet Nezami Ganjavi. The work features effective editing and an attention to details which, as always, render Kiarostami’s movies simple, different and absorbing.

Abbas Kiarostami characteristically attaches a special significance to audiences. In his latest production, Shirin, he goes as far as explicitly suggesting that the silver screen would be non-existent in the absence of audiences.

Shirin” is the story of the empathy of audiences—the audiences who are watching the empathy of the other audiences.

( click here for full article )



Kiarostami's 'Shirin': watching a movie about watching a movie

by Jeff Strabone


While the world waits for the second Iranian Revolution, it's important to recall that Iran is not just a place of political turmoil, nuclear ambitions, and theocratic dictatorship. It is also a place of great poetry and cinema, as the work of Abbas Kiarostami reminds us. How timely then that he has a new film out called Shirin that adapts—sort of—a twelfth-century romance and offers the world a stunning new achievement: a feature-length film whose narrative is made up entirely of reaction shots.

( click here for full article )



A Conversation with Kiarostami

by Arsalan Mohammad in Tehran
(A.K.): I just read an article today about Shirin – a critic who said, ‘I don’t understand what he wants to say, really, it’s complicated, I don’t even like it, but what I know for sure is that he is saying something. Let’s give him time, to see actually what he is saying – give us time, then we’ll understand what he is saying. I am sure he is saying something, he has something to say.’

( click here for full article )

P.S. 26 August 2009: By a happy coincidence, news just in that "Shirin" will receive a Melbourne screening this Thursday afternoon :
Presented as part of the Film and Television Studies UNDER CONSTRUCTION seminar & screening series – selected, introduced and especially subtitled by AndrĂ© Dias. Refreshments and discussion will follow the screening.

4-6pm, AUGUST 27 2009, ROOM S704, MENZIES BUILDING 7TH FLOOR,
MONASH UNIVERSITY - CLAYTON CAMPUS. FREE ADMISSION. ALL WELCOME! BRING A FRIEND.


detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

20 August 2009

It's other name is "Double Taker"

.
Following on from yesterday's "Double Feature", this morning Petrus referred me to the 15 minute online presentation Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you. ( click here )

In it artist engineer Golan Levin ( website here ) succinctly demonstrates half-a-dozen playful works of his devising that use and reflect upon the performance activities of the beholder. Here are a couple of glimpses, the first is from Eye Code.



In another, Jaap Blonk performs Kurt Schwitters Ursonate with reactive real-time typography sub-titles mixed into the visual record.



"The idea behind this last project (Snout) is to make a robot that appears as if it's continually surprised to see you. It's other name is "Double Taker", taker of doubles. It's always kind of doing a double take."


detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

19 August 2009

"Double Feature"

.
Adrian Tomine titles his cover image for the latest New Yorker "Double Feature". ( here )

Adrian Tomine-24 Aug 2009_NewYorker
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA
It could be seen as a communal celebration of The New Yorker's own enigmatic house character, Eustace Tilley. He is usually depicted looking through his monocle at a butterfly.

New Yorker logo_400
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA
Our resident inspector Baby BlockOS/HA HA takes it one step less.


detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

16 August 2009

����� P/L

.
This poster scene of playful synæsthesia is by Uncle Charlie.

Int Noise Conspiracy_by UNCLE CHARLIE_sRGB_266x534
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

The Re-emergency

.
Hello again to regular readers. After a week confined to Sniffletown, your correspondent re-emerges in the role of cubo-muso Philip Lemarchand.

2009.08.16_Philip Lemarchand regards_400w
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

09 August 2009

Lulo Lo Lo Ks @

.
View Mix

Lul0 lo lo ks at a guitar.

We look at Lulo side-on; Lulo looks at the guitar side-on.

The guitar looks at us front-on; we look at the guitar front-on.

2009.08.08_Lulu R poster_400w
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

07 August 2009

ANALOGUE SHIFT

.
Just opened to a flying start at Charles Nodrum Gallery is Justin Andrew's ANALOGUE SHIFT.

JA01_400w
Low Trance Assembly 4
2009

Acrylic on canvas



phot0 : A. Stuparich
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

06 August 2009

Reg♭ ♭ ard ♭ : Everybody talks about the

Tonight at the Corner Hotel...

EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT THE WEATHER is a one-off showcase featuring four titans of the Melbourne exploratory music/avant-rock scene in a blistering, bone-shaking display from the far corners of the sonic spectrum. Oren Ambarchi (guitar/electronics), Robin Fox (laser/electronics), Marco Fusinato (guitar/electronics) & Anthony Pateras (electronics) all perform rare solo sets in a memorable night for anyone sick of talking about the weather and wanting to talk devastating sound devoid of any bullshit trend or flash in the pan cyberhype…


The violinist Isaiah looks at a Stradivarius
stolen from a concert at the Mariinsky Theater
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

05 August 2009

Who else is with me?

.
Yesterday, the regard of proximate consciousness. In that dream, the mighty being came so close at one moment I drew back in trepidation.

This morning, looking at Andre Dias' cinema blog We have yet to start thinking, I saw again a familiar and similar image to that of my dream; but here the exchange is actually in the water/
consciousness and it is not going well. Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) :


detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA





"On November 26, 1965, Beuys put the hare into the leading role in an Action. The title: How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. The place: Galerie Alfred Schmela, in Dusseldorf, a gallery that had commited itself early and strongly to Beuys and had done a great deal to promote his reputation. Beuys sat on a chair in one corner of the gallery, next to the entrance. He had poured honey over his head, to which he had then affixed fifty dollars worth of gold leaf. In his arms he cradled a dead hare, which he looked at steadfastly. Then he stood up, walked around the room holding the dead hare in his arms, and held it up close to the pictures on the walls; he seemed to be talking to it. Sometimes he broke off his tour and, still holding the dead creature, stepped over a withered fir tree that lay in the middle of the gallery. All this was done with indescribable tenderness and great concentration."

Heiner Stachelhaus, Joseph Beuys, Abbeville Press, New York, 1987, (Translated by David Britt) p.135
Several days ago another such image, one of a more equal regard, arrived in the mail: this poster, FACE TO FACE (2004), by Lindsey Kuhn of (as chance would have it) Swamp posters.

2004_Lindsey Kuhn_FACE TO FACE-400w
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

04 August 2009

Dangerous Animal

.
I read yesterday that humans kill 100 million sharks per year. (Stop Shark Finning)

bL spent a week at Varanasi in 1998. Arrived after dark, found a room not far from the Ganges. Next morning first thing took a ride in a low row boat. Solicited to do so, placed a lighted candle on that holy water and watched it drift in the great river spirit of India as pink dolphins gently rose and rolled, in and out and all around. Did not sight these beings again but have never forgotten that welcome.

After last night's dream of watching and wondering from a low grassy bank as a .../dolphin/porpose/shark/whale/... its dorsal fin cutting the air as it circled so near in the crystal clear water... this poster from Spike Press.

SHESUS_boy looks at fish in bowl_SPIKE PRESS

01 August 2009

Greetings comrades, the image has now changed its status* [again]

.
Greetings comrades, the image has now changed its status* : great topic and title, thought bLOGOS/HA HA. Especially the phrasing that has "the image" to be self-governing, the rest the mere town crier reportage of a passing ideoLOGOS/ HA HA. Imagine that: self-creator Image. Or rather, "That, imagine you!". If these graffiti covered walls could speak they would surely text bubble :) {Created in the image of G-d"]

And so it goes, and so it goes: projection-space Other spinning through mutable dualistic imaginary space-time :

Tommaso Siciliano
The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism
1585

Pavel Poluyanov
Downfall of the Theater and Triumph of the Cinema
1925
cover by N. Il'in


A. Latsis and L. Keilina
Cinema and Children
1928
cover by Varvara Stepanova

Stepanova_1928_Cinema and Children_#1_400w

A. Latsis and L. Keilina
Cinema and Children
1928
cover by Varvara Stepanova

Varvara Stepanova_Cildren and Cinema cove-400r