bLOGOS/HA HA: October 2009

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.

31 October 2009

Blank Worship

bL enjoys the tape-made works of Melbourne artist BUFFdiss

There's plenty to be found online : Blank worship and lots more here ; the full photo of the image below plus an interview clip at UNEARTH here.

I was reminded of the image above when I received the image below, unattributed, in today's transmission from E of the O.

2009.10.31_Man in stairway looks at cube tape

The Laughing Cubist
-------------------------
Yesterday upon my stare
I saw a cube that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
No worries!

30 October 2009

Episode 12 : The Adventures of Inspector U

Sharp-eyed heapist malE ( here and here ) yesterday morning sent a collection of comic-culled projection-spaces, tagged as
Eleven Someone - Somethings.

Here's just one.

I thought to show and share a few more of them here, but by day's end our correspondent had himself taken the next step (.here.) and re-compos(t)ed the eleven into a new meta-view comic-style arrangement. Merci malE

29 October 2009

Model Viewers

Frank Lloyd Wright, Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim regard the 1945 model for the Guggenheim Museum. Wright died 6 months before the official inauguration, fifty years ago.

27 October 2009

Reporting Season

Smack Bang centre-stage on the Stocks page of today's The (Melbourne) AGE, this bottom line summation of your
avant-garde investments.

25 October 2009

Out, Damn'd Blot or What The Angel Saw

Jonathan Swift's 'The Lady’s Dressing Room' portrays two ways to regard the blotist.

The entire poem can be read here. These are its concluding lines:

Thus finishing his grand survey,
Disgusted Strephon stole away
Repeating in his amorous fits,
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!

But vengeance, Goddess never sleeping,
Soon punished Strephon for his peeping:
His foul Imagination links
Each dame he see with all her stinks;
And, if unsavory odors fly,
Conceives a lady standing by.
All women his description fits,
And both ideas jump like wits
By vicious fancy coupled fast,
And still appearing in contrast.

I pity wretched Strephon blind
To all the charms of female kind.
Should I the Queen of Love refuse
Because she rose from stinking ooze?
To him that looks behind the scene
Satira’s but some pocky queen.
When Celia in her glory shows,
If Strephon would but stop his nose
(Who now so impiously blasphemes
Her ointments, daubs, and paints and creams,
Her washes, slops, and every clout
With which he makes so foul a rout),
He soon would learn to think like me
And bless his ravished sight to see
Such order from confusion sprung,
Such gaudy tulips raised from dung.

In our time, another archaic sounding name, Quilton, appears on shopper shelves with angel view and a blotter worthy of our blot.

On the Quilton ("Loves your bum") website, on the guest book page, Sarah-jane updates the paean thus :

Posted by Sarah-jane on October 15th 2009
Thankyou to the Quilton Gods above for makeing such a perfect paper. As all us women know soft toilet paper is a girls best freind.

( click image to enlarge )

23 October 2009

bLOG of Blot

A dozen old blotters arrived in the mail today, bought online from Cardboard Heroes. Beaut name, Cardboard Heroes.

The front of the package, with requisite stamps stickers and customs declaration, inclines towards the Merz of Schwitters.

This is the back of the package. The Silver frame defines a projection-space for heroes. An Arte Povera crown, fit for a cardboard king.

2009.10.23_carboardheroes wrap_shadow_600h

Inside, old blotters. Un-numbered pages from the Book of Blot; mirrored shadows for the Peoples of the Book.

In the Beginning was the Word.
Then was the blot.

22 October 2009

Puppet Culture

A big thank you to those Carnivors of the Art Cult who so excitedly brought to the heap's attention this fresh cut Meat Puppets poster by Fred Hosman of Hosco Press.

2009.10_Meat Puppets_poster by Fred Hosman

21 October 2009

Smells Like Teen Spirit or Whatever

Still on projection-spaces and public posters: this is The Ballarat Courier's banner from last Friday. Displayed in the usual way, in a metal wire grid leaning against a window outside the Hepburn General Store.

2009.10.16_Courier poster_Teens Bored._400w

19 October 2009

oкнo сатиры : design for a projection-space

Once again in the spirit of the previous post, here is Konstantin Egorov's 1931 design for a public projection-space.

1931_Konstantin Egerov_design for 'Satire Window'_sRGB_400w

An emanation of The Supreme Goddess as Void, with projection- space for image, I imagine.

Ergemov was a Russian Soviet avant-garde painter and graphic artist; he lived in Saratov and Moscow. Here, inside the rectangular frame, he has inscribed oкнo сатиры (OKNO SATIRY is the English phonetic). It translates as Satire Window.

From wikipedia :

If I read it correctly, the design appears to be for a cut-out standing figure: an artist, with a pen in one hand and an open-palm gesture for the other, who creates and presents the latest Rosta poster.

Maybe this is also a portrait of Egorov, the artist whose pencil has drawn a pen that draws into being the [ projection-space for image ]. And is that a knowing wink of the eye as well?

Post Script :

On tonight's TV News former Australian Liberal Party leader Brendan Nelson, about to retire from Parliament, was shown standing beside a political poster of his own face. Very much in the mode of the Egorov design, in this photo from The Age he is holding with one hand a formal rectangular projection-space onto which he has painted two words. With his other hand he waves to passes-by. Plus ça change!

16 October 2009

Public Projection-Space Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even

In the same constructive spirit as the previous post, this by Sam3 via Vandalog.

15 October 2009

Cynthia and Cyril listen to Thomas and Gerald talking on the wireless.

When not listening to the Ubuweb stream, via WFMU, the team at bLOGOS/HA HA are most likely tuned to ABC Radio National.

Two RN programs greatly enjoyed here in recent days are Peter Mares' interview with writer Gerald Murnane on The Book Show ('Gerald Murnane and the Barley Patch' : here ) and Natasha Mitchell's interview with Thomas Metzinger ('You are not a self! Bodies, brains and the nature of consciousness' : here ) on All in the Mind. bL commends both programs to you, dear reader.

Peter Mares: No, but you want us as readers to be conscious...

Gerald Murnane: I don't want you to think that Cynthia and Cyril are real. I want you to be aware all the time that Cynthia and Cyril are fictional personages, and they're part of a trio; that the third person of the trinity is the personage behind the text, not necessarily the author but this ghostly shadow that you see as you read.

Natasha Mitchell: So it's not a little man or woman inside our heads...

Thomas Metzinger: ...that looks at pictures. But the experience of looking, of being directed to one's own feelings or to one's sensory perceptions of the outside world, this is itself an image. There is nobody looking at the image, it's like the camera is part of the picture or the viewing is itself a part of the process of viewing. This is how a first-person perspective emerges in our own case, the question is, okay, if it's not a thing, if it's not something in the brain, what kind of a process is it? And I think it's a process, as philosophers say, of representing, that is of making an image, and that process is not there all the time. You know you have a conscious self in dreams, you have one in your waking life. During anaesthesia or during dreamless sleep there is no such thing as this process of self-ing, if I may call it like that.

14 October 2009

A day for little things, no doubt

.
Decades ago I made some images to accompany a friend's suite of small poems that were to be published. As far as I know this did not eventuate, but I often have cause to recall the proposed title : A day for little things, no doubt, but who would dare despise it? (Zechariah 3:1-4:14)

This morning I had that feeling. First, over breakfast, delight at a selection of old advertising blotters and trade cards that arrived in the mail. Then the delivery of something larger by the parcels postman. As he handed it across he added what a good and friendly night it had been at Petrus's birthday party (see previous blog). This time we got to talking. His name is R. He does drawings too, always has, and still hopes 'to take it further someday'. He asked if I knew G, another of the local posties. I do. G had lent him a DVD about the sculptor Bernini. Extraordinary artist, Bernini, we agreed. The parcel was a copy of Melbourne's un Magazine sent by K. What topped the lot was the unnecessary, therefore special, extra layer of inside wrapping. Sheets of bright colour patched together for mere pleasure's sake.

13 October 2009

Petrus Spronk 70 Today

Today is the 7oth birthday of master confectionist Petrus Spronk.

Petrus Spronk-the apprentice confectioner

On Sunday evening at The Hepburn Palais his bounty of friends and family celebrated a life of constant art and boundless generosity.

One of the best known works of Melbourne street art is by Petrus Spronk : Architectural Fragment (1992). His model for it was initially displayed in the window of a shop in Hepburn Springs.

( photo by The Lab : click to enlarge )

Then there are those who know and appreciate his burnished Black Earth Studio bowls. In 2004 Petrus was commissioned to create a group of these from which one was selected as the official gift to the Dalai Lama after his teachings in Melbourne that year.

The bowl below, The endless horizon, the endless journey, was raffled at the Sunday night party and, typical of Petrus, the proceeds were donated to the Daylesford Dharma School.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETRUS

10 October 2009

2009 Swiss-Italian Festa Parade

Saturday morning. We open the door to a clear blue sky and the sound of a brass band rehearsing. It's the Victorian Youth Brass Band, with players from all over the State - "We're from Echuca", a proud mother of two trumpeters tells me - and they're playing that great simple 6os hit by The Turtles, Happy Together.
For a moment, all seems perfect.

Recently I've been listening again to Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. The Mothers of Invention line-up for that features 'Flo and Eddie' who had earlier formed The Turtles.

Anyway, so begins the annual Swiss-Italian Festa Parade along the main street of Hepburn Springs.

Led by the local brass band (above, with the famous Macaroni Factory in the background); then the district's primary schools' children and parents; Swiss with cow bells and long horns; Italians with flowers and flags; and the many locals who also join the grand parade down to the Springs. Every year, at some point on this walk, I feel my heart leap .

09 October 2009

Lyrics and Type

bLOGOS/HA HA follows online (and occasionally adds to the home heap from) the daily deluge of gig posters. Below is my 2009 favorite. It's by Melbourne graphic designer/illustrator/artist Timba Smits : see more at THE FAD EXPERIMENT

( click image to enlarge )

Lyrics and Type opens in Melbourne tonight at Gorker Gallery (corner of Gore & Kerr Streets, Fitzroy) until Sunday 17 October

08 October 2009

someone looking at something . . .

someone looking at something... is a West Space project curated by Kelly Fliedner. It closes on Saturday.

( click image to enlarge )

someone looking at something...
by Ross Coulter and Meredith Turnbull
Two Half Faces
single channel looped DVD

someone looking at something...
by Patrick Pound :
Egglestone Near Minter City and Glenora, Mississippi
mobile phone photographs

( click image to enlarge )

someone looking at something...
by yours truly

07 October 2009

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS

05 October 2009

"So that each person is in charge of himself."

John Cage/Wim Mertens "So that each person is in charge of himself." (1982) as heard today on UbuStream.

click on image below to listen

04 October 2009

UbuStream : par ordre d'apparition

UbuWeb and WFMU have combined to present a new 24 hour internet radio stream of material from the Ubuweb archive : go to WFMU then click on UbuStream at the left side column.