Check out the Irving Penn archives. [via The Art Institute of Chicago]
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The Beach Boys in Singapore
The Beach Boys will be playing at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on 22 August. Get your tickets from SISTIC. [via SISTIC]
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Carlos Fuentes dies.
Filed under Literature
New Release Day
Today sees the release of (among other albums) Beach House’s Bloom, Squarepusher’s Ufabulum, and Best Coast’s The Only Place. Here are three tracks to celebrate the day:
["The Only Place" by Best Coast]
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New Animal Collective album.
The new Animal Collective album is called Centipede Hz and will be out in September. [via Pitchfork]
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Edition Additions: Gender Bias
Arriving this past week (and probably the last few books that will arrive for a while) are some “old” books (in the sense that I’ve read them before) and one new one.
Here they are:
Nox by Anne Carson
Antigonick by Anne Carson with art by Bianca Stone
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda.
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Filed under Edition Additions, Literature
Rojak: Stalkers.
Rojak is a regular collection of assorted links as well as a bulletin summarising the week (or thereabouts) on this blog.
Assorted
The video for “This” by Modeselektor and Thom Yorke is here. [via Vimeo]
New Directions blog on poet 西川. [via Now That it's Now]
New Animal Collective songs. [via Animal Collective]
Javier Marías is in the latest issue of Five Dials, talking about Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard. [via Five Dials]
On Roberto Bolaño’s The Secret of Evil. [via The Millions]
The New York Review of Books on Tarkovsky’s Stalker and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the video game. [via NYRBlog] Jim Rossignol on the same subject. [via BLDG BLOG]
St. Vincent on Jools Holland. [via YouTube]
Bulletin
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Omnivore: Theoretical inclinations.
Omnivore is a regular report on some of the things that I’ve been enjoying during the week (or thereabouts).
This week, I’ve had to read some Walter Benjamin, some Derrida, and some Barthes.
I also read Jesse Ball’s The Curfew.
And I rewatched Tokyo Godfathers. Which I nearly mistyped as Tokyo Grandfathers.
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Filed under Omnivore
“Art’s Fading Sway”
This scene, the most scripted in the film, is also the one where the aura is most potent. For the past hour Sokurov has been conditioning us to be unsure of when the actors in this film can see him and when they cannot. There’s no logic to it—some of the characters see Sokurov and the Marquis and some don’t. At times it even happens that someone who couldn’t originally see them suddenly does. This unreliability is one thing among crowds in public spaces. But now, at the acme of the Russian Empire and amidst a wobbly balance between the vanities of two civilisations, Sokurov and the Marquis are wandering through with their mouths open. The immaculate and lavish extras are constantly glancing into the camera, and I am staring back, I am looking hard to see if they see me. The only comparable sensation is the eerie, belated exchange that takes place when you look at a picture you’ve taken, and there on the sidelines is someone’s small, forgotten face frowning into your lens. Or rather, it’s like when seeing a play at a small theatre, the actors and I are so tightly together that I can plausibly believe that they can feel my individual gaze on them. In the moment they are both actors and regular persons of the kind I’d meet on the street, and I am—what? At times they stare into my eyes and I am thrown all out of balance: do I stare back as per my right as paid spectator, or do I succumb to the scummy feeling of the discovered voyeur and look away? When I wondered if that actor saw me sleeping during his performance, we entered into a rudimentary sort of relationship. You can have this relationship with a theatrical performance. You can even have it with a painting—remember how they say the Mona Lisa’s eyes follow you? Well, forget that. I’ve passed a few intense minutes when I’ve felt Rothkos looking at me. But Russian Ark is the only time in memory that I have felt it with a film. Right here in Tsar Nicholas I’s mammoth reception chamber I am having it with these scores of Russians standing in nice, tidy lines, as their gaze drifts from their tsar into Sokurov’s camera—that is, onto me. Am I foolish for wanting to look down into my lap? Or am I seeing now that Sokurov is not merely concerned with the representation of beauty? Have I become that mistake that mars their script, have I become the film’s proof of reality to itself?
Having had to work with some Walter Benjamin recently (and perhaps having to work with more of his work in the imminent future), this article by Scott Esposito on Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark was all rather timely. [via The White Review]
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Filed under Film + Television
Ultraísta
Ultraísta is made up of Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Laura Bettison. [via Consequence of Sound]
Here is their only released song to date. [via YouTube]
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