Jeff Piediscalzi: AN AMERICAN TRADITION

January 20, 2011 10:35 AM

About six months ago I irritated an acquaintance of mine by saying "Why the fuck is Sarah Palin still relevant?" I was surprised at his irritation, never realizing his right leaning tendencies (something I flippantly dismiss as his spending too much time socializing at the gun range). Obviously, I needed to search a little deeper into her phenomena instead of just dismissing her as a sideshow bozo that John McCain needs to be slapped for because he brought her into the circus spotlight.

15 Favorite Horror Films of the Decade. What Are Yours?

Posted by Simone Muench

January 13, 2011 9:38 PM

Here's a list of my top horror films of the last decade in no particular order. What are some of yours?

1. The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005).Two-fold narrative with dual monsters: the cave and the crawlers. Probably my favorite horror film of the last decade (with the original ending, of course.) This film is one of my favorites to teach along with the original TCM and Suspiria when discussing startling usages of sound and silence. I'm intrigued by the sonic sleight-of-hand in films where the viewer is purposefully distracted by non-threatening sounds, and then boom, someone's dead. In The Descent, this device is cleverly constructed, delivering a purging shock to the audience when the main character awakes in the night, and as she stares out the window into the darkness, we only hear ambient sounds—snoring, the breeze, a bird; as we are mentally diverted by the bird's cry, a pole breaks the window, slamming straight through her eye. Inevitably someone always screams during this scene. Perhaps my affection for this film also has something to do with going spelunking as a kid in the Ozark mountains.

2. Ginger Snaps and Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (John Fawcett, 2000 and Brett Sullivan, 2004; written by Karen Walton). I can't decide which I like better. Both highlight the travails of adolescent girls with humor, poignancy and horror. Lycanthropy employed as a metaphor for the sexual transitions of female adolescence, as well as for PMS, scarification, and drug addiction. The prequel is interesting as well, but doesn't compare to these. Mimi Rogers is a delight in this film (many have fortunately forgotten that she was once married to Tom Cruise) and sparks up the screen with subtle humor.

3. À l'intérieur (aka Inside, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, 2007). The first 20 minutes read like an Antonioni film capturing grief and depression in blue cinematic splendor, and then cut, and the fireworks begin. Watch it the first time for entertainment and then watch it again for its intricacies of patterns, camera movement, sound, color and utilization of light to create suspense. The more I watch it the more I appreciate it. Beatrice Dalle is one beautiful, but scary woman. Scissors, babies, and beautiful women, need I say more.

4. Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008). It took me two years to decide what I thought about this film because I never want to watch it again and yet I'm continually haunted by it (same as Gaspar Noé's Irreversible). It is a brilliant horror film essay on interrogation, the banality and routinization of torture, and our "need to know" regardless of the cost. I love the way it transitions through various horror subgenres so that where you begin and where you end is a lengthy and unexpected journey, and demonstrates the director's love of horror films in his various homages. The ending, which I initially discounted as "too easy" has continued to resonate in its ambiguity. Probably the most viscerally pounding and depressing film on this list.

5. The House of the Devil (Ti West, 2009). This film transported me back to being a kid going to see movies like The Silent Scream (1980) with my dad. The House of the Devil raises many interesting topics surrounding issues of psychosis, the frightening power of belief systems, externalizations vs internalizations of violence, authority constructs, Barbara Creed's notion of the monstrous-feminine, etc. It is a great homage to 70'/80's horror films, and what more to say than "Tom Noonan!" Remember Michael Mann's Manhunter and the tiger scene?

Gods and Monsters

Posted by Sarah Kretchmer

January 11, 2011 6:04 AM

Marianne
2010, 230 x 75 x 60 cm
Wood, metal, plastic, PE, gloss paint, cables, mixed media

The word "Laboratory" is painted in large letters on Willi Tomes' studio door, and it's no mistake. Tomes, based in Berlin, is an alchemist, turning the debris of everyday life into gold, and a modern day Dr. Frankenstein who breathes new life into that which was once dead.

Looking at a Tomes sculpture, one can't help but notice that it is comprised of familiar objects: A Mickey Mouse head, part of a toy boat, broken records, a Christmas decoration, a kitchen utensil. Cast off from some previous life, they are all there in parts and pieces, reassembled to create something new.

"Finding new materials and techniques is something I'm interested in," he says of his work. "I find things without searching for them. I feel that's part of an artist's job - to find - not only to do. It feels good to not think about it too much, to just do it and surprise myself."

The Animal (biped or quadruped?)
2008/2009, 130 x 110 x 54 cm
metal, textiles, plastic, leather, vinyl, plaster, acrylic paint, gloss paint, mixed media

While his process of creation may be fluid and intuitive, the narratives he weaves are deeply thoughtful. He retells the ancient tale of Good vs. Evil through his art, and calls his particular version of the story the Blimperium Zyklus.

"There are always three main parts: The invasion of the evil, the triumph of the evil, and the destruction of the evil - because it has to be destroyed. It destroys itself." He has also assigned colors to these three epochs, and uses them throughout his work: Silver represents the invasion, gold is the triumph, and black is the defeat.

"They are monsters," he says of the misshapen creatures that wreck havoc in his work. "They are like gods, but they are also the heroes that people have created. And so they are made of 'hero stuff': Mickey Mouse, Masters of the Universe figures, toy turtle heads...it's all man made. I wanted to show that this isn't an 'outer space' story like in War of the Worlds - these monsters come from us, and they're doing the things that we want them to do."

The battle plays out in a series of wall-mounted dioramas he has created to showcase the rise and subsequent fall of his monster-god-heroes:

Triumph
2007 - 2009, series of 10 dioramas, wall installation, size variable
(Installation view)

Detail of one of the dioramas, showing the battle between the
giant golden monster (only the feet are visible here) and the tiny people below.

While not all of his work is as literal in depicting the Blimperium Zyklus as his dioramas, it is a theme that is nevertheless ever-present. His demented busts and statues - constructed from the objects we work so hard to purchase and then discard - represent our true idols and dictators. They are monuments to a world gone wrong, led by greed and consumption, and even the pedestals that hold them up have been crafted from neatly stacked trash, spray painted in stately grays and blacks.

Helios
2009, sunglasses, acrylic plaster, metal, PE, wood, gloss paint, synthetic plaster, 39 x 27 x 26 cm

Bäh, Bäh, Bäh
2008, plastic, acrylic plaster, PE, glass, metal, textiles, 22 x 13 x 17 cm

It's no surprise that the plastic bag - the most ubiquitous of all trash - has become a key material in Tomes' work. "Plastic bags are interesting things," he says of them. "You buy things in them and then you throw things away in them - it's a transporter - and aside from that it's useless. I was looking for something that I always have around that I could use to make art out of, and it was perfect. It's a material that everyone knows - even in Africa, where they have nothing, they have plastic bags."

Stretching plastic bags onto stretcher bars like canvas, he forms new compositions from the juxtapositions of the printed images on the plastic, and applying heat, he manipulates and distorts the surfaces.

Two Mountains
2010, PE, mixed media on wooden frame,
51 x 49 x 3cm

But Tomes doesn't limit his use of discarded materials to the man-made. The remains of animals are often featured in his work as well: the corpse of a frog, a mummified rabbit, a stuffed pigeon or pheasant, and even - occasionally - a little bit of mammoth ivory. "In nature a thing can only grow if another thing dies. It happens slowly, but it's a necessary cycle. That's why I like to use these animals - because they have actually been something. They're not just packaging or toys, they're real things that were once alive and have a history."

Through his art, Tomes crafts a poignant yet poetic statement about the fate of humanity: if we continue to worship our plastic idols and create massive amounts of trash, we will destroy ourselves and end up going the way of the mummies and mammoths. It's a clear message, yet the work never comes across as preachy, condemning or self-righteous. It merely points to one of many possible futures and leaves us to ponder our destiny.

"This is only one version of the story," Tomes says of his work. "It is open and evolving, forever continuing."

Willi Tomes is represented by Galerie Gerken in Berlin, Germany.

Poetry of the Week: "I Am Myself Three Selves at Least," "Adolescence," and more by Jennifer K. Sweeney

Posted by Simone Muench

January 6, 2011 10:35 AM

Jennifer K. Sweeney's second poetry collection, How to Live on Bread and Music , received the 2009 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of America Poets and the Perugia Press Prize. Her first book, Salt Memory , won the 2006 Main Street Rag Poetry Award . Her poems have been translated into Turkish and published widely in literary journals including American Poetry Review, Poetry Daily and the 2009 Pushcart Prize anthology. After living in San Francisco for twelve years, she currently lives and teaches in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband, poet Chad Sweeney and their son, Liam.

I AM MYSELF THREE SELVES AT LEAST

I am, myself, three selves at least,
the one who sweeps the brittle
bees, who saves the broken plates

and bowls, who counts to ten,
who tends the shoals,
who steeps the morning's Assam leaves

and when day is wrung
tightens clock springs.
And yes, the one who sat through youth
quiet as a tea stain, whose hand

Poetry of the Week: "Crawlspace Tango," "Film-Noir Panopticon," and more by Larry Sawyer

Posted by Simone Muench

January 4, 2011 12:45 PM

Larry Sawyer curates the Myopic Books Reading Series in Wicker Park, Chicago. His work is included in the anthologies The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007), Shamanic Warriors Now Poets (JN Reilly, ed. Scotland), and A Writers' Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama's Inauguration (DePaul Humanities Center Press, 2009). His debut collection, Unable to Fully California, is available on Otoliths Press (2010). Larry also edits milk magazine (since 1998).

CRAWLSPACE TANGO

On a bench my newspapered nerves flutter.
Bloom of a dark, wide silence, the human
Tether keeps pulling. Like a snake bisected
Some hypotenuse out of sight, caffeinated.
The rejection of the forest floor, therefore
Is, in its elevator, a wordless lip, while
Originality convalesces in a retirement ward.
Can you see them? Festooned with teenagers
These quixotic gymnasia replete with audits
Move, slender and klutzy, as if incomplete.
But when the revolver of Indianas reloads

Podcast Interview with Alexander Johannes Kraut

Posted by Mark Staff Brandl

January 4, 2011 11:01 AM

This week: This is the second of two interviews with German artists conducted by Mark Staff Brandl on the island of Elba, Italy. Alexander Johannes Kraut is an artist who concentrates on drawing and printmaking, sometimes reaching installative proportions. He has also created an amazing thirteen chapter wordless graphic novel. Kraut comes from a farming village in the Allgäu, and is now based in Kreuzberg in Berlin. He has lived in many places and exhibited widely in important museums and other venues including in Mexico City, Paris and New York as well as several places in Germany.

The artist was in an invitational retreat in July as a working guest of a foundation on the island of Elba along with Viennese jazz pianist and composer Martin Reiter, New York playwright Sony Sobieski, Ruessellsheim artist Martina AltSchaefer (the interviewee in part one) and Mark Staff Brandl, the EuroShark the Bad at Sports Continental and now also islandal European Bureau. As a note to English speakers: Kraut's name is not only amusing as the English-language slang for 'German,' but also means 'herb' in German, and 'Johannes Kraut,' called 'St. John's wort' in English, is a plant traditionally used to combat depression and, in ancient times, to ward off evil.

Look for more Sharkforum Berlin connections soon!

Link: http://badatsports.com/2011/episode-279-alexander-johannes-kraut/

Poetry for the New Year: "Reading Yeats's 'The Second Coming' on January 1, 2001," "Motherwell," and more by Dean Rader

Posted by Simone Muench

January 2, 2011 8:23 PM

Dean Rader is professor of English at the University of San Francisco where he held the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair. Rader's debut poetry collection, Works and Days won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize judged by Claudia Keelan (Truman State University Press, 2010). He has published widely in the fields of poetry, literary studies, American Indian studies, and visual and popular culture. He regularly contributes op-eds and book reviews to San Francisco Chronicle and blogs at The Weekly Rader, SemiObama and 52 Gavins.

READING YEATS'S "THE SECOND COMING" ON JANUARY 1, 2001

To begin, to start out, to turn. To expand: to center and to throb.
To fall apart. To eat in the dark grammar. To spiral and to oh; to if.

To ask of the tantrum wind. To labor, to invoke bone, to anoint. To vex:
to wish, to want and to want. To will. To waste. To plug time's stoma.

To unfasten and to abandon. To erect: to shutter. To bleed. To unbuckle
the sprung sun. To plummet. To thigh. To saddle venom's gleam and to ride.

Disappearing Address by Simone Muench & Philip Jenks

Posted by Simone Muench

January 1, 2011 6:35 PM

Disappearing Address by Simone Muench and Philip Jenks is out now from BlazeVOX. Cover art by Kim Ambriz.

Dear Philip & Simone—

Your writing's overwrought. Too haute.
Not cuisine or couture, but chicken-legged

high-kickin' rhetoric vetted, vent,
& le vexor. French-fried car-talkers,

superspeed diesel drama. You're all dilemma
& no serenity. Prickly as Jamestown weed,

more story than history. You've been dissed
& rechristened: poet to bootlegger; writer

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Latest Entries

Jeff Piediscalzi: AN AMERICAN TRADITION

January 20, 2011 10:35 AM

15 Favorite Horror Films of the Decade. What Are Yours?

January 13, 2011 9:38 PM

Gods and Monsters

January 11, 2011 6:04 AM

Poetry of the Week: "I Am Myself Three Selves at Least," "Adolescence," and more by Jennifer K. Sweeney

January 6, 2011 10:35 AM

Poetry of the Week: "Crawlspace Tango," "Film-Noir Panopticon," and more by Larry Sawyer

January 4, 2011 12:45 PM

Podcast Interview with Alexander Johannes Kraut

January 4, 2011 11:01 AM

Poetry for the New Year: "Reading Yeats's 'The Second Coming' on January 1, 2001," "Motherwell," and more by Dean Rader

January 2, 2011 8:23 PM

Disappearing Address by Simone Muench & Philip Jenks

January 1, 2011 6:35 PM

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