August 2011
26 posts
Ballardian; Between 'Jim' and 'JG' Ballard
“Most of the time with Jimmy you weren’t going all that deep, but he set aside times for JG, as it were. He stopped watching television a long time ago, he never listened to the radio, and he didn’t like music. He liked quiet. In those moments if I asked him what was on his mind, he would just say: I am thinking about my life.”
I’m a hopeless bloody romantic;
...
Where does this all go, now?
Chapter One of the angry beast that has become my thesis…
(On the subject of sound in silent film)
The repetitive and rhythmic nature of these visual cut-aways that are shown momentarily reminds the viewer that sound is constant and pervasive. In an odd paradox given sounds often boundless and uncertain origin, it can situate action through the ability give a cinegeographical context. Yet...
The Russian Connection
One of my favorite blogs - Africa Is A Country - has done a short write-up on the event I co-curated at Gasworks earlier this year. You can watch an edited version of the talk too…
http://africasacountry.com/page/16/
Very exciting!
thesis intro- finally
In these ambient sounds, we are listening to a certain topology of the future. Sounds emerge from sources we cannot see, resonating, producing a cinematic echolocation of the future metropolis. The images are wet with rain, and become hidden behind an opaque screen of smoke and steam, that rises from the city depths. In this imagined geography, we listen, and see. It is rich, crowded; a density...
sour lemons and sweet honey
The Clock
The Czech writer Petr Král, in the essay entitled “Time Flies” describes watching with a companion the 1916 silent movie serial Judex by Louis Feuillade. He recalls:
“Suddenly on the screen there appears a clock set in the centre of the kind of sumptuous salon that epoch, and Feuillade, alone had a taste for; it shows 4:40pm. One of us automatically consults his watch:...
Winston 'WeePow' Powell on Sonic Dominance and...
“A lot a man go to dance to find a girl, and if the music not bounce right him can’t find a girl. If the music bounce right it give him that push, ’cos everybody feel vibesy, can say: ‘Can I beg a dance?’ More time the music a right more time all the girl come and beg you a dance. And things just start from there so … I have people married from Stone Love, hundreds of them.”
RIOTS AND THEIR AFTERMATH
ITS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF BLACK AUDIO FILM COLLECTIVE’S ‘HANDSWORTH SONGS’. TIMELY, POWERFUL AND BEAUTIFUL.
You can rent it from LUX here:
http://www.lux.org.uk/collection/works/handsworth-songs
A MANIFESTO FOR UTOPIA; inspired by Baudrillard's...
“UTOPIA HAS BEEN DEFERRED IN IDEALISM THROUGH A CENTURY AND A HALF OF TRIUMPHANT DIALECTICAL HISTORICAL PRACTICE”.
Utopia is a no- place, the radical deconstruction of every political space. It offers no privelidges to revolutionary politics.
“There could be no model for utopia nor utopian function, because utopia denies the inscription of all finality, whether unconscious or in the class...
