in places like universities,
where everyone talks too rationally,
it is necessary for a kind of enchanter to appear
quoted by elizabeth devonshire
university of newcastle department of fine art graduation catalogue
newcastle nsw australia 1994
Action Piece
26 February 1972
presented as part of seven exhibitions held at the Tate Gallery 24 Feburary - 23 March 1972
review
Samantha Lang is a film maker who is not afraid of a challenge : her debut was an ambitious adaptation of elizabeth jolley’s wonderful australian gothic novel the well, in which everything was blue.
then, after making a film of Dorothy Porter’s lesbian noir poem The Monkey’s Mask, she went to france to make a film in French, in the French studio system. the result, L’Idole (2003) was secretly shown by sbs australia late on friday night. it seems odd to say the least that our national broadcaster did not see fit to promote this extraordinary film made by one of australia’s most courageous film makers, which has hardly been seen in australia. beautifully shot, it is a flawed masterpiece which addresses the gaze, the private vs the public and challenges our ideas about race, age and gender.
l’idole shows the masculine at its most repulsive and pathetic, as well as at its most beautiful and gentle. ultimately strangely surreal, this is an austere and profound film which manages to be compassionate, generous, and even occasionally comic : french actors are world leaders when it comes to playing sleazy men (see claude berri’s wonderful jean de florette/manon des sources for one example) and Jean Paul Roussillon is brilliant in this.
see it. more than once.
four stars.
There’s someone standing in the rain like they have no place to go
Maybe that someone is you, maybe someone you don’t aim to know
Maybe lost possessions
Maybe stolen property
You just lie around waiting on a signal from heaven
Never had to heal any deep incisIon
Darling you are not moving any mountains
You are not seeing any visions
You are not freeing any people from prison
Just an aphorism for every occasion
As if the only thing that ever matters
Is your place at the table
You never read the writing on the label
When you drank from the bottle
It said Keep Away From Children
This is stolen property, this is stolen property
Let her run away
Let her run, let her run away
She can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now
She don’t belong any more, learn the hard way
She don’t belong here anymore
Finders keepers, losers weepers
Finders keepers, losers weepers
This is stolen property, this is stolen property
Reach out in the darkness now she’s not there
Reach out it’s getting darker now she’s not there
Reach out it’s getting darker now
She don’t belong anymore, learn this the hard way
She don’t belong here any more
You stumble, sometimes fall
Pick yourself up! Hold yourself up to the light!
Duck your head ! Watch for the blade!
Can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now
This is stolen property
This is stolen property
This is stolen property
This is stolen property
(David McComb)
Monument (If it Bleeds, it Leads) is an installation by Caleb Larsen in Seattle in which “a computer program continuously scans the headlines of 4,500 English-language news sources around the world, looking for people who have been reported killed. Each time it finds an article, an algorithm determines the number of deaths, and instructs a ceiling-mounted mechanism built from Legos to drop one yellow BB per person. During the course of the installation, BBs will accumulate on the floor, contributing to an ever-growing constellation, ultimately forming a sort of monument.
At the beginning of an installation the pellets will be sparsely scattered around the space, and by the end they will form a dense and chaotic arrangement, with errant BBs traveling throughout the building…”
Today there were 18 1p coins on the grave of Ludwig Wittgenstein at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge. Originally — some days ago — there were four, spread about; and then five in a little pile to one side. This morning there were 15 neatly underlining his name. Now there are three more, still neatly lined up. Over the years numerous small objects have been placed on the grave including a lemon, a pork pie, a Mr Kipling cupcake and a Buddhist prayer wheel. (Letter to the editor from Nick Ingham, The Times, September 3, 2001)
“My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.”
Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
meanwhile in vienna Natascha Kampusch is about to give her first interview and tell the world How a cruel obsessive crafted his perfect woman in a dungeon
what question/s would you ask her? mine would be : did she keep a diary and does she know if Wolfgang Priklopil had ever read the collector by john fowles ?
ephmrl recent listening
