Apeiron (1996) – Eurico Coelho depicts a modern technological labyrinth where society has surrendered to the cold lamps of their computer screens. The entirety of this ten minute film was animated on a Commodore Amiga 4000, giving the film a completely fresh aesthetic that has outlived the technology with which it was created.
Floating World Animation Fest returns with a new name and trippier mission. We’ve dug even deeper into the vaults of psychedelic animation to curate a heroic dose of visionary video art for this year’s animation fest.
For our fourth annual animation fest it was time to focus on what we liked best from previous shows and continue to seek out films that really embrace the infinite mysteries that resonate with us. The result is DMTV, a program that goes further into experimental realms of video art and abstract visuals.
Rounding out the evening are two of my favorite local bands, Atole and Nice Nice who will perform with live visuals mixed by e*Rock.
LISTING INFORMATION:
WHO: Atole, Nice Nice; films by: Barry Doupe, Michael Robinson, James Mercer, Eurico Coelho, Jacob Ciocci, Milton Croissant, David O’Reilly, Dash Shaw, Dalibor Baric, Kihachiro Kawamoto, Max Hattler, Jesus Rivera, Max Capacity and more!
WHAT: FWC’s 4th annual animation fest & live music by Atole, Nice Nice
Wanting and dissatisfaction are the main ingredients of happiness. To want is to believe there is something worth getting. Whereas getting only shows how worthless the thing is. And this is why destruction is so useful. It gets rid of what was wanted and so makes room for more to be wanted. How valueless is the orderly. It cries out for disorder. And life that thinks it fears death, spends all of its time courting death. To violate beauty is the essence of sexual desire. To procreate is the essence of decay.
OCTOBER 8 — JACQUES DERRIDA
French Deconstruction theorist, human-rights activist.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 8 IN HISTORY…
1820 — Haitian despot Henri Christophe, former slave, shoots himself.
1871 — Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicks over a lantern, igniting the great Chicago Fire.
1933 — “Sanctuary” movement founder James Corbett born, Casper, Wyoming.
1967 — Revolutionist Ernesto “Che” Guevara dies, Bolivian highlands.
1969 — Haymarket police statue bombed again, Chicago, Illinois.
2004 — Philosopher, deconstruction-theorist Jacques Derrida dies, Paris, France.
Many poets and all mystics and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains and chains of conscious beings who are not of heaven but are of earth, who have no inherent form, but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them.
– W.B. Yeats
The examples of UFO’s, ghosts, and whatnot that have been seen by the officials and authority figures is much too large to list here in this essay. In fact, cops and air force pilots seem to be UFO’s’ favorite targets! Jimmy Carter, the freaking president, saw a UFO. So what! It just illustrates that neither Authority nor a massive number of witnesses are not enough to convince the world at large.
Likewise, it does not matter how many people see the UFO or the blood-weeping Mary, or the Missing Link. It doesn’t matter if it is hundreds of folks day after day, or even thousands. It will be swallowed by time. (Perhaps this is simply because these experiences are always ephemeral – mysticism and the supernatural cannot readily be harnessed by capitalism to turn a profit; therefore it is unimportant to the point that it does not exist.) For example: In 1917 thousands of people witnessed UFO activity; at one point 70,000 people gathered to wait and watch at one location in Portugal after three children reported the Virgin Mary appearing there. The huge crowd, and indeed everyone within a 30 mile radius, reported seeing a swirling UFO appear. As one eyewitness described :
“It was seen by seventy thousand persons, among whom were pious individuals and atheists, clergymen and reporters from a socialist newspaper. As promised, it happened on October 13 at noon. Among the crowd was Professor Almeida Garrett, of Coimbra University, a scientist, who described the phenomena in the following terms: ‘It was raining hard, and the rain trickled down everyone’s clothes. Suddenly, the sun shone through the dense cloud which covered it: everybody looked in its direction. It looked like a disc, of a very definite contour. It was not dazzling. I don’t think that it could be compared to a dull silver disk, as someone said later in Fatima. No. It rather possessed a clear, changing brightness, which one could compare to a pearl. It looked like a polished wheel. This is not poetry. My eyes have seen it. This clear-shaped disk suddenly began turning. It rotated with increasing speed. Suddenly, the crowd began crying with anguish. The sun, revolving all the time, began falling toward the earth, reddish and bloody, threatening to crush everyone underneath.”
The website where I found the above description argues that this purportedly religious experience was, in fact, definitely a UFO. It goes on to argue that another similar case where children saw angels: “he appeared to be about nine years old, was dressed in a long, seamless blue robe, had a small face with black eyes, and fine hands and short fingernails,” was obviously not an angel but an alien.
How beside the point!
They are on the right path in realizing that the alien and the angel are perhaps the same thing, but to think that it must be only one or the other is as blind and foolish as the men in our earlier parable of the elephant. Continue reading →
Seripop is a Montreal based, internationally focused art/design duo made up of Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau. In addition to doing gig posters and international gallery exhibitions, they are currently touring as the noise-rock band AIDS Wolf. Catch them on tour and pick up a copy at their merch table. Limited to only 1000 copies, this oversized 10″ x 15″ newsprint monograph collects 16 mutated and melty designs suitable for browsing or framing. Each image is composed of layers like a 4 color silkscreen, inviting viewers to indulge in optical exploration.
OCTOBER 7 — JOE HILL
Wobbly martyr of American Zerowork movement.
ALSO ON OCTOBER 7 IN HISTORY…
1826 — First railroad in U.S., 3 miles long, completed in Massachusetts.
1849 — American mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe dies, Baltimore, Maryland.
1879 — American labor organizer, martyr Joe Hill born, Gävle, Sweden.
1897 — Elijah Muhammed of Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) born, Sandersville, GA.
1927 — R. D. Laing, Scottish radical anti-psychiatrist, born, Glasgow, Scotland.
1929 — French lettrist and situationist theorist Gil Wolman born, Paris, France.
1934 — Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) born, Newark, New Jersey.
1943 — British lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall dies, Rye, East Sussex.
1969 — Haymarket Statue (memorial to police slain in 1886) bombed, Chicago.
A BitchPork festival-goer rocks out to Heavy Times, a Chicago-based band that performed the festival’s opening night.
Isaac Catacombz
Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt) adjusts his mask during a torrid performance in Mortville. He and bandmate Brian Gibson surprised fans by playing under the name Turd Thrower.
A crowd rushes the stage during Turd Thrower.
Drummer Kim Sherman of Jerusalem and the Starbaskets (Columbia, Mo.) performs some psychedelic country-rock during the final night of the three-day festival.
Jerusalem and the Starbaskets.
John Bellows performs on the rooftop of Mortville.
“Everything is worse than ever” A conversation with righteous MC5 manager/poet/scholar/activator and great American JOHN SINCLAIR, who is leaving the country
Introduction by Byron Coley
John Sinclair casts a huge shadow across the American underground. The force of his personality and energy of his vision kept the midwest alive for several years. His writings, howlings and example ignited fires in the brains of kids everywhere, and his return to live performance in the last few years has been a cause for elation.
Sinclair was born in Flint, Michigan in 1941. His father worked building Buicks. John would have followed his footsteps had he not been driven mad by hearing R&B. The music—so alive, foreign, transformational—clicked a switch and he was never the same. In high school John became a party DJ and record nut. After graduation, he found affinity with words, especially those of Charles Olson and the beats. He dropped out of college after two years, getting heavily into jazz, writing poetry and doing drugs. Newly illuminated, Sinclair finished his BA, and began graduate studies.
John’s high profile drew lotsa heat. He was busted for pot in 1964, again in 1965. Shifting his wheels out of the academic rut, along with his partner Leni, John founded the Artists Workshop—a collective involved in publishing, presenting readings, film showings and concerts. He also wrote about high energy music for Downbeat and elsewhere. After Cecil Taylor played him the Beatles’ Revolver LP, Sinclair made the pivotal decision to get back into rock music.
Busted again in 1967, John began a long legal odyssey. At this time, the Artists Workshop transmuted into Trans-Love Energies, and he began working with a young band called the MC5. By filling their brains with righteous dope, free-jazz and politics, a quintet that might have been remembered as the American Troggs was transformed into the pinnacle of free-rock perfection. In 1968, the tribe moved to Ann Arbor and the White Panther Party was founded. The Panthers’ stated goal (revolution via rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets) seems a bit naive now, but at the time it sounded perfect.
By upping his political content, Sinclair got deeper into shit. After producing the first Detroit Rock & Roll Revival in 1969, he got 10 years for having given a nark two joints. Sinclair continued to write from prison (mostly politically charged music criticism). This work was collected into the essential Guitar Army. [Guitar Army was reissued by Process Media in 2007: http://processmediainc.com] The MC5 couldn’t handle his imprisonment, however, and left Trans Love (at the behest of future Springsteen slave, Jon Landau). Fortunately, others took up his cause. There were numerous benefits, culminating in a massive Detroit rally, featuring John & Yoko, Archie Shepp, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs, Bob Seger, the Up and Ed Sanders. In 1971 the case was tossed out.
Sinclair continued to mix politics and music, although the Panthers were folded into the Rainbow People’s Party (a less obstinately provocative organization). A full time political activist, Sinclair lobbied for marijuana reform, involved himself in community work and put together the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals. Sinclair also had a book of poetry published in 1988, at which time he returned to the live stage. But by 1991, local politics had bogged him down and he headed south to New Orleans.
Sinclair continued to do radio shows, edit magazines, write about music, and do wild-ass performances of investigative jazz poetry. He formed a band called the Blues Scholars, and recorded explosively syncopated albums of music and words. He also rekindled his friendship with former MC5 guitarist, Wayne Kramer, which resulted in excellent new work, fantastic archival releases and the promise of much more of both. His latest book is a blues suite Fattening Frogs for Snakes and many future projects beckon.
Hearing through the underground grapevine that Sinclair was preparing to exit America, Arthur arranged a phoner with the great man. The following Q & A was conducted by Jay Babcock in July [2003].
ARTHUR: So you’re leaving America.
JOHN SINCLAIR: Yes, God willing.
ARTHUR: And you’re going to…?
SINCLAIR: Amsterdam. I have a patron there and they said if I came over they would take care of me until they could get me set up and then I could call for my wife. That’s an offer I’ve been waiting for all my life. Now I’m old and I can really use it. [laughs] I wanna get the hell out of here. [laughs]
ARTHUR: You’ve been traveling around the last couple of months, so you’ve been getting a good look at the mood of the country. And you can remember when the resistance to the Viet Nam war was starting. Is the current situation—the state of the country now—worse than it was back then?
SINCLAIR: Oh yeah. The people are so much dumber now. They’re just…painfully dumb. They love this guy Bush, they love all this stuff that’s going on, and they’re gonna return him to office in a big way, and it’s gonna get worse and worse. That’s what I see. And except for the occasional glimmer of light like that new issue of Arthur, [laughs] it’s hard to even find people who have any inkling of what they’re doing.
Recorded in Detroit, 1974. So beautiful. The timeless, centerpiece song from Ted Lucas’s eponymous solo album, to be reissued on October 12 by Yoga Records.
You can listen to a radio interview with Ted Lucas from the period over at Waxidermy.
Arthur Magazine 