Sorne - House of Stone: Apstraktno-antropologijski pop

Antropologijska shizofrenija, glasovi napravljeni golim rukama, instrumenti izvađeni iz utrobe Indijanca, šamanistički ekspresionizam, adolescentska opera, urbani mitovi za špiljske ljude, špiljski mitovi za asfaltirane umove.

SORNE sounds of the future gawking at you with a gaping mouth, fearlessly and enveloped in mysticism. They will make you lose your mind. – Red River Noise

A wonderful brand of twisted, deeply textured abstract pop. Sonically and conceptually it reaches beyond genre definition. – Bowlegs Music

Nonconformist in nature, brilliant in execution. This is absolutely phenomenal in every sense of the word. Music cannot get more unique and authentic as this.– Sputnik Music

A conceptual, wide screen epic that unfolds in shivering awe. – Doug Freeman of the Austin Chronicle

Echoes of Tv on the Radio’s ghostly pop. – San Francisco’s Bold Italic

Sounds like Anthony and the Johnsons inhabiting the more esoteric realms of the Mars Volta. – Austin Powell of the Austin Chronicle

Somewhere in the same realm as Yeasayer’s psychedelic pop. – Austin 360

I definitely recommend going to the show and witnessing the otherworldly artistic performance for yourself. – OVRLD

Theatrical creativity at its finest. This one deserves your complete attention. – Austin Music Weekly

Completely blown away. – Peel Post 

"Born at the highest point of elevation in the Panhandle, right up against an Indian burial ground, Morgan Sorne grew up with dreams of Indians coming out of the woods surrounding his home. Music and Christianity encircled him as a child. The latter, he grew out of. The first, he embraced. His mother, an opera singer, enrolled him in a music program after her voice coach suggested it. Sorne remembers hating it profoundly even at the age of three, but after throwing a rock at a kid’s face, his days at the school for the gifted ended. Music never left him.
In the last few years, Sorne has written over 80 songs using only the voice, handmade instruments and found objects. The first 13 were released in 2011 in his debut album, House of Stone, and he’s working on the rest to be released in a series of chapters, one for each of the five siblings, the star characters of the House of Stone saga: First Born. Second Son. Black Sister. Little Brother. Blue Sister.
Set in no particular time or place, the story speaks of family relationships, focusing on the death of the father and highlighting Sorne’s obsession with the Divine Mother. House of Stone grew in his mind for years, the characters initially born as direct reflections of his mother and her siblings. House of Stone evolved from childhood views of family into characters with a life of their own, each representing, in Sorne’s words, “archetypes of the human condition.”
A short film based on the story behind the album House of Stone entitled "Children of the Black Mountain" premiered at the SXSW Film Fest 2012 and can be seen at www.sorne.com

Halvor Aakhus - Book of Knut: A Novel by Knut Knudson

Neke knjige u konceptu djeluju toliko neobično i zanimljivo da teško možeš zamisliti kako će zapravo u konačnici izgledati i hoće li biti na razini obećanja. Ponekad i ne želiš saznati, da bi se stalno mogao pitati. Želim li uopće "vidjeti" najavljenu knjigu Halvora Aakhusa? Matematika, notni zapisi, slike u boji - sve u knjizi proze... fijuuuu!

"Halvor Aakhus is the smartest and most wildly inventive young writer to come around since David Foster Wallace. Knut rules!" - David Leavitt

"Behold, the bastard child -- thrice removed -- of Padgett Powell, Barry Hannah, and Samuel Beckett. There's something very wrong and very right about the wires crossed in his head." - Benjamin Percy

"I once saw an extravagant castle in the wilds of Colorado, constructed from various materials over many years by one odd guy with a vision. This novel reminds me of that castle. It also reminds me of E.L. Doctorow's claim that excess in literature is its own justification. This wonderful novel is excessive - beautifully and humanely and ecstatically excessive. I urge you to give yourself up to it."
- Chris Bachelder

"Halvor Aakhus should be paralyzed from depression and knowing too much. He has two or three doctoral dissertations, never consummated, in his head. The truly arcane stuff in Book of Knut is from his memory. This book won a prize getting to this point, and the judge said it was so outrageously complicated he could not not give it the prize. The reader should gird his or her loins if loins can be in one's head." - Padgett Powell

An Interview With Halvor Aakhus by David Hoenigman:

"Halvor Aakhus was born and raised in southern Indiana, on the Ohio River. There, he practiced the piano until 1999, when he went to the Jacobs School to study composition but soon abandoned music for various kitchen jobs and graveyard shifts at gas stations. The first decade of the new millennium is a blur. Despite himself, Aakhus earned a B.A. in Mathematics (2006) and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida (2011). Aakhus’ debut novel Book of Knut: A Novel by Knut Knudson has been turned into a math textbook. It contains musical scores and oil paintings, as well as homework problems. (Forthcoming from Jaded Ibis Press, October 2012.)
Aakhus currently lives in Pennsylvania, where he teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.
What projects are you currently working on?
Book #2.
Book #1 is coming out this October from Jaded Ibis Press. It’s a novel called Book of Knut: A Novel by Knut Knudson (by Halvor Aakhus). Here’s the premise: A mathematician finds a novel (Book) written by her dead lover (Knut Knudson) and subsequently transforms it into an annotated mathematical textbook, complete with homework problems. Aside from oil paintings, musical scores, mathematical graphs, etc., it’s got 216 footnotes.
Anyway, Book #2 is the sequel. Also a novel, but more of a painting. It’s called Knut in Hell: An Oil Painting by Knut Knudson (by Halvor Aakhus): As a proactive guide to self-punishment, it adopts the structure of Dante’s Inferno.
If all goes well, Book #3 will be a string quartet. Or an opera. Possibly a requiem. Perhaps all three?
When and why did you begin writing?
I learned to read, and thus I wrote.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
To consider yourself a writer is a lot of pressure. Knut prefers to be unaware of self. Blind is his point of view.
What inspired you to write your first book?
Got a degree in math and chemistry. What else was I supposed to do?
Who or what has influenced your writing?
Practicing piano for the first two decades of my life certainly played a role. I also spent several years copying math textbooks into notebooks. But shit like flipping burgers, tending bar, and sleeping behind a Dumpster probably made the biggest impact. And then there’s love and death.
How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?
From a very early age, as the son of two artistic academics, Knut vowed to never become a writer, nor a painter. And certainly not a teacher. (Knut failed there, utterly, on all counts.)
Do you have a specific writing style?
Only when I revise.
What genre are you most comfortable writing?
Given genre, I am most comfortable subverting its conventions. This is the game of art I’ve learned to play. Follow the rules enough to make sense, but break them enough to keep shit interesting. Genre is the box: my job is to show my audience the box, and help them step outside it.
Is there a message in your work that you want readers to grasp?
No. I prefer books that raise questions, not answer them.
What book are you reading now?
Just finished Padgett Powell’s You & I. As dialogue, it raises the stakes of his “monologic” Interrogative Mood. You know, like fucking Plato. Just as Plato adopts elderly Socrates as his grand inquisitor, Powell champions a pair of horny old men to achieve the same effect.
What is the most misunderstood aspect of your work?
Probably the math."

Here's a video of some music appearing in Book...

This video's soundtrack is Torbjorn's "Improvisation on B & F," which he performs naked in Excerpt 6.3 of Book. (The appended slideshow, however, includes paintings which may or may not appear in Book.)

  

O svemu ovdje

Stanley Kubrick - Day of the Fight (1951)

Prvi Kubrickov film - dokumentarac. Boksačev strah od jedanaesterca.

"This is Stanley Kubrick’s first film. In 1951, he was taking photographs for Look magazine but decided he could make a short documentary film for less money than the average production cost. Working with high school friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick filmed a boxer’s preparation for a big fight. It’s a concise and effective documentary with some excellent coverage of the match." - Candlelight Stories

Shalom Tomas Neuman - Fuzijska umjetnost

Sva čula, svi mediji udruženi u osjetilnoj internacionali! Multi-senzorna smo bića pa "slikarstvo" ne smije biti žanrovsko i ograničeno, potrebno je u djelo uključiti sva čula (zvuk, sliku, okus, miris, dodir) a danas imamo tehnologiju koja nam to i omogućava. Napuštanje čovjeka da bi se vidjelo što je čovjek. Religija, pop-kultura, tehno-psihodelija - sveto trojstvo 21. stoljeća.

 

 

"If our world is composed of overlapping stimuli which create constant sensory overload, then why should visual art limit itself to any one discipline such as painting, sculpture, print, video or computerized digital images? Is it not true that imagery is inseparable from sound and evolution in time? And if that is the case, shouldn’t art be a mirror that accurately reflects our environment, society and culture?
With the assistance of a graduate student physicist I built my first computerized dimming system in 1968. It was programmed for an infinite number of lighting combinations which created a multi-sensory environment where two-dimensional images became indistinguishable from the 3D objects and sculpturally painted elements in my work. There was an overlay of evolving colored lights and projections in conjunction with a looped sound system which distorted the viewer’s perception of his/her surrounding physical space, thereby successfully integrating all artistic media into one indistinguishable statement or genre which I call fusion art.
As an artist I want to bridge the existing barriers between all disciplines such as painting, sculpture, light, sound, performance theatre, video and digital art. I want to make these individual genres indecipherable from one another. I love figurative painting and I am firmly committed to it. My belief is that by breaking away from the canvas I can bring the classical approach into the contemporary arena, especially when I am incorporating computer generated art, artificial illumination and video projections. In this way, I am creating a bridge between the past and the present, where classical tradition fuses with our continuing cultural and technological evolution." - Shalom Neuman

Neumanova web stranica ovdje

Shalom Neuman’s Art in Exile

Lester Strong - August 18, 2011

 

IN AN essay in the recent book Shalom Neuman, art critic Robert C. Morgan labels Neuman’s art “humanism in exile,” and describes him as “a kind of artistic renegade” who “wants to remain outside the fray, and beyond the superficial machinations of the market. There is no doubt that he would like collectors to buy his work, but he is repulsed by the notion that investors would speculate on the profit they would make from it.”
Neuman is indeed an artistic renegade, but not just in terms of his feelings about the commercial gallery system. His art is colorful, playful, and often imaginative in a way that reminds one of the extremes of surrealism. But it’s also a committed art that crosses boundaries, incorporates a conceptual framework embracing political and social ideas, and never abandons a critique of everything in our contemporary cultural environment that debases the human spirit. This is not unheard of in today’s art world, but it is increasingly rare in a culture where, as Gary Indiana wrote in Andy Warhol and the Can that Sold the World, “financial success [is often seen] as the measure of any artistic activity’s value.”
Color, playfulness, and imagination are all evident in a major exhibition in Prague focusing on Neuman’s work this summer and fall, “The Art of Fusion Art: Talking at You,” on view at the National Gallery (August 19 to September 18), the American Center (September 6 to September 30), and Galerie La Femme (September 21 to 30).
Neuman explains fusion art as a reaction to “what most artists for the past 2000 years have been doing”: replicating reality “as they see it.” Neuman argues that

a two-dimensional surface with illusionary painted space doesn’t replicate reality because we are multi-sensory brings. We don’t just see the world; we smell it, we taste it, we hear it, we feel it through our tactile senses. I believe that today we have the technology and ability to convey all that artistically. To me it’s almost intuitive that we have to develop the disciplines that will allow us to represent the world in all its complex reality.

His Wall of Cultural Confusion, for example, features a “combination of found objects—plastic and electronic toys—whose designs probably originated in the Western World, which were mostly likely produced in factories in China or elsewhere in Asia and sold in the United States, and which were eventually discarded by consumers as no longer of practical use and picked up by me for use in my art.” Wall of Cultural Confusion makes uses of acrylic paint on plywood, looped soundtracks, and incandescent light, which together form “an instrument that plays music when you press the right buttons.” The artwork is “the byproduct of many cultures artistically and physically, and intended to appeal to several of our senses.”

Artists of similar-seeming works would likely reference Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Jean Tinguely, or Robert Rauschenberg, or theories of objective, nonobjective, or conceptual art. Neuman’s ideas depart from those passed down in art schools or art history books, and instead refer to realities we run up against every day: technology, economic interdependence, environmental concerns, consumerism, and recycling.

BORN IN Prague soon after the Second World War to parents who had survived the Holocaust, Neuman and his family moved to Israel when he was an infant, then to the United States, where he has lived ever since. With the exhibition in Prague, Neuman is returning not just to his birthplace (where he keeps a second apartment) but to a city rich in Jewish history. That heritage has played its part in Neuman’s art in several ways, most notably in a number of assemblages he has created over the years that he calls his “Golems” (none of which, unfortunately, are included in the retrospective).

In Jewish folklore, the Golem was an inanimate creature given life through mystical means. The most famous Golem narrative revolves around Prague in the sixteenth century and its then-chief rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, who created one of these creatures to protect the Jewish community in the city from pogroms initiated under the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Neuman’s Golems are large-scale (nine to thirteen feet high), multi-sensory constructions sporting moving parts, lights, and sounds that are indeed quite imposing. Jews these days have nothing to fear in Prague; Neuman’s Golems, rather, recall a history of anti-Semitic violence in Europe that during the Second World War all but wiped out his extended family. Indeed, while the Golems most explicitly bear the influence of Neuman’s Jewish heritage, it is also evident in the political and social critiques embedded in his art, as well as in his conception of the interrelatedness of all things cultural, economic, and technological. His work draws on the Jewish notion of “tikkun olam,” or “repairing the world”—interpreted now as a call to social justice. Neuman draws on another part of his heritage in his “Amerika” series, on view at the Veletržní Palac division of the National Gallery. The spelling—with the German “k”—implies a displaced point of view, one that Neuman clearly took up when he created the pieces, a collection of portraits of imaginary individuals.

Conventional portraiture usually involves capturing the likeness of a person—not just the face, but also the individual’s clothed or unclothed body and surroundings—as a way of suggesting something about the person’s background, personality, and life. In some portraits, like many of those by fin-de-siècle Viennese painter Gustav Klimt, the larger world seems to overwhelm the individual, with face and body almost submerged within the physical environment the person inhabits in the painting. Neuman’s Amerika portraits, on the other hand, are mostly faces, with the barest hint of bodies—but the faces themselves are mostly made up of objects: a small plastic toy or marble serving as an eye, a badminton birdie or syringe as a nose, a bent toy stethoscope as a mouth. In Neuman’s portraits, the subjects are not just surrounded by objects, but in some sense are the objects—the products of consumerism run amok. These works are at first glance quite whimsical, but on careful inspection appear more than a little sinister.

NEUMAN’S ART thrives on a productive tension between its surface gaudiness and technological flair, and its underlying political and social content. It’s disturbing art, and meant to reflect the disjointed times in which it was created. Neuman’s work involves plastic toys, flashing lights, electronics, and talking machines, and so might seem to depart from the style of earlier, also intentionally disturbing, politically trenchant works by artists like Francisco Goya, or the expressionists of Weimar Germany. But his world—our world—confronts a set of problems peculiarly its own, so it’s no surprise he chose to use materials that are peculiarly our own as well. Likeability, popularity, and commercial success are often secondary considerations for artists who feel compelled to create art that bears witness to the confusion and destructive tendencies of their times. Indeed, Neuman’s art bespeaks a desire to communicate, and even to persuade. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer in Neuman’s oeuvre than with his involvement in action art through the Performance Artists’ Network (PAN), which moves out of the gallery and onto the streets. Neuman’s action art is also being spotlighted in Prague, with live performances at most of the venues as well as videos of actions he has carried out in the past.
Yet Neuman believes that art only rarely transforms those who encounter it. “Art responds to what we see, what we experience,” he said. “Artists are like antennas. I believe they need to absorb through every part of their bodies, through the ports of their bodies, what is really happening.” He thus places the onus of transformation on the viewers. They decide how the vision embedded within the art is to speak to them, educate them, and change their perceptions of the world.
This is why Robert C. Morgan describes Neuman’s art as “humanism in exile”; it asks that we learn to experience the world and think for ourselves about its beauty, its meaning, its problems, and their solutions. Neuman’s work may be in exile from an art world that tends to see art merely as a commodity. But it challenges us to confront our lives, our history, our society, and our humanity so that we no longer live in exile from ourselves.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Welt am Draht

"Desetljećima izgubljen, sada restauriran", Fassbinderov film iz 1973. SF od njemačkog olova: kompjutori, virtualna stvarnost, Simulacron, pretjerano je reći "svijet" itd..

Trejler:

Dokumentarac o filmu: World on a Wire: Looking Ahead To Today

“People are terrible. They can bear anything. Anything! People are hard and brutal. And everyone is disposable. Everyone! That’s the lesson.” —Rainer Werner Fassbinder

While the above quote wasn’t written specifically in reference to World on a Wire, it may as well have been. Originally released as a two-part German miniseries that aired in 1973, Fassbinder’s sci-fi adaptation of criminally under-valued New Orleans author Daniel Galouye’s 1964 novel Simulacron Three is as much about the absurdity of certainty and the essential futility of human action as it is about the difference between reality qua reality and virtual reality. And while one could quickly (and rightly) point out how capable these lofty concepts are of imbuing the work with some undue (boring) heft, the film actually clips along quite nicely throughout its nearly four-hour runtime. Lost for decades and recently restored, this proto cyber-punk experiment of Fassbinder’s has surely earned its place alongside the director’s more critically acclaimed works.
At a pioneering technological company in urban Germany in a not-too-distant future, the lead architect of a groundbreaking new social modeling system mysteriously dies right after a nonsensical and hysterical rant about mirrors and their symbolic relationship with existence to the president of the company and government officials who are bankrolling the project. This tragic event is the catalyst that allows Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) to take over the project, which he’s only so happy to do, seeing as his natural state seems to be murkily brooding, feeling that his talent is being squandered, and feeling nonplussed when lusty blondes offer to sleep with him. The first half of World on a Wire does an excellent job of drawing its audience into an intriguing story of Stiller’s ambition and attempts at triumph over adversity through establishing a classic noir mystery with some avant-garde visual flourishes, which sustain its believability when the theoretical stuff comes into play later.
It has always struck me as kind of tragic that the lion’s share of well-known dystopian futures’ antagonists are evil on a very basic level. That is, they’re nefarious and brutal and exist to control/harm people for whatever malevolent purpose strikes the most presumably visceral fear into a given audience during a given epoch. And so it is to Galouye’s (and, by extension, Fassbinder’s) credit that the antagonist in World on a Wire is something as mundane and ever present as marketing. Market research provides the impetus to create a virtual world that can predict, for commercial interests, what people will want/need to buy in 20 years. It is not despite this ostensibly harmless purpose that things go awry, but precisely because of it.
The stroke of genius in the film, in contrast to the novel upon which it’s based, is Fassbinder’s refusal to just come out and say whether he believes himself that humans are totally predictable (the very presupposition of the Simulacron machine in the film) or if he feels that a system based upon the idea that humans are totally predictable is totally abhorrent. Over and above this unanswered question, the evil in this film is just about as banal as it gets; the anguish and suffering and dread that Stiller experiences in this film are all attributable to a government’s pragmatic and morally neutral collusion with private enterprise. Prescience, anyone?
Technically, World on a Wire is one of Fassbinder’s great achievements. The performances in this film are rock solid, which is pretty remarkable considering the amount of unnatural blocking Fassbinder employs during long conversations between principal characters. There is a blatantly obvious visual motif involving mirrors that, in a less capable director’s hands, could’ve detracted from the experience of viewing the film to the point of making it unwatchable. However, Fassbinder repeats and varies this technique to such an extent and to such a degree that it becomes hypnotic and just as central a part of the film as the story and the actors.
World on a Wire deserves a lot more respect than it received when it originally aired and during its subsequent overly long exile from audiences the world over. The film is a dystopian masterwork that cuts to the heart of what is legitimately terrifying about a large, bureaucratic/corporate entity in some vague future sure to rob good folks of everything decent in this world. There is no smirking Mr. Smith or smug Colonel Sanders to personify evil in this film. The real heart of darkness that Galouye and Fassbinder are getting at is a fascistic partnership completely blinded to the uniquely human by its ostensibly well-meaning desire for efficiency and general prosperity. Also, try your best to forget that one time you watched The 13th Floor because you thought Gretchen Mol was a total QT. World on a Wire is nothing like that movie. Nothing like that movie at all." - Paul Bower

Ich will nicht nur, daß ihr mich liebt - Documentary about Fassbinder:

Još Fassbindera -

Das letzte Jahr:

Liebe ist kälter als der Tod: [ENG SUB]:

Lola (1981) Fassbinder [English Subtitles]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlso9Bjc2-k

The Marriage of Maria Braun

Veronika Voss

 Wildwechsel

Mark Leyner opet među mutantima!

Mark Leyner, svetac otkačene psihodelične postmodernističke proze, vratio se nakon 13-godišnje pauze za ručak. Novi roman zove mu se The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. Leyner je izumio jezik rastopljen u internetskoj kiselini prije nego što je internetska tinta zasjala pred našim očima. I dalje je jednako ekstatično besmislen i paranoično seksi.

“Purposefully impenetrable” is a significant understatement when it comes to describing The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, Mark Leyner’s first novel in more than a decade. The book is discursive and recursive at the same time, hopping from tangent to tangent, then repeating passages within those tangents. It has the acutely academic attitude of Mark Z. Danielewski’s suspenseful metafiction powerhouse House Of Leaves, espousing lengthy cultural and literary theories about fictional material that takes the place of actual story.
In New Jersey, unemployed butcher Ike Karton is beset by warring factions of gods—with names like XOXO, Mogul Magoo, and El Brazo—who observe and meddle with his life while living thousands of miles away in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Or maybe the gods are a figment of Ike’s imagination, and he’s just going bonkers. Or the whole story is a written account of a modern oral tradition in the style of a Homerian epic, passed down through recitation by blind bards. Or all three are happening at the same time, since Leyner doesn’t like keeping things simple. Parsing out the details can be an excruciating exercise in patience.
Ike is brilliant, but dangerously paranoid; he oscillates between giving off vibes of Charles Manson and Homer. He’s prone to rampant sexual deviance, and Leyner falls into the easy Chuck Palahniuk trap of indulging those fantasies at gratuitous length. And in spite of being a sex-crazed, deranged lunatic who makes no contribution to society, he gets elevated to messianic heights of immortality, which provides Leyner’s starkest comment on current celebrity trends. The problem is that Ike is only the main character for the final third of the novel. The rest of the book focuses on the phenomenon of celebrity, recognizes it as an artificial construction, then comments on its own self-recognition.
Leyner’s thoughts on radical devotion could be construed as satirizing religion, and the book certainly features enough discussion of canonical passages to build that argument. But given that it suggests bringing back the guillotine to use on A-list celebrities, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is more likely another entry in Leyner’s career-spanning satirical indictment of celebrity worship and fandom.
Most of the obvious criticisms of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack are contained within its own meta-commentary: It describes itself as “punishingly repetitive” and “virtually incomprehensible.” And after the cacophony of references and detailed theses on the perils of celebrity culture, the book’s core is confusingly empty. Leyner’s previous novels, especially his 1990 story collection My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, now seem darkly prophetic in their depiction of the rise of media oversaturation and its cornerstone importance within American culture. But he’s been blaring the same warning for more than two decades.
In a 1993 essay reprinted in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace called Leyner’s work “a methedrine compound of pop pastiche, offhand high tech, and dazzling televisual parody, formed with surreal juxtapositions and grammarless monologues and flash-cut editing.” That still fits Leyner’s writing, even two decades later. Like the reality television and commercialization Leyner satirizes, his work has grown more extreme, and it’s less concerned with what it says than how loudly it says it.
At its best, Leyner’s satire is black as tar, with a bite as strong as the Jaws of Life, but The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is ultimately too obsessed with its own hermetically sealed gratification to say something substantive instead of shocking." - Kevin McFarland



 
Za podsjećanje, evo jedne Leynerove stare priče, iz zbirke My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist.

Mark Leyner: Bio sam beskonačno vruća i gusta točka 

Vozio sam se u Las Vegas da kažem sestri da sam dao isključiti majčin respirator. Četvorica ćelavaca u kabrioletu ispred mene gulili su kožu sa suncem opečene glave i bacali je na cestu. Morao sam vijugati da izbjegnem te ljigave ugruške krvi zbog kojih bih izgubio kontrolu nad autom. Manevrirao sam što sam bolje mogao svojom uvoznom, korejskom kutijom, ali mislio sam na nešto drugo. Nisam jeo danima. Bio sam pregladnio. Kada sam dospio na vrh brijega, iz magle je izronio jarki neonski natpis koji se palio i gasio: GUŠČJA JETRA I MAHUNE NA SLJEDEĆOJ STANICI. Pogledao sam u bedeker i pročitao: Hrana izvrsna, ambijent neugodan. Redovito sam zloupotrebljavao ilegalan hormon rasta, izlučen iz hipofiza ljudskih leševa i osjećao sam kao da se utapam u smradu izmeta, ali pomisao da pojedem nešto dobro razveselila me je. Od konobarice sam naručio soup du jour, a ona je rekla da je to primordijalna juha – amonijak i metan pomiješani s morskom vodom i šibani munjama. Naravno, uzet ću velik tanjur te embrionske čorbe, rekoh kad mi je suzdržanost popustila pod zanosom pretjerivanja – ali čim je ona otišla, raspoloženje mi je splasnulo jer je ambijent bio tako neugodan. Izbacivači su maltretirali neke mladiće koji su željeli piće – umjesto da ih samo legitimiraju, testirali su ih ugljikom 14 da odrede koliko su stari – a bio je tu i mladi pametnjaković iz Texas A& M, za susjednim stolom, koji je zatražio svježe mljevene Rolaids na svojim fettucinima, a dva konobara opako su ga obradila golemim mlincima za papar, veličine bejzbolske palice, pa sam odmah pohitao u auto i narcisoidno češljao svoju gustu kosu crnu poput ugljena, ogledajući se u retrovizoru. Pogledao sam u bedeker. Blizu je neka gostionica – zove se Little Bo Peep’s – njezini gosti su ovčari. Nakon dugačkog dana čuvanja stada, striženja, svirala Panove svirale, prizivanja muza i dijaloga u eklogama, vrijeme je za pivo i Bo Peep’s puna je seoskih bekrija koji su ostavili svoja stada i suncem okupanu, idealiziranu Arkadiju zbog sočnije privlačnosti opipljivih društvenih odnosa. Omiljena konobarica svima je Kukigoro. Nosi svijetloplavi svileni kimono i brokatni obi sa zlatnim i srebrnim krizantemama te s malenom lepezom u naborima. Lice joj je našminkano i napudrano do porculanske bjeline. Kauboj s južne strane granice naručuje “Biggu Makku”. Ali Kikugoro kaže: “Ovo nije Makudonarudo.” Uzima velik valjak od kristala galijeva arsenida i reže mu tanak vafl koji mu servira sa umakom od soje, wasabijem, ukiseljenim đumbirom i daikonom. “Provodi elektrone deset puta brže od silicija… dobar okus, gaucho-san, jedite” – kaže ona i nakloni se. Moja sestra je prelijep dan. O, prelijepi dane, sestro moja, obriši mi nos, umotaj me u odjeću svježeg mirisa. Sišem na nepopustljivoj bradavici prelijepog dana, ločem mlijeko prelijepog dana i prvi put od 1956. počivam na ramenu prelijepog dana. O, prelijepi dane, operi me u svom jezeru vedroga azura. Predozirao sam televiziju, katatoničan sam i cijanotičan, oživi me svojim pljuskom ledenog svjetla i prošeći me svojim trgom popločanim elegantnim pločama od vremena. O, prelijepi dane, poljubi me. Tvoja usta su poput Kolumbovog dana. Ti si mentol jeseni. Moja pluća ne mogu utažiti žeđ za tobom. Oživi me – nikada neću izdahnuti svoje osvježavajuće plinove. Napuhni me, da se uspnem na nebo i oplakujem monotonu topografiju svojeg života. O, prelijepi dane, sestro moja, obriši mi nos i uresi me svojim raskošnim haljama. Idemo ručati na otvorenom. Tvoji sendviči su od trske i vjetra s mirisom svježeg tiska. Tvoje iskrzane čačkalice su listopadno drveće iz školskih dana. Bio sam beskonačno vruća i gusta točka. Tako počinje autobiografija divljeg djeteta koje su odgojile goleme, blijede lutke. Autobiografija napisana s utezima na zglavcima. Završava ovim riječima: Automobil prolazi kroz baricu sperme, znoja i kontracepcijskog želea, poprskavši velikog kung-fu osvetnika iz hongkonškog filma. U automobilu spavaju dvije akefalne sardine u umaku od gorušice, u mrkloj tami svoje limenke. Odjednom se otvore vrata i ulazi mezomorfni kiborg, vadi 15-kilogramski falus od nehrđajuće poniklane legure i počinje ga polako milovati, zatvorenih očiju. Ima membranu od metalnog oksida za apsolutnu submikronsku filtraciju petrokemijskih fluida. Može ejakulirati herbicide, sumpornu kiselinu, katransko ljepilo, što god hoćete. Na drugom kraju bara, žena čija je poema dužine albuma o disfunkciji temporomandibularnog zgloba (TMJ) dobila Gramyja za najbolji verbalni zvučni zapis, nježno, polako, ritualno utrljava bakreni heksafluoroacetilaceton u klitoris dok promatra kako komad s neeuklidovskim crtama lica ispucava kuglu dehidrogeniziranog etilbenzena 3900 milja daleko, prema arktičkom arhipelagu, i ona na kraju kiši nad Baffinovim zaljevom. Vani, košarkaška lopta pada s neba i ubija psa. Na sajmu, visok i kosmat muškarac u blatom zaprljanom radnom odijelu, okružen ruljom retardiranih tinejdžera, maše batom iznad glave, rukama punim ožiljaka, i punom snagom njime udara po tofu-burgeru na cvjetnom papirnatom tanjuru. Gušter liže rosu s tučka zakržljala šafrana. Zakovice i grede lebde nad telekinetičkim građevinskim radnicima. Testosteronski glas Barryja Whitea dopire iz nekog tajanstvenog izvora u praonici. Dok gutam čašu vode iz slavine, bijelu od primjesa, shvaćam da se moj um prazni od sadržaja i puni vjerovanjima prema cilju usmjerenog zločestog djeteta koje su odgojile blijede lutke. Ja sam glas… glas iz onostranosti i glas iznutra – čujete li me? Da. Govorim vama i samo vama – je li to jasno? Da, gospodaru. Kome govorim? Sebi i samo sebi. Je li “sretan” odgovarajući epitet za onoga koji doživljava svaki trenutak kao da ga naizmjence živoga deru i škakljaju na smrt? Ne, gospodaru. Osim hormona rasta izlučenog iz hipofiza leševa, uzimao sam anaboličke steroide, lijekove za regeneraciju tkiva, stimulativni faktor za rast granulocitno-makrofagnih kolonija (GM-CSF) – tvar kojom se stimulira rast nekih važnih krvnih stanica kod žrtava radijacije – i nosni sprej s neuropeptidima koji ubrzava lučenje hormona hipofize; rastao sam sve više, a troškovi prehrane postajali su golemi. Stoga sam se prijavio na televizijski kviz u nadi da ću zaraditi novac. Moje pitanje za 250 000 dolara u gotovini i nagradama glasilo je: kad bi Tihi ocean bio pun džina, koje bi jezero trebalo napuniti vermutom da bi se smiješao suhi martini? Rekoh jezero Ontario, ali odgovor je bio Kaspijsko more, koje se naziva morem, ali po definiciji je jezero. Nisam uspio. Ponizio sam svoju obitelj i osramotio majstore kung fua iz hrama Shaolin. Zlokobno sam zurio u publiku u studiju koja je skandirala nešto nalik na “glupane”. Sada sam u autu. Pun sam Sinutaba. Vozim posvuda. Vektor moga gibanja od dane točke je izotropan – što znači da su svi mogući smjerovi jednako vjerojatni. Završavam u prljavoj maloj kockarnici negdje u Vegasu, možda u Renou, možda u Tahoeu. Ne znam… ali ona je tu. Ne mogu reći je li ljudsko biće ili ginemorfni android pete generacije, a i nije me briga. Otvaram ampulu feromona za parenje i puštam da ispari u barski zrak; pijuckam metilni izocijanat s ledom, metilni izocijanat je tvar koja je ubila više od 2000 ljudi kada je procurila u Bhopalu, Indija, ali zahvaljujući dizanju utega, aerobnim vježbama i prehrani s malo masnoća i mnogo vlakana, ta tvar ne djeluje na mene. Naravno, ona dolazi ovamo i sjeda na stolac nasuprot meni. Nakon nekoliko trenutaka šutnje, ja povlačim prvi potez: mi smo svi psihotici u začetku i takvi smo od svoje druge godine, kažem i ispljunem kocku leda natrag u čašu. Ona mi se približava. S te udaljenosti, fine dlačice oko njezina pupka podsjećaju me na fraktalne paprati koje nastaju ubrizgavanjem obojene vode u otopinu polimera u vodi; to joj kažem. Ona me gleda u oči: blagoglagoljiv si, površno šarmantan, megaloman, nemaš grizodušja, osjećaji su ti plitki, impulzivan si i nemaš realistične dugoročne planove koji me upravo sada uzbuđuju, kaže ona i približava se još više. Mi se hranimo istim plijenom, mrljam ja. Moje usne sada su samo jedan angstrem daleko od njezinih, samo jednu desetmilijardinku metra. Počinjem je ljubiti ali ona okreće glavu u stranu. Zar dobri dječaci koji pojedu sve povrće ne dobiju desert? – pitam. Ne smijem te ljubiti, mi smo monozigotni replikanti – imamo 100% isti genetski materijal. Vrti mi se u glavi. Ti si prelijep dan, uzvikujem, tvoj dah je zefir eukaliptusa koji pleše pas de bourrée na Galilejskom moru. Hvala, kaže ona, ali ne možemo otići k meni i voditi ljubav jer su starješine zabranili monozigotni incest. A što, rekoh ja, ako bih mogao sve to promijeniti… Što ako bih, rekoh ja, imao minijaturni pištolj koji ubrizgava genetske fragmente u stanice živih organizama i mijenja njihovu genetsku matricu tako da monozigotni replikanti više ne bi bili monozigotni replikanti i ona bi tada smjela voditi ljubav s mišićavcem a da ne prekrši tabu incesta, kažem ja, raskopčavajući košulju i otkrivajući uređaj koji sam pričvrstio za pojas svojih crnih traperica. Kako si to dobio? pita ona bez daha, zureći u debelu plastičnu cijev ojačanu vlaknima i u logo Uzi-Biotech na magazinu s dvjema nabojima želirane rekombinantne DNK. Dobio sam to za Božić… Imaš li posljednje riječi prije nego što pomiješam tvoje kromosome, kažem i ciljam. Da, kaže ona, prvo ti. Okrećem cijev prema svojem srcu. Ovo su moje posljednje riječi: kada sam izašao iz majčina uterusa bio sam velik poput kocke za pileću juhu i otac je rekao porodničaru: Shvaćam da je na ovom stupnju teško prognozirati njegove izglede za produktivnu budućnost, ali ako će cijeli život imati šest strana i težiti 0,4 grama, onda je eutanazija najbolje rješenje. Ali majka, koja je nekoliko milisekundi prije toga trpjela trudove, već je bila odjenula svoju havajsku haljinu i espadrile te pušila Marlboro: nikakva prištava budala koja je prije dva mjeseca izašla iz Guadalajare neće rastopiti ovaj mali, bespomoćni heksaedar u loncu vrele vode, rekla je, a sestra je s akrobatskim očajem uspjela podmetnuti lavor pod pepeo njezine cigarete koju je spalila jednim gnjevno dubokim udahom. Evo mojih posljednjih riječi: moj strah od maltretiranja i ponižavanja potječe od incidenta koji se dogodio prije mnogo godina u restoranu. Pokraj mene za šank je sjeo muškarac od 200 kila i dokazivao da jedna vrsta papirnatih ubrusa upija bolje od druge. Lice mu je bilo nateklo, prekriveno grozničavo crvenim mrljama. Izlio je moju čašu čokoladnog mlijeka na šank i obrisao ga prvo jednom vrstom papirnatog ubrusa, pa drugom. Svakim zamahom po šanku zahvaćao je sve više i više, dok nije počeo udarati natopljenim ubrusom po mojim prsima. Primao sam ritmične udarce. Umjesto da mi drugi gosti za šankom pomognu, rugali su se i posprdno smijali. Ali pogledaj me sada! Ja sam strašan bog. Kada uđem u šumu, i najmoćniji hrastovi poblijede i zadrhte. Sve šuškanje, cvrčanje, brundanje i zujanje prestaje, žuboravi potoci utihnu. Sve je to zbog moje mišićavosti… koja je rezultat mnogih sati naporne vježbe u teretani i stroge dijete koju provodim. Kada uđem u šumu, ptice dobiju proljev od straha i nastane poplava sranja s drveća. Koračam kroz šumu – moj zvižduk je poput zaglušne frule koju svira luđak s krvavim zavojem oko glave. Osvjetljava me sunce, rasparano u inkoherenciju blještavih vektora: svjetlucavo, nazubljeno čudovište!

Preveo Goran Vujasinović 


Intervju s Leynerom u Wiredu

Bernard Queysanne i Georges Perec - Un homme qui dort

Uspavani čovjek, film po romanu čudesnog Georgesa Pereca. Matematička permutacija ljudi, stvari i prostora. Sestinska kapela otuđenosti.

"Perec's 1967 novel Un homme qui dort is, by Perecian standards, a relatively straightforward work—its most noteworthy stylistic feature is its unfailingly beautiful use of the second person singular. It tells the story of its title character's attempted withdrawal from the world. At first the book's "you" seems a victim of depression; but the narrative grows more acute, and eventually genuine philosophical ideas emerge, and intertwine with the question of how to apply a philosophy to life as actually lived in a society/world that one cannot, finally, turn one's back on.

In the early '70s Perec and his friend Bernard Queysanne, a filmmaker whose experience had heretofore been as an assistant director, teamed up to make a film of the book. While much of the film's narration—which comprises the entirety of the film's verbal content; there is no dialogue—is taken directly from the novel, Perec jettisoned the book's linear structure in favor of, Bellos explains, "a mathematical construction. After the prologue (part 0, so to speak) there are six sections. The six sections are interchangeable in the sense that the same objects, places, and movements are shown in each, but they are all filmed from different angles and edited into different order, in line with the permutations of the sestina. The text and the music are similarly organized in six-part permutations, and then edited and mixed so that the words are out of phase with the image except at apparently random moments, the last of which—the closing sequence—is not random at all but endowed with an overwhelming sense of necessity."
Indeed. It's this structural sophistication that makes the 77-minute film so peculiarly compelling. As the screengrabs here suggest, much of the film's imagery comes from the playbook of the surreal and avant-garde. It's not hackneyed—we will never get our fill of reflections in cracked mirrors—or presented in a hackneyed way...merely familiar. It's in the differing permutations that they gain power. We start seeing them in new ways. An entire world is created through shifts in perspective and dislocations, and it's achieved so seamlessly that the viewer may well become hypnotized without quite understanding why.
Here's the conclusion of Bellos' sentence about the filmmakers' attitude towards their final product: "...but now that they had seen it properly, they, too, were moved to tears." As you may well be." - Glenn Kenny