Nico B. (Nico Bruinsma) - Sin + Pig + 1334

Religiozna tijela ubojica.

From the Director of PIG and BETTIE PAGE DARKEL comes the erotic, surreal, film SIN. Three episodes, staged in the 1920-1940s, where each story tells the duality of a female protagonist; the belly/frolic dancer (with Angelita Franco of Tinto Brass’ Kick the Cock), the sculpture model versus the nun (with Caroline Pierce), the legless aristocrat and the maid (with Dahlia Dark).

Director: Nico B

1334, a ghost story, that reveals the haunting disturbances than began to plague the ones left behind following the completion of PIG and the death of R.W., where reality turns into darkness, with the effect upon no return.

Director: Nico B

PIG (1998), a film depicting the relationship between a killer (Rozz Williams) and his victim (James Hollan), where all lines are crossed, blending fantasy and reality, in a transformation of the subconscious mind of a killer, graphically showing the manifestation of itself into abstract forms and material, all deriving from his suffering and desperation. PIG is an exploration of the subconscious thru underground film making. PIG was the last project of Rozz Williams (who died 4.1.1998), formerly known from the rock group Christian Death among others. R.W. spoke of the film as a form of exorcism & transition of his personal demons.

Director: Nico B

Until relatively recently, I do not think there has ever been an occasion in my life where I felt a certain overwhelming nostalgia for a film that I had never actually seen, but such is certainly the case with the apparently long ago completed but only just released cinematic work Sin (2005-2008) directed by Dutch-born auteur Nico Bruinsma. I first heard about the film in 2008 but did not become obsessed with seeing it until early 2013 after interviewing director Nico B, whose latest film 1334 (2012) became somewhat of a personal obsession of mine. At the time, my lady friend had become extremely sick with some mysterious illness and joked that she was ill with “1334,” thus the film name became a brief but nonetheless memorable inside joke of sorts between of us (given that both of us are also longtime fans of Christian Death/Rozz Williams, the dark origin of the name was not lost on us). In short, early 2013 was a very happy period in my life and I cannot help but associate the enigmatic film Sin with it, so naturally I have been dying to actually see the film in all its sexually sacrilegious splendor, especially considering that I eventually began to suspect that it might not ever be released.

A partially pornographic, silent black-and-white avant-garde triptych with an innate timeless quality starring both literally and figuratively dark dames with deadly and thankfully wholly organic fleshy curves that should remind any sensible heterosexual man why fake tits are aesthetically repugnant and nothing short of the erotic equivalent of fool's gold, Nico’s rather refined 30-minute celluloid experiment in stylishly sinister eroticism is arguably his most personal and, in turn, auteur oriented, film to date. For those familiar with dark-haired Dutchman, it is no secret that Nico B is arguably better known as a film distributor and owner of the great company Cult Epics than as a filmmaker, hence his fairly small yet nonetheless notable oeuvre. Of course, Nico pretty much always intended to be both an entrepreneur and auteur as he saw it as a practical means to not succumbing to the starving artist cliché that has more or less become synonymous with his famous countryman Vincent van Gogh. In fact, as the filmmaker stated in an interview with proud belligerent dipsomaniac Gene Gregorits in regard to his one-time film professor and mentor Babeth Mondini’s absolutely imperative early influence on his career, “She took me to school every day, because we both lived in Amsterdam. After one month, she said, ‘Okay, I like what you’re doing but the films you want to make are not going to make any money.’ Or, ‘No one’s going to invest money in these films.’ I thought, Well, I’ll make money first, and then I’ll do films. She gave me the best advice of my life.” Ultimately, Nico would return the favor by releasing Babeth’s feature Kiss Napoleon Goodbye (1990) starring Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins under his Cult Epics label. 

Not unlike his one-time friend, legendary experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, Nico B is an auteur that might not direct many films, but when he does they tend to be seemingly immaculate in their esoterically erotic ‘evil’ splendor as singular celluloid works that surely transcend time in terms of both cinematic technique and subject matter. Also, like his one-time professor, Dutch experimental master Frans Zwartjes (Living, Pentimento), Nico seems to have nil interest in appealing to any sort of audience as a perennially underground filmmaker that rarely makes full-length features and is only concerned with exploring his own distinct personal obsessions, especially of the carnal sort. In that sense, Sin is, in many ways, the quintessential Nico B film as a sort of instant cult classic that will only be truly appreciated by those select loyal few that have the will and good instincts to find it.  Somewhat ironically, despite being rampantly heterosexual as demonstrated by his virtually lifelong obsession Bettie Page and the promotion of her bondage films, Nico’s best known film is the homo serial killer meditation Pig, which was co-written and co-directed by legendary deathrock prince(ss) Rozz Williams and thus less geared towards the Dutchman's own sexual proclivities (for starters, the film not only features no unclad female bodies, but not female characters at all). As his early Super-8 student film Slime (1990) rather blatantly reveals, Nico has been long obsessed with many of the same themes, especially in regard to the so-called fairer sex, sacrilege, and the sometimes strangely complimentary relationship between sex, death, and religion.  In many ways, Sin, much like Rozz William's art, is a deceptively spiritual cinematic work in that sense that it feels like it was created by a heretical believer who subscribes to an inverted form of Christianity where sin and human misery are worshiped, as if Nico lost the faith due as a result of living in such a dark, dispiriting, and dystopian realm that he could only bring himself to believe in hell and sinfulness.  Indeed, not unlike much of Zwartjes' films, Sin feels like an aesthetically pleasing expression of hell on earth, thereupon making it all the more notable that the director hails from a literally puritanical Calvinist nation where telling jokes was even considered subversive only a couple of generations ago.

 Notably, nearly a decade ago in 2008, Nico B confessed in an interview in regard to the cryptically semi-autobiographically nature of his film, “My new film SIN is a collection of 3 stories told from my own personal experiences with women I have been with. I put the protagonist of each film in a different time and changed their professional ambitions. All three I shot on Super 8 to get that early century artistic feeling. All three are also very surreal and erotic (and of course controversial). In one story a nun gives an on camera blow job to a priest. I believe this is the first art film to show this on screen. The scene is a tribute to Rozz of Christian Death (both of us being brought up with Christian beliefs). Also, the religious ending of BETTIE PAGE: DARK ANGEL is also a reference to the scene in SIN.”  As Nico's own words more or less express, his film is a sort of amorously abstract three-part cinematic anti-love letter to seemingly mostly dangerous and mentally unstable ex-lovers from his past.  In a second interview that I conducted with Nico in 2013, he demonstrated an almost ambivalent attitude to the act of filmmaking by stating, “I never intend to ever make any film, unless I see no way out,” thus underscoring the internal pain, sorrow, and despair that is at the very core of the film. Of course, judging by the fact that virtually all of the male characters in the film meet a grisly or tragic end, it is easy to see what Nico means as Sin is a fairly forebodingly forsaken cinematic work that, despite featuring unclad busty babes flaunting their entrancing flesh, is clearly the agonized express of a haunted and internally wounded individual that sees sex as an oftentimes deadly affair, at least spiritually speaking. An elegantly gritty three-part Super-8 tone poem fueled by pathos of perversity and full of big and highly suckable milky white tits and nicely trimmed beavers, Nico B’s strikingly beauteous dark romantic cinematic confession thrives on unabashedly laurelling the lethally lustful and sexually neurotic in such an effortlessly confident and reassured fashion that most filmgoers, including thoroughly desensitized gorehounds, will be simply stunned and dumbfounded by what they see to the point where they will only remember the big bosoms and cross-in-the-cunt. Far too moodily aesthetically exquisite to be confused with actual pornography and too politically incorrect and just plain incendiary to be accepted by the more spiritually castrated members of the Criterion Collection crowd, Sin is sinema for the decidedly romantically damned. 

 A modern day mythopoeic silent flick featuring a musical score made up entirely of Impressionist compositions by Claude Debussy that thankfully does not seem masturbatorily cinephiliac in a Guy Maddin-esque fashion nor obnoxiously anachronistic like the sickeningly silly shot-on-video neo-vintage Lovecraft adaptation The Call of Cthulhu (2005) directed by Andrew Leman, Sin begins in a striking fashion that seems like what might happen if someone attempted to reconcile the classic Golden Age Hollywood biblical epics of Cecil B. DeMille with Kenneth Anger’s classic psychedelic Thelemite micro-epic Lucifer Rising (1972). After beginning with an ancient Egyptian princess having her throat slit by some random Egyptian gentleman, the following inter-title appears, “In ancient Egyptian mythology the panther Bastet is the God of pleasure, dancing and music, also know as . . . LADY OF THE EAST.” Literally roaming with black panthers as a child, the Lady of the East grows up to be a sort of archaic stripper and while she is doing one of her exotic dance routines she is ‘bought’ by a wealthy American (Pipo) who brings her back to the United States where she becomes the headliner in a Chicago burlesque cabaret act called “Dance of the Pharaohs” where she exploits her exotic ancestral roots in a fittingly kitschy fashion. Leading a lurid life of potentially deadly vice, the Lady of the East has a traumatic childhood flashback in regard to the murder of her father whilst in an opium haze and subsequently shoots her man dead with a handgun after he gets the gall to attempt to steal her precious whoring money. As the ‘Lady of the East’ segment seemingly unintentionally reveals, America has the power to even debase tough third world whores.  Of course, the segment also reveals that it is never a good idea to get involved with a girl that has daddy issues, especially if said daddy issues began at an early age before any sort of emotionally maturity could have been reached.

 In what is arguably the most intricate and indubitably the most controversial segment of the film, ‘Le Modèle,’ one watches with erotic intrigue as porn star Caroline Pierce—a seemingly forsaken woman that now regularly appears in extremely amateurish ‘mandingo’ porn—portrays a dual role as both a Catholic nun and a lecherous model in a provocative performance that features a devilishly dichotomous look a female sexuality and spirituality. Undoubtedly, one could argue that the model is the nun’s sort of Jungian shadow and vice versa, as both characters seem to reflect the other’s unconscious longings and compulsions. Despite being total opposites in virtually every single way (for instance, the nun is followed by a white cat while the model is followed by a black one), they are merely inversions of one another, with one suffering from sexual repression and the other spiritual repression. Of course, as Nico B more than hints in the segment, the sexual is oftentimes intertwined with the spiritual and vice versa, with a crucifix being arguably the ultimate figurative (and, in the film’s case, literal) dildo and/or phallic symbol. While ‘Le Modèle’ oftentimes feels like a hypnotic hodgepodge of Jean Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet (1930), Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), and John E. Schmitz's The Voices (1953), it also owes a little to the Catholic carnality of Walerian Borowczyk’s classic Nunsploitation flick Interno di un convento (1978) aka Behind Convent Walls. While the nun sucks the cock of a swarthy Jesus-esque priest with great grace, the model seductively stabs her cunt with a wooden crucifix, which she eventually mutilates herself with after adding a crown of thorns to the makeshift holy dildo. After their sexual experiences, both women become somewhat haunted in their own ways, with the nun being obsessed with destroying a statue modeled after the model and the model being preoccupied with the horrors of being seen naked in public by finger-wagging nuns and priests. In the end, the nun stabs the statue in the heart and causes to magically bleed and the model strips her clothes and enters a large church, which immediately becomes consumed with flames of passion.  As to whether either women achieves salvation or eternal damnation, one can only assume, but considering the model seems to worship herself and her own body (hence why she is a model) instead of Christ like the nun, it is probably safe to say that she will become one of Satan's sluts.

 Undoubtedly, the third and final segment of Sin, ‘The Maid,’ is the most understated and enigmatic as a sullen and quite literally pathetic story that centers on a vaguely handsome and independently wealthy legless dope fiend (Mark Lee) that hires an inordinately busty broad (Dahlia Dark) to supposedly clean his humble abode. Indeed, the eponymous cleaner has what might be sensitively described as ‘jumbo jugs’ and she certainly knows how to use them as indicated by the fact that her crippled employer is regularly voyeuristically gazing at her fine fleshy goods. In fact, the perverted cripple even finds himself masturbating with one of his stubs whilst admiring the maid’s absolutely mesmerizing carnal meat, as if her ample sized body parts are all the more of a turn-on for him since he is missing some of his own appendages (whether or not he has a cock remains to be seen). A man that seems to have come to the conclusion that he is nothing and that no healthy sane woman would ever be genuinely interested in him as a romantic partner, the visibly lonely legless wonder seems determined to degrade himself and does so by kissing and gently placing high-heels on his rarely clothed employee’s feet.  The relationship between the man and his maid is innately infantile and almost seem like that of a mother and son as demonstrated by his tendency to crawl around his house like a baby and stare at his employee's fine fuck-udders like he is desperately thirsty for mother's milk.  As an individual that seems to have lived a seemingly unbearable life of pain and discomfort as hinted in haunting childhood flashbacks where he receives large injections from a doctor while be watching by a little girl that may or may not be his sister, it is certainly no surprise that the man is a morbidly morose and melancholic masochist that lives solely to further his own self-debasement despite the fact that he is wealthy. In a bittersweet conclusion that really sums up many of the themes of the entire film, the well endowed maid gives the man an injection that provides him a most permanent form of solace that could not be more ideal considering his extra precarious predicament in life.  As all three of the chapters of Sin make quite clear, sex and death are the only things that make life truly worth living, especially if you are a whore, cripple, or nun.

In the introduction of his text Erotism: Death and Sensuality, French Nietzschean Georges Bataille wrote, “Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death. Strictly speaking, this is not a definition, but I think the formula gives the meaning of eroticism better than any other. If a precise definition were called for, the starting point would certainly have to be sexual reproductive activity, of which eroticism is a special form. Sexual reproductive activity is common to sexual animals and men, but only men appear to have turned their sexual activity into erotic activity. Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest independent of the natural goal: reproduction and the desire of children. From this elementary definition let us now return to the formula I proposed in the first place: eroticism is assenting to life even in death. Indeed, although erotic activity is in the first place an exuberance of life, the object of this psychological quest, independent as I say of any concern to reproduce life, is not alien to death.” Undoubtedly, Bataille’s words in regard to erotic passion, as opposed to sexual reproduction, having to be imagined by the individual are indubitably relevant to the entire essence of a film like Sin where sex takes a truly transcendental and otherworldly form that entirely eclipses bodily functions, so it is only fitting that the frog anarchist concludes his introduction to Erotism with the remark: “Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism—to the blending and fusion of separate objects. It leads us to eternity, it leads us to death, and through death to continuity. Poetry is eternity; the sun matched with the sea.” Of course, in a way, cinema is also eternity, thus making it all the more fitting that Nico B’s film has an innate timeless quality as a cinematic work that even transcends the truly bygone era(s) that it recreates, hence its similarities to the films of Cocteau (who Nico paid tribute to with his ‘travel film’ Ville Jean Cocteau (2003), which is included with the BD/DVD combo of Sin released by Cult Epics). 

 Sometimes feeling like an avant-garde porn-snuff flick documenting three real-life cases that were excised from Kenneth Anger’s classic piece of highbrow toilet reading Hollywood Babylon (1953), Sin is nothing short of an orgasmically oneiric celluloid gem that was made for the sort of dark seeker cinephile that looks at hunting down rare and arcane films as a sort of spiritual quest. As a successful film distributor and cinematic poet that clearly only makes films for himself, Nico B is like both Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo van Gogh combined. Certainly, I cannot think of another mensch that I respect as both an artist and businessmen that releases obscure European arthouse films that no one else would dare to release. While set in an idealized past that seems like a schizophrenic universe as dreamed up by the black sheep stepson of Judaic pornographer Irving Klaw and surrealist poet Cocteau, Sin is certainly most potent if viewed from the perspective of a cryptically autobiographical film that is based on three events from Nico B’s life, hence why the filmmaker seemed so reluctant to release it. Of course, as a film with a strangely erotic crucifix masturbation scene that makes the infamous unholy preteen Onanist scenario in The Exorcist (1973) seem like outmoded child’s play, one can only speculate how literal the film is in terms of its autobiographical depiction of the auteur’s sexual life, though one can pretty much assume that Nico B has had his fair share of unhinged girlfriends with humongous hooters.  Naturally, as art history has unequivocally demonstrated, crazy cunts with addictively delectable carnal-traps and devilish curves always make for a great source for artistic inspiration, even if one would rather forget the mind games and violently neurotic tendencies that tend to plague many members of the so-called fairer sex.  Undoubtedly, after watching Nico's film, I could not help but be reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche's poetic words, “The true man wants two different things: danger and diversion. He therefore wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything . . . Man must be trained for war, and woman for the relaxation of the warrior: all else is folly . . . Too sweet fruits — these the warrior does not like. He therefore likes woman — even the sweetest woman is bitter [...] Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!”

In his 1963 article ‘The Camera As A God,’ film theorist and experimental filmmaker Charles Boultenhouse (Handwritten, Dionysus) provocatively wrote, “The good film-maker is he who is engaged (consciously or unconsciously) in preserving and perfecting the demon in the camera; the very best film-maker is he who is engaged in transforming the demon into the god. I am sure you will see that an idea so theological as this will probably make out experimental film to be positively sacred in character and commercial film rather blasphemous. You will be right..” In the same article, Boultenhouse also states, “Hollywood is the tease of all time [...] The teenagers of all ages who worship its fetishes will never be satisfied; nor will the Demon of the Camera, bored almost cross-eyed by the miles of Nothing passing before it into Oblivion.”  Of course, whereas Hollywood gives you nothing more than the a wholly artificial pseudo-blonde silicone-fueled tease that has plagued vulnerable American youth with a sort of collective metaphysical disease that has caused them to confuse love with lust and eroticism with animalistic bodily function, Sin—a delectably demonic film where, in the Nietzschean sense, god is long dead and has been replaced by a sort of Dionysian goddess of erratic eroticism—is a three course orgy that reminds the viewer that sometimes the sight of a certain pussy evokes serious pathos.  As someone that counts virtually all of the great loves of my life as voluptuous women with killer curves and delectable derrieres, I can certainly understand the misery, melancholy, and lovelorn lunacy that the unclad female form can provoke in men, hence my admittedly somewhat perverse personal obsession with a film like Nico B's where a woman's best assets are elevated to the level of spectral archetypes that stir the collective unconscious and penetrate the psyche like a pulsating love truncheon plowing into a fresh hymen-intact prick-purse.  In short, Sin is the sort of romance film that you hope to see from a friend of Rozz Williams and ex-student of Frans Zwartjes. - http://www.soiledsinema.com

Studio Smack - The Garden Of Earthly Delights (2016)

Vau!
“Any sufficiently advanced civilisation is indistinguishable from its garbage.” – Bruce Sterling
Svaka dovoljno razvijena žudnja nerazlučiva je od svog smeća.



We created a new and animated interpretation of 'The Garden Of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymus Bosch (tinyurl.com/zf6u9nu). We were chosen to go crazy on the middle panel. So we did... in 4K!!!
Go check out the result in the MOTI museum. It's HUGE and AWESOME! You have until the end of 2016. So hurry! motimuseum.nl


For the New Delights exhibition celebrating cultural legacy of Hieronymus Bosch at the Moti Museum, Dutch creative house Studio Smack was asked to reimagine the center panel of the artist’s iconic painting “The Garden Of Earthly Delights“. The resulting PARADISE was a wonderfully wild, vividly animated, short 4K film that brings to life modern versions of Bosch’s characters within the distinct landscape he created so long ago.

The creatures that populate this indoor playground embody the excesses and desires of 21st century Western civilization. Consumerism, selfishness, escapism, the lure of eroticism, vanity and decadence. All characters are metaphors for our society where loners swarm their digital dream world. They are symbolic reflections of egos and an imagination of people as they see themselves – unlike Bosch’s version, where all individuals more or less look the same. From a horny Hello Kitty into a coke hunting penis snake. An incarnate spybot into headless fried chickens. - laughingsquid.com/a-vividly-animated-digital-interpretation-of-the-garden-of-earthly-delights-by-hieronymus-bosch/

other stuff:

Carl Andersen - I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing (1988)

Stilizirani trash, bečki odgovor američkom "cinema of transgression" (Kern i Zedd): punk rock-hardcore sex-vampirska komedija. "Najčudniji film svih vremena"?

I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing AKA I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing and the Incredible Lusty Dust-Whip from Outer Space Conquers the Earth Versus the 3 Psychedelic Stooges of Dr. Fun Helsing and Fighting Against Surf-Vampres and Sex-Nazis and Have Troubles with This Endless Titillation Title AKA Vampiros Sexos (1988), and Mondo Weirdo: A Trip to Paranoia Paradise AKA Jungfrau im Abgrund (1990), dir. Carl Andersen


I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing‘s long title alone says this must be the weirdest movie ever, but it’s nothing you expect. In 1989 we invited the director Carl Andersen to the Cult Club in Amsterdam to show this movie, but instead he gave us the premiere of his next film, Mondo Weirdo. Teenage Zabbadoing, shot on 16mm, is in part the Austrian answer to the Cinema of Transgression of Richard Kern and Nick Zedd, but even more it’s a European punk rock hardcore sex vampire film, stylistic and trashy at the same time, with an excellent no-wave score by Model D’oo.
Mondo Weirdo, Carl Andersen’s second film, is in the same style as his debut, with a script like Jess Franco meets Jean-Luc Godard. It surpasses the first one in obscenity: straight, lesbian and hardcore gay sex in a world of vampires, punk rockers, and surrealism, again with the electro music of Model D’oo. Carl sadly died a few years ago, nearly forgotten. - Nico B. 366weirdmovies.com/nico-bs-top-10-weird-movies/

Viennese underground trash-horror movie from the late eighties, score composed and recorded by Modell Doo in 1989. The scenes here feature the song "No Soundtrack" and a stripped-down instrumental version of "Don''t Overact", both of which are available on MD''s album "Dinky Diamond" (to be ordered at www.klanggalerie.com). A 180 gram vinyl album called "Frame Electric. Music for Movies, 1987-1993" featuring the original soundtracks to Carl Andersen's "I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing" (aka "Vampyros Sexos") and "Mondo Weirdo" plus a track from Johannes Rosenbergers avant-garde film "karma mecanique" can be ordered via www.modelldoo.com

While the Cinema of Transgression movement had peaked in the mid-1980s with the work of Richard Kern and Beth B., across the Atlantic, director Carl Andersen began making films clearly in the same vein in the late 1980s. His debut film, I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing... (full title: "I Was A Teenage Zabbadoing And The Incredible Lusty Dust-Whip From Outer Space Conquers The Earth Versus The 3 Psychedelic Stooges Of Dr. Fun Helsing And Fighting Against Surf-Vampires And Sex-Nazis And Have Troubles With This Endless Titillation Title") is clearly situated within this movement, combining Vampire archetypes with hardcore sex all set to a soundtrack of post-punk and no-wave music.

In this hour long, starkly lit black and wide feature, plot takes a sidestep to the depiction of angsty counterculture, fights, obsessive sex, and lusty vampires. What little plot is found follows, apparently, "A female vampire from the planet Arus [who] tries to vampirize the descendants of Dr. Fun Helsing."¹ The vampire infects her first victim by way of "infected" olive oil (?!), and then the vampire virus spreads itself via sex and biting. This all takes place among 20 something kids clad in black and leather, who hang out at a bar (The Video Teque) and don't really do too much with their lives other than fuck.

For being what could be considered an ostensibly empty plot, the film moves at a rapidly entertaining pace, with occasional bouts of humor (as two characters are driving along the street on their hunt for the vampires, they keep passing couples fighting for no apparent reason). Parts of the film also are tailor made to fit the excellent music that's decorating the scenery, but the film plays these "music video" scenes in a way similar to the aforementioned Cinema of Transgression, never delving into something that seems out of place (in the way quite a few contemporary straight to video horror flicks do).

It's remarkably trashy but stylish; a perfect visual accompaniment to the no-wave music scene that prevailed in America (and to some extent, Europe)--far more fitting, in my opinion, than many of the films of Nick Zedd (who authored the Cinema of Transgression Manifesto).

There are, however, two particularly interesting elements of the film that merit mention. The first is a particularly potent twenty second scene where two of the main vampires get into a brief fight as one of their soon to be victims plays an acoustic song with lyrics about dancing in the background. It's bizarrely poetic in a very low-rent sort of way that totally fits the tone of the film. The second interesting element comes by way of what the vampires are weak against: instead of garlic and crucifix's, the vampires cannot cross the border of--wait for it-- Tarkovsky films! It's a bizarre jab that once again fits the punk spirit that pervades the rest of the film.
My main point of interest to the films of Carl Andersen, aside from the fact that they're delightfully entertaining and earnest in a way that most cinema has forgotten about, comes from the fact that ever since seeing Andersen's most notorious film, 1990's Mondo Weirdo, I've been a bit obsessed with the band that does the soundtracks for what appears to be his entire oeuvre, Model D'oo. There's a track that I absolutely love from Mondo Weirdo that also appears in this film, albeit in a stripped down version. Regardless, liking the music of the soundtrack significantly helps to enjoy the film.
 - esotika.blogspot.hr/2008/03/i-was-teenage-zabbadoing-carl-andersen.html

Dalibor Barić - Amnesiac on the Beach (2013)

Slike u ogledalima bliže su nego što se čini? Naravno, jer su cijelo vrijeme u vama. Već su vas otele (a evo i od čega se sastoje). Mislili ste da je vaša unutrašnjost vaša i da je u vama? Greška. Ona upravo pluta u najdubljem svemiru a jedan njezin manji dio prepoznajete samo zato što ste ludi. 
Barićevi geni potječu s meteora nađena na Marsu pa je jedini hrvatski filmaš opremljen za međugalaktičku komunikaciju sa sadašnjošću.  


vimeo.com/user1479357
















I Sing the Body Electric from Dalibor Baric on Vimeo.

The work of prolific collage artist, experimental filmmaker and graphic novelist Dalibor Barić explores psychedelic realms in which voyeuristic psychic vampirism and cut-up images of consumerist dissociation create an obsessive alternate reality that is often frightening, sometimes funny, but always transfixing. Baric lives and works in Zagreb, and this retrospective, the first of its kind in Montreal, showcases 23 of his films, videos and quirky experiments. Films include So, This Vampire Soup is No Good for you?, New Hippie Future!, Krautrock 74, Ghost Porn in Ectoplasm! But How??, Horror of Dracula, The Mind From Nowhere and many more. - popmontreal.com/

http://vimeo.com/user1479357/videos    http://www.fangoria.com/new/fangoria-screamers-pop-montreal-selects-dalibor-barics-horror-of-dracula/


Singing The Body Electric with Dalibor Barić

Dalibor Baric

Dalibor Barić is a Croatian experimental filmmaker whose works often explores traditional genres like science fiction and horror.  Using found objects as his source material, Barić uses collage techniques in order to produce sophisticated psychedelic narratives that often blur the lines between our outer and inner realities.  Moreover, Barić’s work also calls into question issues surrounding artistic practices in the digital age including ideas about authenticity, simulation/replication and appropriation.  With that being said, his work is extremely engaging, bizarre and stimulating.
The following is an interview with Barić that took place over many conversations via e-mail.  On Saturday, September 28, 2013 POP Montreal will be screening twenty-three of his genre-bending films curated by Kier-La Janisse, a rare event not to be missed by experimental film enthusiasts and genre fans. (Screening details HERE)
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Clint Enns: Let us begin with one of the more obvious questions.  How are your films made?
Dalibor Baric: For me, it all begins as child’s play; I wanted to be a filmmaker, but without worrying about budget and equipment.  I am a ringleader for a flea circus comprised of found-footage, collage and references attempting to make films that examine various subjects.  Unfortunately, it is impossible to avoid real work. Like a stowaway destined to peel potatoes, I work frame by frame making handmade films using a Wacom tablet and Photoshop.
CE: In your work you blur the boundary between still and moving images. For instance, you experiment with the boil (a short loop that creates the illusion of movement), the pan, the zoom, layering, rotating and flipping the image, etc.
DB:  There is a concept from the field of robotics called the “uncanny valley,” in which a CGI character becomes too realist producing a feeling of repulsion when humans look at it, in essence, describing the cognitive dissonance we feel when the illusion of the Real is disrupted. I like to create this kind of rupture by breaking the illusion of homogeneity and continuity in film, that is, to spoil the believable, realistic effect by bringing to surface all this mechanics of film which are supposed to remain hidden.  In other words, the medium has of same importance as the message.
CE: Is your work digital or a hybrid form of film and digital?
DB: I never work with film, besides hand scratching on old 35mm stocks.  In the end, it’s all digital, even though my source material is gathered from everywhere: scrap images, textures, photographs, re-shot sequences from a television or computer screen. I cut out each image free hand using Photoshop to emulate scissor paper cut-outs to achieve an organic atmosphere or daylight presence. I never use any of the built-in effects or plug-ins other than Gaussian blur and basic colour correction. I would rather invent an effect or technical solution instead.

Pain So Light That Appears as Tickle

CE: One of the most aesthetically apparent aspects of your work is the use of digitized film grain and other replicated filmic artifacts, like sprocket-holes, etc.  What does authenticity mean in the digital age?
DB: There is an excellent example of forgery versus authenticity in Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in High Castle (1962). The book can be read as an exploration of Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra, a copy without an original, that is, pure simulation. I am fascinated by the way in which digitized old movies keep traces of mechanical damage and decay. It has all become merged in one layer, like a fossil. New digital artifacts are introduced through compression. Who knows, maybe the original film has already ceased to exist and this version is all we are left with. It’s a disturbing, haunting thought. Culturally, we are obsessed with the relics of our past. Think about our generations interest in retro, hauntology, fantasy, steampunk, Instagram, etc.  Due to the internet, we are over saturated with the radioactive contamination of our past forcing the future to disappear along the way. It might have something to do with creating a peaceful anchor in time. These are some of the reasons I make digital films that mimic analogue ones.  To document death in the rear-view mirror. “Watch out, the world’s behind you”, sings the Velvet Underground in Sunday Morning.
CE: You have nothing to worry about, the future is coming.  Plus, as you have already pointed out, new technologies inevitably produce new artifacts which will eventually become nostalgic.  I can image future generations saying, “Instagram 9.4 is terrible, do remember the original Instagram?”  Do you feel the affects you create by simulating an effect are nostalgic in nature or something entirely new?  Do you feel you are also expanding analogue techniques by simulating them through the use of a computer?
DB: Film itself is one the most technological-based mediums and the technology itself defines and structures its aesthetic. I don’t think that I’m creating something entirely new because what I’m doing is encoded in the aesthetic/technology inherent to the medium (frame, duration, camera, screen).   However, I don’t see it as purely pastiche or repeating what has already been done. Still by doing this with new technologies we are definitely working towards something new.  For instance, the technical process is much easier, faster, controllable, malleable, etc. In my case, it allowed me to produce many completed films in a very short time by myself, as if I was composing on a musical instrument.

Amnesiac on the Beach

CE: Your sound design is incredibly cinematic. Do you use the same processes as your image production?
DB: For the most part, I do my own sound design using Fruity Loops. For Amnesiac on the Beach (2013), I worked with composer Tomislav Babić with whom I share the same interest for kraut rock/experimental music, the BBC radiophonic workshop, science fiction soundscapes, 70′s television and movie soundtracks. I should add that all my previous movies were made after the music/sound design, which set the atmosphere and dictated the visual rhythm of the films. Furthermore, these films were made rather quickly.  I would regularly upload them to Vimeo, however, I do not consider them to be part of my filmography proper; rather they are make-believe films or exercises.
CE: Are you influenced by other experimental collage filmmakers? Marienbad First Aid Kit (2013) seems particularly Lewis Klahr inspired, both in your use of text and in your use of comic book images. Can you talk about your approach to collage in film?
DB: I think Martha Colburn’s work is amazing. I often visit her website looking for new work.  Of course, Lewis Klahr is a major influence on my work. The first thing I saw by Klahr was a music video and it captured me. Since that time, I have attempted to read every interview and article on Klahr, however, until recently I have been unable to see any of his other films. At that time I could only speculate about the movement in his work. In a way, Marienbad First Aid Kit can be seen as an homage to Klahr, even the use of music which is Achille-Claude Debussy with the Forbidden Planet soundtrack.  In addition, Marienbad First Aid Kit also connects to Alain Resnais’ L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961) which supposedly was based on La invención de Morel (Morel’s Invention, 1974) by Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Marienbad First Aid Kit

The narrative, textual part of film, is composed from dozen of of comic books from Mandrake the Magician to various Marvel and DC comics. The visual imagery would take too long to mention it all. Marienbad is my first film after Amnesiac on the Beach which is my only funded project to date. Since I completed Amnesiac, I started several collage based films which I will never finish. I came to a dead end and felt I was starting to repeat myself so I gave up for a while. I have two upcoming projects: a short film called Unknown energies, Unidentified sensations and a rotoscopic SF animated movie Astronaut of Featherweight.  Both have professional actors, film crews, small budgets, etc.
CE: Your work is constantly referencing other works from William S. Burroughs to J.G. Ballard, from genre films to the French New Wave, in essence sampling.  Can you talk about the use of appropriation in your work?
DB: William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard were real discoveries for many reasons. For instance, they both combined experimental and science fiction. In addition, their writing techniques involved the surreal, the idea of inner space, contemporary landscapes, alienation, media theory, etc.  The French New Wave also had this relationship with pop art, science fiction, literature, in addition to a radical approach to filmmaking. It was a very exciting and inspiring thing for me. I use many references, for example, the title you who exist only in the darkest recess of my own brooding mind, i command you-appear! (2010) comes from a Doctor Strange comic speech balloon whom I prefer more than Aleister Crowley. Furthermore, humour is important to me.

Collage (Masculin, Feminin)

CE: Let’s talk about some the narrative devices you are using.  For instance, how you externalize internal emotions.  In Don’t you want to hear my side? (2010) the couples internal conflict seems represented by images of war and in Ghost Porn in Ectoplasm! But How?? (2010) inner most desires are represented by ectoplasmic outbreaks. Furthermore, what role does free association play in your work?
DB: I like to think of my films as ectoplasmic manifestations of our inner worlds. For me, film/video is a non-place between life and death, an idea I explicitly explore in Amnesiac on the Beach. For instance, my characters in Ghost Porn in Ectoplasm, But How?, Don’t you want to hear my side?, and The Spectres of Veronica (2011) are either vessels or possessed by forces unknown to them.  They are oblivious of the nature or conditions of their existence. It also reflects my own view of reality. Humans are “strangers in the strange land,” possessed by consciousness, the mind from nowhere. In Amnesiac on the Beach, I was amused by the idea that due to nature of our minds and nervous system, every (interpersonal) communication is in fact a telecommunication; every contact with the outer world is a broadcast, an interpretation, just like a television.
About the process of my filmmaking, it is mostly intuitive and based on stream of consciousness with some real-time structuring. It walks the thin line between knowing and not knowing what goes next. It’s like Tarot readings.

Ghost Porn in Ectoplasm, But How?

CE: It seems the people in your films are always trying to transcend the body, both in terms of narrative and form.  In some films it is spiritual and in others it is through technologies.
DB:  Artistically, I’m interested in bodily effects, a special effect in which a body can produce doppelgangers, hauntings, possessed bodies, ectoplasmic bursts etc.  I see the body as more than a mere vessel in which the real-self (or spirit) is placed, but something entwined and inseparable. Similar to our relationship with the places which surround us.  Places structure our sense of self, for instance, they determine if we feel cozy, safe or alienated. I think on symbolic level there is a certain dualism between what we think of as the inner world of mind and outer world of everyday reality where our bodies represent a border; avatars in flesh, physically limited and vulnerability. Bodies are zones of conflict and transgression, of diseases and violence and I think this need of escapement, transcendence is a primal desire for self-protection and self-preservation, of having some hope that there is an escape pod; spiritual or technological, which return us back into some Cartesian point of view. People need their fantasies, beliefs and some amortization. Consider the painting by Surrealist artist Remedios Varo titled Embroidering Earths Mantle (1961) depicting captive maidens in the top room of circular tower, embroidering a tapestry which is falling out of the windows into the void.  We see that everything in the outside world is made out of the same tapestry: cities, seas, forests and even the tower of their imprisonment. The whole world is tapestry and the tapestry is the world.
http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2013/09/singing-the-body-electric-with-dalibor-baric/




Selected Filmography:
Amnesiac on the Beach (2013)
The Spectres of Veronica (2011)
New Hippie Future (2011)
Pain So Light That Appears As Tickle (2010)
The Mind from Nowhere (2010)
The Horror of Dracula (2010)
Ghost Porn in Ectoplasm! But How? (2010)
Nymph Gloss Atari (2010)




Dalibor Barić (1974) redatelj je eksperimentalnih filmova čiji radovi često istražuju tradicionalne žanrove poput znanstvene fantastike i horora. Korištenjem found footagea kao izvornog materijala, koristi tehniku kolažiranja za stvaranje sofisticiranih psihodeličnih priča koje često zamućuju granicu između vanjskih i unutarnjih stvarnosti.
Barićev rad bavi se i pitanjima koja okružuju umjetničku praksu u digitalnom dobu, uključujući pitanja o vjerodostojnosti, simulaciji/replikaciji i prisvajanju.
Pohodio je mnoštvo festivala, a može se pohvaliti i ekskluzivnom retrospektivom na Festivalu Pop Montréal, o kojoj je hvalospjeve pisao i kultni časopis Fangoria. Senses of Cinema, utjecajni filmski portal uvrštava ga 2014. među najbolje autore, a Ken Russell poželio mu je pokloniti svoju nagradu za životno djelo. Festivali u Dresdenu, Oberhausenu i Parizu, među desetinama drugih, uvrštavali su Barića u svojim selekcijama uz bok Chrisu Markeru i drugim autorima inovativnog filma.
Barić je autor stotinjak kratkometražnih animiranih i eksperimentalnih filmova, glazbenih spotova (Bilk, Vuneny, Pips, Chips & Videoclips), festivalskih špica, stripova (koje objavljuje Libra Libera), instalacija, crteža, kolaža i raznih drugih pokretnih i nepokretnih vizuala.
Bavi se glazbom i nastupa kao VJ. Njegov film iz 2015. godine 'Nepoznate energije, neidentificirani osjećaji' osvojio je nagrade za najbolji scenarij i oblikovanje zvuka na Danima hrvatskog filma 2015. godine te Nagradu Vedran Šamanović, koja je dodijeljena na Pulskom filmskom festivalu, dok je film 'Amnezijak na plaži' (2013) osvojio Oktavijana na DHF-u 2013. godine. Trenutačno završava 'Astronaut od perolaka' u produkciji Bonobostudija. Među odabranim radovima su: 'Amnezijak na plaži' (2013), 'The Spectres of Veronica' (2011), 'Nova hipi budućnost' (2011), 'Pain So Light That Appears As Tickle' (2010), 'The Mind from Nowhere' (2010), 'The Horror of Dracula' (2010), 'Ghost Porn in Ectoplasm, but How?!' (2010), 'Nymph Gloss Atari' (2010).
U Hrvatskoj je prva retrospektiva njegovih radova održana u prosincu 2013. godine u Galeriji Greta. Za ovu drugu radove je birao sam autor, a jedini je uvjet bio ne koristiti 'hitove'. Autor je stoga uronio još dublje u arhiv i sastavio listu rijetko viđenih filmova, od kojih se jedan prikazuje premijerno.  - www.tportal.hr/kultura/film/424294/Rijetko-videni-filmovi-Dalibora-Barica-na-25-DHF-u.html

Germán Sierra - Deep Media Fiction

Već dosta dugo jedino što posjećujem baš svaki dan je twitter-stranica Germána Sierre. Čovjek je Španjolac, zapravo neuroznanstvenik, piše prozu i ima genijalan ukus (tj. sličan mome, haha). Njegove preporuke u mutantskom prostoru književnosti, teorije i svih "novih" umjetnosti, fenomena i pokreta jednostavno su must. Između ostaloga napisao je i epohalno važan esej "Deep Media Fiction".


twitter.com/german_sierra?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
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germansierra.tumblr.com


Cloudwall: Short Story 
excerpt from Standards: The Fashion

Fiction is a curvature of reality. While hyperstitional media refer to reality as a consequence of fiction, hypostitional media might refer to fiction as a consequence of reality. Deep media fiction becomes a property of reality (something like the properties of particles expressed as quantum fields), independent of human-associated meaning (or human perception) - Deep Media Fiction

Primjeri njegova ukusa:


The novelist who gave up the world: @Gemurmelmoon & @ThePhthailer on contrivance, erasing meaning, & formless chaos. http://ow.ly/QVJq305MN54


My writing is a process not of generating meaning, but of erasing meaning endlessly, in which a statement does not add meaning to the previous statement, but erases, deconstructs, or cancels out the meaning that has been generated. This happens at the sentence level as well as on the scale of an entire story - Jung Young Moon



Hito Steyerl giving this year's Benno Premsela on killing as an act of design





Imaginary Cities: An Interview with Darran Anderson https://rhystranter.com/2016/10/21/imaginary-cities-darran-anderson-interview/ … #literature #philosophy #cities #scifi #art





Malabou #philosophy https://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/malabou/ … via @FractalOntology










Must Watch: Helen Hester on Machines, Women, Work, & Machine Women