'a posteriori gourmandise'

'his servant brought him a nourishing enema compounded with peptone... his predilection for the artificial had... attained its supreme fulfilment! A man could hardly go further; nourishment thus absorbed was surely the last aberration from the natural that could be committed'

J.K. Huysmans, Against the Grain (A Rebours) (1884) Ch.15

(exultant Cartman from southparkstudios.com)

Where then's now

Just back from the Edinburgh festival, where I saw Grezegorz Jarzyna’s production of  S. Kane's  4:48 Psychosis, the one she wrote before/about topping herself. Couldn't work out if the turn of the century costumes, which made me think of stuff Kim Gordon's clothing line put out back in the day, were intentional or just, like, a Polish thing. Then I  remembered that - kind of like that disney island where it's NYE every night or maybe like outsourcing call centres to the subcontinent or having yr photos backed up on a server somewhere or an otter sanctuary - East Europe is where the pre-millennial anglo angst slack gets picked up nowadays, to prove which I've dredged up a  flyer for the 2k7 Exit festival in Serbia (the prodigy played, so did basement jaxx and lauryn hill); you'll plz note the Face-esque layout + effulgent, lime-toned Matrix type and take for granted I can barely see my keyboard for dewy-eyed nostalgia

(4:48 pic from eif.co.uk, proj from exitfest.org, strappy topped festival girl from the exit festival's myspace, subcontinental nuclear testing from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998, auntie kim from Kim Gordon Chronicles Volume 1 (cheers Jok))

R.I.P.Y.S.L.

When that model ‘plunged to her death’ the other week (Ruslana Korsunova, while I was googling the whom, incidentally, itunes threw up Roxy Music’s Tara, which seemed super apt given its air of windswept albeit basically hollow melancholy and the fact that the title = both offhand geordie mode of adieuing and the name of many upscale girls from circa Roxy) it was sort of awkward because fashion’s not very good at seriousness and basically any tribute-payers had to find a respectful way of asserting she was good at a job that boils down to walking, being hot/photographed.

HOWEVER this month’s Paris Vogue  manages a weirdly moving R.I.P Y.S.L by having lots of old good photos of old good models in his clothes (mostly (conveniently) black of course), by teaching you to apply black cosmetics via images of the ever-more haggard/feral Malgosia Bela, by having oldenpics of Kate Moss in the proximity of new pics – catalysing own mortality type reflexions -  and by also being the pro fur issue, meaning a shoot where a frail Brazilian teeters about in the dusky pelts of ignobly slaughtered noble beasts flipping the bird at PETA sympathising placard brandishers. All of this, when I flipped through the magazine drunk on the train home last Saturday, left me a) w/ an impression of profundity/poignancy b) even more abidingly smitten w/ Carine Roitfeld, her iron editorial fist and whole callous, vapid, pseudo-erudite, pseudo-evil schtick.

Incidentally, Carine-darling and owner of everyone’s favourite decolletage Lara Stone said in a recent interview she didn’t think of herself as a very creative person, which is just wonderful given how Pixie Geldof reputedly told paps post ODing ‘creative people can be allowed to make mistakes’ (quote fr. london lite or quite possibly the london paper or metro) and altdom’s whole quasi-art production = inherently holistic and serious non-thesis etc. 

(L. Stone pic out of that summer 2k7 Another Magazine shoot w/ all the crocheted kneesocks fr. supermodels.nl, Paris Vogue pix, contents, lonely belgian 15 yr olds' discussion thereof @ http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f78/vogue-paris-august-2008-daria-werbowy-inez-van-lamsweerde-vinoodh-matadin-70337.html)

ALSO:

While the below was in progress, stumbled across this, the which pretty much renders commentary redundant, n'est pas?

(pic fr.  stealthfighter.org (duh))

Vorticism, glitchy nostalgia

Went to see the Wyndham Lewis portraits show and the Vorticit stuff they've hanging at the Tate last week. It's all definite and exoskeletal, stealth bomberesque as opposed to the provisional, blurry ‘n’ diachronous indeterminacy of cubism and futurism. He vents all he elsewhere manfully eschewed and resisted -  psychology and sentimentality and non-opacity - on some kitschily spectral  portraits of the wife come the 1950s tho. His earlier, ardent anti-girliness = a portait of a tallowy V. Woolf w/ gouty Rabelaisian clubhands. Serves her right for feminism and that.

Bonus!

stills of glitch-riddled 90s mecha battle game Virtual On, from before Americans and technological advance rendered everything in games as solid as glossy as an assiduously buffed deuce coupe or the greased dugs of a Maxim centrefold.

(Pix fr. greeninteger.com, randomknowledge.files.wordpress.com, news.bbc.co.uk, ag0ra.co.uk, 24hourmuseum.org.uk)

What it is this copse is

Exquisite corpse being, you'll recall, that surrealist parlour game whereby a gang of you pass paper round and draw disarticulated heads and thoraxes and legs etc. and you end up w/ mutant emanations of yr hive-mind. W/in this digital spinney or thicket misc. scraps of cultural flotsam will be juxtaposed and sutured and bricolaged in a similar way, is the intention. It's - in the words of Janet Jackson - all for you, whomever...