The Devil We Know

Faust (1994) - d. Jan Svankmajer (b. 1934)


'In proposing a new etiquette for seeing, Surrealism often harks back to Romantic and occultist cosmologies which posit a latent harmony beneath the discontinuities of the world's surface. Always eager to startle and often to mystify, Surrealism typically postulates bewilderment as a precondition of insight. Its approach to creativity tends to grapple with jagged elements of disparity, of prolixity, of sheer unprocessed excess, in the hope of eliciting a more thrilling - because delayed - vision of equilibrium and clarity. A Surrealist typically distrusts any revelation which lacks a complementary aura of enigma: the naked truth cannot be embraced without its veils.'

From Thinking Through Things: The Presence of Objects in the Early Films of Jan Svankmajer by Roger Cardinal

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition III

Splitting Hares

Broomstick Bunny, released February 25th 1956 (Warner Brothers) - d. Chuck Jones, w. Tedd Pierce, a. Richard Thompson, Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Abe Letivow, v. Mel Blanc, June Foray (uncredited), m. Milt Franlyn, p. Eddie Selzer

The Week in Review

Films:

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, 2005 - d. Lian Lunson
Perfume, 2006 - d. Tom Tykwer
Pan's Labyrinth, 2006 - d. Guillermo del Toro
A Scanner Darkly, 2006 - d. Richard Linklater
Little Miss Sunshine, 2006 - d. Johnathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Marie Antoinette, 2006 - d. Sofia Coppola

Books:

Journals of Jean Cocteau - Jean Cocteau
Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas de Quincey
Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journal - Paul Gauguin
The Private Journals of Edvard Munch: We Are Flames Which Pour Out Of The Earth - Edvard Munch
Inferno: From the Occult Diaries - August Strindberg
Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh - Vincent van Gogh

Music:

Symphonies, 1-10 - Gustav Mahler
Daphnis et Cloé - Maurice Ravel
Four Last Songs - Richard Strauss

Exhibitions:

Before the Body: Matter - Monash University Museum of Art
Sigmar Polke: Music from an Unknown Source - RMIT Gallery

Bunny Bonus

Lady Bugs






















From Hare Conditioned, 1945 - d. Chuck Jones

Beastly Bonking

Indian - Horse Pursuing a Peacock

"The orgy was not the farthest point reached by eroticism in the pagan world. The orgy is the sacred aspect of eroticism in which the continuity of beings beyond solitude is most plainly expressed. Only in one way, however. In the orgy continuity cannot be laid hold of; individuals lose themselves at the climax, but in mingled confusion. The orgy is necessarily disappointing. Theoretically it is the complete negation of individual quality. It presupposes, it even demands equality among the participants. Not only is individuality itself submerged in the tumult of he orgy, but each participant denies the individuality of the others. All limits are completely done away with, or so it seems, but it is impossible for nothing to remain of the differences between individuals and their sexual attraction connected with those differences.

The final aim of eroticism is fusion, all barriers gone, but its first stirrings are characterised by the presence of a desirable object.

In the orgy this object does not stand out by itself, for sexual excitement occurs through an uncontrolled urge, the opposite of habitual reserve. But everybody has this urge. It is objective but it is not perceived as an object; the person who perceives it is at the same time animated by it. On the other hand, excitement is normally roused by something distinct and objective. In the animal kingdom, the odour of the female often sets the male after her. The songs and displays of birds bring into play other kinds of perception that tell the female that the male is near and sexual shock is at hand. Smell, hearing, sight and even taste are objective signals distinct from the activity they incite. They are signals to announce the crisis. In the world of man these messages have an intense erotic value. A pretty girl stripped naked is sometimes an erotic symbol. The object of desire is different from eroticism itself; it is not eroticism in its completeness, but eroticism working through it."

From Eroticism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille


The Week in Review

Viewing:



Deadwood: First Season

Ep. 1: 'Pilot - Deadwood' (w. Ted Mann, d. Mark Tinker)
Ep. 2: 'Deep Water' (w. Malcolm MacRury. d. Davis Guggenheim)
Ep. 3: 'Reconnoitering the Rim' (w. Jody Worth, d. Davis Guggenheim)
Ep. 4: 'Here Was a Man' (w. Elizabeth Sarnoff, d. Alan Taylor)
Ep. 5: 'The Trial of Jack MacCall' (w. John Belluso, d. Ed Bianchi)
Ep. 6: 'Plague' (w. Malcolm MacRury. d. Davis Guggenheim)
Ep. 7: 'Bullock Returns to the Camp' (w. Jody Worth, d. Michael Engler)
Ep. 8: 'Suffer the Little Children' (w. Elizabeth Sarnoff, d. Dan Minahan)
Ep. 9: 'No Other Sons or Daughters' (w. George Putnam, d. Ed Bianchi)
Ep. 10: 'Mr. Wu' (w. Bryan McDonald, d. Dan Minahan)
Ep. 11: 'Jewel's Boot Is Made For Walking' w. Ricky Jay. d. Steve Shill)
Ep. 12: 'Sold Under Sin' (w. Ted Mann, d. Davis Guggenheim)

Grave of the Fireflies - w. & d. Isao Takahata (1988)




Porco Rosso - w. & d. Hayao Miyazaki (1992)




Princess Mononoke - w. & d. Hayao Miyazaki (1997)




Steamboy - w. Sadayuki Murai & Katsuhiro Omoto, d. Katsuhiro Omoto (2004)




Tokyo Godfathers - w. Keiko Nobumoto & Satoshi Kon, d. Satoshi Kon (2003)




Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend & Legend of the Demon Womb - w. Noboru Aikawa, d. Hideki Takayama (1989 & 1991)




Wicked City - w. Kisei Choo, d. Yoshiaki Kawajiri (1987)

Reading:

Deleuze: An Introduction - Todd May
Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga (catalogue essays) - ed. Philip Brophy
Gillian Wearing: Proof (catalogue essay) - Juliana Engberg

Listening:

The Complete String Quartets - Joseph Haydn
The Complete Symphonies - Joseph Haydn

Exhibitions:

Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga - NGV (International)

Six Good Reasons To Stay at Home: Hiraki Sawa (video works) - NGV (International)

Howard Arkley - NGV (Australia)




Light Sensitive: Contemporary Australian Photography from the Loti Smorgon Fund - NGV (Australia)

Living Proof: Gillian Wearing - ACCA

The Last Days Of The "Idiot Box"?

Ren and Stimpy - (from the episode) Altruists!

"The argument, then, is that television produces the conditions of an ironic knowingness, at least as a possibility...[which] may offer a way of thinking subjectivity free of subjection...Most of all, it opens identity to diversity, and escapes the notion of cultural identity as a fixed volume...But if it does all this, it does not do it in that utopia of guaranteed resistance which assumes the progressiveness of naturally oppositional readers who will get it right in the end. It does, rather, with terms hung in suspension. . .tactics of empowerment, games of subordination with neither term fixed in advance."

From Playing at Being American:Game and Tactics by John Caughie (1990)