a fistful of links

via Eric's Little Dark Star.

The daisy chain of links that groups us all together: some news.

Its was the Awaodori festival in Tokyo last Sunday – whose enchanting dances I first saw in Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (sorry I can't actually find the video). The results for the worst british architecture awards are in – funnily enough, partly judged by Bad British Architectecture. I'm still in love with the stop-motion architecture site of Flores Prats, (thanks to the Twitter source for the reminder). In the world of photography Nick Veasey has some dope x-rays, and Alex Prager tries to capture the 70's girl. Bit of a thinking one, Michael Tawa's design lexicon, a dense site of interesting etymology.

Saudi Arabia is pretending that the country has no history before The Prophet. Cause and effect: the Bush-Saudi connection / the last column from the Twins is back at square one. Possibly also related, Kevin Spacey and George Clooney star in a new film about psychic soldiers. Certainly related, MyNinjaPlease also goes back to NY, and visits Frank. ClickMuslim, a dating service. Another religious group trying to capitalise on the internet: Laser Monks (sadly, apparently not like an existential laser tag) – just "Real Savings. Real Monks." Mum, if you're reading, blessed toner for Christmas please.

Young, amazingly self-obsessed women seem to be getting louder (or maybe I'm just receiving a heavy dose at the moment) and they're asking the hard webcam questions: 'How do I do a neutral midde-school look?', 'How do I fake abs?' Still, it is amazing the difference a bit of make-up can make. Natalie Portman plays with some kittens, Arrested Development's George Michael (Michael Cera) is abused Between Two Ferns, and Charlie the sci-fi writer goes on tour of a nuclear facility.

A lonely housewife is driven to insanity by her boring husband and trains her cat to eat with fork. Why Hooters waitresses are the most coveted sexual partners. A video that did the rounds in Paris a while back, even though the song is of dubious quality: a naked woman walking down the street, sex sells I guess... Your New Reality, a blog. Volcanoes versus lightning, not as exciting as Mothera versus Godzilla. Segway: what does the phrase 'post-nature' mean, anyway?

Robot hookers of the future will recognise you and remember your preferences, but I can't work out if that will make it better or boring. Time Team's Mick Aston tells us about his work (Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons have become acceptable as nerd activities, but I still get no respect for my 'archaeology, yes!' t-shirt). Some of those dead bodies in the Thames I mentioned are much older than you might think. Confusingly, there are spaces in space that are going no place, and we want to go to them; Nasa chews over the possibility of sending astronauts on a Venus flyby in a lunar lander (not exactly what I had in mind).

Copy or original? Larry David makes a show about making a show about a Seinfeld re-union that's about a Seinfeld re-union. The Call of Duty city, real versus digital: Hexkey on informatic dross. New type of photography? Time captured in some amazing animated gifs. Detroit is in ruins, while the tallest building in the world has some surpisingly normal interiors.

To wrap things up, a good old fashioned On This Day: 1902, humanity starts thinking seriously about going to the moon; 1939, Hitler invades Poland (don't mention the war); 1974, the Blackbird flies London to New York in a little over an hour; 1985, the Titanic is discovered (Conrad on its loss).

under the pavement, the man.

The final destruction in Antonioni's 1969 Zabriskie Point

Even when the bourgeois Chelsea Marina mob set cars alight they return the next day to sweep the streets and right the burnt out husks. The protagonists of Ballard's Millennium People are the solid middle classes: doctors, lawyers, ad men, pilots. Their revolution, or more correctly their revolt, is orderly and well behaved. They are intellectually concerned with the symbolism of their act, but eager to avoid actually hurting anyone.

Ballard, who is arguably the most imaginative writer of the last 50 years, was nonetheless firmly rooted in reality – Will Self noted, “Other writers describe; Ballard anticipates.” So it says a lot about contemporary society that Ballard chose to describe revolution and reform in our own time as being limited by the self-imposed social order of the middle class. It was perhaps the most he could hope for…

So what happened? What happened to the riots, the demonstrations, the manifestations of the 60’s and 70’s? What happened to the spirit of ’68, or the civil rights movements? Were they real, did people feel that way, or is it only fabricated nostalgia? How did it all get so bad that the best hope for social reform became a fictional tale about a moderate and localised Chelsea hiccup?

My generation had anti-war marches too; I took part in them. A million Australians (1/20^th of the country) walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In London, New York, Paris and other global capitals people (I hesitate to say the people) had similar responses. Their effect was less than negligible, and no further evidence of the fact that democracy has failed us is necessary.

My teenage years neatly coincided with the Decade of Terror. The culture of fear, the untrustworthiness of the government, the duplicity, the unbridled economic growth, all came together to produce in this teenager an intense sense of outrage. Not a moral outrage, and not directed at any agent in particular, but at society as a whole. Typique.

Over time the outrage cooled to become disappointment, as I realised that it was my parent’s generation that had conscientiously crafted the world of helicopter parents and bubble-wrapped children. The dissidents that smoked dope to Pink Floyd got jobs, made money, had families, gentrified. They donned the shoulder-pad suits of the 80’s and became the Man.

I don’t want you to think this blog is deteriorating into a series of sporadic film reviews, nor that it is touting some idealist line. As I said in my first post: ‘I am not interested in architecture as an activity of object-making. I am completely fascinated by architecture as a legitimate tool of social change.’

In this case, it is the architecture of the film Zebraskie Point. The Breathless of its time, it recounts the futile struggle of youth against social processes that are beyond their influence. Whether you view it as a trip down memory lane or as an access into a bygone era, the film does well to capture something of the eclectic spirit of the late 60’s.

The conclusion to the film is probably the most beautiful sequence of celuloid I have ever seen. Sometimes, when the frustration with other people becomes too much, we all secretly dream of mass-destruction, of wiping the slate clean and starting again...

vampyr

Allen Gray is neither awake nor dreaming, as he stares down into a coffin.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht – staring one of my favourite actors Bruno Ganz (who went on to become Hitler). But its Downfall is that it just isn’t supernatural enough. Everything is a bit too clear. The general drive of Millennium People is the essential ambiguity and indeterminacy of the world, and Werner just isn't there.

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 Vampyr is a different story. It is a film about a dapper young man, Allen Gray, who becomes deeply fascinated in the supernatural, to the point where he becomes no longer able to tell the difference between reality and a dream-like state that we are told is the precipice of death. To get away from it all he goes off hunting butterflies in the hills, and as day turns to moonlit night he takes a room at a deserted hotel.



Allen Gray is presently awoken by a strange man who implores him to help save his daughter, and then disappears. Going to investigate, he is led on a terrific journey through eerie forests, ruined chateaus, into the path of ghosts, vampires and ghouls. The spirits of the dead float as long shades – in one scene the shadow of a seated soldier becomes detached and carries itself off to commit a murder, before returning. The special effects are really amazing, and I still wonder how they managed to project onto the walls of an empty factory the dancing shadows of a whole ballroom.


A soldier's shadows goes off to commit a murder.


A great scene from the forest, typical of the film's soft and ephemeral light.

As an aside, I only just realised how unjust the whole vampire system is. Legend has it that someone who has committed terrible sins in life, such that they cannot find peace even in the coffin, will rise again – living forever, prolonging their life by drinking the blood of children and virgins.

Ok, fair enough – bad things should happen to bad people. Makes sense. But what about the poor virgins? Then they become vampires forever too. What did they do to deserve that? I mean it pretty much ruins any future hopes of marriage, except for the Bride of Dracula, of course. And where do God and the dinosaurs fit into all of this, anyway?