It’s been a while since I’ve posted back here — amidst holiday travels, I’ve been mostly blogging at Logos Graphics. For friends who have been patient with me, a very happy belated new year!
There are works from some of the best known names of the era — El Lissitzky (see his Soviet poster, below), Malevich, Kamensky, even Lenin and Trotsky — though to my great delight, I learned of seemingly countless other groups and their often humorous counter groups:
El Lissitzky, “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919)
The somewhat staid Ego-Futurists, mostly in the literary camp, were later superceded by the Imaginists who indulged in long, deeply metaphoric poetry; there were also the painterly Cubo-Futurists, who counted Malevich and Mayakovsky as primary leaders. Then there were the Acmeists, the Suprematists (Malevich at his finest), the Neo-Primitivists, the Rayonists, the Bicosmists, the Luminists, the Electroorganists, the Constructivists and the Productivists.
The funniest groups were the Eggists, who formed as a joke in a newspaper article; the Everythingists, who embraced all styles of expression; and the Nothingists, whose slogan was “Write nothing! Read nothing! Say nothing! Print nothing!”
But these groups seem disappointingly shallow when compared to artists like Iakov Chernikhov, who is worth mentioning here as one of the most imaginative minds in modern architecture — even if his perspective is missing from Baku. Though best known for the Flying City, his body of work (especially his collection of Architectural Fantasies) is well worth a peek.
Iakov Chernikhov, Fundamentals of Modern Architecture (1925-30)
One of the album’s highlights is About Two Squares – A Suprematist Story by El Lissitzky (1920-22), a children’s tale about a red square and a black square. They travel toward a red circle (Earth) and smash into each other, creating abstract forms on Earth.
El Lissitzky, About Two Squares (1920-22)
It’s a futuristic narrative that combines experimental typography with the fun of reading aloud “colour-blocks of Word”… a synesthetic experience from one of the Russian greats! View the entire story here.
So I’ve been hanging out with Ripley lately, and her research in music and copyright issues reminded me of Jelinek’s second release on Faitiche. Under a new moniker called G.E.S. (Gesellschaft zur Emanzipation des Samples, or Society for the Emancipation of Sampling), Jelinek output a collection of brief, mirtfully sampled snippets into an album called Circulations.
Circulations; image from Faitiche.de
Jelinek pre-selected and then played a range of material in various public spaces, recording both the selections as well as the ripples of conversation, traffic, and other sounds commonly found in field recordings. In doing so, he challenged the notion of music copyright violation within the public domain.
You can preview the tracks at Faitiche’s website; ”hawaiian machine chant” is a new favorite.
Now I wish he’d visit the Bay area again, and visit the Musee Mecanique for even more incredible audio samples! Creepy puppets (like the one I caught below in 2006) would undoubtedly make rich fodder for another album.
I started off with weekend brunch at Little Skillet, a tiny little window serving incredible fried chicken and fresh waffles — just steps away from 330 Ritch in SoMA.
Then booked tickets to go see the Boredoms play in New York! Yippee!
Thurston Moore
Sonic Youth proved that they could still rock out on Monday night (see photo of Thurston Moore above, from sfdavidz).
I can’t wait for Sunn O))) to slowly drone me away in a live setting. And speaking of Sunn O))), I was reminded of their homage to Southern Lord’s mainstay group, Earth when I came across a new word: Ouroboros.
According to Wikipedia, an ouroboros is “an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle.” I’d heard about this symbol in a few different ways, from Jung to Norse mythology — apparently even Plato found it significant.
Ouroboros
Earth produced a song called “Ouroboros Is Broken” on the slowly unfolding album, Extra-Capsular Extraction. Find it and listen closely for the tail…
