So you thought Marxism was a thing of the past ?
Then ask the real George Lucas (George LucaCs, that is)
” The essence of commodity-structure has often been pointed out. Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a ‘phantom objectivity’, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people. “
Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat, 1923
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc05.htm )
When it doesn’t try to rebrand capitalism under the false equation transparency = honnesty (from Swatch to Jean Nouvel), contemporary design sometimes shows us its true colours and the fetishization of the female body has long been one of its favourite vectors.
Yes, under the consumerist Sun, we are all objects, and some of the following folks could hardly put it any clearer….
Pharrell Williams, Perspective Chair (on show at Gallerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris)
—
(Heather and Ellie)
—
(David LaChapelle)
—
OK Fuck Marxism : donchu just wanna run and book a table at Japanese restaurant Nyomataimori ?
Topics: Sound | No Comments »
Fetishism exposed
By House of Coma | November 13, 2008
DIE ART DIE
‘He had too much control over my life.’
I Shot Andy Asshol.
The ‘Destruction of Art’ in itself, is a sublime contradiction. Art’s nature as a process of creation means that ‘Art’ ironically sanctions its own murder, because although its literal destruction may appear to be sacrilege, the concept that lies behind the destruction of art is unavoidably symptomatic of growth. If a function of Art is human provocation, for art to provoke its own destruction by simply ‘being’, for it to be powerful enough to incite a move beyond the velvet rope that divides the viewed and the viewer, proves its own worth.
‘You’re worshipping the wrong God’s!’
Silenus Anonymous Assailant
Vyner Street E3, within the cultivated decay of the fronts of factories and warehouses is a colony of East London’s fashionable gallery scene. Into this space of white neutrality entered an anonymous person carrying a crowbar. The work this unknown proceeded to attack was ‘Silenus’, an obese, freestanding, phallus clutching Stallion Faun. Whether this desecration was premeditated as art-statement (conceivably even by its own sculptor), or a Hackney resident embittered about the invasion of twats in his local, or as the evidence of their war cry points: someone for whom Silenus had become symbolic of the worship of false idols reflects the endless possibilities of interpretations of destructive acts.
Definition Complexities, on a basic level the destruction of artwork is vandalism, even if its destructor confusingly dedicates the action to art itself. Both the planting of a peachy kiss on an expensive Cy Twombly and the pissing in the Duchamp urinal are hilariously naughty whilst being symbolic of the dialogue between artist and viewer as both Pinoncelli (mistaken euro nation) and Rindy (hot lips pretentious bitch) describe their actions as. These acts are the logical progression of contemporary art’s self-analytical obsession, the question of ‘where will it end?’. A question that has been answered beautifully by conceptual art: implosion. Prepare for Breakdown. Art must become art once it is defined as such, whether it is defined by the creator or spectator: shooting a Rembrandt in the face with a sawn-off shotgun is beautiful expression regardless of what intentions the marksman had for the interpretation of their action.
The establishment of progress is reliant on venturing further into extremity; each successive person engaged in invisible competition. ‘Breakdown’, a statement not the work of a pussy, is symptomatic of this osmosis. In the piece Michael Landy assembled each of his 7227 worldly possessions and systematically annihilated them over a period of two weeks – leaving him naked but for a pair of overalls borrowed from his girlfriend (who was disappointingly spared inclusion) – sans credit card, sans passport, sans everything. Amongst his possessions were his own and other friends artworks including of course Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, implicit within this aspect is betrayal encompassing the loss of relationships into the breakdown. Landy had a sense of humour about the extroverted elements of the destruction, when asked in an interview ‘What is your favourite smell?’ he replied ‘Burning gloss paint from Gary Hume’s £25,000 painting’. A comment that had the effect of loosing a Turner Prize nomination for ‘vandalism’ and ‘going too far’; the winning of such a prize however would have made his gesture: renouncement of all: redundant. The Turner panel’s judgment shortsightedly ignored the possibility of a fire in Charles Saatchi’s storage warehouse. Breakdown is ultimate in nature and whether intended or not destroyed him, “I didn’t want to make any work, I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t feel the need to”. Following Breakdown Landy turned his attention to etching urban weeds, pursuit which resulted in lasting eye damage. Fuck.
Inverting this dedication towards self-destruction results in martyrdom. The romantic possibilities inherent within Art and Destruction come from sacrifice. Bas Jan Ader’s (FAILED) solo voyage across the Atlantic Ocean transcends the materialist concern of Landy’s work into the metaphysical - differentiating itself as spirit quest from anti-capitalist experiment. ‘In Search of the Miraculous’ - a grandiloquent title carried in 12ft of fibreglass minimalism. The realm that ‘In Search’ inhibits in retrospect is distant from the physical, it is the concept & not the sparse photographic evidence immortalised, this distance is the reason why the destructive element to the piece is eclipsed by the creative.
“…The question is not yet settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence - whether all that is profound - does not spring from disease of thought, from moods of mind exalted at the expenses of the general intellect.”(Edgar Allen Poe)
Topics: Vision | No Comments »
Art & Destruction.
By robotdeniro | November 12, 2008
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
Oh the shopping trolleys and dark alleys.
Our very first monthly whoroscope,
is a tribute to the Disco of Tesco
and the Dorian Gray sexiness of Video Art.
Videoclip for the song “Hands around my throat” by Death in Vegas,
taken from the album Scorpio Rising.
Directed by the Fearless Richard himself,
starring the uber French actress Emmanuelle Seigner.
The clip was banned from major music video channels as it shows the belle Emmanuelle caressing her intimate parts before she sets out to strangle herself. Enjoy…
Accompanying text : extract of “The Tyger”, a poem by William Blake.
Topics: Sound, Vision | 1 Comment »
Your February Whoroscope
By admin | February 21, 2008
LIKE THE CHANCE ENCOUNTER
OF
THE SEWING MACHINE
AND
JODIE HARSH
ON
AN OPERATING TABLE
,
METAMODERNE
LAUNCHES
INTO
INTERACTIVE S&M POETRY
.
A PIECE
BY
THIS HOUSE OF COMA
SHORTLISTED
BY
THE WELLCOME TRUST.
///
(FLASH DESIGN
BY GetCONFUSED)
///
PRESS ”AUTO PLAY”
AT THE BOTTOM RIGHT HAND CORNER
TO RUN THE PIECE
IN NORMAL SEQUENTIAL ORDER.
OR PRESS ”I WANT TO PLAY”
AND
MASH UP THAT DAMN KEYBOARD
FOR INSTANT GRATIFICATION.
///
E.E.N.N.J.J.O.O.Y.Y
///
click here to watch interactive piece
(
: : :
” ” ”
Invisible inspiration,
vitamin plague,
wonder no more,
like an ancient animal,
the maps of prayer and sleep.
For Nature is thy nurse
and fever your masterpiece.
Molecular mutations of paper people ;
shrunken silver skeletons,
the smoke of a million bottles
tatooed with all things about the art of war,
all pregnant with
the radical serenpidity of sex.
Well the preservation of roses
is well worth a conceptual ceremony.
History of an experiment.
Walking the pain
of your placebo helix,
in a steroid studio,
a nude Apocalypse,
I shall nurture the Unicorn
with some emblematic dreams
of artificial beauty.
Blind, curious and free,
Bullet Woman
& the Knock-out Child
hold their head
and tie their tongue
to the memory
of a revolutionary illness.”
” ” ”
: : :
)
Topics: Vision | 1 Comment »
Invisible Inspiration
By admin | February 18, 2008
Christian symbolics and the visual aesthetics of death metal
After an apocalyptic Summer of sorts and a decadent continental Winter, Metamoderne comes back to unearth the uncharted and the uncanny in contemporary aesthetics. We kick off this return of the Phoenix with a topic that offers an enlightening illustration of the clandestine connections between high and low culture, and more specifically between trashy pop music, Z horror movies and cartoons, Flemish court painting and Christian symbolism. All things wonderful which have helped to forge the contemporary visual landscape of death metal as we know it.
The visual origins of “Metal” are most often associated with some of the recurring themes and imagery of horror / dark fantasy and trashy Z culture.
Iron Maiden, for instance, have consistently resorted over the course of their long career and horrific visual output to the twin figures of the zombie and the mummy.
As two instances of a creature that defies the laws of death and revert the temporality of life and decay, they represent a symbolical challenge to the divine order. In both cases, zombies and mummies assume a function that is symmetrically anti-christic in the sense that they come back from the realm of the dead not to save mankind but to exert vengeance and quench their thirst for blood.
The iconography of the band Black Sabbath also provides a fine case in point of a superb and overt recycling of Christian symbolism into mainstream pop trash.
A first key is to be found in Jan Van Eyck’s The Last Judgment (ca 1430) , located in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. This striking piece by 15th century Europe’s most famous painter was probably initially intended as an object of private devotion. It is a good illustration of the moralistic intent of sacred painting in the Middle Ages which aimed to elevate the soul of the viewer by reminding him of the fate which the scriptures assigned to men - depending on how well they obeyed God’s commandments. Organized in three tiers, the painting represents, from top to bottom, Christ with the blessed and the Church fathers, St Michael about to strike Evil, and in the bottom tiers, Satan overlooking the spectacle of the cursed as they are devoured and tortured by a horde of demonic beasts. As we gaze at the painting, our attention is immediately drawn towards the gory vividness of the representation of Hell, typical of the literality of medieval interpretations of the underworld. Considered a master of realism, Van Eyck spares us no details of the torment that awaits the sinner in the Dark Lord’s kingdom. Lucifer himself, represented by a skeleton, is seen masterminding their suffering, covering the mass of nude bodies as they fall into the pit of Hell.
550 years and a fair amount of drugs later, Black Sabbath’s cover for their fifth album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, designed by Drew Struzan (famous for his work on Star Wars) offers us an interesting take on Van Eyck’s motif of Hell. An almost identical skeleton figure is overlooking the scene, except this time Hell has been converted into an orgiac gathering. On a bed covered with pink silken sheets, a male figure is circled by a round of lustful male and female demons while a snake is strolling around his neck. In an ironic transmutation, the gory realism of yesterday’s damnation thus gives way to today’s trash kitsch erotico-fantasy.
Ozzy Osbourne’s infamous beheading of a bat with his mouth counts arguably as another performatic gesture of the reversal of Christian symbolics. Fans of the band would regularly bring live animals to their gigs and throw them on stage, some of which were massacred in an act whose evocation of the rituals of the Black Mass parallels the ancient tradition of the slaughter of the lamb. During the “Bark at the Moon tour”, a live bat ended up at Ozzy’s feet who promptly engaged to bite its head off, a feat for which he allegedly later required two weeks of antirabies shots.
Symmetrically opposed to the dove, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the bat, as all animals with featherless wings, was considered a demoniac creature in the Christian tradition. It is a symbol of those who are condemned to wander on Earth instead of raising towards the skies and the Creator. Therefore, by sacrificing the animal and incorporating it within his body, Ozzy would perform an act whereby he incorporated its symbolic attributes as his own.
An exploration of recent contemporary art discloses how similar connections still operate as dormant or overtly expressed properties in the aesthetics of metal.
Take Jonathan meese, one of German painting’s rising stars, who reveals through his expressionistic style a characterized penchant for the figure of the antichrist, seen here as both hero and antihero, as much a negation of glamour as the recurring image of an alternative neo-messianic glamour, steeped in thick layers of black paint.
Using simple typographic effects and a good dose of dark humour, Steven Shearer creates graphic adaptations of the blasphemous intent at the heart of Metal’s discourse. By accumulating in a seamless flow a series of terms alluding to the repertoire of christianity along with a colourful palette referencing sin, violence, sexual perversion, torture, distortion and physical decay, the artist demonstrates the unbound comical potential and dark surrealism that lies behind the surface of metal’s horrific varnish.
From a photographic perspective, the portraits which Peter Beste took of the Norwegian black metal scene represent a landmark work for the disclosure of the negative Christian dialectics which founds the genre’s aesthetics. A look at these images reveals indeed the skillful mise-en-scene of a radically anti-christian posture that fuses elegantly the traditional antichristic elements (inverted cross, goats heads, Nosferatu-like make-up) with a distinctly christic posture which the references to the Scandinavian pantheon cannot completely evacuate (the long hairs, Christ-like stigmata and fake blood as the overt references to the gathering of the Apostles around Christ for the Last Supper) .
Finally, we do not resist the temptation to end this piece with the sublime Personal Jesus, covered in 2004 by Marilyn Manson and taken from their best-of album Lest we Forget, undoubtedly Manson’s best cover to date. Although it doesn’t sound particularly metal, retaining the original Depeche Mode format with additional guitar distortions, nor really has the look of it, more Jesus-Christ-Superstar-meets-goth-punk-Vegas-freakshow than death metal spectacle, the song, a popular theme amongst catch wrestlers, is nonetheless an instant hit by its sheer oddity, and shows that Manson has no lessons to take from anyone when it comes to trash kitsch sleaze.
” Reach Out and Touch Faith ” …
House of Coma
Links :
Jonathan Meese at Contemporay Fine Arts, Berlin
Steven Shearer at Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
Topics: Vision | 1 Comment »
Metallic Anti-Christic
By House of Coma | February 2, 2008
Who said that charity events brought to the mind images that aren’t necessarily so tightly linked with the sweet smell of excess, beer and rock’n'roll frenzy ?
mmm ?
Well…
THINK AGAIN folks !
Following the good lead of Miss Freebush who certainly knows how to entertain a demanding audience, and pushing behind the curtains for a night its visceral anti-humanist stance, Metamoderne champions a good cause and invites you to join an evening of charity riffs and discobeat oblivion brought to you by the Huberd Heroes crew in aid of Centrepoint.
Topics: Sound | No Comments »
8:59
By admin | January 15, 2008
Although the East London line is closed, making it an utter nightmare to access the venue, we would like to bring your attention to the following exhibition which includes work by House of Coma taken from an ongoing project on the most prominent leaders of the Italian-American mafia.
NOTICE
171 Deptford High Street
London SE8 3NU
Private view: Thursday the 6th of December 2007 from 6-9pm.
Exhibition dates:
Open from the 7th of December 2007 to the 16th of December 2007.
Closed during Christmas break and reopen on the 11th of January 2008 until the 20th of January 2008.
Friday to Sunday from 2-6 pm.
” Pages is an exhibition of work curated by Nicola Oxley and Rosemarie McGoldrick at the Notice Gallery in Deptford High Street.
Pages in notebooks are kept, archived, sourced, glossed. The moment of the idea or perception is there for re-visitation, perhaps years later. These pages are conceptual keepsakes, notional isolates, and labyrinth markers, yet usually private and unseen. Pages wishes to show how -once collected- the un-disseminated and unvoiced creates a generous dialogue in relational art, bound between the covers of the larger volume that is the gallery.
Upon invitation, practitioners have responded to a set of agreed instructions for Pages. Each practitioner has provided work as if torn from a sketchbook or note book, then to be reframed and represented in a gallery setting. The instructions for Pages were dictated by the format of a book. All the work requested was to be two-dimensional and not larger that the A3 paper size. The collected responses form the basis of an archive, then interpreted and displayed in the gallery. “
Topics: Vision | 1 Comment »
Pages
By admin | December 1, 2007
Starring : regarder les filles au telephone qui passent dans l’espace / swinging kiss / nice callas / sexuelle et sans suite / gout acide / ronde enfantine / la pavane de l’architecte / electrophonique / cosmic satsuma / karmic disco
Music To Watch May By mixed by L.A von Metamoderne (Click here to listen / Right click to download)
Topics: Sound | No Comments »
Music To Watch May By
By anna_metamoderne | May 17, 2007
Metamoderne and Central Saint Martins are proud to present the first UK show of French artist Sebastien Pruvost. For this exhibition, the Paris-based artist will present All That is Solid Melts Into Air, a new installation characterized by his trademark commitment towards the investigation of language, symbolism and the cultural politics of ‘pop’.
Here sited in Central Saint Martins’ Back Hill building, Pruvost’s work references the secret history of Clerkenwell. Formally a hotbed for non-conformist cults and hidden assemblies, political and religious dissidents who used the shroud of secrecy offered to them by the area to discuss and promote their beliefs, it has now become a center for the creative and media industries. As such, the whole area has operated a complete reversal onto itself, embracing instead the ideology of exposure to reach out to the masses. The current building at Number 10, Back Hill was itself originally a newspaper printing plant, then home to the former London College of Printing, and currently houses CSM’s Foundation degree, BA CCC and Drama Centre London. With its warehouse-style architecture and aspirational status, it provides a striking illustration of this historical shift in relation to the arts.
Composed of three separate pieces, All That is Solid Melts Into Air engages with this historical reversal, offering a reflection on the artist’s condition in an age of mass communication and spectacle. Le Sacre (Coronation) , a sound loop of the artist’s voice, reminds us of the tension between authenticity and the fabrication of memory in a ‘ping-pong’ dialogue which leaves no room for certainty. Fan Club, a Duchampian alignment of seven spray-painted electrical fans, alludes in its disposition to the chorus of Greek tragedies or the ritual gatherings of secret societies. At its feet lies Squared Ego Circles Itself Out (Black Mandala) , a sculpture made out of mirrors and punched paper clippings. Bearing also the mark of ritualistic practice, the piece revisits in the light of utopian geometry the sand paintings which Tibetan Buddhist monks craft to symbolize the transitory nature of things and the intricacy of the divine, before carefully unmaking and returning them to their initial state.
While all three pieces are characterized by a reflexive playfulness, their bringing together takes the installation to a much darker level. As Marx and Engels famously prophesized in The Communist Manifesto, under modern capitalism, the fate of all things solid is to melt into air— as indeed has happened to the barriers between art, design, technology and commerce. Here, in the deployment of Fan Club around Squared Ego hovers a thinly veiled threat of disintegration, a threat reinforced by Le Sacre’s defiant claim that the piece itself may in fact never have happened. In this investigation of artistic rituals and objecthood, references to utopia and the tragic collide with metaphors of containment and invocation to critically examine a ‘relational’ and dematerialized concept of art. As in previous pieces by the artist, the multiplication of puns and riddles point here towards a world where symbolic language stands as both the locus of power and a potential mode for its evasion.
-
Sebastien Pruvost has shown recently at Galerie France Fiction and Glassbox (Paris), Galerie des Beaux Arts (Tours), and presented a video at the Rush Arts festival in New York.
This exhibition has been generously supported by the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni and Central Saint Martins.
Open Mon – Fri, 10 – 6 pm
Admission free
Topics: Vision | No Comments »
All that is solid melts into Air
By admin | April 12, 2007
A une longue epopee clandestine faite d’epiphanies apocalyptiques et autres retours messianiques, le collectif danois Floorless tente en 2006 d ajouter une nouvelle dimension : l’Avenement concu comme une experience virale, entre art et litterature. Pour celebrer le triple alignement du six et ses promesses d affrontements cosmiques, l’equipe commissionne une serie de livres d artiste qui s’echangeraient de main en main jusqu’a ce qu’emerge une oeuvre produite par une chaine d interactions humaines imprevisibles. Devant initalement etre mis en ligne le jour de l alignement soit le 6 juin 2006, ces schemas de l’apocalypse sont en fait demeures secrets jusqu’a ce jour.
Metamoderne devoile aujourd’hui une selection de dix images tirees d’un de ces livres interdits. Selectionne par Rune Schleimann, Prince n.627G382N par Vap.pu T.aipale est un photo-reportage accompagne de textes dedies aux patients d’asyle psychiatriques de par le monde. Annotees et modifiees a travers les interventions conjointes d’etrangers apparentes, ces images mutantes conservent une part de poesie et de pudeur qu’elles allient a une noirceur ornementale insistante. Apparitions, Infiltrations, sortileges d’encerclement et typographies spectrales convergent ainsi pour dresser le portrait d une apocalypse comme figee a jamais en suspension, pendant que l on s’interroge sur le role joue par chacun de ces personnages dans ces differents scenarios.
House of Coma
Contributors :
Marine Ballif
Marion Herbain
House of Coma
Michael Kasparis
Amber McNett
Topics: Vision | No Comments »
Blueprint 4 Apocalypse (French)
By House of Coma | March 29, 2007