State of Things 2

The current / new issue of arts journal Broadsheet features my essay on the band the Tiger Lillies. There's also an interview with me in the current issue of RealTime discussing both this year's Revelation Film Festival and, briefly, my programming of the Sydney Biennale.

For those interested Revelation starts on 8th July in Perth, while the Sydney Biennale film program continues until August 1st.

Exit Through The Windshield

This weekt I did a ten-minute / twenty-slide presentation as part of the Pechakucha nights at Superdeluxe at Artspace. Based loosely on my chapter on car crash pop songs in Mikita Brottman's Car Crash Culture book - but shredded through my own subsequent thoughts naturally - I waxed lyrical about car crash songs from Red Sovine to The Normal, and especially the Shangri Las, as well as J G Ballard's Crash. For those interested a fascinating 1971 TV appearance by Ballard based on ideas that subsequently found life in his car crash novel can be found here (in my regular FilmInk column I wrote about this a couple of months ago, and I'll probably post a version of that here in the near future).

Space Weather

We've had lots of extreme weather phenomena in NSW this week, including waterspouts and high winds, as well as exceptionally heavy rain. Now according to ABC online a spiral shaped light / UFO was spotted at around 6:00am over NSW and Queensland. Those interested in such things will recall the spiral light phenomena over Norway last December.

While I am not a huge follower of UFO phenomena, it is always interesting when something like this happens. One thing that immediately occurs to me is Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel and, of course Doctor Who. It also recalls Ouroboros, given that the phenomena occurred shortly before sunrise today it is interesting that some Jungians see Ouroborus as the pre-dawn state.

Update: As I said, I'm not big on UFOs. and this turns out (as I suspected) to be readily explainable, the whole thing may have been simply the Falcon 9 rocket, the launch times and trajectory all fit, though conspiracy theorists suspect otherwise. Regardless, not just an interesting visual effect but also interesting to see how people responded to the experience of unusual phenomena.

Calenture 2

Calenture

I am always interested in the elemental, this sky over Hyde Park a few weeks ago seemed wild enough to be documented.

The Old Men Smiled

Finally, I am reading Oliver Harris & Ian MacFadyen's Naked Lunch at 50. A collection of essays on WSB's best known book. There are several interesting pieces in this edition, which is proving to be a good read. The entire notion of interzones - such as Tangiers in the '50s - as geographical locations rather than just states of mind seems to have slipped into nostalgia. But reading this book, and re-reading WSB always hints at potentialities yet to be discovered.

For those interested my own piece on Naked Lunch - originally presented as a lecture to mark the anniversary of the infamous book's first publication - should be published soon, following a cursory editing job to correct a couple of errors and illuminate some further information. Full details to be announced soon.

My essay on the concept of flicker and Brion Gysin's Dreamachine was published in the journal of strange phenomena the Fortean Times, a couple of months ago. The piece explores BG's artwork and the theory behind it, drawing out flicker to the practice of scrying and even cave painting, in relation to expanded consciousness. I am hoping at some point to present a collection of these essays in a single volume, we shall see.