Lacan, Desire and the New Solar Cycle

The Lacan Hour (part one)

I saw a blog post recommending readers consider a scene from a Kevin Spacey film, (The Life of David Gale) before "making your wishes for the new year" [isn't it resolutions?].



The scene is where the Gale character lectures in a fluid and detached style (very suspicious in itself) on Jacques Lacan's concept of the object of desire (what Lacan terms the "objet petit a"). The Spacey character summarizes the object of desire as;

"Fantasies have to be unrealistic. Because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t.- you can’t- want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, Desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the ‘It’ that you want, it is the fantasy of ‘It’. So, Desire supports crazy fantasies."

Sure, coming from a commodity driven cultural apparatus that we call Hollywood, the desire for 'things' seems to be the most logical form of desire. Who else is going to sell us our dreams if it is not the dream factories of the USA.

While the Gale character does back away somewhat from the 'things' perspective of desire with this final statement of the scene:

"So the lesson of Lacan is: Living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you have attained by your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others."

It remains an abstraction of Lacan's ideas based on the plot of the film and not Lacan's work in my opinion. I don't think the goal of Lacan's philosophy was compassion. Rather self-knowledge and critical understanding of the language matrix we are born and die in is a better summary of his mission. This weakening of Lacan's raison d'etre is understandable when we consider the Hollywood film industry as a primary site for the hegemony of the sign. I refer to a Lacan website I found:

"Desire, in other words, has little to do with material sexuality for Lacan; it is caught up, rather, in social structures and strictures, in the fantasy version of reality that forever dominated our lives after our entrance into language. For this reason, Lacan writes that "the unconscious is the discourse of the Other." Even our unconscious desires are, in other words, organized by the linguistic system that Lacan terms the symbolic order or "the big Other." In a sense, then, our desire is never properly our own, but is created through fantasies that are caught up in cultural ideologies rather than material sexuality. For this reason, according to Lacan, the command that the superego directs to the subject is, of all things, "Enjoy!" That which we may believe to be most private and rebellious (our desire) is, in fact, regulated, even commanded, by the superego."

While we are on the subject I would like to mention Mary Klages introduction to Lacan which I found years ago and still consider an excellent summary:

"Lacan says this is what the unconscious looks like--a continually circulating chain (or multiple chains) of signifiers, with no anchor--or, to use Derrida's terms, no center. This is Lacan's linguistic translation of Freud's picture of the unconscious as this chaotic realm of constantly shifting drives and desires. Freud is interested in how to bring those chaotic drives and desires into consciousness, so that they can have some order and sense and meaning, so they can be understood and made manageable. Lacan, on the other hand, says that the process of becoming an adult, a "self," is the process of trying to fix, to stabilize, to stop the chain of signifiers so that stable meaning--including the meaning of "I"--becomes possible. Though of course Lacan says that this possibility is only an illusion, an image created by a misperception of the relation between body and self."

The pure intersection of Lacan, desire, language and film occurs in the work of the madman from Ljubljana, Slavoj Žižek.

From The Perverts Guide to Cinema

As Žižek points out, film is not part of the 'the red pill', "fictions which structure our reality. If you take away from our reality the symbolic fictions which regulate it you loose reality itself." We need to "perceive not the reality behind the illusion by the reality in illusion itself." This is something Hollywood is never going to be able to deliver.

So my thought as we go into another solar cycle is to continue my actions towards discerning illusion from reality. Making art from it and then spending time with the art. This makes me happy, egotist that I am.

Happy new year!
(this is the 200th post for the year on this blog...which also makes me happy)
Philosophy makes me happy as well...am I normal?

Why I Love Shoplifting

A Spoken Work Interpritation of The Essay "Why I Love Shoplifting From Big Corporations" Published in Days of War, Nights of Love.

When I stand in the line at the check out of our local grocer store, surrounded by silent others waiting to make their purchase that will see them survive another day I sometimes wonder..."What the hell are we doing? Is this what life was meant to be?"
Then I make my purchase and go home.

Celebrating Bird - The Triumph of Charlie Parker

Documentary film, 58 mins.

Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Parker is widely considered one of the most influential of jazz musicians, along with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career, and the shortened form "Bird" remained Parker's sobriquet for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite" and "Ornithology."

Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuoso technique, and improvisation based on harmonic structure. Parker's innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries. Several of Parker's songs have become standards, including "Billie's Bounce," "Anthropology," "Ornithology," and "Confirmation". He introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including a tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. Although many Parker recordings demonstrate dazzling virtuoso technique and complex melodic lines — such as "Koko," "Kim," and "Leap Frog" — he was also one of the great blues players. His themeless blues improvisation "Parker's Mood" represents one of the most deeply affecting recordings in jazz. At various times, Parker fused jazz with other musical styles, from classical to Latin music, blazing paths followed later by others.

Parker also became an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat generation, personifying the conception of the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than just a popular entertainer. His style -- from a rhythmic, harmonic and soloing perspective-- influenced countless peers on every instrument. Like Louis Armstrong before him, Parker changed the sound of jazz music forever.

Forest Mountain Voices

Forest Mountain Voices is an indigenous community media project in Ratanakiri. Staff entirely by young Tampeun, Jarai and Kreung indigenous people, FMV makes media in indigenous languages about culture, community and the essential connection between the indigenous people of Ratanakiri and the land

Akira Kurosawa: Influences and Influence

Part One.


Part Two

A high School film project looking at the relationships between Japanese film genius Akira Kurosawa and American films. An excellent piece of work considering the age of the maker.

Hijras

On the Indian subcontinent, a hijra (Hindi: हिजड़ा, Urdu: حجڑا) is usually considered a member of "the third gender" — neither man nor woman. Most are physically male or intersex, but some are female. Hijras usually refer to themselves linguistically as female, and usually dress as women.
Although they are usually referred to in English as "eunuchs", relatively few have any genital modifications.

For centuries, Eunuchs have been an important part of Indian society. But the elevated role they once held has now faded. Today they live in isolated communities, working as prostitutes and beggars. Life may be hard but inside the community, there's a real sense of warmth and camaraderie. The film 'Harsh Beauty' follows the lives of Jyothi, Usha and Hira Bai, three Eunuchs who struggle for acceptance in a culture splintered by religion, caste and politics. Filmed over four years and accompanied by a vibrant soundtrack, it's a warm and poignant look inside this usually hidden group.

Frans Zwartjes

Birds (1968)

Frans Zwartjes (b. 1927) is a filmmaker, musician, violin-maker, painter and sculptor. In the late-60s he was one of the first Dutch visual artists to take up film, initially to document his performances and soon after as an independent medium perfectly suited to his way of creating visual art. His mind-bending works caused a furor, with psychological black-and-white imagery of heavily made-up and over-dressed actors from his circle of friends. Focused on sexually-loaded power games, hysteria, psychosis and cruelty, his films are largely edited 'in-camera'. The images are abstracted in ruthless black and white. The general idea of reality is broken down by brilliant camera work and neurotic editing to replace it with a personal and often disturbing reality. "My own motor system determined the film style", Zwartjes stated in an interview. Zwartjes's oeuvre includes over forty films and his style has left a strong stamp on at least two generations of experimental filmmakers in Holland. You've never seen anything quite like this. - Film Anthology Archive

Behind Your Walls (1970)

Sorbet III (1968)


Visual Training (1969)

Living (1971)
Zwartjes' masterpiece and his own favourite film. “Living has an uneasy, indefinable atmosphere. The camera’s strange swaying and the music that keeps going on and on…”Living demonstrates Zwartjes’ cinematographic mastery. He is the film’s main character and also does the camera work, pointing it at himself with his hand held outstretched. Zwartjes: “I was as strong as a bear back then.” The film is part of the ‘Home sweet home’ series, in which Zwartjes explored the house in The Hague he had just moved into. His wife and muse Trix plays the other role. The two characters move restlessly through the house. The film was made using an extremely wide angled lens (a 5.7), which makes the images very strange.


Speelt

Spectator (1970)
Manders and Toebosch play the artist and his model. Safely hidden behind his lens, the photographer can’t get enough of what the long lashed, glamorous model has to offer.

Some of these films are on UBUWEB

The Housing Bubble Bites A Player

The Housing Bubble bursts on a speculator. Parody using a clip with Hitler as the real estate investor. He bought a house to flip, faces foreclosure, and now wants to get bailed out.

Erik Davis at Burning Man 2007: Nature and Imagination

Nature and Imagination 1: Introduction


Nature and Imagination 2: The Imaginal


Nature and Imagination 3: Creative Imagination


Nature and Imagination 4: Ayahuasca Dreams


Nature and Imagination 5: Death and Science


Nature and Imagination 6: Imaginal Earth


Nature and Imagination 7: Creative Technocracy

Excerpt from an Erik Davis talk at Palenque Norte, Black Rock City, August 07.

Dancing the Tides: Contemporary Shamanism in the Santo Daime

Santo Daime is a syncretic spiritual practice, which was founded in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Acre in the 1930s and became a worldwide movement in the 1990s. Santo Daime rituals involve collective singing of hymns, sometimes while engaged in a formalised dance step, other times simply seated in chairs, combined with the consumption of Daime, the name founder Raimundo Irineu Serra, or Mestre Irineu gave to the drink known generically as Ayahuasca. Dai-me means "give me" in Portuguese, as in "daime força, daime amor" (give me strength, give me love), phrases found in several of the doctrine's hymns.

Santo Daime is syncretic in that it incorporates elements of several religious or spiritual traditions including Folk Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism, and African animism and South American Shamanism. The religion, called simply the Doctrine of Mestre Irineu by its most senior practitioners, has little basis in written texts. Instead, its teachings are learned experientially, through singing of inspired hymns, which explore perennial values of love, harmony and strength through poetic and metaphorical imagery.

Ceremonies, which are called trabalhos meaning "works", are typically several hours long and consist of drinking Daime and either sitting or dancing while singing hymns and playing maracas, or sitting in silent "concentration".

The drinking of Daime induces a strong emetic effect which is embraced as a purging of both emotional and physical impurities. Overall the Santo Daime promotes a wholesome lifestyle in conformity with Mestre Irineu's motto of "harmony, love, truth and justice", as well as other key doctrinal values such as strength, humility, fraternity and purity of heart.

Ayahuasca, which contains the psychoactive compound dimethyltryptamine (DMT), has been the subject of increasing legal scrutiny in the last few decades as Santo Daime has expanded. The decoction has been explicitly legal for religious use in Brazil since 1986, while recent legal battles in Europe have legalized its use in Holland and Spain. In the United States, the Supreme Court in 2006 upheld a preliminary injunction permitting another Brazilian church, the União do Vegetal (UDV), to use ayahuasca ritually. This decision, as the result of specific litigation involving the UDV, applies only to that group, so the legal status of ayahuasca generally remains in a gray area in that country.

Esbjörn Svensson Trio (EST) LEUCOCYTE

Official video of LEUCOCYTE from the final e.s.t. album LEUCOCYTE.

Leucocyte is the result of one of these two day jams. It took place at the famed "Studios 301" in Sydney during the band's Australian tour. In early 2008 e.s.t.'s sound engineer Åke Linton joined the band at the Bohus Sound Studios in Gothenburg, Sweden to begin mixing. On April 28 there was a photo shoot in Berlin for the new campaign. On May 16 the artwork and album were delivered to the label.

Then on June 14 the incomprehensible happened: Esbjörn Svensson, probably the most influential stylist of the last decade, lost his life in a diving accident off the island of Värmdö near Stockholm.

As a result, Leucocyte has become Esbjörn Svensson's and e.s.t.'s musical legacy! It is the most venturesome album Esbjörn Svensson (p), Dan Berglund (b), and Magnus Öström (dr) have recorded as e.s.t. The essence of this journey of discovery is its ecstatic energy. It is a trip through the bloodstream sans compositional safety-net and stylistic restraints in which the borders of musical communication are sounded out.

Video made by Anders Amren

Karl Bartos

Just listened to a long interview with Karl Bartos:

Karl Bartos (born 31 May 1952 in Berchtesgaden, Germany) was, between 1975 and 1991, along with Wolfgang Flür an electronic percussionist in the Electronic music group Kraftwerk. He was originally recruited to play on their US "Autobahn" tour. In addition to his percussion playing, Bartos was credited with songwriting on the Man-Machine, Computerworld and Electric Café albums, and sang one lead vocal on the latter. He left the group in 1991, reportedly frustrated at the slow progress in the group's activities due to the increasingly perfectionist attitude of founding members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.

In 1992 Bartos founded Elektric Music, performing a style somewhat similar to Kraftwerk. This new project released Esperanto in 1993 and then Electric Music in 1998. In between the two albums, Bartos collaborated with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on Electronic's 1996 album Raise the Pressure, and co-wrote material with Andy McCluskey which appeared on both Esperanto and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Universal album. In 1998, he also produced an album by former synthpop Swedish band The Mobile Homes, much in the style of his work with Electronic; guitar-pop with very slight synthetic references. It was received as a great disappointment to synthpop fans, but sold more than any of their previous albums, and was used in TV advertisements for an airline to moderate success.

In 2003 he released the synthpop album Communication, featuring such songs as "I'm the Message", "Camera" and "Ultraviolet".

Karl Bartos announced in early 2008 that he had opened the first edition of the audio-visual exhibition "Crosstalk" for public viewing at the white cube section on the official Karl Bartos website. The program holds 21 films, remixes, cover versions, mash ups from Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, USA and Japan.

Bartos made a lot of sense and spoke of interesting ideas during the program. Bartos is Professor of Sound Art at the Berlin Art Academy. The program is online for the next 30 days.

War Made Easy

War Made Easy (2007) reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.

Norman Solomon’s work has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “brutally persuasive” and essential “for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee.” This film now offers a chance to see that context on the screen.

Directed & Written by: Loretta Alper & Jeremy Earp
Produced by: Loretta Alper
Co-produced & Edited by: Andrew Killoy
Executive Producers: Jeremy Earp & Sut Jhally
Associate Producer: Jason Young
Sound: Peter Acker, Armadillo Media Group
Motion Graphics: Andrew Killoy & Sweet & Fizzy
Additional Music: John Van Eps & Leigh Philips
Narrated by: Sean Penn
Based on the book by Norman Solomon

mariem hassan, the voice of the sahara / la voz del sahara

Mariem Hassan is the voice of the Sahara, the voice of the dessert. Adored by Saharawis living in exile, Mariem Hassan is an icon that gives hope to those who still live in the territories occupied by Morocco. With her prodigious voice and intelligence, she's been able to bring up to date Saharawi music and make it attractive for 21st century music audiences. In the film we go through Mariem's misfortuned life, we discover her as a courageous and enduring character and we witness her artistic transformation into one of the most charismatic and respected figures of the World Music scene.

George Meets Iraqi Opinion

The end to a brilliant career. An Iraqi journalist throws his shoes as George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad today. “This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” the man shouted in Arabic.

“This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq,” shouted the man, later identified by the Associated Press as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi- owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

Both the throwing of the shoes and the 'dog' outburst are deep insults in Middle Eastern cultures.

Journey to the Tarahumara

Anyone who knows the writings of Antonin Artaud knows he spent time with the Raramuri people of Sierra Madre;also called Tarahumara by outsiders. This video is about the Tarahumara as runners. If you are unfamiliar with Artaud, here is an online text, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud (PDF 109 pages)by Jacques Derrida and Paule Thvenin, which may help.

The first work of the Theatre of Cruelty Artaud initially intended for the stage was entitled The Conquest of Mexico, a work based on the Aztec religion and other primitive cultures of the Americas. Partly to escape his numerous failures in Paris, Artaud left for Mexico in 1936 to do research for this play and live in a land where he believed "a new idea of man [was] being born." Unfortunately, Artaud encountered a culture heavily influenced by the same European ideas he was fleeing. The playwright encountered Communist inspired political unrest and an intellectual coeterie of writers and artists, such as Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and JosÎ Clemente, who were adapting modern European styles to depict their own culture. Since Artaud was trying to escape these European styles and ideas, he found himself alienated from the Mexican artists and intellectuals and, unable to speak Spanish, soon felt isolated in a land that he hoped would provide some form of salvation for him. Perhaps as a consequence, he spent much of his time in Mexico City searching for drugs. He did befriend LuÏs Cardoza y Aragon, a surrealist poet Artaud had initially met in Paris. Aragon helped Artaud financially by arranging lectures and translating articles for the Frenchman.

Strangely, Artaud had no interest in the Aztec ruins nearby, which had become tourist sites by this point. Artaud yearned to witness authentic culture untouched by Western influence. Accordingly, Artaud arranged to visit the Tarahumaras, an isolated tribe in the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico who made use of peyote in their religious rites. During this arduous journey, Artaud experienced a painful bout of drug withdrawal. Once there, however, Artaud participated in one of the peyote rituals. What else happened during this visit, we have only authorís own reports. Many of these reports were written or revised several years after original visit and were shaped to conform to Artaudís belief system at the time, so their veracity is questionable. These pieces were published posthumously as the A Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. In this work, Artaud describes a world full of syncretic symbols - crosses, faces in stone - a perfect blending of primitive symbolism and nature, which, for Artaud, typified the lost pre-Renaissance understanding of the world. He also described the peyote ceremony, during which he experienced the ìswirling energies of the earth below. (From Little Blue Light)

There are currently about 50,000 Tarahumara living in the Sierra Madre Occidental in northwestern Mexico. They live in small isolated clusters with most the population concentrated in the Barranca del Cobre, or the Copper Canyon. The Tarahumara indians are part of the Uto-Aztecan indian lineage and are closely related to the Apaches of the Southwestern United States. The area of Northwest Mexico that the Tarahumara lives in is very rugged and unforgiving. The Barranca del Cobre is a chain of five very deep canyons surrounded by very tall mountains that reach almost a mile and a half above sea level. Three of the five canyons are deeper than the Grand Canyon of the United States. The area is different though because it receives much more rainfall and is covered with more vegetation. The terrain is very rugged, so much as to lead to the fact that the area has never been thoroughly mapped or explored (Lutz 66). The area is one of th e coldest in Mexico and soil conditions are very poor. It is because of this that the Tarahumara are semi-nomadic and are cave dwellers for part of the year. ( Running Feet by Art Beauregard)

Pipedream @ Hambone Flux

A machinima documenting the Bogon Flux, in the Wastelands, Second Life.

..The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian--races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized pass through your body...The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market.

Minarets, palms, mountains. jungle...

Cooking smells of all cities hang over the City...

High mountain flutes, jazz and bebop, one-stringed Mongol instruments, gypsy xylophones, African drums, Arab bagpipes... William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

Earth the Beautiful

Astronaut Don Pettit created an astounding video using a sequence of still images he shot of the aurora borealis from the International Space Station.

The Magic Roundabout

I recently blogged about being exposed to the Kenny Everet Video Show as a teenager and it playing a role in my, shall we say, mental state today. Well, before that as a small child I watched a lot of The Magic Roundabout, and it was so cool. I detect a pattern emerging here.
As Dylan the rabbit said..."Pay...like pay..pay...oh no man...why pay?"

Antonin Artaud

This is perhaps why such issues cannot simply, for Artaud, ever be discussed in pure abstraction from their scenic singularity. It could also explain why some of the most powerfully theatrical articulations in his writing were not written "for" theater, not at least in the dramatic sense of the term. One such instance is his celebrated essay on "The Theater and the Plague". Neither purely theoretical nor purely theatrical, this text demonstrates most forcefully what Artaud elsewhere, in "The Alchemical Theater", calls "the virtual reality of theater" (49/60).

In "The Theater and the Plague", which he first delivered in April of 1933 at the Sorbonne, Artaud recounts the spread of the plague in Marseille in 1720. After a brief discussion of plagues and their possible etiologies, Artaud describes the stages through which the plague passes as it spreads throughout the city. It is here that we encounter an allegory of the origin of theater. This consists of four stages, which at the same time and perhaps above all mark what can be called the theatricalization of the stage (temporal as well as spatial). As we shall see, this theatricalization also involves a kind of virtualization, although it is one that contrasts in certain decisive aspects with virtualization as it is generally understood and practiced today. Let us begin, however, by retracing Artaud's account of the four stages of the plague. "The Greatest Thing of All" The Virtual Reality of Theater by Samuel Weber

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (September 4, 1896, in Marseille – March 4, 1948 in Paris) was a French playwright, poet, actor and director. Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine (little Anthony), and was among a long list of names which Artaud used throughout his life.

Artaud's parents, Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud, were of Greek origin (Smyrna), and he was much affected by this background. Although his mother had nine children, only Antoine and two siblings survived infancy.

At the age of four, Artaud had a severe attack of meningitis. The virus gave Artaud a nervous, irritable temperament throughout adolescence. He also suffered from neuralgia, stammering and severe bouts of depression. As a teenager, he was allegedly stabbed in the back by a pimp for apparently no reason, similar to the experience of playwright Samuel Beckett.

Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium stays for their disruptive son, which were both prolonged and expensive. They lasted five years, with a break of two months, June and July 1916, when Artaud was conscripted into the army. He was allegedly discharged due to his self-induced habit of sleepwalking. During Artaud's "rest cures" at the sanatorium, he read Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Poe. In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed laudanum for Artaud, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiates.

In March 1920, Artaud moved to Paris. At the age of 27, Artaud sent some of his poems to the journal La Nouvelle Revue Française; they were rejected, but the editor, Jacques Rivière, wrote back seeking to understand him, and a relationship in letters was born. This epistolary work, Correspondence avec Jacques Rivière, is Artaud's first major publication. In November 1926, Artaud was expelled from the surrealist movement, in which he had participated briefly, for refusing to renounce theater as a bourgeois commercial art form, and for refusing to join the French Communist Party along with the other Surrealists.

Artaud cultivated a great interest in cinema as well, writing the scenario for the first Surrealist film, The Seashell and the Clergyman, directed by Germaine Dulac. He also acted in Abel Gance's Napoleon in the role of Jean-Paul Marat, and in Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc as the monk Massieu. Artaud's portrayal of Marat used exaggerated movements to convey the fire of Marat's personality.

In 1926-28, Artaud ran the Alfred Jarry Theater, along with Roger Vitrac. He produced and directed original works by Vitrac, as well as pieces by Claudel and Strindberg. The theatre advertised that they would produce Artaud's play Jet de sang in their 1926-1927 season, but it was never mounted and was not premiered until 40 years later. The Theater was extremely short-lived, but was attended by an enormous range of European artists, including André Gide, Arthur Adamov, and Paul Valéry.

The 1930s saw the publication of The Theatre and Its Double, his most well-known work. This book contained the two manifestos of the Theater of Cruelty, essential texts in understanding his artistic project. In 1935, Artaud's production of his adaptation of Shelley's The Cenci premiered. The Cenci was a commercial failure, although it employed innovative sound effects--including the first theatrical use of the electronic instrument the Martenot--and had a set designed by Balthus.

After the production failed, Artaud received a grant to travel to Mexico where he gave lectures on the decadence of Western civilization. He also studied the Tarahumaran people and experimented with peyote, recording his experiences which were later released in a volume called Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. The content of this work closely resembles the poems of his later days, concerned primarily with the supernatural. Artaud also recorded his horrific withdrawal from heroin upon entering the land of the Tarahumaras; having deserted his last supply of the drug at a mountainside, he literally had to be hoisted onto his horse, and soon resembled, in his words, "a giant, inflamed gum". Artaud would return to opiates later in life.

In 1937, Artaud returned to France where he obtained a walking stick of knotted wood that he believed belonged to St. Patrick, but also Lucifer and Jesus Christ. Artaud traveled to Ireland in an effort to return the staff, though he spoke very little English and was unable to make himself understood. The majority of his trip was spent in a hotel room that he was unable to pay for. On his return trip, Artaud believed he was being attacked by two crew members and retaliated; he was arrested and put in a straitjacket.

The return from Ireland brought about the beginning of the final phase of Artaud's life, which was spent in different asylums. When France was occupied by the Nazis, friends of Artaud had him transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Rodez, well inside Vichy territory, where he was put under the charge of Dr. Gaston Ferdière. Ferdière began administering electroshock treatments to eliminate Artaud's symptoms, which included various delusions and odd physical tics. The doctor believed that Artaud's habits of crafting magic spells, creating astrology charts, and drawing disturbing images, were symptoms of mental illness. The electro-shock treatments have created much controversy, although it was during these treatments — in conjunction with Ferdière's art therapy — that Artaud began writing and drawing again, after a long dormant period. In 1946, Ferdière released Artaud to his friends, who placed him in the psychiatric clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine. Current psychiatric literature describes Artaud as having schizophrenia, with a clear psychotic break late in life and schizotypal symptoms throughout life.

Artaud was encouraged to write by his friends, and interest in his work was rekindled. He visited an exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh which resulted in a study Van Gogh le suicidé de la société (Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society), published by K éditeur, Paris, 1947 which won a critics´ prize. He recorded Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu (To Have Done With the Judgment of god) between November 22 and November 29, 1947. This work was shelved by Wladimir Porché, the director of the French Radio, the day before its scheduled airing on February 2, 1948. The performance was prohibited partially as a result of its scatological, anti-American, and anti-religious references and pronouncements, but also because of its general randomness, with a cacophony of xylophonic sounds mixed with various percussive elements. While remaining true to his Theater of Cruelty and reducing powerful emotions and expressions into audible sounds, Artaud had utilized various, somewhat alarming cries, screams, grunts, onomatopoeia, and glossolalia.

As a result, Fernand Pouey, the director of dramatic and literary broadcasts for French radio, assembled a panel to consider the broadcast of Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de Dieu. Among the approximately 50 artists, writers, musicians, and journalists present for a private listening on February 5, 1948 were Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Raymond Queneau, Jean-Louis Barrault, René Clair, Jean Paulhan, Maurice Nadeau, Georges Auric, Claude Mauriac, and René Char. Although the panel felt almost unanimously in favor of Artaud's work, Porché refused to allow the broadcast. Pouey left his job and the show was not heard again until February 23, 1948 at a private performance at the Théâtre Washington.

In January 1948, Artaud was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He died shortly afterwards on March 4, 1948. Artaud died alone in his pavilion, seated at the foot of his bed, allegedly holding his shoe. It was suspected that he died from a lethal dose of the drug chloral, although it is unknown whether he was aware of its lethality. Thirty years later, French radio finally broadcast the performance of Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de Dieu.

Neil Young "Don't let It Bring you Down"

BBC TV STUDIOS LONDON 23rd FEBUARY 1971 Taken from the album After the Goldrush.

Old man lying by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by,
Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load
And the building scrape the sky,
Cold wind ripping down the allay at dawn
And the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Blind man running through the light of the night
With an answer in his hand,
Come on down to the river of sight
And you can really understand,
Red lights flashing through the window in the rain,
Can you hear the sirens moan?
White cane lying in a gutter in the lane,
If you're walking home alone.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.

Roland Kirk Quintet - Three For Festival @ Bologna 1973

Psychedelic jazz.

Grateful Dead Columbia Revolt 1968-05-03

Most of the Columbia University Class of '68 walked out of graduation on a prearranged signal -- students carried radios under their gowns and walked out when WKCR played "The Times They Are A'Changin'" -- to a countercommencement on Low Plaza, rockin' out with the Grateful Dead, who were smuggled past the barricades in a bread truck to the steps of the student plaza and from there to Morningside Park for a big picnic.

What the band actually played was not recorded, so the song we've filled in the time frame with works as well as any, and fits like a glove at slightly over 2 minutes, a rare live performance of Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion.

Pt. Kartick Kumar (sitar)

Dhun


Rag Bageshri (3 of 3) drut - Pt. Kartick Kumar (sitar)

Just drink it in....brilliant

Jungle Trip - Ayahuasca

Documentary for Channel 4 To The Ends of The Earth. Amateur ethnobotanist
Piers Gibbon gets drawn into the world of Shamans and the hallucinogenic
Ayahuasca drug. Filmed in Peru !

Odetta RIP

Odetta on "The Johnny Cash Show," August 30, 1969. The first song she performs is based on a Negro "field blues" song known simply as "Black Woman," then duets with Cash on "Shame And Scandal In The Family," which was written by a calypso artist who went by Sir Lancelot, in the 40s.

Odetta Holmes, (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an African-American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consists largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was a formative influence on dozens of artists, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Janis Joplin.

The Psychedelic Genius of Yoshi Sodeoka

Let It Bleed (Left) Let It Be (Right), The Stones And The Beatles Getting Tweaked At The Same Time, 2008 from yoshi sodeoka on Vimeo.
Let It Bleed (Left) Let It Be (Right), The Stones And The Beatles Getting Tweaked At The Same Time, 2008

The entire track is constructed out of two of the most well-known songs in the history of music, Let It Be by Beatles and Let It Bleed by Rolling Stones. Each track was sliced up into small pieces and rearranged. Let It Be is panned on the right channel, Let It Bleed is panned on the left channel.
This video was first premiered at Given Enough Eyeballs show, The Esther M. Klein Art Gallery PA in 2008.


Psychedelic Death Vomit (EXCERPT) from yoshi sodeoka on Vimeo.
Psychedelic Death Vomit (EXCERPT)
Excerpt of "Psychedelic Death Vomit", 04 Minutes 50 Seconds, 2008
Screening:
Heavy Light at Deitch Projects, New York, NY
Floating World Animation Fest 2008, Portland, OR
Archaic Vision at Seed Gallery, Newark, NJ
Three Rivers Film Festival, PA
Select Media Festival, IL


Powercord VS Philter Phreak from yoshi sodeoka on Vimeo.
Powercord VS Philter Phreak
A video from "Noise Driven Ambient Audio And Visuals" DVD


Absinthium from yoshi sodeoka on Vimeo.
Absinthium
A video from "Noise Driven Ambient Audio And Visuals" DVD


Bloodless, Empty Socket from yoshi sodeoka on Vimeo.
Bloodless, Empty Socket
A video from "Noise Driven Ambient Audio And Visuals" DVD

amon düül II. live in munich 1969. untitled jam.

(From the Fassbinder film "Die Niklashauser Fart"- 1970)
You can see and sometimes hear: renate knaup vocals / chris karrer violin / peter leopold drums / john weinzierl guitar / lothar meid bass / shrat bongoes. the guy playing maracas at the beginning of the clip might be falk rogner or dieter serfas.
rainer werner fassbinder, günther kaufmann and some friends are seen smoking unaffectedly...

Amon Düül II (or Amon Düül 2) is a German rock band. The group is generally considered to be one of the founders of the German rock music scene and a seminal influence on the development of Krautrock.
Contrary to their colleagues in Amon Düül I, founding members Chris Karrer, Peter Leopold, Falk Rogner, John Weinzierl and Renate Knaup placed high value on musical ability. With their first album Phallus Dei (God's Penis) in 1969 they created what is considered to be a milestone in German rock history. The title song alone was 21 minutes in length. They received offers to write music for films, winning a Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Award) for their contribution to the film San Domingo.
Their second album Yeti was their breakthrough album in the United Kingdom. Inevitable comparisons with Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground followed.

Mailer and McLuhan 1968

"Violence is essentailly a form of the quest for identity" Marshall McLuhan


Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan expound on violence, alienation and the electronic envelope. The clash of two great minds. (1968)