Your eyes are made of such fine dust

New Walk, Leicester, 18.05.2011

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive

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This month has seen the launch of The Women’s Liberation Music Archive. This website is a substantial historical form of documentation of feminist music-making in Britain and Ireland in the 1970s and 80s, as well as a source of rare material with regard to the junction between feminism and the politics of cultural production. The reference to grassroots groups operating outside the commercial mainstream or alternative circuits is a characteristic example of the project's significance.

I’m posting their press release below, with our best wishes:

THE WOMEN’S LIBERATION MUSIC ARCHIVE
Feminist music-making from the 1970s and 80s

Press release for 1st May, 2011

An exciting new online resource is launched today: the Women’s Liberation Movement Music Archive, at

http://womensliberationmusicarchive.wordpress.com

This project documents the bands, musicians and musical projects that were part of, or influenced by, the great burgeoning of cultural creativity generated by the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) of the 1970s and 80s.

During this era, women’s music, film and theatre groups, visual art, literature, performance art, street theatre and other activities proliferated, fusing artistic activities with politics to develop and express feminist ideas. Feminist bands and musicians were not solely about providing great entertainment but embodied a world-changing commitment to putting politics into practice and advancing women’s rights. Challenging sexism and stereotyped gender roles, their lyrics and style reflected the values of the WLM. They were a vital and integral part of the movement, yet are often omitted from or marginalised by the media and historical accounts. Many operated outside the commercial mainstream or alternative circuits – or indeed were oppositional to them – and are not widely known about. Most were self-funded, grassroots groups who worked on a shoestring and many were unable to create lasting material.

Concerned that this part of women’s history is at risk of being lost, Archive Co-ordinators Dr Deborah Withers and Frankie Green believe the achievements of these music-makers should be mapped and celebrated. This work-in-progress collection comprises testimonies and interviews, discographies, gigographies and memorabilia including photographs, videos, recordings, flyers, press clippings and posters, plus links to ongoing women’s music-making and feminist activism. The project is an independent, voluntary and (as yet) unfunded venture. Funding possibilities and a safe eventual home for the physical archive are being investigated.

All women who were involved in women’s music – as solo artists, in bands, as DJs, MCs, in distribution networks, recording studios, photographers, journalists, events organisers, etc – are invited to contact and contribute to the project.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT wlmmusicarchive@gmail.com

Waves of velvet sweeping into me: The Gathering release Heroes for Ghosts

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The musical genius and aesthetic quality of The Gathering, as well as the influence they have exerted over the course of the past twenty-two years, requires much more that a single post.  And then there is also the issue of love, that sweet fire burning in my chest, as well as in the chests of many others during these years. 

At this moment however the priority is Heroes for Ghosts: a track which has just been released and may be freely downloaded, offering a first view of their upcoming album. 

And as far as their new musical output is concerned, I think the lyric used as a title for this post is pretty explicit...
  

Fading falling
Slow winds breaking soundscapes
And waves of velvet sweeping
Into me

You moved all that was in my world
And showed me all the new colours
In my universe where storms run

Falling, falling, falling, fall into me
I hear echoes of my speech
And I see shadows of my walk
I feel the past
I always look backwards

Fighting, floating
Tasting blood in my mouth
Ancient damp painting ruins
Feel the rising chill

I listened to the sound of your airs
We’re watching stone saints fall over
While the black crows will be taking to the sky

Falling, falling, falling, fall into me
I hear echoes of my speech
And I see shadows of my walk
I feel the past
I always look backwards

My heart is drifting through all shades of green
My head is thinking through meadows of the sea
Lonely as I am

Expanding the scene where I've never (ever) been
A promise at last to call back the past
To finish off with you - I'm finishing off with you

Sliding down

Music by R. Rutten/F. Boeijen
Lyrics by Silje Wergeland

The Gathering: Frank Boeijen - keyboards, Marjolein Kooijman - bass, Hans Rutten - drums, René Rutten - guitars, Silje Wergeland - vocals.
Guests: Jos van den Dungen - violin and viola, Noel Hoffman - trumpet

Are you the one..........

 

Are you the one?
The traveller in time who has come
To heal my wounds to lead me to the sun
To walk this path with me until the end of time

Are you the one?
Who sparkles in the night like fireflies
Eternity of evening sky
Facing the morning eye to eye

Are you the one?
Who'd share this life with me
Who'd dive into the sea with me
Are you the one?
Who's had enough of pain
And doesn't wish to feel the shame, anymore
Are you the one?

Are you the one?
Whose love is like a flower that needs rain
To wash away the feeling of pain
Which sometimes can lead to the chain of fear

Are you the one?
To walk with me in a garden of a stars
The universe, the galaxies and Mars
The supernova of our love is true

Are you the one?
Who'd share this life with me
Who'd dive into the sea with me
Are you the one?
Who's had enough of pain
And doesn't wish to feel the shame, anymore
Are you the one?

Are you the one?
Who'd share this life with me
Who'd dive into the sea with me
Are you the one?
Who's had enough of pain
And doesn't wish to feel the shame, anymore
Are you the one?
Are you the one?

Are you the one?

Happy Anniversary Edward Scissorhands!!!

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This film is very dear to me – and may as well be Tim Burton's best. As Edward has turned twenty, Seb Mesnard developed the amazing website Scissorhands 2oth hosting the work of artists offering their perspectives on the film, while an exhibition has followed. The works by Roberto Ricci and Lorena Alvarez (website, blog) are characteristic examples I enjoyed very much. 

 Seb Mesnard   Scissorhands 2oth

Roberto Ricci     Scissorheart

Lorena Alvarez  (website, blog)     The Blossom Clearing

Cats & Stars

For the animals we have taken care of – those who made it, those who didn't, and those we don't know what happened to.

And for S, whose gorgeous cat has three legs.

And for M, whom I asked how many cats she is taking care of and she replied 'as many as the stars...'

Tim Burton: The Man With A Thousand Faces

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Timothy William Burton was born on 25 August 1958 in Burbank, California. He began drawing at an early age, and later on attended the California Institute of Arts. He collaborated with Disney in the making of the six-minute animated film Vincent (1982), a tribute to Vincent Price with whom he would also collaborate in 199o’s Edward Scissorhands, and the 27-minute live action film Frankenweenie (1984), which was judged unsuitable for children and never got released.  Burton subsequently stopped collaborating with Disney because he realized that the company’s style was very far from his own idiosyncrasy and sensibility. In 1985 he directed the film Pee Wee’s Adventure, an enormous box office-hit, and then the supernatural comedy Beetlejuice (1988). With 1989’s Batman, his less personal film so far and yet one of the most successful films of all times, Burton received critical and commercial acclaim and  gained unprecedented power in Hollywood. No one could ever imagine the succession of films such as Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Big Fish (2003), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Alice In Wonderland (2010), and many others.

As a child, Burton related to the monster figures which were abundant in the B-movies of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s: Frankenstein, Wolfman, Godzilla, an assortment of Draculas, Vincent Price’s villains and the monster of the black lagoon. This amalgam of influences made him later develop his own personal hero, the typical Burtonian male character. The  image of the ‘'outcast’' appears in various forms in Burton’s movies: the persecuted monster, the mad genius, the maniac, the unfinished young man living in his own Gothic dreamworld, and the disturbed superhero who struggles with his evil alter ego. These guises overlap and amalgamate, weaving a complex picture of the typical Burtonian male character. Usually, the eccentric boy who hasn’t still grown up, stands against the 'reasonable' but 'cruel' crowd which cannot accept his 'difference', and most of the times he ends up being persecuted by it. Burton’s protagonists refuse to accept the official version of the world and through magic binoculars they notice things other people cannot see. They think that becoming part of their surrounding reality is something really scary.

Through the years, Burton created his own personal style which can be described as a 'great result with the use of very simple means', which  has made him extremely popular with audiences of all ages. In many of his films, he narrates a quite simple story which is directly accessible by everyone thanks to the beautiful images he creates; they are far more eloquent than words. Despite being clear, however, Burton's message is emotionally deep and complex. He does not use any elaborate means of showing the complexity and  unpredictability of the adult world, such as intricate montage, 'philosophical' long takes or logical discrepancies between picture and sound. On the contrary, there is an ultimate correlation between picture and sound and his grand imagery lies everywhere, from the beginning of the film until the end producing symbolisms which facilitate the plot. Setting, decorations, texture, colors, lighting, framing, make-up and costumes are, each in their own right, static elements of the mise-en-scène, making his works particularly atmospheric. His symbols are not covered with the veil of realism; on the contrary they can be interpreted in a variety of ways.

Burton’s films are very close to the German expressionist aesthetic (distortion of reality, extensive use of chiaroscuro, high degree of stylisation, emphasis on metaphor and symbol) whereas the narrative rules (there is no linearity nor any kind of structure) are sacrificed in order to give space to the visual magnitude. Furthermore, he uses many archetypal schemata such as the death of the father-creator, the conflict between father and son, the hero myth, as well as seductive female figures who, despite never being protagonists (with the exception of Corpse Bride’s Emily and Alice in Alice In Wonderland), they play key roles, for example Catwoman in Batman Returns, the witch in Big Fish, or the Red Queen in Alice In Wonderland. 

In Burton’s case, the perfection of cinematic techniques is not as important as the initial impulse to create, to express a feeling, to give the audience a space where they can connect with the heroes on their own terms and at their own pace. After all, cinema is the kind of magic that creates life out of 'lifeless matter'. 

Sources:

Bassil-Morozow, H. (2010) Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd, London: Routledge
IMDb (n.d.) Biography for Tim Burton (I), www.imdb.com/name/ nm0000318/bio

 

Pink Floyd - The Wall: rock music as ars politica

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The Wall is a concept album released by Pink Floyd in 1979. It addresses the personal crisis, gradual isolation, and emotional breakdown of a fictional rock star named Pink. The Wall was almost exclusively Roger Waters' work, who also wrote the screenplay for the film directed by Alan Parker in 1982. The latter included animation sequences by Gerald Scarfe, while Bob Geldof played Pink.

The Wall largely articulates a critique of the music industry. It actually grew out of Waters' frustration at live performances taking place in large venues and in front of mass audiences. The profit-orientated nature of this type of concerts led, as Waters argues, to the experience of alienation: "I became very conscious of a wall between us and our audience and so this record started out as being an expression of those feelings".  

However, The Wall is also a critique of power relations produced in the context of institutions such as the school and the family, as well as of ideologies such as nationalism and militarism.  The film responded to this type of content through emblematic images, such as the depiction of the school as a disciplinary factory, where massive lines of docile students are crushed in a coordinated fashion (The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part 2). 

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According to Waters, the music industry focuses on ticket sales rather than on whether or not concerts become a  meaningless ritual; as he argues, "the show must go on, at any cost, to anybody. I mean I, personally, have done gigs when I've been very depressed, but I've also done gigs when I've been extremely ill". In the second half of The Wall, the alienated rock star Pink breaks down and is immediately subjected to medical treatment (Comfortably Numb), so as to remain functional as a commodity (The Show Must Go On). This is a significant turning point of the narrative, in that Pink hallucinates under medication and sees himself as a fascist leader, while the concert is turned into a rally and is followed by attacks on minorities (In The Flesh, Run Like Hell, Waiting for the Worms). 

Waters refers to the following experience: "Montreal 1977, Olympic Stadium, 80,000 people, the last gig of the 1977 tour, I, personally, became so upset [...] that I spat at some guy in the front row, [...] which is a very nasty thing to do to anybody. Anyway, the idea is that these kinds of fascist feelings develop from isolation".  In this respect, The Wall's critique of fascism focuses on the level of desire; Pink's reactionary fantasy is indeed an expression of his subconscious. This is also where the concept of the hammers originates from. In the film they are visualised as the emblem of the organisation Pink leads in his hallucination; "we've used the hammer as a symbol of the forces of oppression", notes Waters. This sequence comes to an end as a terrified Pink regains his consciousness and  screams “Stop!”

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Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari focused on the production of reactionary subjectivities in the context of capitalism (Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972/1983). They argued that fascism emerges at the micropolitical as well as at the macropolitical level, and that class struggle both requires and includes the production of radical forms of desire. In this respect, they distanced themselves from traditional, dualistic and bureaucratic models of political struggle, and suggested heterogenuous, counter-hierarchical and decentrealised forms of action (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980/1987).

While introducing the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault refers to  “the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (Preface, in Anti-Oedipus, op.cit, p. xiii). In the context of The Wall, the self appears to desire the very power they have suffered from. It is characteristic that the deformed faces of the students who had been crushed by the disciplinary machine of the school (The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part 2), now reappear to cheer for the reactionary subjectivity embodied by Pink  in his hallucination (Run Like Hell). Moreover, the character of the schoolmaster, a principal agent of coercion and humiliation, turns into one of the hammers which symbolise Pink's imagined organisation (The Trial). Hence, the political content of alienation is defined as a desire of power, because of which Pink emotionally identifies with the institutions he rationally opposes.

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In the final part of the album the wall collapses, and thus Pink's alienation comes to a symbolic end, while the last track's lyrics (Outside The Wall) eloquently reflect upon what has been at stake throughout the work: 


All alone, or in two's,

The ones who really love you

Walk up and down outside the wall. 

Some hand in hand

And some gathered together in bands.

The bleeding hearts and artists

Make their stand.

And when they've given you their all

Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy

Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall. 


Foucault had argued that it would be a mistake to perceive Deleuze & Guattari's writings as some sort of long overdue, holistic and reassuring theory. In contrast, he suggested a reading of their work as an artform: “ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica” (Preface, in Anti-Oedipus, op.cit., p. xiii). In a similar manner, Waters refuses to offer an easy and comfortable answer. The last sound heard in Outside The Wall is in fact the phrase “Isn’t this where....”; while the phrase “....we came in?” is the opening sound of the first track (In the Flesh?).  

Τhe circular form of the narrative thus suggests a need for a continuous and stable critical stand against  power relations; and the choice to make such a stand is evident of the political integrity of its agents.

The Little Broken Egg

My name is MERCAN (Coral in Turkish). When I was found by Melek I was in pieces, like a broken egg (Melek calls me this sometimes) or like a coral reef. I am ok and happy now, I live with other 7 cats at her home for almost 5 months.

I will keep you posted about myself and my fellow cats.

Byeee

Mercan

A lovely underdog

On the pavement, right outside the entrance of an apartment building, lives this small tree. It is called a bigarade (also known as 'bitter') orange tree. You can see it on the right side of the first picture, standing straight with its green leaves and all. 

 

Now, in the same picture, on the left, there is a very strange entity leaning outwards. It looks like a dead, bare and leafless branch - but in fact, it is a damson tree. And there is reason to believe that initially it was just a piece of wood supporting the tree on its right.

But instead of giving up, this strange entity has decided to bloom.

Does it matter it is so small and hardly looks like a tree? Does it matter it lives right next to the traffic? And does it even matter at all that every winter it has to stand against persistent north winds and temperatures below freezing?

Judge for yourselves...