Whim Wanders

[imomus]

Sunday in Venice was so squally we didn't go out at all, but stayed in cooking, reading, composing music (a Toog commission which must remain secret for a while), and watching DVDs of Wim Wenders' truly awful film Till The End of the World. Luckily we also found a DVD of the excellent Belleville Rendez-Vous, as sharp, observant and funny as the Wenders film was waffly, rambling and portentous (we've nicknamed him Whim Wanders as a result).



On Saturday we caught more of the scattered national pavilions, the ones that fall outside the established ones in the Giardini. Hussein Chalayan's four-screen sci-fi film starring Tilda Swinton was a bit Whim Wanders for my taste, but I liked some folk dolls being displayed downstairs in the Armenian pavilion. These turned out of rhyme nicely with a display of oversized dolls by Laura Ford in "Somewhere Else: Four Artists from Wales" out on the island of Guidecca, so I've made a photo compilation of oulandish folkloric costumes for you today. I wish street fashion paid more attention to this sort of stuff — tell you what, next time you're about to pull on jeans, T-shirt and trainers, pull on clogs, a striped poncho, or a suit made of coffee sacks instead. Promise?

Off to Turin on the train, arrivederci!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Is it Kachinas? An exhibition I saw at this museum:

http://www.moma.pref.kanagawa.jp/museum/exhibitions/2005/antes050612/

was VERY interesting...

Keiko T

[snowy-florimell.livejournal.com]

Kachina dolls are Native American, and I don't think those folk dolls above are. I read the Nancy Drew mystery about the Kachina Dolls, hence my expertise.. Wow, what paragons of outlandishness..! I promise to get on that; I must!

[womanonfire.livejournal.com]

okay, i promise ;)

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

easy, firebird !!...it doesn't necessarily have to flow...it could just nervously psychokill all over the place.

Certainly

[armoredbaby.livejournal.com]

I think I am going to pass on the sacks and go for the "stove-pipe" antennaed/antlered look for head gear.

costumes

[(Anonymous)]

They dress like actual bolivians...

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, I'd be interested to know what you make of Michel Houellebecq. He's described as a "tender pervert" in the article below - did you come up with that phrase or did you pinch it from somewhere else?

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,1635247,00.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The phrase "tender pervert" is mine, although the inbuilt performativity of language makes it, potentially, everybody's. I haven't read Houellebecq, something has put me off in the past. Let me tell you that, for instance, I couldn't bear to read Sartre's "Intimacy" because it was too cynical and disenchanted.

[iamcoreyd.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many other of your phrases people have adopted as their own. Let's do a google search!

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=64509

Woman attempts to poison boyfriend

hehe

[(Anonymous)]

I really liked Until the end of the world when I was 11, and I still love it. Ha ha !
Antonin

[l-archivist.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about Until The End of the World a day or two ago -- and how much I like it, mostly for it's being so ramblin' and weird. I tend to forgive generally poor execution of anything if the ideas are interesting enough. At least it's something fertile!

p.s. I usually don't post here, but I always enjoy your writings.

[l-archivist.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about Until The End of the World a day or two ago -- and how much I like it, mostly for it's being so ramblin' and weird. I tend to forgive generally poor execution of anything if the ideas are interesting enough. At least it's something fertile!

p.s. I usually don't post here, but I always enjoy your writings.

Houellebecq

[instant-c.livejournal.com]

I found his books a fast read, spiritualy furtive, and morally corrupt. They have a certain element of play but live in a world of complete hopelessness and depression. I would hawever reccomend his book on H.P Lovecraft, an early Fashion Goth, if you will.

Sack Up! (baby)

[rober-dyeatribe.livejournal.com]

A certain ratio of sacker and comfort is a good thing. I remember a time in in Mr Byrite's, I was taken with a nice bit of sea grass. Part of a display in the window.

Eventually, following much of a shin-dig (I always get what I want, it's for the best), the assistant said "you can take it, prat".

I think he changed his view about me though, as I'd heard him say as I eventually left the store "that was the last straw".

Stipetic

[mongoltrophies.livejournal.com]

While you were there, I wonder if you saw Wild Blue Yonder (http://www.wernerherzog.com/main/de/html/news/THE_WILD_BLUE_YONDER.htm) by Werner Herzog.
This year he also has come out with a film of widespread distribution in America, Grizzly Man (http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/grizzly_man/), which I am going to see later tonight.

[hook-and-eyelet.livejournal.com]

"Whim Wanders" is clever & apt.

My friend, Nick, wears a poncho regularly. I wish I could live in its fringes.

the Wales show.

[(Anonymous)]

I was over at the Welsh chaps Halloween party.
Horrors aplenty and good times.

The three screen video at their pavillion was rather catchy.
As were there robots on heat.

I played live electronica on a boat made from bins from Belfast.
Did you get bitten by any of the fierce Venice mosquitoes?

barryc
dodgy stereo

the Wales show.

[(Anonymous)]

I was over at the Welsh chaps Halloween party.
Horrors aplenty and good times.

The three screen video at their pavillion was rather catchy.
As were their robots on heat.

I played live electronica on a boat made from bins from Belfast.
Did you get bitten by any of the fierce Venice mosquitoes?

barryc
dodgy stereo

Imitation, Flattery, and Critical Commentary

[epymetheus.livejournal.com]

I was wandering through my mind this weekend, and wrote an essay in the style of Momus. I thought it might amuse, if not enlighten, you to see the effect of your daily commentary on the cultural critics of the future. I hope you enjoy The Ill-Fated Adventures of the Beep (http://www.strangejournal.com/archives/00000584.html).

Adam

[(Anonymous)]

eh, until the end of the world.. it's the most brilliant(ly f**ed up) film of the 90s, maybe of all time. true from the time they get to australia it does get boring but till then it's the ultimate in pastiche, it quotes everything and it's fun just for that. I'd love to see the 8 hour or so original or intended version. for something truly horrible most wenders' movies after that: wings of desire part 2 whatever it's called, end of violence etc. guess if i watched u.t.e.o.t.w. now for the first time i might think differently but having seen it at its first release it's one of a few movies i can actually watch again and again. to about the point they get into the stupid lab.

do you like Kings of the Road or alice in the cities?

alin

[jina---.livejournal.com]

I wish you post some street fashion pictures instead...
I've heard there are some pretty nice happenings in the streets of venice...
or maybe not?

Turin

[(Anonymous)]

I hope you'll publish some pic about Turin, my city.

See you this night!

http://tolove.splinder.com/

[theantisuck.livejournal.com]

this doesnt have anything to do with anything but i thought this was interesting:

"The development of spam can be seen as an attempt on the part of spammers to push anti-spam filters toward ever more effective methods of recognizing spam and thus allowing genuine human communication to reach the user. In this sense, spam is necessary to the experience of e-mail in the Internet age -- seeing the vast number of messages summarily dispatched by the spam filter, we are reaffirmed in our belief that e-mail provides us always and only with desired communications: convenience-enhancing self-chosen bulletins and, more importantly, real human interaction.

The automated refusal of the false intimacy of penis enlargement, call girls, and debt consolidation underwrites and guarantees the real intimacy that electronic communication has always promised. Indeed, the very experience of the stray fugitive spam message as invasion serves to reinforce the illusion of the electronic medium as a privileged site of intimacy and privacy -- an illusion that is increasingly necessary as the model of security and surveillance comes to dominate what we once thought of as our public life. In this way, spam is the essence and condition of "cyberspace" itself as an adjunct of political control -- and, we may perhaps conjecture, as the possibility of future liberation."

[krring.livejournal.com]

i fell in love with belleville rendez-vous, and still am. the plot goes through stages of hilarity, melancholy, thrill and humanity, achieving all with an almost complete lack of dialogue which renders it international and relies on the use of aesthetics to connect with the audience on a greater level.

everything is a caricature, from the contrast between the balloon-like bellevillers, the slender, streamlined cyclists and the strictly rectangular french mafia to the impossibly tall belleville architecture. even in the movement or plotline we see evidence of such contrast, with the impatience of rearing cars and the cyclists' laborious single-mindedness, inherited by madame souza as she diligently crosses the atlantic on a pedalo.

ahem... i love it and i'm glad you do too.

[slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, I'm always thinking about your prompts for street fashion to be riskier because I myself enjoying experimenting on that level...but the truth is, it's easier to go wild on that if you don't have a job, a school, any kind of social life that's composed by people who are not going to think twice before plainly pigeonholing you as a weirdo and give you hate or, at best, contempt for it. Or maybe it's just harder in spain.
Still, magic happens sometimes. Have you seen the movie 'rize'?it's a documentary about some pretty weird clown dancing gangs that flourished in the 90s and are still going strong in one of the worst parts of LA, and they're all positive community values and covered in a spontaneously generated mix between clown and african tribal makeup.check the trailer here http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/rize/large.html
I'm afraid the recent media exposure will just make their thing into just another MTV style if it hasnt completely happened yet, but who knows.