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imomusThe Schinkel Pavilion -- the most mysterious venue of the Berlin Biennial -- dedicated a shuttered, octagonal room to the mirrors and musings of Italian mystic, designer and womanizer Ettore Sottsass, who died in January aged 90. The place, dominated by a pink Art Deco phallus -- from the terracotta yantra series "inspired by Aztec sculpture and jazz age radio receivers", it says here -- felt like a kind of temple to Sottsass' spirit.
It was the semi-accidental layering of styles that provided some of the magic -- a typically Berlin, and typically Sottsassian, experience. First of all, the Schinkel Pavilion itself is a luxury 19th century structure near the Opera, remade in the communist era with a kind of mysterious Communist-Modernist ambience with ancient Greek undertones (the palmette wallpaper, for instance). Secondly, the Sottsass exhibition itself combined the "grey furniture" of offices (represented by swivel chairs) and texts strewn about in typewriter font with some funky 70s mirrors, so it felt like a 70s office combined with a hairdressing salon combined with an erotic temple. And all this was framed by the restrained chintz of the Schinkel's 1950s nomenklatura style of austere luxury, Germanic Modernist solidity, and the Berlin Biennial's own Deco graphics.
My favourite of the Sottsass texts strewn on the floor pinned down exactly this sort of multi-layering of styles, and the kind of poetry that results from it. "In a room, one is asked to put as much as possible of the "grey furniture", to the extent that the normal, "cute" square structures of mass-produced or not mass-produced room furniture become almost or totally covered and destroyed," Sottsass wrote in a 1970 text entitled Could Anything Be More Ridiculous.
"If this point is carefully reached, the inhabitant will feel practically suffocated by a grey, shiny, fibreglass plastic, geological slip: he will feel suffocated by roundish, inflated (for ever) forms of perhaps feminine origin -- or, if you like, religious origin (which is the same thing); anyway, the inhabitant will feel completely isolated from everything which is outside the room, like being in Benares in the boiling red monkey temple, like being in Captain Nemo's submarine drawing room with carpets and organ music, like being in the yellow (grey) submarine, like being in the grey powdered Royal Tomb, down under the pinkish rocks of the Valley of the Kings or, in the end, like being on a silent trip into the black solid sky between Mars (the planet) and Orion (the star). A trip that is a trip and also death, as always happens if you dive profoundly into reality."
It was the semi-accidental layering of styles that provided some of the magic -- a typically Berlin, and typically Sottsassian, experience. First of all, the Schinkel Pavilion itself is a luxury 19th century structure near the Opera, remade in the communist era with a kind of mysterious Communist-Modernist ambience with ancient Greek undertones (the palmette wallpaper, for instance). Secondly, the Sottsass exhibition itself combined the "grey furniture" of offices (represented by swivel chairs) and texts strewn about in typewriter font with some funky 70s mirrors, so it felt like a 70s office combined with a hairdressing salon combined with an erotic temple. And all this was framed by the restrained chintz of the Schinkel's 1950s nomenklatura style of austere luxury, Germanic Modernist solidity, and the Berlin Biennial's own Deco graphics.
My favourite of the Sottsass texts strewn on the floor pinned down exactly this sort of multi-layering of styles, and the kind of poetry that results from it. "In a room, one is asked to put as much as possible of the "grey furniture", to the extent that the normal, "cute" square structures of mass-produced or not mass-produced room furniture become almost or totally covered and destroyed," Sottsass wrote in a 1970 text entitled Could Anything Be More Ridiculous.
"If this point is carefully reached, the inhabitant will feel practically suffocated by a grey, shiny, fibreglass plastic, geological slip: he will feel suffocated by roundish, inflated (for ever) forms of perhaps feminine origin -- or, if you like, religious origin (which is the same thing); anyway, the inhabitant will feel completely isolated from everything which is outside the room, like being in Benares in the boiling red monkey temple, like being in Captain Nemo's submarine drawing room with carpets and organ music, like being in the yellow (grey) submarine, like being in the grey powdered Royal Tomb, down under the pinkish rocks of the Valley of the Kings or, in the end, like being on a silent trip into the black solid sky between Mars (the planet) and Orion (the star). A trip that is a trip and also death, as always happens if you dive profoundly into reality."![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 11:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 11:42 am (UTC)I loved the show, as I loved the biennial, for its obliqueness and quietness and the sense of something new and aesthetic and refined stirring within it, but others may prefer to side with Ed Ward (http://berlinbites.blogspot.com/2008/04/berlin-biennial-bombs-bigtime.html)'s dunderheaded blunderbuss blast at the biennial.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 01:14 pm (UTC)If you mean to imply that Momus is under-endowed, then let me disabuse you of that notion. I have seen photos of Momus au naturel, and his appendage is a monster. HE IS HUGE! Enough to set this girl's loins aflutter, in any case! I'm sure Hisae is a very, very happy woman.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 07:13 pm (UTC)i'm a nudist 4 life!
nothing to be ashame of..
I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 07:30 pm (UTC)I agree, he's huge! A friend of mine from Momus' album Stars Forever said he wondered if Momus' penis size matched his level of lust, and I'm still trying to figure out if it is.
Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 07:54 pm (UTC)Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 08:24 pm (UTC)Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 09:48 pm (UTC)Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 08:34 pm (UTC)Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-21 02:32 am (UTC)Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-21 05:52 am (UTC)There was this chick who had her eye on me. A couple of them sort of had their eye on me for quite awhile, being a drummer and all.
Anyway, she'd follow me. She had a kid. I don't know, I don't like screwing chicks with kids. She was being very nice and she'd keep turning up, you know, making scrambled eggs. She kind of cultivated me.
She was trying to get me to fuck her. One time, I was kissing her and stuff on her couch over at her place and I was lying on top. I was humping her actually, and she was saying, "Why don't you go all the way? Let's go all the way." I was put off. Then finally, one night in my room — I had this really weird room with a little balcony. I used to shit on it, shit on my little balcony and let it dry. And I had all the furniture in my room, including two single beds, all the furniture tipped on end. I made a maze out of it so that you couldn't see more than two or three feet in any one direction at any given time. It was an interesting room, a little room of its own. Anyway, she got me really stoned on good stuff. I'd only had a little marijuana in my life so it was still fresh in my blood.
I don't remember how I got my clothes off, but we were on the balcony. I cleaned the shit off the balcony and put a bed out there because she was coming over that night. It wasn't hard and I wasn't aware exactly what was happening to us. Somehow she managed to sort of do it herself. And then I came. It was very much like a dream sequence. I just sat up, didn't say a word and took off. I ran downstairs and got on her bicycle and rode, just as fast as I could, away. I was very upset and I turned a corner on the wrong side of the street. I was in a frenzy and I ran head-on into a car, and flipped into the air. I flew over the car and landed on my feet. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1965)"
Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-21 05:54 am (UTC)" When I was fourteen, sex suddenly became all-important to me. It didn't really matter who or what it was with, as long as it was a sexual experience. So, it was some pretty boy in class in some school or other that I took home and neatly fucked on my bed upstairs. And that was it. My first thought was, Well, if I ever get sent to prison, I'll know how to keep happy.
I remember the first time it got out. Somebody asked me in an interview if I ever had a gay experience and I said, "Yes, of course, I am bisexual." The guy didn't know what I meant. He gave me this horrified look of "Oh, my God, that means he's got a cock and a cunt." (London, 1961)"
Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-21 05:59 am (UTC)Link to Iggy Pop story with other essays from famous musicians, poets, authors, etc (http://www.nerve.com/PersonalEssays/Cook/StarFirsts/index.asp?page=Pop.asp)
Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-21 02:17 pm (UTC)btw, I've decided what I am going to do with my momus plaster caster when it gets here... hood ornament for my Maserati!!
right right?
Dear Women
Date: 2008-05-20 10:03 pm (UTC)Sorry for giving you nothing but an odd appendage spurting yop to lust after.
I was having a ‘bad DNA’ day.
Love,
God
Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 08:00 pm (UTC)Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 11:58 pm (UTC)right right? *-) (http://www.strangeholiday.com/images/backgrounds/clockwork_orange_book_cover.jpg)
Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-21 02:27 am (UTC)Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 08:06 pm (UTC)are there any more nudes out there?
Re: I can't believe this entry was from a year ago
Date: 2008-05-20 08:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 11:11 am (UTC)Scotsassery
Date: 2008-05-20 02:34 pm (UTC)How does Momus do accomplish so much in one spring? Does he keep extra time in convenient portable tins? About all I've accomplished this spring is replacing last year's old, tired air in my bicycle tires with this year's new, exciting fragrances.
I'm especially excited by a possible new Laplantine collab, as the last is still forever psychogeographically imprinted in my mind with the landscape of Appalachia, since I listened to it over and over again along those twisting, turning mountain roads. (Some day I'll tell Momus how I've purposefully listened to "Ocky Milk" only once so far, in a Doylesque "Lost World" jungle in the crater of an exinct volcano in the Caribbean, as I wandered under tree ferns and giant silk-cotton trees. Another experiment in psychogeoacoustics.)
And will Momus be able to get Alvin Lustig to design his next book cover, please?
xyz
Re: Scotsassery
Date: 2008-05-20 07:34 pm (UTC)I wonder sometimes myself. Basically:
1. I've always had a lot of energy.
2. Related: I'm decisive and impatient, and that reduces my "transaction times" enormously, leaving me "time rich" for cultural activities. The kind of practical problems that fill other people's lives (many of them oriented to bringing up children, it has to be said) either don't exist at all in my life, or are dealt with in a matter of minutes.
3. My ratio of input to output is kind of amazing: for instance, I can do just two things per week, and get a blog entry, a New York Times piece and a Frieze column out of them! I went on Sunday to a Japanese sweet making party, for instance, and asked if I could take photos, then warned "Of course, there's a risk these will end up in the New York Times!" I was kind of joking, and kind of not. Having taken the snaps, I pretended to leave, saying "Right, that's it, I can go now!" Which again was kind of a joke, and kind of not.
4. This is probably all the result of some kind of weird mental metabolic disorder, a combination of narcissism and ADD. Oh, and getting up ridiculously early in the morning, and being endlessly enthusiastic about things other people can easily get super-cynical about.
The story about listening to Ocky Milk in an extinct volcano crater is completely amazing, and I respect you totally for making that your sole listen! Great stuff!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 04:09 pm (UTC)This is precisely why I've always loved the homes of elderly people who have led interesting lives.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-20 07:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-21 02:14 am (UTC)