#tributaries digital cinema

[thatrickmcginnis]

RICHARD KERN, TORONTO, 1988

Richard Kern's career has been remarkable to watch from the perspective of someone who met him briefly for a portrait session, after a screening of his films in the backroom club where I usually saw and photographed bands. Kern emerged from New York's East Village with a zine and later a series of films that were aggressively provocative, back when this was still acceptable subject matter for artists. I'd already seen an evening of his films - a program that included Fingered and The Right Side of My Brain - and it was pretty indelible. But we were all edgelords back in those pre-grunge days, and this sort of overtly offensive stuff was celebrated, especially if it offended the right people.

Richard Kern and his colleagues in what got called the Cinema of Transgression - which included filmmakers like Nick Zedd, Jon Moritsugu, Beth B, Kembra Pfahler, David Wojnarowicz and others - were an obvious tributary to the underground and indie rock scene, especially when musicians like Henry Rollins and Lydia Lunch would appear in Kern's films. Their whole "fuck you if you don't like it" aesthetic was a natural fit with bands like the Butthole Surfers, Jesus Lizard, Big Black, Poison Idea, Pussy Galore and so many others. So it was natural that we'd do a feature on Kern for the alternative music monthly I worked for when he showed up to answer questions after an evening of his films, with my friend Tim assigned to write the piece while I got to do the pictures. I showed up with my Mamiya C330 and my flash, umbrella and light stand and photographed Kern simply, sitting on a chair in front of the movie screen on the stage at the Rivoli where I usually saw bands.

What I didn't know at the time was that my Richard Kern portraits would be my last ever job for Nerve magazine, where I'd been developing as a photographer (no pun intended) for over two years. The story Tim and I handed in would be laid out on flats but never saw publication, as money troubles (and some personal ones) unceremoniously ended Nerve magazine after five years. This was effectively the end of my apprenticeship as a photographer; if I wanted to make a living at this, I had to seriously start looking for work at "real" magazines. I'm not sure if anyone ever saw these portraits of Richard Kern; they probably didn't get published anywhere until I posted a few on my old blog several years ago.

With all that in mind I'm still rather pleased with my portraits of Kern: they have a starkness and simplicity I was striving for (what my friend Chris Buck recently referred to as a "clunky honesty"). You didn't have to know that Richard Kern would end up with a career as a celebrated, arty pornographer, but it wouldn't surprise you. He has, in the decades since I took these photos, published over two dozen books with titles like XXModels, Digital Kern, Shot by Kern, New York Girls and Extra High, sometimes for quality imprints like Abrams and Taschen. Even more improbably he has survived the scythe of cancel culture, perhaps by hiding in plain sight.

[tributariesdigitalcinema]

Have you ever wanted to put a tripod in the middle of the ocean or a river? So did we.


Check out our latest post about the new version of our on-the-water camera system:

[beforeafterrobots]

Read the tea leaves

A dizzying cache of bullshit fell from his gums - shiny black - sure and constant like the summer rains in March, causing in himself and others the volumes of stupefied languor that could drive even poets and weed heads to heavy panic.

The energy that possessed him in those months and night long fits of chatter and declarations was not manic, nor was it clever, just nervous, and so self-servingly solemn that it kept the soup of non sequiturs and solecisms soaking his brain on the boil and splashing at the brim - a side ear vein of sweat that would slide right down to his carve on cold nights was the steaming birthmark of that murky river. The tributary to a fungal swamp in the mind spread festering to his pinky foot. 

The bad dream ballerina tick of rubbing the front of his left foot against the back of his right knee every other minute to quench the irresistible itch melted and might escape the untrained eye because he had other shows of girliness that flickered like soundless thunder from under the leather trench coats, Arabian scarves and zealous flirting and touching and leaning in breath close, rebroadcast in dogtooth smile as charm or some other kitsch slick snake gimmick of personality as he spoke and spoke and spoke and …

I won’t lie I was certainly possessed with jealousy and plain pure contempt and I had been deliberately, at substantial financial discomfort, drinking myself into a foul mood for three nights - days devoid of mornings - searching my cigarette scorched mouth for the words to explain my actions, which equated to laying out the entire map work of my being didn’t it?, without ever registering or detecting any real seriousness in a situation that any other person who knew what I knew and felt the thumping nerve shredding throb I felt would realise was a cloud that might never clear.

What I couldn’t understand is what she found so fucking attractive in him that I was now completely out of the picture, compensated with yellow hearts and blue ticks and every other conceivable version of fake intimacy.

I was smarter than him by most measures, my imagination was deeper and any kinks and eclecticisms I had were bravely unique, rather than cosmetic weapons. What I didn’t have was ambition. I relied heavily on obscurity and a naive belief in sensitivity. Side by side, my personality was a bush forest of strange noisy birds compared to his trimmed and watered garden of coos and candour and power - power by proxy, by proximity, by promiscuity. She didn’t care and she ...

It was from out the depths of this brain fog that I leapt onto the tip of his vile little infected pinky toe that night and rejoiced as I heard the concealed wet-sore go "squissssh". 

- ei sorry man, harde. shit. my mistake. 

 I asked him for an interview and savoured the sight of his wicked face twist into a wince. 

- Sharp sharp it’s okay. Interview? About what?

My timing was miraculous. Marvellous.

- What book is on your nightstand? What are you reading?

It was nearly 3am. I'd asked the question loud enough for anyone in earshot to hear. An eternal proven truth is that all journalists instinctively, compulsively eavesdrop, especially when bored and coffee-less and cold . So an audience I had.

- He? Hheeheeh are you serious? You’re asking me what I’m reading? Why?

Satan was with me and every drop of Three Ships Whiskey I swilled for the past three days as national voting reached crescendo evapourated in the heat of that battle into a plasma screen of fate. All the Angels of Doom giving me what I didn’t know I wanted but deserved. How else could I have known that this one time the scales of power were tipping delicately in my favour and like they would never do again.

- For background. You know, colour. Why not?

- Hehehehe what publication are you from again?

- I didn’t say

The gust howled and whistled and heaved death kisses at the pylon-high ceiling of the military hanger where birds of fluorescent lightbulbs were blinking and fading like low-fat milk.

The cinema-size digital blackboard flashing real-time tallies of last few hundred votes was frozen in ROY-G-BIV. It hadn’t moved for an hour. And for once, neither had his cracked, condescending lips.

I turned my recorder off. Looked down to where his left foot should have been. Slipped my notebook inside a jacket-less paperback and slumped off into the shadows.

[noloveforned]

i finally caught up with posting the last six months worth of radio shows on the site. thanks to anyone who missed us and for those of you who reached out! lots of great stuff in there including an entire philly indie rock theme and the origins of our current argentina alternative theme. after you check them out, be sure to tune into wlur at 8pm tonight for this week's show!

no love for ned on wlur – september 10th, 2021 from 8-10pm

artist // track // album // label los violadores // revolución inter // y ahora qué pasa eh? // umbral tar // same // handsome ep // chunklet the stick figures // september // archeology // floating mill sonic youth // flower // smart bar- live in chicago 1985 // goofin' sweet knives // u don't mind // i don't wanna die 2x7" // big neck the breakaways // walking out on love // the nerves- one way ticket // alive motorists // surrounded // surrounded // debt offensive partial traces // nova // glass beach // salinas liz cooper // getting closer // hot sass // sleepyhead * belly // star (full band version) // bees // 4ad swansea sound // swansea sound (cynmraeg version) // swansea sound cassingle // skep wax the pacific ocean // it's too late // the other shore demos // enchanté karl blau // natural limit // scream time // (self-released) f.s. blumm and nils frahm // desert mule // 2x1=4 // leiter susan howe and david grubbs // concordance (excerpt) // concordance // blue chopsticks lady blackbird // fix it // black acid soul // foundation directions // echoes (continental drift version) // echoes (expanded) // temporary residence * herbie hancock // palm grease // thrust // columbia matthew e. white // let’s ball // k bay // domino * vaughan mason // roller skate // bounce, rock, skate, roll // brunswick botany // fuck this whole day // portal orphanage // western vinyl * little simz // little q, part two // sometimes i might be introvert // age 101 the marías // little by little // cinema // nice life * beach vacation // i fell apart // i fell apart // z tapes fan modine // i am your tributary // i am your tributary digital single // overseas mouth painter // mother carey's chickens // tropicale moon // feeding tube rat columns // sarah // new romans ep // (self-released) super furry animals // it's not the end of the world? // rings around the world // bmg

* denotes music on wlur’s playlist

[martine-anciaux-blog]

9-2-2017 Presentation © HDdiapo Our world Thinking photo & photo-painting ANCIAUX Martine THOMAS André world tv web education life © THOMAS André

THOMAS ANDRE, author, writer, poet, MARTINE ANCIAUX, art photographer, creator of photo-painting, Martine ANCIAUX creator of the photo painting, new art of the 21 century, art photographer, creator of photo-painting

25-11-2016 Today, there are 4 days of heavy rains and wind that hit our region.

«OUR WORLD» this was written on 04-09-2012

For me, poet, life is not necessarily a facility, And I am very surprised, that the simple fact of pressing a button, May we believe, that a computer is enough to play Of all the vicissitudes of life. Be very practical, a storm falls on your area causing A very large power cut, For you, more television, more electric car, No more computers, no fridge, no freezer, more light, Unable to recharge your mobile, Ipad, etc. Then you see, we are really the slaves of progress, Let us take care of all this.

© OUR WORLD POEM OF THOMAS ANDRE © PHOTOS & PICTURES MARTINE ANCIAUX creator of the photopainting, art Photographer ©

Never has mankind evolved so rapidly, Progress, is a race that invites itself, Every day by transforming us quickly, In badly programmed robots, because always evidently perceptible.

Flying away from the basics, With a dementia, As we change in relation to our daily synthetic approach, Towards a future of less pathetic discoveries.

In less than one hundred years, we discovered the automobile, In recent times the mobile, In the 1900s, it was the turn of the cinema to enhance itself, First mute, then in color, and finally in 3D, and Dolby stereo and finally to digitize.

How of a film without words, we have arrived at such a power of sound, To a superb evolution of the cascades, to be able to create to us so many emotions That an extraordinary enthusiasm can arise among the spectators, And we project in the film as actors.

Then we discovered thanks to EINSTEIN, the relativity, And it was from there that OPPENHEIMER created the terror of radioactivity, A discovery, which brought us to the atomic age, The one who heals and heals our physical pain.

Generating comfort, and electricity, Creating by the same an ambiguity between benefits and risks of the activity, An extraordinary discovery, but one that requires a lot of understanding, And maximum safety, to benefit from its put into production.

The computer, an opening tool, But also closing, Indeed, our children have become more than keyboard memorizers, At such a point, that they no longer know, read or count, because of this keyboard.

Ipad, multifunction touch, Who renders us at the present time servile, In giving us, from a tributary ring, And from a message, the impatient recipient.

How often, the lack of control of progress, The fact that humanity has gone astray, And that the individual, though avid of advances, Is lost, and is responsible for its incompetence, before these advances.

[tributariesdigitalcinema]

Alberta, Canada 2022.

[martine-anciaux-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47rN_4AHfgE)

9-2-2017 Presentation © HDdiapo Our world Thinking photo & photo-painting ANCIAUX Martine THOMAS André world tv web education life © THOMAS André

THOMAS ANDRE, author, writer, poet, MARTINE ANCIAUX, art photographer, creator of photo-painting, Martine ANCIAUX creator of the photo painting, new art of the 21 century, art photographer, creator of photo-painting

25-11-2016 Today, there are 4 days of heavy rains and wind that hit our region.

«OUR WORLD» this was written on 04-09-2012

For me, poet, life is not necessarily a facility, And I am very surprised, that the simple fact of pressing a button, May we believe, that a computer is enough to play Of all the vicissitudes of life. Be very practical, a storm falls on your area causing A very large power cut, For you, more television, more electric car, No more computers, no fridge, no freezer, more light, Unable to recharge your mobile, Ipad, etc. Then you see, we are really the slaves of progress, Let us take care of all this.

© OUR WORLD POEM OF THOMAS ANDRE © PHOTOS & PICTURES MARTINE ANCIAUX creator of the photopainting, art Photographer ©

Never has mankind evolved so rapidly, Progress, is a race that invites itself, Every day by transforming us quickly, In badly programmed robots, because always evidently perceptible.

Flying away from the basics, With a dementia, As we change in relation to our daily synthetic approach, Towards a future of less pathetic discoveries.

In less than one hundred years, we discovered the automobile, In recent times the mobile, In the 1900s, it was the turn of the cinema to enhance itself, First mute, then in color, and finally in 3D, and Dolby stereo and finally to digitize.

How of a film without words, we have arrived at such a power of sound, To a superb evolution of the cascades, to be able to create to us so many emotions That an extraordinary enthusiasm can arise among the spectators, And we project in the film as actors.

Then we discovered thanks to EINSTEIN, the relativity, And it was from there that OPPENHEIMER created the terror of radioactivity, A discovery, which brought us to the atomic age, The one who heals and heals our physical pain.

Generating comfort, and electricity, Creating by the same an ambiguity between benefits and risks of the activity, An extraordinary discovery, but one that requires a lot of understanding, And maximum safety, to benefit from its put into production.

The computer, an opening tool, But also closing, Indeed, our children have become more than keyboard memorizers, At such a point, that they no longer know, read or count, because of this keyboard.

Ipad, multifunction touch, Who renders us at the present time servile, In giving us, from a tributary ring, And from a message, the impatient recipient.

How often, the lack of control of progress, The fact that humanity has gone astray, And that the individual, though avid of advances, Is lost, and is responsible for its incompetence, before these advances.