#ulmer museum

[garadinervi]

Gottfried Honegger, Enrico Castellani, Gottfried Honegger, Jan Schoonhoven, Ulmer Museum, Ulm, March 15 – April 26, 1981 [Flat & Bound, Integral Lars Müller GmbH, Zürich]

[a-german-town-every-week]

Ulm

Ulm ist eine Stadt in östlich Baden-Württemberg, neben der Grenze mit Bayern. Die Stadt ist auch ein Stadtkreis, und hat fast einhundertdreißigtausend Einwohner. Ulm ist eine sehr alte Stadt, und ist bekannt für Ulmer Münster, das den höchsten Kirchturm der Welt hat und der größte evangelische Kirchenbau in Deutschland ist. Die Stadt befindet sich an der Donau, und gegenüber der Stadt von Neu-Ulm in Bayern. Die Altstadt von Ulm wurde im Zweiten Weltkrieg zerstört, aber erfolgreich wiederhergestellt. Ulm Hauptbahnhof ist auf der Bahnlinie zwischen Paris und Budapest, und die Stadt hat auch eine Straßenbahn. Neben dem Münster sind manche Sehenswürdigkeiten das Rathaus, die Stadtbibliothek, das Museum Ulm, das Fischerviertel, und der Botanischer Garten der Universität Ulm. Ulm ist auch der Geburtsort von Albert Einstein.

[taunuswolf]

Keiner der Heiligen Drei Könige war schwarz, trotzdem wird fleißig über Rassismus diskutiert

Alle Jahre wieder, pünktlich zum Tag der „Heiligen drei Könige“ am 6. Januar, flammt sie wieder auf: Die Diskussion um den angeblich „Schwarzen König“ Melchior (In anderen Berichten ist von Caspar die Rede. In Wahrheit ist es Balthasar) Statt sich an der wunderbaren Legende zu freuen, dass auch aus Afrika ein König den Weg nach Bethlehem gefunden haben könnte und dies als Zeichen zu werten, dass für Jesus alle Menschen gleich sind, ist diese humanitäre, universelle Symbolfigur angeheizt durch bildungsferne von Selbsthass zerfressene Eliten zu einem Stein des Anstoßes geworden. Laut Albertus Magnus war der schwarze König ein Äthiopier. Vielleicht ist heutigen Beamten-Kirchenvertreter nicht mehr bewusst, dass es in Äthiopien schon seit dem 3. Jahrhundert eine Christliche Kirche gibt, die im Gegensatz zu Deutschland nicht mit Auflösungserscheinungen und massivem Mitgliederschwund kämpft. 

Bereits Weihnachten 2020 wurden im Ulmer Münster die historischen Krippenfiguren komplett entfernt. Dabei beriefen sich die Kirchenvertreter nach Meinung der Medienplattform katholisch.de möglicherweise auf Aussagen der umstrittenen Black-Lives-Matter-Bewegung, wonach der schwarze König eine „Verkörperung kolonialrassistischer Stereotype“ beinhaltet. Von dieser unseligen Diskussion betroffen sind auch die Sternensingen, deren Schminkaktion inzwischen als „Blackfacing“ geächtet wird. Facebook hat die Abbildung von farbig geschminkten Sternen Singer streng verboten. Wer viel Lärm macht und auch mal die Muskeln spielen lässt, scheint recht zu bekommen.

Dabei ist die Frage, ob es überhaupt einen farbigen König oder überhaupt „Könige“ gab, leicht zu beantworten. Laut Matthäusevangelium eindeutig NEIN. Da ist von „Sterndeutern“ die Rede, die aus dem Morgenland kommen (Math. 2,1fl). Damit ist wahrscheinlich Babylonien, Zweistromland gemeint, wo bereits vor 5000 Jahren von hohen Zikkuraten (Stufentempeln) aus, der Lauf der Sterne beobachtet wurde. Alle drei waren demnach Orientalen und mutmaßlich hellheutig. Auch auf frühmittelalterlichen Mosaiken sieht man nur hellheutige Heilige. Wie und wo entstand die Legende vom „schwarzen König“?    

Ein Edelstein aus der Antike wurde als Porträt gedeutet

Vieles deutet daraufhin, dass die wunderbare Geschichte vom farbigen König aus Afrika in Köln entstanden sein könnte. Dort werden seit dem siegreichen Feldzug Barbarossas gegen die Stadt Mailand im Jahre 1164 die Gebeine der Heiligen Drei Könige aufgebahrt. Einer der Heerführer war der Kölner Erzbischof Rainald von Dassel. Um der Kriegsbeute einen angemessenen Platz zu geben, wurde lange vor dem Bau des Domes jener Dreikönigschrein angefertigt, der auch heute noch bewundert werden kann. Absolutes Kleinod in dem goldenen Sarkophag war das sogenannte „Bildnis der Heiligen Drei Könige“. Ein wertvoller großer Cameo aus Sardonyx (Ptolemäer-Cameo). Er stammt aus einer anderen Kriegsbeute. 1204 plünderten Kreuzfahrer die Stadt Konstantinopel – den eigenen Verbündeten – und überschwemmten anschließend West und Osteuropa mit wertvollen Schätzen, Ikonen, Büchern usw. Darunter befand sich auch ein dreifarbiger dreilagiger Sardonyx, der zur Mineralien-Gruppe der Chalcedone zählt. Niemand ahnte, dass es sich bei den in Stein geschnittenen Porträts um die Abbildung des hellenistischen Herrscherpaares Ptolemaios II (308-246v. Chr.) und seiner Frau Arsinoe II. handelt. Das Kleinod war nach dem Tod der Königin Kleopatra in Römischen Besitz gelangt und zuerst in Rom später in Konstantinopel aufbewahrt worden, ehe er als weitere Kriegsbeute in Köln eintraf. 1574 wurde er gestohlen und gelangte nach weiteren Irrfahrten durch Italien und Deutschland nach Wien, wo er im Kunsthistorischen Museum besichtigt werden kann.  

Albertus Magnus entdeckte einen „bärtigen Äthiopier“

Wie man auch auf Wikipedia nachlesen kann, sah bereits der Kölner Scholastiker Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) in einer Figur auf dem Helm des Hellenistischen Königs – es handelt sich um den ägyptischen Gott Ammon - einen „schwarzbärtigen Äthiopier“. Tatsächlich heißt einer der Sterndeuter „Balthasar“ der „Schwarzbärtige“. Für den Hobby-Mineralogen, besser gesagt Pionier der mittelalterlichen Mineralogie, der nach eignen Aussagen Bergkristalle und Achate ausgegraben, und über alle zwölf Edelsteine des „Himmlischen Jerusalems“ (off 21,9) lange Abhandlungen geschrieben hatte, fügte sich alles harmonisch zusammen. Der Stein war ein Geschenk des Himmels und der kleine schwarze König – er wurde ohne Diamantbohrer aus den dunklen Onyx-Teilen herausherausgeschnitten – kam gleichfalls aus himmlischen Sphären.

Sah Albertus Magnus rassistisch oder herablassend auf Baltasar herab? Dazu war er im Gegensatz zu heutigen Gender-Woke-Eliten zu gebildet. Er wusste um die Existenz der Äthiopischen Kirche, die erfolgreich den islamischen Eroberern getrotzt hatte. Seine Kreation des „bärtigen Äthiopiers“ ist eine Verneigung vor einem afrikanischen Kulturvolk, dass bereits von Herodot erwähnt wird und sogar Juden während der Babylonischen Eroberung Zuflucht geboten hat. Als nationales Heiligtum wird die Bundeslade in Äthiopien verwahrt. Die Äthiopier haben also – abgesehen von der historischen Wahrheit – ihren schwarzen König doppelt und dreifach verdient. Dass ihn jetzt ausgerechnet weiße Eliten verdammen und als „rassistisches Kolonialerbe“ verbannen, grenzt an Schizophrenie und konterkariert christliche Werte. Es nährt den begründeten Verdacht, dass nicht der schwarzbärtige Balthasar abgeschafft werden soll, sondern das Christentum als universelle alle Hautfarben vertretene Religion. Dass Kinder sich rassistisch verhalten, wenn sie ihre Gesichter schwarz färben, ist schwer zu vermitteln. Umgekehrt färben in Haiti und Kuba farbige Anhänger der Santeria und anderer Yoruba-Religionen ihre Gesichter weiß, wenn sie zum Beispiel Aufnahmerituale praktizieren. Die Diskussion ist also schräg. Sie offenbart vor allem eins: Bildungsferne, Selbsthass und die Lust die eigene Kultur zu zertrümmern.                     

Quellen:

[trascapades]

🙌🏿#ArtIsAWeapon This is fantastic news, and the @themuseumofmodernart #JustAboveMidtown exhibition was inspiring and empowering!!

"MoMA announces the establishment of the Just Above Midtown Archives in the Museum’s Archives, Library, and Research collections, following the Museum’s recent exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces. Started by #LindaGoodeBryant in 1974, Just Above Midtown (JAM) was an exhibition and creative space started by #Blackartists and curators that welcomed people of many generations and races in New York City until 1986. A hub for Conceptual art, abstraction, performance, and video, JAM proposed an expansive idea of #Blackart and encouraged thinking beyond its commercialization. The exhibition used archival photos, videos, and other contextual historical material from the #JAMArchives to give visitors a sense of the alternative model of art it championed to respond to a society in need. As a part of MoMA’s collection, the JAM Archives will be available for activation in the Museum’s galleries and for consultation and research at MoMA by curators, art historians, artists, journalists, researchers, students, and the public."

Reposted from @t.jeanlax “Artists’ imaginations and creativity shaped and made JAM what it was and what it continues to be today, fresh and alive. After 50 years in storage, the JAM archive has a home at MoMA where it can continue to energize, challenge, and inspire current and future generations of artists and those of us who are fortunate to engage and experience their work.” —Linda Goode Bryant 💐

S/o @michelleelligott chief of moma archives library and research collections who co-led on the establishment of the jam archives 💫

🎶: Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris Conduction® Conducted and conceived by #VernonReid, played by #GregTate’s Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber including Shawn Banks, Lewis “Flip” Barnes, Lisala Beatty, Jason Tobias DiMatteo, Chris Eddleton, Leon Gruenbaum, Bruce Mack, Jared Michael Nickerson, Shelley Nicole (first vocalist), Ms. Olithea (second vocalist), LaFrae Sci, Dave “Smoota” Smith, V. Jeffrey Smith, Mazz Swift, Ben Tyree, and J.S. Williams. Special guests: James Blood Ulmer and David A. Barnes. Projections: Allison Costa. Documentation by @orestionline Feb 9, 2023

#BlackGirlArtGeeks

[einereiseblog]

Neu-Ulm: Eine Stadt voller Sehenswürdigkeiten Neu-Ulm ist eine Stadt im Südwesten Deutschlands, die sich durch ihre einzigartige Schönheit und Geschichte auszeichnet. Die Stadt liegt am Ufer des Flusses Donau und ist ein beliebtes Reiseziel für Touristen aus aller Welt. Neu-Ulm bietet eine Vielzahl von Sehenswürdigkeiten, die jeden Besuch wert sind. Die Altstadt von Neu-Ulm: Ein historischer Ort Die Altstadt von Neu-Ulm ist ein wahres Juwel der Stadt. Hier finden Sie eine Reihe von historischen Gebäuden und Sehenswürdigkeiten, die Sie erkunden können. Eines der bekanntesten Gebäude ist das Rathaus, das im 18. Jahrhundert erbaut wurde. Hier können Sie eine Führung durch das Gebäude machen und mehr über die Geschichte der Stadt erfahren. Ein weiteres beliebtes Ziel ist die Stadtmauer, die im 12. Jahrhundert erbaut wurde. Sie ist noch immer gut erhalten und bietet einen wunderbaren Blick auf die Altstadt und die umliegenden Gebiete. Neu-Ulm: Ein Zentrum des Handels und der Kultur Neu-Ulm ist auch ein wichtiges Zentrum des Handels und der Kultur. Hier finden Sie eine Vielzahl von Geschäften, Restaurants und anderen Einrichtungen, die jeden Besuch wert sind. Ein besonderes Highlight ist der Marktplatz, auf dem Sie eine Reihe von Kunsthandwerk und anderen Produkten finden können. Museen und Galerien in Neu-Ulm Neu-Ulm ist auch ein wichtiges Zentrum für Kunst und Kultur. Hier finden Sie eine Reihe von Museen und Galerien, die Ihnen einen Einblick in die Geschichte und Kultur der Stadt geben. Eines der bekanntesten Museen ist das Neu-Ulmer Museum, das eine Vielzahl von Kunstwerken aus der ganzen Welt ausstellt. Die besten Restaurants in Neu-Ulm Neu-Ulm ist auch bekannt für seine hervorragenden Restaurants. Hier finden Sie eine Vielzahl von Restaurants, die eine breite Auswahl an Gerichten aus aller Welt anbieten. Ein besonderes Highlight ist das Restaurant "Alte Mühle", das einige der besten Gerichte der Stadt anbietet. Neu-Ulm: Ein unvergessliches Erlebnis Neu-Ulm ist ein wunderbarer Ort, um einmalige Erinnerungen zu schaffen. Die Stadt ist voller Sehenswürdigkeiten, die jeden Besuch wert sind. Egal, ob Sie historische Gebäude, Kunstmuseen oder hervorragende Restaurants erkunden möchten, Neu-Ulm hat alles zu bieten. Entdecken Sie die Schönheit der Stadt und machen Sie sich auf den Weg, um Neu-Ulm zu erkunden.

[skyfire85]

-A Bell X-2 at Edwards AFB. A Boeing B-47 is visible in the background. | Photo: NACA/USAF

FLIGHTLINE: 159 - BELL X-2 STARBURSTER

The X-2 was built to investigate the "thermal thicket" at speeds above Mach 2, but the two examples completed had a short service life.

Building on the work of the Bell X-1 and Douglas D-558 aircraft, the X-2 (nicknamed Starburster, though it was rarely used) was designed to explore speeds in excess of Mach 2. Engineer calculations, backed up by flights of the former aircraft, indicated the existence of a "thermal thicket"; that is: escalating aerodynamic heating as speeds increased. As a result, Bell devoted extensive time to development of advanced materials, aerodynamics, and control systems all with the goal of creating an aircraft capable of flying faster and higher than any human had done previously.

-Orthograph of the X-2. | Illustration: NASA-DFRC

The X-2 incorporated numerous advances over the X-1, including a swept wing and horizontal stabilizer. The airframe was built from K-Monel, an alloy of coper and nickel, as well as stainless steel. An XLR-25 two-chamber throttleable rocket motor provided 2,500 to 15,000 pounds of thrust, burning a mix of liquid oxygen and alcohol. The XLR-25, produced by Curtiss-Wright, was actually based on a WWII RATO bottle developed by Robert Goddard for the US Navy. The aircraft were designed with a skid rather than main landing wheels, though a nose gear was equipped, as well as skids on the wingtips.

-An XLR-25 motor on display at the Aviation Hall of Fame in New Jersey. | Photo: Bill Maloney

In a worst-case scenario, the cockpit section of the X-2 could be ejected. With stability provided by a parachute, the pilot could then eject the canopy and bail out. Like the Skyrocket and X-1 before it, the X-2 would be carried aloft by a bomber (in this case a Boeing B-50), then dropped to begin its flight.

-One of the X-2s, its ground support personnel, the B-50 and its crew, F-86, F-80 and F-100 chase planes, and H-19 rescue helicopter. | Photo: NACA

FLIGHT TEST PROGRAM

X-2 number 1 was chosen to have the first engine installed, so ship #2 was sent to Edwards AFB for initial unpowered tests. The first glide test of the X-2 was on 27 June 1952, and ended rather inauspiciously. During the landing on Muroc dry lake bed, the aircraft pitched unexpectedly, forcing the right wingtip to contact the ground, breaking off the bumper. The nose gear collapsed as well, and the aircraft slid along the lakebed on its fuselage for some distance before coming to rest. The second flight was delayed while repairs were completed, and took place on 8 October, followed by the third flight two days later.

-Bell test pilot Jean Ziegler sits in the cockpit of the damaged X-2 #2 after the 1st rough landing. | Photo: NACA

X-2 number 2 was returned to Bell's factory in New York state afterwards, and the XLR-25 engine was installed. A captive carry flight over Lake Ontario on 12 May 1953 resulted in the loss of aircraft #2, Ziegler, and Frank Wolko from the B-50 crew. During a test of the liquid oxygen system, an explosion rocked the combined aircraft, jettisoning the Starburster, Ziegler and Wolko. The remains of the X-2 fell into Lake Ontario, and neither it, nor the bodies of the two men were recovered. The B-50 mother ship was able to return to the Bell facility, but was judged to be uneconomical to repair, and was scrapped. Similar explosions destroyed one of the X-1s, the X-1A and X-1D, and were eventually traced to Ulmer leather gaskets in the fuel system. The gaskets, treated with tricresyl phosphate (TCP), would react with liquid oxygen, making them explosive if sufficiently jarred. The Ulmer leather gaskets were replaced, and the explosions stopped.

-A Bell X-2 is loaded aboard the Boeing B-50A-5-BO Superfortress “mothership,” 46-011. | Photo: USAF

Modifications to the first X-2 and the engine delayed flights until 1955, with the first powered flight occurring on 18 November, reaching a speed of Mach 0.95. The test series began in earnest at this point, with the Starburster showing both its promise but also its limitations. On his final flight in July 1956, Lt. Col. Pete Everest was propelled to Mach 2.87, earning him (temporarily at least) the title of "Fastest Man Alive". Everest reported that the controls were only marginally effective at those speeds however, as the center of pressure for the aircraft changed at high speed, coupled with aeroelasticity of the empennage rendered the flight surfaces ineffective.

-Photo of the first X-2, showing shock diamonds in both exhaust plumes. | Photo: NACA

Testing continued however, with Captain Iven Kincheloe crossing 100,000 for the first time on 7 September 1956 and Captain Milburn Apt setting a new (unofficial) speed record of Mach 3.2. This mark came a grave cost however, as Apt, likely the victim of a lagging or miscalibrated instrument, attempted a banked turn above Mach 3, far in excess of what the X-2 could achieve. The aircraft tumbled out of control, with Apt unable to counter the control coupling, inertial roll coupling and supersonic spinning faced by the aircraft. Apt triggered the ejection of the nose, but was incapacitated by the forces he encountered, and was unable to release the canopy and free himself to activate his own parachute, and was killed when the capsule struck the lakebed. The nose-less X-2 continued on, eventually returning to Earth with little damage. A proposal was made to salvage the plane and modify it for hypersonic research, but was not funded, and the first X-2 was scrapped.

-Color photo of an X-2 still coupled to the B-50D mothership prior to launch. | Photo: USAF

LEGACY

The two X-2s completed 20 flights between 1952 and 1956, and although they set records in both altitude and speed, their contribution to the knowledge of high speed aerodynamics and heating was debatable. The unmanned X-7 and research variants of the Bomarc missile were capable of the same speeds, and the destruction of both X-2s meant that much of NACA's planned test program was left unflown. Manned exploration of hypersonic speeds and ultra-high altitudes would have to wait for the North American X-15, still several years off.

The X-2 was made a part of the 1956 film "Toward the Unknown", as the movie depicts several real and fictional test programs taking place at the USAF Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB. The climax of the movie depicts and accident roughly similar to Mel Apt's, although the pilot survives the crash.

-Film crews surround the X-2 during filming for Toward the Unknown. | Photo: Bob Rohrer

The plane was later included in the pilot movie "Genesis" for the NBC series "Quantum Leap", in which the main character time travels into the body of a fictional pilot for the aircraft. A full-scale mockup of the X-2 was created for the show, and was later acquired by the Planes of Fame Museum in California. The prop is still in the museum's collection, though years of exposure have not been kind to the faux-X plane, which was not built to last in the first place.

-Photo of the X-2 mockup at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, CA, some time in 1994. | Photo: Jon Goto

[indigosandviolets]

Hi could you write headcanons for what the basterds from Inglorious Basterds are like AS fathers? You write so well!! Aaah!!!

of course! i’ve gotten a couple of these, so here we go!

Aldo Raine

Aldo is a very loose father in that he is very leneant on rules

he is very much a, “yes, unless your mother finds out. then i had nothing to do with this, alright?”

you two have three kids — a ten year old daughter named Maria and two sons, Irving and Peter who are eight and five

they are all as mischievous and clever as their father

like holy shit, you have three Aldo clones because they mostly have his personality

Peter even has the accent, which you don’t even know how that happened

Maria and Irving don’t have it, so why the hell Peter picked it up is a complete mystery to you

Aldo loves it though

he’s taught each of them a valuable life skill as their personalities take shape

Maria? Knife welding and carving. Irving? Basic bootlegging tactics and how not to get caught. Peter? Apache phrases and code speak.

he has his own little group of basterds

Donny Donowitz

i wrote a little bit about this already in my serious dating headcanons for Donny so read there because i already included him as a father in that

but as an overview, you two have two kids — a son named Art who you call Artie who plays baseball and a daughter named Anja who is fascinated by Donny’s dog tags

Donny coaches Little League and it’s cute as fuck

he loses a lot of his edge when he becomes a father and it’s a good change for him

he’s not as much of a loose canon but you have to talk him out of doing stupid things with Art and Anja ALL THE TIME

it gives him people to come home to and a reason for him to smile and you’re glad that he’s become a much happier person in general

Hugo Stiglitz

you have twin boys named Leon and Benjamin and a daughter named Margret

Leon and Benjamin are just like you and Margret is just like Hugo

i mean exactly like him. strong silent type. she opens up to very few and for very little.

but, because she is just like Hugo, he’s great with her

they’ll watch Westerns together when she can’t sleep

Leon and Benjamin are constantly trying to get his attention and he tries to share all of the love equally

does this mean you have come home to the three of them piled on top of Hugo, all four of them fast asleep with the tv playing a random movie

Wilhelm Wicki

Stefan is your only kid but he’s you and Wicki’s world

he’s also a crackhead and the two of you together doing something is Wicki’s nightmare

he has woken up in the middle of the night to you two making brownies because Stefan couldn’t sleep

he loves hearing you read Stefan to sleep

since Wicki works as a translator for German and Jewish immigrants, he’s taught Stefan German and Hebrew

you two also take him to the Art Museum whenever you can and he always darts straight to the Suerat pieces

Stefan also can and WILL sleep in your bed with you and neither of you really mind

Smithson Utivich

you and Uti were only planning on having one kid — until you found out it was twins

“Twins.”

“Twins, Y/N.”

“Fucking — really?”

y’all are great parents though

you have two sons — Dov and Eli who look absolutely nothing alike

Dov looks more like you and Eli looks more like Utivich

you teach them Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish(Uti’s parents don’t speak English), and everything about hating Nazis from the comfort of your New York apartment

they’re the exact opposite of each other but you and Uti handle it pretty well

“Okay, so Dov wants to go to the dinosaur museum downtown but Eli wants to go to the statue of liberty.”

“So...both?”

“You’re paying the cab fare.” (Uti still cannot drive.)

Gerold Hirschberg

You and Hirschberg have a daughter named Sarah and a dog named Dog

it wasn’t your idea, it was Sarah’s

to explain how Hirschberg is as a parent, Sarah’s first word was, and I quote, “Damn!”

“Gerry, what the hell.”

“She probably learned it from you!”

“Damn!”

“Jesus fuck.”

you love her with all your heart but she’s just as much of a wacko as him sometimes

this means the two of them will poke you while you sleep in order to wake you up just to tell you they’re making breakfast

she is also constantly on his shoulders

they are inseparable

Omar Ulmer

you and Omar only have one kid named Elizabeth

he’s very involved in her interests and you two both make it a point to do what she wants to do with them

she became obsessed with Omar’s camera so you called her ‘Clicker’ as a joke

it stuck

it stuck enough for her to not realize that’s not her actual name

Omar ended up getting her a camera of her own for her seventh birthday so she would stop taking his

the only pictures she takes are of birds and you two while you’re not looking and Omar gets the film developed every two weeks

“I think this one is from your birthday?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. When the hell did she get in our room?”

“I have no idea.”

[fatehbaz]

Disrupting Western practices of place and geography, Enote and several Zuni artists and storytellers have created a series of counter maps, which are decolonized maps “that bring an indigenous voice and perspective back to the land . . . challenging the arbitrary borders imposed on the Zuni world.” [...]

Chora is an ancient Greek word for space or place, and Plato considered it as a “third kind,” a bastard discourse that is neither rational nor definite [...]. Chora is difficult to define [...]. In E.V. Walter’s words, chora is connected to a space’s energies, passions, myths, fantasies, biographies, and histories -- its “expressive space”. This embodied and affective element of chora compels us to deal in the material: How does this place make me feel? [...] It is Ulmer who ultimately re/envisions chora as something we can do. He calls this practice choragraphy, or place-as-invention (doing place). [...]

---

[S]cholarship in Black feminist geography and [I]ndigenous studies opens opportunities [...] to be attentive to land, decoloniality, and memory [...].

As a scholar of African American and African Studies, Tamara Butler’s The BlackGirlLand Project is a collaborative project that links Black women, nature, land, and rural spaces [...]. Butler argues that “Our [Black lives] liberation requires cartographic knowledge,” and BlackGirlLand seeks to preserve the lived experiences of Black women in the South Carolina Sea Islands [...]. Another example is Black/Land Project [...]. In addition to their community collaborations and speaking engagements, much of Black/Land Project is about sharing stories. On their website is a collated series of stories from the organizers and other participants. Like BlackGirlLand Project, Black/Land is collaborative and draws from story; for example, each blog post presents a different story from varied authors that explores the complexities of race and place and virtually maps those relationships. [...]

---

Enote, a traditional Zuni farmer and director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center, partnered with Zuni artists, elders, and council members to create maps that challenge Western ways of knowing and making. Their maps, what they refer to as “counter maps,” are intended, as Enote explains, to “reclaim the names of Zuni places and depict the land of the A:shiwi as they know and see it . . . with culture, story, and prayer . . . [because] modern maps do not have a memory” (Loften and Vaughan-Lee). The maps that the artists created look nothing like Western maps or atlases. Rather, they are composed of colorful, textured images and stories. One of the artists, Ronnie Cachini, [...] created a map called Ho’n A:wan Dehwa:we (Our Land). Cachini explains what makes Zuni maps unique: “A conventional map takes you to places -- it will tell you how many miles and the fastest route. But the Zuni maps show these significant places that only a Zuni would know.” Cachini’s contention directly refutes the notion that maps represent Truth and objectivity:

“[Modern maps] are widely assumed to convey objective and universal knowledge of place. They are intended to orient us, to tell us how to get from here to there [...]. Few [...] have thought to ask what truths a map may be concealing [...]. Many [...] have not thought to look for the topography of a myth in the surrounding rivers and hills. [...]” (Loften and Vaughan-Lee [...])

---

All text above by: April O’Brien. “Mapping as/and Remembering: Chora/graphy as a Critical Spatial Method-Methodology.” enculturation. 11 May 2020.

[emilyludwigshaffer]

Installation views, LINK

Good Pictures, Curated by Austin Lee

September 19–November 7, 2020

What is painting? That is the question that runs across a rectangle of canvas exhibited in the new installation of the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York:

WHAT IS PAINTING

DO YOU SENSE HOW ALL THE PARTS OF A GOOD PICTURE ARE INVOLVED WITH EACH OTHER, NOT JUST PLACED SIDE BY SIDE? ART IS A CREATION FOR THE EYE AND CAN ONLY BE HINTED AT WITH WORDS.

John Baldessari’s painting, What is Painting (1966-68), sparked the attention of Austin Lee when he saw the work at the Museum of Modern Art last fall. “It’s been stuck in my head ever since,” Lee recounts. “I think of painting as evidence of a state of mind. Documentation of thoughts. That can take form in an infinite amount of variations.”

Good Pictures, curated by Austin Lee, expands Baldessari’s investigation into what it takes to make a good painting, or more generally, a good picture. In Good Pictures, Lee has brought together artists with whom he has a personal history, some of which he considers part of his artist community. As Lee reveals, “They are artists who have influenced what my idea of painting is. Some through years of discussion, some from only seeing the work online.”

The works in Good Pictures embrace the holistic idea suggested by Baldessari’s painting that “all the parts of a good picture are involved with each other, not just placed side by side.” The exhibition showcases a mix of styles and techniques with some technological experimentation. Baldessari’s ironic painting is an invitation to celebrate seemingly simple “fundamentals of art.” The show is not meant to answer the question, but provide a prompt for artists in a group show to do what they always do.

Austin Lee was born in Las Vegas and currently lives and works in New York. During the past two years, he has presented exhibitions all over the world from Kaikai Kiki in Tokyo to Mosaic Art Foundation in Istanbul to his ambitious solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch in New York in 2019.

The artists participating in Good Pictures are:

Marina Adams Michael Ambron Kevin Beasley Genesis Belanger Judy Chicago Oliver Clegg Holly Coulis Somaya Critchlow Julie Curtiss Awol Erizku Louis Fratino Dominique Fung Lenz Geerk Kati Gegenheimer Mark Thomas Gibson Sayre Gomez Adam Green Meena Hasan David Humphrey Marcus Jahmal Haley Josephs JPW3 Hein Koh Emily Ludwig Shaffer Dustin Metz Marilyn Minter Mario Moore Katrina Mortorff Jayson Musson Dona Nelson Odili Donald Odita Erik Parker Lamar Peterson Rachel Rossin Rafaël Rozendaal Koichi Sato Jacolby Satterwhite Sally Saul Peter Schuyff Li Shurui John Szlasa James Ulmer John Wesley Xu Zhen

[garadinervi]

Otl Aicher, Rhythmus und Wandel in der Kunst, Ulmer Volkshochschule, Ulm, ca. 1950 [MoMA, New York, NY]

[chiseler]

The Head -- It Just Won’t Stay Dead

In the early 1960s, the overwhelming majority of European horror films imported to the United States were either British or Italian, the British films being easily understood and the Italian ones frequently pretending to be of British origin. Examples of French horror were rare (odd for a country whose cinema was so rooted in the fantastique), reaching an early apex with Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960), which came to the US in a well-done English dub called The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus during the Halloween season of 1962.

Seldom paid much attention in retrospectives of this fertile period in continental horror cinema is a rare German example, Die Nackte und der Satan (“The Naked and the Devil,” 1959), which came to the US retitled The Head almost exactly one year before the arrival of the Franju masterpiece. Critics like to refer to The Head as “odd” and “atmospheric,” words that seem to disregard deeper consideration, never really coming to terms with it as anything but a sleazy shock trifle. However, it was in fact the product of a remarkable and rarely equaled concentration of accomplished patrimonies.

Consider this: The Head starred the great Swiss actor Michel Simon, renowned for his roles in Jean Renoir’s La Chienne and Boudu Saved From Drowning; it was directed by the Russian-born Victor Trivas, returning to his adopted homeland for the first time since directing Niemandsland (1932, aka No Man’s Land or Hell On Earth), a potent anti-war statement that was all but obliterated off the face of the earth by the Nazis when he fled the country, and who furthermore had written the story upon which Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946) was based; it was photographed by Georg Krause, whose numerous international credits include Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957); its sets were designed by Hermann Warm, the genius responsible for such German Expressionist masterpieces as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921), as well as Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), and its score is a wild patchwork of library tracks by Willy Mattes, the Erwin Lehn Orchestra, and a group of avant garde musicians known as Lasry-Baschet, who would subsequently lend their eerie, ethereal music to Jean Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus (1960). If all this were not enough, The Head was also filmed at the Munich studios of Arnold Richter, the co-founder of the Arri Group, innovators of the famous Arriflex cameras and lenses.  

Though made after the 1957 horror breakthroughs made in Britain and Italy (Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein, and I vampiri, co-directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava), The Head represented a virtual revolutionary act in postwar Germany, where horror was then considered a genre to avoid. The project was proposed to Trivas by a young film producer named Wolfgang C. Hartwig, head of Munich’s Rapid-Film, whose claim to fame was initiating a niche of exploitation cinema known as Sittenfilme – literally “moral movies” – which, like many American exploitation films of the 1930s, maintained a higher, judgmental moral tone while telling the stories of people who slipped into lives of vice (prostitution, blackmail, drug addiction), their sordid experiences always leading them to a happy or at least bittersweet outcome. Though it goes quite a bit further than either Britain or Italy had yet gone in terms of sexualizing horror, The Head nevertheless checked all the boxes required for Sittenfilme and was undertaken by Hartwig in early 1959 as Rapid-Film’s most prestigious production to date.

After the main titles are spelled out over an undulating nocturnal fog, the story begins with a lurker’s shadow passing along outside the gated property of Prof. Dr. Abel. With its round head and wide-brimmed hat, it looks like the planet Saturn from the neck up. When this marauder pauses to pay some gentle attention to a passing tortoise, we get our first look at the film’s real star - Horst Frank, just thirty at the time, his clammy asexual aura topped off with prematurely graying hair and large triangular eyebrows that seem carried over from the days of German Expressionism. More bizarre still, he later gives his name as Dr. Ood, whose explanation is still more bizarre: at the age of three months old, he was orphaned, the sole survivor of a cataclysmic shipwreck .

“That was the name of the wrecked ship,” he explains. “S.S. Ood.”

The ambiguous Ood takes cover as another late night visitor comes calling: a hunchbacked woman wearing a nurse’s habit as outsized as an oxygen tent. This is Sister Irene Sanders (the screen debut of Karin Kernke, later seen in the Edgar Wallace krimi The Terrible People, 1960). Though Irene cuts a figure as ambiguous and unusual as any Franju ever filmed, she owes her greatest debt to Jane Adams’ hunchbacked Nina in Erle C. Kenton’s House of Dracula (1945). As with Nina, Irene lives in the hope that her deformity can be eradicated by the skill of a brilliant surgeon.

When Irene leaves after meeting with Dr. Abel, Ood presents himself with the written recommendation of a colleague he previously, supposedly, assisted. A burly old walrus of a man, Abel (Michel Simon) already has two younger associates, Dr. Walter Burke (Kurt Müller-Graf, “a first class surgeon”) and the handsome, muscular Burt Jaeger (Helmut Schmid), who hasn’t been quite the same since an unexplained brain operation. Both associates share a creative streak; Burke is also “an excellent architect, [who] designed this house,” while Jaeger “designed my special operating table; it allows me to work without assistants.” (So why does he have two of them? With names that sound the same, no less!) Given the high caliber of Hermann Warm’s talent as a production designer, Burke and Burt together are every bit as skilled in architecture as was Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar Poelzig in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934). The main floor of Abel’s sprawling house is dominated by a vast spiral stairwell, striking low-backed furniture, a mobile of dancing palette shapes, and an overpowering wall reproducing Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virtuvian Man.” Down in the lab, Burt’s robotic surgical assistant looks as if it might have been conceived by the brain responsible for the Sadean mind control device in Jess Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965) - a film that, along with Franco’s earlier The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), seems considerably more indebted to Trivas on renewed acquaintance than to Franju. The film was shot in black-and-white and at no point inside Abel’s abode do the silvery, ivory surfaces admit even the possibility of pigment.

Adding to its effect, the music heard whenever the film cuts back to Abel’s place is anything but homey. It consists of a single, sustained electric keyboard chord played in a nightmarish loop that seems to chill and vibrate, its predictable arc punctuated now and again with icy spikes of cornet. Though I don’t recall reading any extensive discussion of the film’s music, The Head represents what is surely the most important advance in electronic music in the wake of Louis & Bebe Barron’s work on Forbidden Planet (1956). Though the film’s music credits list bandleader Willy Mattes, Jacques Lasry and the Edwin Lehr Orchestra with its music, the most important musical credit is displaced. Further down the screen is the unexplained “Sound Structure, Lasry-Baschet.”

Lasry-Baschet was a musical combination of two partnerships – that of brothers Francois and Bernard Baschet, and the husband-and-wife team of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry. The two brothers were musicians who played astonishing instruments of their own invention, like the Crystal Baschet (played with moistened fingers on glass rods), the Aluminum Piano, the Inflatable Guitar, the Rotating Whistler, and the Polytonal Percussion. The Lasry couple, originally a pianist and organist, began performing with the Baschets on their unique devices in the mid 1950s. Some of the music they produced during this period is collected on the albums Sonata Exotique (credited to Structures for Sound, covering the years 1957-1959) and Structures For Sound (credited to the Baschet Brothers alone, 1963), a vinyl release by the Museum of Modern Art. These and other recorded works can be found on YouTube, as well; they are deeply moving ambient journeys but I cannot say with certainty that they include any of the music from The Head. That said, the music they do collect is very much in its macabre character and would have also fit very well into Last Year At Marienbad (1961) or any of Franju’s remarkable films.

When Ood meets with Abel and expresses his keen interest in experimental research, the good doctor mentions that he has had success copying “the recent Russian surgery” that succeeded in keeping the severed head of a dog alive – however, his moral code prevents him from taking such experimentation still further. After leaving Abel, Ood finds his way to the Tam-Tam Club, a nightspot where a life-sized placard promotes the nightly performances of “Tam-Tam Super Sex Star Lilly.” This visit initiates a parallel storyline involving Lilly (Christiane Maybach), who supplements her striptease work as an artist’s model, and is the particular muse of the brooding Paul Lerner (Dieter Eppler), a man of only artistic ambition, much to the annoyance of his father, a prominent judge who wants him to study law. Maybach reportedly won her role the day before she began filming. According to news reports of the day, the actress originally cast – the voluptuous redhead Kai Fischer – had signed on to play the part, after which producer Hartwig decided she must also appear nude. Fisher sued Hartwig for breach of contract in March 1959 and he was sentenced to pay out a compensatory fee of DM 4,000 – in currency today, the equivalent of about $35,000. As it happens, Christiane Maybach doesn’t appear nude in the film’s final cut either.    

The English version of The Head opens with a credit sequence played out over a shot of the full moon taken from near the climax of the picture. Unusually, the German Die Nackte und der Satan doesn’t present its title onscreen until Lilly is ready to go on. It’s superimposed with inverted commas on pleated velvet curtains that suddenly rise, revealing a stage adorned by a single suit of armor. Lilly dances out, stage right, garbed in a medieval conical hat, scarves, a bikini and a black mask, performing her dance of the seven veils around the impervious man of metal. She only strips down to her bikini but her dance ends with her in the arms of the armor we assumed empty, which tightly embraces her as its visor pops open, revealing a man’s face wearing skull makeup. Lilly screams, the lights go out, and the house goes wild with applause – a veritable blueprint for the striptease of Estella Blain’s Miss Death in Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965).

The music heard during the film’s Tam-Tam Club sequences was recorded by the  Erwin Lehn Orchestra, evidently with Jacques Lasry on piano, though its emphasis on brass is its outstanding characteristic. Erwin Lehn was a German jazz musician and composer who established the first German Big Band Orchestra for South German Radio. Brass was a major component of his sound – indeed, he made pop instrumental recordings credited to The Erwin Lehn Beat-Brass. You can find their album Beat Flames on YouTube, as well.

Backstage, the beautiful Lilly is a nagging brat, drinking and flirting with patrons while berating Paul’s lax ambitions on the side. Dieter Eppler, a frequent player in the Edgar Wallace krimis and also the lead bloodsucker in Roberto Mauri’s Italian Slaughter of the Vampires (1964), makes for inspired casting; he looks like a beefier, if less dynamic Kirk Douglas at a time when Vincente Minnelli’s Lust For Life (1956) would have still been in the minds of audiences.

Once Ood joins the payroll, Dr. Abel confesses that his heart is failing rapidly. The only means of saving himself and perpetuating his brilliant research is by doing the impossible – that is, transplanting the heart from a donor’s body into his own, which he insists is possible given his innovation of “Serum X.” What Abel could not foresee was that his own body would die during the procedure. Ood tells Burke that the only way to save Abel’s genius is to keep his head artificially alive, which his associate rejects uncatagorically, pushing Ood over the edge into murder. Then Ood proceeds with the operation,  working solo with Jaeger’s robo-assistant passing along surgical tools as he needs them. When Abel revives, Ood breaks his news of the procedure gently by holding up a mirror and exclaiming that he’d had “one last chance – to perform the dog operation on your head!” Abel screams in revulsion of what he has become. The conciliatory Ood gently cautions him, “Too much emotion can be extremely dangerous now.”

The severed head apparatus is a simple yet ingenious effect, shot entirely in-camera and credited to Theo Nischwitz. It utilizes what is generally known as a Schufftan shot, a technique made famous by spfx shots achieved by Eugen Schufftan for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). Essentially, Michel Simon was seated behind a pane of mirrored glass with all the apparatus seen from his neck up. The silvering on the reverse portion of the mirror was scraped away, allowing the camera to see through to Simon and the apparatus while reflecting the apparatus arrayed below his neck, in position for the camera to capture its reflection simultaneously. In at least one promotional photo issued for the film, Simon’s shoulders can be transparently glimpsed where they should not be.

Irene returns to meet with Dr. Abel and is surprised to find new employee Ood now alone and ruling the roost. When he offers to perform her operation himself, she instinctively distrusts and fears him – but is reassured after hearing Abel’s disembodied voice on the house’s sophisticated intercom.

After the killing and burial of Burke, whose body Bert Jaeger later finds thanks to the barking of Dr. Abel’s kenneled hounds (a detail that one imagines inspired Franju’s use of a kennel in Eyes Without a Face), the film introduces the dull but nevertheless compulsory police investigation, headed by Paul Dahlke as Police Commissioner Sturm. Sagging interest is buoyed by a surprise twist: when Dr. Ood returns to the Tam-Tam Club and asks the perpetually pissy Lilly to dance, he refers to her in passing as “Stella,” prompting her to recognize him as “Dr. Brandt” (the scorecard now reads Burke, Bert and Brandt), who has inside knowledge pertaining to her poisoning of her husband! Given that his  earlier writing projects include Orson Welles’ The Stranger and the bizarre Mexican-made Buster Keaton item Boom In the Moon (also 1946), in which an innocent shipwrecked sailor is rescued from his castaway existence only to find himself confused with a serial killer, Victor Trivas would seem partial to characters who live double lives.

Though Ood/Brandt’s aura is basically asexual through the first half of the film, the second half requires him to take an earthier interest in the female bodies finding their way into his hands. He takes the already tipsy Lilly/Stella home for a drink and some mischief.

“What’s in the glass?”

“Drink it and find out.”

“I hope it’s not poisoned.”

“That’s not my specialty, is it?”

Lilly/Stella becomes the necessary auto parts for Irene’s pending operation. In a nicely done montage, the film dissolves from Lilly’s unconscious body to a glint of light off the edge of Ood’s poised scalpel. It cuts to a curt zoom into Abel’s scream at being forced to watch a procedure he abhors, then a dissolve from his mouth to the spinning dials of a wall clock, followed by some time-lapse photography of cumulous clouds unfurling from an open sky, before Irene awakens in her recovery room with a decorative choker around her throat. She is able to gain her feet and covers her nude body in a sheet. She finds Ood lounging in Abel’s old office. He walks toward her as the sheet tumbles off her bare shoulders.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Well, I… I’ve a strange kind of feeling, as if my whole body were changed, as if my body didn’t want to do what I wished.”

Therefore, Ood has not only taken away her deformity but her responsibility for her actions, as well. Though she has never smoked before, she craves a cigarette. As Ood lights one for her,  her wrap falls further, undraping her entire bare back and thus exposing a birthmark on her left shoulder blade that becomes an important plot point. Ood confesses she’s been unconscious for 117 days, during which time he has passed the time by performing numerous enhancing procedures on her inert body. When he compliments her superb figure, she self-consciously covers her legs and recoils from him.

“Why run from everything you desire?” he asks. “You can’t run from yourself.”

He draws Irene into a surprising deep kiss, which – to her own apparent horror - she returns. Ood then tries to take things further but she refuses. After a brief (and surprisingly curtailed) attempt at abduction, he releases Irene, who dresses in a black cocktail dress and heels left behind by Lilly and returns to the humble apartment she kept in her previous life, where a full-length mirror stands covered. In a scene considerably shortened by the US version, she rips the cover away in a movement evocative of a symbolic self-rape, and glories in her new reflection.  The score turns torrid, brassy, and trashy as she admires her shapely terrain, fondling the curves of her breasts and hips in a prelude to a gratifying personal striptease. She then goes to her bed, where she tries on an old pair of slippers; she laughs and kicks them away, delighted at how small her feet now are. When she wakes the next morning, she finds a pamphlet for the Tam-Tam Club in Lilly’s old purse, which leads her body back to its former place of employ. When she arrives, another striptease artist is working onstage with a bed. This performance appears to burlesque Irene’s own motions from the night before; she kicks off one of her shoes as Irene had done.  

From the moment she walks into the club, still wearing Lilly’s clinging black dress, Irene evokes a black widow, a kind of Alraune – the femme fatale of Hanns Heinz Ewers’ novel, filmed in 1930 with Brigitte Helm and in 1952 by Hildegarde Knef. Like Alraune, she’s the beautiful creation of a mad scientist’s laboratory, but unnatural. In this case, she’s not really a soulless artificial being out to destroy men; on the contrary, she is soulful, starving for some insight into who she is, what she is. In this way, she particularly foreshadows Christina, the schizophrenic subject of Baron Frankenstein’s “soul transplant” played by Susan Denberg in Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman (1966).

She quickly attracts Paul’s artist’s eye, just as the now-topless dancer onstage swirls into a swoon on a prop bed – unconsciously mimicking Lilly at the only time she ever saw her, when Ood gave her a sneak peek at the unconscious woman on his living room couch. She asks about Lilly, whom Paul mentions has been dead now for three months, her body (in fact, Irene’s former body) found maimed beyond recognition on some railroad tracks. He asks her to dance, but Irene refuses, as she has never danced, never been asked to dance before. But he insists and they both discover that she can: “You must be a born dancer!”

Beautiful and irresponsible, she allows herself to follow Paul back to his studio, where drawings of Lilly are displayed. Paul asks to draw her, and when she turns her back to bare her shoulders, he recognizes Lilly’s beauty mark. She flees from the apartment and confronts the unflappable Ood.

“You must have grafted her skin on my body!”

In the movie’s most hilarious line, he fires back, “You have a poor imagination!”

She rejects his true account of the procedure and demands to see Dr. Abel, so Ood takes her down to the lab for a personal confirmation from the man himself. Ashamed to be seen this way, Abel pleads with Irene to disconnect him from the apparatus. She is driven away before she can accomplish this, and tries to shut away the horror of the truth that’s been revealed by losing herself in her new relationship with Paul – but the old question arises: Does he love her for her body or her mind? There seems to be one answer when he first kisses her, and another and his lips venture further down her front.  

I should leave some things to be discovered by your own viewing of the film, but it demands to be mentioned that Irene – the triumphant climax of Ood’s genius, so to speak – actually survives at the end of the film to live happily ever after. Think about this. This is something that would have been considered unacceptable in any of Hammer’s Frankenstein films at the time – indeed, through the following decade. So, although Ood is ultimately destroyed (you’ll need to see it to find out how), the mad science he propounds is actually borne out. It’s left up to Paul and Irene, as they walk off together toward a new tomorrow, how they will manage to live with the fact that the two of them are in fact a ménage à trois. Will they keep the details of her existence a secret? Will medical science remain ignorant? Should they ever have any, what will they tell their kids?  

The Head was hardly the first word on severed heads in horror entertainment. In his own admiring coverage of the film, Euro Gothic author Jonathan Rigby likens the film to the story of Rene Berton’s 1928 Grand Guignol play L’Homme qui à tue la mort (“The Man Who Killed Death”): “There, Professor Fargus revived the guillotined head of a supposed murderer and the prosecutor lost his mind when the head continued to plead his innocence.” Earlier such films would include Universal’s Inner Sanctum thriller Strange Confession (1945, in which a never-seen severed head is a main plot point), The Man Without a Body (1957) and The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958), the latter two proving that the concept was actually trending at the time The Head was made. Also parenthetically relevant would be She Demons (1958), which involves the nasty experiments of a renegade Nazi scientist living on an uncharted tropical island, who removes the “beauty glands” of native girls to periodically restore his wife’s good looks. Though The Head wasn’t the first of its kind, many of the traits it introduced would surface in similar films that followed – not only in Franju’s Eyes Without A Face or Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof and The Diabolical Dr. Z, but also in Anton Giulio Majano’s Italian Atom Age Vampire (1960), Chano Urueta’s The Living Head (1963), and most conspicuously in Joseph Green’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, not released until 1962 though filmed in 1959, some six months after The Head.

It must be mentioned that the film’s unusual quality did not go unrecognized by its American distributor. Trans-Lux Distributing Corporation advertised the film that took a most unusual approach to selling a horror picture. The ads did not promise blood, or that your companion would jump into your lap, or shock after shock after shock. Instead, Trans-Lux promised that “At The Head of All Masterpieces of Horror [my italics] That You’ve Ever Seen… You Must Place… The Head.”

Of course it was an overstatement, but the size of its overstatement would seem to have narrowed appreciably with time.

So why has The Head, with its rich pooling of so much European talent, been so neglected?

A key reason may be that horror fans like their actors and directors to maintain a certain consistency, a certain fidelity to the genre. Horst Frank (who died in 1999) would appear in other horror films, but never again played a lead; he pursued his career as a character actor and singer, maintaining a career on the stage and keeping close to home, never making films off the continent or appearing in productions originating from England or America. After The Head, Victor Trivas made no more horror films. The other four features he made had been produced a quarter century earlier and the majority are impossible to see in English countries. Those who remembered him for Niemandsland would have considered The Head an embarrassment, an unfortunate last act. It wasn’t quite a last act, however. The following year, he returned to America, where he sold his final script to the Warner Bros. television series The Roaring 20s, starring Dorothy Provine. Though the show avoided fantasy subjects, it was a voodoo-themed episode entitled “The Fifth Pin,” directed by Robert Spaar and televised during the series’ first season on April 8, 1961. The guest stars included John Dehner, Rex Reason, Patricia O’Neal and, surprisingly, beloved Roger Corman repertory player Dick Miller. Trivas died in New York City in 1970, at the age of 73.

The English version of The Head is considered to be a public domain title and has been available from Alpha Video, Sinister Cinema and other PD sources. This version was modestly recut to create a new main title sequence and to remove certain erotic elements unwelcome to its target audience in 1961. Happily, a hybrid edition – which, in a fitting fate, grafts the English dub onto the original uncut version from Germany – was recently made available for viewing on YouTube.

In the immediate wake of The Head, producer Wolf C. Hartwig pushed another erotic horror film into production, Ein Töter hing in Netz (“A Corpse Hangs in the Web,” 1960). Scripted and directed by Fritz Böttger, the film (Böttger’s last as a director) was first released in America as It’s Hot In Paradise (1962), sold as a girlie picture with absolutely no indication of its horror content. It was later reissued in 1965 as Horrors of Spider Island (1965). Under any of its titles, the film is notably lacking all of the artistic and aesthetic pedigree that made its predecessor so special and, indeed, influential.

Sixty years further on, The Head warrants fuller recognition as a spearhead of that magic moment on the threshold of the 1960s when so-called “art cinema” began to be fused with so-called “trash cinema,” leading to a broader, wilder, more adult fantastique.  

by Tim Lucas

[1] Victor Trivas’ Niemandsland may be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-4XhNMWoyw

[2] Rapid-Film’s later successes would include the German film that was subsequently converted into Francis Ford Coppola’s directorial debut (The Bellboy and the Playgirls, 1962), Ernst Hofbauer’s Schoolgirl Report film series (1970-80), and Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron (1977).

[3] You can see Lasry-Baschet perform and be interviewed in a French newsreel from January 1961 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awaFd6gArLg&t=46s.

[4] Well, as “recent” as 1940, when footage of a supposedly successful Soviet resuscitation of a dog’s severed head was included in the grisly 20m documentary Experiments In the Revival of Organisms. The operation was performed (and repeated) by Doctors Sergei Brukhonenko and Boris Levinskovsky, making use of their “autojektor,” an artificial heart/lung machine not unlike the contraption seen in The Head. A close look at Experiments reveals that it really shows nothing that could not have been faked through means of special effects. (When George Bernard Shaw learned of the Soviet experiment, he’s said to have remarked, “"I am tempted to have my own head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without being bothered by illness, without having to dress and undress, without having to eat, without having anything else to do other than to produce masterpieces of dramatic art and literature.") Experiments In The Revival of Organisms has been uploaded to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap1co5ZZHYE.

[5] Rigby, Jonathan. Euro Horror: Classics of Continental Horror Cinema (London: Signum Books, 2017), p. 79.

[6] Joseph Green also worked in motion picture distribution and later formed Joseph Green Pictures, which specialized in spicy imported pictures, some from Germany. It’s possible that he saw the Trivas picture when it was still seeking distribution in the States. When Ostalgica Film released The Head on DVD in Germany under its Belgian reissue title Des Satans nackte Sklavin (“The Devil’s Naked Slave”), the disc included The Brain That Wouldn’t Die as a bonus co-feature.

[7] A fine quality homemade experiment, it runs 91 minutes 47 seconds and can be found at: The Head (Die Nackte und der Satan) 1959 Sci-Fi / Horror HQ version!.

[harvard-art-museums-prints]

Madonna of the Green Cushion, Johann Conrad Ulmer, 19th century, Harvard Art Museums: Prints

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the collection of John Witt Randall

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/247640

[nexttoparchitects]

#next_top_architects in #NEXTarch We Trust :: Space units for residential buildings, model. 1961, industrialised Building, HfG-Archiv/Ulmer Museum. From exhibition 'The Ulm Model', Raven Row Gallery, London. photo @collectivehousingatlas :: @next_top_architects

[pailzingis]

COMM 3550 - WEEK 2 - PROMPT 3 - SACHSENHAUSEN - EXTENDED 

 The Holocaust is undeniably one of the worst extended events in human history. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the world was shaken by the actions of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Although defeated, the consequences of those actions will never go away and the Holocaust will have a significant impact on world culture for hundreds of years to come. With that being said, healing after such a horrible event doesn’t come cheap nor fast and it is the job of people of strong-will and connections to Germany (as well as other emotional connections) to the Holocaust to help those heal and educate others in what happened. 

The camp was undeniably a tough experience. In the United States are taught the history of the Holocaust but (because of the material) not always taught the exact details of what happened. I do think it is important for people of all nations to visit in order to truly grasp what happened during those years. Sachsenhausen functions as a Public Relations hub in many ways in the education of German citizens as well as tourists in what life was like in a concentration camp. 

The Guth reading talked about the different ways in which organizations can have anticipation and lack of it while dealing with events. It goes without stating, that putting the Holocaust in that kind of context is unhealthy and that would lack meaning behind it. However, it was very interesting that our tour guide pointed out that members of the German AFD (a German group similar to the US Alt-Right) were visiting Sachsenhausen next week. Although this “crisis” was self-inflicted by Sachsenhausen it will be interesting to watch how they handle this public event. Many are outraged by this because their party has been compared to “Neo-nazism” but their are points to be made that it may not be right to deny a group to see; and it may be possible to educate them. As if a citizen from Germany needed any more education on such an event. 

 The next part of tour that was in relation to one of our readings was the part of one of the Barracks that was burned in the 1990s. Effective Crisis Communication: Ulmer states “Organizations are also vulnerable to sabotage, which involved the intentional damaging of a privy of the working capacity of the organization..” (ECC PG. 5). Obviously, post WW2 there were many Nazis who escaped punishment and were still quietly living the streets of Germany planning their next attack. Their might be folks alive now who would consider themselves such a category. This leaves memorials and museums that shine light on such an event to danger of attack. It is important however, for organizations to stay vigilant in defending such important memorials and monuments that mean so much. 

 Sachsenhausen was truly one of the most enlightening experiences I have ever been apart of. It was sad in many ways, tough to listen and walk through but I think the experience was extremely important in developing my knowledge of the Holocaust and bringing ideas I had in my head full circle.

[weemsbotts]

How the Kiwanis Club Built Merchant Park’s Backbone for Picnics, Geocaching, and Pokémon

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

In 1986, the Kiwanis Club constructed a pavilion for Merchant Park in the Town of Dumfries. Not only is this pavilion used daily for visitors and nearby workers to enjoy an outside lunch, celebrations, ceremonies, and community gatherings have all filled this steady structure. But what are the roots behind such an established part of our park & rec? Pack a bag and sit down at one of our tables while we take you back to the 1700s.

(Construction of Merchant Park’s Pavilion, 1986)

People eating outside is obviously not new and is even more popular today as a safer way to eat with those not in your quarantine or vaccine bubble. The origins of leisure picnics go back to the 1700s, although our current concept aligns more with the changes during the 1800s reaffirming Victorian norms. While originally entrenched in French aristocracy, the concept moved to Great Britain during the French Revolution and became popular with lavish meals and entertainment usually held indoors. The emerging middle class, consumerism, and the idea of escaping to innocent gatherings or enjoying something considered “genteel”, led Britons and eventually Americans to seek this now seemingly quaint activity outside. In both children and adult literature, authors featured picnics setting the stage for scenery, relaxation, and ease.

Picnic tables, such as the 15 in our pavilion, appeared in the early 1900s as people looked for ways to enjoy more of the inside comforts outside. “Picnic groves” appeared in urban centers sporting tables and benches, notably in contrast to the simplicity and assumed bucolic blanket. By 1904, C.H. Nielsen patented a design for a sturdy and reliable unit that was both portable and safer – having the unit buckle or pin you down could be problematic. In 1918, Harold R. Basford patented the design we are familiar with today. As people continued improving the design, portability became more user friendly. Of course, the National Parks Service contributed to the development providing standardization with dimensions, specifications, and much sturdier features. As the National Park Service amusingly notes, there are pros and cons to adapting and changing natural areas for our comfort. Whether a person “graced a natural setting with an harmonious facility” by using native cut timber or acted instead with the “ruthlessness of the vandal, felled trees that were the park's very reason for being, despoiling a glory of nature to produce in an outworn craftsmanship” is up for debate.

(Construction of Merchant Park’s Pavilion, 1986)

Perhaps you want to use it as a base of operations as you hunt for a treasure with your GPS or look for an elusive Pokémon. On 05/03/2000, Dave Ulmer held the “Great American GPS Stash Hunt” to test the accuracy of the GPS as people had to use their receiver to find it. People immediately embraced the idea of hiding and locating hidden stashes with the rule “Take some stuff, leave some stuff”, eventually leading to the coined word geocaching. Mike Teague compiled the differing locations from around the world and Jeremy Irish eventually launched geocaching.com. While you do not need a GPS to find Pokémon, you will need Pokémon Go or risk a painful incident with a wild animal as you attempt to capture it with a tiny ball. With origins extending from 1996 to the launch of Pokémon Go in 2016, there may be many happily occupying our park (Bulbasaur) or sleeping (Snorlax). Note: There really should be a Ghost type...

Whatever your reasons, the Kiwanis Club Pavilion has stood in our Park since 1986 as a friendly gathering place, an improvised archaeological lab, a spot to escape from the rain, and a place to sit and enjoy the Park. While The Weems-Botts Museum has stood silent over the past year, we continue to watch families and friends gather safely and thanks to the Kiwanis and careful design, our “picnic grove” remains a harbor for people and wildlife.

Note: You can help support our organization today by purchasing a membership or participating in one of programs! From virtual discussions on the Grimms Brothers Fairy Tales to online educational boardgames (Spring Break!), we have a variety of ways you can enjoy your March 2021!

(HDVI Archives; Historian’s Cookbook: The History of the Picnic. History Today, Vol. 69, Issue 7, 07/2019 accessed online 03/10/2021, https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-picnic; Hogue, Martin. An Illustrated History of the Picnic Table, May 2018, accessed 03/10/2021, Places Journal, https://placesjournal.org/article/an-illustrated-history-of-the-picnic-table/?cn-reloaded=1; National Park Service: Park Structures and Facilities: Seats and Tables, Prepared by the US Department of Interior, NPS, and Branch of Planning, 1935. http://npshistory.com/publications/park_structures_facilities/secg.htm; Groundspeak, Inc.: Geocaching)

[catsynth-express]

Fun with Highways: Philadelphia

Philadelphia has played an important role for us at CatSynth this year, musically, personally, and now politically. All eyes have been on this city the last few days, and this morning they delivered the crucial votes to call the presidential election.

Downtown Philadelphia lies between two rivers, the larger Delaware and the smaller Schuykill. It is further boxed in by three major freeways, I-95, I-76, and I-676 / US 30. Just south if I-676 (which enters the city from the east on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge from New Jersey) are the famous historic sites including Independence Hall, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution where written.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Independence_Hall_Clocktower_in_Philadelphia.jpg

But modern city is much more than these historic sites, revered as they are. It is one of the largest cities in the country and has its own unique culture. Great seafood, Italian food, and of course cheesesteaks. Also some important centers for modern art and architecture. There is the neo-classical Philadelphia Museum of Art (made famous by Rocky) but also the modernist Institute of Contemporary Art and the University of Pennsylvania.

var quads_screen_width = document.body.clientWidth; if ( quads_screen_width >= 1140 ) {document.write('<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:600px;height:100px;" data-ad-client="pub-5176416568130778" data-ad-slot="2974773354" >'); (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); }if ( quads_screen_width >= 1024 && quads_screen_width < 1140 ) {document.write('<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:600px;height:100px;" data-ad-client="pub-5176416568130778" data-ad-slot="2974773354" >'); (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); }if ( quads_screen_width >= 768 && quads_screen_width < 1024 ) {document.write('<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:600px;height:100px;" data-ad-client="pub-5176416568130778" data-ad-slot="2974773354" >'); (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); }if ( quads_screen_width < 768 ) {document.write('<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:600px;height:100px;" data-ad-client="pub-5176416568130778" data-ad-slot="2974773354" >'); (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); }

https://www.visitphilly.com/things-to-do/attractions/institute-of-contemporary-art/

In addition to the facade of the museum, I like the modernist buildings nearby which are presumably part of the university. (Hey, didn’t someone supposedly graduate from Penn/ Wharton?).

And nestled among the tall buildings of downtown Philly is the Love sculpture by Robert Indiana. Originally part of the 1976 bicentennial celebrations in “the city of brotherly love”, it is now a permanent fixture in the city.

700https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philadelphia,The_City_of_the_Brotherly_Love–USA-_panoramio.jpg

Philadelphia is one of the larger and denser cities in the country, more akin to New York than to Los Angeles.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philadelphia_from_South_Street_Bridge_July_2016_panorama_3b.jpg

One of the more famous skyscrapers is the PSFS building. Now a hotel, it was once a the headquarters of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society. It is an official landmark.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PSFSBuilding1985.jpg

Of course, we would be remiss if we did not talk about the city’s music. In particular, I have a soft spot for Philly soul of the 1970s, as exemplified by the band MSFB.

They were the house band of Philadelphia Sigma Sound Studios, the seminal house for the city’s particular sound, heavy on strings and detailed production. In addition to MSFB, they spawned many important acts like the O’Jays, the Spinners, the Delfonics and Stylistics, many of whom worked with the great producer Philadelphia producer Thom Bell. The sound and musicians of the city also attracted so called “blue-eyed soul”, such as David Bowie’s Young Americans album, and Elton John’s hit Philadelphia Freedom which was recorded with MFSB. The latter truly seems like song for this moment of celebration.

Many great jazz and funk musicians also came out of Philadelphia and call the city their home. Among them is the drummer G Calvin Weston who worked with Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, James Blood Ulmer, the Lounge Lizards and more. And he is working with me on my latest musical project as well. You can hear about his history and many other musicians from Philadelphia in our extended interview with him from this summer.

He has been adding the “icing on the cake” to several tracks on my new album scheduled to release in early January, hopefully in time for change of power in our country. But for the moment, I would just like to say how proud I am of the city of Philadelphia and to call them my friends.

Fun with Highways: Philadelphia was originally published on CatSynth