Mark Leckey at the ICA

I heard Mark Leckey talk at the ICA last week and he did am amazing job of making a couple of ideas which had seemed quite dry to me suddenly seem pretty fascinating. First watching his object-centric films and then listening to him talk about the complexities of objects and images really naturally and enthusiastically made it more or less come alive.

He talked about his 2004 video Made in 'Eaven (above), how making the video was in a way an attempt get as close to this 'sublimely perfect' object as possible (the sublime object itself is Jeff Koon's Rabbit from 1986). he talked about the powerful pull certain objects, like this one, had over him, how they made him want to literally become one with them, or to get as close as possible to them. It's a theme he played with in other films too, but this was the best.

And of course he wants that, I thought, OF COURSE we all do, in some sense. The right image or the right object creates a wierdly powerful response, from the right book or record to the perfect pair of black leather boots, bikes, lipsticks, buildings. I mean, these are just things I find myself investing in to any degree, and that's not even touching on the deeper stuff Leckey is talking about, the intimate connection which certain really charged objects induce.

There's something about objects - for me - with a strong sense of form and presence that sets something off. There are a couple of things I've stumbled across recently, a ring and a painting which are kind of similar actually. Anyway, I feel like I want to keep them, or the sense I get when I look at them - with me at all times. Mmm.

It can be epically pop as well, Leckey talked about wanting to become these beautiful pictures of made-up women he'd seen in magazines. I watched Prince's Purple Rain recently and kind of lost myself dreaming about Appolonia's perfect 80's hair and glossy lips. Not to be near her but to kind of  become the carefully constructed perfection, on some level.

It's there in Cronenberg's Videodrome, with a slightly different and darker emphasis (becoming one with the VHS image, the world of Videodrome). A lifetime ago, reading Naomi Klein's No Logo, I remember she talked about driving down a street full of fast food stores as a child and wanting to disppear into the plastic perfection of the signs and lights. Going back to Jam City, the cover of his album is all photoshopped corporate perfection marred the shiny sleek motorcycle, another feat of form and function. It's everywhere, to be fair.

I suppose it boils down to the glossy allure of perfect form, a perfect surface. Maybe a response to the natural chaos and messiness of life (would it be annoying to say espeecially modern life?); maybe a sign of an ill-adjusted element in the human psyche. Maybe a perfectly sane response to the massive amount of consumer imagery and objects we're subject to at all times... after all, how far do those objects differ from art objects? Why not treat them with the same interest and attention. TBC.

Rorschmap London

Google Street view meets the Rorschach. Super patterns, nice new way of looking. Check out booktwo.org, where they're from. 

The (Not So) New Aesthetic

David Semeniuk, Landscape Permuation 1 (2010)

I say not-so-new because the New Aesthetic, in January 2013, has been around for a little while. The SXSW panel discussion which blew the idea wide open took place in March 2013, and James Bridle started the New Aesthetic blog a year or more before that.

There's plenty of debate about what the New Aesthetic stands for and means, and how much it's worth as a concept, but Bridle kind of describes as looking at things with new eyes - the eyes of all this new technology. Think google maps, CGI, the obligatory pixels.

The idea on paper sounds clever enough but once you take it down one or two roads of practical manifestations it starts to get Twilight Zone interesting. And once it gets personal.. even more so, obviously.

Say we're taking the New Aesthetic to be the new boundary, often-crossed, permeable and sometimes hard to see at all, between technology's view of the world and our view of the world. I say new boundary, but only as new as the internet and internet culture, really. Once the internet began gaining momentum, we were using it to represent and see the world in a way only the internet, or cyberspace, could show it. How does our technology see the world which then feeds back into the way we see the world? What kind of world are we shown, how is our world different - visually, emotionally, any way - for this perspective which literally did not exist twenty years ago?

There's googlemaps, and the way we interact with the world through that lens. By interact, I don't just mean see, the most interesting part is how we invest emotionally in the world we are seeing through technology. A personal example - I had the sudden idea to look up the house I lived in from ages 7 to 9, which is in Houston Texas. I've not been back, and - up until seeing it again - had only memories to recall it with. I expected to feel emotional or excited at seeing it, rather it was a somewhat disappointing American suburban house, which looks smaller to me today than it did to me as a child. Interacting with the world and my past memories through a screened technology, and the emotional impact of the technology.

I don't know, this is all coming out quite clumsily, which is fine. I'm probably putting more of an emotional spin on the NA thing than it actually has. Went to see Mark Leckey screening at the ICA last night and it's really started me thinking about all of this again, he talked loads about the emotional power of the object, and the kind of subconcious dream world which the internet acts as. I'll put something up about his films (his newer films have an clear pre-occupation with these same issues, framed slightly differently perhaps) and what he said - which was really interesting - over the weekend.

David Semeniuk, Landscape Permutation 2 (2010)

Juergan Teller for Celine AW12

Not a new thing but it's just so stunning. Shot by Juergan Teller, model Daria Werbowy. Textured structured understated beautiful.

Video for Mind Over Mirrors - Memorander

Easing into the morning with this.

 

Chromatics Live at Heaven

Gig stereotypes. The relentlessly snogging couple, the out-of-tune singalonger, the tall person with a hat who stands right in front of you. They were all there last week at the Chromatics Heaven gig but heaven knowns (groan) even they couldn't detract from the shimmering, amazing performance.

For one far-too-short hour, the room was awash in the Chromatic's brittle shimmer and wistfulness, and Ruth Radelet's voice sounded in-cred-ible live (although that's a bit lost in the videos of the gig, sadly).

Their first few tracks were more like tasters than full blown songs, really short and bare bones riffing. A few tracks in and it shifted to longer, bigger, more emotive, more magical, more more more. You know, (in the headiest tradition of gig cliches), it was like a journey. A really superb, gorgeous journey.

High points were definitely Kill for Love, Night Drive, my favourite In the City. The opening bars of their cover of Neil Young's Into the Black set off shouts of joy from around the room. Incidentally, are the Chromatics the world's best cover band? Their cool italo vibes and understated vocals work wonders on songs that were pretty damn good to begin with. Their version of Bruce Springsteen's I'm on Fire aches with cold desire and Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill becomes an unforgettable,  monumental electronic love song.

Johnny Jewel from the band organised their latest album, Kill for Love, onto a single Soundcloud (below), which is very thoughtful. Night Drive and In the City are also ESSENTIAL LISTENING. (imo, more so than Kill for Love - just saying).

Out of Date Record Review - Marcus Mixx & FIT

So this record came out on Detroit's Fit Sound in April but I only got it a month or two ago. It's just so damn good I still fancy writing about it.

The Marcus Mixx track, Salut the Noise with a Laugh, is unsurprisingly a mix of raw house beats & cowbell (classic Mixx) and cheerfully unhinged vibes. Opening with a straightforward enough sounding stab, things quickly unravel as video gamey bleeps and weirdness starts undulating all over the place..and then.. and then.. the laugh starts. Yes, the sampled man's laugh that dips in and out of the track adding a bit of  One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest to an already pretty odd track. The beats are ace, the production flawless (read, raw and direct) and the samples and weirdness absolutely spot on. Happy days.

The FIT track has a way different appeal. Totally, utterly hypnotic and more than a little bit sweat lodge, it shares the raw hewn sounds of the Mixx track and has more than a hint of Oasis Collaborating vibes. A simple looped builder which creeps up and up and up and takes you back back back to the source. SERIOUSLY HOT.  

Listen to clips at the Fit Records distribution site, there's a pretty defunct looking Fit Soundcloud if you're interested, and don't forget Marcus Mixx's INCREDIBLE youtube channel.