Strange Factories – Trailer HD
Strange Factories – Trailer HD from FoolishPeople on Vimeo.
A writer, haunted by an idea for a new story hunts for four refugee performers of a theatre destroyed in a mysterious fire.
He locates his friends in a remote, pagan settlement founded by Stronheim; owner of a Strange Factory hidden deep in the local countryside that emits an infamous Hum.
Victor enters into a dangerous pact when a vow is made to re-build their theatre if the story is completed in time for it to be performed at the village festival, where bizarre rituals are enacted by the Villagers under the influence of a hallucinogenic effluence siphoned out of the Strange Factory.
Victor’s imagination and the fragmented memories of his friends collide in a violent fiction that not everyone can survive.
Strange Factories’ is an immersive feature film; a uniquely powerful and original project that fuses cinema with a dreamlike environment to create an experience like no other.
Principal photography on Strange Factories was completed in Prague and the UK in October 2011 and is currently in post-production with release scheduled for 2012.
http://www.foolishpeople.org
http://www.facebook.com/strangefactories
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2150487/
Art War, Art During Wartime, War on Art
If you want to see where your coutry is headed in the next five years, look to the state of the culture and those who produce it. Artists are the canaries in the coalmine. Artists will be shut out first on the march towards totalitarianism. First the creative, hard to control individuals need to be put on the defensive, made to think more about whether they can survive than is good for their work.
First, they removed the poets from the national conversation. I was not a poet, so I said nothing….
And any consideration of art or philosophy becomes indefensible, as I touched upon in Is It Art? Is IT Legal? Is It, Bugger… on the kkoagublogg:
It’s kind of a bourgeois thing to sit and speculate on w(h)ither art?, declare this form or that form dead, and debating back and forth to estimate the time of death. Hey, it’s all dead and in ruins along with the future, literacy and quite likely the industry currently eating up your time in exchange for the means and permission to stay alive for your natural span and do so in sheltered accomodations, owned or rented. The future is here, the future once promised is dead, long live the future, dead music and all.
It may be a stretch, but as I see it, the life is being wring from culture, as life giving qualities is being removed from the food. Well, here’s an offering made, and a curse placed. Of course from a group of artists:
5th public Curse on the Most hated corporation in the world the Monsanto corporation that makes genetically modified foods that cause real health problems. Up to 90% of what Americans eat is genetically modified.
Performance with Jeanelle Mastema & Halie Koehler. Music by USAF, Adam Cooper Terán and John Gross
Watch it until you vibrate with its current, and you’ll be a conduit for the rebuilding. It is audacious to ask “What is Art?”, to devote ones energies to it, unless sanctioned by the 1%, but our survival depends on it.
Trailer for the documentary “What is ART? Inside the Mind of the Artist as They Speak the Truth” by Steven Johnson Leyba featuring H.R.Giger, Genesis P-Orridge, Howard Bloom, Joe Coleman, Richard Metzger, David J, Mark Bode and more answer the difficult questions, what is Art?what is TRUE ART?, what is the difference between art and entertainment?, what is more important the artist or the art? Is art important?
WHAT IS ART? |
|
| Inside the mind of the artist as they speak the truth | |
| Director: | Steven Johnson Leyba |
| Studio: | Coyote |
| Producer: | Coyote |
| Starring: | ARTISTS |
| Genre: | Documentary |
| Rated: | R |
| Region coded: | region 0 |
| Run time: | 2 hours – 20 minutes |
| Catalog #: | SJL01 |
| UPC bar code: | 885007122548 |
| Disc: | dvd |
| Release date: | July 19 2010 |
| Opinion based documentary on the subject of “WHAT IS ART?” | |
Audio addenda:
SLEEPCHAMBER 23 Hour Party Ticket Giveaway
If you want to WIN A FREE PAIR to the marathon party, tune in to Music of Flywheel with DJ ALDURU/VIKING WOMAN WXOJ 103.3 fm in Northampton, MA on the radio or listen streaming live on valleyfreeradio.org.
DJ ALDURU and VIKING WOMAN will be giving away four pairs only on Thurday night from 9 p.m.to 11 p.m. Call 413-585-1033 during the show and demand I want my SLEEPCHAMBER TICKETS!
For more details, go to SLEEPCHAMBER.INFO.
Les Vampires Ep. 10 – The Terrible Wedding – P. Emerson Williams Score
Now ,this tenth and final episode of Les Vampires can only be described as a helter skelter romp, complete with chases, mesmerism, somnabulism, dancing vampires and gunplay. The English title should be something more akin to “The Bloody Wedding”, methinks, but the above is what it says in the title card…
This serial was a ton of fun to create sounds for, and I may start another one soon, but first there’s a few small and larger treats in the works.
Les Vampires Ep. 09 – The Poisoner – P. Emerson Williams Score
Well, I was on my way to keep with my original intention of scoring the ten episodes of Les Vampires in ten weeks, but life got in the way. The tenth and final episode will be up within a week though and many other videonic projects to follow.
The Vampires learn of Guerande’s engagement and plan to poison him and his family at his engagement party. Guerande and family are spared due to a servant imbibing in the poisoned champagne early and then the chase is on. Will Irma and Venemous escape?
Salomé (1923) – P. Emerson Williams Score
Working on this brought to mind a million different thoughts and connections. I’ll be pulling the chaos together into something relatively linear soon.
Salomé (1923), a silent film directed by Charles Bryant and starring Alla Nazimova, is a film adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play of the same name. The play itself is a loose retelling of the biblical story of King Herod and his execution of John the Baptist (here, as in Wilde’s play, called Jokaanan) at the request of his stepdaughter, Salomé, whom he lusts after. Salomé is often called one of the first art films to be made in the U.S. The highly stylized costumes, exaggerated acting (even for the period), minimal sets, and absence of all but the most necessary props make for a screen image much more focused on atmosphere and on conveying a sense of the characters’ individual heightened desires than on conventional plot development.
I think the mythical Salome is both a product of and a window into the minds of those who told it. There’s a flavour to the tale that feels more like one from the old testament than the new.
http://etext.virginia.edu/subjects/salome/salome2.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2848
Phantasmagoric Environments
As the immersive art of FoolishPeople extends into the realms of cinema, the immersive art that is the essence of our work is brought into another realm. Those of you who have experienced the living narrative of FoolishPeople know that what is to be created with Strange Factories will transcend what we think of as cinematic form.
The Phantasmagoria of Strange Factories from FoolishPeople on Vimeo.
This film explores the ideas and background to FoolishPeople’s first feature film ‘Strange Factories’.
Stories and myths are given life by those who engage with them and we would like you to become part of our story. You’re a crucial element of how this project is produced, created and experienced.
Join our IndieGoGo campaign and become a part of ‘Strange Factories’.
http://www.indiegogo.com/strange-factories
The Multiverse of Phantasmagoric Reality and Corporeal Myth
When the Soviet Union fell many pondered what would happen to the spy agencies and the main strains of paranoia that characterized the cold war period. And what would happen to the spy genre and the archetypical characters who inhabited this oppressive world. Film noir style and atmosphere could be used in a light-hearted manner in a post-historical context, but viewing the original films while living in an empire in fast decline brings out the undercurrent that gives lie to a Father Knows Best view of the -50′s.
There are parallels between with past decade and the mid to late 1950′s, culturally and politically, but the situation is inverted economically. The loans taken out by the Greatest generation (TM) and the baby boomers has come to term with no payments having been sent in in the meantime. The -50′s was the crest of the wave of prosperity and that wave has now crashed against the rocks.
The sunny gloss of -50′s popular culture covered an underbelly crawling with tension, political subterfuge and the gradual intertwining of oranized crime and power. In recent memory the popular culture and media of the West combined a Brave New World tabloid «reality» TV peopled with orange-tanned hedonists coupled with news organizations reduced to being propaganda mouthpieces for the corporate paymasters who own you, me, our government and even our :grass-roots» movements, divided into «left» and «right» wing outlets arguing over whether the populace should be drinking political and economic bleach or gasoline. Different substances, same outcome.
My own perspective may singular in its vantage point. I have been working nearly three decades of working with the Lord of Hallucinations, so it may logically follow that I should find my consciousness invaded by disturbances, hypnagogic impressions and that I would be drawn to projects that inhabit dream worlds. Film noir, german expressionism, electronic voice phenomena and hauntology inhabit different countries in the same dark parallel world. The haunted landscape of Witch House is the dread beneath the crumbling suburban veneer, just as the world of the films of Harmony Korinne lifts the lid of the psyche of that majority of people who were left out of even the boom times.
As with Cirxus, its theme of nuclear meltdown and utopian promises was met with dismissal from some corners with a notion that the nuclear energy question was one settled in the favour of the industry. Now we have the nuclear disaster in Japan and it turns out many of our facilities are similarly vulnerable. So it is with dreams and monsters that for a few generations have seemed to be innocent and hokey. Zombies grab our collective imagination, and witches are potent archetypes in one subculture and another subculture is hard at work trying to bring literal witch hunts back elsewhere on the globe with a view to importing them back here. A possible dystopian future could be as much The Crucible and the rat-infested Nosferatu as Mad Max, and the mood is definitely dread and maximum schreck…
The stories we tell play a role far greater than to make the period between shift at work pass by more quickly. They help us interpret our reality and more importantly, to shape it.
Strange Factories – The Power of Stories from FoolishPeople on Vimeo.
Strange Factories is FoolishPeople’s first feature film, which explores the power of stories and myths and how they are ultimately given life by those who engage with them.
We would like you to become part of our story. You’re a crucial element of how this project is produced, created and experienced.
Join our IndieGoGo campaign and become a part of the ‘Strange Factories’ story.
http://www.indiegogo.com/strange-factories
http://www.info.strangefactories.com
A special thank you to Arban Severin, designer and maker of the Punch mask.
Les Vampires – Ep01: The Severed Head
Of the moonless nights they are kings,
darkness is their kingdom.
Carrying death and sowing terror
the dark Vampires fly,
with great suede wings,
ready not only to do evil… but to do even worse.
The Original Poster for Les Vampires
I’m having a lot of fun creating a score for this. Les Vampires is a film serial that gave us so much of the aesthetic for iconic gothic imagery its influence can not be overstated. Not a single vampire in sight, but enough mystery, twists and wickedness to fill twenty vampire novels.
From Wikipedia:
Les Vampires (1915) is a 10-part silent film serial. It was written and directed by Louis Feuillade and stars Musidora as “Irma Vep” a femme fatale whose name is a suspicious anagram of “vampire.” The serial is set in Paris, France and follows the exploits of a gang of master criminals (known in the period as an “Apache gang“) who call themselves “Les Vampires.”
There are 10 episodes, averaging around 40 minutes each, totalling about 6 and a half hours.
Olivier Assayas 1996 movie Irma Vep, with a story line of a director’s attempt to remake Les Vampires, is both an homage to the innovative nature of the original film and a critique of the then current state of French cinema.
Over the next few months I’ll be scoring all the episodes of this series:
- La tête coupée (The Severed Head) 33 min. Released on 13 November 1915.
- La bague qui tue (The Killer Ring) 15 min. Released on 13 November 1915.
- Le cryptogramme rouge (The Red Cypher) 42 min. Released on 4 December 1915.
- Le spectre (The Ghost) 32 min. Released on 7 January 1916.
- L’évassion du mort (The Escaping Dead Man) 37 min. Released on 28 January 1916.
- Les yeux qui fascinent (The Hypnotic Gaze) 58 min. Released on 24 March 1916.
- Satanas (Satanas) 46 min. Released on 15 April 1916.
- Le maître de la foudre (The Thunder Lord) 55 min. Released on 12 May 1916.
- L’homme des poisons (The Poisoner) 53 min. Released on 2 June 1916.
- Les noces sanglantes (Bloody Wedding) 60 min. Released on 30 June 1916
The John Zewizz Show Second Video Edition
John Zewizz speaks on SHEMHAMPHORASH, living in America, the 10 year hiatus, writing musick now, the Vinyl On Demand box set, the Inner-X-Musick Studio, Eroticism, and Reptiles, Cats, Women, the Internet, the 30 year anthology “Sacrifice”, the SLEEPCHAMBER sound, and new Inner-X artist artists.
This Episode is decidedly NOT work safe. Best viewed with a glass of absinthe in the comfort of your rumpus room/dungeon.
The John Zewizz Radio Show – Hosted by the infamous John Zewizz. Each show will include information on upcoming SLEEPCHAMBER events, programming, and new releases. You can expect to hear lots of unreleased material as well!
The John Zewizz radio show can be heard on Music Tuesdays on Alterati.com and Inner-X-Radio.
SALON APOCALYPSE:
“Secret Theater”
by Hakim Bey
As long as no Stalin breathes down our necks, why not make some art in the service of… an insurrection?
Never mind if it’s “impossible.” What else can we hope to attain but the “impossible”? Should we wait for someone else to reveal our true desires?
If art has died, or the audience has withered away, then we find ourselves free of two dead weights. Potentially, everyone is now some kind of artist — & potentially every audience has regained its innocence, its ability to become the art that it experiences.
Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols (in this case, the images we’ve been “given” by the organizers of this salon — murder, war, famine, & greed).
We might now contemplate aesthetic actions which possess some of the resonance of terrorism (or “cruelty,” as Artaud put it) aimed at the destruction of abstractions rather than people, at liberation rather than power, pleasure rather than profit, joy rather than fear. “Poetic Terrorism.”
Our chosen images have the potency of darkness — but all images are masks, & behind these masks lie energies we can turn toward light & pleasure.
For example, the man who invented aikido was a samurai who became a pacifist & refused to fight for Japanese imperialism. He became a hermit, lived on a mountain sitting under a tree.
One day a former fellow-officer came to visit him & accused him of betrayal, cowardice, etc. The hermit said nothing, but kept on sitting — & the officer fell into a rage, drew his sword, & struck. Spontaneously the unarmed master disarmed the officer & returned his sword. Again & again the officer tried to kill, using every subtle kata in his repertoire — but out of his empty mind the hermit each time invented a new way to disarm him.
The officer of course became his first disciple. Later, they learned how to dodge bullets.
We might contemplate some form of metadrama meant to capture a taste of this performance, which gave rise to a wholly new art, a totally non-violent way of fighting — war without murder, “the sword of life” rather than death.
A conspiracy of artists, anonymous as any mad bombers, but aimed toward an act of gratuitous generosity rather than violence — at the millennium rather than the apocalypse — or rather, aimed at a present moment of aesthetic shock in the service of realization & liberation.
Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.
Is it possible to create a SECRET THEATER in which both artist & audience have completely disappeared — only to re-appear on another plane, where life & art have become the same thing, the pure giving of gifts?
We take Kirkegaard’s “leap of faith,” but absent the old existentialist’s Fear & Trembling & Sickness unto death. Our leap of faith into sorcery & secret theater is more like a wet dream than a nightmare, “awe-full”, not awful.
We name our peerage of this new plane The Seven Dramaturgs. But no Peer Panel here, please. We prefer, like Jacob, to wrestle with our angels, & if our tussling turns amorous, all the better. Let the games begin. The Seven Dramaturgs show us that the universe wants, more than that, intends to play with us. We can be pawns or partners in this intention of The Seven Dramaturgs.
In Sufiism there is a belief in The Forty Guardians who protect & keep mankind from destroying itself. What’s interesting is, these Guardians are human, but they remain completely unknown & are constantly in flux. Anyone in the world could be one of The Forty at a present moment, including oneself. Of course you would never know if you had been one of The Forty — they remain anonymous even to themselves. That is why Sufiism calls for you to bow your head whenever you meet a stranger — he could be one of The Forty Guardians.
Do we lead or follow The Seven Dramaturgs in their sorcery & secret theater? Ali Baba is merely one of The Forty Thieves — each of The Forty Thieves is Ali Baba. The text does not begin or end here — the pencil is passed like a baton amongst The Seven Dramaturgs. The universe is still being written.
Corrode and Engulf – Cognitive Dissonance VI – Final Chapter
http://www.archive.org/flow/flowplayer.commercial-3.0.5.swf
This represents the final chapter and transmission of the Cognitive Dissonance process. Next, I’ll share a few bits of what I’ve been working on lately, between things I’m bound by blood oaths not to talk about, extensive research into rhizomatic consciousness, chaos theory, extreme esoteric number manipulation and viral linguistics. A ton of creative output had been gathering momentum, and dissemination has been an afterthought, though I came to see that aspect becoming part of the creative flow. Further dissection of the sounds. In keeping with the original intent, I’m going to limit the final production notes to a bare outline of the process that got us here and convey gratitude to those of you who followed and added to the conversation.
The first thought I had at the outset was to track a simple album with a classic trio sound. I’ve done well with that, except for the added melody line at the beginning of the first track. Then a few stray ideas took root and grew into strange mutant entities. Major revamps, rethinks and re-visions, then sounds, images and artifacts suggested ever more forms and eventually, narrative, albeit of the surreal sort. With the album itself I took a very direct and raw approach. I’ve always preferred the sound of a human being playing instruments and singing to the mad scientists creation that is the protools version of injection molded plastic. (Not to be confused with electronic music.) Vocalists don’t usually like to have anyone hear anything but the most spot on, confident performances, but I was going for a feeling and a story, and these are my sketches.
Cognitive Dissonance was a working title that became the final title, for the name fed the blossoming idea that tied the album together. A story that encompassed a vision split in four directions, a juxtaposition and melding together of the points of view of of same world/ two views, two worlds, same character observing and acting in them. The central idea is of a cognitive dissonance between first appearances and a closer look.
I recorded all the music, and then came up with the song titles. I decided the order according to how the titles felt. Then I wrote a short story starting from a cutup of the titles. I expanded that and took the lyrics from that. I think my machines freaked out and became possessed in the process. I had some radio signals coming through the guitar as I laid down the tracks, and I made liberal use of them. While I continued to track the album I released several transmissions. I thought I’d make the various stage escapes into their own entities, as opposed to a few stray mp3′s.
Unlike the album itself, I layered, layered the layers and added extra layers to boot. I tried something different in the first, and with the help of the fine folks at librivox.org, I added spoken word from readings of public domain classics. We’re hearing mostly Flaubert, Coleridge and Emily Dickinson.
Transmision II I made from the bass tracks from the album. Mostly you’re hearing one track of bass with no layers but the real-time FX, though there are a couple points where the cello creeps in. A few inexplicable voices emerged that weren’t recorded by me. If it fits as a soundtrack for your daily experience, I want to hear the story. throw these out of my head in quick bouts between working on two movies, my own moving image projects, not included, three comics, (not telling yet), and a sum total of five albums of various styles at different points of production.
Along with the sound transmissions, the lyrics were extending into stories. The lyrics to most songs I’d done so far were dreamlike fragments of one continuous tale. I wanted to bring some of the underlying structure into focus. At the same time I listened to others stories. I was especially interested to hear some apocalyptic tales. Ragnarok, Armageddon, the end of one life and the beginning of another. The death of the ego, the body, a belief. The hearing became expression, and the telling of the tale that resulted was an embodiment of experience.
Individual Files
| Movie Files | MPEG4 | Ogg Video | 512Kb MPEG4 |
| 189 MB | 183 MB | 183 MB |
Cherry Red Interview With Mick Mercer
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1243718046
Cognitive Dissonance Transmission IV
This
represents the final chapter and transmission of the Cognitive
Dissonance process. I thought I’d share a few bits of what I’ve been
working on lately, between things I’m bound by blood oaths not to
talk about, extensive research into rhizomatic consciousness, chaos
theory, extreme esoteric number manipulation and viral linguistics. A
ton of creative output had been gathering momentum, and dissemination
has been an afterthought, though I came to see that aspect becoming
part of the creative flow. Further dissection of the sounds. In
keeping with the original intent, I’m going to limit the final
production notes to a bare outline of the process that got us here
and convey gratitude to those of you who followed and added to the
conversation.
The
first thought I had at the outset was to track a simple album with a
classic trio sound. I’ve done well with that, except for the added
melody line at the beginning of the first track. Then a few stray
ideas took root and grew into strange mutant entities. Major revamps,
rethinks and re-visions, then sounds, images and artifacts suggested
ever more forms and eventually, narrative, albeit os the surreal
sort. With the album itself I took a very direct and raw approach.
I’ve always preferred the sound of a human being playing instruments
and singing to the mad scientists creation that is the protools
version of injection molded plastic. (Not to be confused with
electronic music.) Vocalists don’t usually like to have anyone hear
anything but the most spot on, confident performances, but I was
going for a feeling and a story, and these are my sketches.
Cognitive Dissonance was a working title that became the final title,
for the name fed the blossoming idea that tied the album together. A
story that encompassed a vision split in four directions, a
juxtaposition and melding together of the points of view of of same
world/ two views, two worlds, same character observing and acting in
them. The central idea is of a cognitive dissonance between first
appearances and a closer look.
I
recorded all the music, and then came up with the song titles. I
decided the order according to how the titles felt. Then I wrote a
short story starting from a cutup of the titles. I expanded that and
took the lyrics from that. I think my machines feaked out and became
possessed in the process. I had some radio signals coming through the
guitar as I laid down the tracks, and I made liberal use of them.
While I continued to track the album I released several
transmissions. I thought I’d make the various stage escapes into
their own entities, as opposed to a few stray mp3′s.
Unlike
the album itself, I layered, layered the layers and added extra
layers to boot. I tried something different in the first, and with
the help of the fine folks at librivox.org, I added spoken word from
readings of public domain classics. We’re hearing mostly Flaubert,
Coleridge and Emily Dickinson.
Transmision
II I made from the bass tracks from the album. Mostly you’re hearing
one track of bass with no layers but the real-time FX, though there
are a couple points where the cello creeps in. A few inexplicable
voices emerged that weren’t recorded by me. If it fits as a
soundtrack for your daily experience, I want to hear the story.
throw these out of my head in quick bouts between working on two
movies, my own moving image projects, not included, three comics,
(not telling yet), and a sum total of five albums of various styles
at diffent points of production.
Along
with the sound transmissions, the lyrics were extending into stories.
The lyrics to most songs I’d done so far were dreamlike fragments of
one continuous tale. I wanted to bring some of the underlying
structure into focus. At the same time I listened to others stories.
I was especially interested to hear some apocalyptic tales. Ragnarok,
Armageddon, the end of one life and the beginning of another. The
death of the ego, the body, a belief. The hearing became expression,
and the telling of the tale that resulted was an embodiment of
experience.
Veil of thorns is an act that rarely repeats itself, but with Cognitive Dissonance, they may surprise even some long time fans. Veil of Thorns approach has
never been this stripped down, nor has their music been more complex. Stark, angular post-punk songs give way to a cello as it descends into madness. Spare
jazz-inflected tone poems lead back into sanguine deathrock dust storms.
For nearly a decade now, most of the work of front man P. Emerson Williams has been focused inward. Dissemination of his wide, varied
output took place through tales whispered in corners remote from. This conversation is part of the creative flow that forms his work.
Williams tackled the latest Veil of Thorns release by sharing the process in a new way. After having tracked the basic instrumental elements
of the next Veil Of Thorns album, “Cognitive Dissonance”, Veil of Thorns released podcasts created from the sonic raw material of the tracks as they
progressed. Through the bands website, blog comments and emails the resulting conversation helped expand the bands vision while focusing the tale being
told.
Inspired by scrambled radio signals coming through the
guitar as he laid down the tracks, Williams created long form compositions using montage techniques derived from the work of Williams Burroughs and Bryon
Gysin. Unlike the album itself, he layered, layered the layers and added extra layers to boot. His machines freaked out and became possessed in the process.
Where podcasts are often in a format similar to radio shows, Veil of Thorns ranks among a select group of sound and video artists who are stretching the
boundaries of the form into unique works of art.
fragments making one continuous tale. Cognitive Dissonance brings some of the underlying structure into focus. While they wove their tale they listened to
the stories of others. In the spirit of our times they collected many apocalyptic tales. Ragnarok, Armageddon, the end of one life and the beginning of
another forms one side of this archetypical narrative. Tales of the death of the ego, of the body, the breaking down of a belief offer a more insightful
view.
Coming off collaborations with Industrial cabal subQtaneous and Norwegian post Blackmetal band Manes, Williams
took the experience of working with such gifted and unique artists and has re-emerged with a stronger and darker vision. Lyrically encompassing two universes
and two realities, this tight and spare album ends up being more expansive an experience than anything Veil of Thorns has released before.
Agape,
-333
CHORONZON
Incunabula Papers – Ong's Hat
PANICMACHINE
Veil Of Thorns
