N-SPHERE a world behind curtains | january 2011 FEATURING KRISTAMAS KLOUSCH BARON DE MEYER CRASH KAOS BEAUTY KLINIK COUM TRANSMISSIONS DbE II DAN BLACKLODGE N-SPHERE JANUARY 2011 EDITORIAL TRANQUILIZERS A game is a reason to smile, while The creature, this sweet enticing de- playing catch and slapping your op- praved creation of the human sexual ponent, running around with bruised deviations, has many talents. It lives knees and torn socks. But what if a inside engines and in the depths of game would often be a chance to mischief, it runs along highways and grin? What would become of the inno- wrecks the extreme, it resides inside cent chase, the imprudent grabbing David Cronenberg's Crash. of wrists, the soft fluttering of skirts and the laughter caused by falling This beast is not always cruel, not al- in the dirt? What if while growing up ways sweet. Sometimes, it's just plain the game becomes a living breathing dirty and straightforward. A sensual boo-monster that pushes their owner release, an exciting escape from daily towards unknown limits of the human motions, this entrapment of the hid- endurance? This creature, let's call it den brute's raw nature comes out to Ailihparap, is like a childhood friend play in the COUM Transmissions per- that can hold its owner's hand and formances. play the game. »The world owes its enchantment In the works of Kristamas Klousch the to these curious creatures and their game wears cat years and the fiend fancies; but its multiple complicity re- is tiny, hiding under the bed and look- jects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, ing out with big curious eyes. As time heartrending in their evanescence, progresses, the maturity of the game they must go blowing headlong to makes itself visible in the pieces of perdition.« Richard Kadrey and Dan Blacklodge, with delicate bruising and violent ten- Quote: Jean Cocteau. Les Enfants Vel.THora derness. Terribles. 1929 | 2 INDEX JANUARY NOX NOX 2 2011 34 SHOWCASE I 82 SHOWCASE II Editorial Kaos Beauty Klinik Dan Blacklodge Tranquilizers United States United Kingdom GLASS CLOCKWORK CHAINS & 4 SHOWCASE 48 SHOWCASE 96 SCISSORS Kristamas Klousch COUM Transmissions Hone-Onna Canada Guaranteed Untitled Disappointment STONE ABUSE EYE 18 SHOWCASE 56 SHOWCASE 100 TEASER Baron de Meyer's Dark Bombastic Geoid Harem of Muses Evening II United States Gig Review MOVING HANGING 26 SHOWCASE 78 CAGES See the breaking glass Wish list 101 In the underpass 3 | GLASS SHOWCASE KRISTAMAS KLOUSCH | 4 GLASS SHOWCASE KRISTAMAS KLOUSCH 5 | »CREATING EXPLORING SELF EXPRESSION PASSION« Name: Currently favourite artists: Kristamas Klousch Aleksandr Rodchenko, Francesca Location: Woodman, Joel Peter-Witkin, Montreal, Canada Cindy Sherman, Lewis Carroll, Occupation: Julia Margaret Cameron, Marilyn Selfportrait Artist/Photographer Manson. The list is never ending and Definition of personal sphere: always changing. [not answered] Tools of trade: Artwork in 4 words: Various cameras - always a remote Creating, exploring, self expression, and tripod. passion. Current obsessions: What is inspirational for you: Russian avante garde cinema. Exploring the forest where I live, Personal temptation: visual language. Cupcakes. | 6 photo | Kristamas Klousch. I live in a cemetery of dolls. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook7 | photo | Kristamas Klousch. Still life. Courtesy of the artist photo| 8 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Kristamas Klousch. Untitled. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook9 | photo | Kristamas Klousch. Cat ears. Courtesy of the artist photo| 10 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Kristamas Klousch. Untitled. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook11 | photo | Kristamas Klousch. Untitled. Courtesy of the artist photo| 12 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Kristamas Klousch. Waiting on St. Anne. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook13 | photo | Kristamas Klousch. Oh. Courtesy of the artist photo| 14 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Kristamas Klousch. Little apple. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook15 | photo | Kristamas Klousch. Detached. Courtesy of the artist photo| 16 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Kristamas Klousch. Red mask. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook17 | STONE SHOWCASE BARON DE MeYer'S HAreM OF MUses | 18 STONE SHOWCASE BARON DE MeYer'S HAreM OF MUses 19 | »the Debussy OF phOTOG- raphy« Name: Associated with: Adolph de Meyer Associated with: Vogue Magazine, Lived: Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazar 1st September 1868 – 6th January 1949 Influenced: Location: Ira L. Hill, Charlotte Fairchild, Frank London, UK. New York, US. Paris, FR E. Geisler, Alfred Cheney Johnston, Occupation: James Abbe, Nickolas Muray, Photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, Cecil Influences: Beaton, Horst P. Horst Theatre life and contemporary Obsessions: socialites, pictorialism Ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky Technique: Pictorialist abstraction, under- Quote | Cecil Beaton spotting faces versus backlighting, dramatized poises, stillness, photo right | Adolph de Meyer. composure Etude de Danse. 1912 VEL.THORA | 20 21 | |photo 16 | Adolph de Meyer. Ruth St. Denis in The Revelation of the Goddess from Omika. 1913 Like a muse, she stands there, all absorbed by the intricacies of hu- man desire. It doesn't take long before her eyes fall upon the walls around her, noticing the hard metal hooks. »Would you care for a cup of tea, my dear?« he asks her sud- denly and she jumps up, her heart beating its way out of her chest. She nods quietly. He kisses her temple and checks the gag tightly secured to her mouth, then disap- pears out of the room. She returns her eyes to the walls and feels her skin crawl with delight and curios- ity and disgust and fear at the long night ahead. 23 | |photo 16 | Adolph de Meyer. Ruth St. Denis, The Revelation of the Goddess in Omika. 1913 »Raise your head« he whispers. The shutter releases again and again in the morbid silence. »what a sight« he crawls around her, watching her body through the lenses... There is silence. Deep, immutable si- lence. And a shutter releasing in a dark room, at the edge of insanity. 25 | MOVING SHOWCASE See The breAKING GLAss In The UNDerpAss | 26 MOVING SHOWCASE See The breAKING GLAss In The UNDerpAss 27 | »SEE THE BREAKING Glass. IN THE underpass« 2011 – now. 1996 – Cronenberg re- Hear the crushing steel. Feel the steer- leases the filmCrash . 1973 – J. G. Bal- ing wheel. Now let’s go back to hyper- lard releases the novel Crash. 1960 reality. – Camus dies in a car accident. 1955 – Lyrics | The Normal. James Dean dies in his Porsche 550. Warm Leatherette DIANA DAIA | 28 Hear the crushing steel. develops into a continuum of auto- tion and fluidity they create? A hy- crashes, celebration of wounds and pothesis. Bringing into focus a group of people new forms of sexuality, increasingly living in the urban landscape of To- involving more persons. On one level, the paraphilias endless- ronto (London in J.G. Ballard's novel) ly explored in Crash draw attention who share a common fascination for A tear of petrol is in your eye. to wounds as open sexual orifices car crashes and the exploration of and the techno-body investigated sexuality, Cronenberg's Crash has Crash has often been read as a trans- through a continuum of death simu- created controversies for both its gression of existing limits, such as the lacrums. In this sense, the well-known elaborate depictions of intercourses celebration of a new sexuality born dichotomy of Eros / Thanatos and and sexual fantasies in technologi- from the embrace of the machine as Apollo / Dyonisus are reconstructed cally-filled settings, and the ambigu- an extension of the body. But what if and questioned, leading to a grow- ity concerning the treatment of the the invasion of the body by shards of ing fascination for the body and the machine-sex-death triptych, a con- machinery, the breaking glass and its machine – both as central elements stant triangle throughout the film reflections, the persons pushing their of contemporary society. On a fur- and novel alike. At the core of the own limits in a continuum of explora- ther level, this constant investiga- narrative is placed Vaughan, a man tions of the body, the steering wheel tion places the temporary borders who used to work in the TV industry, and handbrake penetrating open at the core, transforming them into now obsessively staging and filming wounds, do not merely present the fu- spaces where inside and outside are scenes of car wrecks, gradually gath- ture as a fetish or a hyper real space in a continuous shift, where the public ering material for his head-on colli- which lacks emotion and desire as and private spheres are in constant sion with actress Elizabeth Taylor. In suggested, for instance, by Jean Bau- reversal, where the hybridization of his search, Vaughan meets James drillard in Simulacra and Simulation? those boundaries questions the very and Catherine Ballard, a couple at- What if the fascination about Crash position of the signified and the signi- tempting to revive their sexual rela- (both the film and the novel) is about fier, of the subject and spectator. The tionship, and from then on the plot borders, and the space of negotia- point where mutation takes place is | 30 given either by the wound or the exis- junior airline personnel, car-park at- apparently endless row of contor- tence of characters such as Vaughan, tendants, waitresses and steward- tions. Following Vaughan's example the car as a symbolic technological esses) seem to revolve around transit of launching himself into open space, entity, the actors on the list of pos- points, hence placing emphasis on a techno-apocalypse would become sible auto-crashes, the camera which this passage of change and mutabil- the transgressive act which provokes draws a thin line between spectators ity where two sides converge: roads, massive suicide and ends death.