N-SPHERE a world behind curtains | august 2011 FEATURING SYMON CHOW RUDOLF KOPPITZ HENRY AND JUNE VINCENT DUCARD GERTRUD STEIN S[K]EEN N-SPHERE AUGUST 2011 EDITORIAL TRANQUILIZERS It is hot, very hot in these parts of the to perception in an entanglement of world. This is the hottest fraction of the senses. year in the northern hemisphere. It is the perfect moment to listen to Gertrud The night is long, and a quiet breeze slow- Stein's beats and feel the temperature ly moves the curtains. In Henry and June's rising even more. It is the perfect slice bed, a new dimension of sensuality is ex- of time and space to talk about sensual- plored. Reality is bent to will, but a will ity and eroticism and lascivious sweaty of masked resources, hidden affairs and skin while crickets fill out the silent night subtle liberation. However hot, nights are outside the curtains. bound to recline into a slight chill, creas- ing goosebumps on the skin. Time to step When lips part slightly, a faint breath behind a heavy door, feel the stifling air, can be heard. She slowly stands up dance your desires away. I do hope you from your bed and walks lazily, her skin are listening to Plastic Spoon right now. trailing in faint light. The sensitivity of vi- sion creates a connection with all other Ah, dawn. Dawn is here; cool, frail dawn, senses. Symon Chow's works depict invaded by a walk on marble side-walks, intensively the connection between high-heels in one hand and your garter breath and skin, remarkably modelling a in his pocket. A smile, a touch of the fin- story untold. On the other side of the gertips and the world bursts again into window, looking in with delight, the uni- hot sunlight, preparing its protagonists VEL THora verse of Vincent Ducard relates twilight for another parching night. | 2 INDEX AUGUst ABUSE CHAINS & 2 2011 34 ShowCASE 66 SCissors Editorial Gertrud Stein Misinterpretations Tranquilizers Interview Of Silence The Centre Cannot Hold GLass NoX EYE 4 showCASE 42 ShowCASE 70 TEASER Symon Chow Vincent Ducard Quadreria United States France Romantico Seriale Italy stoNE CLOCKWORK 20 showCASE 56 ShowCASE Rudolf Koppitz S[k]een Czech Republic MOVING HANGING 26 showCASE 62 CaGES The Naked Eye Contour Henry and June 3 | GLASS SHOWCASE SYMON CHOW | 4 GLASS SHOWCASE SYMON CHOW 5 | THE PErsistENCE OF MEMory Name: Artwork in 4 words: Symon Chow Passion Greed Personal Peace Location: What is inspirational for you: Brooklyn, New York. United States Memories, Stories, Perceptions, Occupation: Francesca Photographer and Graphic Designer Currently favourite artists: Definition of personal sphere: BD Miller, Matthew Larkin, EJ I guess it would be my drive to Bellocq, and all the underrated remember and be remembered, »The creatives on the internet Persistence of Memory«, if you would. Tools of trade: Also, doing something that matters to Fingers, Eyes, Grey Matter, and lots me is a big factor, because as most of of screen space my friends can tell you, I'm completely Current obsessions: useless if I have no interest in it. I don't Cameras (old and new), Chicken, and really consider the photos I take to The Little-Man be necessarily, »art"« To me they are Personal temptation: more like snaps-shots for me to put in Chicken my scrapbook to reminisce about at a later date, but if someone stumbles upon them and enjoys them as well, photo right | Symon Chow then all the better! Courtesy of the artist | 6 7 | photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist | 8 photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist 9 | photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo| 10 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook11 | photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo| 12 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook13 | photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo| 14 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook15 | photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo| 16 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook17 | photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo| 18 | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook photo | Symon Chow. Courtesy of the artist photo | Martin Bladh. DES - The Scrapbook19 | STONE SHOWCASE RUDOLF KOPPITZ | 20 STONE SHOWCASE RUDOLF KOPPITZ 21 | BUT Eros drowNED, drowNED, HEAVY-HALF DEAD WITH TEARS Name: Institut Wien, Czech Pictorialism, Rudolf Koppitz Pittsburgh Salons of 1926, 1927, 1928 Lived: Connections: January 4 1884 - July 8 1936 Vienna State Opera Dancers, Location: Tatyana Gsovsky, Tilly Losch, Freudenthal (Bruntál), Claudia Issatschenko Czech Republic Style: Occupation: Bewegungsstudie, Portrait Photographer, Graphic Artist Photography, Nude Photography, Influences: Clair-Obscur Technique, Pictorial Karel Novák, Viennese Secession, Processing (pigment, carbon, gum, and Symbolist Painting, Gustav Klimt, bromoil process of transfer printing) Alphonse Mucha, Ferdinand Hodler, Obsessions: Japanese Art, Constructivism Motion, Skulls, the Female Body, Associated with: St. Stephen's Cathedral (Wien), Photo-secessionism, Viennese Hungarian villages, alpine landscapes, Jugendstil, Wiener Werkstätte, Land und Leute, Agrarian Romanticism DIANA DAIA Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt Quote | Ezra Pound. Canto VII | 22 photo | Rudolf Koppitz. 1926. Bewegungsstudie. Courtesy of the artist 23 | photo | Rudolf Koppitz. 1925. Composition Courtesy of the artist | 24 photo | Rudolf Koppitz. 1928. The Brothers Courtesy of the artist 25 | MOVING SHOWCASE HENRY AND JUNE THE NAKED EYE | 26 MOVING SHOWCASE HENRY AND JUNE THE NAKED EYE 27 | A SERIES OF MECHANICAL GEstURES striCTLY LINKED WITH A PLAIN BIOLOGICAL PROCEss There is a common mistake to be with no real insight. Copies. Because it made when approaching sexuality in a is not the act itself, it is a raw and pas- film, that of showing without suggest- sionless image. It is very easy to show ing anything. There are dozens of films two people kissing, but it is rather dif- containing wild sex scenes, shoving ficult to make this simple act be felt the viewer's nose in them, but few re- on a nearly organic scale. How many ally are bold ore inspired enough to kissing scenes have you seen and how be committed to their own material. many made you feel like you are the In most of the cases, we have movies one being kissed? And the examples SHADE that serve the viewer's basic needs could go on... | 28 It is a difficult task to accomplish be- cause then your whole film is no longer focused on a particular topic, or not even on some particular characters, but the intimate interaction in between them which means that somehow the whole films must take their course, otherwise the material might pull it- self apart, since whatever is around or in between is only a mere distraction. In Henry and June, this task is ac- complished: one cold care less about the story itself (or about some other historical or fictional context) once he is drawn into the film's sensuality. Like Bernardo Bertolocci's Last tango in Paris, this film works with contrasts (something that is raw and dirty and something that is frail and »clean« be- ing one example). Of course, in this particular case, expressionism can- not be taken out of the list, which may seem a rather obvious aspect, but largely misunderstood by others. Because you can say that a porn film is expressionist in its own right, but the expressions depicted there, the image, is cheap and common, mostly because the directors choose to be practical in all the wrong ways. They rely on immediate (yet if - in consider- able cases -) pleasures into something the viewer may like, not it to some- thing that viewer may feel. In fact, expressions and gestures are, in some sense, gateways and they also can cover more obvious aspects because depicting something erotic is mostly like depicting something hor- rific: sometimes you are best advised to show less and suggest more. Many of today's films show everything and suggest nothing, so, what we are left with, at best, is a series of mechanical gestures strictly linked with a plain bi- ological process. Not much pleasure in that, is it? Amusingly, in one of Henry and June's scenes we are shown an ex- | 30 31 | cerpt from Carl Theodore Dreyer's The same can be said about Yves La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc and I say Cloquet's character. »amusingly« because as in Dreyer's film Joan, the saint, is mirrored in Naked Lunch is a movie about alien- the suffering of Joan, the human, the ation taken literally. The character inner communication (and meaning) alienates himself, but so is the movie, between partners, may be very well fortunately not a in an unfavorable mirrored in the organic »course of manner, mainly because the film's events«. outlandishness does nothing to un- dermine anything, quite on the con- If Henry and June or Last tango in trary, some of its aspects would not Paris use a simple artifice of con- work otherwise, not even the sexual trasts and movements to unveil an framework (remove the outlandish- emotional world, Peter Greenaway's ness and none of this would sustain Pillow Book takes a more »abstract« itself). approach. Here we have the link be- tween the sexual act and the process In Crash there is an even more organ- of body calligraphy. It is apparently a ic approach, more in the vein of cult more distant approach because most favorites such as Tetsuo.