Lemon Cordial Intervention

JUST JAM #26

loosemeatsandwich — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:38:05 +0000

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for some text heavy opus to signal my return (at least, I imagine you are!), alas I leave you with a short video piece from the always great Tim & Barry TV. Don’t let the opening few minutes deceive you, this is not your garden variety two-step set (though I love those too!). Instead, what we have here is for the most part, a classical rap set on a par with DJ Spinbad’s excellent contribution to the Fabric:Live series. Highly recommended. Oh, and I have some really rad ideas for some upcoming essays and posts too. Let me just surmount my gargantuan mountain of schoolwork, and we can talk then.

GIORGIO AGAMBEN IN LOVE

loosemeatsandwich — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:09:48 +0000

Love is never directed toward this or that property of the loved one (being blond, being small, being tender, being lame), but neither does it neglect the properties in favor of an insipid generality (universal love): The lover wants the loved one with all of its predicates, its being such as it is. The lover desires the as only insofar as it is such - this is the lover’s particular fetishism. Thus, whatever singularity (the Lovable) is never the intelligence of some thing, of this or that quality or essence, but only the intelligence of an intelligibility. The movement Plato describes as erotic anamnesis is the movement that transports the object not toward another thing or another place, but toward its own taking-place – toward the Idea.

- The Coming Community, 1991

ALL MEN ARE DOGS

loosemeatsandwich — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:48:15 +0000

Friend of the blog Eddie Bacal has recently released a mixtape composed of entirely original material, one that I’ve been deeply enjoying both for its amazing Wham loops (seriously), and its sentimental value. Some of the material within was in its early stages of production many moons ago, when we met as undergrads working in a frigid warehouse, united by our love of… stuff. I don’t really remember how our friendship began, but it’s been a fruitful one – so here’s to you, pal. The rest of you, listen and enjoy.

Listen (Left Click)/Download (Right Click)

CAKE #5 – MOSSY MASTABAS, PAISLEY RUINS

loosemeatsandwich — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:24:18 +0000

Yet another piece for Let Them Eat Cake - here I meditate on ruin value in Brutalism, the appearance of Modernism in Tropical climes, and how these illuminate a darker aspect to the colourful textiles used in the recent revivals of both the 1960s and the 1990s.

Article here.

LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948)

loosemeatsandwich — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:34:37 +0000

I’m away all week, so I thought that I would share this little tidbit in the meantime to keep you all interested. It is an excerpt from Max Ophüls’s Letter From An Unknown Woman, and bar none, my favorite movie scene. In it, we have the female lead Lisa, together at last with the love of her life, Stefan Brand. Little does she know that it will be the only evening that they will ever spend together. They are in a pleasure garden in turn of the century Vienna, sitting in an attraction, essentially a mechanical panorama disguised as a train, and ‘travelling’ through Europe.

This early simulated experience is what grabs me every time. Consider some of the dialogue – Switzerland is represented by the Matterhorn, for example. In one brief line, an entire theory of vicarious experience and landscape is established. The entire landmass composing Switzerland has been condensed into a single signifier, that of a mountain. At first glance, this may seem somewhat strange, the mountain being a natural accident, having been formed due to the freak alignment of a number of factors at that very spot. However, in a sense, the Matterhorn as presented in this scene provides an insight into how we construct landscapes out of that which is already there. ‘Matterhorn’ is a name applied to a natural formation of rock, but by association, it also refers to Switzerland, and perhaps more specifically still, the tourist’s experience of that country.

With the proliferation of images, sublime features of the landscape such as the Matterhorn have become pieces of circulating currency. On an abstract level, this occurs as the circulation of images of certain landscapes become signifiers of nations as a whole – you haven’t really been to Switzerland until you visit the Matterhorn, and inversely, the vicarious experience of Switzerland has been condensed to merely passing by this mountain. More concretely, the monetary character of landscape is expressed in both its use to sell tours, and the influence that it has on real estate prices – iconic vistas dramatically increase the price of the land surrounding them. We have been circulating and trading a mechanized experience of nature for centuries now. There is thus a certain honesty to the train attendant’s comments, when she says that they’ve no countries left.

GLORIES OF SOCIALIST ARCHITECTURE

loosemeatsandwich — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:30:27 +0000

Via Der Spiegel

CAKE #4 – HEART OF GLASS

loosemeatsandwich — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:25:47 +0000

So, those of you who actually care probably are fully aware of this already, but I am woefully behind on my Let Them Eat Cake updates. The truth is, I’ve been struggling a little bit with writer’s block here, and am really unwilling to turn this blog into an endless chain of posts promoting my other writing. As a result, I’ve decided to just keep updating this blog as I get inspired, and then intersperse links to my other writing throughout. One unfortunate side-effect of this is that my updates won’t be necessarily up to date with my output, but I think that the blog, and my readers, will benefit overall.

Administrative stuff aside, I recently wrote an article on Christopher Kane’s Resort 2012 collection, its relationship with glass, and the language of purity. It turns out that stuff is pretty cool!

Check it out here.

PURITY

loosemeatsandwich — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:24:39 +0000

It all started in December, when I was working on a review of a relatively recently published collection of Walter Benjamin’s archival papers, using it as a starting point from which to discuss the unbound book as a viable alternative to the traditionally bound codex. This conversation arose from my critique of the book’s formatting and layout. Each item from Benjamin’s archive was displayed against a stark, white background, surrounded by ample gutter and margin space. When you think about it, this is a terrible design choice, particularly for a book that was marketed by its publisher as a memoir. Benjamin was a disorganized mess! My proffered solution was to instead print the materials on index cards such that they may be shuffled around, ordered, leafed through, and even lost by the reader. It seemed this chaos was far more true to the spirit of the man.

I digress! A few weeks after I had submitted this critique, I received back an annotated copy from my prof, with a few margin notes here and there. Of these, the one that caught my attention the most was a note in a segment where I briefly discussed the importance of white space to minimalism and modern curatorial practice, attempting to debunk the mythology of neutrality that has grown up around this shade. All the note said was ‘Citation Needed.’ I was incensed. Now, in order to understand my reaction, one must also understand that I was deep in the ‘hubris’ phase of my personal development. This seemingly innocuous request for a citation struck me as a personal affront, as though something that I had written was plainly too intelligent to have come from me alone.

A couple of months later, I learned to chill out a bit and not take myself too fucking seriously. With this epiphany came another – my professor may have been on to something. It is common enough to accept the relationship between white, modern art and curatorial practice. However, the specifics of this relationship are more elusive. When thinking about art history, I could not remember when I had ever read a direct allusion to the purity, neutrality etc. of white. More interesting still is the relationship between white, minimalism and utopian notions in architecture. Le Corbusier frequently relied on white in his work, much of which would comprise the corpus of what is now known as Brutalism. It is worth noting that Brutalist architecture was, for a long time, considered the utopian, socialist form par excellence. Yet, paradoxically, in the context of communist and socialist nations, it often exists alongside a healthy and continuing tradition of ornamentation. The stark minimalism embodied by white is often seen as the optimistic face of futurism, but perhaps it is worthwhile to ask exactly whose futurism?

Artist John Powers recently published a series of ten essays attempting to address the importance of white and its relationship with modernity. They make for an excellent read, though I must admit that my curiosity, far from being satisfied, is more voracious than ever.

Via Rob Gallagher

COLONIZING SPACE (1970s)

loosemeatsandwich — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:56:32 +0000

Hello all, it’s been a little while. I’m doing well, having just returned from a vacation, and been knee deep in other writing. Anyhow, I should have something up and running tomorrow, but in the meantime, I thought that I would leave you with this little anachronism, produced by NASA in the 1970s. I feel its positivity about space colonization should make for a somewhat interesting juxtaposition with my next post.

Via Jake Rodkin

CAKE #3 – COLD & BRITTLE, IDEAL FLESH

loosemeatsandwich — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 14:04:25 +0000

My third blog post for Let Them Eat Cake is now up, wherein I revisit one of my favorite topics, namely, why the Eurotrash aesthetic is so goddamned appealing. A hint – it’s all in the rich history! And perhaps our latent power fantasies.

Relevant links may be found in the sidebar under ‘Networks,’ or you could jump right to the piece here.