The first thing that strikes is the return of the rabbit suit from ‘Gummo’. Dreamy characters with a hyperactive sense of imagination stuck in a desolate place. In this Die Antwoord and Harmony Korine fit together perfectly. And welcome a sense that is expressed in other works, like Ron Currie Jr.’s book God is Dead, or ‘Beast of the Southern Wild’ (2012) by Benh Zeitlin or the documentary series – that I discussed in a post in December of 2011 – by filmmaker Emil Trier and DJ Torgny. A joyous melancholy of some sort.

The title “Umshini Wam” – comes from the Zulu language and means something like: bring me my machine gun, in English – is a struggle song used by the military wing of the ANC during the struggle against Apartheid. Now it is mostly associated to the president of South Africa Jacob Zuma as it is used at his rallies.

The philosophical contemplation of the festival or feast had been one of the subject matter of my master thesis; but also finds a practical application within my own existence, as a communications director, producer and various other functions within a wide array of festivals. I could go on and on about the philosophical side using Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard and others, but that is something for a later post. Or I could tell horror stories about badly produced festivals or high tales about one of the greats that I’ve been apart of, but again that is something for later.

For now I just want to share this video and hope it inspires someone else as much as it did me. Because it does it really does.

The star of this video portraying a violent killer is none other than Jake Gyllenhaal. The aesthetics reminds me of films like ‘Hanna’ (2011) by Joe Wright or ‘Brick’ (2005) by Rian Johnson. It has a straightforward, almost documentary like, realism with a slight suggestion of the magical or hyper, induced by the dubstep, setting and lighting, without going down the rabbit-hole of magical – or hyper realism. There is just a brief sense of this other worldliness  without actually showing something to that effect. The overall story is one of an existential search, a protagonist that is lost.

However before I say too much, just push play and watch.

Whenever I see Gyllenhaal wearing a hoody and having a sinister expression on his face I can’t help but think of his iconic role as Donnie Darko from 2001, but maybe that is just I.

These comments aside see how the different locations affect the mood and how the story gets told effectively without the use of speech. The power of the narrative lies in the combination of the song with the performance on the screen.

In short a great achievement by director Daniel Wolfe, the production team of Somesuch & Co and of-course Mr. Gyllenhaal. Have a nice Sunday darlings…

Untitled | Editorial Art for Malibu Monthly

She has just escaped from the hospital or rehab – you can still see that she is wearing her ID-bracelet – and is now bathing in a bed of pills that have spilled into the ocean. She is the archetype of a young troubled addict, how has fallen asleep with her cigarette still burning. You can imagine her inaudible murmurings just before she gives into her state of slumber. She is like an intoxicated Gulliver as the little people find her on the beach and play with red and white candies. At any moment someone might start climbing on top of her and start surveying the new mountain. No body seems to be bothered and much rather ignore the beast, let it remain in it’s daze, until it becomes part of the landscape or simply get’s up and walks into the sound of the Pacific.

For me, I just want to stroke her hair until the pain goes away, but for now she is the hung-over giant on the beach.

What hits is the heath and bright colors of the desert community setting. This camp-esque aesthetic is at home in a community that isn’t grown naturally over centuries but pops-up in carton boxes in the middle of the desert.

But what do we learn from this video, always choose the robot over your wife?

Combining food with art, like Sarah Illenberger does in her creative food sculptures, is a prime example of instant fascination. For she recreates recognizable products and dishes using other recognizable but completely not food related objects. Such as her apple sculpture created by hair or her hamburger created by wood.

Sarah Illenberger | McForest | sideways/die gestalten verlag | photo by Ragnar Schmuck

By using wood one not only reconsiders the form it represents, for example the hamburger, but also it’s choice of substance, for example trees. Considerations of the production of meat and the food-culture that is represented by the hamburger thus coincide with considerations of forestry and the disappearance of pure nature. This foodart is not created for salivating but rather to reconsider both properties, food and what it is made of.

Damien Hirst | “For the Love of God” | platinum, diamond, human teeth | 2007 | White Cube Gallery, London, England

This work is a confrontation with death and one’s own mortality and the march towards it was along works of a similar nature, although I doubt that many of the masses noted any of this as the slowly made their way toward the center chamber. The gaze into death as the affirmation of the limit of being, to paraphrase Georges Bataille. The image of skulls is a haunting beauty, beyond the confines of mere hard-rock apparel. The hollowed orifices which one’s housed the eyes – the window to the soul – pull you deep into their darkness. The thought persists there is nothing there, it is all gone. Death is empty and we will all meet it one day, we will all become this object. You touch your own skull to conform the bones underneath the body tissue. Standing in front of an object is a dancing with death.It is what the Mexicans do on Día de los Muertos, a feast where one transgresses the boards of existence, to release this tension and live with death in your heart and in the morning one returns to the routine. As the dead become a part of the living and the living a part of the dead, it is in this tension of the two co-existing that one affirms the boarders to which one will return. This interpretation is very much inspired by the before mentioned Bataille, but can the subject of skulls also be pulled in a different light?

Ron Ulicny’s “Skull of Sarah Winchester” is in reference to Sarah Winchester, the widow and heir of  William Wirt Winchester, the only son of Oliver Winchester, the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. She is remembered as the woman who build a house of trapdoors and staircases to nowhere, the mislead the ghosts of the hordes of native American people slaughtered by the weapon created by her husbands family. The work consists of a painted human skull, encrusted with gold leaf, and a magazine of Winchester bullets screwed prominently into it.

Ron Ulicny | “Skull Of Sarah Winchester” | 9” x 9” x 6” | Miscellaneous Medium | 2011 | Grand Central Art Center, Fullerton, California, USA

It is not so much a testament to the fact that we will all die one day, but a testament to the brutality of humanity. To the creation of more and more efficient ways of killing each other, of producing more and more skulls, of destroying entire (native) populations. Moreover, of getting exuberantly rich on this productions of death. The detail that puts a smile on my face is that of the knitted coaster on which the skull of ‘Sarah Winchester’ rests, it expresses the sweet old sophisticated lady element of her character while simultaneously one has to rhyme the cause of her wealth. Although she didn’t have a physical stake in the creation of her wealth, she did feel haunted by it and the constant building works on the Winchester Mystery House only stopped upon her death in 1922.

So what about this confrontation with death? Doesn’t it tell us more about the living than the actual fact of dying?

Not the people on the park benches drinking cheap brand-less beer, I’m talking about the highly-functioning alcoholics, the Hemingway’s of our world, the Mad Man business executive types who spend long afternoons drinking bourbon. What I’m discussing is Peter O’toole as Jeffrey Bernard in ‘Got a Drinking Problem‘ or Brendan Behan when he stated: ”I am a drinker with writing problems.” Or am I nostalgic for a time of great alcoholics, that really didn’t exist? Not in the way I imagined at least.

The answer comes in the form of a brilliant 25-minute short, featuring – my current indie* darling – Lizzy Caplan, ‘Successful Alcoholics’ by Jordan Vogt-Roberts.

We see the couple Drake (co-writer T.J. Miller) and Lindsay (Lizzy Caplan) stumble through intoxicated situations. It is interesting that they function as two equally drunk drunks, to see a relationship in which both have frequent black-outs, to paraphrase from the film. Off course this way of living can’t sustain itself and at one point one of them has to opt out, either from the relationship or life. And when that happens we are left on a note of contemplation, does sobriety necessarily mean the end of fun? And if so, is that a good thing?

Successful Alcoholics from Jordan Vogt-Roberts on Vimeo.

The film written by Vogt-Roberts and Miller, premiered in 2010 at Sundance and made a round on the festival circuit, notably making a stop in Texas at SXSW.

*The concept of independent film taken at it’s broadest conception.