Happy 14th Birthday!

Today Bizzarro Bazar turns 14!

Ah, it seems like yesterday, how time goes by, a lot of water has passed under the bridge, etc. — and okay, there sure have been many changes in these 14 years. If I’m honest, though… I opened my cell phone gallery this morning and the first photo that came to my eye was this one (NSFW), so it doesn’t seem to me that the stature of my intellectual interests has undergone much of an upheaval.

All joking aside, I am still, like you who read and support me, searching for unprecedented, liminal, wacky and wonderful territories.

However, the time also comes to draw a bit of a balance of the past year. It has been a very complicated period for me but an extremely stimulating one; if I have blogged less and somewhat thinned out my online presence, it is also because there are so many things simmering in the pot that required my attention. In particular, I will be announcing a couple of projects in the coming time: one of them has taken me across the length and breadth of the peninsula (and the journey is not over yet); the other one deviates from my usual boundaries but is a new adventure in which I hope you will want to try to follow me.

For now I cannot say more so I will just raise my glass and toast to us, seekers of enchantment, and to wonder! Keep The World Weird!

The Village of Puppets

A few days ago I visited Maranzana, a village in Monferrato known to be populated by strange inhabitants…
(Turn on English subtitles!)

Links, Curiosities & Mixed Wonders – 27

The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity.
(Dorothy Parker)

Welcome back! Before we dive into our new harvest of wonders, I begin by inviting you on Sunday, April 16 at Defrag in Rome: I will be giving a talk in the truly extraordinary context of Danza Macabra Expo, an event curated by CRUSH – Collective Visual Art. In addition to a collective art exhibition, over the course of this month the event will be enriched by a packed schedule of events including performances, live music, role-playing games, workshops and lectures. You can take a look at the program here.

And now, on with the weird stuff!

Musical Sadisms

  • In 2021 at the Nagasaki Zoo, the female gibbon Momo gave birth to a cub. In itself this would not be big news, except that Momo lives alone and has never had contact with other males. How could this virginal conception happen? After two years of research, and DNA tests, those in charge came to the conclusion that Momo became pregnant… through a glory hole.
  • In Shakespeare’s plays, monstrosity is made explicit in deformed bodies, nefarious instincts, and through language itself. Michela Compagnoni has explored all this in a new book reviewed in this insightful and fascinating article [in Italian]. (Thanks, Bruno!)
  • The first lab-grown meat burger was presented in London 10 years ago. Since then, technologies have evolved, costs are gradually coming down, and synthetic meat seems to be on its way to becoming a possible ethical and ecological alternative to traditional meat in the future. But at this point, why limit ourselves to producing beef slices when we can create recipes from extinct animals?
    The one below, produced by an Australian company, is a mega-meatball made from the DNA of a mammoth.
    Yet I would not recommend tasting it, because the scientists themselves have no idea of the allergic problems a 5,000-year-old protein could cause in humans. (And so goes my idea for a new fast food chain, “Jurassic Pork.”)

  • On L’indiscreto, a great piece by Alessio Montagner [in Italian] on Jesus’ penis, Mary’s vagina and more generally the symbolic density of genitalia in sacred art. (Thanks, Gaberricci!)
  • Feast your eyes on these tears.
  • Park Van Tassel (1853-1930) was an American aerial stunt pioneer. Originally a bartender in Albuquerque, he became interested in areostatic flying beginning in 1879 and decided to become a professional daredevil; his performances consisted of parachuting from his hot air balloon. But although today he is considered an important figure for some technical innovations and for introducing women (i.e., his wife and daughters) to the sport, at the time not everyone thought him particularly skilled. Many of his shenanigans did not end exactly as planned, and Van Tassel often ended up injuring himself or crashing-landing so much so that the crowd often booed him or even sabotaged the balloon. As Jan Bondeson reports in Strange Victoriana, in one case a spectator ended up lying unconscious because of a ballast carelessly thrown by Van Tassel; in another, the reckless aeronaut risked being killed when his legs got caught in the balloon’s support ropes while his parachute had already opened; in yet another, a wedding that was to take place in the air had to be cancelled because no priest or justice of the peace agreed (understandably) to ascend in a balloon along with Van Tassel.
    And they were right: flying with him was really not good business, as the 1889 incident in Honolulu tragically demonstrated. Van Tassel and his co-pilot Joe Lawrence had just taken flight in front of a cheering crowd when the hot air balloon was displaced by the wind toward the ocean; unable to control it, Van Tassel and his colleague jumped by parachute, but as they gently descended they realized that an even worse fate awaited them below… Van Tassel managed to reach the shore unharmed, but the poor assistant ended up mauled by sharks.

  • In the first of my Milan anatomy lectures, I mentioned a peculiar court proceeding that took place in France in 1659, in which on trial came the poor erectile capacities of a nobleman, accused by his wife of failing to fulfill his marital duties — impotence, at the time, was almost the only reason for a woman to file for divorce. This trial, in which the defendant had to prove his manhood by attempting copulation before an attentive jury of doctors and magistrates, was not an isolated case. Here is an article about the history of impotence trials.
  • There are those who look at a photo from when they were 16 years old, think back to that time and say, “I was a little immature, but I was still me after all.” And there are those who wonder, “but was that really me?” as if they no longer recognize themselves.
    Some of us, in short, naturally see a continuity (a “narrative arc,” as a screenwriter would put it) in our life experience, while others feel subject to metamorphoses so continuous and profound that the past is crowded with many outdated and now extraneous versions of themselves. I certainly belong to the second category.
    By now there is a good deal of psychological research showing precisely how perception about one’s own past identity varies greatly from person to person, so much so that scholars have even coined two terms to denote the two different types of approach. Are you continuers or dividers?
  • “It was about four bells in the middle watch, the “churchyard” watch, as the four hours after midnight is called, that it happened. We of the mate’s watch were on deck–the men for’ard, Burton and I under the break, and Mr. Thomas pacing the poop above our heads. Suddenly, apparently close aboard on the port hand, there came howling out of the darkness a most frightful, wailing cry, ghastly in its agony and intensity. Not of overpowering volume–a score of men shouting together could have raised as loud a hail-it was the indescribable calibre and agony of the shriek that almost froze the blood in our veins. […] Even the old man was awakened by it and came up on deck. Everyone was listening intensely, straining their eyes into the blackness that enveloped us. A moment or two passed and then as we listened, wondering, and silent, again that appalling scream rang out, rising to the point of almost unbearable torture and dying crazily away in broken whimperings. No one did anything, or even spoke. We stood like stones, simply staring into the mystery-laden gloom.”
    This sounds like a passage from a William Hope Hodgson short story, but instead it is a truthful account of a nighttime scream heard at sea by the crew of a sailing ship in the early twentieth century and still left unexplained.

  • How did the idea of the Martians come about? The one above is one of the maps of Mars made by Schiaparelli in the late 1800s. The astronomer christened those mysterious rectilinear formations “canals”-a term mistranslated into English as canals, which by definition implies the idea that they are artificial. Soon many other scholars became convinced that those strange structures were too regular to be mere rivers, and from there to the idea that intelligent beings might inhabit the planet’s surface was a short step. When the first probes photographed and mapped Mars more closely, it was realized that the channels were just optical illusions; but without this mistake who knows if we would ever have science fiction as we know it today.
  • At Waterloo, one of the bloodiest battles in history, 20,000 soldiers died, plus thousands of horses. But then where did all those bones end up? A recent historical study has provided a surprising answer: they were illegally unearthed between 1834 and 1860 to refine and bleach sugar.(Thanks Vito, RIP)
  • Let’s keep talking about bones. In just one year, in 1657, Genoa lost two-thirds of its population to the plague. There were so many dead that numerous mass graves had to be resorted to. One of these was found in 1835, during renovation work in the city park of Acquasola; it was then decided to move the remains to the tunnels that develop underground in the area. So even today, just a few meters below the feet of dog walkers and children playing, mountains of stacked bones hide.
    The tunnels cannot be visited, but here are some photos taken by speleologists.
  • Most minimalist deity.
  • Most ingenious funeral card.
  • Most AAARGH animal.
  • The Essentials of Smallpox is a manuscript compiled (probably in a single copy) in the late 17th or early 18th century by Japanese physician Kanda Gensen. The sheets have been worked in such a way as to illustrate the plagues of smallpox in relief.

That’s all, see you next time!

Hermit Wanted!

The strange fashion of garden hermits.

Turn on English subtitles, and if you like this video please subscribe to my channel and… spread the word!

Happy 2023!

Another year is behind us, a new one begins.
This may seem like something to do with the passage of time, but it is relative to space: the year exists because we are moving, carried by our planet-arch along its sidereal trajectory around a fiery star.
In short, the New Year reminds us that even when we seem to be standing still, we are actually always on the move.

And I have been traveling the length and breadth of Italy again for a few months now, at work on some books whose details I will reveal in the coming times. I hope the fruits of my wanderings will be enticing enough to make you want to indulge in the very surreal thrill of travel!

For now, I wish you all my warmest wishes for a 2023 full of oddities and quirks… Keep The World Weird!

The Monk’s Secret

Here’s a new mini-video: a seventeenth-century engraving hides a risqué secret.

[Turn on English subtitles!]

The Fantastic in Science

Certain watershed moments in our lives happen by accident, at least on the surface.

While attending university in Siena, it happened at one point that some of the lectures in the course of study were held not on the premises of my faculty, but located in the classrooms of theAccademia dei Fisiocritici, one of the oldest scientific institutions in Italy.

So one day I was in class in there, and to dilute the inhuman torment (no one should be subjected, without prior informed consent, to a general linguistics class) I got up to look for a bathroom. I asked the janitor how to get there, and he pointed to a door specifying that I had to go through the whole room because the restrooms were at the back.
When I entered, the shutters at the windows were ajar, and it took me a moment to adjust my eyes to the dimness. I finally distinguished, half a meter away from me, a strange silhouette… I focused with difficulty, and what I saw was this:

My memory is usually ragged and lazy, but that shock I remember as if it were a thing of today: the rush of adrenaline left me shaky. I found myself surrounded by other teratological specimens, although I didn’t even know the term at the time: in addition to the Siamese calf taxidermy, there were skeletons of thoracopagus lambs, malformed fetuses and human preparations.
I could have looked for an escape route, pulled straight for the restrooms cursing the janitor who had not warned me what I would be facing; instead, something clicked. I stood paralyzed for I don’t know how long, then the dismay faded, giving way to the most all-encompassing wonder I had ever felt. Precipitated in a paradoxical state, at once hypnotic and euphoric, I forgot about the bathroom, about class.
I did not leave that room until, an hour later, a fellow student came looking for me. Leaving the Academy, intoxicated and inebriated, I knew that moment would define at least in part all the rest of my life.

Why was that experience such an epiphany?
There was a hallucinatory quality to those deformed bodies that made me feel like a lost child, or at least get back in touch with a childlike trait that tends to be blunted by time: the inability to distinguish sharply between dream and reality.
(I wrote “inability to distinguish,” instead it would be better to say: the ability not to distinguish. But we’ll get to that.)

Now that I have been involved for many years precisely with anatomical or natural history museums, and their relationship to the uncanny, I understand well why that moment was so foundational for me. Without that surprise, that unexpected and cruel thrill, that cutaneous horripilation, that primal trauma, I would not have arrived at the approach that I believe informs much of my work: that of valuing the “Fantastic in science,” a concept around which I have long orbited, though without defining it explicitly until now.

Scientific and fantasy fiction are contradictory only in appearance, just as specious is the opposition between the Fantastic and Realism. Whether we are talking about film, literature or art, a double misunderstanding has plagued these disciplines for quite a while: on the one hand, Realism is merely a mode of exposition, laden with conscious choices and omissions — thus a clever pretense of verisimilitude. On the other, under the allegorical veneer, any fantastic narrative is a meditation (more or less conscious) on the reality of its own time.

In other words: realism is always a fable in disguise, while a fantastic narrative is always about concrete and current concerns.
The great difference between the two expressions is similar to what in music is called timbre; different are the instruments that play it, different are the filters, effects, distortions, and vibrations that are produced, but the note may well be the same.

In the artistic-literary sphere, therefore, such a dialectic never goes beyond the epidermis of the story, but I am convinced that on serious examination it does not hold between scientific language and the fantastic dimension either. While we are accustomed to recognizing the scientific themes that sometimes populate art or fantastic literature (think of Frankenstein), at first glance the presence of fantastic elements that run through scientific narratives — which are nothing more than a realist register taken to extremes — is less obvious.

It is the study of anatomy, human and animal, that in my eyes encapsulates more than other disciplines a propensity for the Marvelous.
On the one hand it is infused with all the epic of the heroes of science, the pioneering cartography of the body as a virgin continent to be explored, the esoteric toponymy and nomenclature; but the medical rhetoric of case reports — despite having developed a predilection for aseptic language honed over the centuries — is still descended from the accounts of prodigies and monstrous births of the Sixteenth Century. It is not uncommon to encounter medical papers that resemble veritable short stories.

Pietro da Cortona, Tabulae anatomicae, 1741

On the other hand, I have always been fascinated by anatomical plates (with their unintentional surrealism) and especially by the spectacular aspect of some museum preparations — such as those that treacherously stood before me at the Accademia dei Fisiocritici.

Precisely in the monstrous preparations, but also in certain dissections that unfold the body in unexpected visual distortions, there is an element of transfiguration of matter that I think is necessary for one to be able to speak properly of the Fantastic.

Honoré Fragonard, Écorché of Horse and Rider (1771), Fragonard Museum, Paris.

12-part human skull section, preparation by Ryan Matthew Cohn.

In short: If I were asked to name a place that perfectly represents my idea of the Fantastic, I would not think of any enchanted glade inhabited by fairies and goblins, nor of a crumbling mansion haunted by some evanescent ghost. Nor would I address distant hypothetical planets populated by inconceivable life forms.

I would direct the interlocutor to an anatomy museum.

Prepared in liquid twins, MUSA, Naples.

Tracing the fantastic in science, then, has broader and deeper repercussions. It means reconsidering the distance between mathematical-scientific and artistic-humanistic disciplines.

There is a widespread idea that the artist is predominantly irrational and emotional, but anyone who has ventured to produce any form of art knows very well that it is a work of ingenuity considered as an inseparable whole: it is necessary to guarantee space for the unknown to intervene in order to harmonize and elaborate it thanks to the control that technique guarantees.

On the other hand, the researcher or scientist proceeds in a kindred way — in spite of the different timbre, semiotic register, and tools — that is, in perennial balance between the describable and the indescribable, putting their faculties to good use indiscriminately, tuning the scruple of reasoning with those vast unfathomable areas from which intuition and unexpected illuminations spring.

Eureka!” Archimedes in the bath, 16th-century woodcut.

No human quest, in other words, is wholly rational or irrational: for we only move in an attempt to untangle the thicket of symbols we have inherited or created ourselves, and to overcome them. The poet and the scientist who intend to reach some truth must strain in a constant effort against the traps of language, of categories, of preconceptions.
In this, as I said, the child’s ability not to make big distinctions between dream and reality would be a discipline to cultivate since, when needed, it allows us to place ourselves beyond traditional separations.
It is useful to access that privileged vantage point from time to time, because from there the heterogeneous stimuli that animate our thinking are no longer judged a priori: and the multiple currents, coming from all directions, that churn and eddy under our keel, are still the same ocean.
(This post is dedicated to that janitor who at the time did not warn me of what I was getting into. I don’t know his name, but he was infinitely more important to my education than the linguistics professor.)

BB Contest Awards 5

The time has come to reveal the results of the fifth edition of the Bizzarro Bazar Contest!

This year, the entries were once again numerous and full of imagination, and I sincerely thank all the participants: our family of bizarre creatives gets bigger and bigger every year, and this can only fill me with pride.

Let’s get started!

Sambuco envisioned, for his vintage composition, “an old-time newsie intent on shouting, in these words, the praises of Bizzarro Bazar’s hypothetical store of wonders.” No better way to start!

For all the world’s
Satiated souls
Fascinated
By the unexplored
Seeking the wonder
To which our brains
Are unaccustomed!

Run hungry
Run fast
For every taste
And personality
There are stories
Of life and death
Of strange and macabre
Amenities!

Run curious
Run fast
For every taste
And sensibility
Bizzarro Bazar’s store
Opens its doors
Of wonder!

(Sambuco: Instagram)

Any fortune teller can read the future regarding classic questions about health, love or work.
But the fortune teller envisioned by Andrea Kendall Berg answers only strange and unusual questions — thanks to the intercession of her wacky otherworldly friends.
The only downside: the tarots end up giving the same answer every time…

(Andrea Kendall Berg: Instagram)

Elena Baila, in those idle, torrid days of summer, created this little animation that, in addition to paying homage to Bizzarro Bazar, seems to me to be an excellent advertisement about the risks of prolonged exposure to the sun.

(Elena Baila: Instagram, Facebook)

Perhaps works of art should never be analyzed in search of literal metaphors, but in Debora Campagnoli’s self-portrait, it almost seems as if her eyes have decided to look at the world through the lens of the Macabre… resulting in the brilliant colors of life in bloom breaking through the monochrome.

(Debora Campagnoli: Facebook)

ElaGhi has composed a lyric with a romantic, crepuscular tenor: lending her voice to a statue, her verses transport us to the mournful, decadent atmosphere of a Victorian cemetery.
Who among us would not want to walk among those bumpy tombstones under a leaden sky?

(ElaGhi: Instagram, Facebook)

Here’s a question that everyone asks themselves at one time or another: can a flayed woman still be beautiful and sensual?
What’s that you say? You never wondered? Dude, you really are strange.
In any case, Pamela Annunziata shows us that the answer is unequivocally positive. (Pamela Annunziata: Instagram, Facebook)

“I am vast, I contain multitudes,” wrote Walt Whitman.
Eleonora’s surrealist collage seems to suggest a similar inner immensity — with that anatomical Venus from whose entrails, as in a fantastic eruption, phrenological heads, Phoenix Arabs, circuses and hot air balloons emerge…

(Eleonora – Lola thumbnails: Instagram, Facebook)

Astrid, who sends me her work from Germany, created this fairy-tale chamber of wonders; the truly original solution is that she used an AI image generator to fill it with arcane and mysterious objects, then integrated the results into her digital painting.
The result is a Hermetical and indecipherable wunderkammer!

Regarding his stunning new creation, André ElRagno Santapaola writes, “I was inspired by two themes that are very dear to me, which I discovered and delved into precisely thanks to Ivan: anatomical preparations and Witkin’s magnificent photographs.
I made this silicone sculpture using a live cast, which I then tried to paint it in a hyperrealistic way. Being my first attempt with these techniques and materials, I am satisfied with the result.
I later set up the photograph by adding elements taken from my wunderkammer (the book is last year’s special prize!); the result is an anatomical preparation of a bizarre, yet beneficial, disease: curiosity.”
If you need a special effects artist for your next movie, now you know who to call! (André ElRagno Santapaola: Instagram, Facebook)

Illustrator Dimitri Fogolin places me in a singular tech-noir setting, where shady individuals with additional limbs implanted on their backs roam, where distinguished ladies wear gas masks, trains are sentient biomechanical hybrids, and mysterious dark ladies plot in the shadows.
Which is actually is a pretty accurate description of my everyday life. (Dimitri Fogolin: Instagram, Facebook, website)

It is no mystery that I have a soft spot for Elena Simoni a.k.a. Psychonoir’s tiny, delightful drawings, so much so that above my desk hangs the post-mortem portrait she gave me for last year’s contest .
This time Elena imagined a procession of freaks, saints, mummies and monsters (all inspired by topics I have covered over the years), marching to support the right to be proudly weird.
The only rally I would gladly attend in my life. (Elena Simoni Psychonoir: Instagram, Facebook )

WINNERS

Third prize

“There is treasure everywhere.”
With this phrase (borrowed from a volume of Calvin & Hobbes) Elisa Caviola presents her work, which won third place not only for its very elegant graphic rendering, but especially because it mixes digital techniques with an ancient and fascinating nineteenth-century printing method: cyanotype.

Elisa writes, “Lucky are those who look at the world with awe and wonder, because so much magic and beauty surrounds them. Especially in places where no one looks.” And even just watching the chemical process take place, and the cyan-blue emerge ever brighter, is something enchanting:

And here is the completed work: (Elisa Caviola: Instagram, Facebook)

Second prize

Chiara Toniolo, who won second place, decided to portray herself as an anatomical Venus intent on reading my book Mors pretiosa; what struck me, besides her beautiful pencil stroke, was the unusual atmosphere, languid and homely, and that almost casual caress of the skeletal cat…
Chiara says, “I could have depicted one of the many wax Venuses in anatomical museums, but it’s my professional deformation as an artistic nude model that’s to blame: I always have to put my face in it, and this time my guts too!” (Chiara Toniolo: Instagram, Facebook)

First prize

Gaberricci had also participated in our contest a couple of years ago, winning the third prize; this year, however, he really outdid himself, creating a very tasty and amazing whimsical crossword puzzle.
Virtually ALL of the definitions in these crossword puzzles refer to some article or video I posted here on the blog!
A true masterpiece of humor and puzzles, which will require a lot of effort to solve but, possibly, will make you discover (or remember) a myriad of unexpected and curious stories. What better to ask for?

(Gaberricci: website)

We have come to the end, and I am, as always, touched and moved. Once again, thank you to all the participants for gifting me with these wonderful works; I hope you enjoyed making them as well.
If you enjoyed any particular work, please remember to show your appreciation to the authors in the comments section.

Keep The World Weird!

Upcoming September Events

A five-week course on the representation of death through the ages, a meeting at a curious film festival, a conference about a major archaeological find… here are September’s events!

Starting September 3, and continuing with a date every Saturday, I will teach a 5-week online course for Morbid Anatomy on the iconology of death from antiquity to social networks. It will be a richly illustrated journey spanning three thousand years, tracing the historical variations and semantic richness of allegories of death: from the depictions of the ancient world (Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Etruscans) to the medieval danse macabre, from the “Triumphs of Death” to Flemish vanitas, from dissected corpses in early modern anatomical illustrations to the morbid infatuations of nineteenth-century Romanticism, from surrealist experiments to contemporary artists who include authentic corpses in their works. Find more information and the opportunity to register on the Morbid Anatomy page; the course will be held via Zoom in English.

On Sept. 6, I will be a guest at Garofano Rosso, Italy’s “smallest and coldest” film festival to be held in Forme di Massa d’Albe (AQ). It’s been many years since this tiny hamlet in the heart of the Abruzzo Apennines served as the location for John Houston’s The Bible (1966) and Valerio Zurlini’s The Desert of the Tartars (1976); but, thanks to the good spirits of a group of passionate young folks, once a year Forme gets to “breathe cinema” again, with a surprisingly rich program of free screenings and events. When they invited me, I accepted enthusiastically, because on the one hand such an initiative cannot leave my cinephile soul cold (cinema has been my first love, and was my main job for almost twenty years), and on the other hand this is a moving example of cultural commitment and resistance.

Finally, on September 9, I will take part in a major conference, where the details of an exceptional historical find will be released. Nothing was known about the whereabouts of the remains of the Marquises Pallavicino, one of Italy’s most important feudal families, until a wooden box containing human bones and bearing the names of Gian Lodovico I, Anastasia Torelli, Rolando II and Laura Caterina Landi was discovered in 2020, walled inside the Basilica of Cortemaggiore (PC).

During the meeting (to be held at 9 p.m. at the Eleonora Duse Theater in Cortemaggiore) the results of the archaeological investigations carried out on the remains will be announced, and I will be in prestigious company: speakers include paleopathologist Dario Piombino-Mascali, bioarchaeologist Alessandra Morrone and historian Marco Pellegrini.

Creature invisibili nel cielo

Here is a new video: until now I had never talked about UFOs and similar topics, but this time I made an exception, because… well, by watching the video you will understand what my motivations are.

What if the sky that seems empty to us is actually inhabited by invisible beings?

Turn on the English subtitles and enjoy!