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!

Tre appuntamenti milanesi

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

The Monk’s Secret

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

[Turn on English subtitles!]

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.

Bizzarro Bazar Contest 5

Here we are at the 13th birthday of Bizzarro Bazar, and the 5th Bizzarro Bazar Contest!
As in previous years, I like to celebrate this recurrence by awarding prizes for the most macabre, creepy and wacky fantasy; to participate just stick to the rules, which are always the same:

  1. Create an original contribution that makes explicit reference to Bizarro Bazar;
  2. Post your work on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #bizzarrobazarcontest – alternatively, you can send it via email;
  3. The deadline is September 15, 2022;
  4. Remember, the idea is to give free rein to your weirdest creativity in a safe space where a morbid mind is valued and cherished — you’re among friends here!

“Explicit reference” means that Bizzarro Bazar (the site, the logo, one of the books, even my goatee) must be depicted/mentioned/included within the contribution. Keep in mind that, while promoting your creations, I also want to promote this blog. Win-win.
For a better understanding you can take a look at the first, second, third and fourth edition entries.

And now to the prizes:

1st prize: T-shirt of your choice + mug of your choice from the official store + surprise gift
2nd prize: T-shirt of your choice from the official store + surprise gift
3rd prize: T-shirt of your choice from the official store

The best unclassified entries will still be published on Bizarro Bazar with links to the authors’ websites/profiles, and shared on social media.

Have fun! Keep the World Weird!

Taxiderman

On Friday, June 17, I will be in Padua for a very unique event, an evening devoted entirely to taxidermy and the sociological, psychological and cultural implications of the art of stuffing animals.

At 9 p.m. inside the prestigious Zuckermann Palace there will be a screening of Taxiderman, directed by Rossella Laeng, a documentary focusing on the work of taxidermist Alberto Michelon.

I wrote about him five years ago, in this post: besides being the only taxidermist in Italy to offer “artistic” (i.e., non-naturalistic) taxidermy creations, Alberto also specializes in taxidermy of pets.

I have always found it very moving that different species manage to create a deep relationship with each other, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the coldness of the world; when the affection between a human being and another animal becomes so intense, it is clear that grieving can be difficult and painful. For this reason, on Friday we will also discuss taxidermy in relation to pet grief with various personalities from science and culture: in addition to the meeting with Alberto Michelon and director Rossella Laeng, the evening will therefore include talks by Anna Cordioli (psychoanalyst), Stefania Uccheddu (Head of the Service of Behavioral Medicine, Clinic S. Marco), Gianni Vitale (journalist, President Promovies), and myself. I will talk about the history of taxidermy and its relationship to other types of remains preservation, such as relics.

If you would like to reserve your ticket for the evening, you can do so on Eventbrite. I look forward to seeing you there!

Links, Curiosities & Mixed Wonders – 26

Welcome to this Easter edition of the column that collects various treats and bizarre delicacies from the internet. Depicted above is a party I’d really feel comfortable, painted by an anonymous seventeenth-century Tuscan artist.
And we’re off and running!

  • Let us begin with a short collection of last words spoken on the guillotine stage.
  • And here is a bridge of ants.
  • During the work to rebuild the Notre-Dame Cathedral, after a fire devastated it three years ago, a mysterious leaden sarcophagus was unearthed. The casket in all probability dates back to the 14th century, and it will be opened shortly: who knows if it contains a hunchbacked skeleton.
  • How would you react if, searching for your home on Google Street View, you saw mom and dad sitting on the porch… who have been dead for years? Would that image distress you, make you suffer? Or, on the contrary, would you look at it with emotion and affection, because that picture still makes you feel close to them? Would you ask Google to remove the image, or keep it forever in memory? With the growth of Street View, this sort of thing is happening more and more often, and it’s just one of the many ways the internet is changing grief processing.

  • The gentleman above is one of the founding fathers of the United States, Gouverneur Morris, who had a particularly odd and eventful life: at the age of 28 he was run over by a carriage and lost a leg; he later helped write the Constitution, then was sent to France where he had a string of lovers and managed to escape the Revolution unscathed. Back in the US, he finally decided to put his head straight and marry Ann Cary Randolph, his housekeeper, who incidentally some years before had been accused of infanticide. In short, how could such a man close his existence with a flourish? In 1816 Gouverneur Morris, who suffered from prostate, died as a result of internal injuries caused by self-surgery: in an attempt to unblock the urinary tract, he had used a whale bone as an improvised catheter. (Thanks, Bruno!)
  • Ten years ago I posted an article (Italian only)  about the Dylatov Pass incident, one of the longest-running historical mysteries. In 2021, two Swiss researchers published on Nature a study that would seem to be, so far, the most scientifically plausible explanation for the 1959 tragedy: the climbers could have been killed by a violent and anomalous avalanche. Due possibly to the boredom of last year’s lockdown, this theory did once again trigger the press, social media, conspiracy theorists, romantic fans of the abominable snowmen, and so on. Before long, the two researchers found themselves inundated with interview requests. They therefore performed three new expeditions to Dylatov Pass and published a second study in which, in addition to confirming their previous findings, they also report in an amused tone about the media attention they received and the social impact of their publication.
  • An autopsy was held last October in Portland in front of a paying audience. The great Cat Irvin, who is curator of anatomical collections at the Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh, was interviewed on the ethical implications of pay-per-view autopsies. (Cat also runs a beautiful blog called Wandering Bones, and you can find her on Instagram and Twitter)
  • Below, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria dressed as a mummy for a souvenir photo, (circa 1895). Via Thanatos Archive.

  • If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? What if a bear plays the piano in an empty house?
  • A tweet that offers a novel (and, frankly, kind of gross) perspective on our skeleton.
  • On April 22, 1969, the most hallucinatory and shocking opera of all time was staged at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall: Eight Songs for a Mad King, by Peter Maxwell Davies. The protagonist of the drama is King George III, who suffered from an acute mental illness: consequently, the entire composition is intended to be a depiction of the schizophrenic cacophony inside his head. The six musicians (flute, clarinet, percussion, piano/harpsichord, violin and cello) played inside gigantic birdcages; interpreting the verses, the cries and the sudden changes of mood of the mad King, was a baritone with 5 octaves of extension (!) dressed in a straitjacket. The opera, lasting half an hour, was a completely unprecedented assault on conventional rules, as well as on the ears of the spectators who had certainly never heard anything like it: the one-act play culminated in the moment when the king stole the violin from the player and tore it to pieces. If you have 28 minutes and want to try your hand at this disturbing representation of madness — a unique example of classical punk music, at least for its attitude — here is a 2012 video in which the solo part is played by Kelvin Thomas who, at the time of filming, was 92 years old.

Now, two pieces of slightly more personal news.
The first is that my upcoming online lecture (in English) for Morbid Anatomy will take place on May 14, and will focus on the cult of the dead in Naples.
Info and tickets here.

Secondly, if you can read Italian, I would like to remind you that the Almanacco dell’Italia occulta, edited by Fabrizio Foni and Fabio Camilletti, has been published by Odoya: following the line of the previous Almanacco dell’orrore popolare, this volume collects several contributions by different authors. If the first book, however, focused on the rural dimension of our country, this new anthology examines the urban context, exploring its hidden, fantastic and “lunar” face. Among the essays by more than 20 authors included in the Almanacco there is also my study of the weirdest, most picturesque and unexpectedly complex newspaper in the history of the Italian press: Cronaca Vera, which with its pulp and fanciful titles has left an indelible mark on our imagination.

In conclusion, I wish you all the best and I take my leave with an Easter meme.
Until next time!

The Nativity Scene, Death and the Dream

Does the Neapolitan nativity scene hide a dark and mysterious side?
Here is a small video where I talk about it (as usual, you can turn on the English subtitles).

Happy Holidays!