The Monk’s Secret

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

[Turn on English subtitles!]

Hatari

Article by guestblogger Verina Romagna

The 2019 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest is open, the audience waves their flags in the stalls or collapses on the couch at home to watch the live event on TV: everyone is dazzled by the glittering, ever-smiling singers, by catchy songs obsessively repeating “love, love, love”.
It is now Iceland’s turn, a small competitor which never turned out to be very successful or surprising, and suddenly the stage turns blood red. With a harsh metallic beat, the scene is revealed: there’s a cage, and a group of androgynous creatures dressed in leather and latex; one of the singers lies like a dying man on a staircase; the other does not sing, he screams from the top of his lungs. With a growl that is not wild or liberating, but rather cold and hallucinated, the lyrics deliver a terrible message: HATRIÐ MUN SIGRA, “hatred will prevail”.

“What’s this? How could this happen?”, the shocked audience ask themselves.
Let’s take a step back.


Four years ago, on a bright summer evening, as the midnight sun was shining, two boys strolled through Reykjavík contemplating the rise of populism, the ruin of capitalism and the crimes of growing individualism in Europe. To them, the only possible answer was: Hatari.

Meet the band

Hatari translates as “haters”. The band defines itself as an “award-winning performative, anti-capitalist, anti-systemic, industrial, techno-dystopic, BDSM” band, modifying and adding adjectives at their will. Hatari is a multimedia project, chaired by a nebulous company going by the suspicious name of Svikamylla ehf. (“Relentless Scam/Web of Lies Inc. “).

The project is based on the musical band founded by the two boys of the story, singers Klemens Hannigan and Matthías Tryggvi Haraldsson, together with their “drummer gimp” Einar Hrafn Stefánsson. Joining the trio is a variable team of performers, dancers, choreographers, visual artists and independent stylists responsible for a keenly designed fetish wardrobe, as well as a series of branded gym wear for the band’s moments of relax.

The legend of Hatari’s foundation is a brazen ironic hoax, regularly administered to the press by Klemens and Matthías, but there are some irrefutable facts: Hatari has indeed won several awards, and most of its members actually graduated from the Art Academy of Reykjavík. Matthías, aged twenty-five, already gained some recognition as a playwright and his writing is at the heart of Hatari’s nihilistic lyrics. Klemens is a carpenter and set designer, Einar also plays in the indie-pop band Vök.

Defining Hatari’s musical genre is a tricky task, because the band is eager to reinvent its style whenever it gets too close to being apprehended. Asking Klemens or Matthías will result in the usual long list of adjectives created on the spot: it might start off with almost fitting terms such as “techno-punk”, but will soon turn to “pop”, “bondage” and “doomsday”, and eventually end up being defined as “cabaret” and “bonanza”. Among their musical influences are Rammstein, Die Antwoord, Rage Against The Machine, Abba (“if only they were more Marxist“), the Spice Girls, Naomi Kline, Noam Chomsky, Donald Trump and Theresa May.

Hatari’s songs feature an electronic rhythmic base, enhanced by Einar’s live drumming, and two contrasting voices: Matthías’ growl delivers the main part, while Klemens will usually sing the melodic line in a soft, imploring and plaintive tone which can rise to a shrill falsetto, as in the song Hatrið mun sigra performed at Eurovision.

Music, however, is just one specific feature in Hatari’s wider concept, which is carried out through different performances: their act consists in staging a fascist dystopia set at the end of humanity, in the unmasking of the relentless scam we are subjected to in everyday life, in dismantling capitalism… and maybe, in the meantime, sell some CDs and T-shirts. After all, as the band put it, “it’s not cheap to bring down capitalism“.

Hatari’s key feature is precisely this love of contradiction, paradox, opposition. The BDSM clothing aesthetic is deemed necessary, because BDSM “liberates you, but it constrains you at the same time […], just like capitalism“.
But their use of contrast is also evident in the relationship between the singers Klemens and Matthías, a dualism ceaselessly exhibited on and off stage, which, as we shall see, might be the true focus of the entire project.

Hatari’s characters

Matthías, the leader of the group, plays the role of the absolute ruler and dictator in Hatari’s dystopia. He is brown-haired, cold and imposing, and his voice has a solemn and cavernous tone. The tyrant Matthías is characterized by rigidity, repressed movements, and a blank expression. He barely moves when he’s onstage, and he addresses the audience with a few controlled gestures, dry and theatrical, a Nazi-inspired reference. Angry screams rise from his granite, absent face, lost in a hateful frenzy of self-assertion. Even when he is not singing, Matthías maintains his apathetic composure; if he utters ironic and paradoxical sentences, he does so avoiding any hint of hilarity.

Klemens is Matthías’ right-hand man, an innocent martyr that the dictator subdues and persecutes. He’s a victim whose torment becomes obscene ecstasy: Klemens represents the compassionate undertaker of a dying humanity. He is small, with blond or sometimes bright-red hair, sparkling and ephebic. Like Matthías, he exhibits Hatari’s odd rhetoric with the utmost seriousness, but does not follow the same self-discipline. The inspiration for his body language and expressive range comes from a variety of traditionally feminine incarnations: the tender and fragile angel, the cheeky lolita sporting a blatant look, the bored prostitute, the sleepy men-eating vamp.

Beside a frozen Matthías, Klemens staggers without peace along the stage and dances to the rhythm. His arms are raised, hips swaying, his body is softly disjointed, keeping the pelvis as a center of gravity. With his skimpy costumes and orgasmic moans, Klemens becomes the spokesperson for the erotic element in Hatari’s performance: he symbolizes light, life, sex, against the darkness and dryness of Matthías.

Einar, the drummer gimp, is a silent character. But then again, he always wears a studded leather mask which hides the lower half of his face, limiting his communication possibilities. Contact lenses blacken his sclera, or narrow the pupil, so that his features are unrecognizable and the only noticeable trait is his gigantic stature.

During performances Einar beats on the drums with a metronome’s stolidity, or he spins around a spiked mace. Sometimes he just stands motionless behind the band and stares at the audience, like a fearsome Golem disguised as a sex toy. The only sentence he has spoken so far, the one time Klemens generously opened the zipper over his mouth, is the prophetic title of the song Hatrið mun sigra.

Some dancers who collaborate in Hatari’s performances complete the whole picture: the elegant and lanky slave Sigurður Andrean Sigurgeirsson and the pale, robotic dominatrices Sólbjört Sigurðardóttir and Ástrós Guðjónsdóttir. Female dancers are no less dressed than men, and even if they happen to interact with male performers, they never do so in an allusive way: in Hatari’s choreography the sensuality remains exclusively homoerotic and masculine.

Rise and scandal at the Eurovision

So how could this freakshow ever get to arrive at Eurovision?
The first step was to win the Söngvakeppnin, the Icelandic musical competition where every year the national representative at Eurovision is chosen.
The band’s participation in a television pop competition made a sensation, not only because so far the band only played the underground scene, but also because Hatari in theory just split up – with a farewell concert and a press statement on Iceland Music News (the “most honest information channel in Iceland“, actually another fictitious company of theirs). The motivation behind the split up is the aknwledgemtn that their pojects has failed: “We could not bring an end to capitalism, in the two years we gave ourselves“. But this farewell lasted just ten days.
Their taking part in Söngvakeppnin was announced with a promotional video designed to reassure the event’s pop audience: in the video, the smiling group is dressed in middle-class clothes (Einar’s without his trademark mask, for the first time ) and gets together to eat a cake. In order to make this family picture more intimate, Klemens’ daughter also participates, along with the daughter of Einar and Sólbjört, who are engaged in private life.
Did Hatari become a family-friendly and bourgeois band? Not exactly: the script of the video is a copycat of the electoral campaign of Bjarni Benediktsson, a controversial politician who devotes himself to cake design.

When, during the award ceremony, Hatari was proclaimed the winner, taking everyone by surprise, Matthías nodded condescendingly and repeated Hatari’s leitmotiv: “Everything’s according to the plan“. Capitalism shall be dismantled starting from the Eurovision contest, he reasoned, since having Hatari as national representative will at least cause the collapse of the Icelandic economy. Hatari already prepared an apology letter to the government, in case of victory.

So let’s get back to the Eurovision, a festival that supports peace and friendship among peoples. The 2019 edition took place in Israel, in Tel Aviv, in the scenario of an occupation that is not at all peaceful and inclusive.
It was clear that Hatari was the ideal candidate to exploit this paradox, and the band was seen as an inconvenient competitor since their first public statements. The group clamied to be backed by an imaginary sponsor, a carbonated water called SodaDream – which echoes the name of the Israeli brand SodaStream but which unlike the latter “has never operated in any kind of occupied territory“, as Hatari was eager to specify.
A video appeared in which the band challenged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a match of glíma (Icelandic wrestling), raffling Icelandic or Israeli territories to be colonized at will by the winner.

In the European Broadcasting Union headquarters, anxiety was growing about Hatari’s stunts and interviews: what is this “plan” they were constantly talking about? Were they planning to disregard the competition guidelines?
Warned by the EBU, Hatari agreed to change their attitude: they switched to a more glittering look, and shunned any question that could can be seen as political, including the ones about their favorite foods. They made it clear that their song Hatrið mun sigra wasn’t really meant to incite hatred, but rather to inspire the same spirit of union at the base of Eurovision: an invitation to love, before Hatari’s dystopia might come true.

Everyone began to relax. All in all, maybe Hatari were just a clique of funny jokers, and any Eurovision edition must have their “freak” contestants. As the final evening approached, it seemed clear enough that no such thing as “the plan” really existed. The very idea of bringing capitalism to an end was nothing but a joke.

But then, just as the final score was being announced, the unthinkable happened. While the band was to appear live from the Eurovision’s “green room”, a second before going on air, Matthias exchanged a quick nod with Klemens.
He then extracted from one of his kinky boots some scarves decorated with the Palestinian flag, which the band secretly managed to smuggle past the Israeli military checkpoints.

As soon as it was announced that Iceland had gained tenth place, and as the crowd booed, security broke in to seize the scarves. Meanwhile, on Hatari’s Instagram profile, a giant Palestine flag appeared, while on YouTube a new videoclip was published: a collaboration with Palestinian gay artist Bashar Murad, shot in the desert of Jericho.

Male intimacy, the ultimate provocation

Besides their transparent political alignment, and having the nerve to remind the Eurovision audience that we do not live in the best possible world, Hatari also offered one final provocation – a perhaps more subtle but insidious provocation, destined to polarize and upset even their fans: the emotional and physical harmony between Klemens and Matthías.

In public appearances Klemens and Matthías coordinate perfectly their gestures and words, finishing each other’s sentences and sometimes even talking in sync. Yet sometimes the dynamics of domination and submission they exhibit during their musical performances seem to reverse: one of their running gags during the interviews is Klemens whispering some words in the ear of his “master” Matthías, who then just reports them impassively.

Still, what’s really confusing to the public is not even this inversion of dom/sub roles, but rather the peculiar intimacy between the two characters.
Klemens often leans against Matthías and reclines his head on his partner’s shoulder; Matthías, on the other hand, holds his friend to his chest, wraps him in his arms with a protective attitude.


The two singers claim to have a special, intense and long-standing relationship: Klemens supports and encourages the stoic Matthías to express himself completely, while Matthías acts like a shield and safe haven for that “very unconstrained emotional being”. They are two opposites completing each other, the feminine and the masculine, the Yin and the Yang.
Yet – and here is where gender prejudice arise – the two singers are cousins, childhood friends and above all heterosexuals.

The reactions are of dismay. “Impossible! Are they bisexual? Is it just a hoax? They must be lovers! ”
It seems that the public prefers to imagine a homosexual incest, rather than admitting that two heterosexual males can share such a mutual trust and fondness for physical contact; the affection and tenderness Klemens and Matthias show during their effusions is an even stronger taboo than homosexuality, as it seems to question the traditional and all too fragile concept of masculinity.

In spite of all their paraphernalia, their trickster attitude, their parodistic smoke screens and raw, gloomy aesthetics, Hatari’s real message lies in the group dynamics, which stand out as a true antidote. They give each other strength and courage, they trust in one another, they consciously abandon their bodies in the hands of their fellow members. They know how to nurture each other’s most unruly and dark sides, and how to mix them as if they were ingredients of a cake “full of love, but a bit sticky“.

Hatari’s quixotic struggle against capitalism is perhaps just another one of their jokes; yet if we want to avoid living in the toxic and deadly world they foreshadow, our only tools are empathy, trust, respect, bonding.
We just need someone to accept us, support us and – why not – cuddle us, without fear of ridicule, without it making us feel less masculine; here lies the strength we need to express ourselves.
And when self-expression, creativity and vitality are allowed to shine, then hatred cannot prevail.

20 Bizarre Christmas Gifts Ideas

Credit: Rob Sheridan.

Christmas is approaching, and with it comes the usual risk of choosing banal and trivial gifts.
Fear no more! Here is a selection of 20 absolutely weird gadgets, to refuel your consumerist creativity and to satisfy your relatives and acquaintances with tailor-made presents!

For your goth friends, nothing is better than a melancholic cup of tea while dreaming of sepulchres by the sea.
This delightful Edgar Allan Poe tea set includes: a hand-stamped muslin bag, a bag of “Midnight Dreary” herbal tea, and a limited edition charmed tea ball. (Crow not included.)

Available on Etsy.

A book is a classic but always welcome gift. Especially when, besides being a compelling read, it also proves useful and educational.
Someone you know will certainly appreciate this very practical guide.

Available on Amazon.

And now a perfect gift for (your enemy’s) children: it’s fun AND instructive!

Available on Amazon.

A calendar is as boring a gift as it can get. Well, not these ones: here are Bizzarro Bazar’s picks for 2019.

Available on Amazon.

Available on Amazon.

Available on Amazon.

Available on Amazon.

Available on Amazon.

These fun-loving nuns remind us, however, that Christmas is above all a sacred holiday. So here’s your pious decoration: a praying mantis Christmas angel.

Available on Etsy.

Chocolate is always a safe bet, when it comes to Christmas presents. The variant I propose here is not exactly cheap, but it sure sounds exotic: this chocolate bar is made from camel’s milk.

Available on Amazon.

It takes you a whole afternoon to set up your Christmas tree, but only 2 minutes for your cat to destroy all the hard work.
The problem is solved with this pet-proof Half Tree. Also available in the snowy version.

Available on Argos.

Since we’re talking cats, it is a real pity that this kitty saucy boat is no longer on the market. It was a Kickstarted a few years ago, and it’s now sold out. I’m listing it here anyways because, who knows, maybe you can find a secondhand one to shock your guests at Christmas.

Enough about cats, just one last thing: here is an action figure for your crazy cat lady friend.

Available on Amazon.

What about dogs? Don’t they need to keep warm during a rough winter?

Available on Amazon.

Here’s another useful, exquisite gift.
When the cold gets intense, and it makes the eyes water and the nose run, these double-sided “Snittens” offer two solutions in one: they’re specifically designed to dry tears on one side, and to absorb mucus on the other. Specifically designed, mind you. Just imagine the team of scientists working on this ground-breaking project, and be thankful you live in such enlightened times of sophisticated technology.

Available on eBay and Amazon.

If snot mittens were not enough to disgust your friends, maybe you want to go a bit further.
Give this pimple simulator as a gift to your most squeamish friend. Pus recharge is included!

Available on Amazon.

Lastly, we need to come up with something for those sexually liberated friends — or boy/girlfriends, why not— who are constantly looking for a new sex toy. We want it to be Xmas-themed, but something more than the usual kinky Santa outfit.
When you give them this awesome reindeer penis dildo (well, if we believe the producer’s description), you’ll know you’ve made their Christmas a bit happier.


Available on Amazon.
(By the way: Amazon’s suggested combined purchase is a thing of beauty.)

Before concluding, I would like to suggest two gadgets which are not really gifts but rather tools that you can use yourself, in case of need. A survival kit for the festive season, to defend yourself against relatives visiting, long dinners that can sometimes turn into Kafkian nightmares, etc.
The first remedy allows you to noncalantly approach your Christmas tree, unscrew a ball and drown your sorrows in alcohol.

Available on Amazon.

The second is designed for real emergencies.
Instructions: get up from the table, make up an excuse for leaving your guests, head into the other room and, once you’re there, scream your lungs out in the scream-absorbing jar. This essential accessory will allow you to let off steam without spoiling that pure, touching Christmas spirit.

Available on eBay.


In closing, allow me to remind you of my books, which could work just fine as a Christmas present
.

Available on Libri.it.

That’s all, happy holidays!

The Unexpected Ascent

(This article originally appeared on #ILLUSTRATI n. 44, Che ci faccio qui)

It’s September 7, 2013. At the 0B pavilion of the Wallops Flight Facility, on the east coast of Virginia, NASA is getting ready to launch a rocket towards the Moon.
The LADEE probe was designed to study the atmosphere and the exosphere of our satellite, and to gather information about moon dust. For this purpose, the probe is equipped with two technologically advanced mass spectrometers, and a sensor which is capable of detecting the collisions of the minuscule dust particles that rise up from the lunar ground due to the electrostatic effect.

As the countdown begins, dozens of specialists supervise the data flow coming from the various sectors of the rocket, checking the advancing launch phases on their monitors. Vibrations, balancing, condition of the ogive: everything seems to be going according to plan, but mental tension and concentration are palpable. It is a 280 million dollar mission, after all.

Yet at the 0B pavilion of the Wallops Flight Facility, on the east coast of Virginia, there is also someone who is happily ignoring the frantic atmosphere.
She knows nothing about electrostatics, mass spectrometers, solid rocket fuels or space agencies. Furthermore, she does not even know what a dollar is.
The peaceful creature just knows that she is very satisfied, having just gulped down as many as three flies within two minutes (although she ignores what a minute is).
From the edge of her body of water she looks at the moon, yes, like every night, but without trying to reach it. And like every night, she croaks, pleased with her simple life.

A life that had always been without mysteries, ever since she was just a tadpole. A comfortably predictable life.
But now, all of a sudden – here come the thunderous roar, the flames, the smoke. Absurdity breaks into the reality of our poor frog. From the pool, she rises in the air, sucked up by the rocket’s contrail. Flung up in the sky, in an unexpected flight, in a definitive and shining rapture.

NASA Wallops Flight Facility © Chris Perry

She sees her entire existence passing before her eyes, like in a movie – although she doesn’t know what a movie is. The endless stakeouts waiting for a tiny little insect, the cool nights spent soaking in the water, the eggs she has never managed to lay, the brief moments of fulfilment… but now, because of this cruel and unnatural joke, it all seems to be meaningless!
“There is no criterion for such an end” reflects the amphibious philosopher in the fraction of a second in which the incredible trajectory pushes her towards the rocket’s furnace “but maybe it is better this way. Who would really want to be weighed down by a reason? Every moment I have lived, good or bad, has contributed to bring me here, in a vertiginous ascent towards the flash of light in which I am about to dissolve. If this world is a meaningless dance, it is a dance after all. So let’s dance!”
And with this last thought, the fatal blaze.

One must imagine that frog happy.

Adam and Eve Raised Cain

We all know how hard it is for talent to emerge in the art field. That is why from time to time, in my own small way, I have tried  to give voice to young promising artists; some of them went on with their careers with excellent results, as did Fulvio Risuleo whose work I wrote about and who then won the first prize of the “Semaine de la Critique” at Cannes Film Festival.
I say this not to brag about my farsightedness, but in the secret hope that Bizzarro Bazar might turn out to be bringing good luck also in the future: today I would like to present you with a curious Italian stop-motion short film which in my view is a true little gem.

Entitled Adam and Eve Raised Cain, it was written, directed, animated and edited by Francesco Erba, born in 1986, from Bergamo.
Before discussing the short with his author, I advise you to take some 20 minutes off and let yourself drift into the fark, disturbing atmosphere of this little film.

The short film starts off with a declaration of love to Sci-Fi B-movies from the Fifties (Jack Arnold, Roger Corman, Bert I. Gordon  and their giant radioactive monsters), and goes on to pay homage even to the father of fantasy in motion pictures, Georges Méliès.
But the true references here are to horror and science fiction film directors from the Eighties, Carpenter, Hooper or Cronenberg. These nods are perfectly inserted in their context (an all too rare occurrence these days): the main character’s passion for monster movies, for instance, becomes a pivotal dramatic element in a scene where the child’s toys are sold, a psychologically scarring moment for little Albert.
Any citationism, even when done with a purpose, entails the risk of breaking the spectator’s identification, projecting the public “outside” of the film, and lessening its emotional impact. It could be because of the visceral and painful nature of the themes addressed in this short, but Francesco Erba succeeds in the task of creating an even stronger connection with his character: it’s as if, when observed through the filter of the American movies the 80’s generation grew up with, Albert’s trauma became more recognizable, more humane – despite his rough stop-motion puppet appearance.

Since he was a child, Francesco has been living and breathing cinema. How could he tell a tale of fear and love, if not by going back to those films which frightened him or made him fall in love?
This, in my opinion, is the admirable subtlety of Adam and Eve Raised Cain, a sensitivity which many narratives of nostalgia lack.
Behind the animated film facade, behind the entertainment, Erba is depicting a world of solitude and mental cages. And whenever he relies on some vintage stylistic elements, he’s not throwing them to his audience like peanuts just to stimulate some cinephile pavlovian response: he is using them because, to him, they still represent the best (maybe the only) way to really tell us about the wounds and anguish tormenting his character, both a victim and a perpetrator.

I asked Francesco Erba a few questions about his work.

How was this project born, and how did you manage to make it happen?

The concept for Adam and Eve was one of many sitting in my “Ideas” folder, on my laptop. After spending much time working with and for others, I decided it was time to shoot something new for myself. Sifting through the folder (and discarding all million-budget ideas!), the one that was left was a live-action version of Adam and Eve.
I started working on it, inserting new elements and focusing on the structure until I realized what I was really trying to tell: my film was about imprisonment, in all its possible meanings.

Once the script was completed, it started to dawn on me that this film could – should – be realized in stop motion: enclosing some puppets in a 1.5x1m box would cartainly take this idea of “imprisonment” to the extreme.

I knew all too well that to shoot this film in stop motion, as I had it layed out and with the resources at hand, it would take at least 2 years of work. I had to prepare a complete storyboard, character studies and preliminary drawings, set and prop construction, sculpting and mold making, motion tests, all leading up to several weeks of shooting in a dark room. And then the digital effects, and compositing the live actors’ eyes on the latex puppets, a process that had to be done frame by frame…

I mustered up all my masochism, started filming, and in the end I discovered I was even too optimistic. It took nearly three and a half years to complete the short movie!

Was the choice of stop motion limiting or did it give you more freedom? Which challenges were the most tough in producing the film?

Stop motion, which I do not consider just an animation technique, but THE animation technique, has an unquestionable charm which transcends time and technological innovations. But it can also be a real bitch!
If on one hand it allows full artistic freedom even on a tight budget, on the other it is certainly demanding in shooting time, shooting process, scenic design (sometimes down to miniaturization). Every aspect needs to be considered in advance, carefully calculated and measured, and you very often have to use your ingenuity to bypass problems: if I cannot move my camera, then I need to build a slider rig, and so on.

All these limitations, I think, really disappear when looking at the final result, at what you can create with this incredible technique. Take for example the movies produced by Laika today: they teach us that stop motion, although very old and almost the same age of cinema itself, has no limits other than those dictated by budget or creativity.

Adam and Eve seems to tap into the current vein of nostalgia for the 80’s (Super 8, Stranger Things, the San Junipero episode from Black Mirror, etc.). Did any film in particular inspire you? Is there some director’s work you had in mind while writing the script?

The short was filmed back in 2011, before this new wave of nostalgia for the cinema of the 80’s and 90’s (at least I chose to put it online at the right time!). Inevitably, it ended up containing many elements from the films I grew up with, which are now part of my DNA; these are references I cannot leave out of consideration.

Actually when you think about it, even those cinematic references coming from my imprinting are enclosed, like the rest of the story, in a chinese box system. Besides the cinema from the 80’s and 90’s, I chose to include some references to the films those very directors took inspiration from and sometimes plagiarised, namely monster movies from the 50’s. Taking it to the extreme, as I did with every aspect of the short, I went even further, paying homage to Méliès himself.

Sometimes directors get asked to summarize in few words the style they’re aiming for. My answer, right from the start, was: “think Rob Zombie doing stop-motion animation”. A coarse, wicked, sharp and sometimes repulsive style, which had to be recognizable in each aspect of the film.
But ofcourse I’m semplifying. If I think back to all the directors who inspired me, it might look like a meaningless list, and yet in Adam and Eve‘s world of opposites and extremes they make perfect sense to me: Carpenter, Cronenberg, Jackson, Spielberg, Selick, Park Chan-wook, Harryhausen, Quay, Svankmajer, Peter Lord and Aardman, Laika… they all influenced in a creative way the approach I chose for this short film, and its genesis.

The film shows extremely adult themes: phobia, alienation, family violence, unwanted pregnancy, despair. Yet all this is filtered through obvious irony: the handcrafted animation and the homages to the imaginary of American cinema make the film a “second level” experience. I personally find this ambiguity to be one of the strenghts of the project. But in your intent, should Adam and Eve be seen as pure entertainment, or taken more seriously?

This is one aspect of the “research” which I very humbly try to carry on with my work. One of he constants that can be found in everything I’ve done until now, from short films to music videos, from a pilot for a children TV show to the feature film I’m working on, is a search for the limit and the balance between two opposite extremes.

Using stop motion (which is often regarded as a technique for “children movies”) to tell an adult story, making an adult film about imprisonment, alienation and phobias with latex puppets, this is already a strong combination. To “cage” a real actor’s eyes inside the puppet, thus closing him within these narrow limits, to me is a further exaggeration of this concept. If you then imagine myself, the animator, stuck in strange positions and “prisoner” of a small dark room, the narrative gets really dizzying!

And what about the entertainment? Well, I’m not one of those who think cinema has the power to save the world, but it certainly makes it a little better. To me, films should not try to give answers, just to ask questions and create emotions.  It you’re looking for important answers, you’d better get a ticket for the museum, rather than for the movie theatre.
According to this philosphy, Adam and Eve is of course to be taken as a visual experience and not just as an artistic research: I think the scenes in which I “physically” enter the main character’s brain to show his past. make it clear that it’s also meant to be a product of pure entertainment.

This short film must have been quite a training ground. Will you continue with animation? What are your future projects? 

I am finishing my first live action feature film: here my personal research has evolved even further, as my movie is narratively and stylistically composed of an investigative report, a mockumentary and a more “traditional” film.
In the last few months I have been working on a TV animated puppet series for 5/6-years-old children, a project I very much believe in, and which gave me the opportunity to experiment with a different kind of animation.

As for stop motion, its “call” is very strong, despite the huge sacrifices that Adam and Eve demanded. One day I would love to be able to film my peculiar horror version of Peter Pan, or another small short film on Tesla and Edison.
A director’s work is often based on human interaction and mediation… I confess I sometimes miss being alone in my little dark room, moving my puppet’s head frame after frame!

Here is Adam and Eve Raised Cain Facebook page.

Subversive farts & musical anuses

Those who have been reading me for some time know my love for unconventional stories, and my stubborn belief that if you dig deep enough into any topic, no matter how apparently inappropriate, it is possible to find some small enlightenments.
In this post we will attempt yet another tightrope walking exercise. Starting from a question that might sound ridiculous at first: can flatulence give us some insight about human nature?

An article appeared on the Petit Journal on May 1st 1894 described “a more or less lyrical artist whose melodies, songs without words, do not come exactly from the heart. To do him justice it must be said that he has pioneered something entirely his own, warbling from the depth of his pants those trills which others, their eyes towards heaven, beam at the ceiling“.
The sensational performer the Parisian newspaper was referring to was Joseph Pujol, famous by his stage name Le Pétomane.

Born in Marseille, and not yet thirty-seven at the time, Pujol had initially brought his act throughout the South of France, in Cette, Béziers, Nîmes, Toulouse and Bordeaux, before eventually landing in Paris, where he performed for several years at the Moulin Rouge.
His very popular show was entirely based on his extraordinary abilities in passing wind: he was able to mimic the sound of different musical instruments, cannon shots, thunders; he could modulate several popular melodies, such as La Marseillese, Au clair de la lune, O sole mio; he could blow out candles with an air blast from 30 centimeters away; he could play flutes and ocarinas through a tube connected with his derriere, with which he was also able to smoke a cigarette.
Enjoying an ever-increasing success between XIX and XX Century, he even performed before the Prince of Whales, and Freud himself attended one of his shows (although he seemed more interested in the audience reactions rather than the act itself).

Pujol had discovered his peculiar talent by chance at the age of thirteen, when he was swimming in the sea of his French Riviera. After sensing a piercing cold in his intestine, he hurried back to the shore and, inside a bathing-hut, he discovered that his anus had, for some reason, taken in a good amount of sea water. Experimenting throughout the following years, Pujol trained himself to suck air into his bottom; he could not hold it for very long, but this bizarre gift guaranteed him a certain notoriety among his peers at first, and later among his fellow soldiers when he joined the army.
Once he had reached stage fame, and was already a celebrated artist, Pujol was examined by several doctors who were interested in studying his anatomy and physiology. Medicine papers are a kind of literature I very much enjoy reading, but few are as delectable as the article penned by Dr. Marcel Badouin and published in 1892 on the Semaine médicale with the title Un cas extraordinaire d’aspiration rectale et d’anus musical (“An extraordinary case of rectal aspiration and musical anus”). If you get by in French, you can read it here.
Among other curiosities, in the article we discover that one of Pujol’s abilities (never included in his acts on grounds of decency) was to sit in a washbowl, sucking in the water and spraying it in a strong gush up to a five-meter distance.

The end of Joseph Pujol’s carreer coincided with the beginning of the First World War. Aware of the unprecedented inhumanity of the conflict, Pujol decided that his ridiculous and slightly shameful art was no longer suitable in front of such a cruel moment, and he retired for good to be a baker, his father’s job, until his death in 1945.
For a long time his figure was removed, as if he was an embarassement for the bougeoisie and those French intellectuals who just a few years earlier were laughing at this strange ham actor’s number. He came back to the spotlight only in the second half of XX Century, namely because of a biography published by Pauvert and of the movie Il Petomane (1983) directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile, in which the title character is played by Italian comedian Ugo Tognazzi with his trademark bittersweet acting style (the film on the other hand was never released in France).

Actually Pujol was not the first nor the last “pétomane”. Among his forerunners there was Roland the Farter, who lived in XII-Century England and who earned 30 acres of land and a huge manorfor his services as a buffoon under King Henry II. By contract he went on to perform before the sovereign, at Christmas, “unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum” (one jump, one whistle and one fart).
But the earliest professional farter we know about must be a medieval jester called Braigetóir, active in Ireland and depicted in the most famous plate of John Derricke’s The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne (1581).

The only one attempting to repeat Pujol’s exploits in modern times is British performer Paul Oldfield, known as Mr. Methane, who besides appearing on Britain’s Got Talent also recorded an album and launched his own Android app. If you look for some of his videos on YouTube, you will notice how times have unfortunately changed since the distinguished elegance shown by Pujol in the only remaining silent film of his act.


Let’s get back now to our initial question. What does the story of Joseph Pujol, and professional farters in general, tell us? What is the reason of their success? Why does a fart make us laugh?

Flatulence, as all others bodily expressions associated with disgust, is a cultural taboo. This means that the associated prohibition is variable in time and latitude, it is acquired and not “natural”: it is not innate, but rather something we are taught since a very early age (and we all know what kind of filthy behavior kids are capable of).
Anthropologists link this horror for bodily fluids and emissions to the fear of our animal, pre-civilized heritage; the fear that we might become primitive again, the fear of seeing our middle-class ideal of dignity and cleanliness crumble under the pressure of a remainder of bestiality. It is the same reason for which societies progressively ban cruelty, believed to be an “inhuman” trait.

The interesting fact is that the birth of this family of taboos can be historically, albeit conventionally, traced: the process of civilization (and thus the erection of this social barrier or fronteer) is usually dated back to the XVI and XVII Centuries — which not by chance saw the growing popularity of Della Casa’s etiquette treatise Il Galateo.
In this period, right at the end of the Middle Ages, Western culture begins to establish behavioral rules to limit and codify what is considered respectable.

But in time (as Freud asserted) the taboo is perceived as a burden and a constriction. Therefore a society can look for, or create, certain environments that make it acceptable for a brief period to bend the rules, and escape the discipline. This very mechanism was behind the balsphemous inversions taking place in Carnival times, which were accepted only because strictly limited to a specific time of the year.

In much the same way, Pujol’s fart shows were liberating experiences, only possible on a theatrical stage, in the satyrical context of cabaret. By fracturing the idealistic facade of the gentleman for an hour or so, and counterposing the image of the physiological man, the obscenity of the flesh and its embarassements, Pujol on a first level seemed to mock bourgeois conventions (as later did Buñuel in the infamous dinner scene from his 1974 film The Phantom of Liberty).
Had this been the case, had Pujol’s act been simply subversive, it would had been perceived as offensive and labeled as despicable; his success, on the other hand, seems to point in another direction.

It’s much more plausible that Pujol, with his contrived and refined manners conflicting with the grotesque intestinal noises, was posing as a sort of stock comic character, a marionette, a harmless jester: thanks to this distance, he could arguably enact a true cathartic ritual. The audience laughed at his lewd feats, but were also secretely able to laugh at themselves, at the indecent nature of their bodies. And maybe to accept a bit more their own repressed flaws.

Perhaps that’s the intuition this brief, improper excursus can give us: each time a fart in a movie or a gross toilet humor joke makes us chuckle, we are actually enacting both a defense and an exorcism against the reality we most struggle to accept: the fact that we still, and anyway, belong to the animal kingdom.

Christmas presents – II

Has the consumistic frenzy infected you yet, like every year? Are you panicking at the last minute, wiping out every good idea and whatever creativity has left you? All the other presents seem more original than yours?
Here are some gift ideas from Bizzarro Bazar.

Survival stockings
This year we haven’t heard any prophecy about the end of the world but, as you know, the Apocalypse is always near. So here is the perfect tactical stocking to hang by the fireplace, fully-equipped with pockets for your ninja weapons, handles, snap-hooks, velcro and zippers, designed to hold every essential MacGyver tool.

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tactical-christmas-stocking-8464RuckUp Christmas Tactical Stocking

Half pint
Speaking of survival, it should be noted that the festive period always deliver a hard blow to your liver. If this year you’re considering the idea of limiting your alcohol assumption, but you fear you will lose your face with your friends, here is the clever half pint glass that looks like a pint glass, when seen from the side.

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Zombie slippers
With the first cold, there is nothing better than slip your feet in something warm. Even better if it is the mouth of a zombie, quietly gnawing on your ankles as you relax by the fireplace.

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VENKON – Calde Pantofole di Peluche a Disegno Zombie

Calendars to your (bad) taste
Wonders of Christmas: we are bound to give a present even to people we cannot stand. Most of the times we then resort to the most trivial and impersonal gift there can be, the calendar. But why not pushing things a little further, and spoil the whole year 2016 for your worst enemy?
One solution could be those calendars which redefine the concept of bad taste: the one offering monthly pictures of dogs pooping, or the roadkill calendar.

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2016 Pooping Pooches Calendar

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Roadkill Calendar 2016

And, after the calendars for enemies, here are those for friends. Still weird, but with a much more refined irony, the Crap Taxidermy wall calendar presents the most hilarious taxidermy gone wrong.

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The calendar from our friends at Morbid Anatomy, on the other hand, is a thing of pure beauty. It features photographs exploring the collections from 12 different Museums all around the world, and on its pages  someimportant dates for the lovers of macabre are noted, such as Edward Gorey‘s birth, the Dia de los Muertos or the Santa Muerte festivities.

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Morbid Anatomy Curious Collections 2016 Wall Calendar

Candles
Another classic present, if a bit corny, are artistic candles. The ones we suggest here are granted to surprise those who light them up.

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melting-reindeer-skeleton-candles-3577PyroPet Candles Dyri Candle, Light Blue

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Dinosaur Egg Candle

Flower grenade
In this time of warlike tensions, it’s time to go back putting flowers in your guns. You can do it in your own garden, throwing this grenade made of clay that is designed to melt with the first rain, releasing its seeds and granting the blooming of lively colors from this instrument of death.

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7745Flower Grenade

Christmas songs
Lastly, what would Christmas be without traditional songs? This year you can delight your relatives coming over to lunch with a playlist of Christmas melodies performed (or, better, shouted) by goats. Surprisingly, behind this project there is the charity action of ActionAid, aiming to raise awareness of the importance of goats in the fight to poverty. Enjoying your relatives’ dismay as you know deep in your heart that you have done a good deed, is really invaluable.

All I Want For Christmas Is A Goat

Safety videos

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Nel 2001, i due registi tedeschi Stefan Prehn e Jörg Wagner firmano il cortometraggio Staplerfahrer Klaus.

Si tratta di una gustosissima e scorretta parodia dei video per la prevenzione degli incidenti sul lavoro, quelli per intenderci che dovrebbero ammonire gli operai dei rischi che corrono quando non rispettano le norme di sicurezza. Ovviamente quello che comincia come un classico filmato aziendale si trasforma ben presto in una sarabanda splatter, scatenata e cartoonesca.

Le disavventure di Klaus sul suo muletto sono divertenti, non c’è dubbio. Eppure se pensate che il corto sia un po’ troppo sopra le righe, aspettate di vedere i prossimi due video: perché qui l’effetto è pressoché simile, ma l’umorismo totalmente involontario.

Entra in scena la ERI Safety Videos, una società di produzione video che ha sede a Lexington, in South Carolina. Specializzata da 25 anni negli spot sulla sicurezza, all’epoca di internet è diventata a suo modo famosa per la qualità grandguignolesca e trash dei suoi filmati: una sequela di incidenti mortali, mutilazioni e catastrofi. Se Prehn e Wagner nel loro corto giocavano sull’idea di mostrare in dettaglio le conseguenze raccapriccianti degli incidenti (cosa che normalmente i safety video suggeriscono soltanto), i video della ERI fanno un passo oltre. Sembrano già, cioè, delle parodie: vorrebbero spaventare e scioccare lo spettatore, ma il massacro è talmente insistito e compiaciuto che l’unica reazione naturale è la risata.

Attenzione, perché le cose peggiorano ulteriormente in quest’ultimo filmato, sempre ad opera di ERI Safety Videos. Qui la consueta carneficina è sottolineata da una canzone, Think About This, appositamente composta e arrangiata per l’occasione. Dire che il brano in questione aggiunge un ulteriore livello di orrore è un eufemismo. E, meraviglia delle meraviglie, potete canticchiarla anche voi in stile karaoke, grazie al testo in sovrimpressione. Si sfiora il capolavoro.

Dopo aver visto questi video, emerge luminosa una sacrosanta morale: non bisogna mai, MAI andare a lavorare, gente.

Joan Cornellà

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Joan Cornellà, al secolo Renato Valdivieso, è un giovane disegnatore spagnolo nato a Barcellona nel 1981. Si tratta forse del fumettista più seguito sul web, dove ogni sua nuova tavola diventa immediatamente virale, e la cui pagina Facebook conta quasi un milione e mezzo di iscritti.
Il segreto del suo successo internazionale è dovuto senza dubbio alla vivacità dei colori delle sue strisce, all’assenza di dialoghi che rendono possibile una fruizione senza barriere linguistiche, e al tratto semplice e preciso, da illustrazione per l’infanzia. Ma i fumetti di Cornellà sono tutto fuorché disegni per bambini.

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Sei vignette compongono quasi ogni tavola dell’artista spagnolo: la mini-storia ci trasporta in un mondo fatto di onnipresenti sorrisi di plastica, all’apparenza spensierato e idilliaco ma che nasconde invece una terribile crudeltà. Nel personale Grand Guignol di Cornellà la violenza è pronta a scoppiare all’improvviso, senza causare alcuna sorpresa nei personaggi, quasi fosse sistemica e connaturata al mondo stesso; allo stesso modo sembrano essere accettate senza battere ciglio deformità, perversioni, e strane irruzioni dell’assurdo in contesti quotidiani.

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I corpi sono plastici e deformabili, sezionabili e ricomponibili all’infinito, nella più pura tradizione splatter: eppure il perturbante arriva al lettore anche attraverso altre strade, come ad esempio un repentino avvicinarsi in primo piano ai personaggi dallo sguardo vuoto, quasi a cercare una minima espressione umana, una reazione all’orrore che però non arriverà mai.

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Da buon moderno surrealista, Cornellà insiste sui tabù borghesi (le reazioni fisiologiche, il sangue, il sesso, la merda, e via dicendo) ma li contamina con un linguaggio che si fa satira della cultura consumistica e del buonismo imperante. Le reazioni dei suoi personaggi sono di volta in volta incomprensibili, o sfasate rispetto al contesto, perché anche nella più drammatica delle situazioni essi sembrano comportarsi come all’interno di una pubblicità per dentifricio o di uno show televisivo: il loro posticcio sorriso rimane imperturbabile, anche quando la realtà è divenuta un incubo. L’imperativo è credere ai colori disneyani, al “migliore dei mondi possibili”, obbligati a una perpetua e idiota felicità.

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Fra omicidi, pedofilia serpeggiante, catastrofi e orrori assortiti, tutti affrontati con un taglio sardonico e con una buona dose di humor nero, lo sguardo del lettore è tenuto in scacco da continui e repentini cambi di prospettiva; la sorpresa finale spesso strappa una risata, ma la sensazione di spaesamento è talmente forte da interrogarci su quello che abbiamo visto. Spesso si torna indietro, e si rileggono le sei vignette dal principio, quasi si trattasse di un enigma da risolvere: e invece, insiste Cornellà, non c’è nulla da capire o interpretare. È così che vanno le cose, almeno nel suo mondo.

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Ecco il sito ufficiale di Joan Cornellà, il suo blog e la sua pagina Facebook.

Un’intervista a Bizzarro Bazar

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Se c’è qualcosa di folle, assurdo o malato noi ne parliamo o ne abbiamo già parlato o di sicuro ne parleremo.

Così si presenta il sito Sdangher (pron.: Sdengher), fanzine online senza peli sulla lingua, dedicata alla weird music e all’heavy metal, con frequenti digressioni nei territori della cronaca nera, dei film porno, dei clisteri (!), dei b-movies e in generale da ogni tipo di notizia bizzarra dal mondo. Il tutto con tono scanzonato, divertito e divertente, che nasconde però una seria preparazione culturale.

Francesco Ceccamea, uno dei curatori di Sdangher, mi ha rivolto una lunga serie di domande particolarmente gustose, e l’intervista è stata pubblicata oggi. Abbiamo chiacchierato soprattutto di cosa significhi gestire un blog, ma anche di libri, arte, cinema, musica… e ovviamente del gusto del macabro e del meraviglioso. Ecco un estratto:

La tua passione per il bizzarro ti ha condotto materialmente in posti insoliti, quali ti hanno lasciato un’impressione maggiore?

L’Italia, quanto a luoghi insoliti, non si batte. La nostra penisola è una vera e propria wunderkammer traboccante di meraviglie poco conosciute. È ciò che mi propongo di documentare con la collana di libri. Prendi ad esempio Roma: ad ogni angolo c’è una chiesa, e basta infilarsi in una a caso per scoprire capolavori spesso macabri. Scene di martirio, reliquie, cadaveri di santi esposti nelle teche, cripte decorate con autentici teschi… questi tesori nascosti mi danno un senso di continuità […].

Più che i posti in sé, però, sono le esperienze che contano, e la mia passione mi ha portato a viverne di indimenticabili. Ho passato giorni e notti fra centinaia di mummie a Palermo. In un Museo di Anatomia Patologica, ho tenuto in mano la testa disseccata di un bambino, e imparato come far cambiare posizione a un feto deforme dentro un barattolo di formalina senza aprirlo. Sono salito in treno con una placenta nella borsa termica, dono di una cara amica che aveva appena partorito… Anche se forse l’esperienza più vera, essenziale e a suo modo sacra è stata assistere a un’autopsia.

Qui trovate l’intervista integrale.