Hello! It has been a long time since any of us has published here. Or anywhere anything. Therefore, in the light of how much we liked the idea of this magazine a year ago we’re announcing a new issue! Our aim is to have it done in, more or less, two weeks! 

What’s new?

Well, just to say that we haven’t been sitting around doing absolutely nothing, we have a new design made by one of our newest members. And speaking of members, there are some new and some that have left. Surely, and hopefully, this won’t be much of a problem to what we write.

What isn’t new? 

Apart from what I’ve mentioned above, Nothing! The same kind of articles. The same approach. We put art to the wall and we try to question it (and see if we can get something out of it…)

Now, for more details, feel free to write to us (easiest way is to leave a comment on the site). 

Right, if you want to write something regarding art (here you can thing of everything that it offers: music, cinema, photography, literature, visual art, drama and so on…) feel free to send it to us and we’ll make sure we have it published.

Adios!

the radioactive toy

Gauguin was a renegade. A renegade of his time and age. He raised three wonderful questions through one of his masterpieces.

“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”

Throughout history We tried to come up with answers for these questions focusing mainly on the ‘Origin’ and on the ‘What’.

What about our ‘Destination’?

Where exactly are we going?

I am, as You are, as We all are, a Victim of OUR time and age. I’m a Victim in the sense that I’m overcome by the world I’m living in. A world where the main thing we listen to is our iPod, a world where the Computer is the one that we socialize the most and where the TV and Xbox are like gods.

We chose fake meeting places in a fake space instead of enjoying a beautiful sunny afternoon.

So, Where Are We Going?

Are We Going to become slaves to what we create?

Who is to tell?

Science Fiction novelists such as Isaac Asimov wrote about various utopias where we fall under the power given to our creations. It seems as a very far-fetched idea, doesn’t it?

But if you come to think about it Jules Verne predicted the submarine and traveling in outer space.

So what if the SF novelists are right, without being aware of it?

What if we fall?

The World that we live in is a stunning and beautiful place. We have our own heaven that we ignore and exploit.

Man is vertical because we raised our head. We have embraced the World.

And what are We doing?

Crouching back down?  This time it’s the PC!

Well, We must accept the time in which we live with all it’s Brands and Commerciality.

Do not let mere Electrical Devices and all other 21^st Century traps get you down!

For Good!

the radioactive toy, Lazarus

You might be taking it as one of your subjects or you might not be allowed to take it at all. You might be utterly fascinated by it or you might just not care about such ‘impractical’ things. Recent analyses of educational systems all over the world show how important it is for children to be doing philosophy. Being presented with philosophical questions at an early age does not only increase the children’s IQ up to 6.5 points but also improves their emotional intelligence, self-esteem and confidence. Youngsters doing philosophy are able to quickly progress to the level where they can make choices based on their own judgement. Teachers have noticed that students interested in philosophy are able to critically evaluate and not just passively receive information. Studying becomes more of a thrill; it is not just repeating the dogma but engaging yourself in the process of learning by sorting the information according to its relevance.

Doing philosophy is not just sitting in an armchair, being isolated from the outer world, with a bottle of wine to save you from your tremendous (and potentially painful) discoveries about the meaning of life. It does not mean that you have to grow a beard and a belly and live in a barrel. Philosophy is thinking about the things that matter to you and the people around you. It means being able to form a coherent opinion and being an active member of your society.  

Guiddity

In the past 2 weeks I’ve been in a permanent indecision about this column. At first I was thrilled with the idea that I can write about The Mars Volta’s “Bedlam in Goliath” and its ‘Soothsayer’ – the talking board that almost dismantled the band in what is, I might dare to say, the weirdest background story in the history of music that brought to light an exquisite album.

I hope I raised the curiosity in many of you, and probably a bit of anger regarding this album.

But, on the other hand, I chose to bore the mainstream audience with one of my favourite bands, ‘Porcupine Tree’ and its “Fear of a Blank Planet” album which frankly it reminds me of their ‘Deadwing’ – song ‘Shallow’.

 Classic Rock magazine’s “2007 Album Of The Year”, ‘Fear of a Blank Planet” is the 9^th studio material of the British progressive rock band ‘Porcupine Tree’, and it saw daylight on 16^th of April 2007.

The founder of ‘Porcupine Tree’, Steve Wilson explained that ‘Fear of a Blank Planet’( also Transmission 6.1) is a direct reference to Public Enemy album, Fear of a Black Planet – ‘The race relations were a major issue when it was released and I see coming to terms with information technology and… The 21^st Century as a modern issue”

Transmission 6.1 is a 50 minutes recording that in comparison with its predecessor flows in a sort of a thematic and musical continuity from one song to the other. This is because Wilson wanted a piece of music that could be listened at once, describing it as an approach to the 70’s records of moderate length prevented the listener from losing his focus.

The record bares the influence of Bret Eastons Ellis’ novel “Lunar Park” which tells the story from the point of view of a father named Bret, whereas the album is told from his son’s perspective, a ten-year-old named Robby. The majority of the lyrics are lifted directly from the novel (especially “My Ashes” which is homage of the last chapter where the ashes of Bret’s father are scattered and, thus, cover the memories of his life).

“…this kind of terminally bored kid, anywhere between 10 and 15 years old, who spends all his daylight hours in his bedroom with the curtains closed, playing on his PlayStation, listening to his iPod, texting his friends on his cell phone, looking at hardcore pornography on the Internet, downloading music, films, news, violence… He’s also on prescription drugs. Parents these days seem to deal with their kids’ problems not by sitting down and talking to them but by sending them to the doctor and getting them prescription drugs – which is kind of tragic, really.”

Steve Wilson’s description of the album in an interview of Revolver magazine.

The question raised in this situation is simple.

Will this stereotype evolve or will it seize?  Will we be overcome by what we create? And, as much as a cliché might it sound, this is a lively question.

The 21^st Century has a terrible effect. It casts a long shallow shadow over the weak and unprepared youth of the 1^st WORLD COUNTRIES.

Porcupine Tree’s record has the ability to create a PHOBIA towards technology and its slaves.

the same radioactive toy

Pull The Strings! Don’t be afraid to be whoever you want!

Be Me or Be John Malkovich.  Leave your everyday life for 15 minutes. Enter the mind of one of Hollywood’s’ most prolific actors. Then be dumped in the New Jersey Turnpike.

“Being John Malkovich” (1999), is my story, Craig Swartz, the looser Puppeteer, and Lotte, my pet – obsessed wife and, of course, John Malkovich.

The portal found in my office becomes my doom, the dissolution of my marriage, my passing into nothingness after becoming the Master Puppeteer of my Ultimate Puppet, John Malkovich.

My marriage failed because of her, Maxine(Catharine Keener).

 Maxine, the love of my life.

Maxine, the love of my wife.

Maxine , Malkovich’s love.

Malkovich – a refuge for everyone – for just 200$.

Now, I’m trapped in a 7 year-old-child. Losing my puppeteer powers I’m damned to see the world through someone else’s eyes .After knowing the zenith of every puppeteer; after loosing My American Dream.

Under the tagline ‘Ever Wanted To Be Someone Else?’  Charlie Kaufman’s highly acclaimed story brings on the silver screen John Malkovich in an original role: a fictionalized version of… himself, fact that attracted the critics’ opinion upon himself.

The motion picture is heavily related to themes from Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich’. This influence would later be expressed by Kaufman and Jonze couple in ‘Adaptation’ where they, again, combine fact with an outrageous fiction.

In the same time ‘Being J.M.’ illustrates both John Cusack and Cameron Diaz in a ‘homely’ posture, out of which Diaz stands forth.

Jonze’s direction, the wonderful play of Cusack, Diaz, Keener and Malkovich combine into one of the most original films of the past decade.

The Story will be retold.

7^th of March. Fore dayroom.  8 o’clock.

the radioactive toy, Lazarus

Fight Club is a book, it’s a film.

Fight Club is a revolution. It’s an attempt to destroy modernity. It’s a terrorist army of enraged anarchists. It’s people condemned by the life routine. It’s the battle with the habitual life, with the fear; it’s about soap and how to make it. It’s about brainwashing and unusual utilization of soap. It’s about chaos and a new order. It’s about anarchy. It’s about apocalypses in our age. It’s about our age. It’s about our life. It’s about everything. Project Mayhem is about a new world. It’s about social cataclysm and panic over the world. It might be only about soap and homemade napalm.

And Fight Club has some rules. The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. Second rule of Fight Club is you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. After Fight club comes Project Mayhem. Project Mayhem has some rules. The first rule about Project Mayhem is you don not ask questions about Project Mayhem. The second Rule of Project Mayhem is you DO NOT ask questions about Project Mayhem.

Friday 14^th 8:30 Fore Dayroom.

Gospel.

      Rimbaud died when he was twenty. At twenty he stopped writing poetry. Then, at thirty-seven he had a physical death. Although the poet died at twenty the man died seventeen years later. That’s everything: destruction or transcendence. Silence or speech. Rimbaud or the nothingness. Sartre couldn’t say it better “existence precedes essence.” Essentially all the men are equal, forward us transcendence/destruction at one step. Both can be taken, it’s just matter of balance; the wine has the effect of this transcendence/destruction, Baudelaire knew it — a whole section of The Flowers of  Evil  is dedicated to the wine — and his damn son experienced it.

  Rimbaud’s four-year life started at his first successful escape from home. The prodigal son, kept in a cage, condemned to study, escaped into the city of the classic poets; being a brilliant disaster, the familiar tragedy, just a genius with an intoxicated brain teeming with a race of Fiends. There he started to study the dark poets in the streets and the women, a voracious reader, a poor and rebellious poet, starving, running away from the law. Raped by soldiers during one of his voyages through France. Enemy of the state. Poet. What happened to you forged you. Weld with beer, literature, rebelliousness and Paris. How did he meet Verlaine? Verlaine was ten year older than Rimbaud. He was married. He had a normal Parisian life, a bourgeoisie. Then Rimbaud came. One year was enough. End of the relation with the wife. A controversial friendship. Drunkenness. The poet as a seer. That same year they moved to London. Next year, during a discussion in Brussels, Verlaine shot him in a gesture of disagreement. A wound in the wrist. Two years in prison for him —that used to be the maximum sentence— and a hospital for Rimbaud. What else? A Season in Hell: a small and demoniacal novel, perhaps just his life. Thereafter Illuminations, a book of such a poetic prose, a cataclysm of language, a cursed substance. Ink. Poetry. Rimbaud.

  After a short period of his life with notoriety as a poet, although without Verlaine, Rimbaud kept writing. The next book Romances sans Paroles had a dedicatory to Verlaine, his friends convinced him to remove it. They sacrificed themselves. Both couldn’t live without the other and together. After this no more. Rimbaud decided return home. That was all. Four years of poetry melted with beer, wine, Paris, London, some bullets, Drunkenness, voyages and ink. Rimbaud, a seer.

Gospel

The drunken Boat (fragment)

Then I bathed in the Poem of the Sea,

Infused with stars, the milk-white spume blends,

Grazing green azures: where ravished, bleached

Flotsam, a drowned man in dream descends.

Where, staining the blue, sudden deliriums

And slow tremors under the gleams of fire,

Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our rhythms,

Ferment the bitter reds of our desire!

I knew the skies split apart by lightning,

Waterspouts, breakers, tides: I knew the night,

The Dawn exalted like a crowd of doves,

I saw what men think they’ve seen in the light!

I saw the low sun, stained with mystic terrors,

Illuminate long violet coagulations,

Like actors in a play that’s very ancient

Waves rolling back their trembling of shutters!

I dreamt the green night of blinded snows,

A kiss lifted slowly to the eyes of seas,

The circulation of unheard-of flows,

Sung phosphorus’s blue-yellow awakenings!

Sensation

Rimbaud

Through blue summer evenings, I’ll go down the pathways,

Pricked by the wheat ears, trampling the short grass:

In a dream, I’ll be sensing, beneath me, the freshness.

I’ll let evening breezes bathe my bare forehead.

I’ll speak not a thing: I’ll think not a thing:

But infinite love will swell in my soul,

And, I’ll go, far, far away, like a gypsy,

Through Nature – joyful, as if I had a girl.

 Departure

Rimbaud

Enough seen. The vision was encountered under all skies.

Enough had. Sounds of cities, evening, and in the light, and always.

Enough known. The decisions of life. – O Sounds and Visions!

Departure into new affection and noise!

Art is usually considered to be a representation of beauty. Since the era of Ancient Greece, the art has been filling our perception with images of battle-winning heroes, like the ones in 300, and flawlessly beautiful nymphs who lead sailors to death with their singing. Pictures of obese female bodies, dead cows and pig corpses do not fit to this strict, traditional definition of art. These are the main topics of Jenny Saville’s stupefying oil paintings.

Saville’s enormous, larger-than-life-size paintings stun the viewer with the contrast of the traditionally-schooled brushwork, and the topics which are less commonplace. Her brushwork  captures the play of light on masses and mountains of pure flesh -which often happens to be her subject. For example, her Passage (2004) displays a highly confusing image of a transsexual person who is in the process of changing the gender. The choice of topic sheds daylight on a taboo.

Most of her paintings present different kind of social taboos or themes which usually generate disgust. Therefore they are highly controversial, people either love her or hate her. Or just don’t know how to react. Personally I am part of the first group.

Selective realism. This is the way I would describe the style of hers, though she likes to be referred to as a pure realist. Her use of colours looks sometimes highly stylised in order to gently guide the eye of the viewer from one point to the other on the gigantic canvas. The highly pigmented blobs of colour that form the shape transform into a slightly abstract mix of tones when you get closer to the picture.

Dead cows, obesity, blood, the expressiveness of strong lines, somehow depict-able angst – they make one wonder if Saville sees the world as an ugly place. In one of her interviews she has answered: “Oh, fantastical – fantastically ugly. … There’s no truth, just a series of lies.” — mh, a series of lies.

The Worldaholic

“Stroll in Paris”, the photography-essay of a young Hungarian photographer, Juhász Balázs. Following past classical greats, he spent 6 years in Paris, taking walks starting and finishing in the VI^th district, the “chic “district of the city. The result was around 200 fabulous black-and-white shots, published in the album “Paris flâneur”  in 2005.

Looking for the beauty in the urban mess, in his pictures he caught moments of everyday street-life: the play of lightning on buildings or the absurd effect of billboards, queuing tourists under the Eiffel-tower and resting showmen, piles of books to read and artists at work.

The black-and white images have some romantic aura, with soft lights, spontaneous yet perfect compositions, but they are also lively and dynamic. They are both documentary and decorative, showing intimate moments of private lives, whether it’s the life of a monument, a coffee-cup or an old lady with her dog. They are simply very human.

Paris is Paris. She is captured in numerous poems, novels, paintings, films and photographs. Everybody has their own vision of it, it is a most personal thing. The vision shared in this essay is of someone who is in love with the city. It is a way of seeing worth adding to your perspective, or if you haven’t been there yet, it is a good start;)

The webpage linked below contains a vide-selection of the Paris-series, and also some other works of the artist. It is well-presented and easy to handle:

http://jbreklam.hu/page.html

It’s worth checking out!

 copycat