Clutching the short straw

I am pleased to announce that the next issue of “Böse Geschichten” will feature a full-page spread of one of my shots. “Böse Geschichten” is published by Charon Verlag, whose main product, “Schlagzeilen”, is Germany’s best selling BDSM magazine and is partnered with Sklavenzentrale, the largest “alternative lifestyle” community in DACH with almost 145.000 registered users.

On another note, I just realized there’s a project I’ve never plugged here and it’s a damned shame, so let’s fix that…

Since some three years ago I’ve been working on an automated radio station using Last.fm, painstakingly adding tracks to it one by one in order to create something like the online equivalent of my live DJ sessions: a moody, atmospheric, slow and/or melancholic mixture of dark ambient, jazz, torch songs, oldies, trip hop, french chanson, southern gothic, soundtracks and any other stuff that conveys those moods for me regardless of genre.

Now, the thing is that you have control over the contents of the library but not over the order in which they are played, which has the advantage of giving the listener a different selection every time instead of making them listen to the same playlist over and over, but also has the risk of making everything sound like an inconsistent mess. To avoid this I’ve been fine tuning the song database constantly during all this time, not only by adding new tracks regularly (there are around 1000 at this time) but also by removing the ones that I believed didn’t fit so well on second thought.

Of course, there will always be times that the very randomness of the station’s nature makes for some weird transitions (say, like Bobby Vinton following Atrium Carceri or Massive Attack playing right after a Johnny Cash track; those things can happen!), but all in all I believe I’ve really managed to create a very fluid listening experience, with no nasty surprises or runs for the “skip” button.

The bad news is you’ll only be able to listen to it if you’re in Germany, the UK or the USA, as Last.fm decided to make listening to radio stations a “subscriber only” feature in the rest of the world. They really screwed my homies back over in Spain with this one.

If you want to try it out, dim the lights, grab yourself a pack of smokes, fill a glass with ice and your poison of choice, click the link below, sit back and enjoy:

Seeing as everyone and their mother has a Facebook page for their stuff, I figured it was about time to create one for mine. Support the cause, become a fan and please suggest it to those people in your contacts whom you think might be interested!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chaospiral-Studios/109367249090103

Guess who’s back! Anybody left out there?

It’s been three years since I last recorded anything, but ever since I left photography aside I had been feeling the need to go back to making music. It always works like that: I stop doing something and I have to do something else to keep my sanity. So some months ago I started getting my act back together, experimenting, writing new stuff and exploring new directions from where I had left off. Now I can proudly say that the first step has been taken and I have something real and solid in my hands again:

Trip hop, ambient, audio collage, nicotine, some hip hop, lots of samples and a few words: that is basically “The night watch”, the debut demo album from my new solo project, Winter Trees Stand Naked. It was written and recorded in only three weeks for the 2010 RPM Challenge, so if you’re going to bitch about sound quality (it’s not even properly mastered, just a bit compressed and maximized) or about the songs being too short, put your talent where your mouth is and prove you can do better ;P Now seriously, I think what really matters more here is the fact that this challenge has accomplished what it was meant to: to give me that kick in the ass I needed to get moving and get something done again.

Although this may appear quite different from almost anything I’ve done before, there is still of course some relation to my previous projects: the atmospheres and sample collages of the late Morpheus can definitively be heard in some places, I’ve used trip hop rhythms before in some Chaos Condensed tracks and, of course, in some ways spoken word is not so different from hip hop… In fact, I don’t see it at all as a rupture with my past, but simply as the continuation of that path I set foot on years ago: the one less travelled by. And I must say I’m really excited about what I’m seeing ahead!

But enough with the chatter: click here or on the cover above to download the album (35MB, 256kbps mp3, 10 tracks, 19 minutes). Of course, as per the rules of the RPM Challenge, none of the stuff I had been working on before February has been included here, so I still have a bunch of tracks that will probably find their way to the second record, whenever that may happen.

The future is now. Looks like it’s time to add another section to Chaospiral Studios!

A couple of weeks ago we made a photo trip to the famous Beelitz-Heilstätten complex, in the outskirts of Potsdam. I didn’t bring any cameras along because I didn’t intend to shoot anything, but a good opportunity showed up and I decided to take a stab at a couple of shots just for the sake of it using my darlin’s awesome Olympus OM-2. I must say that I’m pretty happy with this one, light leak and all!

Hope you enjoy it after all these months without any updates, but you’d be well advised not to sit around waiting for more for the moment. I’m still not exactly feeling the urge to resume my photographic activity just yet :)

On the other hand, I’m happy to share that I’ve been working on some tracks for the last weeks and it’s quite possible that they’ll end up amounting to a full album in the near future. Now, if I could only find a good name for this project… “Morpheus” just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

The term glamourbomb (sometimes written as two words, i.e. “glamour bomb”) was coined in the late 1990s. A glamour bomb is a prank or act of mischief aimed at challenging or altering perceptions — in particular, expanding the target’s view of reality.

For centuries the word “glamour” denoted a magic spell cast on somebody to make them believe that something or somebody was attractive, an illusion cast by gypsies and witches. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1721 glossary of poetry: “When devils, wizards or jugglers deceive the sight, they are said to cast glamour o’er the eyes of the spectator.”

Today, glamour usually denotes the impression of attraction or fascination that a particularly luxurious or elegant appearance creates, an impression which is better than the reality. Here, too, is an essential quality of glamour: it is an escape, an illusion, an ideal, a dream. Glamour is not quite real.

The people who engage in glamourbombing are quite varied — many are practitioners of various forms of magic or neopaganism, particularly of those traditions with an appreciation for chaos and the Trickster archetype, such as discordians and chaos magicians.

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. A very sexual archetype, the Trickster figure frequently exhibits gender and form variability, changing gender roles, engaging in same-sex practices and playing havoc with the hyper-rational personality and community.

The Trickster is an example of a Jungian archetype. Its nature recalls its differentiation from the fool: the trickster is not playing. Not just any rogue or anti-hero can properly be termed a trickster. The true trickster’s trickery calls into question fundamental assumptions about the way the world is organized, and reveals the possibility of transforming them.

Unlike the fool, the trickster aims to change the rules of the “real” world; he/she is in fact the perfect vehicle to undermine the “terminal creeds” that rigidify into overdetermination or stereotype.

In Tarot symbolism, the Trickster archetype is represented by the figure of the Magician.

(Text stitched together from wikipedia articles, The New York Times and several other sources which I am unable to recall right now. Paiting by Jack Vettriano.)

In times of confusion, I usually turn to my roots to find solace and advice in that which molded what I am today, in the words and works that made me steer my path and inspired me to take up the disciplines which I felt were appropiate to express that very “I”. One of those roots is, without discussion, Chaos Magick. I’ve always found the writings of Austin Osman Spare, Phil Hine, Ray Sherwin, Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary or Alan Moore tremendously lucid, providing a very useful insight on the reasons why we do things more than on the things themselves that we do. And that very method of approaching the subject is its own answer: the important thing is not what you do, but how you do it. A simple truth. More of a blueprint for action than a set of rules and regulations. In pure Chaos Magick, all the “do”s are there and it’s up to you to fill the “don’t”s.

Some days ago, flipping back through Ray Sherwin’s “The Theatre of Magick”, I found this (emphasis is mine):

“The magician believes nothing in the sense of having faith, he experiments practically to ascertain if there is any truth or value in the postulates he has made himself or which he has borrowed from elsewhere. It is true that he holds certain organic beliefs for the sake of convenience. For example, he believes that the chair in which he is sitting or in which he is about to sit in is real – most of the time. This however is not a mental process but an instinctive or organic one without which life would be impossible.

The traditional Theatre of the magician is as good a starting model as any. It is unlikely, absurd, and perfectly equipped. The magician has a special room with particular decor and stylized instruments. In the non-magician this room inspires fear, awe or hilarity. In the magician it inspires a mood and it inspires change.“

This is, quite simply and better put than I ever could have done it, the reason why I can’t work in photography since about a year ago. I’ve always required a secluded environment in order to function correctly: a fixed, controllable, customizable and intimate space for shooting (some would call it a “studio”), a printing room, whatever. My magick doesn’t work outside such a space. I can get myself to do stuff outside of my self-imposed confinement, but it feels painful, inadequate, disconforting and awkward. Without a sancta sanctorum, I’m no good. Sure, I can “take photos”, but they have nothing to do with the obsessions which fuel my drive.

I suppose that’s why I’m not, and I’ll never really be, a photographer. I’ve always wanted to be an alchemist and that’s what I’ll always keep being. That’s why I’m going underground, because some works must be performed in the outmost obscurity and secrecy, like “Rebis” was. These works grow from a very particular type of spiritual/intellectual humus, and the seed must be protected from the light until it is nourished and manages to start finding its way up from the soil.

The seed is already there and Winter’s going. Now it’s only up to Time to tell us what will sprout forth from it.

So, yeah… As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve decided to put my all photographic activity on an indefinite hold. I have aborted the “Wunderkammer” series because I don’t think I’m achieving the results I wanted, but that’s only the symptom of a deeper problem. Or rather two:

One, I feel exhausted. Jaded. Dried up. I feel like I’ve said everything I wanted to say when I started doing collages, shooting and striving to communicate something, and that right now I’m only going through the motions. I’m not exploring anymore, but at the same time I don’t really know if there’s anything else I want to express. It’s as if all this was only the prelude, the learning stages for something else. During all this time I’ve been shooting I’ve moved towards something, creating a kind of a personal style in the way, something hinted at but still too inconsistent. I now look at all my work and, with few exceptions, see it as steps towards that, but with no actual achievements; as if I was defining the elements, but not creating the works themselves yet. Maybe it’s time to just let it steep, to assimilate everything I’ve done all these years and see what comes out of it after some time.

Two, money. I simply can’t afford it anymore, not for now. It’s bleeding me to death because doing what I do implies spending money in every stage, from buying film to printing a photo, from purchasing wallpaper and atrezzo to lights, paper or chemicals. I’ve managed to turn some weaknesses into strengths (I don’t need “proper” lighting for what I do, for example; neither do I require a space-age tripod; and so on), but right now I’m so broke I can’t even have prints of my own shots. The most I can do with my crap scanner is order a 20x30cm print at some digital lab, which to someone who got into this because he loved to do everything using his own hands, simply does not cut it. No money for prints leads to no possibility of exhibitions, which leads to no exposure, which leads to no money for prints. Vicious circle.

So that’s it. I’m hanging my hat for now. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, if I do something, or when I will start shooting again, or if I even will. If I do, I don’t know if I will show it. I don’t know anything and that’s what it’s all about: starting anew, with no intention and the least expectations possible… but not a tabula rasa, as I intend to carry everything I’ve learnt and that has made me what I am now with me.

Thanks to all who cared and helped, and hope to find you all somewhere along the way.

Cheers!

This will be the last shot of the “Wunderkammer” series, as I’ve decided to abort all my current projects and take a loooong break from photography. Since I don’t have too much time to write right now, I will offer a detailed account of my reasons for this in an upcoming post.

Heartfelt thanks to all the people who’ve helped out and contributed with their time and effort to the project: Aude, Daisy, Domino, Gregor, Gunnar, Irene and Iván. Working with so many different people in such a small amount of time has been a whole new experience for me!

Keep safe, my friends. Get back to you soon.

“But the city has since transformed its commitment to chic poverty into one of its key selling points — and it is one which has so far protected it from the tidal wave of economic bad news. Berlin’s lack of industry means it is immune to the shocks being suffered in other parts of the country where auto manufacturers and engineering companies are feeling the full impact of the global economic slowdown.”

“Berlin is now the only place in the world you can go where everyone isn’t depressed,” said Marc Glimcher, president of PaceWildenstein art galleries in New York. “That’s because in Berlin, it’s always a recession. That’s what being an artist in Berlin is all about — in this evolutionary cycle, they’re perfectly adapted for survival.”

Berlin’s Poverty Protects It from Downturn at Der Spiegel.