manunderstress.com » art n’ shit

Black Metal Theory

man.under.stress — Wed, 11 May 2011 21:12:06 +0000

How fucking kvlt are you? My guess is that while you may dabble in a little weekend corpse paint, you have yet to venture into church burning. So you long for something to consummately up the devotion, fully engaging your creative black energies, but perhaps something more legal. Welcome to Black Metal Theory, the mutual blackening of metal and theory, duh, which is all the trooest rage in the chthonic realms of Continental Philosophy. Two symposiums already, Hideous Gnosis and Melancology, and I am assuming more on the way. Hideous Gnosis is available in paperback in case you missed it. But what the fuck is all this? From Melancology:

Black metal irrupts from a place already divested of nature, a site of extinction…

As such black metal could be described as a negative form of environmental writing; the least Apollonian of genres, it is terrestrial – indeed subterranean and infernal – inhabiting a dead forest that is at once both mythic and real unfolding along an atheological horizon that marks the limit of absolute evil where there are no goods or resources to distribute and therefore no means of power and domination, a mastery of nothing.

A new word is required that conjoins ‘black’ and ‘ecology’: melancology, a word in which can be heard the melancholy affect appropriate to the conjunction.

…

This environment of absolute evil is exactly the same as the absolute good of black metal itself: the expenditure of a sonic drive that propels a blackened self-consciousness, a melancological consciousness without object that is the necessary prior condition to any speculation on or intervention in the environment.

The Black Metal Theory Symposium thus invites speculation and interventions on the blackening of the earth, landscapes of extinction, starless aeon, sempiternal nightmares, black horizons, malign essences, Qliphothic forces from beyond … in a general re-conceptualization of black ecology.

Whoa, dude. You had me at ‘melancology’.

If you can’t wait for another symposium, there is also ‘Helvete · A Journal of Black Metal Theory‘ and their forthcoming inaugural Incipit: Open Issue due in 2012, hopefully before the apocalypse.

Let the Right One In

man.under.stress — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:56:02 +0000

This is a must see. A stark and minimal vampire “coming of age” classic. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a better vampire film, and even without regard for genre it would rank in my top 20 movies of all time. The horror is subtle, Japanese style. Much is left to the imagination. But there are two scenes in particular that put it on par with films as visually creative as The Exorcist. A+ and favorite film of 2008. It’s playing at the Plaza in the ATL now.

Kelis Sex Pickle

man.under.stress — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:09:58 +0000

A recent comment spam I thought I should share. I confess to being very intrigued.

She neck sings, “Let’s configuration a flick case in point blocking, infant,” on the Rockwilder-produced run to mum , although don’t chronometer a Kelis sex pickle to hit the Internet anytime soon. “It’s ably-wishing of like a misunderstanding CD,” the chorister said recently. “It’s place of wide being nothing but congenial with yourself in establish, which is an top-spread out up till ambition, markedly in the corporation we’re in.

Mock Rock

man.under.stress — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:08:05 +0000

You’ve all probably seen these by now, but I’ve been in the studio the last two weekends, which makes them all the more punishingly funny. The most surreal and artfully decomposed mock-ups of all time perhaps. This is the Maiden one, the Metallica is also curl up on the floor funny. Wired put them up because Youtube took them down. This almost erases the pain of un-super Tuesday.

So Long People of Earth

man.under.stress — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:44:29 +0000

Well, that’d be cool wouldn’t it? If I was heading off on some intergalactic adventure. Fantasies aside, I’m headed to Europe, with Magnapop, for a couple of weeks. If you’re nearby…yo- check it!

Tuesday August 7
HAMBURG, DE
Molotow club

Wednesday August 8
JOURE, NL
Café de Stam club
Free show !

Thursday August 9
ZICHEM, BE
Den Hemel club

Friday August 10
LOKEREN, BE
Fonnefeesten festival

Saturday, August 11th
WATERINGEN, NL
Waterpop festival

AND…

ANTWERPEN, BE
Petrol ‘Summer Night City’

Sunday, August 12
ELL, NL
Ell Nino festival

The Agrifolk Art Movement

man.under.stress — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:01:37 +0000

Here’s a really funny documentary short I saw last night as part of the AFF done by David Moore of Eyekiss films. Check it out, you will laugh, and if you don’t, it’s definitely your problem. Music by The Georgia Fireflies.

The Agrifolk Art Movement:

Then continue with part 2 and part 3.

AFF

man.under.stress — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:59:02 +0000

Yo, check it. Atlanta Film Festival starts today.

Eggers in Atlanta

man.under.stress — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 03:04:52 +0000

Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and Valentino Achak Deng, Sudanese refugee and subject of Egger’s new quasi-fictional biography What is the What?, spoke tonight at the Margaret Mitchell house. It was one of those typical writerly events, free cheese with $10 admission, annoying introductions (what for?), no drum solos, minor technical difficulties. Dave didn’t speak much about his writing as most of the time was spent interviewing the affable Valentino who spoke about the tragedy and fortune that led him to the US. Interestingly enough, the aspect that moved me the most wasn’t so much the genocide tragedy (which, like all of them, are so awful they are difficult to even process) but Valentino’s emphasis on the fact that he did not suffer, that he escaped the suffering, and that those who didn’t escape are the ones who suffered. Now that, is fucking human. Survivor guilt was palpable, paralleled with the first-world status guilt of the audience, most of whom were not refugees, and whose lives nowhere approached this level of tragedy. Whose most taxing dilemmas stem from having too many choices to contemplate. How we labor over freedom, if we have the luxury.

Destroy All Art

man.under.stress — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:25:44 +0000

Someone is screaming sell-out, by defacing street art in NY. But is it cool? Is it art when you destroy art? Hmmm…I’m thinking of a brigade of nihilist dadas…interesting.

In recent years, some of these young artists have been embraced by galleries, museums and collectors, and there are those who fear that the practice might become perceived primarily as an avenue to greater recognition.

The pasted screeds that appeared with the splatters seem to stem from such concerns. They are headlined “Avant-Garde: Advance Scouts for Capital” or “Art: The Excrement of Action.” Statements at the bottom of the pages warn that the paste used to affix them has been mixed with shards of glass.

I like the manifesto aspect of it, that much I’ll admit. Because manifestos and secret messages are cool. I don’t know about raining on someone’s parade though…isn’t that what cops do? My guess is that this art vandal is a embittered cop who always dreamed of being an artist, but never had the chops to make it.

An alternative to destroying art would be to simply poop near it. Duh.