lonely monster

"Abandoned, frightened, and completely unaware of his own identity, the monster wanders through the wilderness searching for someone who would understand and shelter him.
He finds brief solace by hiding out in the woodshed of a remote cottage inhabited by a family of peasants. While they are unaware of his existence, he learns every part of their lives by eavesdropping on their conversations and comes to think of them as his own family, calling them his 'protectors'.
One day, the creature musters the courage to finally make his presence known. He introduces himself to the family's patriarch, their blind father, and experiences kindness and acceptance for the first (and last) time. The blind man can not see his "accursed ugliness" and so treats him as a friend. When the rest of the family returns, they are terrified of the creature and drive him away. Bewildered but still hopeful, he rescues a peasant girl from a river, but is shot in the shoulder by a man who claims her.
Heartbroken, the creature renounces all of humankind and swears revenge on his creator, Frankenstein, for bringing him into the world.
The monster searches for Frankenstein relentlessly, guided by some papers which were in the pocket of the clothing he took from his creator's rooms. From these he discovers Frankenstein's whereabouts, but also discovers the horrific details of his own birth. Upon arriving near Frankenstein's village, he meets and tries to befriend a small boy hoping that the innocent youth will not be prejudiced against him. The boy is instantly frightened and threatens to call for his father, Monsieur Frankenstein, revealing to the creature that the boy is related to his enemy. The creature kills him.
Full of grief and despair, Frankenstein retreats to the mountains to find peace within himself. The monster approaches Frankenstein on top of the mountain and insists that Frankenstein hear his plight. Here the monster tells Frankenstein his story and pleads with him to create a female equivalent to himself so that he can hide from humanity with one of his own kind. Frankenstein agrees, but relents just before finishing the mate, aghast at the possibility of creating a race of monsters. Enraged, the creature swears he will destroy everything Frankenstein holds dear. The creature's final words before fleeing are "I will be with you on your wedding night!".
He later fulfills his promise by killing Frankenstein's best friend and his bride. Frankenstein's father then dies of grief. With nothing left to live for, Frankenstein dedicates his life to hunting his creation down and destroying him. The search ends in the Arctic Circle when Frankenstein loses control of his dogsled and falls into ice-cold water, contracting severe pneumonia. He is rescued by a ship exploring the region and relates the entire story to its captain before succumbing to his illness and dying. The creature later boards the ship, intent on taking his final revenge, but is overcome with grief upon finding Frankenstein dead, having lost the only family he has ever known. He pledges to travel to "the Northernmost extremity of the globe" and there burn his body to ashes, so that no man can ever create another like him. He leaps from the boat and is never seen again."
(from wikipedia)

paradise lost

paradise lost by john milton published in 1667 with illustrations by william blake.
these two are the temptation and fall of eve and satan watching the caresses of adam and eve.
nick cave took the title of his song "red right hand" from paradise lost, also his songs "song of joy" and "let love in" refer to milton´s poem.
red right hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUlgN__Jrxk

"did i request thee, maker from my clay
to mould me man? did i solicit thee
from darkness to promote me?"
(x.743–5)

louise bourgeois

destruction of the father. reconstruction of the father.

the crying spider

by odilon redon.
odilon,
-that name alone seems like a flight to an imagined place called wonderful.

the gleaners and i

a wonderful film by agnes varda, i´ve seen some years ago.
she goes out to visit all kind of collectors throughout france, she in turn "collects" for her film, as manifold elements to a beautiful and complex and humble and human and intriguing film mosaic.
she philosophises on collecting, observes what objects are collected and what, when collected, they transform into, she listens, she thinks aloud while driving in the car to the different places, she talks about death, about her aging hands and shows them to the camera, she plays, she talks about the cats she loves, she often uses the camera herself, films herself, films herself filming even, she shows the broken walls of her house that to her are works of art, she talks about law, about the government, about films and filming, about society, she steps into the picture, she steps aside, she allows people to speek and truly truly respects. the love in her she has for things and people and doing and living is so strongly transferred when you watch her film. like a broadcasted love. but never manipulated, never calculated, not expecting or wanting to show something off, like humanitarian ideals or christian goodness, -not at all. she is enjoying what she is doing, she is living off her ideas and celebrating them. her film and she herself are modest und unpretentious, so absolutely unvain, that their unadulturatedness, unaffectedness and truthfulness are revolutionary, shocking in the best way.
very good work doesn´t allow vanity.
i love this film truly.

she

she told me to watch rape by yoko ono.
she told me to say: does there have to be an answer to every question?
she told me: what the fuck. nothing should keep you from doing it.
she talked about discrimination inside yourself and coming from outside.
she talked about jill magid.
about the black plague.
about wolves.
about death.
about the medical.
she said i was young and healthy.
she said that three times.
she talked about susan meiselas.
about "near dark" by kathryn bigelow.
about "black kats".
she said i could just as well reject what she told and proposed to me.
she talked about the durational.
she told me i was a woman and i will be told so again.

robert kramer

i just started watching robert kramer´s film "route one" (the first two hours i´ve seen so far) and already felt the urge in my fingertips to press these buttons in excitement and put some of my feelings about this film into words and sentences, giving them bodies of their own, something outside my head, so i won´t forget so quickly and they´ll be there, while i go on.
i love the way he starts this film, and even though i´m not such a fan of jazz music in film scores anymore (just seen too much of it, -cassavetes, malle, the beat films...), it works here and you really get into the flow of his travelling without a goal, travelling for travelling, thinking while walking, letting the events in time become the film.
the film follows "doc", the filmmaker, who has been gone for ten years and comes back to the u.s.a., everything has changed, everything stayed the same. he drives down route one with a cameraman. this is the film.
it at first reminded me of debord´s philosophy "ne travaillez jamais!" (don´t ever work), meaning of course not to work for something not in your view, not to work estranged from yourself, for something you know nothing about, that lies outside your personal sphere, that you don´t care for, something meaningless and merely functional, working for something that deprives you of living a life.
only to work for love, was the idea, for the thing itself, for the joy and pleasure and satisfaction of doing something just for the sake of it. without purpose. without future. without career. just out of desire and interest and celebration of the moment.
what i so appreciate is the way the production of the film is already the film, the way he doesn´t know where he´s heading and what he´s after, but will do it to find out retrospectively and then know and draw the lines between the dots. he doesn´t really know why he´s making this film, and he´s making it. that´s strong. he has nothing to prove, nothing to tell, has not found out some words of wisdom, he´s just travelling down a very very long street with the longing to take pictures and talk to others to record what they say. making the film is just a pretext for being able to get in contact with other people, you wouldn´t meet otherwise, a pretext to do the travelling and follow the direction of your desire. or cluelessness.
everything starts making and creating sense, one incident put next to the other. a collage of time, of aggregate states, of concrete little, lived lives and universal stories, of the past immanent in the presence, of succesions and chains, of ideas and aspirations, of things broken apart but still together. a world fallen apart into a mosaic, still a picture, but the glue between the shards being visible.

johan grimonprez

"virilio remarked once that television turned the world into an accident, and that with the advent of virtual reality the whole of reality will be 'accidented'. each technology invents its own catastrophe, and with it a new relationship to death. the boat invented the sinking of the boat, the airplane invented the crashing of the airplane. television has reinvented the way we perceive reality and the way we relate to catastrophe, history and death.
tv has turned our notions of private and public inside out, but, more importantly, the representational modes for portraying actuality and imagination have become intertwined: cnn borrows from hollywood and vice versa. the everyday talkshow has zapped the family right off their couch and into the studio. in the opposite direction catastrophe culture invades our living room.
the territory of the home overlaps with the space of tv in a much more profound and psychological way than we are possibly aware. 'dial h-i-s-t-o-r-y' ends also with a scene of a highjacked, crashing plane accidentally framed by some honymooner´s camcorder. the couple were immediately invited to be guests on larry king´s talk show on cnn to tell how they were able to shoot the footage! the dynamics of abstract capitalism thus allow the spectators to be the heroes and political issues are simply reduced to explanations of how to operate a camcorder. patricia mellencamp calls it the shift from catastrophe to comedy: 'we can´t change the world, but we can change our socks,' according to one nike ad: 'it´s not a shoe, it´s a revolution.' "

(interview with hans ulrich obrist & johan grimonprez in 1999, included in the book to the film "dial h-i-s-t-o-r-y" by grimonprez)

planes making spirals of time to place

olaf breuning