Saturday, April 30, 2011

Awesome Things must be made (or I fall into a depression and die)

I'm one of those people who need to know that Awesome Things are still happening in the world or I fall into a pit of despair. I need to discover new and interesting bands, edgy authors, spectacular art or a great TV series to keep my faith in the human race alive and well.

 It's not that I crave novelty 24/7. I can be quite happy spinning my old cds and re-reading my favourite books. But I need to know that we're not over yet. That the days of being creative and daring weren't for that Golden Era located in the distant past and one of which I am not a part of. I need evidence that our world hasn't fallen prey to hands of cynical marketers who study us like we are interesting insects, then go about tailoring music/books/fashion/computer games based off their findings.

There are artists who in my eyes can never do wrong. Nick Cave being one of them. Even when he and his fellow band mates from Grinderman are dancing about in Gladiator suits and shooting laser beams out of their eyes he still, somehow, gets it all right. (according to me)





I have to say so far a small trickle of awesome usually comes my way and keeps me happy. This can come from just about anywhere, from the tried and true big shots with the big record deals/publishers/word spinners/wheelers/dealers or they can be a solitary artist or a small band of artists forging out a space for their work like a small voice singing in the darkness not knowing if anyone is listening.

I also derive great pleasure in discovering art in between worlds. The work  that falls between the cracks and can't be defined so it never really makes it to a mainstream audience. There is actually a movement of artists who identify their art as being Interstitial, or falling in the cracks between genres.

"What is interstitial art? It is art made in the interstices between genres and categories. It is art that flourishes in the borderlands between different disciplines, mediums, and cultures. It is art that crosses borders, made by artists who refuse to be constrained by category labels" 



 I find this movement freeing. Genre can be such a restrictive mistress as can the market forces that demands each work of art produced be labeled and placed on the shelf in their correct place accordingly.


Here are a few of my favourite recent finds. Please comment if you also have some great finds.



Musicians

"Lolly Jane Blue - Worms". When I saw this video I just about fell off my seat in rapture.





Amanda Fucking Palmer. One of my prized "finds" in recent years I adore this woman! As one commenter said on youtube "this bitch is epic"



Authors

Catherynne M. Valente. She writes books that can only be described as ornamental jewels. Novel length poetry. This is an author who loves words and loves to push them to their limit.

"My body is bound with guitar strings, nipples like fawn's hooves strumming E minor chords and finger-picking a Path through resonant briars, redolent of the desert bellies of blue lizards. By now my feet are worn through, holes like mouths gaping and smacking in cathedral soles, pounding, thrusting on the Path like a drum-skin stretched into incandescence, finding that old comfortable rhythm that by now I know so well, that I invented out of dust and the sweat beading prettily on my own calves."




Caitlin R Kiernan - Edging to the dark side of novel writing she maintains she is not an horror author.





Strange Online Games


Samorost- A strange web-based game with very cool graphics



Sleep is Death - a two player interactive game. One player is the game-master creating the game as they go the other is playing the game. I'm still looking for someone who wants to team up with me!

Artists

Yang Fudong - I saw his work "Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest" at the Venice Biennale and was totally blown away. This was created for Prada however it still retains his haunting delicacy.