question out of context
You gave your talk at the TED conference last week wearing your mushroom death suit. How does the suit work?
Did Amanda just interview Errol Morris?
Previously on clusterflock.
American Elegy: An Interview with Phil Bebbington
Phil Bebbington (aka Terrorkitten to many on the web and Flickr) is an Englishman with a keen sense for photographing the US. On his photographic journeys to America, he has captured an amazing array of “disappearing America” shots. Upon starting American Elegy, Phil was one of the first photographers that popped into my mind as an artist that needed to be featured here. Though based in Bath, England, I consider Phil Bebbington to be one of the best American Elegy-type photographers working today. I want to thank Phil for working with me for this interview and letting us use some of his wonderful images.
A terrific interview with one of our own. Recommended reading and viewing.
Vetiver: “In Studio” on WNYC’s Soundcheck
Gorgeous-sounding Vetiver release, The Errant Charm, out tomorrow. Till then, an interview and live-in-the-studio performance on Soundcheck.
Joyce McKinney calls Pete Ashton
In honor of the impending release of Errol Morris’s Tabloid, I give you Joyce McKinney’s call to Pete Ashton.
[haiku url="http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/joycemckinneycallspeteashton.mp3" title="" graphical="true"]
Update: clusterflock’s visit from Joyce.
David Byrne on William Eggleston
Musician, artist and filmmaker David Byrne has had a 25-year relationship with Memphis photographer William Eggleston. The two first collaborated during the filming of Byrne’s 1986 feature film “True Stories.”
I had no idea.
Hey, Deron
Guy with shotgun: “You boys have any last words before I kill you?”
Butthead: “Uh. I have a couple. Butt cheek.”
Hey, what song are you listening to?
The Art of Fiction No. 174
INTERVIEWER
Do you enjoy writing? Is it pleasurable?DAVENPORT
Sometimes. What do you mean by “enjoy”?
From an interview in the Paris Review with Guy Davenport.
Harold Camping Post Rapture Interview
The world not having ended, Harold Camping had time to sit down with me, in his first post-rapture interview, and answer a few questions.
How certain were you the world was going to end on May 21 — did you have any doubts?
I’m battle tested man. I’m tired, I’m so tired of pretending like my life isn’t perfect and bitching and just winning every second and I’m not perfect and bitching and just deliverying the goods at every friking turn, because, look what I’m dealing with man, I’m dealing with fools and trolls, dealing with soft targets and it’s just, you know, it’s just strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee because I don’t have time for these clowns.
Can you expand on that?
I don’t have time for their judgement and their stupidity and you know they lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and look at their loser lives and then they look at me and they say “I can’t process it!” Well, no, you never will, so stop trying . . . just sit back and enjoy the show. You know?
But you were wrong the first time you predicted that the end of the world would take place in September of 1994. So you must think, in the back of your mind, that maybe you can’t actually predict when the end of the world will be.
Boom, that’s the whole movie, that’s life. That’s life, there’s nobility in that, there’s focus, it’s genuine, it’s crystal and it’s pure and it’s available to everybody. So just shut your traps and put down your McDonald’s, your magazines, your TMZ and the rest of it and focus on something that matters.
But . . . But . . .
But you can’t focus on things that matter if all you’ve been is asleep for forty years. Funny how sleep rhymes with sheep. You know? Anyway. We’re getting off topic. We don’t care anymore, we don’t care.
Okay, so describe to me exactly what you expected to happen on May 21 . . . .
Yeah, why not because it’s just pure, pure and complete gnarlyisms. Um, yeah, I sat with two radical fire napalm-dropping pilots in my movie theater watching the attack sequence, the chopper attack sequence on the beachhead to go surfing because they wanted to and those people were in their way. Um, and I was getting a tattoo during the the the the death from above. And it’s the banner from the death card that Kilgore is throwing on his victims. But there’s also falling from it is the apple from The Giving Tree. There’s my life. Deal with it.
So, have you thought about what you’ll tell your followers now that the Rapture didn’t take place?
You know, it’s um, I just, I’m sorry man, I got, I got, I got magic and I got poetry in my fingertips and um, most of the time. And this include naps. I’m a, I’m an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air and I will I will deploy my ordnance to the ground.
Okay. Any final thoughts?
Bye bye. Losers.
from the spam
Ever do much thinking about Utopia?
from the spam
Is this true?
Each time I return, I discover different aspects of it. It’s one of the great human-created catastrophes. It’s going to be a monument for hundreds of thousands of years.
From an interview with Werner Herzog about his new film Cave of Forgotten Dreams and what might be left of us to discover:
AVC: In 20,000 years, could it be our culture that’s discovered in a cave somewhere?
WH: In 20,000 years, there will be significant things in the environment that will be preserved, like certain dams. Like Vajont Dam near Longarone [Italy], where there was this catastrophic event almost 50 years ago now. An incredibly massive landslide came down into the lake. The entire lake, over 50 billion cubic meters, shot up into the air in a tsunami of 700 feet that came down in this gorge and wiped out the town of Longarone. I have studied the place over and over. I do my pilgrimages to the place. At its base, [the dam] is something like a hundred feet thick. The steel-reinforced concrete. The whole thing is about 180 meters at its highest, and it withstood the landslide coming into it. It’s still intact, and most of it will be intact hundreds of thousands of years from now. So in the future, when people are looking for the Neanderthals of the 21st century, they will see our traces standing in open air. They will see the sarcophagus of Chernobyl, which is going to be built over it now. It will be there in 20,000 years. They won’t have to search in a cave.
(thanks, Aaron)
Dick Cavett Interviews Lance Loud (circa 1973)
Rick spoke of Lance Loud, made famous by An American Family, a cinema vérité series shot in 1971 and broadcast by PBS in early 1973. Here is Dick Cavett interviewing Lance not long after the series aired.
Terence Stamp in “Toby Dammit”
Terence Stamp, speaking in his own voice, in “Toby Dammit,” Federico Fellini’s contribution to the 1968 omnibus (anthology) film, Histoires extraordinaires (Extraordinary Stories/Spirits of the Dead).
For years only dubbed versions were easily available.
This is my Easter basket treat for all y’all. Make of it what you will.
(Terence Stamp just got another award. This one from the Film Society. San Francisco.)
Jim Jarmusch interviews Martin Scorsese about Italianamerican
Italianamerican is a 1974 documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. Martin Scorsese’s parents, Catherine and Charles Scorsese, feature in this homemade documentary acting as themselves. The Scorseses talk about their experiences as Italian immigrants in New York among other things, while having dinner at their flat on Elizabeth Street. Scorsese’s mother also instructs how to cook her meatballs, a recipe later featured in the credits of the film. Among the subjects discussed in the film are family, religion, their origins, Italian ancestors, life in Italy after the war, the hardships of poor Sicilian immigrants in America striving to make ends meet.
The documentary, broken into five parts, is available on YouTube.
Japanese ‘Elder Porn’ Star Shigeo Tokuda
Following up on yesterday’s post, a video interview with Japanese ‘Elder Porn’ star Shigeo Tokuda.
Even though it’s pixelated, you probably don’t want to watch it at work.
“You’ve been described as a more hard-line atheist than Richard Dawkins. Do you think that is a fair comment?”
From an interview with British Chemist, Peter Atkins:
As a scientist, how do you think philosophy can help society? Do you think it does have a place?
Moral philosophy is useful; political philosophy is useful. They help solve those conundrums relating to deportment of individuals in societies. In terms of science, I think it has nothing to contribute. I think science goes out and looks at what the world is like. Philosophers sit around, either reflecting on what the world should be like or telling scientists that they can’t believe their own observations!
Carter Sans, a comparison
This might be a little far-afield if you’re not a typography nerd, but in an interview with Matthew Carter about his new font, Carter Sans, Carter and the interviewer, Paul Shaw, get into an interesting discussion about flare-serifs, or the fonts that live somewhere between serif and sans serif. Here’s Shaw’s set up:
The typefaces I mentioned above would have been classified as “Flareserifs” by Bitstream, but I think this is a misnomer because they don’t really have serifs as such. I rather like the term flare serif. But there is always the sticky question as to where the dividing line lies between a sans serif such as Optima with flared strokes and a flare serif such as Icone or your new Carter Sans Pro. Some people get around this slippery slope by declaring that any deviation from a straight stem or stroke disqualifies a letter as a true sans serif. Do such classification quibbles bother you or do they provide you an opportunity for a new design? Are there specific examples of inscriptional lettering that sparked Carter Sans Pro in the same way that the lettering on the reliquary of Justin II provided the basis for Sophia?
Artists Wanted | In Focus : Pete Eckert
Pete Eckert is a totally blind person. But through his photography, he proves that he IS a visual person, he just can’t see.
Pete was the Grand Prize recipient of Artists Wanted: Exposure 2008, an international photography competition, and was awarded $2,008 with a formal reception at Leo Kesting Gallery in New York City on Thursday August 7, 2008.
Artists Wanted is proud to present this truly inspiring portrait of the artist.
For more information: ArtistsWanted.org
Hillman Curtis — Bobbi Brown: fashion shoot
Behind the scenes at a Bobbi Brown cosmetics shoot.
Terry Gross Interviews James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem
“When I hit my early thirties I decided to do something which is radical to my mind, which is to stop complaining about things.”
The Order of Myths
A film by Margaret Brown. Trailer:
Read more
Journey Beyond The Artist’s Studio: Wil Freeborn
The Studio Chronicle did an interview with Wil Freeborn, describing him this way:
Designer and illustrator Wil Freeborn’s drawing are nuanced, extraordinary documents of the life of an artist. Diligently, Freeborn illustrates the world around him in his Moleskine journal, a stylish notebook popular among artists, writers, and travelers. Through beautiful line and minimal color Freeborn illustrates; through documentation, he presents the narrative of his life.
I couldn’t agree more.
Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, a conversation
Did this get posted here already?
If so, did this?
Read more
