One man realizes that he might just need a little help from an unlikely place to figure out how to be happy dating in a futile universe in this video by artist Jeremy Franklin-Ross.
Isstillcools**t
Sorry, Kale Drinkers: Trump’s Rampage Isn’t a Resurgence of American Bigotry or a Reichstag Fire—The Problem’s Less Sexy, More Fundamental
Thalatta Twice
The Praetorians, apprehensive that, in this private contract, they should not obtain a just price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction.
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The Incorrigible Michael Lewy
In the Mutableye
Michael Lewy’s art exists in spaces that are often bare of even desolation, and utilizes common usually office-related objects to then re-interpret or re-examine them in an abstractified way. There is something very etherealized and conceptualizing about his CGI interpretations of office environments and other equally meaningless spaces, and something appealing too, but my favorite of Lewy’s works always have some sort of story to them—a simple image that suggests some larger story we are missing or a video project that is much about the back-story of his trapped minuscule double for example. (I am thinking of the video projection piece in the City of Work series, that gives us a glimpse of a minuscule Lewy in a CGI workplace dealing with his solitude poorly.)
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Radio Masquerading as Dust
Gabriel Boyer
Within the first ten seconds of Bode Radio’s Dust Bowl Masquerade, the album defines itself as a jarring fusion of the exotic and the deranged. In the following twenty seconds you find yourself really enjoying yourself. Then the rug falls out from under you, and it continues to fall out from under you, and over you, and around you, until you are seeing sound in a very different very unsettling way. Dust Bowl Masquerade is both a frenetic piece of cut-up electronica as well as a very groove-oriented album from start to finish. I’d like to say it’s what it would sound like if The Books and Aphex Twin had a baby, but this baby belongs in a species all its own.
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The General Disaster
In recent years there have been many disasters, but what about the general disaster? “Before the alternative of facing the anarchic growth and total arbitrariness of decay or bowing down before the most rigid, fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology, the masses probably will always choose the latter and be ready to pay for it with individual sacrifices — and this not because they are stupid or wicked, but because in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self-respect,” (Hannah Arendt; The Origins of Totalitarianism, page 352). This is the quote found on the opening page of Quotilator, C. Cooper’s remarkable game of computational free association, in which various hyper-linked words lead to other quotes, with blue hyper-links being scored at the bottom. You can click the winner button at any time and type your number in to see if you’re a winner, but the answer will always be, “You may be a winner.”
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Strange Relations
Space Canon
This book is about alien sex.
Not imperialist, colonial sex, with human male astronauts dominating winsome green-skinned babes à la Captain Kirk. Nor is it bestial. This is real mutual discovery and understanding between sentient beings. It’s not something you see much in science fiction — in Tiptree’s short stories, admittedly, and to a lesser extent with Heinlein and Delany, although that’s mostly human-on-human stuff. Not that I’m a connoisseur.
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Video: Harpya!
In the Mutableye
A dapper mustachioed man is walking down a dark street when he hears the cries of a woman who is about to be bludgeoned by an axe in a nearby fountain. The man knocks out her assailant only to discover that she is in fact a harpy, a harpy that looks like a bald Klaus Kinski with apple-sized marshmallow-colored breasts. Fascinated, the man takes the beast to his home to shelter and feed it. He soon discovers the Harpy’s insatiable appetite.
This is Harpya! Directed by Raoul Servais, and starring Will Spoor, Fran Waller Zeper and Sjoert Schwibethus. It was introduced to Mutable recently, and quickly went on to become our favorite belgian animated short of 1979. The film can be found below.
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Illustration by Dorothy P. Lathrop for Walter de la Mare's Three Mulla-Mulgars (1919)
The Three Mulla-mulgers
Walter de la Mare
On the borders of the Forest of Munza-mulgar lived once an old grey fruit-monkey of the name of Mutt-matutta. She had three sons, the eldest Thumma, the next Thimbulla, and the youngest, who was a Nizza-neela, Ummanodda. And they called each other for short, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod. The rickety, tumble-down old wooden hut in which they lived had been built 319 Munza years before by a traveller, a Portugall or Portingal, lost in the forest 22,997 leagues from home. After he was dead, there came scrambling along on his fours one peaceful evening a Mulgar (or, as we say in English, a monkey) named Zebbah. At first sight of the hut he held his head on one side awhile, and stood quite still, listening, his broad-nosed face lit up in the blaze of the setting sun. He then hobbled a little nearer, and peeped into the hut. Whereupon he hobbled away a little, but soon came back and peeped again. At last he ventured near, and, pushing back the tangle of creepers and matted grasses, groped through the door and went in. And there, in a dark corner, lay the Portingal’s little heap of bones.
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Video: Lookwell
This amazing show was co-written by Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel, and never got beyond the initial pilot. Adam West stars as a washed-up TV action hero—who at the peak of his career was ceremonially deputized by local law enforcement and now falsely believes he can solve crimes in real life. Check it out below!
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Levy in his study
Video: Dr. Doowop
Below is a short film about Mutable author, William Levy (1939, Brooklyn, New York), and his notorious radio show, The Dr. Doowop show. Levy is an author, publisher and pioneer of independent erotic media, who currently lives in Amsterdam where he has the only doowop radio show in Europe. We have been honored to reprint his writing on Otto Muehl and Christian Loidl, and now we are honored to showcase the above documentary about the life and times of William Levy, and his radio persona Dr. Doowop. It’s a film about radical media, loneliness and eternal love, absurdity and close harmony music. ‘There’s nothing that makes you feel so alive as getting a death threat.’ Indeed.
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
William Levy (d.2019) was more than an author we were privileged at one time to know. He also would on occasion give us well appreciated advice. He will be missed.
Ten Thousand Faces
E C Large
It is an eerie and a horrible experience to be in attendance on a stand at a Flower Show, day after day, and to watch the staring faces that come to rest before my exhibits and then move on. From right to left, from left to right they pass, these faces, propelled with hesitating pace and starkly turned towards me. I watch them, because I cannot help but do so, and in the day’s reckoning I have looked into perhaps five, perhaps ten thousand human faces.
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Video: Smash putt!
In the Mutableye
The industrial artists of The Department of Culture re-apply and reinvent their practiced predilection for mechanized mayhem to the humble sport of miniature golf. Forget everything you would normally expect from this national past time and be prepared for innovative chaos teetering on pure bedlam. Smash Putt, originally opened in Seattle, has since moved on to Portland, and soon Denver, CO.
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The Haunted Woman
In the Mutableye
(We’ve written about David Lindsay before, but all the same, this week wanted to present you with some of his own words, a selection from one of Lindsay’s lesser known novels, entitled The Haunted Woman, a book that reads like Victorian Scooby Dooby Doo with a hefty dosage of spiritualism and a good deal of romantic intrigue. Below is a selection from the first chapter.)
In the latter half of August, Marshall Stokes went to New York, in order to wind up the estate of the lately-deceased brother of the lady to whom he was betrothed. As a busy underwriting member of Lloyd’s, he could ill afford the time—he was over there for upwards of a fortnight—but no alternative had presented itself. Miss Loment had no connections in America, she possessed no other relations, except a widowed aunt, with whom she lived, and it was clearly out of the question for either of the two ladies to travel across in person, to examine books, interview lawyers, deal with claims, etc.—they had not the necessary business experience. The task, therefore, had devolved on Marshall. He had not been able to conclude the business, but he had put it in a fair way of being concluded, and had appointed a reputable firm to act as Miss Loment’s representatives. The estate was worth forty thousand dollars.
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The Animal Hospital Ensemble
Animal Hospital‘s Kevin Micka makes beautiful music. His luscious soundscapes mesmerize as they dig deep in with loops that dig deep and wailing riffs that cut. Long ago, we were lucky enough to put out one of his albums, Good or Plenty, Streets + Avenues, and have been following his career since with a keen interest. One side project of note is his Animal Hospital Ensemble, in which a group of players come together to perform under Micka’s direction. Enjoy the performance!
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Lawrence & Gibson
Lawrence & Gibson is a publishing cooperative hailing from New Zealand who have released the work of satirical rake, Richard Meros, wry short stories by William Dewey, the mysterious and notorious Urlich Haarburste’s novel of Roy Orbison in Cling Film, and of course A D Jameson’s Giant Slugs.
Some time ago, a Skype conversation was had between the offices of Mutable and our friends down in Wellington. Hopefully our numbers will only grow! Soon, the world will be full of small publishers holding hands across the globe as they change the very fabric of thought using the tools at their disposal, the printed word in all its pristine glory!
Please, go to their websiteand learn about them and who they are!
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Wonder Woman and The Hammer meet at Thalia
(A S Hamrah, known to us affectionately as “The Hammer”, as in, “And the hammer came down…”, has always astounded us with the precision of his observations and the general power of his critical punch. Recently, he interviewed Lynda Carter, better known as Wonder Woman. The first few paragraphs of this interview can be found below.)
“You look hot.” The first words Lynda Carter spoke to me were a variation of the same ones I had spent more than 30 years waiting to say to her. But Ms. Carter did not mean “hot” that way. What she meant was that I was a mess, and sweating. By the time my long wait to meet her was over—it ended at the Thalia restaurant in midtown on a humid afternoon last Wednesday—I was in rough shape.
I had had a few decades to prepare for this interview with Wonder Woman. When I finally got the chance, the one superpower I possess kicked in—my ability to melt when the dew point hits 60. The closet thing I resembled to a superhero was Frosty the Snowman, in warm weather, two eyes made out of coal swimming in a pool of water.
I had just gotten off a delayed flight at J.F.K. Sitting at the bar waiting for Ms. Carter, wearing the same clothes I had been in for the past 28 hours, during which time I had not slept because the guy sitting next to me on the plane spent the flight jabbing me with his elbow while playing video games on an iPad, I could not be trusted to hold a door for her, much less coherently discuss her days as Wonder Woman on television, her singing gig at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room or her new recording, Crazy Little Things. Where was the bartender with that soda water I ordered?
Before he could deliver it, Ms. Carter appeared in the doorway of the restaurant, silhouetted by the noon sun streaming in from Eighth Avenue, outlined like a four-color drawing in a comic book but in 3-D.
[The rest of this article can be found at The New York Observer.]
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Never-ending Theater
Mutable favorite Jason Grote is working on a new project: HABIT, an installation piece by David Levine, which uses a three-character “realistic” play Levine commissioned from Grote. The actors will move into the installation and perform Grote’s play over and over again on a loop. Among other things, it’s a riposte to those who claim that “experimental” playwrights do what we/they (depending on whether or not you think Grote’s experimental) do because we/they “can’t” write “normal” or “well-made” plays. Open rehearsal May 1. To learn more about the piece click here.
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Video: The Pigeon Game
The Pigeon Game is a documentary on the disappearing culture of homing pigeon racing in New York City made by Mutable favorite, Annie Heringer. Unknown to most people, there are still men and women who raise birds on their rooftops and race them from distances up to 600 miles. The scenes of Marlon Brando at his pigeon loft in On the Waterfront may have secured the sport in the history of the city, but The Pigeon Game proves that the tradition still exists today among a small but dedicated group of fliers.
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Video: The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Long before the more famous Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland, L. Frank Baum himself made a series of Oz films with his company, The Oz Film Manufacturing Company. The blow film was released in 1914, and was directed by J. Farrell MacDonald. It was the first film made by his esteemed company, and after its failure, Baum found it increasingly more difficult to find distribution, and eventually his production company went under, but we can still enjoy this amusing fantastical romp with its rectangular cardboard cat, Woozy, and its Lonesome Zoop, seductive statuette, and the loopy Patchwork Girl herself. Enjoy!
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Ephemera Revealed
In the Mutableye
Recently we here at Mutable were introduced to a website full of all sorts of neat goodies from the image-making world of the past. Above is an example from their collection of prints from the Russian underground, circa 1905-1906, but you can find everything from tibetan anatomical drawings to vintage matchooks. Peruse some of our selections from this wonderworld below.
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