Stewart Home's Blog, page 17

Another banned YouTube video is now available via Vimeo

I reported on an earlier YouTube banning of my work in a blog I posted in September, and shortly after I'd written that YouTube pulled another video of mine, Nude In Melbourne. The point of the second piece, which was clearly lost on YouTube's half-wit censors, is that I may or may not be nude in this short: you can't tell because anything that might break the YouTube rules is hidden by a camera… but that didn't stop the platform from banning it. However, the video is now available again via ...

Secret Rites: witchcraft night at BFI Flipside

Shortly after I'd settled into my seat at BFI Screen 1 for the Flipside Halloween shindig, a 'real-life witch' came and sat next to me. I figured this woman was a Wiccan because she looked completely out of place among hordes of trash film fans. A few minutes later Geraldine Beskin from the Atlantis Bookshop joined her. Among many other things, I overheard the pagan immediately to my left make the following observation to her occult book dealing friend:

"A lot of people said they would have...

International manifesto of the left-bourgeoisie

1. Flying around the world, attending art biennials and eating expensive meals puts us in touch with the wretched of the earth – by underlining exactly what it is that peasants and workers are missing out on.

2. Like the lumpen-proletariat, the left-bourgeoisie is a distinct class fraction and cannot be conflated with its bourgeois and lumpen enemies. Since the proletariat has failed to act as a class for itself, we have no choice but to lead it to taste and discernment via our elevated...

Flying Lizard tribute to Tony Sinden at Tate Modern

Last night I went to the celebration of the life and work of Tamara Krikorian and Tony Sinden at Tate Modern's Starr Auditorium. The event was a tribute to two pioneering UK based video artists who died earlier this year; among other things, Krikorian also played a major role in setting up London Video Arts. Unfortunately, I find Krikorian's work boring, and neither the talks about her nor the screening of her 1977 video Vanitas did much for me. In Vanitas, Krikorian stands in front of a...

Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer

When I first heard about Children of the Sun, I assumed the title was taken from the classic sixties psyche single of the same name by The Misunderstood, but anyone who reads the book can see that it actually invokes Savitri Devi, a particularly bonkers and unpleasant exponent of post-war Nazi occultism, and one of the founding members of the World Union of National Socialists. That said, the focus of this 'novel' is very much on English neo-Nazi scum of the Thatcher era; although Devi does a...

Is Mark Waugh's "Bubble Entendre" banned in the USA?

Two weeks ago I received an email informing me that an attempt to sell titles in my Semina series at the New York Art Book Fare had descended into farce because the books had been impounded by US customs. Book Works told me they'd flown from Europe to America to sell  the novels, but ended up manning an empty table. The publications have now disappeared and may have been destroyed; from New York any unsold copies should have gone on to a distributor in Los Angeles, but there is still no sign ...

Hadewijch, or Bruno Dumont at the London Film Festival

Hadewijch is the latest film from Bruno Dumont, a former philosophy lecturer whose movies are often compared to the work of Robert Bresson. Dumont doesn't so much take inspiration from Bresson, as allow the older man's films to possess his own, so that he might correct their faults. If someone had told me before I went to see Hadewijch that it was 'The Trial of Joan of Arc meets Mouchette in the age of post-modern simulation', then I could have imagined the flick in its entirety before I...

Zoo 2009, or the art world in recession…

With plenty of galleries and art fairs closed for good by the vagaries of the current recession, some might see it as a surprise that Soraya Rodriguez's Zoo has survived at all. No longer billed as an art fair, Zoo 2009 (16-19 October 2009) was restructured to include more curated projects and a section given over to multiples. Becoming more 'educational' is, of course, one way of securing sponsorship when the commercial sector has become both less willing and less able to support shebangs...

Saturday night out in London with Wu Ming…

Yesterday night I was at the ICA doing an event with Wu Ming 1 and Wu Ming 4, who were presenting their latest book Manituana. After a very brief intro from me, Wu Ming 1 opened things up with a short explanation of the collective writing activities he's been embroiled in for many years as one part of the Wu Ming collective (and before that the Luther Blissett Project). Then there was an introduction to the new Wu Ming novel, after which I read a passage from the book that required a strong L...

Running Away by Jean-PhilippeToussaint

I read Running Away about two weeks ago and ever since I've been thinking about blogging it, but there's something in me that revolts against writing about this book. It's short and light and Matthew B. Smith's translation reads really well… but the narrator is repulsive, a middle-class idiot savant who has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He goes to Shanghai to deliver money to a guy called Zhang Xiangzhi, and then indulges in all the usual orientalist fantasies; including misreading...