Notes from Berlin to self written in my notebook.
Bitan, Shachaf. Winnicott and Derrida: Development of logic-of-play. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (2012) 93: 29-51. [PDF]
- look up Derrida & play (1981)
- the ‘playful turn’
- challenging the binary structure = what I’m doing is this too in this sense there is more than two ...always at least three...me, myself, and I...a magic number?
- ”destabilizing the absoluteness” = disrupt the status quo (in my own painting) by challenging the notion of (my own) authenticity
- Holson, 1998 “non-exclusive negation/non-inclusive affirmation
- paradoxical - playful [turn, turn]
- not … not, not
- playful relations between opposites (or playful opposites between relations … playful opposite relations between?)
Reading the opening and closing chapters of David Bowie: Die Biografie, Marc Spitz, 2016, Edel Germany.
Watching DVD of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973) film by D.A. Pennebaker. Digitally remastered 30th Anniversary edition, 2003. Film of final concert, July 3, 1973 Hammersmith Odeon, London. Quote from filmmaker, Pennebaker’s, text in booklet:
“The minute he strode out on stage I could see he was a character looking for a film.”
‘The last time’
Darkness surrounding Ziggy
Gesture - in German I’d describe as ‘gekonnt’
Ziggy as Readymade (Duchampian) - Bowie took existing ‘things’ from one context and placed them into another.
Ziggy performed ‘Changes’ much differently than other Bowie performances of this same song. It might be interesting to look at what/how the performance of this one song changed over the 40+ years. (oh, YouTube)
‘Cracked Actor’- Ziggy playing blues riff on harmonica in James Brown cape
‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ -Jones as Bowie as Ziggy gives a more engaging performance than Jagger as Jagger performing the same song (Jagger wrote) … a duel a la Derek and Hansel, but who is the judge?
https://youtu.be/l61MFiIeuVM ...ok, not a fair comparison, as 1967 TOTP
appearance they are not playing (like Ziggy?) but only ‘performing’ (lip synch)
Watching Best of Bowie 2002 DVD compilation of various performances and videos.
Important: each video has director info.
Feb 8 1972 appearance on Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC) Younger self, no (little) make up ...without a mask… comes across as ‘washed out’. He appears to have the ideas (think Duchamp’s paintings between 1911-1917) but still working to generate/obtain the spectacle to attract the looker/listener? A decidedly less seductive performer than he would become. He showed ‘mimic’ but has neither a sense of authenticity or inauthenticity through its application.
April 4 1972 TOTP performance of ‘Starman’. Two months later, not playing the music but performing it (lip synch). How much of this allowed DB and band to re-direct attention from the music to the performance? TOTP role in developing Ziggy and Co.? Hint of make up, hair redder, brighter, costumed (as opposed to what could appear more street clothes-like attire. More dynamic all around, same can be said for backing band now the Spiders. Interaction with Ronson more pronounced, guitarist has moved forward as a ‘prop’ to character.
Music Video, later in 1972. Dir. & Prod. Mick Rock. ‘John, I’m only dancing’. A mix of performance footage, posing and lizard dancers. A work in itself harking back to days with Lindsey Kemp Troupe? Note to self: check out ‘I Want My MTV’ book on shelf when I get home. More makeup, but the Spiders have the role more as a backing band here.
Music Video, Oct. 1972. Dir. & Prod. Mick Rock. made in San Francisco. ‘The Jean Genie’ live concert mix with extra footage (performance...street shots w/female, mime moves, photo studio)
Music Video, Dec. 1972. Mick Rock. NYC. ‘Space Oddity’ mimics a live performance, but it isn’t. Graphics. Shots of what might be the interior of a space ship. Compare to an earlier version of this song/video done upon its initial release in 1969 I saw on YouTube which is a more farcical/humorous/novelty take on the song, much in the vein of its initial release ...pre-Ziggy)
Music Video. 1973 ‘Drive-In Saturday’. London Weekend TV. Russell Harty Plus Pop. South Bank Studios London. Jan 17 1973 TV Announcer start- talks of ‘glamourous’ look of Bowie...glammed up ‘royalty; Maybe they are really playing here, but the band is definitely performing a backing role. Sax playing...blues rock...with a stroll. ‘Crash course for the ravers’ a very Bolanesque song & performance.
Music Video. 1973. Mick Rock. London. ‘Life on Mars’. Extreme make up; the powder blue suit, all white surroundings; the color highlighting the light-filled, liminal space (space) with flattened features...all we see is the mask and not the body wearing it.
Dutch TV program. Feb 7, 1974. TopPop. 16mm archive footage. ‘Rebel Rebel’. Prism disco ball producing honeycomb effect; eye patch era, red-jumpsuit and neck scarf. Multiple Bowies/Aladdin Sane's standing on show title. No band. Not playing, the red electric guitar is a prop he uses in the performance.
Dick Cavett Show. Dec 4 1974. US TV. ‘Young Americans’ . The performance of the infamous ‘coked-up’ interview. (see YouTube). Blue eyed soul-rocking Bowie (transition to TWD era, growing out the red hair dye). Live performance before a studio audience with tremendous backing band and singers. Big shift in performance style from alien to down to earth origins of R’n’R.
Music Video. 1977. Dir. Stanley Dorfman. ‘Be My Wife’. A three year ‘break’ (not really), The Berlin years...end of. All white space (see 1973 video ‘Life on Mars’), but less make up (a mask that does not completely hide) it is no longer necessary...his presence is different, more ‘there’...growing comfortable with being seen outside of a character or has Bowie become enough of a stand alone character that Jones can perform him in a more natural way? At the same time this is very reminiscent of Joel Grey in ‘Cabaret’...minus the makeup, or maybe the scene where the host is removing his makeup watching in the dressing room mirror? Neutral, beige colors… 1920s/1930s and 1970s (late) casual men’s wear -think camel. Sensual stroking of the guitar neck, versus the fellating of Mick Ronson’s guitar during the Ziggy days. A facial expression bordering on the neutral but with a hint of pensiveness.
Music Video. 1977. Dir. Stanley Dorfman. ‘Heroes’. Famous. Frequently played in the early days of late night video programs and MTV. Edith Piaf (or Dietrich or Garland) is how I always thought of this video performance. Superimposed.
Music Video. 1979. Dir. David Mallet. ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. Bowie back in his youthful teddy-boy self, but also pred-dates his 2000 performances of his repertoire...maybe we always do return to how we were in our late childhood? Three drag Bowies -humor! Back up singers and a fashion show. Types, not people.
Music Video. 1979. Dir. David Mallet. ‘D.J.’ A personal favorite of mine from my late childhood spent watching the late night video programs during the summer of 1980 (pre-MTV). Also the song that for a long time, and maybe still today, says ‘Bowie’ “I got believers believin’ me”. Smash the mirror, cut the throat with the 45 rpm, mime -slow down “time flies’. Playing with “I am a D.J.” I am David Jones, not David Bowie. “I am what I play.” David Bowie not David Jones.
Music Video. 1979. Dir. David Mallet. “Look Back in Anger” Painter (which David Jones/Bowie als was) fake-painting a self portrait as an angel. The cliche artist’s studio in the attic...where the crazy people are locked away...or the tortured genius is kept safe from himself (and the world from him). Smearing the image on the canvas -blurring the face of the artist- smearing the lipstick in the drag show- looking into the mirror and back in anger. Paints the mirror- masking the reflection of the self rather than the self… a not, not _ not?
Music Video. 1980. Co-Dir. Bowie and David Mallet. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ After D.J. one of the videos on those late night shows that really caught my attention. Bowie revisits his mime days as a classic commedia dell'arte character/mime. Experimentation with the medium of video, digital and computers. The technology becomes juxtaposed with this very old art form. Identity and insanity, drug addiction - Major Tom the Space Oddity junky -personal and professional history merge.
Music Video. 1980. Co-Dir. Bowie and Mallet. Band appears, playing on small stage in club, using video tech tricks (G.E. Smith’s backward jump … reminds me of Twyla Tharp’s experiments with video a few years earlier in an attempt to have the dancer perform true retrograde which is not physically possible but possible with video). Very downtown 80s feel. Commedia dell'arte figures but this time it is the dancers and not Bowie. Frequently played on early MTV, probably because in addition to having few videos one of the original VJs (Alan Hunter) was a dancer in this video.
Music Video. 1981. David Mallet. ‘Wild is the Wind’ b/w, moody lighting and feel, band present. Chanson. Released in 1976 on Station to Station, video came later. Touches on Bowie/Jones desire to be a crooner?
Music Video. 1983. Bowie & Mallet. ‘Let’s Dance’. Beginning of what Bowie/Jones often called his ‘Phil Collins era’. Seen too many times to look at and dissect at this time.
Music Video. 1983. Bowie & Mallet. ‘China Girl’. See above. Co-written song by DB and IP (aka DJ and JO) during their Berlin period and originally recorded by Iggy Pop on his first solo album, produced by Bowie, The Idiot. Note, lipstick smear at the end… Boys Keep Swinging, etc.
Music Video. 1983 Jim Yukich. ‘Modern Love’. Live performance footage Serious Moonlight tour...arenas. A pomo-retro-big band mixed with Sinatra and Soul….
Music Video. Sept 12 1983. David Mallet. ‘Cat People’ theme song filmed performance in Vancouver, BC Canada on Serious Moonlight tour.
Music Video. 1984. Julian Temple. ‘Blue Jean’. Mini-movie, humor. Bowie plays two very different characters w/in video and to note is the response of his ‘date’ to each.
Music Video. 1985. Bowie & Mallet. ‘Loving the Alien’. Playing with technology, masks, the album design (Tonight) reflected in the video. Renaissance, De Chirico, Surrealism meet an Anthony Newley-esque variety show performance. Colonialism. Ends in a bed...like ‘Lazarus’ will 21 years later…
Music Video. 1985. David Mallet. ‘Dancing in the Streets’. Produced for Live Aid a Bowie-Jagger duet...Bowie still out performs Jagger (always been my opinion and I recall the build up to its original airing in the US and being glued to the TV waiting for and watching it).
Music Video. 1985. Julian Temple. ‘Absolute Beginners’ theme song to film Bowie appeared in, but video character different than in film. Plays between historical (1950s) and futuristic. A short movie to coincide with the longer movie.
Music Video. 1986 Steve Barron. ‘Underground’. The dramatic light/shadow/smoke filtered, tricks of new technology. Labyrinth (the Henson film Bowie acted in). Older images of Bowie morphing into a digital animation sequence and the Muppets from the film make an appearance.
Music Video. 1986. Steve Barron. ‘As the World Falls Down’. Labyrinth again. Historical-future playing with time, 1950s crooner.
Music Video. 1987. Julian Temple. ‘Day-In Day-Out’. Tattoo teardrop - think ‘Ashes to Ashes’ mime-makeup. 1950s rocker. Dystopian. Angels w/video cameras flying over, watching over, gritty side of LA. Survival by any means.
Music Video. 1987. Tim Pope. ‘Time will crawl’. Dystopian dance video -futuristic and contemporary. The future is now? 80s sexual ambiguity as opposed to 70s androgyne. Bowie ‘blind’ but w/crude mime moves.
Music video. 1987. Jean-Baptiste Mondino. ‘Never let me down’. 1930s-50s, golden age of Hollywood, dance, Joe Dallesandro MC, sexuality, crooner, difference of this style of harmonica playing to Ziggy soul-man.
Music Video. 1990. Gus Van Sant. ‘Fame ‘90’ editing b/w with color blasts of past videos. Edward look. (?)
Music Video. 1993. Mark Romanek. ‘Jump they say’. Futuristic. Robert Longo. Early 1960s New Frontier...conformity, cold war nostalgia. Or just fitting in?
Music Video. 1993. Mark Romanek. ‘Black Tie White Noise’. Bowie raps in cravatt, in the ‘hood, with his sax, in blue English-cut suit.
Music Video. 1993. Matthew Rolston. ‘Miracle Goodnight’. Technology heavy. Mime, Dada masks, b/w ...collage...doubling and mirroring, dancing with self, ‘speaking’, 1920s-30s vision of elegance, early 20th century modern dance, is she a cowgirl or exotic dancer?
Music Video. 1995. Roger Mitchell. ‘Buddha of Suburbia’. Visions of Bromley? Film of Hanif Kureishi's novel with soundtrack by Bowie.
Music Video. 1995. Sam Bayer. ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’. Symbolism, dystopian, Foucault, urban street violence, a sculptor’s studio.
Music Video. 1995. Sam Bayer. ‘Strangers when we meet’. Similar to previous, very ‘arty’, targets, casts, stage show, early cinema-silent films.
Music Video. 1996. David Mallet (returns after a 10 year absence). ‘Hallo Spaceboy’. A montage of old sci-fi films, 1950s cartoons, atomic age fears, Neal Tennant.
Music Video. 1997. Floria Sigismundi. ‘Little Wonder’.
Music Video. 1997. Floria Sigismundi. ‘Dead Man Walking’.
Music Video. 1997. Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Roder. ‘Seven Years in Tibet’. Concert video mix.
Music Video. 1997. Dom & Nick. ‘I’m afraid of Americans’. I’m afraid of the gentrification of the Village and Soho… the violence is just beginning to peak?
Music Video. 1999. Walter Stern. ‘Thursday’s Child’. Looking in the mirror, undressing in the mirror, the image in the mirror changes to others...very slow.
Music Video. 1999. Walter Stern. ‘Survive’. Melancholic Bowie. The table flip, kitchen, floating. Uncanny.
Thee videos (and music) starting in 1993 are the exit from the Phil Collins era of Bowie. At times they are very experimental-intellectual-arty but also trying to bring those things into a more popular vernacular...at a time when music video was winding down. There is still videos that were not on this DVD to be explored. The last two albums have quite memorable ones.
Christiane F. -Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (1981) directed by Uli Edel. Bowie was fascinated with the book, appears in the film as himself performing a concert in West Berlin, and composed music for the soundtrack. Reminded me a lot of the book Go Ask Alice popular in the early 80s teen reading as a ‘warning’. It is filled with hopelessness, despair and the boredom of being stuck on an island you can’t get off of.
Melusine’s writing. Maybe a place for it in the paintings? (in response to conversation with a.)
Thinking about Sütterlin and Palmer in my head...
Internet search on styles of handwriting
Writeanalog.com
“Learning cursive handwriting all over again”
Many different types. Palmer is what I learned… but no longer write, at least not faithfully. What did Melusine learn? She is from D-land, although she is too young to have learned Sütterlin. in school, she learned a variation of Palmer (Latin-based) she still could have been taught by an older person. She was. A great-aunt who took care of her while her mother worked.
Sütterlin (wikipedia) -last widely used form of Kurrent -German blackletter. Ludwig Sütterlin was commissioned in 1911 by Prussian government to create a modern handwriting script to honor the history of science, art and culture in Prussia, replacing all the stuff that came before and going back to the 16th century...how very Prussian! Taught in German schools from 1915-1941. One would think the NS would have kept this original (not Latin-based) Germanic script...but it was banned in 1941 on the grounds it was ‘too chaotic’. In other words, it is hard to conquer countries with Latin-based script if the conqueror is using blackletter? Continued use of Sütterlin displayed a type of resistance or subversion both during and after the war ...asserting a non-conforming identity. Sütterlin is nearly illegible for most people outside Germany, for younger Germans. Fraktur printing is more legible.
Give self exercise: practice writing Sütterlin characters in ballpoint pen, then in a calligraphic (Feder-fuller)
Downloaded font so I can always have Melusine write in Sütterlin on the computer too.
Write a letter in Sütterlin as Melusine so I cannot read what it is I am typing as her.
Boxing Shadows. (see next post)