heathenry or self-identification

The ever brilliant Dangerous Minds gives us a gentle but dazzling reminder that in between these cross-quarter days and geographically too we are in the midst of the perennial animistic cycle of death and rebirth in this gallery of photographs by ethnographer Charles Fréger, who trekked across Europe in search of the archetypal Wild Mann. The author is hesitant to put too fine a point on it, as well, so I am reluctant to be pedantic either but dressing up and the associated rituals (and though perhaps not to vouchsafe a bountiful harvest or secure favour from the elder gods) seems suspended somewhere between cosplay and national garb. Rather than being disdainful, I think that there is surely something in the ceremony and associates that transcends fandom or avid re-enactors. What do you think? Are we guilty of chauvinism to dismiss partakers as engaging in a weekend hobby? Be sure to check out the entire gallery of bizarre and transformative regalia.

quasi modo, desperado

Oslo’s City Hall (Olso rådhus)—perhaps most recognisable as the venue for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony—also boosts a grand carillon that’s been chiming away the hour with musical intermezzo for quite a few years already. Through the end of May, the belfry will ringing out David Bowie and Motörhead songs to be added to the daily performance. Sadly, one can be certain that more immortal classics, like Tequila Sunrise and Hotel California, will be forthcoming repertoire with the passing of Glenn Frey. This is a touching tribute on the part of the kingdom’s capital, but 2016 is starting to wear out its welcome and will have to really work in over-drive to make amends.  RIP

bandwidth and broomsticks

Archivists and students of modern history—which I think reinforces that strange feeling of being ungrounded, of something being just out of reach because it happened prior to the spread of the internet’s meticulous and totum pro parte record-keeping—are finding that the teletext pages, the subspace of the airwaves, were also encoded and can be teased out of VHS recordings.
This service, which reaches back to the early 1970s, was invented in the UK but has apparently been phased out entirely by most broadcasters but is still quite prominently featured and utilized on German stations, but the technology remains in place, as it’s the carrier-signal for closed-captions as well—as the notices, headlines, weather, score-cards, schedules, page after page (“magazines”) of programme descriptions and supplemental material provided have been supplanted by the advent of the World Wide Web—which the scheme rather previsioned and anticipated, at least in popularity and accessibility as formatting and compatibility issues tended towards compartmentalization. Recovering this ephemeral—even though parallel and complimentary to what’s on the television in most cases, I think it’s nonetheless a fascinating little snap-shot of the everyday and pushes back the wayback machine by at least sixteen years.

6x6

a fifth of beethoven: brilliant remixing, superposition of classical compositions

sprockets: the future of dance according to a 1960s West German Sci-Fi series

just happy little accidents: out-of-focus stars reveal their true colours

duzen, tutoyer: the revolution that relaxed Sweden’s forms of address

blueprints: Atlas Obscura tells the story of the first publication in the world to be illustrated with photographic plates, a book on the algae of Britian

kineoscopic: Colossal features the newest hypnotic installations by sculptor Anthony Howe