Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Follow Strange Factories on Facebook!


There are creative endeavours, film projects, theatre productions, mythological examinations, transmedia experiences, works that offer psychological insights, part of or particles of sand in the shell of the zeitgeist that grow into pearls. FoolishPeople are on a path with Strange Factories that encompasses all of the above, but is also so much more. Strange Factories is something to which anyone who appreciates the pushing of artistic boundaries in film and art has to pay attention.


Strange Factories - HD Trailer from FoolishPeople on Vimeo.


We are not in the most critical need of another entertainment product in our mediated age, and life-changing and challenging encounters with art has to bring us beyond the marketer-colonized world of transmedia. You are invited into the world of Strange Factories, a place in which you will confront your own self in the most real terms.

A writer, haunted by an idea for a new story hunts for four refugee performers of a theatre destroyed in a mysterious fire. 
He locates his friends in a remote, pagan settlement founded by Stronheim; owner of a Strange Factory hidden deep in the local countryside that emits an infamous Hum. 
Victor enters into a dangerous pact when a vow is made to re-build their theatre if the story is completed in time for it to be performed at the village festival, where bizarre rituals are enacted by the Villagers under the influence of a hallucinogenic effluence siphoned out of the Strange Factory. 
Victor’s imagination and the fragmented memories of his friends collide in a violent fiction that not everyone can survive. 
Strange Factories’ is an immersive feature film; a uniquely powerful and original project that fuses cinema with a dreamlike environment to create an experience like no other. 
Principal photography on Strange Factories was completed in Prague and the UK in October 2011 and is currently in post-production with release scheduled for 2012.




It is my great privilege to be part of the FoolishPeople family. Many of you have come to me to tell me how deeply you have been touched by the releases Salon Apocalypse and Necrofuturist. Neither of these albums would have been possible if not for my having been allowed to work on Cirxus, Abattoir Pages, A Red Threatening Sky, The Basement and having been a part of the magickal world of FoolishPeople for the last few years.







Follow these links, subscribe to updates, like on farcebook and expect the experience of your lives.

With Love,
P. Emerson Williams

http://www.foolishpeople.com
http://www.facebook.com/strangefactories
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2150487/

Thursday, December 8, 2011

P. Emerson Williams In Apocalyptic Imaginary: Early Edition

Pieces that ran on ModernMythology.net are gathered, edited and expanded in this special collection. This endeavour is one of the projects the fund raising campaign helped bring to life, and is just the beginning of what is to be brought to you in the coming year. Some of this will include the music of Veil of Thorns. Here are a couple examples from the book from me, your humble Veil of Thorns overlord:

Modernism to Postmodernism to Postmortemism

By P. Emerson Williams
We cultural types do love to declare death wherever we cast our jaded blood-shot eyes. When our imaginations are exhausted, hard-ons for the latest arising only with greater efforts require new extremes of fetishism. A point comes when completed work crowds out attention. Art, empire, economy, politics look to us to be sated with days and ready to give in to sweet oblivion.
Lady Gaga killed sex, says the once much discussed Camille Paglia, who quotes her subject who declaims “Music is a lie”, “Art is a lie”, “Gaga is a lie”. The death of the novel is an idea so oft repeated that one can envision members of the literary establishment daring each other to intone the phrase three times in front of a mirror in expectation of the candyman to appear. And closer to home for us here, the right honourable psychonaut James L. Kent writing for Acceler8or the new transhumanist vehicle established by R. U. Sirius says we've come to rest after years of the deceler8ing of music as a living mode of expression. Nice opening shot.
Read on at Modern Mythology. 




Human Demonology: Salome

By P. Emerson Williams
And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist.  
And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist. And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother. And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.- (Mark 6:21-29, KJV)  
The story of Salome is a familiar one in Western culture, the climax of wich with her lascivious dance and the severed head of John the Baptist has fired the imagination of artists, writers and composers for hundreds of years. Then there's Dracula as an allegory describing Victorian men's fear of female sexuality, Lilith in legend and art... The mythical Salome can be seen as both a product of and a window into the minds of those who told it. Salome was a real historical person, born EV 14, the daughter of Herodias and the stepdaughter of the Emperor Herod Antipas. Though she is unnamed in the New Testament, Salome is named in the writings of the historian Josephus.

Read the rest of the article at Modern Mythology.




This book captures and expands upon the unique commentary and analysis that has helped define the Modern Mythology project in 2011. Through the voices of many contributors, we collectively take a hard look at the blurred lines between narrative and truth, philosophy and literature, personal history and cultural memory. All of this is done with an eye towards the imagined apocalypse that is always just around the corner.

This is the $.99 early edition, meaning that there will be one more editorial pass before the final version which will be released in print. This contains all the final content that the final book has, but will almost certainly have minor typos. If they light your hair on fire, feel free to report them.

Available as PDF, .epub, Kindle and more on Smashwords. (Just $.99)

First edition in print and kindle formats Jan 2012.


Tuesday, August 18, 2009

SALON APOCALYPSE:

"Secret Theater"

by Hakim Bey


As long as no Stalin breathes down our necks, why not make some art in the service of... an insurrection?

Never mind if it's "impossible." What else can we hope to attain but the "impossible"? Should we wait for someone else to reveal our true desires?

If art has died, or the audience has withered away, then we find ourselves free of two dead weights. Potentially, everyone is now some kind of artist -- & potentially every audience has regained its innocence, its ability to become the art that it experiences.

Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols (in this case, the images we've been "given" by the organizers of this salon -- murder, war, famine, & greed).

We might now contemplate aesthetic actions which possess some of the resonance of terrorism (or "cruelty," as Artaud put it) aimed at the destruction of abstractions rather than people, at liberation rather than power, pleasure rather than profit, joy rather than fear. "Poetic Terrorism."

Our chosen images have the potency of darkness -- but all images are masks, & behind these masks lie energies we can turn toward light & pleasure.

For example, the man who invented aikido was a samurai who became a pacifist & refused to fight for Japanese imperialism. He became a hermit, lived on a mountain sitting under a tree.

One day a former fellow-officer came to visit him & accused him of betrayal, cowardice, etc. The hermit said nothing, but kept on sitting -- & the officer fell into a rage, drew his sword, & struck. Spontaneously the unarmed master disarmed the officer & returned his sword. Again & again the officer tried to kill, using every subtle kata in his repertoire -- but out of his empty mind the hermit each time invented a new way to disarm him.

The officer of course became his first disciple. Later, they learned how to dodge bullets.

We might contemplate some form of metadrama meant to capture a taste of this performance, which gave rise to a wholly new art, a totally non-violent way of fighting -- war without murder, "the sword of life" rather than death.

A conspiracy of artists, anonymous as any mad bombers, but aimed toward an act of gratuitous generosity rather than violence -- at the millennium rather than the apocalypse -- or rather, aimed at a present moment of aesthetic shock in the service of realization & liberation.

Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.

Is it possible to create a SECRET THEATER in which both artist & audience have completely disappeared -- only to re-appear on another plane, where life & art have become the same thing, the pure giving of gifts?

We take Kirkegaard's "leap of faith," but absent the old existentialist's Fear & Trembling & Sickness unto death. Our leap of faith into sorcery & secret theater is more like a wet dream than a nightmare, "awe-full", not awful.

We name our peerage of this new plane The Seven Dramaturgs. But no Peer Panel here, please. We prefer, like Jacob, to wrestle with our angels, & if our tussling turns amorous, all the better. Let the games begin. The Seven Dramaturgs show us that the universe wants, more than that, intends to play with us. We can be pawns or partners in this intention of The Seven Dramaturgs.

In Sufiism there is a belief in The Forty Guardians who protect & keep mankind from destroying itself. What's interesting is, these Guardians are human, but they remain completely unknown & are constantly in flux. Anyone in the world could be one of The Forty at a present moment, including oneself. Of course you would never know if you had been one of The Forty -- they remain anonymous even to themselves. That is why Sufiism calls for you to bow your head whenever you meet a stranger -- he could be one of The Forty Guardians.

Do we lead or follow The Seven Dramaturgs in their sorcery & secret theater? Ali Baba is merely one of The Forty Thieves -- each of The Forty Thieves is Ali Baba. The text does not begin or end here -- the pencil is passed like a baton amongst The Seven Dramaturgs. The universe is still being written.



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