Idolatry
Angelspit’s “Carbon Beauty”: Album Art
I love the artwork on Angelspit’s new remix CD, Carbon Beauty (released March 8), which is awesome as always. It features a black-and-white animal anatomy and taxidermy theme, and Destroyx and ZooG in some heavy-duty avant-garde all-black fetish texturific garb.
Destroyx’s outfit for Carbon Beauty album photographyCheck out all the CD booklet images below. All images are clickable for a larger view.
Tags: amazing makeup, anatomical-themed, angelspit, animal skulls, avant-garde goth, black and white, CD artwork, deer, destroyx, exposed anatomy, fascinators, skeleton, taxidermy
Prose Poetry: “Darling, They’ve Found the Body”
‘Darling, they’ve found the body’ comes from a series of dreams – a body is buried beside a house, a house on stilts, the body has lain there for many years, i always knew it was there but consciously obscured it from view by willfully dimming the lights, the body is my body and i have been murdered by my ‘once upon a time’ lover turned keeper, i scrimshaw this dream onto liz bonami, the blonde dream doll with pernicious eyes lest i forget (when i lived on a boat my father would scrimshaw ships and birds and the letters of our names onto whales’ teeth we bought from a danish bank robber, we would sell these to buy food and make necessary repairs), my apparent self-imposed incarceration means i scratch messages onto the walls of my cell as i wait out my final hours, i try to make sense of the floating debris of letters, unpaid bills and medical records that seem surely to be a poor suggestion of a life, i self-portrait the face that accuses me and demands that i make good my escape, while i sit ludicrously passive watching the pot boil dry…
my sewing machine enables a solipsist god complex to spin out her own creation myth, where time stops and ‘the one who knows’ will come riding by on his ship, up the iron river and i will be waiting pretty as a picture so here i am, an impenetrable snaggle-toothed old crone stirring the secrets of my omniverse…the butterflies are notches on my belt as 39 years flutter by i am reminded of a dream where i live alone in a beautiful cottage in the forest in bavaria, by day i paint self-portraits with a solipsistic narcissism, by night i hunt, i am a wolverine i am reminded of another story – a woman sitting on her roof because of the floods, the water is rising fast, she has been told by God to wait there for a miracle, three times a man comes by in a boat to rescue her and each time she says ‘no, God has told me to wait here for a miracle,’ the water levels continue to rise and the woman drowns, when she gets to heaven she stands accusingly before her God and says why did you not perform the miracle that you promised me and her God says i came by three times and each time you sent me away
- KatieJane Garside, 2007
Tags: katiejane garside, lovely quotations, metaphors, modern fairy tales, stream of consciousness
An Interview with Tatiana Susla
There’s an interview over at Something We Like with one of my very favorite artists, Tatiana Susla (mon-artifice).
“Most of my inspiration I get from music. It can give me absolutely unearthly feelings and to create the necessary atmosphere around me, so there is almost an absolute illusion of presence in my imaginary world.
The music which inspires me is not usual, it must be complex and magical. Usually it combines classical, operatic elements with dark and strong sounds of metal or electronic music, and the demonic, tempting voices of the singer, so the musical composition becomes some kind of dark ritual.”
Short Film: “Monarch”
A lovely experimental short film, titled Monarch, with styling and modeling by one of my favorite alternative models and greatest creative/style inspirations, Anna Swiczeniuk, also known as Aiko273, and filmed by Markabre Charade.
Tags: 1920s, aiko273, colorful, emotive, hauntingly beautiful, homage to silent film, makeup, short films
Royal Fairy Tales and Frail Dolls
Lily Bloodstained AKA Mon-artifice is an amazing young photographer who does the most fantastic self-portraiture. In her richly dark imagery, she takes on the personae of tragic and baroque, 18th-century aristocrats and the like, in flour-white makeup elaborated with ink ornamentation, and half-masks, often with the theme of mirroring, fragmented, or double images. Expressive, dark, and endlessly creative, she is a true inspiration. She embodies a sense of nostalgic melancholy, and her work, though deeply emotional, is always subtle and has a certain elegant quality. Here is some of her work below. I like so many of her images that it was hard to pick!
Lily Bloodstained on DeviantArt
on Flickr
on Darkfolio
on Dirty Angels
Tags: 18th century, baroque, historically inspired, lily bloodstained, masks, otherworldly photography, self-portraits
Angelspit: Larva Pupa Tank Coffin – CD Artwork
I know I post about Destroyx a lot, but I can’t help it, she’s my style icon and she inspires me endlessly.
Her and ZooG‘s band Angelspit is coming out with a remix CD, titled Larva Pupa Tank Coffin, in October. The title comes from one of my favorite songs off their previous album Hideous and Perfect, of which the first line is, “I was not born, I was hatched; from larva, to pupa; tank to coffin.”
The CD artwork has been unveiled, and of course I love it. Destroyx says, “This rich and elaborate work is inspired by Russian Constructivism, vaudeville theater, with a twist of late 19th-century Mysticism.”
Her looks for each of Angelspit’s albums have been so different! This one is rather “prettier” and less “alienating” than some of her other looks, but awesome as well. No one is able to transform themselves with makeup quite like Destroyx. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
Tags: angelspit, CD artwork, destroyx, russian constructivism
Emilie in Her Wheelchair
This is one of my favorite live pictures of EA.
from her “Erotic Medical Burlesque” show at KinKats, Munich, March 2009Isn’t she divine?
Awesome wheelchair, too.
Tags: burlesque, emilie autumn, insane asylum aesthetic, medical-themed, steampunk, wheelchair
Katja Faith
Katja Faith is one of my absolute favorite artists. Her works are surreal, with an otherworldly haze, beautiful color, and amazing atmosphere.
Tags: colorful, hazy, katja faith, photomanipulation, surreal
Rat Love
My Victoriandustrial rock idol Emilie Autumn recently did an interview with Planet Green. I thought her answer to the last question, advice on “how to make more green, compassionate, and creative choices,” was most pertinent, as it’s totally the way I see it, too:
I would suggest that the element that would help the most in keeping our planet green is to learn to appreciate the beauty and importance of what it is that we have, similar to my view of vegetarianism and converting people to that way of eating. It is much more effective, and far less annoying, to increase people’s appreciation for animals of all species than it is to tell people not to eat them. A dietary alteration will soon follow once the animals in question are seen as something more important than food. We need to teach people to fall in love with the natural world again before we can expect them to care about saving it.
Also, here’s a behind-the-scenes video from Emilie’s photoshoot for Bizarre Magazine – with rats! (Don’t mind the God-awful porn lounge-type music they always accompany their videos with, it’s so ridiculous):
Follow ze linkTags: animal love, emilie autumn, environmentalism, rats, vegetarianism
The Self-Portraiture of Kristamas Klousch
I love the work of self-portraitist Kristamas Klousch. It’s fascinating, brilliant, and ever-changing. Combining instant film and digital techniques, she creates images that express a myriad of facets of, revealing and yet eluding the subject of the photographs, her “self.” What results is intensely beautiful, haunting, and dreamy. In the mini-bio on her site, she says, “Kristamas Klousch is a strange little wolfgirl, residing deep in the forests & cities of Canada.” She has also been described as “at once wild forest creature, fetish vixen, tousled witch, Lolita, courtesan, silent movie vamp, and voodoo priestess.” One of her pictures is on the cover of the current issue of Coilhouse Magazine.
Tags: grainy, kristamas klousch, self-portraits, vintage
