Seduced catalogue

The catalogue which accompanies the current exhibition Seduced: Art & Sex From Antiquity To Now presents representative images covering all aspects of the exhibition alongside contextualising essays by Marina Wallace, Martin Kemp, and Joanne Bernstein.

Seduced

Seduced: Art & Sex From Antiquity To Now, an exhibition at the Barbican in London (from 12th October 2007 until 27th January 2008), presents an historical survey of sex as represented in various artistic media from Classical sculpture to contemporary photography.

Every significant field is included: Japanese illustrations from the 18th and 19th centuries, Victorian and early 20th century erotic photography from the Alfred Kinsey collection, outrageous drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, Surrealist images by Man Ray, illustrations for Justine and The Philosophy Of The Boudoir, and the Kama Sutra. There are even late drawings by Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, and an early (self-satisfied) Picasso self-portrait. Sex in contemporary art is represented by Andy Warhol's film Blowjob, and collections of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (his most sado-masochistic, homoerotic images), Nobuyoshi Araki (close-up, eroticised images of isolated organs and snails), Jeff Koons (quasi-pornographic self-portraits with Illona Staller), Thomas Ruff (out-of-focus images appropriated from porn websites), and Nan Goldin.

Goldin's work, a slide-show of naturalistic images, is the only exhibit to carry an individual 'explicit content' warning, although the Kinsey slideshow is far more graphic; the Goldin warning may be a precautionary reaction to the fuss over her recent Baltic exhibition. There are very few notable omissions, though Warhol would have been better represented by Blue Movie, and Carolee Schneemann's film Fuses should have been included, as should Andres Serrano's History Of Sex photographs.

Dead Certain

Robert Draper's book Dead Certaint is subtitled The Presidency Of George W Bush, which seems a bit premature given that Bush's presidency has not yet ended. Draper had extensive access to Bush, in five personal interviews, though this is not an authorised, sugar-coated history. Draper has also spoken to all of the key members of Bush's White House team: Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice (the sole exception being Colin Powell). The result is an authoritative, detailed account of Bush's administration.

Adland

Adland: A Global History Of Advertising, by Mark Tungate, is the first truly historical and international book about the advertising industry. Its emphasis is on the industry rather than the advertisements themselves, and its index is incomplete, though it explores the business of advertising with unprecedented scope.

Another Book

Another Book, by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage, is the second compilation of material from the comic Modern Toss (the third and fourth issues; issues one and two were featured in the first Modern Toss book). The star character from the first book, Mr Tourette, is still included. He is a sign-writer, and he specialises in painting outrageously obscene slogans (often revolving around a certain word) for unsuspecting businesses.

The dominant character in this second book is Alan, who appears to have anger-management issues, creating havoc and then undergoing psychotherapy. My favourite element, though, is a series of cartoons called Work, in which the banality of corporate life is exposed with blunt simplicity, such as an office drone telling his manager: "I just got one of your pencils stuck in my eye, see you in court". All the Work cartoons have been collected into their own book, and I'm hoping that Mr Tourette will eventually get his own spin-off, too.

Potty Fartwell & Knob

Potty Fartwell & Knob: Extraordinary But True Names Of British People, by Russell Ash, is a pre-Christmas, stocking-filler book, as is The Magna Farta (and as, last year, were Profanisaurus Rex, The Joy Of Swearing, and Filthy Shakespeare). Ash has compiled thematic lists of unusual names, all taken from census records, registers of marriages, and other public documents.

Thus, for example, we learn that there was a man named Jesus Christ who was born in 1940 and died in 2004. I'd like to give more examples, but the best ones are too rude to include here. My favourite word is given its very own chapter, and the book lists twenty first names and surnames which incorporate it. (Anyone familiar with the English town Scunthorpe will get the general idea; as a personal nomenclature, it appears in even less disguised forms.)

In his introduction, Ash stresses that "wherever possible original documents have been checked" to avoid mistakes, though he also writes that his research involved "access to online material". Exactly how many census records he checked online, and how many he examined in their original versions, is unclear. I'm not convinced that all of the names listed are genuine, as it's too easy for mistakes or spoofs to creep in when records are typed into databases.

Film & Video Act

Thailand has passed the Film & Video Act, which will introduce age classification to Thai cinemas for the first time. Classification has been called for by the Free Thai Cinema Movement, though how it will work in practice remains to be seen. There will be no film industry representatives on the classification committee, unfortunately.

2008: A Film Odyssey

The Barbican in London will present an exhibition of Kubrick artefacts early next year (21st to 27th February 2008). Archive material has previously been shown in Germany, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. The exhibits are on loan from the Archive at the University of the Arts.

Stanley Kubrick Archive

I went to the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts in London yesterday. The Archive was donated by Kubrick's widow earlier this year, and is currently being catalogued.

I had a great surprise: I found that I am actually part of the archive! In one of the boxes is my list of Kubrick's Look photographs, printed out from my website.

The Magna Farta

The Profanisaurus Rex swearing dictionary has been updated, with 2,000 new headwords added, in a new edition titled The Magna Farta. If you've followed the monthly updates in Viz magazine, this new edition will not offer anything extra. It's edited by Graham Dury, Davey Jones, and Simon Thorp.

Santiago Sierra

Santiago Sierra is an artist with a social conscience, whose work highlights the capitalist exploitation of labour, though by paying marginalised individuals to perform demeaning tasks the artist has become a part of the system he is critiquing.

His latest work involved Indian scavengers collecting dried human excrement and moulding it into twenty-one large blocks, which are currently on show with six other works at the Lisson Gallery in London (30th November 2007 until 19th January 2008). The show is titled New Works, accompanied by a catalogue titled Seven Works. Collectively, the excrement blocks are known as Twenty-One Anthropometric Modules Made From Human Faeces By The People Of Sulabh International India.

Christmas in the UK

I'm currently in the UK (I arrived yesterday), staying with my parents for Christmas. I'll be back in Bangkok on 29th December.

Thai election

As I'll be in the UK for Christmas, I'll miss the Thai election, which will be on 23rd December, though I can't vote anyway as I'm still a UK citizen.

My only hope is that PPP leader Samak Sundaravej, a dinosaur who oozes corruption and contempt, doesn't become the next Prime Minister. With the current climate of musical chairs (politicians changing allegiancies on a daily basis), anything is possible. (Though Sonthi and Pallop will not be candidates, which is some consolation.) If I could vote, it would be for the Democrats, and their leader Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Samak's PPP is basically a reincarnation of Thaksin's dissolved TRT.

The Bridge

The Bridge is a documentary directed by Eric Steel. Throughout 2004, Steel used remote cameras to film people walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, looking for anyone who was preparing to jump off the bridge. His cameras captured nineteen people as they jumped to their deaths. The film includes footage of these suicides, and interviews with friends and relatives of those who died.

Documentary film-making has always raised questions about directorial intervention, though in this case the issue is absolutely fundamental. Steel maintains that, any time he saw someone behaving unusually, he called the coastguard, and that he was thus able to prevent six suicide attempts. One of the film's interviewees, a photographer, explains the detachment he feels when looking through a camera viewfinder, and this has also been explored in horror films such as Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project. In The Bridge, the photographer overcame his artistic instinct and intervened to save the life of the suicidal woman he was photographing, and Steel himself is adamant that he did all he could for each of the people whose deaths he filmed.

hi-thaksin.net blocked yet again?

Thai newspapers are reporting that the pro-Thaksin website hi-thaksin.net is blocked again.

A video clip on the site claims that a vote for PPP in the forthcoming Thai election represents a vote for Thaksin, a claim which MICT and the Election Commission regard as divisive. The site also mocks EC member Sodsri Sattiyatham, with a photo of her surrounded by Nazi insignia. Sodsri has announced that she is planning to take legal action against the site.

The website was totally inaccessible this afternoon, though MICT denies blocking it. It's possible that the server crashed temporarily, because it is accessible again at the moment.

1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2007)

Stephen Jay Schneider's 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die has been tweaked again, in a new 2007 edition. As in 2006 and 2005, the changes are few and are limited to the most recent films. The Departed has been added, for example, but Nine Queens and Y Tu Mama Tambien have been unfairly excised. Cache, added in 2006, has now been cut.

Adam & Ewald

Photographs by Iranian artist Sooreh Hera have been withdrawn from a planned exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum in the Netherlands. The images, part of a series titled Adam & Ewald, show gay men wearing Mohammed masks, and are also included in a video made by the artist (Allah Ho Gaybar). Other prohibited Mohammed artworks, such as the Lars Vilks drawings and the opera Idomeneo, have subsequently been exhibited, so hopefully another gallery will show Hera's work soon.

Destination Moon

Destination Moon was directed by Irving Pichel and produced by George Pal. Pal's intention was to inject scientific credibility and documentary realism into science-fiction, though the result is a rather boring, uneventful film. A group of engineers build a rocket, fly to the moon, and then fly back again. They don't encounter any aliens, they don't crash, and there isn't even any dramatic conflict. (Some elements, such as the coloured space suits, the procedural details, and an astronaut adrift in space, could have influenced Kubrick's 2001.)

While Pichel and Pal were perfecting their scrupulous accuracy, they were overtaken by a low-budget exploitation film, Rocketship XM, which was rushed into production and actually released before Destination Moon. Rocketship XM has no production values, but it's far more exciting than Pichel's film. Pal later produced the alien invasion film The War Of The Worlds, one of the most dramatic sci-fi films of the period, but it was the success of Destination Moon which revived the genre at the start of the 1950s.

Love Of Siam

Love Of Siam is an exceptional romantic drama set in downtown Bangkok (Siam Square, hence the title) and directed by Chukiat Sakweerakul. It's exceptional for a variety of reasons, though unfortunately its advertising campaign highlights none of them.

This is one of the longest and most ambitious films in recent Thai commercial cinema. Although on the surface it's a teen romance, the film also portrays the gradual breakdown of a marriage, a surprisingly mature and emotionally deep sub-plot considering that Chukiat is less than thirty years old. It is also one of the first Thai films to portray a gay relationship sensitively and realistically, following the coming-of-age of two childhood friends who develop stronger feelings for each other in high school. The film never resorts to melodrama, and (at least in my opinion) it does not have a conventional, happy ending.

It's a shame that this wonderful film is so misrepresented by its trailer and poster, both of which present it as a story of two heterosexual relationships. Apparently, this strategy was approved by the director, who did not want to limit the potential audience - it is being marketed as a love story, not as a gay film. In commercial terms, the scheme has paid off, as screenings are sold-out and it's the latest hot topic in Bangkok. But surely if you want a mainstream audience to accept a gay narrative, you should not pretend that it's something else just to lure them into the cinema.

I hope that, before too long, a film like this can be marketed as what it is - a deeply affecting portrayal of contemporary relationships, emphasising the complexities of friendship, family, and gay first-love.

The Fellowship Of The Ring

The Fellowship Of The Ring is the first film in Peter Jackson's trilogy The Lord Of The Rings, based on the novels of JRR Tolkien. I did not see these films when they were originally released, though I am a huge fan of Jackson's earlier splatter films Bad Taste and Braindead. I saw his remake of King Kong last year, and it sapped away any enthusiasm I had to see The Lord Of The Rings.

Well, The Fellowship Of The Ring is so much better than King Kong. The entire cast is suberb, especially Ian McKellen as Gandalf. It's surprising that Orlando Bloom's character has so little dialogue, though presumably his role is expanded in the second and third installments. Though there is extensive CGI, the film also relies heavily on traditional effects such as matte paintings and miniatures. Logistically, the trilogy is surely one of the most complex film projects ever undertaken, as the three films were produced simultaneously, with multiple units.

The result is stunning. I only wish I could feel the same enthusiasm for Jackson's King Kong.