INTERZONE DISPATCHES: Report #4.3

Let's continue our trip through the very best of contemporary artwork based on the films of David Cronenberg. Reach deep inside your guts and ask yourself, "is this real, or hallucination?", because this time we're taking a look at Videodrome.

Previous entries:

SCANNERS

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE; SHIVERS; RABID; THE BROOD

In a very real way, the dystopian vision of Videodrome has come to pass. Max Renn tells Masha that the pirate channel he's been watching is "just torture and murder. No plot, no characters. Very, very realistic. I think it's what's next." Later in the film Masha confronts Max with the truth, "What you see on that show, it's for real. It's not acting. It's snuff TV."

When David Cronenberg wrote those lines thirty-four years ago, the only things resembling Brian O'Blivion's transmission were Mondo-style shockumentaries (so tame by today's standards) and the televised atrocities of Vietnam that had appalled American families the decade before. The idea that you could simply type the words "torture and murder" into a search engine and be inundated with endless images and videos of just that was unimaginable.

The media landscape has changed so drastically (and rapidly) that it compelled authors David Kerekes and David Slater to update their book Killing for Culture, expanding it beyond its focus on Mondo and snuff* to include internet horrors like the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs and ISIS executions**.

The Canadian master's sixth film has turned out to be a frighteningly prescient vision. As is the hallmark of all great sci-fi, Videodrome is more relevant today than when it was created.

A series of poster redesigns, all playing with videotape noise, from the always reliable Silver Ferox:

Adam Juresko uses the VHS glitch to distort Nicki Brand's face:

A shirt design and poster from Aaron Crawford:

Videodrome for the meme kids from Michael DiPetrillo:

An abstract interpretation from Chris Malbon:

And now to the best of the bunch. This time around I have to give it to two artists - David Huntley (aka Mute) and Gilles Vranckx (who also did that stunning giallo poster art for Amer). First, Mute's gorgeous (and trippy) likeness of Debbie Harry:

Finally, Gilles Vranckx's superb artwork for Arrow Video's special edition Blu (which every self respecting Cronenberg fan should have on their shelf next to the Criterion Videodrome dvd). Another beautiful likeness of Nicki Brand, and I love that illustration of Barry Convex coming apart!

Ok, that's it for now you Cronenfreaks. Next time: THE DEAD ZONE and THE FLY!

*It's still the definitive read on the subject. Among other things, it thoroughly debunks the myth that black market snuff is anything more than an urban legend.

**Just a personal note: I won't watch any of that stuff. Never have, never will. The evening news already takes enough of an emotional toll on me. To quote Barry Convex, I just can't cope with the freaky stuff.

The Mark Of The Vampire

I'm three years into treatment for lymphoma (chemo, radiation and the rest), and I'm just emerging now from a particularly nasty few months of heavy chemo and a stem cell transplant. My strength is just starting to return, and it feels great. All this shit has kept me from writing as much as I'd like to recently, and I'm hoping to start posting more frequently again until my next round of treatment begins.

I want to show off a gory bit of medical tech that I had to wear around for a couple of days recently. It's called a Vas Cath, or central venous catheter. It's a "port" that is stitched into the neck and connected to an access tube that runs directly into the Jugular Vein, on down through the Superior Vena Cava and into the heart. In spite of the fact that it sucked having it in, a perverse part of my sci-fi horror lovin' mind couldn't help but appreciate it's similarity to some cool biomechanical imagery in some of my favourite flicks:

unfortunate Max Renn's Videodrome-tumour induced episode of a gun assimilating itself into his "old flesh" via a series of gorily tunneling conduits...


... and even more so, the disgusting Harkonnen "heart plugs" from Lynch's Dune.


Finally, much to my amusement, after having the device removed, my doctor described the hole left in my neck as "the mark of the Vampire". Groovy.

INTERZONE DISPATCHES: Report #2

MAX... I'm so glad you came to me. I've been through it all myself you see.

The hallucinations, the headaches, the uncertainty. It won't go away, but it will get easier if you stop resisting and accept that this is your new reality now. However, you'll have to learn to live in a very strange new world...

Let's take a look at some examples of contemporary art and design that are obviously influenced by the works of David Cronenberg. That the ideas he first postulated in Shivers are still having such an influence on the arts 35 years later is interesting. Is it a testament to the depth and richness of his vision? Or are artists cribbing from Cronenberg for a more superficial reason, namely that the imagery in his films is so fetishistically pleasing? I'll leave that up to you to decide...



CATHODE RAY MISSION


This was a group exhibition of video art held at the Waterside Project Space, a new gallery in East London. It was set up to resemble the interior of the Mission from Videodrome, quite an ingenious gimmick for a video installation. In the gallery's own words:

Cathode Ray Mission creates a fictional environment in which to display artists' video. With its technologically redundant display equipment, ad-hoc office architecture and low-budget aesthetics, the strategy stands in opposition to the mundane, yet readily available, platforms for exhibition.

Website HERE

TECHNOLOGY MADE FLESH

The images of TVs, VHS cassettes, typewriters, gaming consoles etc, transforming into living organisms - complete with veins, umbilical cords and entrails - are some of the most unsettling and memorable in Cronenberg's films:















... and in reverse - Flesh transforms into technology in eXistenZ:



MIO IIZAWA'S MECHANICAL TUMOR

Here we have a computer with a tumorous organ seemingly growing from it, the tumor actually serving a functional purpose (see Videodrome). Japanese artist Mio Iizawa's Mechanical Tumor uses internal motors and pneumatic actuators to graphically react to the demands placed on the computer's CPU. The tumor pulses and grows when more programs and utilities are being run.




BAR-RECTUM


Joep van Lieshout is a dutch designer/artist who creates works (through his Rotterdam based firm Atelier Van Lieshout) that are simultaneously art, design and functional architecture. His description of the fully functional "Arsch Bar" in Vienna, Austria:

BarRectum, Arsch Bar, Asshole Bar, Bar Anus. While the translations sound different, the form is universally recognizable. The bar takes its shape from the human digestive system: starting with the tongue, continuing to the stomach, moving through the small and the large intestines and exiting through the anus. While BarRectum is anatomically correct, the last part of the large intestine has been inflated to a humongous size to hold as many drinking customers at the bar as possible. The anus itself is part of a large door that doubles as an emergency exit.


A browse through AVL's website reveals many more works that are undeniably Cronenbergian in nature, including some giant disembodied heads that are reminiscent of the artist Pierce's work in Scanners (seen in his studio).



INSECT EROTICISM

Another recurrent nightmare in Cronenberg's films is inter-species sex between humans and insects (although most obvious in The Fly & Naked Lunch, see also the insect-like gynecological instruments in Dead Ringers):






These French posters (below) for safe sex and AIDS awareness are reminiscent of the disturbing centipede rape in Naked Lunch as well as the Japanese Lunch poster. Not to mention that when Veronica is having sex with Seth after his trip through the Telepods, she's basically doing it with a giant fly. It's certainly not a stretch to imagine a French advertising company referencing Cronenberg, as he's more popular in France than anywhere else in the world. Just last year he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the highest decoration in France.





VIDEODROME

Finally, in April of this year Toronto's Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art used Videodrome for it's inspiration for a large scale audio/visual installation. It's well worth watching, as much of it is striking and provocative (using imagery from horror movies a few times to good effect).

INTERZONE DISPATCHES: Report #1

"You'll forgive me if I don't stay around to watch.

I just can't cope with the freaky stuff"

Over half a year into this blog, and the EYE is yet to cast it's baleful gaze sufficiently upon my favourite director... Mr. David Cronenberg. To remedy that I'm embarking on a series of reports dedicated to the Canadian Master. These reports are comprised of data gleaned from various covert sources of intelligence within the Zone and Annexia.

A WARNING that reading these will result in the development of tumors in the human cerebrum. If you read too much, you will feel these words coalesce, and become Flesh... uncontrollable Flesh.

I'll be looking at some recent examples of Cronenbergian influence & references in art, design and popular culture. I'll also be uploading a few of Cronenberg's rare short films for download. No, not Transfer, From The Drain, Stereo or Crimes Of The Future (the latter two of which have been easily available for a while now on Blue Underground's excellent Fast Company DVD). Rather, some of his early genre TV work, made at the same time that he was crafting his seminal shockers, Shivers and Rabid. These will be pretty rare to most people.

So keep watching here on CIVIC TV (Channel 83, Cable 12).

First up let's take a look at Cronenberg's short film Camera, commissioned by the Toronto International Film Fest in 2000 to celebrate it's 25th anniversary. Made just after eXistenZ, this brilliant and beautifully crafted short shares that film's connection to Videodrome in it's exploration of the Media's ability to transform the psyche, and through that, the body. Again technology is given "life" (though here it's less overtly organic). We've seen TVs, videotapes, typewriters and game consoles take on a malevolent life of their own. Now the camera itself becomes the antagonist.

It's pretty obvious that Cronenberg had Videodrome on the brain (pun intended) again at this period of his career, when Camera's human protagonist relates a nightmare he had:

"it was the movie that was doing it. I had caught some kind of disease from the movie... and it was making me grow old... bringing me closer and closer... to death."

And it's the protagonist of this little film that really makes it work. Cronenberg has a habit of sticking with actors he likes, which has resulted in some fascinating lesser-knowns turning up repeatedly in his movies to great effect (see Robert A. Silverman: Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Naked Lunch & eXistenZ). To that end, here he wisely chose veteran Canadian character actor Leslie Carlson, with whom he'd worked on three previous films. They'd collaborated before on The Fly & The Dead Zone - but most famously on Videodrome, where Carlson memorably portrayed the sleazy, sinister Barry Convex. Also of note to fans of Canadian genre film, Carlson began his career in two Canuck horror classics, Bob Clark's Black Christmas & Alan Ormsby's Deranged (above right).

In this little film he gives it his all (and that's a considerable amount), and his performance is memorable and emotionally affecting. Pretty amazing, given the film's brief running time of only six minutes. In fact, it's surprising how profound & moving this little piece is - an obvious testament to Cronenberg's brilliance and Carlson's skills. Please download the short below, it's a really nice quality AVI at about 100MB. And remember, your reality is already half video hallucination. If you're not careful, it will become total hallucination. The tumor is growing.

CAMERA

Insect Politician

David Cronenberg is 67 today.

This is an appropriate time to mention my favourite auteur, as I can't think of a better expression of his idea of the New Flesh than the visceral processes of procreation and childbirth (Other examples that spring to mind are the changes wrought upon the body due to cancer, and the increasingly mundane use of body-modification to transform ourselves in ever more bizarre ways).

Birth (and rebirth) is present in so many of Cronenberg's films: Nola Carveth giving life to her inner rage through the miracle of Psychoplasmic therapy. Tom Stall's reemergence as a new man - a hybrid of his two formerly separate identities. Unfortunate Seth Brundle, enduring his agonising journey of death and renewal that could be said to be three distinct rebirths: first as super-human, then as something less than human and finally as something utterly non-human.

The twitchy president of CIVIC-TV and a pair of brilliant twin gynecologists - all of these characters and more have been put through the wringer by Mr. Cronenberg and have come out the other side... changed. They're all here tonight at David's party, looking haunted and traumatised. It's not a very happy gathering, but it is the most fascinating and exciting party in town. So whether your poison is bug powder, Mugwump jism or the black meat; raise your glass and drink:

LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH! LONG LIVE DAVID CRONENBERG!

My Year As Seth Brundle

Well, here I am writing my second post almost a year after the first and on the first day of a new decade. My ambitions for this blog fell by the wayside when I found myself in the midst of my very own Cronenbergian body horror nightmare (aka cancer) and it's various delightful treatments.

Cronenberg has been my most loved director for as long as I can remember, and I've always been fascinated by the physical transformation and metamorphosis in his best films: The Fly and Videodrome. So it was with a perverse sense of satisfaction and familiarity that I watched clumps of my own hair fall out, my nails deform, my mouth ulcerate, my skin burn and blacken. Looking at my hair lying on the bathroom floor would often trigger thoughts of the Brundle Museum Of Natural History and it's various disgusting and mysterious artifacts. Sometimes I'd imagine the hard, lumpy tumours I could feel bulging under my skin bursting violently out of me like the masses of New Flesh exploding through Barry Convex's ruined and rended face.

I'm not officially in remission yet, but my treatment is over for now, and it's time for me to get back to the unfinished horror business of this here neglected blog. So, if you're interested in the cinema of the bizarre & fantastic, but crave a perspective on it that differs from that of the typical mainstream, I'd love to have you along for the ride. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!