this is not a dream...
"this scenario is not the story of a dream and does not profess to be such; and i shall not try to justify its incoherence by the simple device of labelling it a dream." (antonin artaud, preface to the shell and the clergyman, 1930)
one of the strangest RPPCs i own. it looks a bit like two hillbillies in an early surrealist film still. the strange white lines seem like visible liquid electricity. the white glows, connected to early spirit photographs. the scenario, some pagan ritual in a dumpy urban apartment - film noir meets michaux and artaud's darkness. it certainly has the hallucinatory feel of a dream state. i have no idea what the hell is going on here...
Labels: artaud, ghosts, RPPC, spirits, strange photos, surrealism
5 Comments:
OK - I can also see 2 or 3 dogs. There is one under the table looking at us, while the guy on the left seems to have one in front of him that looks like our shih tzu (only blurry) and maybe another in his left hand. They almost look too well dressed for hill billies - leftie has some braces on and there is another jacket hung on the wall. What are the picture though - lots of them all over the walls. Clients?
Jeremy
Yeah, I was wondering when you would post this insane and wonderful image - I spotted it on your flickr page some time back and *loved* it immediately! It's such a bizarre and generative image - almost fuel for a Coen Brothers film... I agree, they do seem a bit too well dressed for active hillbillies, but they both could certainly have their roots in such a past... Isn't that a dancer on the wall behind? Is this from New Orleans? I think they are "experimental" photographers by night and bookies by day, or vice versa....
yeah, this one is completely nuts. inside the white line area where the "dog" is supposedly hiding i see a duck's face on the right side, which is probably a book, but there are so many strange things in the photo - the guy i think looks a bit like stan laurel, what the hell is he holding and doing? and the white lines are not stains on the paper, they're part of the negative... nuts nuts nuts!
I love this picture too, as well as the notion of surrealist hillbillies.
It's hard to say what's going on here, but on a technical note, those types of lines can be caused by electro-static charges in a film holder.
I like the relation to Artaud. It also is remniscent of when he received electric shock treatment. That's what came to my mind when i first saw this tagged as Artaud anyway.
Great photo though.
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