3 posts tagged “art”

Last night, a friend of mine who works for a local independent record company took me to a little bar named after everyone’s favorite hallucinogen, Peyote. (The continuing European obsession with Native Americans as noble savages extends to Istanbul as well. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just spend some time wandering around the leftist, student quarters of large European cities and you will find shops selling dream catchers and other posters of wolves and Native American inspired smoking pipes. The idealized N.A. also fits into an environmentalist/pre-modern fantasy that is common among some European circles. Now here’s an Orientalism even Asians can enjoy. For the US version, please let me refer you to a Dinosaur Comics from earlier this week.)

Anyway, upstairs at Peyote, I was treated to a show by some really great musicians exploring the harder side of Turkish indie. The band, Nekropsi, struck me as similar to good Pinback recordings, but without the vocals. Their playing was even tighter than Pinback’s, and I wouldn’t doubt it if some of them had been classically trained.

As the effects of Peyote’s elixir set in (for me, this was Gusta beer), I imagined myself adding vocals over the music. In my tipsy mind, it seemed like a good idea. But I often have reveries of singing with a band. However, an hour into the show the music began to seem a little repetitive (b/c my voice was missing?), and the cloud of smoke in the small got increasingly thicker.

Nevertheless, I am glad my friend took me out. As a pre-show treat, she took me to the opening party for ResFest Istanbul, where I got to pre-drink and see some really good digital film with a DJ playing sweet tracks. Ah, the salad days, may they never end!

Against my better judgment, I have bought a ridiculous number of tickets for the !F festival. But so far I haven’t regretted it. On Saturday, I saw three films, including the touchingly rendered and exquisitely shot Zoo, which premiered at the last Sundance. Zoo is a documentary retelling of the people involved in the farm in Washington State where a man was killed after being penetrated by a horse in 2005 (see this article from Seattle’s The Stranger). Admittedly, I was drawn to this film for the gross-out factor. But it was a feast for the eyes, with night shots of orchards in bloom and majestic mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

Perhaps the film I am most excited about plays tomorrow: My Winnipeg by Guy Madden. I was won over to Madden with his silent film Cowards Bend the Knee, which I watched three times in one day last year. All in all, I am scheduled to see eight films over the course of the week. It’s so much fun, especially because I almost never visit the cinema in Philadelphia. I will also be fun to go to the queer party sponsored by the festival on Friday. It is being DJ-ed by the venerable Lady Miss Kier, who sang for Dee-Lite in the 90s. Groove will indeed be in the heart this weekend.

My adopted Turkish sister and almost look-alike (if you really need glasses) is the director of !F, the coolest film festival in Turkey. !F is the abbreviation for the Istanbul International Independent Film Festival, and it starts today. Tonight I am going to see the new David Lynch film with a friend before heading to the festival opening party. My friend pointed out that Lynch’s films have been getting crazier and crazier over the years, so we can’t expect this one to make a lick of sense.

I accept the fact that Inland Empire will most likely be a bunch of shots of Laura Dern looking deranged, intercut with flowing velvet curtains and accompanied by molasses-slow atonal acid jazz. But isn’t this the whole reason for going? I don’t care so much if there is a discernable story as long as I leave with a creepy feeling.

I will admit that Lynch’s unquestioning support of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his cult transcendental meditation organization makes me love him a little less. I mean, if I had the time to just meditate and film creepy shit, I think I would be supporting people like Anna Politkovskaya and Arundhati Roy rather than the Beatles’ old guru who runs his organization like a bad-manimal-Rescaper (see the book listed at the right by Keller Easterling for a chapter on the spatial projects of the TM organization.)