El gusto del infinito

15 August 2010 • out of context
tags: books, dreams, drugs, existence, fantasy, hallucinations, imagination, nature, perception, quotes, senses

“Este señor visible de la naturaleza visible (hablo del hombre) ha querido, pues, crear el paraíso mediante la farmacia, mediante las bebidas fermentadas, tal un maníaco que reemplazara muebles sólidos y jardines reales por decorados pintados en tela y montados sobre bastidores”.

Los paraisos artificiales by Baudelaire

Haunted Mind

3 August 2010 • outer
tags: documentaries, earth, electricity, hallucinations, nature, perception

“Broadcaster Don Hill saw and felt a chilling apparition in the basement of his house. The house had reportedly been haunted for years, driving out many occupants. A four-year odyssey to discover the truth behind the ghostly encounters turned up some startling new science which suggests that weak electromagnetic fields, naturally occurring in the environment, are responsible for stimulating mystical experiences, UFO reports and especially, ghostly entities and poltergeist phenomena.”

This quote talks about a documentary entitled Haunted House, Haunted Mind that I haven’t watch. I”m not interested in ghosts, UFOs and paranormal phenomena, but I’m interested in electromagnetic fields and mystical experiences, so maybe it’s worth to remember this film.

Tsuyu

22 July 2010 • out of context
tags: earth, nature, rain, weather

Tsuyu = 梅雨
梅 (plum) + 雨 (rain) [plums ripen when it starts to rain at the end of the spring, and then it follows 40 rainy days].

“The East Asian rainy season (…) is the frontal precipitation caused by a front, a persistent east-west zone of disturbed weather during spring which is quasi-stationary and stretches from the east China coast, across Taiwan, and eastward into the southern peninsula of South Korea and Japan.”

I find out about Tsuyu at The Japan Photo Project Blog.

Sitting with crossed legs

13 June 2010 • out of context
tags: articles, books, civilization, mankind, nature, texts, walking

“When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them —as if legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon— I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.”

Walking by Henry David Thoreau

No such thing as human nature

20 May 2010 • out of context
tags: books, cinema, mankind, nature, quotes, science, texts, water

“Science has proven that there’s no such thing as “human nature”. Just as water takes the shape of its container, so human nature is relative to its past and present conditioning.”

Expended Cinema by Gene Youngblood

Crossing the Great Sagrada (1924)

21 April 2010 • watchings
tags: cinema, civilization, comedy, documentaries, fantasy, fiction, found footage, humour, imagination, mankind, nature

Adrian Brunel
Original: 35mm, black and white, silent.

Crossing the Great Sagrada is a strange film with an odd sense of humour and a slightly postmodern feeling. It’s not a masterpiece, but in a sense it’s decades ahead of its time.

“(…) this journey is portrayed in an absurd manner, drawing attention to the artificial nature of the film. (…) Titles, intended to provide narrative orientation, constantly give conflicting information, producing a confused, comic effect. (…) Crossing the Great Sagrada satirises the colonial stereotype of ‘native’ people. It also places doubt upon the authenticity of many of these travel films (…) The film’s surreal humour prefigures that of later innovative British comedy, such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

Jamie Sexton

Watchings

16 April 2010 • watchings
tags: animals, capitalism, cinema, consumism, documentaries, economy, found footage, humour, nature, politics, television, tv series, vampires, video

• Simplicité volontaire et décroissance (2007) [watch]
Jean-Claude Decourt

• The IT Crowd. Series 1-3 (2006-2008)

• Full Frontal (2002)
Steven Soderbergh

• Innocent Blood (1992)
John Landis

• Footprints (1992)
Bill Morrison

• The Bats (1998)
Jim Trainor

• C’mon Babe (1988)
Sharon Sandusky

• Swamp (1971)
Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson

• Hyas et sténorinques (1927)
Jean Painlevé

• Science Friction (1959)
Stan Vanderbeek

• Historia Naturae (Suita) (1967)
Jan Svankmajer

• Crossing the Great Sagrada (1924)
Adrian Brunel

• Supermâché, aire de pique-nique (2008)
Laurent Sfar & Jean Guillaud