During the rise of the state hospital system, tens of thousands of patients with schizophrenia, severe bipolar, and other (at the time) seemingly untreatable mental disorders were abandoned by their families to spend the rest of their lives in the back wards of public mental institutions. The only physical memorial that stands to the plight of these forgotten souls are the thousands of brass urns filled with the unclaimed ashes of society's mistakes. These urns are currently stored in a building at the Oregon State Hospital. David Maisel’s large-scale photographs display the copper canisters that hold these ashes. The Oregon State Hospital, in Salem, inaugurated as the Oregon State Insane Asylum in 1883, stored the remains of over 5000 people in canisters in an underground vault in the mid-1970s. The vault flooded repeatedly, and the canisters—some containing unclaimed remains more than a 100 years old—underwent spectacular processes of deterioration. Maisel writes of his work: “The copper canisters have a handmade quality; they are at turns burnished or dull; corrosion blooms wildly from the leaden seams and across the surfaces of many of the cans. Numbers are stamped into each lid; the lowest number is 01, and the highest is 5,118. The vestiges of paper labels with the names of the dead, the etching of the copper, and the intensely hued colors of the blooming minerals combine to individuate the canisters. These deformations sometimes evoke the celestial — the Northern Lights, the moons of some alien planet, or constellations in the night sky.” David Maisel’s Library of Dust is the subject of a large-scaled monograph released by Chronicle Books in 2008.
this is officially my new favorite resource. "It documents the earliest and the latest manifestations of the belief in witchcraft as well as its geographical boundaries, and elaborates this history with works on canon law, the Inquisition, torture, demonology, trial testimony, and narratives. Most importantly, the collection focuses on witchcraft not as folklore or anthropology, but as theology and as religious heresy."
i will be going through it piece by piece until i've picked it clean... and then likely dive back in for a more detailed account. i promise to offer up bits and pieces along the way. ...in the meantime here is a quick mix i made with respect to witches and magic makers to hold you over until i finish some larger projects.
anti-anxiety spell... even though jung is often discredited in psych community because of his association with the analysts, as well as his more esoteric ideas on the collective unconscious, he is still considered one of the more brilliant individuals to have ever lived and many of his ideas are integral to modern theory, culture, and critique... he had a lot to say on the importance of dreams, art and mysticism and their value in combination with logical positivism... dreams, art and mythology are some of many good means of confrontation and alleviation of anxiety built up through schemas of thought and role conflict... i personally find that anything that involves ritualism, chanting, repetition, confrontation, and a lack of overall seriousness helps me quite measurably. its kind of about immersion... so it's best to watch it close up, full screen, with the volume up... whenever you watch it, watch it all the way through to the end, it gets less overwhelming as it goes along... and try and watch it in a dark room at least once a day for a week or two. ...so, i hope this helps you in some way... (it's made up of several audio and video sources i mixed together... some of them produced by me, some of them appropriated and highly processed and distorted... fire, zombies, children, chanting, rhythm... )
Hoodoo Your Love 2010 dimensions variable "Who Do You Love" 45 RPM record by Bo Diddley, beeswax, wick, jar, honey, binding spell, orris root, rose petals, coriander seed, witch grass & cumin seed. and a mixtape of hers... "you can take it with you" harmonic spheres: work and mixtape by anne jordan regan
anybody who's anybody is a busybody everybody. as evidenced in the plethora of mediums Maximilla Lukacs' work shows up in. good stuff all around, but i'm particularly taken by these two videos at present... the first because it reminds me of the intro to the wonder years via my childhood (read as: small town punk rocker with nothing to do)... the second (done for her boyfriend Guy Blakesle's Entrance Band) because it feels like a psyched out Maya Daren treatment of sorts...
most of what she does are shot for shot remakes of well known experimental awesomeness... but she grabs from good places, and if Tarentino can make a career of it, why not someone more attractive? pajo-where eagles dare mp3 the entrance band-grim reaper blues mp3
