Sunday 25 October 2009
Saturday 24 October 2009
[The illumination][ Krzysztof Zanussi]
Krzysztof Zanussi, Poland 1973, 87 min
A student of physics searches for solid scientific paradigms and, ultimately, metaphysical explanations, eventually realizing that the state of mind suggested by the title will prove elusive. Combining elements of fiction and documentary, this film-essay puts the impossible ideal of philosophical illumination in confrontation with the clichés of everyday life, utilizing a shocking and extraordinary form.
[Godardski]
Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s Through and Through (Na Wylot, 1972), was one of the most challenging films, particularly since both the setting and narrative sense of the events portrayed in the film only become clear at the end. According to Ronduda, who introduced the film, this is because Królikiewicz was one of the few Polish directors who was also a film theorist and based his films on a specific theoretical understanding of cinematic perception. His conception of cinematic perception is an existential and ethical one, essentially grounded on the idea that human experience is based on the construction of order out of chaotic and fleeting perceptions.
[Screen Memories from Eastern Europe]
The 5th European Psychoanalytic Film Festival is about to kick of with a list of speakers that would pop your eyeballs. Notably the film theorist Laura Mulvey who has attended ever since the first one in 2001. The programme is intense and the registration fee is for serious fans only but the film schedule is packed full of rare and hard to find titles.
Established in 2001 and held every two years, the event is a unique forum for dialogue between psychoanalysts, film makers, academics, critics and the public. It is organised by the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Established in 2001 and held every two years, the event is a unique forum for dialogue between psychoanalysts, film makers, academics, critics and the public. It is organised by the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Some of the films that will be shown include;
This year's theme is Screen Memories Eastern Europe which makes us all at Panopticum shudder with anticipation.
Venue: BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9LN
Dates: 29 November - 1st October
[Ms De la Pasture as our Muse]
This woman is the inspiration for our Delafield Lace Dress.
She was an author born in 1890 and epitomised
Victorian chic.
[Apocalyptic Times]
We miss good interviews with Zizek. Here is a pretty amazing one from a couple years ago by the Guardian. For real fans, go into your diaries and write the 24th of November as your day off. Zizek is speaking for free at Birkbeck. Currently touring his new book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce , Zizek will be doing a few talks in London. Panopticum is delighted to see Zizek has launched a new website too.
Hurray
Friday 23 October 2009
[Gothic Fiction]
PANOPTICUM has always adored subtle gothic vibes. Every now and again, this sensibility emerges and engulfs us into a frenzy of work. Goth style will never die it seems. A new fiction book has been brought to my attention which has made all these feelings of goth lust swell up. Gothy, moody and brilliantly clever, Audrey Niffeneggerhas blown us away with her new book Her Fearful Symmetry
When I discovered that she is also a painter we all toppled over with jealousy for her talent. Here is a review of her paintings in the Chicago Time Out. Beautifully titled project called 'Elegy for Isabella Blow'
When she is in London you can find her doing free walks and tours of Highgate
Cemetery.
We love it.
[Rodarte - Sweet Success]
The Rodarte sisters have a truly inspiring
story best captured in this
gothy elusive little interview.
The way they work together is so
anti fashion, anti establishment.
Most mornings, Kate and Laura Mulleavy wake up in their parents’ home, kiss
their mother goodbye at the door and head out to work. When they get to the Starbucks in downtown Los Angeles, they order the same thing. The sisters then head to their design studio, where they sit across from each other at a wide work table, and when the design process becomes intense, they pull out a thin fabric partition to signal that they shouldn’t be disturbed.
As usual in the rag trade, fame has arrived well ahead of fortune and commercial success for the little house of Rodarte. After eight seasons of collections, the sisters’ label is dining on buzz, which the Mulleavys are counting on to tide them over until their evening-dress business reaches critical mass. There’s industry pressure to turn them into a bankable brand—the sisters were among the designers Gap asked to create limited-edition white shirts in 2007, and last year Vogue approached the pair with a four-month regimen intended to help them, in Vogue’s terms, “learn good habits.” They lost a combined 50 pounds. Despite all the attention, the women are an unwavering and united sister act.
Rodarte’s dresses are a gothy art-school tribute to the couture method. Russian ballerina costumes spiked with a downtown edge, festooned with tissue-thin layers of mussed-up chiffon, embellished with silk tulle and worn with shredded, spiderweb tights and stiletto sandals. Linda Fargo, women’s fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman, remembers an early Rodarte show in September 2006 where the audience fell silent. “It was like ‘run don’t walk’ to get a closer look at these beautiful dresses that were so romantic and original,” she says.
Kate, now 30, and Laura, 28, grew up in the San Francisco area, and later Pasadena, under the wings of intellectual and free-spirited parents, whom they still regard as their best friends. William, their dad, is a former botanist and professor who specialized in fungi. A licensed pilot, he took his daughters flying on the weekends, and his photographs of spores have been the inspiration for certain Rodarte printed fabrics. Rodarte is the maiden name of his wife, Victoria, an artist who made Navajo weavings and taught her daughters to sew.
Bookish and outdoorsy, Kate and Laura were inseparable growing up. In 2001, after graduating with liberal arts degrees from their dad’s alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, they moved back to their parents’ 1940s-style cottage bungalow, and began mapping out their fashion future. They scraped together about $20,000 in seed money: Kate sold off her prized vintage record collection, 25 milk crates full of rare jazz and rock albums dating back to the 1930s; Laura saved her salary and tips from waitressing at a neighborhood restaurant.
[Wendy Bevan] [Polaroid Chic]
Wendy Bevan has captured my interest ever
since I first hit the London fashion magazine
circuit. She has a sublime sense of heavy
texture and a emotional gloss over her
images. This talent must be celebrated..
See her efforts manifest at this beautiful
play showing at the Hackney Empire
today and tomorrow LULU
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- is a self-styled parallel miniature universe of fashion. Carefully designed and skilfully finished in a little studio in Hackney and made in one of the first Fair Trade workshops in Poland.All items are made in short runs and 50% of fabrics used are from vintage hard to find stocks.