Mashinka Firunts | News

Jeremy Orchestrates New Voices Inaugural Reading

2008-07-22T18:10:00.001-07:00

News Bulletin
July 23, 2008 - Mister Jeremy James Thompson to orchestrate "New Voices" inaugural reading at the Center for Book Arts.

The players:
Jen Bervin
Bronwyn Carlton
Marie Carter
Barbara Henry
Paolo Javier
Evan Kennedy
Ryan Murphy
Kyle Schlesinger

The details:
WHEN: Wednesday, July 23rd, 6:30pm
WHERE: The Center for Book Arts, 28 W. 27th St. 3rd Floor, New York
HOW (much): SUGGESTED admission $10/ $5 CBA Members

Every True Religion is Bound To Fail

2008-07-22T18:05:00.001-07:00

June 2008: Mister Jeremy James Thompson produces a broadside for Mister Charles Bernstein's Every True Religion Is Bound To Fail, in conjunction with his reading at the Center for Book Arts. An annotational exquisite corpse, it was created through the collaborative involvement of five poets and academics; Walter K. Lew, Dillon Westbrook, J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden, Blake Butler, and William Moor. July 2008: The broadside makes its long awaited Autotypist appearance. (Click To View)

Photographic Illustrations for an Aural-Literary Spectacular

2008-06-17T23:15:00.000-07:00

The photographs below will accompany a new section of the website on the historical framework and contemporary recuperation/reconfiguration of radio drama. It will also include excerpts from my own aural-literary spectaculars, including Tales of Doom From the Boom Boom Room: The Mystery of Fraulein Franziska and the Dance of the Seventeen Fabric Samples.

Fits of Depression on May 31st

2008-05-27T16:08:00.001-07:00

I'll be performing a live stockbroker-suicide-fashion-show radio drama at this event, May 31st at the Pussycat Lounge:

Lucas Lanthier (from Dances of Vice) will be co-hosting (along with Retch Dempsey and Jeremy James Thompson) a Depression-era nightclub night called "Fits of Depression", and it will be thoroughly Crash of '29-ish.

SEE the soup kitchen!
HEAR the '30s jazz!
SMELL the smoke from the flash cameras!
TASTE the acrid flavor of radio waves!
TOUCH the dime in your pocket and be glad you have it... unlike some poor bastards.

Dress code is "Down On Your Luck". Actual New York bums will be on hand to give financial advice on how to live cheap.

Additional sloganeering:

-It's your favorite Rock-Bottom Dollar Dance Party!
-You can meet people, but you can't make ends meet!
-Where a penny for your thoughts is too much!
-A social club for dime-store dames and chintzy chaps!
-A penny-pinching easy-speaking gathering, for loafers, slackers, layabouts & tramps.
-Today: Pussy Cat Lounge Tomorrow: Alley Cat Lounge
-Come dance "The Dollar Drop" it's the latest thing.

We welcome the Suicidal Sons of Wall Street, the Formerly Middle Class Mother's Assoc., the Veterans of Past Depressions, and all you homeless of the future!

In Review: Foreign Affairs Edition No. 2 5.13

2008-05-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

Daniel Isengart – a showman and impresario so skilled at his trade he could doubtlessly charm a snake with a single fiber from his fedora and a Weillian melody – unveiled the newest edition of Foreign Affairs at Corio’s Supper Club on May 13th. As indicated by the subtitle Postmodern Cabaret and Transnational Lounge, the event seems in part a response to the distinctly 21st century conditions of the instability of national identity and the prevalence of the geographically displaced person.

The roster of performances constituted several transatlantic aural flights from Germany to New York City with several layovers in France. Sporting an ensemble at once suggesting that he could have emerged from the narrative of Die Dreigroschenoper or a warehouse situated in the heart of Berlin, Isengart offered the audience a serenade that shifted from dulcet to quasi-industrial in tone as seamlessly as it did from English to German.

Nicole Renaud’s francophonic offerings delivered on the accordion were visually accompanied by the sight of her signature sparkling petticoat and its strands of white light sewn into the seams. Amber Ray, burlesque artist and chanteuse outfitted in a smart, periwinkle PVC suitdress, performed “Whatever Lola Wants” with the slight modification of “Whatever Amber Wants.” She carried herself with the demeanor of a lady who is assured that at any given moment, should she utter the words Anybody got a match?, Corio’s would be alight with flame as each audience member speedily fumbled for a lighter.

In its original incarnation, Foreign Affairs was housed in Canal Chapter, an alternative collective loft space situated in Soho. By contrast, Corio’s Supper Club boasts an aesthetic marked by plush lounging divans upholstered in chartreuse velvet, antique cherubic wallpaper c. 1960, and a prix fixe dinner priced at 40 dollars per person. It boasts celebrity clientele of the likes of The Strokes and $13 Gypsy Rose Lee Appleton rum cocktails.

The spectacle, itself, remained nothing short of spectacular in its second incarnation. In the longstanding tradition of kabarett, it served as a forgetting potion for the seated spectators, enabling the erasure from memory of such catastrophic realities as the incipient recession and death tolls of the recent earthquake in China’s Sichuan province. In stark contradistinction to Foreign Affairs no. 1, however, this particular potion was purveyed in a decidedly exclusive apothecary. Lamentably, the atmosphere and crowd of attendees underwent the same sort of metamorphosis one imagines the Bauhaus might have undergone upon its move from Weimar to Dessau. It was recently reported that the event was once again going underground in search of a more suitable location, and one dares say that a considerable sum of cabaret connoisseurs await the appearance of Foreign Affairs edition no. 3.

In Review: The Maestrosities Open Fly Cabaret 5.5

2008-05-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

Resetting the New York vaudeville circuit to high voltage, the Maestrosities musical ensemble and comedy troupe inaugurated what is to be their monthly cabaret on May 5th at the Zipper Factory, whilst simultaneously celebrating their first birthday. In spite of the assorted and enchanting medley of offerings throughout the evening, most prominently displayed in this droll odditorium of objets de consommation visuelle were the identities of the individual Maestrosities themselves.

(A selection of) the players:
Deirdre (Jenny Lee Mitchell), a proper British finishing school primrose in cat eye spectacles, soon begins to crack in the fashion of three coats of lip varnish left applied overnight - her neuroses exposed in impromptu, angelically crooned aria. Princess Penny (Gina Samardge), a petite prima donna in pink crinolines, oscillates between an embrace of her pre-pubescent persona and an awkward attempt to twirl the tassels of pasties affixed to her accordion. The Maestro (David Gochfeld), attempts with varying degrees of success to “conduct” his Maestrosities in spite of his markedly milquetoast mannerisms.

The scene:
Eight ukuleles leap daringly from the hands of one Maestrosity into another in a dizzying delivery of pas de trois juggling. Mostly razor-sharp swords perform soaring summersaults in the air. Liquor bottles are coaxed from previously empty brown bags by an inebriate magician. The grand finale - which doubles as the most sensational piece of performance art I have personally witnessed since Anita Berber’s 1916 appearance at Bluethner Hall – subverts both gravity and dominant paradigms in one fell, sequined swoop. Conceptual burlesque spectacularist Julie Atlas Muz performs a striptease - not upon her own person, but upon that of the Maestro – at the conclusion of which he is left standing on the stage in neon red-light-district boxer shorts, ankle garters, and trouser socks. She then removes her own underthings and lowers herself down upon the Maestrosities’ birthday cake. Following her performance of an exceptionally masterful bump and grind atop it, she proceeds to wrap her fingertips around the Maestro’s cranium, pull him toward her pelvic bone, and permit him to consume the frosted, vanilla flavoured confection from betwixt her thighs.

Musical medleys seamlessly weave together Material Girl, operatic numbers, and early 20th century standards. Costuming is a mélange of intentionally ill-tailored1970s spring formal wear, neon nineteen eighties Madonna music video attire, and Cotton Club crooner chic. Colloquial jargon sways back and forth between jazz age speakeasy slang, sixties bebop terminology, and a 21st century abbreviated vernacular in the span of a single sentence. The Maestrosities are aptly named. Nowhere else is there available for viewing so exceptionally crafted and idiosyncratic a display of self-assembled animate anomalies under the roof of a single odditorium.

In Review: Dances of ViceTribute to Die Dreigroschenoper

2008-05-01T11:26:00.001-07:00

Were a saloonkeeper to 1) combine pages from a historical textbook dedicated to the 1880s-1940s, six tons of sixteen-inch corsetry, and one tablespoon full of comely Weilian cabaret ditties, 2) swirl them about in a Boston Shaker filled halfway with bowties of every stripe and polka-dot, and 3) strain them through the socio-cultural narratives of the 21st century into a den of proverbial decadence situated in Park Slope; the result would bear no small resemblance to the animate aesthetic cocktail constituted by the Dances of Vice Tribute to Die Dreigroschenoper.

The throng of anachronistic attendees was a concoction made up of nearly equal parts Victorian tophat, Art Deco cloche with bakelite button detail, and feathered nineteen forties fascinator (peppered with the occasional Brooklynite straight-ironed, asymmetrical coiffure). In short, it was a crowd – and an evening – of many hats.

Dances of Vice's transgression of decade-demarcated boundaries wasn't confined to millinery. A statement emblazoned in bold on much of the event paraphernalia exclaims, We are not historical reconstructionists. As further testament to this, the roster of attractions-so-amazing-you-won't-believe-your-eyes -ladies-and-gentlemen encompassed visual culture of eras both Dickensian and Dot Parkeresque alike. Grandpa Musselman & His Syncopators - a sensationally skilled jazz repertory ensemble with a rendition of "Black and Tan Fantasy" to rival the Duke's - was among those to grace the makeshift Montauk Club stage. The irony implicit in a 21st century ensemble specializing in early 20th century jazz performing at an homage to an opera composed in 1928 yet set in turn-of-the-century England was highlighted in the following official announcement: And now presenting, Grandpa Musselman & His Syncopators: A Victorian-Friendly Jazz Band!

Venerated Weimar, New York virtuoso Isengart, clad in a becoming two-piece black velvet suit, recalled Joel Grey's 1972 performance in Cabaret as a 1930 Master of Ceremonies. His crooning of selections from The Threepenny Opera was so undeniably enchanting as to beguile an audience of entranced spectators to chant "Is-en-gart" and stomp t-strapped satin mary-jane pumps in unison until sated by an encore of "Mack the Knife."

Audio theater, a mass medium whose advent did not occur until 1921, was also incorporated. Messrs. Jeremy James Thompson and Lucas Lanthier intermittently offered sharp-as-varnished-nails announcements in the tone of old-time radio broadcasters on a Heil Classic Pro – a 2008 replica of an RCA 1930 studio microphone. In the latter half of the evening, I performed a radio drama entitled The Mystery of Fraulein Festkleid and the Dance of the Seventeen Fabric Samples.

On the second floor, a miniature World's Fair of vendors booths purveying bric-a-brac and bijoux was set up, including Cha Cha's House of Ill Repute, Molly Crabapple, Glittery Blue, and Ghost's Attic Marionettes.

In summation, it was an evening that could only have occurred against the plush setting of a postmodern 21st century New York cityscape. To reduce the variegated, century-spanning assortment of phenomena above to a late Victorian Sunday Social reenactment, or to ascribe to it a purist, historical authenticity which it seems to have no aspirations of, would be so grievous a gaucherie as describing a carefully crafted Violet Fizz as a puddle of gin, egg whites, and creme de violette melting in a highball glass.

Dances of Vice Tribute to Die Dreigroschenoper 4.26

2008-04-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, April 26th, I will be performing a live broadcast of an audio theatre piece I wrote in the mode of old-time radio drama at the Dances of Vice Tribute to the Three-Penny Opera. The event features the Weillian vocal stylings of Daniel Isengart and an exhibition of the photography of Adrian Buckmaster. The radio drama, entitled The Mystery of Fraulein Franziska Festkleid and the Dance of the Seven Fabric Samples, is an aural-literary striptease spectacular. I will have the distinct privilege of having live musical accompaniment provided by Grandpa Musselman and his Syncopators. Jeremy James Thompson and Lucas Lanthier will perform advertisements spots in "A Word From Our Sponsors" duing intermission.

OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION & DETAILS

This Saturday, April 26th (8PM), Dances of Vice collaborates with The Montauk Club to present an exclusive "Dark Victorian" evening at the venerated private Victorian clubhouse - The MONTAUK CLUB - featuring:

- the musical talents of cabaret sensation ISENGART and GRANDPA MUSSELMAN & His Syncopators in a spectacular tribute to The Threepenny Opera

- as well as a thrilling cabaret radio drama by the lovely and enigmatic MASHINKA FIRUNTS, entitled: The Mystery of Fraulein Franziska & the Dance of the Seven Fabric Samples!

- plus a Baron von Munchausen feature animation introducing the next Dances of Vice Festival by esteemed artist ADRIANO!

- and JEN ZAK's signature vintage Polaroid photo booth!

Dances of Vice is also pleased to feature the following fantastic vendors offering an exciting array of curiosities, art and fashions inspired by a forgotten era:

- CHA CHA's HOUSE OF ILL REPUTE: Beautiful Custom & Ready-made Vintage-inspired Fancy hats

- PUREVILE!: Original Oddities & Curiosities crafted from vintage & unique items

- MOLLY CRABAPPLE: Fine Art Illustrations & Dr. Sketchy's

- GLITTERY BLUE: Original Steampunk & Vintage Fashion Jewelry

- GHOST'S ATTIC: Hauntingly Beautiful Custom Marionettes, Dolls, & Poppets

- KENNETH KUDULIS: Vintage-inspired Photo-Paintings

The event is free to Montauk Club members, and $15 for non-members.
For details, please visit: http://www.dancesofvice.com/

NEWS FLASH:

Look for your picture in the most recent issue of SPIN Magazine, which spotlights the fashions at our previous festival in February 2008! The full spread can be accessed at the following link: http://community.livejournal.com/dancesofvicenyc/

Dances of Vice was also covered this month in the New York Times - the article can be read HERE.

Finally, stay tuned for information regarding the next Dances of Vice Festival, to take place from August 22-24, 2008, featuring live harpsichord and Baroque music, a historical costuming "fashion theatre", 18th century fencing demonstrations, art, and much more!

Columbia University

2008-04-15T19:11:00.001-07:00

Columbia University Butler Library c. 1934

I've been admitted for graduate study in the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in the Modern Art: Curatorial Studies MA programme. I intend to explore contemporary exhibition venues like Deitch Projects and Bricktops that have encouraged a model of spectatorship with alliances to turn-of-the-century World’s Fairs, cabarets, and other incarnations of late 19th and early 20th century visual culture. The chief concern of my studies will be the potential of quasi-carnivalesque spaces that engage play, participatory spectatorship, and stylized interior design to reconfigure the relationship of the viewing subject to the work as well as to the institution within which it is displayed.

The Collegiate Stomp & The Lindbergh Hop

2008-04-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

On April 1st, Jeremy returned from an excursion to Florida where he guest taught two courses at the University of Miami, graduate and undergraduate, respectively, on the theory and practice of self-publishing, bookbinding, and democratic media.

On April 3rd, a postcard he designed and printed entitled Some Never Never Lands showcasing sovereignties no longer extant was included in a set compiled, bound, and offered for sale by the New York Center For Book Arts at the 2008 Annual Benefit organized around the theme of travelogues, aeroplane adventuring, and transatlantic excursions.

Pratt Institute

2008-03-19T16:32:00.000-07:00

Pratt Institute Female Art Students c. 1890

I've been accepted for graduate study at the Pratt Institute in the dual-degree MFA Fine Arts/MS Art History program, and have been offered the maximum scholarship amount.

Of all the Pratt alumni luminaries listed in the official catalogue, I'm most charmed by the inclusion of William Boyer, designer of the classic Thunderbird automobile.

In Review: shadoWord, Parse Follies, and the Literary Spectacular

2008-03-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

Little Nemo in Slumberland, the comic strip creation of vaudeville performer Winsor McCay, features a miniature protagonist with a penchant for the spectacular. Nemo’s subconscious nightly bills him as the performer of such feats as stilt walking through an enchanted forest of oversized flamingoes, riding a circus elephant atop a bridge of jugglers’ pins, skyscraper Alpinism, and the derailing of railroad cars onto rollercoaster tracks. The nocturnal adventurer awakes each morning to discover that his journeys have been nothing more than the products of his subconscious mind’s meanderings, throughout which he has remained spatially confined to his bed. In spite of this regularly occurring discovery, reality is approximated with such vividness and precision in his dreams that Nemo continues to mistakenly believe himself to be traveling through actual time and space on each excursion to Slumberland.¹

When the comic strip debuted in the New York Herald in 1905, the construction of the visual consumer was in full throttle, fueled by increasingly persuasive and accurate methods of rendering reality.² Winsor McCay’s background of performance on the vaudeville circuit and his protagonist’s egregious fascination with popular visual culture of the period suggest a conceptualization of Nemo’s adventures in Slumberland as paradigmatic of this twentieth-century consumer’s experience with a spectacle so adept at simulating reality that, as is often the case with dreams, it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between the two. This expands upon the 19th-century model of the spectator, revising it into a near-somnolent subject for whom viewing constitutes a state of total physical and (conscious) psychical immobility, comparable to one experienced during sleep.³ The subsequent historical development of the apparatuses and industries associated with popular visual culture has functioned to produce manipulable, quasi-catatonic viewing subjects, and consequently equally inert social subjects.

Poets of the Unreeled: A CinePoetry and Performance Extravaganza offered an altogether different model of 21st century cinematic spectatorship and the viewing subject. Presented under the troupe name shadoWord productions, the cinepoetic spectacular was coordinated by impresario, University of Miami Professor, and Movietelling scholar, Walter K. Lew.⁴

Poets of the Unreeled seems to function as a sounding alarm to the somnolent viewing subject. An endeavor toward the rethinking of Movietelling and its implications for a 21st century audience, the Cinepoetic Extravaganza’s roster of performances was comprised of eight literary and visual artists dabbling in genres of every stripe and swiss dot. The event was executed over the course of two evenings on February 8th and 9th at Galapagos Art Space and the Bowery Poetry Club, respectively. Though remarkably eclectic in thematic content and subject matter, the pieces were bound by the marriage of text and projected image and the tacit invitation to audience members to re-examine their relationship to moving pictures on a screen through the superimposition of spoken dialogue that by turns explicated, elaborated upon, and complicated them. The evenings commenced with an introduction and brief theoretical framing of the genre by Lew. Contrary to what might be expected given the academic overtones of the event; the conceptual innovation and expert delivery of several of the performances (as well as the introductory speech) lent it the sort of entertainment value one might expect to find in a more orthodox motion picture palace. Gems included; dennis M. somera’s piece entitled WEstsiDESTROY, a fast-forward paragraph-a-second satirized retelling of West Side Story turned factual postcolonial narrative punctuated by intermittent vocalizing in falsetto, Dillon Westbrook’s Long Life, a pulsing live drum performance with images of such 20th Century jazz icons as Max Roach projected behind the performer along with his textual tributes to each figure superimposed over the photographs, and the collaborative piece by Paolo Javier, Ernest Concepcion, and Mike Estabrook entitled The Original Brown Boy, which might be called a spoken Dada storybook whose construction occurred before a live audience.

Parse Follies, performed by Jeremy Thompson, repeatedly lured spectators into a red & white striped circus tent and proceeded to collapse the canvas ceiling in on them. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s puppet theatrical adaptation of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal was displayed on the screen while Wurlitzer Circus Calliope melodies selected by Thompson played at a disquietingly low, barely audible volume in the background. Period appropriate attire and musical accompaniment created a sense of aesthetic and aural cohesion within the work, and produced a hypnotic affect evident in a silence so acute the drop of a hatpin might have been heard. While the delivered text frequently made direct reference to the activities of the onscreen wooden effigies - it quickly developed into an absurdist, nonsensical excursion through the magical laboratory of Klingsor’s Castle, occasionally peppered with homophonic translations of the Lord’s Prayer and Baudrillardian and Benjaminian allusions (“Keep watching as they try their best to save the empire of meaning.”) Audience members were invited to suspend disbelief and enter the kingdom of Parsifal only to immediately be reminded of its illusory, celluloid status (“And here’s the king again; he’s more like a puppet, just made to watch. Let’s see what he sees.”)

The projection of Thompson’s stentorian, stylized boom across the room, his gesticulations, and the tempo of the tinkering calliope tunes recalled the familiar scenario of a Master of Ceremonies at a late 19th century World’s Fair sideshow, directing the viewer’s attention to the desired focal points of the spectacle. In the place of contortionists with limbs arranged in curlicues and trapeze artists performing death-defying feats of acrobatics, the spectacle being proffered to the viewer was a multisensory experience of text and poetics – a spectacle not lending itself to a state of somnolent, psychical immobility. Rather, a literary spectacle that reenvisions the mesmeric potential of sequined letters strung out across a stage as commensurate to that of Beatrice the Bearded Lady, Bruno: World’s Most Powerful Strongman, Mme. Zelda: Teller of Fortunes, or the popular narrative film.

¹ Winsor McCay, Little Nemo 1905-1914 (Köln: Taschen Evergreen, 2006)

² The Lumière Brothers had already held the first cinematographic screening of a motion picture in Paris, Thomas Edison had produced several films intended for viewing via Kinetoscope, and the foundations for what would become known as the “Hollywood Dream Factory” had been laid.

³ In summarizing this phenomenon, Debord writes in the oft-cited Society of the Spectacle, “So long as the realm of necessity remains a social dream, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep.” See Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1995) 18.

⁴While the global Movietelling / Benshi sensation – encompassing any instance in which a cinematic screening is accompanied by live narration - remains by and large unknown to American audiences, it thrived in the first quarter of the 20th century in nations throughout Asia and Europe. Its permutations assume multiple names: Pyônsa in Korea, Benzi in Taiwan, Gavrilov Translation in the USSR, and Benshi in Japan. In recent years, Lew has coined the term Movietelling with reference to this phenomenon in an attempt to emphasize its international origins, to avoid associating it with one specific historical variation, and to suggest its continued vitality in the contemporary sphere.

The advent of the genre occurred concurrently with the motion picture’s emergence as a mass medium of entertainment and the transcontinental transport of Western cinema (no doubt alongside shipping crates replete with glass bottles emblazoned with the Coca Cola logo and hand-tinted Lillian Pickford postcards), and international audiences’ inability to read English interstitial text. Latently subversive content implicit in the plotlines and dialogue of Western motion pictures – so seemingly threatening that it constituted filtration and reconfiguration through the mediating figure of a film narrator - was also a contributing factor. As such, several instances of Benshi warrant quasi-propagandistic classification. (One might imagine an example wherein a Komsomolski Gavrilov Translator sporting a scarlet neck kerchief recasts Garbo in “The Mysterious Lady” as a Slavic espionage agent so thoroughly devoted to her civic duty that she expertly mimics the gestures of a lady in love so as to successfully complete her mission– rather than a traitorous secret service worker so awestruck by Conrad Nagel’s Austrian charm that she is unequivocally willing to tell the Russian government what for.) For further elaboration upon the historical origins of Movietelling and its contemporary incarnations, see Jeremy Thompson’s post entitled Movietelling: For a More Practical Avant-Garde at autotypist.blogspot.com.

Electronic Autotypist

2008-02-29T06:04:00.000-08:00

Jeremy, typographical and cinepoetic spectacularist, has recently created a new blog at:

AUTOTYPIST.BLOGSPOT.COM

wherein he expounds upon neo-Benshi practices, Kharms's subversion of narrative logic, contemporary experimental poetics and typography, and early Finno-Swedish literary modernism.

Until The Hat pins & The Lip sticks

2008-02-15T08:26:00.000-08:00

Fragments from photographs taken as a part of Jeremy's Valentine's Day gift.

He arrived last night with the arrangement below.

It included

A bouquet of peonies in full bloom
Rougié foie gras
Pomegranate, earl grey, lapsang souchang, green tea, and rosewater truffles from Dean & Deluca
Heart-shaped honey French milled soap from Gianna Rose Atelier in black & white tissue with Victorian illustrations
Eastern Shore Tea Co. Rose Petal Tea
A valentine emblazoned with silent film stills and bordered with celluloid reels

Dances of Vice Festival

2008-02-07T06:43:00.001-08:00

I will be exhibiting video pieces at the following Festival, organized by The Marvelous Mlle. Lee, an event poised to rival the collective sensationalism of the Cabaret Voltaire, Stray Dog, and Die Kabarett Katakombe:

"DANCES OF VICE invites all modern dandies, decadents, aesthetes, artists, thinkers, and dreamers to join them on February 8th and 9th for the 2008 Dances of Vice Festival in New York City! Avant garde cello-rock ensemble RASPUTINA will be headlining the festival with a very special show in the exciting context of a Neo-Victorian costumed ball.

The festival will feature such performances and displays as Victorian-era fencing, musical saws, marionette operettas, dance art, live music, theatre, avant garde fashion vendors, an art gallery, an elaborate vintage Polaroid photo booth, and much more - with tickets sold to attendees traveling from as far as Australia, London, and Vancouver.

The Dances of Vice Festival promises to be the most elegant and sensational spectacle of the year for all enthusiasts of vintage culture, Victoriana, gothic subculture, steampunk, performance art, dark cabaret and other creative alternative subcultures. Advance tickets are available for purchase through the website at http://www.dancesofvice.com.

Details regarding the festival proceedings can be found in our official Program Booklet: dovprogdigi.pdf (3.62 MB)"

http://www.myspace.com/dancesofvice

Dances of Vice Roster:

I. Music Artists
Rasputina
The Deadfly Ensemble
Nicki Jaine
Oryx Incruentus
What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?

II. Performing Artists
Desert Sin
Black Forest Fancies

III. Exhibiting Artists
Molly Crabapple
Symon Chow
Tina Imel
Scott Irvine
bd miller
Zoetica Ebb
Lisa Mei Ling Fong (Eerie Art)
Ryan Toth
Mashinka Firunts

IV. Special Guests
Martinez Academy of Arms
Jen Zakrzewski
His Master's Voice
DJ Delecti
DJ Johnny Sake

http://www.dancesofvice.com
http://www.myspace.com/dancesofvice
http://community.livejournal.com/dancesofvicenyc

News Bulletin Aught Eight No. 3

2008-02-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

Adrian, divinely skilled photographer of dolled-up members of the demi-monde, took the photographs above on Friday, February 1st in a domicile of hidden early twentieth century decorative delights tucked away in an outer borough of New York. In addition to possessing assorted aesthetic virtues, the images act as a record of the afternoon [raspberry-Stoli-in-]tea[cups] party that ensued. The subjects are:

Jeremy, typographical and cinemapoetic spectacularist
Shien Lee, Shanghai Triad chanteuse and gracious hostess of Dances of Vice
Lucas Lanthier, comedy sensation and Cinema Strange chanteur
James , bona fide bon vivant, Dances of Vice resident dandy, the afternoon's host, and last remaining practitioner of the lost art of entertaining
Candice G., lingerie and Victorian-inspired finery couturière
And I.

Adrian's portfolio is available for viewing at AdrianBuckmaster.com.

A CinePoetry and Performance Extravaganza

2008-01-31T20:57:00.000-08:00

ShadoWord Productions Presents: Poets of The Unreeled
A CinePoetry and Performance Extravaganza
FEBRUARY 1st & 2nd

FLYER

Jeremy will be performing at this event tomorrow evening, February the 1st, at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn and Saturday evening, February the 2nd, at the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan. The evenings promise to be animate Musées Mécaniques with poetic human automata. Jeremy's piece ought to have been read at a World's Fair in 2048 next to a portable theatrical puppet theatre replete with steel, metallic marionettes.

The information is as follows:

February 1st, $6
Galapagos Art Space
70 N. 6th Street
Brooklyn, NY
GalapagosArtSpace.com

February 2nd, Midnight, $8
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
New York, NY
BoweryPoetry.com

News Bulletin Aught Eight No. 2

2008-01-28T09:55:00.000-08:00

This photograph of Jeremy and I appeared in this November article on Dances of Vice in the New York Post, accompanied by the caption "Mashinka Firunts and Jeremy Thompson glam it up at the ball."

News Bulletin Aught Eight No. 1

2008-01-10T08:55:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Jeremy and I relocated to New York last autumn.

MULTIPLES & EDITIONS, VOL. 2

This Friday, January 11th, Jeremy's work will appear in an exhibition entitled Multiples and Editions, Vol. 2 at the Front Room Gallery in Williamsburg. The address is 147 Roebling Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the reception will run from 7-9pm. Website: Front Room Gallery.

ZINC BAR POETRY SERIES

This Sunday, January 13th, Jeremy will give a reading in conjunction with the Zinc Bar Poetry Series at the Zinc Bar in Manhattan. The address is 90 West Houston Street, New York. The reading will begin at 7pm. Website: Zinc Bar.

ACADEMIA

I recently completed my first semester of study at Columbia through the Postbaccalaureate Studies program and an internship at the Leo Koenig Inc. Gallery.

DANCES OF VICE FESTIVAL

I will be exhibiting pieces at the Dances of Vice Festival, which will run on February 8-9 at the Pussycat Lounge and Element. Further information is here: Dances of Vice.

Viz Trans-Genre Anthology

2007-07-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

Jeremy's autotypographs were recently published in Viz: Inter-Arts (A Trans-Genre Anthology), alongside works by Charles Bernstein, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, and others.

A publication gala will be held this evening at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, at 7pm.

Further information is here (http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100384770&fa=events).

Notion Nanny

2007-05-17T19:01:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, May 20th, Jeremy will be exhibiting his work and staging letterpress demonstrations at the Berkeley Art Museum. The information is as follows:

From 11am to 3pm, at The Matrix Gallery, BAM/PFA, Berkeley, 16 artists will be giving demonstrations and exhibiting work as a part of Alison Smith's traveling exhibition Notion Nanny. He will be collaborating with whoever wishes to create the 3rd in a series of anonymous Agitation Propaganda prints pertaining to Global Warming, Global W/arming, Global War/ming. The event is free and open to anyone. Refreshments will be served.

From NotionNanny.net:

"Notion Nanny is a collaborative touring project in which Allison Smith takes on the role of an itinerant apprentice traveling through rural and urban districts in search of traditional skills and revolutionary dialogue. Through a series of residencies and exchanges, Smith builds a temporary guild, a platform for discussion, and a sculptural installation, which together form the basis for a cumulative traveling exhibition making stops in Cumbria, London, Shropshire, North Adams, Mass, and Berkeley, CA."

The Sophisticate

2007-04-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

The 2007 issue of the Art Deco Society of California Publication, The Sophisticate, is now available. It contains my piece on the Motion Picture Production Code entitled The Satin Negligée Folded Away. To purchase a copy, visit www.artdecosociety.org.

Plastique No. 3

2007-04-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Tonight, the third installment of the Poetry Plastique exhibitions will take place at Mills College, as a complement to M. Mara-Ann's multi-media performance entitled Containment Scenario: The Global Environmental Crisis. I'll be exhibiting the assemblage below.

The information is as follows:

Poetry Plastique & Containment Scenario
April 6th, 8pm
Mills College Concert Hall
Oakland, CA

Undercover History

2007-03-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

The show for which Jeremy and I acted as background players, Undercover History: J. Edgar Hoover, is airing on the Ntl. Geographic Channel on April 17. We appear in the 1935 supper club scene.

Website Redesign

2007-03-01T15:56:00.001-08:00

The new website is up, design by the incomparable Tara Sinn of Monchacha.com.