Just read Paul J. McAuley's GENE WARS in THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK and fell in love. I am however ashamed to admit that this is the first of McAuley I've read. The story is pretty out there, but certainly much less out there than the time it was written (1991). Which leads me to believe that Paul J. McAuley possesses a mind of incredible foresight. To determine this from just one story may seem ridiculous, but you have to read it and then you will understand! He is clearly concerned with ideas far more than over-indulging in the soap operatic turmoil of fictional characters, which is very much my shit.
Reads
“While Anglophone publishing is intensely concerned with comparative titles and where a novel fits into the landscape, contemporary Arabic publishing largely is not. As such, there is no fixed terminology used for cli fi (climate fiction) in Arabic—though there is fiction that looks much like cli fi in English.”
— Speculative Climate Futures in Arabic Literature
Personally, I think genre is bullshit and one of Western civilization's most detrimental inventions for culture at large.
Warhol's MY HUSTLER cost $500 to make. Its first week at The Filmmaker's Cinematheque in New York brought in $4000 USD. The year was 1966.
It's hard to imagine being able to shoot an indy film today and make a profit after screening it in no more than one movie theatre, for months even let alone a single week.
Where did the world go so wrong.
Andy Warhol sold one of his largest flower paintings to Isabelle Collin Dufresne (who would eventually adopt the moniker Ultraviolet) for today's equivalent of about $5,000 USD. Hardly comparable to some of the sums fetched by today's top working artists, but here's the thing; his rent for The Factory, the legendary space that was his art studio, production house, and entourage hangout was no more than $150, the equivalent of close to $1,500 today.
For context, the Factory was 5,000 square feet and located in Midtown Manhattan. It was by all accounts beyond dilapidated, but still a massive centrally located space in America's densest city. The best you could hope for for that kind of money today is little more than a closet and chances are it wouldn't even be so centrally located.
Another way to look at this is: The sale of one painting could cover the cost of over 3 months' rent.
“The Velvet Underground and Nico officially debuted on January 10, 1966, in an unlikely setting. Dr. Robert Campbell had invited Warhol to speak to the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry at its annual black-tie banquet at Delmonico's. When asked about his odd choice, Dr. Campbell rhetorically asked, 'How can you be immune to art and the creative process? Surely you're aware of the barely visible line between genius and madness.' Warhol decided that his 'lecture,' 'The Chic Mystique of Andy Warhol,' would consist of films for visuals and the Velvet Underground for sound. That way Andy wouldn't have to talk.
“When the guests arrived in the gold-and-white grand ballroom at six-thirty, they found the Warhol entourage... As soon as the group of three hundred doctors and spouses started their roast beef entree, bedlam broke out. The Velvet Underground played full volume as Nico began singing in her unearthly voice. Gerard Melanga started his whip dance.”
From FACTORY MADE by Steven Watson.
“Their marathon rehearsal sessions began on Friday nights. The next morning each of them ingested a blue tranquilizer and four quarts of beer and smoked a joint, and they then practiced until eleven at night. 'Our music evolved collectively,' Sterling Morrison recalled, and it combined rock and roll with the consciousness-altering musical discipline learned from La Monte Young. The group added guitar feedback and an electric viola that sounded like a jet engine. [Lou] Reed was inspired by now forgotten songs of the time: 'Smoke from a Cigarette,' 'I Need a Sunday Kind of Love,' 'Wind' by the Chesters, 'Later for You Baby' by the Solitaires. 'All those really ferocious records that no one seemed to listen to anymore were underneath everything we were playing,' said Reed.”
More from FACTORY MADE which I am thoroughly enjoying.
“The next problem was where they would play. The band didn't consider themselves to be entertainers, and there were few models on the music scene. 'Rock and Roll consisted of Joey Dee and the Starlighters, guys who played the uptown clubs and had matching suits,' Sterling Morrison said. They didn't want to be cute, like the Monkees, or sincere, like folk singers. Their image was aloof and nasty and urban. As Cale summed it up, 'Our aim was to upset people, make them feel uncomfortable, make them vomit.'
“They found a suitable venue for performing when another neighbor in their Ludlow Street building, underground filmmaker Piero Heliczer, invited them to play at the Filmmakers' Cinematheque on Lafayette Street for two events. Angus MacLise and Piero Heliczer described them as 'ritual happenings.' They featured Piero's films projected through veils hung between the audience and the screen. Multicolored lights and slides were superimposed on the veils, and on the stage were dancers. The strange and overwhelming sound that overlaid this intermedia action issued from behind the screen, where the band improvised their music. In its multimedia overwhelming of the senses and in the band's invisibility, this performance reflected the group's evolution and quickly defined a place for them in the avante-garde.”
Piero Heliczer reportedly struggled with schizophrenia throughout his life but was nonetheless productive.
“Ronald Tavel's ingenuity was tested on several fronts in the spring of 1965. He had to imagine and write scenarios that represented different genres, and he had to create them very quickly.”
For about six months, they shot a film every two weeks to be precise. This is again from FACTORY MADE.
“He had to formulate strategies so that the cast could deliver his lines, even though they never tried to memorize them.”
It's hard to think of Warhol's films having had any semblance of script prior to filming, but apparently they did and they're all available for download.
“He's a fag from New York, he's just a fashion thing, we've read his publicity, this is no serious artist.”
The response from the board of the ICA to the suggestion of a Warhol retrospective in February 1965. The ICA (the Institute of Contemporary Art) was a modest noncommercial art space at Wesleyan University in Philadelphia. Exhibiting there would hardly be considered a major career achievement. Warhol was in trouble though. Despite this being what may be considered the height of Warhol's much mythologized Factory years, he was hardly making any money and practically operating at a loss. It would also mark the first time for an artist to be offered a one-person show less than a year and a half after their first serious gallery exhibition.
Chairman of the board, Mrs. Horatio Gates Lloyd III decided to make the trip to New York and pay Warhol a visit together with ICA director Sam Green, a young recent hire who was pro Warhol, and who got the position out of sheer dumb luck (and connections).
From FACTORY MADE by Steven Watson:
“Warhol seemed uncommunicative, not responding to any of the diplomatic conversational ploys at which Mrs. Gates was so adept. When she asked Warhol about his interest in movies, he just looked at her and said nothing. 'Mr. Warhol,' she said, 'is there anything wrong?' Warhol looked at her and said, 'Uh, gee, Mrs. Lloyd, you are so great. I just think you're really terrific. Would you be in one of my movies?' Mrs. Lloyd reached for her pearls and said what a fascinating idea, what role did he have in mind. Warhol said, 'Would you fuck Sam?' When Green heard that, he thought, 'Oh God, there it goes.'
”'Mr. Warhol, what a very interesting idea and I'm quite flattered,' she said. 'However, you might realize that my husband is the administrative head of the CIA, and it might not be appropriate for me to play that role. Could you think of another?'
The retrospective was eventually approved and scheduled for the fall.
34 pages left on PROJECT OLDBOOK, after which I'm sure I'll come out the other end completely transformed. Can already feel my brain getting rewired.
“It is to Cubism that the next serious innovators are bound to return.” – John Berger, THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PICASSO
I feel this, in a sense, is very spot on. Not so much Cubism's aesthetic, as much as its intent.
“Between 1884 and 1900 the European powers added one hundred and fifty million subjects and ten million square miles to their empires. By 1900 they had reached the stage where, for the first time, there was nothing left to claim—except by claiming from one another.”
16 years. A mere sixteen years that are more or less responsible for all the wars and struggles, independence movements, genocides, and border conflicts that have taken place around the world since, including within Europe itself. From John Berger's THE SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PICASSO, which as the passage suggests touches upon much more than just Picasso. No one exists in a vaccum.