under blue moon i saw you

technically it's not the start of the year, but for all intensive purposes according to certain AWOL monks & blog party time it is. anyway i'm BACK! happy new year one and all. january was a false start punctuated by bush & bollywood. february is much more focussed. more internet time. so soon you'll take me up in your arms.

what better way to commence 2010 than a piece of tortured nostalgia whilst tenderly nursing a morning after KINO hangover? unwillingly mine.

last night was KINO #33 [with an appearance by my pseudo 24 hour flick "not beautiful enough" now sublimely edited/sound designed by the wonderful star germans, felix and michael & starring the ever lovely muse catherine davies]. the fat32 myth finally debunked... fate up against your will.

heads up to oliver dickens, dan rossi & dave cheng for shooting, sound recording & capturing awesome stills whilst we illegally ran amok amongst the loading containers adjacent to sydney airport before security threw us out as the sun rose and heralded in the day. we were in and out almost within the hour. except we had to break back in in the dead of night to look for missing make-up & head torches. under blue moon i saw you.

anyway that was yesterday. today is echo and the bunnymen. in sydney. if this is what george orwell's 1984 looked like i could easily move in. and stay. forever. your lips a magic world...

typograffiti artists

last week we held another ALGAE RHYTHM [AR:006] at the corner shop. the last one for the year.

typograffiti was a mishmash of neon graffiti on hijacked alley walls and spray can action on DIY vertical scapes made from a monster recycled cardboard canvas painstakingly crafted by our resident german curators felix & michael after a workshop from various underground graff artists.

my camera is still broken & my mobile phone wasn't quite up to the job for the evening so all i have to offer as a remnant of the evening are these portraits by fellow punk monk davey & some links to clare and alex's wonderful picture blogs.

additional stop motion was shot from my upstairs bedroom that night so the proof will be in the pudding when it's all uploaded to see if there are any additional offerings of this fantastic night.

in the meantime i give you some of the usual AR suspects.

typograffiti

for me my love of type started with helvetica & david carson. ray gun magazine then bikini...

*swoon*

now this coming monday punk monks felix pflieger & michael prechtl with a little help from our friends bring you AR006: typograffiti.

street art crosses the divide & armed with personal markers in an exhibition setting at punk monk propaganda's corner shop, avid algae rhythmers can learn from these masked masters the secret of fusing type and graffiti into one in an intermedia setting featuring films, infra-red projections, posters, and a scavenger hunt culminating in a collective art project.

all this fueled by civilised pig's secret alcoholic ginger rhythm recipe. the only thing mightier than a pen in one hand is a glass of punk monk's special brew in the other. and a really big speech bubble canvas...

we can't guarantee NSW legislators how secure our spray cans will be but we're using travis bickle's clever arm design to conceal our dangerous weapons. you talkin to me?

maybe you should just write it... try this for some type of obsession:

toyota yaris... for a rainy day

we tried to make a viral film on youtube in our "spare time" for "fun" after i had a dumb-ass idea a week or so ago in the shower... sadly it took longer to execute than we expected. first we had to learn how to draw & animate [massive apologies to the rest of the team felix & davey for mammoth ambush].

then, um, we had to emulate an MP3 player pumping out 70s porn tunes [vox pop]. we still argue about the sound of a car door opening... we think we nailed the airbags. you know the toyota yaris has seven? it was just begging for an ark-like menagerie takeover.

the yaris campaign: it's like a swear word in social media ville. the stunt which has generated a fair amount of discussion on the interwebs. a world of cross pollination between a handful of agencies going head to head tapping into their oft under-resourced concept of social media in order to create a pyramid selling strategy with something even less tangible to sell than amway products or herbalife: an ad.

anyone watching TV in the 80s would have been subjected to the faberge organics TVC: with myopic cells dividing as consumers apparently pass on to their own network the blissful results of the first shampoo which apparenty yielded orgasmic like results. if we are to believe elida faberge's marketing team, this good news spread like AIDS: pioneering self-aware viral media. shiny silky hair for everyone.

back to the future to a bunch of shiny advertising agencies trying to outpitch the other in social media ingenuity. between a werewolf playing chauffeur in sydney, ingenious boot-boxing & a variation on lego stop motion, saatchi positioned themselves at the back of the imaginative pack by dangling a carrot to indie filmmakers & passing the creative buck on. lazy, ignorant and exploitive one could argue.

we didn't become aware of the campaign till after it was well into the active throes. knowing we were disadvantaged & time-poor[the competition is measured by mass clickthrough numbers & comments] we thought we might try anyway... after all we are starving filmmakers breaking into the fast furious vacuous world of advertising & although the tardy 7K prize won't keep us in film stock & processing it will pay our ailing corner shop rent.

we need you to click & tell us how much our first effort sucks. help us go to seed. is it too little too late to play 13th hour climate change bridesmaid? perhaps our effort is even less clever than saatchi and saatchi's foray into social media.

open your mind [shut for business]

meet rozelle mental hospital otherwise known as callan park.

in a couple of weeks time punk monk propaganda will take over this abandoned space with a select group of experimental artists to bring the old girl back to life in the guise of a series of video installations as part of the multiple personalities exhibition in conjunction with leichardt council.

in the meantime since this healthcare facility [which oozes "one who flew over the cuckoo's nest" sensibility] closed a large section of the community who call this a home away from home are displaced.

wandering around the shell it's grossly apparent that home really is where the heart is. no matter how soul-less this environment appears to be, it is steeped in sadness and emotionally tangible history and the ghosts of christmas past. there are still traces of many stories to be told here. some which may wish to be forgotten. others desperately vying for attention. ward 17 is the legendary haunted piano ward...

join us in december for an altogether different flavour from santa's sack where we experiment with historical imprints in geographical space & bring mythology into the present. the shadows do speak.

[pix by punk monk felix]

have dogtag, will SUFF [© @shoes_off]

thursday night. factory theatre. the third sydney underground film festival kicked off with the bang of a free bar & an incredible opening political prankster-saluting feature film [yes men fix the world] supported by tres cool industrial short pochsy & western spaghetti mash-up cattle call.

the pink flamingos & a handful of punk monks [including our new wonderful newly recruited german paparazzi] ran amok amongst the diverse crowd of subversive dogtagged filmmakers & lovers everywhere whilst the endless pizza & wine corks popped.

punk monk propaganda tribe have three short films playing which are the happy result of some collaborative KINO fun:

the sleeper [AUS] - kate taylor [sunday 18:30]

salome's picnic [GER] - victoria waghorn [saturday 18:30]

chick addict [AUS] - victoria waghorn [saturday 18:30]

come see us & support no-frills independent cinema. if not in the theatre we'll undoubtedly be at the bar pimping our wares & excitedly clutching our scratch 'n' sniff card for john waters' delightfully tasteless trangressive cult classic, pink flamingos which screens tonight at 20:30. eggs, eggs, EGGS!!!

[pix by punk monk felix pflieger]

initiation right?

the germans are no longer coming. they're here.

our wonderful cine interns felix & michael have arrived fresh off the plane from bayern, deutschland or bavaria, germany for the uninitiated. which will be those who weren't here on monday night, when we had our regular family tribe dinner at the corner shop, punk monk propaganda's home base.

they're hoping to survive sydneyside for seven months & have already managed to live for almost five days meat-free. so many layers of chaos ridden culture shock they're having to endure already.

first we made them cook for fifeen of us. the gimpish servitude starts here. do not pass go. do not collect 200 euros [btw. the flammkuchen, sauerkraut & kartoffelpuffer were delicious, as was marianne's apple cake].

cases upon cases of bitburger later, some jägermeister & whatever remants of bottles of red wine could be found on the premises where what was left of us concocted some lame-ass alcohol infused intiation rite based on the drinking of blood from the magic chalice [which we sourced from raen -- see bottom pic].

no wonder the photos are blurry.