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:

the honeymoon is over

so my nihilistic perspective on weddings, marriage & femme fatales hit a couple of sore spots in the last few days. it still hurts when i press them.

it all started with the awards night for the punk monk 48HR film project "hybristo honeymoon" i literally broke my back on & ended with the dissolution/disillusion of the marriage of two of my best friends after almost two decades together.

in the beginning of the end some punk monks rocked up to the awards screening at the paddington RSL on friday night with great anticipation having been advised that we'd been nominated for at least one award but not aware which category/ies. there was much nervous anticipation in the air which we quickly tempered with red wine en masse [as you/we do] & witty banter about farm machinery in the hopes of a nomination in the category "best use of a prop". we had a bunch of inappropriate suggestions for additions...

with a couple of nominations in categories [best music, best sound] we walked away with two awards in the end [best sound & most lame director = most extraordinary team]. huge congratulations to our small hardworking cast/crew on set [ky, mischa, felix, michael, andrew, davey & my much luscious muse cat] for the incredible effort, energy and shared vision, raen & kate behind the scenes & to dermot, michael, felix & mischa for sticking it out to the end in post production mode.

mike's super sound design got us over the line & mithra with the lurkers enigmatic banjo sounds fueled from my deliverance dueling banjo obsession/original story inspiration combined with dan's [from meatpig] captivating accordion got us a large percentage of the way there.

it was quite satisfying to feel partially responsible for the honorable minister's [virgina judge] lipsticked nose throughout the night after i went in for the stage pash following obligatory congratulatory handshake. KINO regular, aidan corrigan's crowd pleasing mockumentary "living with EES" won best film. big electrifying clap for his team.

we were a little disappointed with the structure of the awards & felt sorry that some of the other films apart from ours which displayed excellence in particular fields didn't even make the finalist nominations. it does demonstrate that there is no accounting for taste & film festival competition judging is an entirely subjective & political process. our film was always going to be borderline risqué, so we were ecstatic to get the recognition we did in a fairly conservative forum.

apparently "we're all winners", so now it's time for us to harvest the film & send it out to see if anyone else responds positively to our wicked weekend jaunt in the woods. with 50% of marriages ending in divorce, honeymooners often don't last forever. we just managed to dispense with ours a little quicker than most. now we need to see if we can prop it up posthumously long after the wedding cake has been happily consumed. if we can manage a seventeen year long festival life perhaps that's a significant #lovePASS not #FAIL after all.

[photos by punk monk dave cheng]

liquid light show launch

friday evening last. the hopetoun. kate & alex bring the wonder of the punk monk propaganda psychochemical experience as first experienced at their curated ALGAE RHYTHM 0:02 in the final days of the warehouse.

the first of many future collaborations with sydney band, hailer & the launch of the liquid light show event calendar outside of the confines of our own studio run walls... needless to say it was a huge alchemic success.

fellow punk monks; clare, felix & michael were there to soak up the iridescent matmos & record the experience for all posterity long after i disappeared into the night.

pix by punk monk, michael prechtl.

burning bridges

today a small handful of my drinking buddies ran the blackmores running festival's flagship event, the sunday telegraph body + soul bridge run [doesn't sponsorship make for un-succinct copy?]. in what became blistering conditions friends & flesh cats; ky, raen, & andrew with only extensive beer/wine/whisky arm training joined 33, 000 others & um, decided to subject our bodies to an altogether different kind of abuse. 9kms is an excellent cure-all hangover technique. i think it's called pain transference.

with firmly strapped feet, i joined them in the ultimate asthma attack impersonation to survive the completer finisher ranks on the harbour foreshore opposite the opera house after starting on the other side & running over the closed off sydney harbour bridge.

the crown in the jewel of the running races was the sydney marathon [42kms] which appeared to feature peeps of notably higher fitness calibre to ourselves with slightly more rounded training regimes. the marathon was taken out by winning kenyan runner julius seurei in a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes and seven seconds. that's um, 1km in 3.18 minutes... quite a lengthy sprint. as a reality check we ran 9kms in around an hour in a fast fashionably paced "yog", something between an uphill crawl/downhill jog [you saw it here first -- wait for it to go viral].

on completion, after subjecting the god-sent three minute angels to our toxic sweat [lucky them, apologies to your colleagues clare], & following the repeated beration by the woman in the corporate sunday tele tent who put seinfeld's soup nazi to shame taking pride of sausage sizzle catering to new hedonistic over-possesive heights: we did what had to be done when permanently denied the juice we desperately craved... we went & drank more beer. apparently there's a half marathon coming up. we do have our training to consider after all.

pix by punk monk michael prechtl

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.