And then we had lost each other within the trees. The moment slipped away as quickly as her shadow, passing onwards through the breeze. I craved the warmth of the Château Haut-Barr once more, leaves falling through the cracks in its walls, our souls simply kindling for the hungry fire to burn. But I was alone in the murk of trees, all of whom leaned … Continue reading Fragments: On A Hillside Near Château Haut-Barr
When I think of the films of Luis Buñuel, the first image that comes to mind is that of the corpse of a murdered child. Her legs are strewn among the branches of deep, dark woodland, and her legs covered in snails. The image in question is from Buñuel’s 1964 film Diary Of A Chambermaid; a relatively straight film for the director and lacking the overt … Continue reading Snails and Death
I first came across Cindy Sherman’s photographic series, Untitled Film Stills (1977), when looking for photos of film noir titles. The series is designed around fakery, seeking to recreate the feeling of stills from 1950s and 1960s American films but also, in producing the illusion with general key-notes as to the roles of women in these films, comment upon the basic norms prescribed in Hollywood … Continue reading Responses: Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills (1977)
I recently finished a draft of a novel which follows a lone woman mentally cast adrift by the news of her father’s suicide. Her grief manifests in a strange obsession with the town of Strasbourg where she decides on a whim to stay over the winter. In one part of the novel, my character looks into the concept of Fernweh, though really it was as … Continue reading Fernweh and The Green Ray
When Georges Perec was 11, he decided to wander. In fact, escape is perhaps a better description; a jailbreak from his aunt’s house on Rue de l’Assomption. He wandered Paris with who knows what planned. It was such a defining experience for the writer that he later composed a text surrounding the feeling of release and the places he encountered on this lost meander called … Continue reading Georges Perec Escapes
I’m very happy to say that my first fiction book has been taken by the wonderful guys at Influx Press. Mothlight is due to be released on the 7th of February 2019. I’ve spoken publically a few times about this book in the earlier stages of its writing and editing under its original title of “A Hauntography” but, with its new name (a nod towards … Continue reading Mothlight (Influx Press, 2019)
Fifty years ago this September, Chantal Akerman made her first film. It was a short, comical fragment about distraction and suicide called Saute Ma Ville (1968). Following Akerman herself running up to her flat, the film then shows her gradually making a mess of the kitchen where she has locked herself, taping the gaps in the door and windows ready for a slow death. The … Continue reading An Exhaustive List of Nothing and Everything in Chantal Akerman’s Flat
Jean-Pierre Melville was the master of the drame azur; those strange, dark films, usually French, that contrasted such dramatic darkness with often very light visuals of a bluish hue. The light was still murky, creating bluish white-outs with cloud, fog, sea and other natural elements playing into the blurring of the image. But the drama was predominantly daytime, often making crime films especially seem refreshing … Continue reading Jean-Pierre Melville’s Un Flic (1972) and Le Corbusier’s Transitional Pigments
In the late 1970s, Keith Arnatt embarked on an unusual series of photographs collected under the title of Gardeners (1978-79). In the years before, he had produced a similar series of works looking at dog walkers, such was the draw of the ordinary for the artist. Essentially, however, it is what Arnatt found in this seemingly everyday scenario that tapped into his usual sense of … Continue reading Responses: Keith Arnatt’s Gardeners (1978-79)
“In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around… Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind… And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, sweet wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s … Continue reading They Lay With Debris – Wreckage in Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979)
Celluloid Wicker Man 