Captain Swan Song's Atoll (To Van Vliet)

Captain Swan Song's Atoll (to Van Vliet)

To start in words about words is to throw oneself in medias res.
One makes a mark or two....


Ese hombre escala muchos picos

flares flares flares

Ese hombre escala muchos picos

flares flares flares

Ese hombre escala muchos picos

like a brown trout in the desert

flares flares flares

Ese hombre escala muchos picos

like a trout in the desert air

flares flares flares

Ese hombre escala muchos picos

flares flares flares

pythagorean

now about to hit the fan

goes around returns

flares flares flares

Ese hombre escala muchos

hoe hoeing his own

going around and returns

flares flares flares

brown trout

vanilla crew

flares flares flares

in the desert air

black swan

vanilla crew

gasping

flares flares flares

in the desert air

black swan

grasping

flares flares flares

in the desert air rasping

flares flares flares

pónganse truchas

Ese hombre escala muchos

flares flares flares

rasping like a brown trout

in the desert air

rasping like a white crow

in the desert air

flares flares flares

pónganse truchas

Ese hombre escala muchos

flares flares flares

rasping like a brown trout

in the desert air

rasping like a brown trout

in the desert air

flares flares flares

pónganse truchas

Ese hombre escala muchos

flares flares flares

rasping in the desert air

rasping like a brown trout

in the desert air

flares flares flares

pónganse truchas

Ese hombre escala muchos

flares flares flares

rasping like a brown trout

in the desert air

basking in the hair

by the prickly pear

rasping like a brown trout

flares flares flares

rasping like a brown trout

in the desert air

basking in the hair

by the prickly pear

rasping like a brown trout

Pónganse trucha, huele a chota

a brown trout on mesquite

a brown trout in the chiquita

a brown trout in the desert air

a brown trout in the desert hair

a brown trout by the prickly pear

in a sharkskin suit

a brown trout in a sharkskin suit

on mesquite

in the chiquita

in the desert air

in the desert hair

by the prickly pear

it can happen here in the desert air

it can happen here in the desert air

flares flares flares

rasping like a brown trout

in the desert air

basking in the hair

by the prickly pear

rasping like a pythagorean

now about to hit the fan

goes around returns

flares flares flares....

[EAC copyright 2010]
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The Ballerina (Ode To Zárraga)

"It is not that words are imperfect or that, when confronted by the visible, they prove insuperably inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other's terms: it is vain to say that we see; what we see never resides in what we say...."

Michel Foucault

Mutt Descending

"What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt's fountain:

1. Some contend it was immoral, vulgar.
2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing.

Now Mr. Mutt's fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bath tub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers' show windows.

Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under a new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.

As for plumbing, that is absurd. The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges."

[The Blind Man 2, May 1917]

Talking Octopus

Talking Octopus

If it talked to us
What would octopus say?
If it talked to us
What would octopus essay?

When it talked to us
Would octopus
Tell us how swell it is to be
Talking octopus?

[copyright EAC 97]

Moonswim Four Six

XLVI

Y cómo se llama ese mes
que está entre Diciembre y Enero?
Con qué derecho numeraron
las doce uvas del racimo?

Por qué no nos dieron extensos
meses que duren todo el año?

No te engañó la primavera
con besos que no florecieron?

Pablo Neruda


And what DO you call the month
between December and January?

By what directive do they enumerate
a dozen grapes a bunch?

And why not, since they were giving them out anyway,
long spacious months that last the whole year?

Did Spring never cheat on you with kisses
that never bloomed?

[Tr. E. A. Costa]
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Graphics & English translation copyright EAC

Le Détournement (Boucher Anaglyphique*)

Le bon marché de ses produits est la grosse artillerie avec laquelle on bat en brêche toutes les murailles de Chine de l'intelligence.

Guy Debord & Gil J. Wolman


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*Note: both image and animated .GIF are anaglyphs designed to be viewed with 3D glasses, red left, blue right. Click on the still image at the top to view at full size.

The Gyroscopic Orgy

BRAGUETTE: Jeu de billes d'origine phénicienne, imaginé par Pantalon de Tyr et pratiqué encore de nos jours. Ex.: Paul et Virginie jouaient à la braguette (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre)

[Dictionnaire des mots retrouvés]

Headhunters

"Méfiez-vous du rêve de l'autre, parce que si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre, vous êtes foutu."

Gilles Deleuze

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The Battle Of The Nymphs And Butterflies

Rires, tumulte... Un cri !...

José-Maria de Heredia
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Cafe Goya

"Men more knowledgeable than I have explained very well the origin of what has come to pass: Exchange-value could have formed only as an agent of use-value, but its victory by force of its own arms has created the conditions for its autonomous rule. Mobilizing all human use and seizing the monopoly on satisfaction, it has ended up directing use. The process of exchange became identified with all possible use and has reduced it to its will. Exchange-value is the condottiere of use-value, which finishes by waging war for its own advantage...."

Guy Debord (tr.Brook)
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Réflexivité

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Assyriad

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The Chinotto Eaters

Click on the image to view at full size.

How Many Times....

Modigliani's Kick: The Animated .GIF Manifesto (2006)

"It unrecorded in the memoirs of Erik Satie typewritten in neat hand on the piano after hours at the CHAT NOIR that a MANIFESTO by one artist man or woman is less manifesto than ANTIPASTO. We may imply FELIX THE CAT or we may not. It is time to make HOUR SALAMIS to all that can go right and wrong in the BUSH that is an ANIMATED .GIF. Because these works of art are ANIMATE they cry out against the cruelty of VIVISECTION.

What does medical science, if it is a science at all, gain by their inhumane experiments of REVERSE ENGINEERING on cartoons? The artists of the United Liberation Rear put both hands in their back pockets and say, boldly and without periphrasis: WE HAVE FOUND OURSELVES! We raise a banner this day in this hotel calling on the masses to MARCH IN THE STREETS protesting the abuses of the INDUSTRIAL CINEMATIC STATE (ICS).

The MASSES have their CHAINS, which they love and polish in the warmth of their hovels, without the hearth of a computer or a good graphics program, and paying high fuel OIL bills for their PROPANE SPACE heaters because of this vicious foreign war in TIBET. We call for a new art of MASKING AND COMBINING 2D & 3D conscientious OBJECTORS! How much PORNOGRAPHY transpires behind the doors of this HOTEL? These people may not be WORKING for you!

They are contributing to the FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE and they might even be enjoying themselves while transmitting all sorts of PSYCHOSEXUAL ILLNESS. KNOCK DOWN THESE DOORS WITH WARRANTS AND GET IT OUT IN THE STREET WHERE IT BELONGS! This is but the fifth broadside in a long war against ICS ERRORISM, according to which every wrong adds up to the RIGHT. As Felix the Cat said: "Rise up, you only have EIGHT lives to lose...."


Hopalong aka Hopalong EAC aka EAC aka mopsius aka E. A.Costa, "The Animated .GIF Manifesto", first published, December 2006.

[copyright EAC]
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N.B.: The Animated .GIF Manifesto was first published by Hopalong on a Computer Graphics Art Site in 2006, in conjunction with a different image. Hopalong was subsequently banned from the site not for images and animations posted but apparently for too vociferously opposing the war in Iraq in comments and publicizing both the deceit with which that war was begun and the obscene human toll the US is inflicting on the people of Iraq. The site will remain nameless and the Manifesto is still posted in its original form there, without Hopalong (aka EAC) being able to remove it. It would be an interesting volume not yet written to note how many Computer Graphics Galleries and Art sites are either outright owned by extreme Right Wing Capitalist Imperialist Warmongers, staffed by such, or so intimidated by universal US jingo that they are reluctant even to allow comments or art work that makes the case against US war and imperialism.

Interview With Luigi Russolo

The Fish

“The man stands between life and death. The man thinks... The fish is mute--expressionless. The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything. The fish knows everything.”

Emir Kusturica
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Edison's Eves

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Five Finger Exercise

And a three, and a four, and a five....

La Cloche A Sonné

Cela monte gentiment à la tête, tout doucement,
Cela vous mets l'âme en fête!
Le doux parler, le doux parler des amants,
leurs transports et leurs serments,
C'est fumée, c'est fumée....

[Meilhac & Halévy]

...la gaya scienza; die leichten Füsse; Witz, Feuer, Anmuth; die grosse Logik; den Tanz der Sterne; die übermüthige Geistigkeit; die Lichtschauder des Südens; das glatte Meer - Vollkommenheit....

Friedrich Nietzsche

A Un Gato (The Lion Garden)

En otro tiempo estás.
Eres el dueño de un ámbito cerrado
como un sueño.

[Jorge Luis Borges]

You exist in some other time.
You are self-possessed of some secret horizon
like a dream....

[tr. EAC]

Arnulf Schpielberg Reminisces (Ouah Ouah)

S.Palin: Chiromancy Basics For Beginners

There are three basic aspects of the human hand: (1) the palm; (2) the finger; (3) the thumb. The flat middle part of the hand is the called the palm. That is where most chiromancy or palm-reading is done. Attached to the palm are two types of appendages: (1) the thumb (2) the finger. Most human hands have one thumb and four fingers. [See Illustration] Many authorities, however, also consider the thumb a type of finger. They then say that the hand has five fingers. They do not mean by this that most people have five fingers and one thumb. They mean that the human hand is comprised of five fingers including one thumb. There is additionally a large thick appendage extending from the palm opposite the fingers. This is called the wrist. The wrist plays no appreciable role in chiromancy or palm-reading besides serving as a platform from which to hang the hand....

S. Palin, Chiromancy Basics For Beginners, Vol. I, Ch. 13, p.147.
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[copyright EAC 2010]

Una Carta De Garcia (Uno, Dos, Tres...Cha Cha Cha)

"Garcia Airways--where not getting there is half the fun."
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Click on middle image to view full size

Pez En El Viento

Anduve como vosotros escarbando
la estrella interminable,
y en mi red, en la noche, me desperte desnudo,
unica presa, pez encerrado en el viento.

[Pablo Neruda]

I went around just like you
scrutinizing the limitless star
and in my net in the night
waking me up naked one catch:
a fish corraled in the wind.

[tr. EAC 2010]

Fille à plomb

Fille à plomb

Little poem en point
is the slender lady palm:
is she not pretty?

[copyright EAC 2010]
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N__ing And K___ing

If one considers k___ing a process toward definition and completion, k___ing self directly and in the specious present is an illusion.

If there is any genuine import to being self-aware, therefore, it is distinct from k___ing self.

In eastern religion and philosophy, which are essentially the same, the futility of any final k___ing self is a commonplace, so much so that in the West it is easily overlooked as the keystone of all that follows.

The eye cannot see it self.

If k___ing is seeing, therefore, one can never k___ self.

What is true of k___ing is true of n__ing.

[copyright EAC 2010]

Continens Est Formalius Contento (I Girigogoli)

Come la maggior parte degli uomini, tanto parlando quanto scrivendo, hanno parole e frasi favorite e abituali maniere di
dire che introducono nel discorso talora senza intenzione, ossia senza avvedersene, e non di raro anche dove non ci stanno, cosi quasi ogni pittore ha certe maniere abituali eh' egli mette in mostra e che gli sfuggono senza che egli se ne accorga....

Ivan Lemolieff
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N.B. Click on image to view at full size.