I no longer live in Chicago (I’m far from most of what I call civilization) so when I go to there I usually like to do several things or go to events that are close to each other in one evening. This particular night I went to Gallery Cabaret, Odd Obsession video. and The Exit.
I didn’t really take notes on the events I observed because I thought that I was just having a fun night out; I did not think I would write anything about the shows.
I started the night off by going to a poetry show at the Gallery Cabaret. The regular host (my longtime friend, Dave Gecic) was out of town so my fellow city college instructor, and former Mile High party presidential candidate, Bob Lawrence took over the reins.
By the way the regular host, Dave replaced Janet Kuyper who replaced Charlie Newman who replaced someone whose name I forgot.
The always friendly and very cool bartender, Tressa, is putting on an art show there in October. I hope she gives me details. Speaking of art I also saw an artist named Allen McNair there (He is mentioned in Kari Lyderson’s book Mayor 1%) who I met at Hungry Brain decades ago. You can read my review of the book here. McNair’s very sexual and rather childlike/art brut like paintings were displayed in the bar, and they will be there for a while.
I got to the show late so I missed most of the open mic performances.
The top notch features that evening were Doug Powers (who now hosts weeds) and Chuck Kramer who did a marvelous photo show a few weeks back capturing people who have performed at Weeds over the years (including Gecic). A little bio of Kramer who is a retired school teacher appears here.
Among the highlights were Kramer’s great Carl Sandburg inspired piece and Powers’ fine rap inspired poem. They also switched back and forth and did poems on similar themes. They seemed to put more prep into the show than your typical co-feature. They never slipped up or lost composure, and they seemed pretty enthused to be sharing the stage.
Powers is going to be a feature at my show at the art colony on Saturday from 5 to 7 at the Art Colony at 2630 W. Fletcher on Saturday, August 13 from 5 to 7. Other features will include Ali Mae Miller in her first ever feature, Erin Sweeney and Sheila Boe Beila. I host the show on the 2nd Saturday of every month.
I had an hour to kill so I stopped at Odd Obsession video (my favorite video place on the planet). They did not have a few of the films I have been looking for ages such as Abel Ferrera’s Pasolini biopic and Voices of the Moon, collaboration by Fellini and Benigni. To see my disastrous interview with Abel Ferrera go here.
The clerk there was more knowledgeable about film then almost all of most of the college film instructors I knew, and somehow she guessed that I used to teach film. She was an animator and she told me that it is almost impossible to find positions teaching film.
But the clerk did find a very obscure horror flick for me from 1966 named The Devil’s Mistress. I had read about the film in the first edition of the Creature Features reference book which described the film as a vampire western (Believe it or not there were other vampire Westerns such as Curse of the Undead and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula). Strangely enough the store had the film placed in the exploitation/porn category even though the film has no sex or nudity and precious little violence.
The acting was worse than you see in a very bad high school or amateur play and the lighting is abysmal plus many of the early shots are out of focus. By all standards it’s a dreadful film. But it is a quasi-interesting dreadful film.
Spoiler alert: I give up the whole plot in this paragraph. In the movie a bunch of desperadoes take refuge in a mission occupied by a priest (who looks sinister and for some reason he is wearing a cape which is a not too subtle tip off that he is not what he seems), and a beautiful and innocent seeming mute woman. The desperados seemingly shoot the priest to death and rape the woman and apparently force her to accompany them. One of the desperados has a sinister and very stupid laugh and this coupled with the sheet moronicness of the rapists reminded me of some 70s revenge/horror flicks.
Later on the mute woman seduces each one separately. We see shots of her deep kissing a desperado than the next day he is dead. At first I thought she was a succubus but eventually we see her try to bite a man. Then when the last desperado is dead the priest who was supposed to be dead reappears. He stretches out his cape and laughs diabolically. Apparently he was the devil, and he was pleased with the work his vampire companion did.
The basic plot structure resembled the very bad (because of the rape/revenge plot) I Spit on Your Grave and quasi classic Last House on the Left. I can almost picture a young Wes Craven seeing The Devil’s Mistress and storing the story plus a few of the images in the back of his mind for future use.
The shock ending with Satan’s triumph was also similar to the ending of The Devil’s Nightmare (which I recommend) in which Satan rewrites reality to get a priest’s soul. Both films also has a sinister supernatural woman doing the devil’s bidding. In The Devil’s Mistress the woman is a vampire (who drains blood) and in The Devil’s Nightmare she is a succubus (who drains souls). The dress style of the succubus seems like it influenced the original look of the Marvel comics character Satana, the devil’s daughter.
I next headed to the Exit which is located on North Avenue near 90/94. It’s a punk and metal bar that I used to frequent in the 90s, and lately I have been attending some of the poetry shows there. I hardly went there at all between 2000 and 2010.
The show attracts mostly a gothy/fethishy crowd, and I like the fact that I see people there that I see nowhere else on the planet (although there is sometimes some spill over from the Gallery Cabaret show). Some of the other shows always have the same poets and I feel like I am preaching to the converted.
Much of the poetry that is read there is dark themed and some of it qualifies as performance art; a few of the poets seem like they were influenced by the romanticism of Poe and Hawthorne (I taught their work in my lit class this summer) or the work of Charles Baudelaire.
This week the Exit had an art exhibit curated by Peter Propaganda, and it was fascinating not only for the art itself but also the way it was presented.
Geo Alderson was selling horrific dolls for twenty dollars that looked like cute infants in animal costumes with blood coming out of their eyes and mouths. She said that she used to display her work at Gallery 1901 (which I think used to be co-run by Ms. Vine). Well, anyway Geo’s website is at www.GeoAlderson.com.
I told her the doll images reminded me of the images in the Lydia Lunch song “Orphans” with the little children bleeding in the snow. I later resaw the video and found it refers to little orphans running through the bloody snow (a small distinction perhaps). It’s one of the most shocking and powerful videos I ever saw, and it manages to capture the sheer ugliness of humankind in the first minute. Here’s a link to the video of the song.
Some of the artists seemed like they were an extension of their own pieces.
I also enjoyed Squeak Starzula’s work. She also had one of the most elaborate, extraordinary and repulsively sexy looks I ever saw. She was covered with tattoos and had some piercings plus horns. She resembled (perhaps because of her shocking eye makeup) a possessed South American witch or bruja and also an exotic demon. She actually looked quite a bit more convincing and sinisterly seductive than the enchantress character in the recent Suicide Squad film.
She also designs fabulous shirts and pants and you can see her work if you look her up on Instagram or Facebook. At first I thought that she was a model because she resembled the demonic woman in her paintings. Some of her images (which look a bit like the stuff I used to see on the covers of 70’s black and white horror magazines) can be found here.
8th fear made horrific, graphic and disturbingly violent images that looked they came from classic 50s comic books (he said he was inspired by EC comics). He also wore a mad slasher outfit and told me a story about a quiet friend of his that kept everything bottled up inside and went then went postal and killed someone. I’m not sure if this was a true story or part of his persona. I tried to find some of 8th fear’s art but the stuff he has on deviant art said hidden because of mature content. Here’s a link to it anyway.
He told me that his favorite EC artist was Ghastly. I was surprised that I did not remember him because I am a longtime EC comics fan. It turned out that I was familiar with Ghastly’s work, only I knew his work under his real name Graham Ingels. Here’s a link to an interesting bio on the artist.
More info and some of his Ghastly art can be found here.
Speaking of mad slasher flicks, I’m going to digress a bit into film talk again. I’m not sure if you guys know this but many of the elements of the mad slasher flicks (including Friday the 13th and Halloween) such as the masked/gloved mentally disturbed killers hunting their prey came from Italian gialo films (which were gorier variations on Hitchcock’s work) Most giallo films have great lighting and shot composition but the plots are either terrible, untranslatable to American audiences or they defy rationale thought.
There is actually a pretty good poetry book which focuses on the (usually female and virginal) survivors of mad slasher scenarios called The Final Girl by Daphne Gottlieb. See it here.
Back to the show. Eli Bensusan’s work was the most unique and elegant and it seemed highly influenced by architecture (he told me he had studied industrial design, and it also was a hybrid work because it incorporates poems attributed to an Atlantean author. Bensusan was involved in some interesting art institute shows. Here’s a link to his modern art piece Memorial Object as well as his bio.
Other features included Jojo Baby (I saw his stuff at Flat Iron and my friend, Tracy bought a giant smile from him to put over her mouth), Joe Sikora (who I think I met at Gallery Chicago), Dyl Elner and Fi End.
When I asked Peter Propaganda where he found these artists he replied “They’re just my friends.” He also does a regular show which he calls Wormwood radio. So far I have enjoyed all of the Peter Propaganda related shows/projects I have an attended (I think other people such as Jason No ah also help out with the poetry). I sometimes feel like he gives me a small glimpse of another world. Also, the people at the events usually are fairly congenial and they make you feel comfortable even if you are not part of the Goth, fetish and s and m crowd.
