No Weather In Heaven

As we pass above the clouds, everything is blue. Then black. Stars here and there, and planets, if you know what you are looking at.

Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) is an important U.S. painter, a "second generation" abstract expressionist, who, when describing her latest canvases, referred to them as "My black paintings -- although there's no black in them."

Here is a BOMB interview with the artist at her home in Vetheuil, France, in October, 1985.

Balloon

The phenakistoscope is built on a succession of formal symmetries that, once activated, produce a narrative. In yesterday's example the narrative is a succession of ascending balloons.

As a child, the ascension of a balloon was my first indication that the sky could be infinite, that once released, a balloon would rise forever, with nothing to stop it. Only later I did I learn that atmospheric pressure would eventually pop that balloon, but the idea of the infinite sky remained with me.

In February 2012, Kevin Schmidt released a balloon in Northern Alberta. Attached to the balloon was a camera, which eventually fell to earth, but not before taking this picture:

Last week, Kevin resumed the experiment. Below is this year's picture:

Phenakistoscope

Something to make on a rainy day. Like today.

Whirling Dervishes

So slowly, with such grace.

Tilt-a-Whirl

The Tilt-a-Whirl is my least favourite amusement park ride, one that my sister and I were forgotten on at the PNE one summer's night in 1971, when the operator began flirting with our mother.

Unlike the centrifuge Antoine struggles against in yesterday's post, the Tilt-a-Whirl is a more individualized variant that jerks more than it rotates.

Les 400 Coups (1959)

Yesterday's post included an excerpt from Dan Graham's Body Press (1972), while today's post is something of an inversion: a scene that appears early in Truffaut's Les 400 Coups (1959) that has its subject(s) flattened and at the edge of a centre, not amidst it. This scene in some ways parallels the opening credit scene, where the Eiffel Tower provides the centre point.

Body Press (1972)

Two-minutes-and-three-seconds of Dan Graham's filmic installation Body Press (1972), part of the 2007 Flick Collection show at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof.