Colourful cut-out card illustrations by Eiko Ojala

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Tree of Codes: re-inscription as a generative compositional technique

Jonathan Safran Foer's 'Tree of Codes' (2010) "is actually a kind of interactive paper-sculpture: Foer and his collaborators at Die Keure in Belgium took the pages of another book, Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, and literally carved a brand new story out of them using a die-cut technique.

According to Foer's publisher Visual Editions, Tree of Codes was turned down by every printer they approached: 'Their stock line [was], 'the book you want to make just cannot be made'.'…

The luscious results, designed by Sara de Bondt, will fly in the face of anyone who says that physical books are passé. Tree of Codes is tactile, interactive, immersive--and it won't ever run out of batteries."

(John Pavlus, Co.Design)

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The Cut Up Collective and their Cut Up Machine

"The Moustache Foundation is proud to present for its inaugural exhibition, CutUp Machine, a series of new works by the collective CutUp.

CutUp are an autonomous group linked by a shared desire to reorder the urban landscape through intervention and play. Incorporating film, collage and installation, CutUp's practice focuses largely on the creative potential of the street as a site for interventionist art and disruption.

Interested in the spaces of misinformation and miscommunication inherent in the everyday, CutUp aim to introduce disorder into daily existence by interrupting and re-appropriating established visual forms. Occurring both inside and outside the gallery, CutUp's billboard and bus stop works are created by slicing up an advert and reassembling the pieces into a newly ordered image."

(Jaguar Shoes Collective, 4 November 2005)

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Tabitha Soren: in-between narratives capturing stories in flux

"Sometimes it's simply looking at a particular behavior in a new way that evokes a range of emotions. Photographer Tabitha Soren has created a series of photographs, Running, that stir up feelings of panic, tension, curiosity, and concern. Tabitha's photographs have power in their simplicity, and it's as if one edge of her photograph is the past and one is the future, creating an in-between narrative that captures a story in flux. As viewers, we are caught in a pivotal moment of cinematic tension, requiring us to imagine what came before and what comes after each image. The photographs become a series of short stories that seem to shout 'get me the hell out of here.'"

(Aline Smithson, 23 May 2012, Lenscratch)

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Un Chien andalou: a masterpiece of surrealist cinema

"Acclaimed as a surrealist masterpiece, Un Chien andalou aggressively disconnects itself from narrative flow. The creators of this short film. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, fully intended there to be no links between successive scenes. Fortunately this didn't inhibit their dreaming up of some of the most striking moments ever to be projected upon the silver screen. The opening focuses on a man (Luis Buñuel) stropping his cut-throat razor, honing it to a perfect edge. Stepping onto the balcony, he gazes at the moon. This celestial orb is instantly replaced with a woman and, enlarging rapidly, her left eye. The bare blade then descends on her unprotected pupil, a graphic incident.

Designed to shock, which it still does almost 70 years later, quick editing removes the image before it has time to fully sink in. Suddenly the viewer is faced with a nun-like figure weaving uncertainly down the road on a bicycle. There is no bridge to the previous horror, although this mysterious person does provide a number of objects which resurface at odd intervals. Later there is the unusual sight of a man (Robert Hommet) hauling two grand pianos, each stuffed with the putrefying remains of a donkey, as he trudges towards a cowering woman (Simone Mareuil). He is also unfortunate enough to have a hole in his hand, where the ants live. None of this is significant.

A marvellous aspect of something as wilfully bizarre as Un Chien andalou is that almost any interpretation can be drawn from the images shown. Perhaps every single scene is random and unconcerned with any other, although Buñuel certainly seems to have included items which are present throughout the film. In some ways the repeated glimpses of these things in situations where they shouldn't be adds to the confused feel, enhanced by the off-putting and nonsensical time-markers deployed.

The eternal themes of life, death, lust and love are thrown up at various points, although there is no framework on which to attach these emotions. This is of no consequence though as Buñuel has already hurried onto the next sequence, violently cutting so that the desired woman becomes naked in a flash - a picture of what are ardent suitor really sees. Un Chien andalou does not require such deep analysis though, being much more a film which should be purely experienced. It achieves that which Buñuel and Dalí aimed for and, with a live music accompaniment, is unstoppable."

(Damian Cannon, 1997)

Fig.1 Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (1929). 'Un Chien andalou'