Some of the incredible work of the Asafo, the warrior group of the Fante people of Ghana. Exploited by Europeans for centuries, the Fante noted their enslavers obsession with pageantry and mixed it with their own history and traditions to create these amazing, often satirical and defiant banners, many of which are still in use today.
Everything about this 1983 First Day Cover from the German Democratic Republic pleases me. The colours are lovely, particularly for a totalitarian state. Part of my enormous collection of things that have no purpose at all but are absolutely essential.
I Drink Your Blood, d. David E. Durston (1970)
When a satanic hippie cult descend on a small town and make a nuisance of themselves, a small boy gives them a tray of meat pies he has injected with the blood of a rabid dog. The consequences of this unusual but totally understandable action (they assaulted the boy's sister and forced his Grandpa to take LSD) are rapid and irrevocable: madness, cannibalism and an orgy of infection and bloody death ensues. It's a terrible film, really, which is why I only ever watch it once or twice a year.
Happy Halloween, people. Trick, treat, eat, drink and be merry - but maybe give the pies a miss, who knows what might be in them?
Ian Panter (left) and Dr John Harvey examine two conserved longbows recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose. From the Encyclopedia of Archery by W.F Paterson (Hale, 1984).
I think about this photograph a lot.
George Maciunas was the founder of the 'anti-art, pro-chance' Fluxus Movement, and Artype is a simple but mesmeric short film from 1966, one of many made by him and his associates as an accompaniment to the numerous parties, shows, happenings and freakouts organised, attended and no doubt thoroughly enjoyed by the cream of the 1960s American Avant Garde.
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