The Making of Frankenstein's Monster: Post-Golem, Pre-Robot

"But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses. . . . I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I?" (Shelley 121)

Titelsidan till Frankenstein av Theodor von Holst, en av de första illustrationerna till romanen.

Interesting essay by Norma Rowen about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as one in a whole series of embodiments of one of man's oldest dreams -- that of making a creature of his own, referring to the Golem story as one of the most ancient ones.

Another 'making a creature story', interesting from a gender perspective, is the medieval, alchemist recipe of Paracelsus in the Philosophia Sagax (1536).
"If the sperm, enclosed in a hermetically-sealed glass, is buried in horse manure for about forty days and properly "magnetized," it begins to live and to move. After such a time it bears the form and resemblance of a human being, but it will be transparent and without a corpus. If it is now artificially fed with the arcanum sanguinis hominis until it is about forty weeks old, and if allowed to remain during that time in the horse manure, in a continually even temperature, it will grow into a human child, with all its members developed like any other child, such as may have been born of a woman, only it will be much smaller. We call such a being a homunculus, and he may be raised and educated like any other child, until he grows older and obtains reason and intellect, and is able to take care of himself. (Pachter 278)"
Imagine that - making a baby out of a sperm without using a woman.

Read the full essay here.

The Residents live show

Small clip from the opening song by The Residents, yesterday 2013-05-09 at Södra teatern in Stockholm. I enjoyed the show a lot, despite some weird in between talk about King dongs and failed porncareers. Meant to be artistic statements I guess, underlining the cheesyness of the Paul Mccarthy-figure like singer and alter ego Randy. It was funny when he encouraged willing groupies to contact the tour manager outside, given the fact the audience were 95% men with a minimum age of 40 or so. I beleived they would balance the male chauvinism by singing their hit song and James Brown cover It,s a mans mans world in the end - but no, that would probably have been below the dignity line of Randy's. (Swenglish expression?)

I found the music great, the performance tight and the remarkable voice and voice effetcts of Randy is still ringing in my head. Go and see if you get the chance.

Ray Harryhausen R.I.P.

Hard choice between Talos or the skeletons from the 'Jason and the argonauts' movie so here's both.

New Golem Clay models

I wasn't pleased with the looks of my current Golem figure, it was far to good looking, almost athletic and too easy to like. I wan't it to be more monstreous and it really doesn't have to be so humanoid at all, so I started making new models in clay trying to forget about human anatomy and instead thinking purely functional, e.g. it needs two legs to walk with, but instead of muscles Golem is made of clay, so I make the legs according to the physical laws of clay, that is rolling two straight tubes and bending them at the bottom so it can stand.
Golem is made to be a helping hand for the maker, so it needs to have long arms and big hands. In my last two figures I made it with one large hand and one penguin like paw. I personally like the third version best, it is more of the clay creature I wan't it to be. If you don't agree and think one of the others are better as Golem, please let me know.


First version

Second version

Third version

Baba Yaga laid an egg

Baba Yaga, another creature from the eastern european mythology I might populize my game with, who was first known to me reading Dubravka Ugresic great novel 'Baba Yaga laid en egg'. A witch often described as living in the woods in a hut standing on Chicken legs. A lot of different versions of her seems to exit in Romania, Russia, Croatia, Poland etc.

Below on the left, is the heroine Vasilisa outside of the hut of Baba Yaga as depicted by Ivan Bilibin (1902). On the right, a Sami Storehouse on stilts, displayed at Skansen right here in Stockholm where I live. 

Images of my pieces in the exhibition at ID:I

Pot with feather on top and A PLACE IN THE SUN below

Exhibition I'm part of in ID:I gallery, Stockholm

ID:I Galleri

presenterar

INGÅNG NÄSTA DÖRR

15.3–31.3 2013

Vernissage fredag 15 mars 17–20

Öppet ons–fre 12–18
lör–sön 12–16 

Inger Andersson
Åbi Berglund
Cecilia Elde
Linus Ersson
Märit Runsten
Christian Sandell
Per B Sundberg
August Sörenson

Konst handlar ofta om att se något annat än det omedelbart uppenbara. Konsten kan vrida och vända på begreppen och skapa bilder som vid första anblicken kan verka obegripliga men om man som betraktare hittar den där dörren på baksidan och kliver in köksvägen…

Christian Sandell

INGÅNG NÄSTA DÖRR är en grupputställning producerad för galleri ID:I. De sju inbjudna konstnärerna har valts ut av en av galleriets medlemmar, Christian Sandell, som också deltar med ett verk. Var och en har bidragit med upp till två verk, som förhåller sig till utställningens titel/tema. Inspirationen till titeln är hämtad från de skyltar som restaurangägare och andra näringsidkare sätter upp när de tröttnat på att folk går och rycker i fel dörr för att försöka komma in i deras lokaler. En vardaglig företeelse. En vänlig tillrättavisning. Ett trött pekfinger. En pil som visar den rätta vägen?

ID:I Galleri

Tjärhovsgatan 19, 116 28 Stockholm, Sweden