PARIS SYNDROME

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http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/radar/paris-syndrome

PARIS SYNDROME

Immortalised in art, literature, film and music, Paris has been portrayed throughout the centuries as a seductive spectacle for the senses, a city overspilling with old-world charm and the promise of romance and passion. However, for a handful of Japanese tourists each year, this romanticised image shatters like the sugary crust of a Crème Brûlée, leaving them suffering from hallucinations, dizziness and acute delusional states.

When the disappointment dawns that the dream doesn’t correspond to the reality, Japanese citizens can fall victim to ‘Paris Syndrome’, a disorder that carries both physical and psychological symptoms. In some cases the symptoms have been so severe that the afflicted had to be repatriated. For those suffering from a milder form of the disorder, Japan has a 24-hour hotline offering advice and assistance in finding treatment. 

Although the sufferers of Paris Syndrome aren’t exclusively Japanese, it seems that Japan is the nation most susceptible to it over all others; of the eleven struck down by the disorder this summer, the majority were Japanese nationals. Culture shock is a major trigger; coming from a country where unfailing politeness, good etiquette and manners are customary, it is difficult for the Japanese to fathom the informality and the apparent rudeness of the Parisians. This is all, no doubt, exaggerated by the fact that they also have to deal with their ultra-idealised view of Paris being dashed before their very eyes. Thanks to advertising and the media, many expect to arrive to a charming tableau akin to a Doisneau photograph or a Dior advert; cobbled streets swarming with slender, Gauloise-touting, Gallic-goddesses, lovers locked in embraces along the Left Bank, mimes performing around the corner of every elaborate Haussmann block. Meanwhile, sweet sounds of the accordion float gently through the Parisian air. They certainly aren’t prepared for the scope of social problems that bubble beneath Paris’ bourgeois façade; the dirt, the inequality and the obscene amount of homeless, as well as the less-pressing issues of the perverted old men.

This phenomenon is not reserved to Paris alone; Jerusalem Syndrome and Stendhal Syndrome are similar in nature. The former manifests itself during a trip to the ‘Holy City’, and sees the mentally sane transform into delusional religious obsessives with compulsive desires to cut their fingernails and toenails. Whilst those suffering from the latter are so overcome by art that rapid heartbeat and fainting ensue.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DEE DEE PENNY

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AN INTERVIEW WITH DEE DEE PENNY

California’s sisters in black, Dum Dum Girls, blend bubblegum harmonies and Phil Spector-inflected sixties sounds with reverbed garage fuzz.

We had a chat with the leader of the pack, Dee Dee, prior to their set at Festsaal Kreuzberg.


There are always great artists coming out of California, from Best Coast and Nite Jewel, to Zappa, Beefheart, The Beach Boys and beyond… what is it about The Golden State that makes for such great music?

I think it’s the nature aspect. It’s beautiful and the landscape has always been very inspiring to me – the desert, the sandy beaches and the mountains. But other than that I don’t know, I think it’s like a vibe. I just moved to New York and it feels completely inspirational in a different way, it is literally the city that never sleeps and California is the opposite; so mellow.

On your first album there’s a song called ‘Oh Mein M’, when did you learn Deutsch? 

I was really obsessed with German Literature, so much so that I wanted to learn the language. I studied it for two years in college and then I went to school in Germany for a year. It’s been a long time since I was here, so I’m rusty but I try and use it as much as I can. I don’t remember exactly why I wrote the song in German, other than I wanted to write a song about love at first sight which is such a cliché topic and it sounded too simplistic in English, so I did it in German instead. At least to my ears it sounded more intelligent (laughs).

Are there any German writers you enjoy in particular?

I was really obsessed with Hermann Hesse when I was about 16.

And what do you make of Berlin?

I love it. When I went to school in a small town in the middle of Germany, I used to come here a lot on the weekends. It’s maybe my favourite city after New York. Although Berlin is big and so much is going on, it seems very under-populated, so it’s comfortable; you can breathe and it’s really cheap, which is amazing.

You’re signed to the prestigious Sub Pop label, which is synonymous with grunge bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney. Are those are sounds that have inspired you in anyway?

I was a huge Nirvana fan when I was 12, so I think to a degree, yes. I was a massive Hole fan as well, maybe that explains my inability to make music without heavily distorted guitars. There are elements of that noisiness in our music, but it was a pretty macho scene. It is definitely a huge honour to be on the label.

What are you currently listening to in your van?

I’m a massive fan of Dirty Beaches, but I’m obviously biased because he’s a good friend and my label puts him out, but I think he’s a huge talent. Other than that, I’m listening to Kurt Vile, the last John Maus record and Deerhunter; I think he’s probably the coolest guy around right now. I guess I sound like Pitchfork (laughs).

Your new album seems a lot more polished in comparison to your fuzz-heavy debut, are you moving away from lo-fi?

In my head, it doesn’t seem like a ton has changed, but I recently was writing the setlist for our last US tour and I listened to all our songs in an order and it was shocking to hear the difference between a song from an early EP and a song on Only in Dreams, because the fidelity is so much higher now. A lot of it has to do with being in the mood for that kind of sound. When the EP came out I was listening to a lot of Black Tambourine, Primitives and Jesus and Mary Chain; so that sound is what felt right to me. Also, since it was the first time I’d written any songs and recorded, I had no idea what I was doing and I literally did a bad job recording. Now the fidelity is better because we’re in a studio with a sound engineer. The songs on this album are so driven by the lyrics and the melodies that it just seemed appropriate that they should be on top, not buried.

So what did you all do before you were the Dum Dum girls?

When I was in college I wanted to be a writer, which is an equally if not more lofty goal.

What did you write?

I wrote a lot of short stories and poetry. I started a lot of novels and abandoned them. I knew early on that I wanted to try to do music, so I never bothered going to graduate school or trying to get a career of some kind, so I’ve just taken jobs in vintage shops, record shops, libraries and offices. Our bass player Bambi worked for the government in Texas doing non-profit work like social service, Jules is an innovator of furniture and Sandy is a graphic designer and has played in bands for years.

When did you pick up a guitar then?

I picked up a guitar when I was 12 and the first songs I tried to learn were 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins, The Man Who Sold the World by Bowie and probably a Greenday song. I was awful; I tried for years to play it.

What was different the second time round?

I had played the drums since then, which I loved, but it wasn’t conducive to writing songs. I really wanted to play guitar so I could write songs and sing in a rock ‘n’ roll band, so I finally got off my high horse of hating being bad at things and just sucked for a while. It’s all about muscle memory.

You’re known to be quite partial to a cover, the most recent being a Smiths song – how do you go about choosing?

I think at least once a day I’m like ‘we should cover this song’. It started out when I was starting to write songs and learning how to record. Being familiar with how songs are written and structured is helpful in writing your own, so I would play tons of covers and I recorded a lot of them. The Smiths cover was a random last minute thing. I think the next recording I put out will have a Strawberry Switchblade cover on it.

Which Strawberry Switchblade song?

Trees and Flowers. We were over here on tour with MGMT a couple of years ago and Andrew, the singer, was like ‘ you should cover Strawberry Switchblade’. I love the song but I’d never thought to cover them.

What are you reading right now?

I’ve just started ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’, by Carson McCullers.

STENDHAL SYNDROME

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STENDHAL SYNDROME

Have you ever felt giddy admiring a van Gogh, lost all sense of reason looking at a Raphael or turned to jelly before a Botticelli? Shameful wordplay aside, if the answer is yes, you may have suffered a bout of Stendhal Syndrome. Also known as Florence Syndrome, the psychosomatic disorder can develop when an individual is exposed to particularly beautiful art, inducing feelings of elation, exaltation and power as well as malaises such as disorientation, temporary amnesia and rapid heartbeat. Whoever thought a trip to the Louvre could be so fraught with peril?

Coined in 1989 by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, the term was introduced in her study La sindrome di Stendhal and named so in reference to its first-known literary documentation by French novelist Stendhal. In his 1817 book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio, Stendhal stated that upon visiting the Renaissance art in Florence, “[he] had palpitations of the heart […] [and] walked with the fear of falling”, almost fainting beneath the frescos in the Santa Croce. Nowadays, so acknowledged is the disorder that Italian newspaper Firenze Spettacolo published a list of places in Florence most likely to induce it, high on the list include the Uffizi Gallery, the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi and the Palazzo Pitti.

During her work as a psychiatrist, Magherini noticed that the pathology was most prevalent amongst tourists visiting Florence. She concluded that in the majority of cases the city itself is the trigger and that its enchanting Renaissance beauty, medieval structures and rich sense of the past can considerably heighten the elation and stress of being on holiday, making certain tourists more susceptible to manic moods. This could explain why Italians are seemingly immune to the syndrome.

Magherini also identified a deeper and darker Freudian aspect to the ailment; she states that for certain sensitive people, art is capable of unlocking a repressed trauma within the unconscious, pulling it to the forefront of the conscious mind and consequently, in so many words, opening a can of worms. These ‘sensitive people’ are often artistically-inclined, making artists, poets and writers particularly susceptible. Indeed, there is no shortage of authors who’ve documented their dizzying art encounters. There is evidence in his wife’s diaries that Dostoevsky had an ecstatic and transcendental experience when viewing Hans Holbein’s Dead Christ; an experience he confirmed in his novel The Idiot, writing; “Faced with a picture like this, a man could lose his faith”. Proust, too, had a similar euphoric episode when observing Vermeer’s View of Delft, an incident that he later transmuted through the character Bergotte, who collapses and dies at a Vermeer exhibition in his epic Remembrance of Things Past.

The past few decades have seen numerous stories in the press of cases of extreme Stendhal-esque behaviour whereby individuals have acted on their emotions towards works of art. Amongst those include; a Russian who struck the Mona Lisa with a terracotta pot she’d bought in the Louvre gift shop, a young woman who kissed a Cy Twombly painting leaving a lipstick smudge across it, a man who put a hole in a Monet at the Orsay Museum and a mathematician who attacked a Roman statue with a hammer. Just what is it that compels people like this to externalize their emotions towards great works of art in such an acute manner? Whether it be an all-out art attack or a lustful caress, perhaps the mental weight of being so close to something so significant to mankind’s cultural history can awaken an aesthetic response in them so powerful that for a few seconds the thought of being able to interact with or affect the piece in some way seems like the right thing to.

Stendhal Syndrome doesn’t end there, more extreme yet is Rubens Syndrome, which is characterised as a spontaneous need to engage in erotic activity after viewing art, in particular works depicting nudes and orgies such as those by the prolific Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. This kind of cultural seduction is more common than one would believe – a recent study by the Roman Institute of Psychology involving 2000 visitors revealed that 20 percent of them had had an “erotic adventure” in a museum.

BERLIN AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE

http://dontpaniconline.de/p/posts/art/berlin-as-you’ve-never-seen-it-before-by-luis-dourado

BERLIN AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE, BY LUIS DOURADO

Using a vintage map of Berlin from his archives, Portuguese visual artist and illustrator Luis Dourado has designed this exclusive image for Don’t Panic.

Oscillating across an array of mediums - digital, analogue, collage, photography and drawing - and using superimposition and manipulation, Luis Dourado produces works that are pervaded by a distorted and disorientating dream-like aesthetic. Reality and fantasy, vintage and modern, technology and tradition are simultaneously united and blurred.

Memory, illusion, and other matters relating to the mind are central themes in Luis’ work, and just like the human psyche, his pieces are intrinsically mysterious. His compositions are characterised by their absurd and abstract nature - akin to fleeting flashes of déjà vu or fathomless fragments of the subconscious - faces float, smoke billows, bodies cry.

We spoke to Luis to find out more about the image and his current work.

Can you explain your process for the map?

I actually got the map from my archives and in this piece, as in the others from my Maps series, the whole process was fully digital and intuitive. In "Maps" I usually manipulate the images using only three different shapes and for this Berlin map using the square form and something more rational felt like the right direction.

Tell us about your current projects.

Right now I’m working on three different personal series, one involving real statues of old busts. I started working on it in Berlin last year, and I’m now materializing the final pieces; it’s interesting, kind of different from what I’ve been doing previously. Working in 3D as been quite challenging for me - but I’m excited about the final results. I’m also preparing some exhibitions for next year and setting up an independent publishing house.

Can you name an artist or a movement that has profoundly inspired your work?

Not really, I do not feel a particular interest for any movement in art history. I used to be quite interested in antique and classic art but this has never directly influenced my work. I’m not sure what "inspires" my work but I always felt like it was a little bit 50/50, on the one hand, my background will always have a word on my works, on the other hand, I’ve always felt that a part of this will to create came randomly, by chance, directly related to my personal life and experiences and I like it that way, natural.

Manipulation seems to be a constant in your work, what draws you so often to this technique?

I like this appropriation-manipulation process for some of my works. I also love to create something from nothing but usually I get the most satisfaction from distorting reality in order to get a different and personal perspective of it, almost as if the artwork was a testimonial of something, a trace of your own personality. I love this idea of how you can collect something that’s marginal to your world, study it, and make it part of who you are, to reflect myself in the "real world".

Having lived in Berlin, what does the city mean to you and your work?

Berlin is for sure an inspiring city. What I got most out of it was access to so much old stuff in second hand shops and markets. I collected loads of stuff that I’m using now and that I’ll definitely be using in future work. I don’t think the city itself changed my work directly, but I guess that it gave my work different inputs.  

AKIRA KUROSAWA'S DREAMS

http://dontpaniconline.de/p/featured/akira-kurosawa’s-dreams-at-kino-arsenal

AKIRA KUROSAWA'S DREAMS

Akira Kurosawa is a true celluloid titan. Often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers to have lived, revered by Scorsese, Bergman and Coppola, his prolific career spanned 57 years and 30 films, earning him a plethora of awards and international acclaim as a director, producer, screenwriter and editor.

As part of their ongoing Kurosawa retrospective, on October 24 and 25 Kino Arsenal will screen his profoundly personal film, Dreams (Yume). Made in the twilight of his life and career, Dreams treads the line between film and art and is an aesthetic experience not to be missed.

A collection of eight separate vignettes, the film explores the dreams and nightmares that Kurosawa had throughout his life. From the post-apocalyptic ‘Weeping Demon’ to the utopian ‘Village of the Watermills’, his dreams are often presented in a parable format and delve deeply into Japanese legends and traditions whilst simultaneously confronting universal questions relating to environment, mortality and identity.

With little dialogue, a strong cultural context and often inconclusive narratives, Dreams is an antidote to Hollywood. The films power lies in its dazzling visuals which communicate more about Kurosawa’s tales than his words ever could. From start to finish, the vibrant, rainbow-hued imagery that fills the screen of this cinematographic triumph will captivate any imagination.

BACK IN THE USSR

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BACK IN THE USSR

East of the Iron Curtain Trail, scattered across fourteen former Soviet republics, lie the decaying and abandoned architectural relics of the final decades of the USSR. Concrete and chaotic, the Soviet structures that sprang up there between 1970 and 1991 are like nothing ever seen before.

These constructions, with their strong cosmic undercurrents, were the realisation of the futurist fantasies of Eastern Bloc architects whose designs delved deep into the realms of imagination; in the town of Kiev, Ukraine, stands a satellite-shaped crematorium contoured by giant flames of concrete, and situated on a busy street nearby, is the Institute of Scientific Research with a flying saucer casually protruding from its roof. This highly expressive style of architecture is testimony perhaps, to a decrease in artistic suppression post-Stalin, as well as to the loosening of strict Soviet policies by his successive leaders Brezhnev and Gorbachev.

These brutal, beautiful monuments to an era of crumbling communism are, however, endangered, with many set to be destroyed to make way for new developments. Fortunately, this final age of Soviet architecture has been captured by French photographer Frédéric Chaubin. Recently published, his book CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed is an in-depth exploration of this distinctly experimental late-Soviet style of architecture that was born during a period of decay in the USSR. One thing becomes immediately clear; these exuberant and otherworldly buildings were bastions of continuing hope and encapsulated the dreams of the Soviet Union to transcend all that had been and to build a utopian world, despite the increasing disintegration of their nation.