Dear subscribers,
Art & Trash spent 2023 on hiatus while I was busy setting up Black Zero, a home video label specializing in Canadian experimental films.
New episodes are now underway for a year-long bi-weekly run of our series, but in the meantime, I’m writing to share this, the first in a series of video essays dealing with the films of R. Bruce Elder, here starting with his second epic cycle, The Book of Praise.
This video essay was made for the blu-ray release of Elder’s A Man Whose Life was Full of Woe has been Surprised by Joy (1997), an astonishing film about the body and transformation. At the beginning of this month, we published the fourth, fifth, and sixth discs in the Black Zero collection, which you can order here. The disc for Surprised by Joy also contains a commentary track with Elder and me, and a substantial interview with Elder. It is an illuminating look inside of the working process of a major artist.
As a kind of preview for upcoming series of Art & Trash, I wrote three pieces for Split Tooth Media, the online culture magazine, for their October Horror marathon. These essays will be the basis for future episodes of Art & Trash.
Paperback: Prisoners of the Printed Page in The Timekeepers of Eternity
Second Deaths: Metaphors for Tolerance in Mindwarp
The Right Place: Martyrs and Monsters in Suffer Little Children
I’ll be sending out a note early in the new year about the new series, along with a trailer, and information on our Patreon! That’s all for now, and thanks for your attention. Till then.