Jarvis Cocker's "Journeys Into the Outside" TV series

Musician Jarvis Cocker (most famous as the frontman for the British band Pulp) conducted some mightily enjoyable road trips through some major sites of self-taught so-called "outsider art" for UK television in 1998. The three-part series was originally broadcast on Channel 4 (where I originally saw it), but then it wasn't subsequently widely distributed. It's filled with tons of magical mosaic gardens and roadside religious propaganda as you might expect but it's very charming to see Cocker attempt to befriend and discover more about all manner of eccentric and visionary folk, whose works defy most generally accepted aesthetic norms and get down to the business of being totally weird.

Two Lou Reed Documentaries

“If you play the albums chronologically they cover the growth of us as people from here to there, and in there is a tale for everybody in case they want to know what they can do to survive the scenes. If you line the songs up and play them, you should be able to relate and not feel alone - I think it’s important that people don’t feel alone.”

Lou Reed on the Velvet Underground

It keeps floating in and out of the interwebs but the 1998 documentary on Lou Reed entitled Rock and Roll Heart is well worth watching if you haven't (or have!) already. Informative, rich in archival footage, and comparatively concise given the breadth and general eclectic weirdness of old Lou's career. And late last year, in commemoration of Reed's death, the BBC screened a new documentary Lou Reed Remembered largely comprising a montage of clips featuring many of the musician's former collaborators, friends, and those he influenced, including: Paul Auster, Lenny Kaye, Moe Tucker, Boy George, Holly Woodlawn, Mick Rock, Bob Ezrin, and Thurston Moore.

A Conspiracy Collage of Video Clips

For last week’s presentation in my Conceptualisms, Conspiracies, and Counterhistories course I screened some assorted clips that I thought might offer a kind of “conspiracy collage” including the following: the artist Mike Kelley on the notion of “Art and Fucking Things Up.” And some sections of the South Bank Show program on dystopian sci-fi writer J.G. Ballard (part 3) and (part 4).  Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson has started a web series called This is not a Conspiracy Theory, and also speaks about the project at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Theorist Boris Groys offered his perspective on contemporary art for a segment of the film Future of Art. And closed off with a few minutes of video artist Ryan Trecartin’s P.OPULAR S.KY (section ish).