Ever since Icarus fell from the sky, we have been in love with the idea of flight. America watched in anticipation and fearful delight as Australian Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier and survived freefalling 29 miles back to earth; we cheered when the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars. Paradoxically, we so easily forget the absolute […]
There is, within the aesthetics of the grotesque, an unsettling interconnectivity between the organic and mechanical, between the hybrid and the cohesive whole. We don’t mind when we can give such hybrids a name (such as the Borg) and relegate them to the realm of science fiction or fantasy. But then there is the art that […]
Here are the kind of things you will find in Richard A. Kirk’s backyard. What? You mean you’ve never seen creatures like these before? Well, then, you are in for a treat. Or maybe a trick??? Hmmm… Kirk is this year’s Artist Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto. He has worked with many […]
There has been much ado about this term called The New Aesthetic: what it means, where it’s from, what it aims to do, how it might wander aimlessly through the rhetoric of revolutionary art movements with nary a ripple in that ocean. Bruce Sterling has described it as the “eruption of the digital into the physical,” throwing […]
It’s rare to feel as if an animal can possess you — inhabit your body, mind and spirit as if it were a new lover exploring all your real and artificial selves. Dress your dogs and cats with as many sweater vests, booties and hats as you want; they’ll never come close to the hybrid human qualities that […]
Amid all of the cynicism, snark, satire, and dark irony that pervades this 21st century culture, there is an unspeakable, insatiable need for the wondrous, the fantastic, the doorway into the mythic imagination. We sometimes forget the cost of that journey — how much it takes to truly grapple with alternative landscapes, creatures, or cultures that uncannily tap […]
In his artist statement, Chris Mars rallies a battle cry: “There are the voiceless, who cannot speak for themselves. These are the easiest ones to shrink down. There are words for the non-conformers, simple words that can be quickly acknowledged by those that buy in. Crazy. Faggot. Gang. Rich. One is sinful, one is lazy, one is violent by nature and one is […]
Jeffrey Ford is an American writer whose fiction combines elements of traditional fantasy or magic realism with surrealism and horror. As a student at Binghamton University, he studied with the novelist John Gardner and until recently taught at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. His work has been nominated for and received many awards, including the […]
Stacey Steers’s Night Hunter film left me speechless the first time I watched it at the Denver Art Museum in 2011. At that exhibition, it was accompanied by the most delightful and creepy of dollhouses, which you peered into and could see looping clips of film. But it was the full-featured animation (16 minutes and 16 seconds) that […]
Felix Kramer is an occasional student and freelance concept designer living in Southern Tier New York. His creative interests include visual design, prose writing, and poetry, all of which are approached with an eye for surrealism and deformation of existing tropes and systems. He draws influence from the fields of linguistics, mathematics, and architecture, among […]