Dante's Inferno gets an update and a video-game: good news for swaggering hero-poets

Bowler hats, tommy guns, and spats: illustrator Seymour Chwast's updated Dante's Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation looks like a 1930s Hollywood detective movie, telegraphing Dante's ultimately hopeful message in cinematic black-and-white. If Chwast's version of the Divine Comedy begs no comparison to the art of illustrator Gustave Doré, well, it's a safe bet the 19th century engraver never imagined Dante as a Dashiell Hammett character, either.

Chwast's first graphic novel is full of innovative and clever images, although high-school Miss Grundys may wail at the simplified story. "Captain" Charon's lake is now a neon-lit chasm he zooms across in a speedboat and floozies of Florence lounge in cocktail dresses. The damned wear Yale varsity sweaters. Dante still searches for the truth with the poet Virgil, now as his guide in a tuxedo and bowler.

Some things, however, stay true to the original: for most readers, as well as the artists that have illustrated the Comedy over centuries, the torments of Hell are still more thrilling to depict than the transcendence of Heaven -- and for Chwast make for much wittier visuals.

Not to be trumped by mere words and pictures on a page, Electronic Arts has developed a videogame of Dante's Inferno that ratchets up the action to make Dante a fallen crusader swaggering his way through hell, battling Satan himself for the love of Beatrice.

"He fundamentally mapped hell with this poem," says Jonathan Knight, the game's executive producer. "He's created a visual topography, and there's a tremendous amount of structure, geography, weather — and monsters."

A graphic novel and a videogame based on the work of a 14th-century visionary seem a victory of sorts for the image of fearless and swashbuckling hero-poets, if not for truth in literature. It's unlikely there'll be corresponding releases for Purgatory or Heaven -- spiritual redemption is less exciting for gamers, presumably. Who knows -- that still leaves the battle for Heaven in Milton's "Paradise Lost" for some enterprising game company to try.

UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith responds to site hacking in mid-October

Kenneth Goldsmith (photo by David Velasco, 2008)

After the recent hacking of UbuWeb, a heated discussion broke out on the most prominent experimental film listserv, Frameworks, discussing the tactics of Ubu. There was clearly a lot of misunderstanding regarding what UbuWeb is about. Ubu's founder, Kenneth Goldsmith, was compelled to make a response. Here are excerpts. The entire letter can be read on the UbuWeb site.

An Open Letter to the Frameworks Community

October, 18, 2010
(responding to this thread on the Frameworks discussion list)


To the Frameworks Community,

I have been reading your thread on UbuWeb's hacking on the list with great interest. It seems that with a few exceptions, the list is generally positive (with reservations) about Ubu, something that makes me happy. Ubu is a friend, not a foe.

A few things: first of all, Ubu doesn't touch money. We don't make a cent. We don't accept grants or donations. Nor do we -- or shall we ever -- sell anything on the site. No one makes a salary here and the work is all done voluntarily (more love hours than can ever be repaid). Our bandwidth and server space is donated by universities.

We know that UbuWeb is not very good. In terms of films, the selection is random and the quality is often poor. The accompanying text to the films can be crummy, mostly poached from whatever is available around the net. So are the films: they are mostly grabbed from private closed file-sharing communities and made available for the public, hence the often lousy quality of the films. It could be done much better.

Yet, in terms of how we've gone about building the archive, if we had to ask for permission, we wouldn't exist. Because we have no money, we don't ask permission. Asking permission always involves paperwork and negotiations, lawyers, and bank accounts. Yuk. But by doing things the wrong way, we've been able to pretty much overnight build an archive that's made publically accessible for free of charge to anyone. And that in turn has attracted a great number of film and video makers to want to contribute their works to the archive legitimately. The fastest growing part of Ubu's film section is by younger and living artists who want to be a part of Ubu. But if you want your works off Ubu, we never question it and remove it immediately; it's your work after all. We will try to convince you otherwise, but we will never leave anything there that an artist or copyright holder wants removed.

Ubu presents orphaned and out-of-print works. Sometimes we had inadvertently host works that are in print and commercially available for a reasonable price. While this is strictly against our policy, it happens. (With an army of interns and students and myself the only one in charge, it's sometimes hard to keep the whole thing together.) Then someone tells us that we're doing it and we take it down immediately and apologize. Ouch. The last thing Ubu wants to do is to harm those who are trying to legitimately sell works. For this reason, we don't host, for example, any films by Brakhage: they're in print and affordable for anyone who wants them on DVD or through Netflix. Fantastic. [The "wall of shame" was a stupid, juvenile move and we removed a few years ago it when we heard from Joel Bachar that it was hurtful to the community.] ....


Likewise, a younger generation is starting to see that works must take a variety of forms and distributive methods, which happen at the same time without cancelling each other out. The young, prominent video artist Ryan Trecartin has all his work on Ubu, hi-res copies are distributed by EAI, The Elizabeth Dee Gallery represent his work (and sells his videos there), while showing in museums around the world. Clearly Ryan's career hasn't been hurt by this approach. You can see his Ryan Trecartin's Ubu page here (all permissioned).

... In terms of sales and rentals ("Ubu is bad for business"), you'd know better than me. But when Peter Gidal approached Ubu and requested that his films be included in our archive, we were thrilled to host a number of them. I met Peter in NYC a few months ago and asked him what the effect of having his films on Ubu had been. He said, in terms of sales and rentals, it was exactly the same, but in terms of interest, he felt there was a big uptick from students and scholars by virtue of being able to see and study that which was unavailable before. Ubu is used mostly by students and in the classroom. Sadly, as many of you have noted, academic budgets don't generally provide for adequate rental or projection money. I know this firsthand: my wife, the video artist Cheryl Donegan -- who teaches video at two prominent East Coast institutions -- is given approximately $200 per semester (if that) for rentals. Good luck.

... Cinema, as you know too well, is a social experience; Ubu pales by comparison. It will never be a substitute. But sadly, for many -- unable to live near the urban centers where such fare is shown, trapped by economics, geography, career, circumstance, health, family, etc. -- Ubu is the only lifeline to this kind of work. As such, we believe that we do more good in the world than harm.

I think that, in the end, Ubu is a provocation to your community to go ahead and do it right, do it better, to render Ubu obsolete. Why should there only be one UbuWeb? You have the tools, the resources, the artwork and the knowledge base to do it so much better than I'm doing it. I fell into this as Ubu has grown organically (we do it because we can) and am clearly not the best person to be representing experimental cinema. Ubu would love you to step in and help make it better. Or, better yet, put us out of business by doing it correctly, the way it should have been done in the first place.

Kenneth Goldsmith
UbuWeb

A poem for November: "figure: MAP (AT TIDE)", by Sonam Kachru

(Sajjad Malik, http://kashmirblackandwhite.com)

figure: MAP (AT TIDE)


--"And if the seasons defeat our garden?"

1

What fear after the flowers if our eyes recede
And we ebb with unfamiliar light, against
Discolored skin, at tide -- the cutting shores,
The crueler seasons?
Here are yet mothers, and every bit as kind
As the stranger sea; we are taught, and teach
Our children to live as at the ends
Of cut stem or of leaf, or at the break in bone
With the wit of calluses; to take our tea with salt,
Wash one another clean with mud.
Are here not mothers, with a knife
To keep under the pillow of a child at night
To sever them from sleep, if their sleep
Be unkind, or inviting: to forgive us
Should we trespass in the light of morning
With a too beautiful or even unmarred face
Even as we forgive those who recede
And do not wake?

What if this be not light we once knew
To gather to it all that is bright
In a clean room in a swept house,
In the splendid accord of flowers
Pressed to absolute, almost up-to breath,
Condense at the window above the translucent flesh--
Her first turnips; to abound,
By the un-mute edges in spring,
In water we drew from mirror-blank wells,
Moldy taps set in mottled walls, to remember
Something of winter. Still,
The light is not nothing -- to show us nothing
Of the nothing new with us --
But is some scaled thing,
Or unwelcome thought,
Coiled in a damp corner in a fevered brain,
Alive to all that un-still still lives
And passes through us, and is caught
As little dust In little light.


Here is the country, if any, for amateur theology
For, doubtless, God wanted this blue country,
Eventually, to tire of the gravel-throated songs
The drowned hyacinth songs -- O,
O, O, O
But he kills me everyday ...
Did you see him this fall
Embrace me to winter? --
And tire of her tears
That flowed as prayer in her rivers,
Ash in her songs;
The gentle, whetted songs
For crueler mouths, all heartless birds
Our stones no longer breed
From the thirst of snow, the silence in reeds.

By Sonam Kachru. Opening quote: Dina Nath Nadim, Bombur ta Yambarzal, 20th century.

(Material in italics from the author's translation of a song by Habba Khatun, circa 16th century. This excerpt of a poem in five parts originally appeared October 13 at Kachru's website, Argumentative Indians.)

On his blog, Kachru, born in Kashmir and living in Chicago, writes: "my wife and I live a very happy, emotionally rich life. Our dog complains, but then she is too smart for her own good. She eats more often than we do." The author also requests visitors to his site "honk if you would like to see more" of this poem.