catalogue of wonders [the birth of...]

Necessity is mother of invention, apparently, and sloth the father of creation, hum! Who said that? Twenty five years ago someone dreamt of starting a fanzine, called simply ‘bulletin’, full a3 pages folded in the vertical, unusual format for a photocopied format. All copies disappeared. Still there is the memory of that first and only issue of the ‘bulletin’. On the cover there was a black and white photograph (close up) of a baby from a sony advert. Inside there was these lists of obsessions and loves, poems, tiny articles decorated with black and white photos, collages and there was also an appendix in a5 format with a chapter from a novel by kutagawa (imported from brazil and at the time not translated to Portuguese.) the second addenda in a5 format, if i remember well, was a biography of jean genet. The ‘bulletin’ wrote about the music of david sylvian also, i remember now, at the time, or just afterwards, the release of the album ‘secrets of the behive.’ Remembering or not the contents of that fanzine (20 copies, handmade?) what stayed until today was/is the motive, the inspiration. The ‘bulletin’ was born out of frustration and boredom with the ‘normal’ media and the desire to share things that at the time almost no one listen and heard much less read or seen. A community of young boys and girls that had a lot of time in their hands and, they thought, something different to tell and show to the little world surrounding them. This was in 1985, the country was Portugal of the little thoughts and little happenings, and we felt a rage mixed up with ecstasy of going to college with the folded fanzine and trying to sell it to our fellow students. We sold them all, i think, including my own copy. Twenty years on, the country is England and the place is London, metropolis of dreams and disasters, ambitions and depression, a grey place that the colourful postcards represent in a touristic way, false, fake and glamorous it isn’t. If you do not have a great paid job, you are ruined. All is grey and expensive. The live music scene is fantastic, the art museums extraordinary but, and that is a very big but, everything spins/exists around money. O, well, London is the capital of capitalism, you would say. But then there is the anger and hunger for things different.

fig. 2 ¬ steven lee rees

poet, photographer

member since 2007

fig. 3 ¬

suna aktas

photo journalist, writer

member since 2006

fig. 4 ¬

bilginar sadulova

shoe maker, writer

member since 2010

fig. 5 ¬

anne birkland

actress, writer, mystic, musician

member since 2006

fig. 6 ¬

patrick monrad

writer (fiction)
member since 2009

they wrote that seeing the world as an image on a screen, and seeing a picture as a projected, refracted, reflected image was a rather different way of thinking about visual art from the idea of looking out on things through a window ; others objected on the perishable state of formalist art; others of buddha and others said that it was the end of a world and the beginning of another… what they said is recorded on books, videos, electronic media and available on the net. some said that there was nothing else new, all was invented already; others that god was dead, being it ian curtis or christ; electricity replaced steam and coal, valves by silicon and now; ladies and gentlemen: welcome to the age of disinformation, spin, fastness, sex and horror of towers exploding in the air, and where all is available. invent an invention… invent an invention ordained already, constructing another path, as told, the good son, pieces here and there, a figment of seeing things, rise early and have goat milk and crumbles of dreams and nightmares, always stories as lies, aside the melancholy of the pebbles on a beach, the murmurs and laughter of others... invent an explanation to convince one of one's history. almost blasphemy these words… some have and some don’t, as they say also. stories r human’s fabled way to keep dreaming, to run away to other lands and times, so we do also have a short story to tell, compiled by those that lived it, researching here and there, diaries, photographs, cd’s, dvd’s, notebooks, making long distance phone calls, visiting lunatic’s asylums, wondering on the lost ark of memories, re-reading letters and emails, and it starts, as good old lullabies: once upon a time…

fig. 7 ¬ stephan o'goodson

songwriter, writer, jazz and blues singer

member of the catalogue of wonders since 2009

there was a chef with literary pretensions, a kitchen-porter with a taste for cooked vinyl and a predisposition for crazy out of tempo mixes and not so vulgar pop and dance music, a frustrated painter and a teacher of philosophy and history of art at an american university. not to forget the anorak one with pimples and thick glasses, later on substituted by contact lenses that allow strangers to see his lovely gigantic blue eyes [just like elijah woods] and a maniac for assembling and coordinating sounds, the others used to call him creepy and hyper active maniac, but forget about the gossip… their names r not known in the best music magazines and musical world but at their own pace they gathered in surreal circumstances to create a secret world, exactly like children’s stories and nice romantic films. But this is only a little story about music, not of sensual love, well, maybe one is wrong and it is that too, one is to never know the correct amount of facts. these four characters met at the foresaid university in richmond upon thames in 2004. the chef talked of things no one else around knew about, or even cared, except for the younger kitchen-porter that got a close interest on a name, karlheinz stockhausen, referred several times by the chef. he become to like the german composer and developed a friendship with the chef. they started to go out to a gay pub down the hill where they played chewing gum pop music, gay music, as the gay pub people called it, but the chef and the kitchen-porter just called it bad music. their interest in other sounds brought them together and they started to exchange compilations of cds and cuttings from magazines and newspapers and even started to burrow albums and books from the library. one day in the canteen the chef saw a young student with an aphex twin t-shirt and commented on it as a phenomenon and miracle in the midst of the stupidity of the other students, they smiled and started talking to each other when they, rarely, saw each other. one other day the chef and the kitchen-porter went to a straight bas and found the aphex twin fan with a t-shirt printed with the warp logo and they sat together. they talked and talked and talked at the very same time that they had a lot of drink and drink and drink. one thing brings the other and this other brings another and happened that a teacher from the referred collegial comes in and recognises the other three, offers a round of drinks, and afterwards some several. the teacher was very curious because the chef was talking about autechre and stravinsky, burroughs and philip glass and al. well, they realised they all loved the arts, especially the music being made all over the world and that seemed not being played around or available. the teacher had contacts in america, u know, that belligerent new empire and gave copies of weird stuff to all of them and a monday evening club of four was, unconsciously formed, after work.

it is time to reveal their names, the monday evening talking music club, as follows:  

fig. 8 ¬ benjamin silva-pereira, chef, portuguese:

fig. 9 ¬ the kitchen–porter/crazy dj: don pi, norwegian:

fig. 10 ¬ anorak/student: ephoebeus el-ahamar, moroccan (he doesn't like photos):

fig. 11 ¬ teacher: gyorgi telemann, greek american:

but before the monday talking club started, benjamin met antonio vinagre and pieter hurst... 

to be continued...

benjamim silva-pereira and gyrogi telemann

What is the catalogue of wonders? Many viewers will ask themselves this question (or perhaps should). Where has it come from, what does it do, why is it here?

Personally I can think of three main points when answering the above.

The catalogue of wonders represents a golden chance to present new and unknown artists (working in several differing forms of media) to the world. In an increasingly homogenised society (and despite the myriad forms of communication available to the individual – internet, tv, radio etc) it is increasingly difficult to easily find anything that isn’t within the narrow band of ‘mainstream’ forms. Just listen to a conversation in a bar or pub, everyone talks about the same stuff. Be it ‘Britains Got Talent’ or ‘Big Brother’, people tend to talk of the same things. Perhaps with all that is so easily available we have become lazy and lost the need to search out new things. But isn’t that part of the excitement of life? I have sometimes made purchases based on the fact that the work had a beautiful cover without knowing anything of the artist contained within. Catalogue of wonders fills that gap with access to new works by new people.

Catalogue of wonders also embodies an independence that has mostly disappeared these days from most imprints (think of the golden days of Factory records, 4AD, Zang Tumm Tumm etc). When looking at the record (or CD for that matter) sleeve and especially keeping in mind the above mentioned imprints, gone are the days of covers being beautiful and being seen as works of art in themselves. Recently, when venturing around the wonderful Berado Collection in Belem, Lisbon I was delighted to see a small exhibit of classic Factory records sleeves for New Order designed by Peter Saville. No one can deny that they are works of art in themselves. Catalogue of wonders keeps this tradition alive with it’s beautiful and challenging artwork for each individual body of work presented.

Returning to the theme of the homogenised and globalised world we live in, catalogue of wonders represents an increasingly rare chance for artists to present their own individual works without interference, no meddling from ‘the majors’ here, no product placement or extra’s or packaging as a boy band or a girl band. Just the work. Just the beauty.

steven lee rees