Robert Stark and co-host Pilleater talk to doll-artist, fashion/beauty illustrator, Joshua David McKenney. He operates Pidgin Doll. You can follow him on Instagram.
Topics:
Joshua’s background in art and interest in dolls
Marina Bychkova and Enchanted Doll
Little Miss No Name and Blythe Dolls
Designer Toys, Juxtopoz, Kidrobot, Vinyl Will Kill
The personality of dolls Davecat and his doll wife, Sidore Kuroneko
Joshua’s illustrations and their Art Deco influence
Japanese art, anime, manga influences
Trevor Brown and sexuality
Kurt Halsey and innocence
Joshua’s designs for his dolls
Print All Over Me
Attitude of clothing
Japanese audience, Avril Lavigne’s Hello Kitty
Sayoko Yamaguchi and her films
Mass production
Joshua’s collaboration with Teen Vogue
Nintendo’s Amiibos and toy culture in the mainstream
Funko’s ReAction Toys
Collecting and Reselling
A doll as a real person
How Wyndham Lewis, Ernst Jünger, Aleister Crowley, and the Italian Futurist, were individuals who existed outside the liberal reactionary/traditionalist paradigm, and viewed the world in a realist way unbiased by ideology
The cult of Positivism
Italian Futurism, how it was marginalized due to it’s ties to Mussolini, but made a major impact on the arts
How Ayn Rand was influenced by Italian Futurism Robert Stark’s talk with Rabbit about Italian Futurism
Wynham Lewis’s Vorticist movement, his magazine Blast, and his Rebel Art Centre
The philosophy of the Vortex, which views everything as energy constantly in motion
The rivalry between Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti and Wyndham Lewis, and how Lewis critiqued Italian Futurism for putting to much emphasis on technology
Wynham Lewis’s The Art of Being Ruled, which made the case that the artist was the best to rule, and that capitalism and liberal democracy suppressed genuine cultural elites
How the book addresses Transsexualism, and anthropological findings on the Third Sex Kerry Bolton’s essay on Wyndham Lewis
Lewis’s relationship with fascism, how he published the book Hitler (1931), which presented Adolf Hitler as a “man of peace,” but latter wrote an attack on anti-semitism: The Jews, are they human?( 1939)
The influence of war and violence on Italian Futurism The Manifesto of Futurism The Futurist Cookbook
Futurism is about testing what works, and rejecting traditions that don’t work
The futurist believed that every generation should create their own city, and futurist Antonio Sant’Elia’s Plan for Città Nuova (“New City”)
Paul worked on a book that was never published, “The Motor City and the Zombie Apocalypse,” about how the motor city is incompatible with human nature
The effects of global technological materialism on culture, and how technology needs the right people and culture to work Jean Baudrillard point that the Italians have the best symbiosis between culture and technological progress
The Transhumanist concept of Cybernetics, which is rewiring the brain, and how the futurist used poetry as a precursor to cybernetics
Paul’s point that futurist movements such as cyberpunk, and Neoreaction are more focused on Live action role-playing, but are not serious about pushing the limits
The intellectual and transcendental value of LSD and DMT, Ernst Jünger’s experimentation with acid, but they are only effective if the right people use them
Paul’s point that the only real futurist are underground, and experimenting in third world countries
Aristocratic individualism, and Paul’s opinion that Ernst Jünger is the best example, and Jünger’s concept of the Anarch
Ernst Jünger’s science fiction novel The Glass Bees Ernst Jünger’s “The Worker”
The concept of Retro Futurism as how the past envisioned the future
How in the 20th Century society was undergoing rapid change and technological progress
How people today are either pessimistic about the future, or view the present as the future(The Current Year)
Whether Retro Futurism is pure fantasy, an alternative universe, or a blueprint for the future
The Future portrayed in film from utopia to dystopia
The 1927 film Metropolis, which was the first major future film, and inspired by Italian Futurism
How Art Deco was the first major futurist movement in Architecture, and perfectly combines Futurism and Tradition
How NeonLighting has symbolized the future from the Art Deco era to the 80’s Cyberbunk aesthetic
The Synthwave/New Retro Wave Genre in music that emerged in the mid 2000’s, inspired by 80’s New Wave(ex. FM Attack, Robots with Rayguns, Electric Youth, College, Kavinsky)
How 80’s music was much more future oriented than today’s music Greg Johnson reviews New Order’s Music
The Euro-centric and deconstructionist elements to Electronic Music
Rabbit’s involvement in the early 90’s rave scene, and how it started out as futuristic but fizzled out into trashy pop culture
The revival of the 60’s Brit pop sound in the 90’s
How culture has become stagnant and people are looking to the past for inspiration Vaporwave, which is an aesthetic that emerged online, inspired by 80’s and early 90’s illustrations, video games, and elevator music
The Vaporwave Documentary
Donald Trump as an 80’s Retro-Futurist Vaporwave Icon Cyberpunk, how it was inspired by 80’s Films such as Blade Runner, as well as Science Fiction writer Issac Asimov, it’s popularity with the Dark Enlightenment and Silicon Valley Techno-libertarians. Steampunk, which a Futurist movement inspired by Victorian Aesthetics, Old Train Stations, and Science Fiction writers such as HG Wells and Jules Verne
Islamic Retro Futurism
The Mid Century Space age aesthetic
Soviet Retro Futurism
Las Vegas, the Retro-Futurist theme to the city, and hypothetical casino designs(Steampunk, Art Deco, Midcentury Space Age, Cyberpunk, Vaporwave)
Architect John C. Portman Jr. who built futuristic hotels with massive atrium in the 70’s and 80’s
The 80’s mall aesthetic, and how 80’s malls were a lot more futuristic and innovative than the ones being built today
Alex’s point that there is a transcendent element to the mall experience
How Retro-Futurism provides inspiration for architecture and urbanism
How Retro-Futurism offer a Third Alternative to the past and present course
How right wing publications tend to be mostly political, while left wing ones will focus on culture and insert politics
Whether Retro-Futurism is an aesthetic for a New Political Movement(ex.Radical Centrism)
How Thomas got interested in Neon growing up, and how he noticed it’s decline
His project charting and photographing existing Neon Signs before they disappear
The History of Neon, how it was invented in Victorian England in 1898, and latter made into signs by French Scientist Georges Claude
How the peak of Neon was in the late 1920’s and 30’s(Art Deco Era), but already started to see a decline in the 40’s
How Neon was originally used by Corporate chains but latter delegated to small businesses Churches & Neon
How Neon was originally seen as glamorous but latter became associated with seediness
Neon in Cinema, contrasting Dick Powell’s glamorous Gold Diggers Of 1933 – The Shadow Waltz and his 1944 detective film Murder, My Sweet, which depicts Neon as seedy
The 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life which also uses Neon to depict seediness Hotel Neon Signs and and Hotel Neon in the Film Noire Genre
Neon in future films including the utopian 1927 film Metropolis and the dystopian 1982 film BLADE RUNNER
Incandescent Bulb Signs
The history, decline and revitalization of Time Square, and how there are very few Neon Signs left
How Neon has become replaced by LED Signs
The myth that Neon signs are not eco friendly
Historic preservation issues regarding Neon Signs New Neon Signs designed in the Vintage style Neon in San Francisco and the book San Francisco Neon
Las Vegas, how newer casino’s have rejected Neon, and how older signs are preserved at the Neon Museum
The popularity of Neon in Asian cities
How there is a renewed interest in Neon
Artist who depict Neon in their work including Robert Stark
Neon in 1960s Pop Art
The importance of patronizing businesses that have Neon Signs
How Robert and Ray both have personal connections to Santa Barbara and how the city is almost too idyllic
Crime Fiction Novelist Ross Macdonald who’s work captures Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara as a place with strict zoning laws that was modeled after Andalusia in Spain
The contrast between life in Santa Barbara and New York City
How New York City has changed in Ray’s time there in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s
How Cuisine is the one area that has seen increased innovation in New York
Ray’s cameo in the film Exposed set in New York in 1983 staring Nastassja Kinski
How films such as Exposed and Taxi Driver are documentaries for New York in that era
The new peculiarly shaped skyscrapers going up in New York today “See through buildings” where wealthy Foreigners are buying up real estate in New York and leaving them empty
How Ray is drawn to architecture because it is art you can experience and changes the world in a way that regular art doesn’t
How most of the general public has little input and interest in architecture
How places without zoning laws tend to lack any aesthetic value
How the main rule in urbanism is not to do anything that harms the city Art Deco and how it succeeds in bringing tradition and modernity into one Architectual Revivalism which seeks to recreate older forms of architecture Robert Stark’s Artwork
Ray’s work at Newsweek as a reporters covering art, culture, literature, film, and theatre
How Ray’s most significant interviews were with Writers Philip, Roth, and John Updike, filmmakers Francis Coppola, and Robert Altman and Architect Christopher Alexander
How conservatives tend to avoid culture and leave that domain to the left
English Philosopher Roger Scruton as a model for a cultured conservative
Front Porch Anarchist Bill Kauffman New Urbanism
The The Retro Cocktail and Locavore movements James Howard Kunstler
Ray’s involvement with Environmentalism and Bioregional Anarchism
How the environmental movement abandoned the overpopulation issue due to political correctness and mass immigration
The Alternative Right
How the real political divide is between globalism and decentralization
Cultural trends and how Ray views himself as a cultural radar
The trend towards a focus on muscles for young men and men are more self-conscious about their bodies
The value of pleasure and leisure
Erotica and the debate about what’s art and what’s pornography
Controversial nude photographer Jock Sturges, who Ray interviewed
How society is a taking contradictory paths towards lewdness and prudishness Students Still Sweat, They Just Don’t Shower
How having taste and style has become equated with homosexuality
Young women moving to New York City because of Sex and the City “Sex Scenes” which is a raunchy, satirical audio entertainment that Ray created with his wife playwright Polly Frost. Check it out.
