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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and my name

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Speaker 1: is Christian Sager. Robert, When did you first encounter the

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Speaker 1: work of hr Geeker? He must have been adolescent younger,

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Speaker 1: Oh man, it would have been when I saw the

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Speaker 1: Alien movies, or at least began to pick up on

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Speaker 1: their existence. Uh. And I don't remember in what order

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Speaker 1: I saw them. I think I might have actually seen

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Speaker 1: Aliens first, like on TV, yeah, before moving into almost positive.

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Speaker 1: That was the same experience I had, was I saw

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Speaker 1: Aliens before I saw Alien, but probably saw both before

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Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know, twelve or thirteen years old,

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Speaker 1: but like, uh, I also always thought of him as

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Speaker 1: that guy like you would go to the mall and

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Speaker 1: there would be like precursors to hot topic where like

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Speaker 1: they would have like t shirts or posters and stuff

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Speaker 1: with hr geegers art on them, And that was just

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Speaker 1: something I always thought of, like kind of industrial kids

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Speaker 1: loved that stuff. They would be like these big hr

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Speaker 1: Geeger kind of tapestries that you could get for your

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Speaker 1: room or something like that. The other big memory I

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Speaker 1: have of of learning about Giger is that I would

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Speaker 1: go to bookstores a lot, especially with my dad, and

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Speaker 1: he would he would go to the history section and

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Speaker 1: look around, and I'd really get into looking at horror

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Speaker 1: books and sci fi and fantasy. And then I would

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Speaker 1: also check out the the art and photography section, and

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Speaker 1: there was all sorts of weird and interesting things to

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Speaker 1: discover their, including Geeger. You'd beend up picking up, you know,

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Speaker 1: a copy I don't remember if they had a copy

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Speaker 1: of I feel like a Barnes and Noble and Huntsville,

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Speaker 1: Alabama had a copy of Necronomicon, which was is one

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Speaker 1: of his books that was just filled with all of

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Speaker 1: these these designs that would lead to aliens, but they're

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Speaker 1: so surreal, they're and uh and and engage all of

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Speaker 1: this uh this, these these obscene and uh and beautiful

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Speaker 1: and alien themes in them. Um And as a as

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Speaker 1: a young kid, you're looking at it and you just

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Speaker 1: don't even know what to think about it. No, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: I was looking over the notes before we came in here,

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Speaker 1: and I realized that when I first saw his artwork,

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Speaker 1: it made me feel like it was something I wasn't

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Speaker 1: supposed to be looking at it made me feel shameful

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Speaker 1: because I was a kid and it was probably that

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Speaker 1: point in my life where it was like like if

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Speaker 1: you saw like another person naked, you were like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm terrible, I'm a bad person, you know, like uh,

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Speaker 1: And Geeger's art felt like that somehow, maybe that's uniquely American.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if, like the Swiss culture that he came

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Speaker 1: from had that same kind of puritanical uptightness about nudity. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think based on some of the material we looked

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Speaker 1: at here for this episode, that that you saw a

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Speaker 1: split there and there were those that they were certainly

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Speaker 1: more you know, buttoned down, and then those who understand

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Speaker 1: what he was going for. But I also remember in

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Speaker 1: college getting on the Internet for the first time and

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Speaker 1: discovering a lot of these these especially fantasy and sci

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Speaker 1: fi artists, and Giger really stands out from a lot

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Speaker 1: of them because a lot of the stuff I was

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Speaker 1: getting into it was still basically you know, like beautiful princess,

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Speaker 1: beautiful wizard, beautiful barbarian people and then monsters. But but

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Speaker 1: Geger's stuff was the beauty and the monstrosity all smeared together. Um,

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Speaker 1: it was challenging. You know, there were there were certain

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Speaker 1: images that were that were less challenging than others. But

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Speaker 1: because there's certainly deep gieger out there, there's certain works

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Speaker 1: that you really have to to puzzle over to figure

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Speaker 1: out how you feel about them. Um. But yeah, I

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Speaker 1: always felt like his work was was certainly more more

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Speaker 1: challenging and maybe maybe in a sense more you know, artistically, um,

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Speaker 1: relevant than a lot of the stuff that it's often

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Speaker 1: grouped with. It's funny you use that term challenging because

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Speaker 1: I think, like I obviously was aware of aliens and

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Speaker 1: alien but I don't think I knew that he was

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Speaker 1: a person who did these things until like the Dead

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Speaker 1: Kennedy's used his artwork for their album Franken Christ and

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Speaker 1: that was like a big incident where I mean, this

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Speaker 1: is the like late eighties early nineties in general, but

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Speaker 1: just Jello Biafra constantly getting into trouble and like going

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Speaker 1: in and I think that he had to go to

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Speaker 1: trial over the artwork. Because essentially, this is probably a

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Speaker 1: good point for us to say, like this might not

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Speaker 1: be the safest of episodes to listen to with your kids,

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Speaker 1: but this artwork is just a series of of orifices

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Speaker 1: and phalluses like filling one another, right, and then there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of that in his work, but this is

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Speaker 1: an example where it's far more explicit. And I think, uh,

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Speaker 1: I think the afra of originally brought it up almost

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Speaker 1: as a joke, like, well, this should be our album cover,

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Speaker 1: and then the joke kind of spiraled out of control. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then uh we So we're gonna get to the

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Speaker 1: point pretty soon here on who hr Gieger is and everything.

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Speaker 1: But one of the things that we researched for this

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Speaker 1: episode was this documentary that came out recently called Dark Star.

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Speaker 1: It's on Netflix right now. It's all about him sort

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Speaker 1: of in the waning years of his life and his wife.

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Speaker 1: I want to say, there's a point where she's talking

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Speaker 1: about the frankln Christ album cover and she said that

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Speaker 1: that her impression was that the people who wanted a

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Speaker 1: band thought it was a photo. They didn't realize it

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Speaker 1: was a painting. And she was like, how would you

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Speaker 1: possibly arrange all of these people's bodies to be able

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Speaker 1: to pull this off? Like, if you've seen this, this thing,

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Speaker 1: it would just be it would be impossible. It would

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Speaker 1: be like the weirdest game of twister you've ever played. Yes,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah, and we should probably before we before we

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Speaker 1: get into it too, we should also say both Robert

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Speaker 1: and I are fans of Super Egos version comedy version

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Speaker 1: of hr Gieger, which is done by Matt Gorley, so

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Speaker 1: we may occasionally uh slip been to that. If you

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Speaker 1: like Geiger and you've never heard of it, I totally

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Speaker 1: recommend it. Super Egoes a comedy podcast a couple of

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Speaker 1: years old now, but that was like one of their

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Speaker 1: running bits was Matt Gorley doing hr Geeger as if

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Speaker 1: he had to interact with with very mundanely events like

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Speaker 1: like what's it like if he goes through McDonald's drive through,

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Speaker 1: or what's it like when he has to sign paperwork

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Speaker 1: for his kid to go on a field trip. And

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Speaker 1: will include some links to the videos related to this

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Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode is Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. So obviously we're talking about

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Speaker 1: hr Geiger today, but but I just want to reiterate

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Speaker 1: why we're talking about Geeker, and I basically comes down

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Speaker 1: to this, we've pretty much all seen alien or aliens,

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Speaker 1: or we've seen the imagery from it. Uh, we're at

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Speaker 1: least all familiar surface level with Geeger's work, and it's

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Speaker 1: so popular, and it's been so popular in mainstream for

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Speaker 1: so long, and I say mainstream and just mainstream awareness. Now,

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Speaker 1: obviously there are different levels of appreciation for Geeger, but

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Speaker 1: I think it's easy in the midst of all of

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Speaker 1: this um, this mainstream presence, to forget to lose track

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Speaker 1: of or even not appreciate like what the man was about,

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Speaker 1: what his work was about, and what sort of of

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Speaker 1: legacy it has, especially as we as we move on

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Speaker 1: through the twenty first century and look back at the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, look at this this century. Uh, the Gieger

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Speaker 1: and his work emerged from. Yeah, this is gonna sound pretentious,

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Speaker 1: but I going over these notes and reading up on

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Speaker 1: the real deep psychological look at his work and what

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Speaker 1: it means and what it kind of brings out in

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Speaker 1: people who come to it. I can't imagine another artist

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Speaker 1: right now who is as transgressive as Gieger was, but

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Speaker 1: was simultaneously evoking the themes of the of the modern age,

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Speaker 1: you know, like he was really capturing themes of the moment,

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Speaker 1: but at the same time presenting them in such a

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Speaker 1: way that they seemed like, like I said, things you

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Speaker 1: shouldn't be looking at um. I know, I'd love to

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Speaker 1: hear from the audience if there's somebody out there that

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Speaker 1: I'm just unaware of. It's like this outsider artist that's

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Speaker 1: totally doing that. But Gieger maybe it's just because it's

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Speaker 1: our generation to Giger really captured that for me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like that you mentioned outsider artist because something that

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Speaker 1: that definitely came up in the research and comes up

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Speaker 1: and watching that documentary Dark Star, is that Geeger is

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Speaker 1: kind of in a class all his own because he

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Speaker 1: started off, you know, is you know, very much like

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Speaker 1: a localized artist, and then he starts getting some success

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Speaker 1: shipping posters off to New York, kind of having some

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Speaker 1: success as a poster artist, but still he's he's very

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Speaker 1: much small time and then he just skyrockets to the

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Speaker 1: top via his involvement in an alien and so he

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Speaker 1: never is So he was he kind of was a

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Speaker 1: was an outsider to the entire arts scene for a

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Speaker 1: very long time really until the last few decades of

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Speaker 1: his life, because he had kind of skipped over it,

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Speaker 1: you know, like like a like a rock skimming across

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Speaker 1: the water. So he was he was not quite an

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Speaker 1: artist startists, and he was mainstream but also very challenging

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Speaker 1: and difficult for a lot of people. He also had certain,

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Speaker 1: uh you know, outsider artists sensibilities, especially in the documentary

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Speaker 1: when you see his backyard, you know, it reminds you

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Speaker 1: of some of these you know, classic examples of say

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Speaker 1: Southern outsider artists who are just creating stuff because they

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Speaker 1: have to and uh and and there maybe not as

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Speaker 1: interested in how it matches up to uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: artistic sensibilities at all. This is going to be the

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Speaker 1: second time in like two weeks that I've mentioned this

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Speaker 1: podcast on the show, but it reminded me of S Town.

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Speaker 1: So without spoiling S Town, the main sort of focus

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Speaker 1: the protagonist, I guess the character piece that s Town

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Speaker 1: the podcast is is an artist in a way who

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Speaker 1: lives kind of in the middle of nowhere and constructs

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Speaker 1: these crazy things in his basement and in his backyard,

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Speaker 1: very similar to geeger Um. And there's there's a there's

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Speaker 1: a question in s Town of whether or not the

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Speaker 1: like chemicals that he was exposed to over the time

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Speaker 1: that he was working on his projects may have affected

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Speaker 1: his mental health. And it was something I absolutely thought

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Speaker 1: of about Gee, girls, we're watching this and then did

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Speaker 1: you put it in the notes or did somebody else

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Speaker 1: mention it to us that there's some thought that because

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Speaker 1: he spent so much time and enclosed spaces doing airbrushing,

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Speaker 1: that he might have inhaled a lot of chemicals. I

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Speaker 1: have heard that, but I couldn't find any official source

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Speaker 1: that that back that up. So yeah, but he did.

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Speaker 1: He lived in this wonderland. Uh. And it's if you

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Speaker 1: haven't seen dark starts fascinating. Let's let's just put it

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Speaker 1: that way. But this episode is really gonna be us.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna if you've never heard of geeger before, We're

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Speaker 1: gonna spend a little bit of time just walking you

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Speaker 1: through like who this guy was, how his life played out,

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Speaker 1: and then we're gonna do a dive into the sort

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Speaker 1: of psychological academic look at his work and how it

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Speaker 1: represents the human experience. Before we move on, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: read a quick quote from Timothy Leary from his intro

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Speaker 1: to Geegers Alien, which is a book of of his

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Speaker 1: artwork that he created his commission to create for for Alien,

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Speaker 1: as well as his thoughts on the filmmaking process Leary says,

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Speaker 1: and here's my best Leary voice. In doing this, Visionaries

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Speaker 1: like Geeger overstand too much. They overlook, they oversee, they overstate,

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Speaker 1: they overthrill, They physically frightened dutiful hive members and often

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Speaker 1: become nauseous or screamingly panicked by this simple exposure to

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Speaker 1: the tissue fact and cellular fabric of life. Giger, we

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Speaker 1: bless you for taking us back down to meet and

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Speaker 1: coil and intertwine with our old Darwinian relatives. That was

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Speaker 1: pretty good. It sounded a little bit like Carl Sagan

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Speaker 1: to me though, too. Yeah, which is another is a

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Speaker 1: little more akermity. Okay, if you if you try and

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Speaker 1: do a Kermit the Frog, do a bad Kermit the

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Speaker 1: Frog voice, you may Yeah. So this is another thing

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Speaker 1: that that came to mind as we were doing the

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Speaker 1: research for this. Is again like all of these sort

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Speaker 1: of outsider thinkers and artists that you and I grew

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Speaker 1: up with the influence, the people who influenced us, they're

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Speaker 1: all gone now. Geeger's dead, Leary's dead. Yeah. Like when

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about all the people who worked on

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Speaker 1: Alien behind the scenes, Mobius Um, Dan O'Bannon, just the

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Speaker 1: people who really like came to it and like imagined

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Speaker 1: that movie into existence through sheer willpower of decisions by committee.

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Speaker 1: You know, like they're almost all gone except for Ridley Scott,

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Speaker 1: and you know he's still going strong. Well yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean one of the reasons we're doing this episode is

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Speaker 1: Alien Day is the week that we're releasing it, and

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Speaker 1: then like two weeks after that Alien Covenant is going

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Speaker 1: to come out directed by Ridley Scott. He's still cranking

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Speaker 1: out these xenomorph movies and we're still watching them. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's interesting. And I again, like I kind

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Speaker 1: of stepped back and I wonder, and I go, like,

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Speaker 1: who are the people today who are really like the

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Speaker 1: the really gonzo weird thinkers that are influencing kids out there? Well,

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Speaker 1: for those of you listening, uh, maybe some of you

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Speaker 1: are not as similiar with Gegeger's work. And I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna attempt to briefly describe his work to sum it

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Speaker 1: up in one quick statement. An entire man's life work here,

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Speaker 1: but essentially most of his work was it boiled down

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Speaker 1: to surrey surrealistic bio mechanical realms in which humanoid entities

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Speaker 1: shift in and out of an alien landscape, a place

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Speaker 1: of cold flesh where birth, sex and death intermingle and

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Speaker 1: are at once one and his most famous works are

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Speaker 1: an airbrush, but he later abandonedness for pastels and inc Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I he worked in so many different kinds of media,

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Speaker 1: used the sculptor as well, but I think of him

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Speaker 1: mainly as a painter. And one of the astonishing things

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Speaker 1: I learned about him from watching this Dark Dark Star

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Speaker 1: documentary was that he didn't do any underdrawings. He just

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Speaker 1: sit down at the canvas with an airbrush and go.

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Speaker 1: And some people might go, well, yeah, I mean, look

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Speaker 1: at his stuff. It's so abstract and surreal. Of course

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Speaker 1: that he could get away with that, but like, there

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Speaker 1: is an anatomical precision to his work. Even if he's

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Speaker 1: exaggerating like how long an arm should be, or like

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Speaker 1: the way teeth are formed in a mouth, he's thinking

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Speaker 1: about actual anatomy and then exaggerating it, and it's it,

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Speaker 1: and he's doing all of this improvisationally. It's it's fascinating

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Speaker 1: to think about that, just as like a process. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then outside of you know, the obvious sex, death details,

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Speaker 1: Geeker as a painter had this amazing ability to translate

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Speaker 1: texture in whatever medium he was working in, and that

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Speaker 1: really impresses me to like imagine what it would be

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Speaker 1: like to reach into one of his paintings and touch

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Speaker 1: one of the monstrosities. What would what would it be

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Speaker 1: like to pet the head of a xenomorph? I would

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Speaker 1: a wet, cold, and ribbed That's what That's the general

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Speaker 1: idea I get from most Like, I can't I can't

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Speaker 1: decide if the texture would be like hard or brittle

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Speaker 1: or gooey or you know, it's just it's all those

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Speaker 1: things simultaneously. And you're getting that from I mean that's

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Speaker 1: a three dimensional you know, image captured on film, but

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Speaker 1: from his two dimensional images you're getting the same thing.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he really one of the things that I

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Speaker 1: think is great about his work is he really captured

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Speaker 1: reflection of light. Most of everybody knows his artwork is

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Speaker 1: just being like, oh, it's just a lot of dark

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Speaker 1: things and a lot of like phallus is you know, uh,

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Speaker 1: going into things, but all of that darkness like captured

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Speaker 1: these like you know, unseen beams of light on his

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Speaker 1: canvas and then reflected them back. Yeah, and I feel

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Speaker 1: like these are these are details that, for a lot

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Speaker 1: of us are kind of lost on us when we look,

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Speaker 1: especially we don't have an artistic background. You just kind

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Speaker 1: of become lost in what he has created and not

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Speaker 1: so much the mastery involved in bringing it to life.

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Speaker 1: In that documentary, there's scenes where you you get to

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Speaker 1: see him more or less starting from scratch, using the

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Speaker 1: airbrush to create something, and it's it's amazing just how

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Speaker 1: you don't think of an air brush as a precision instrument,

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Speaker 1: not at all, and like this, this is what I

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Speaker 1: think of when I think of the airbrush. When you

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Speaker 1: go to the beach and you get those like custom

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Speaker 1: made T shirts, Like that's what I think of as

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Speaker 1: air brush art. And then you look at what Gieger

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Speaker 1: did with an air brush and it's just this amazingly

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Speaker 1: precise detail for a tool that's really I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: just spitting ink out and paint, you know. Okay, why

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Speaker 1: don't we get into just sort of how this guy

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Speaker 1: was made, like like like how he was born into

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Speaker 1: the world, how the world gave us hr Geeker. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're back, So hands Rudolph Geeger a ka hands Rudy

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Speaker 1: to his friends. Um let's talking about Yeah, where he

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Speaker 1: came from and uh and how he became the the

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Speaker 1: the the icon. So he was born on February five

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty in Sure, Switzerland. I'm not sure if

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Speaker 1: that's the right pronunciation. His full name is Hans Rudy Geeger.

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Speaker 1: The joke in those super Ego videos is that his

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Speaker 1: his real name is hey, really Geeger. But but it

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Speaker 1: was Hans Rudy, and everybody in in his life, you know,

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Speaker 1: close by, they just referred to him as Hans Rudy

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Speaker 1: all the time. Nobody called him Gieger like we do

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Speaker 1: here in the West. We're just like Gieger. That's the

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Speaker 1: only way we can describe this guy. Um. Yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: just this fascinating character. Yeah. So he he had a

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Speaker 1: loving mother who was very close with the all her life.

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Speaker 1: His father was by all counts a bit distant. He

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Speaker 1: was a pharmacist and according to a standards Lav Groff,

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Speaker 1: a psychiatrist and gear author who will get into later,

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Speaker 1: Geger's father was was strict a little distant. Uh but

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Speaker 1: he but he only ever struck Geeger once. This crazy,

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Speaker 1: this story is crazy. Yeah. So I don't want to

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Speaker 1: to go into it in too much of detail, but essentially, uh,

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Speaker 1: Hans Rudy, the young Hans Rudy was was stealing power

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Speaker 1: cables from a street construction project and he was trying

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Speaker 1: to to burn the cables down in the cellar of

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Speaker 1: his parents house to get to get lead for making bullets.

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Speaker 1: And then the smoke ended up a rising up and

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Speaker 1: it polluted and destroyed most of his uh a lot

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Speaker 1: of the stuff in his farm in the pharmacy. Everything

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Speaker 1: was black and sticky and oily, and they had to

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Speaker 1: spend a fair amount of money getting everything cleaned up.

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Speaker 1: And so um, that was It was a very tense moment,

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Speaker 1: but it just Dad was pretty upset about that one. Yeah. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then tell the story about him with the skull.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so a little little kid with a skull. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: his father gave him a human skull when he was

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Speaker 1: a small boy. And I guess you know, this is

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Speaker 1: kind of the pharmacist uh reference coming into play here.

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Speaker 1: So he gr has said in interviews that he was

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Speaker 1: he was kind of terrified by this because here's death

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Speaker 1: in your hands. So he tied a string to it

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Speaker 1: and he would drag it through the streets like it

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Speaker 1: was you know, some sort of a toy boat or something.

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Speaker 1: And then he built a ghost train in his backyard

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Speaker 1: to scare into the light neighborhood kids. And then he

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Speaker 1: would he would later build another ghost train in his

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Speaker 1: backyard as a as an old man. Yeah, and and

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Speaker 1: so all of these seemed to be attempts of a

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Speaker 1: child to conquer his fear of death or things that

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Speaker 1: scared him, like like tunnels or asphyxiating enclosures, things like that. Yeah, Um,

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Speaker 1: something I didn't know about him about his childhood. As

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Speaker 1: a kid, his uncle Otto taught him how to make

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Speaker 1: homemade weapons through lead casting and working with wood and

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Speaker 1: other metals. And there was also an antique dealer that

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Speaker 1: lived in this same town, and that guy taught him

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Speaker 1: how to handle these weapons and also provided him with

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Speaker 1: like a bunch of weapons for his personal collection. This

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Speaker 1: little kid is handmaking like blades and knives and stuff like.

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Speaker 1: Of course, he like becomes this guy who goes on

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Speaker 1: to design you know, Zeno morph It's pretty fascinating. But

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Speaker 1: then he goes on to get an education. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: his father, his mother was just you know, completely supportive

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Speaker 1: of everything he did his whole life. They are these

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Speaker 1: wonderful pictures of of him a younger geeger and his

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Speaker 1: his his elderly mother and she's she's wearing black as well,

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Speaker 1: attending a showing of his work, and so she just

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Speaker 1: you know, kind of embraced it no matter, you know,

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Speaker 1: how weird. Uh the work actually was, would be pretty

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Speaker 1: great if she like put corpse paint on and his

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Speaker 1: his bar. Uh. But but his father, you know, a

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Speaker 1: getting far more sensible, and he said, all right, you

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Speaker 1: need to study industrial design and architecture, and so he

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Speaker 1: did at the School for Applied Arts and Zurich. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and he also attended military college to learn to be

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Speaker 1: a mortar gunner. So this guy has like, uh, this

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Speaker 1: trace background in his younger years of like really dealing

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Speaker 1: with weaponry. And my understanding was like once he went

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Speaker 1: to that military college, like his fascination with guns completely disappeared. Um.

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Speaker 1: This is the school though, where he first started doing

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Speaker 1: his ink drawings that later became uh titled Adam Kinder.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people have seen these and maybe didn't

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Speaker 1: know this was the name. Or Atomic Children is how

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00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:28,119
Speaker 1: it translates into English. And they represented his ideas about

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Speaker 1: nuclear war and the mutating effects that it would have

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Speaker 1: on humanity. Before he graduated. He also became super interested

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Speaker 1: in Freud, which we're gonna talk about a lot. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And he started keeping a dream journal that he used

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Speaker 1: as a resource for years to come. He would just

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Speaker 1: mind this for ideas for all of his creations. So

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Speaker 1: he graduates from school, he goes on to work for

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Speaker 1: Andreas Kristen, designing office furniture for the Knoll International Company. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And he during this time he had his first solo

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Speaker 1: gallery exhib exhibition. This was like a year or after

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00:22:00,359 --> 00:22:03,440
Speaker 1: he graduated school. Uh. So it's a nineteen sixty eight

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00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:06,320
Speaker 1: and a friend persuades him and says, look, give up

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Speaker 1: that job making office furnitures, commit fully to art. And

404
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 1: immediately afterward he got his first gig, creating monster effects

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Speaker 1: for a short Swiss film. Now an important part of

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Speaker 1: his biography here is his relationship with Lee Tobler. So

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00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:25,280
Speaker 1: she was his partner for many years, who was his

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Speaker 1: first great love, mused for so many of his depictions

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Speaker 1: of the feminine form. But they had kind of a

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Speaker 1: temptestuous relationship, allegedly involving, you know, an alchemy of both individuals.

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Speaker 1: These things, uh, you know, tend to because he was

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Speaker 1: a young determined artist with a fanatical devotion to his craft. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And he also recognized no boundaries in his work obviously. Uh.

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Speaker 1: She was a young woman with a traditional Catholic upbringing,

415
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Speaker 1: but she was immersed in this world of permissive exploration.

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Speaker 1: She suffered from depression and she attempted suicide once and

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Speaker 1: then Gieger was was deeply affected by this. But while

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Speaker 1: his his his art, such as his famous um Lee

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Speaker 1: Too and Lilith, they served as an outlet for him

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Speaker 1: after this, but it didn't work for her. Uh. There's

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Speaker 1: a moment in the documentary where Giger reflects on this,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's rather poignant because he says, you know,

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Speaker 1: he was not able to help her with his art,

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Speaker 1: and you really see the here's the guy who's who

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Speaker 1: always turned to art like art was the thing that

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Speaker 1: that made his life possible and and that's how he

427
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:34,920
Speaker 1: explored his fears and his anxieties. Often we are unable

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00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,959
Speaker 1: to help someone that that is in need of serious

429
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:42,280
Speaker 1: professional help for their problems. Uh. But but he felt

430
00:23:42,359 --> 00:23:44,399
Speaker 1: kind of I think, kind of trapped that he that

431
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:47,320
Speaker 1: he and and felt terrible that he could not help

432
00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 1: her with the the one tool that that he really

433
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:51,760
Speaker 1: knew how to use. Yeah. He struck me as the

434
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:54,960
Speaker 1: kind of guy who like was able to sort of

435
00:23:55,359 --> 00:23:58,960
Speaker 1: self care through his own art, but he didn't know

436
00:23:59,240 --> 00:24:02,040
Speaker 1: how to help other people, and so he would try

437
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:04,359
Speaker 1: to help them with his art and they were like,

438
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:06,879
Speaker 1: that's that's not what I need. That works for you,

439
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And so yeah, I mean when you

440
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:13,719
Speaker 1: look at the body of work that was inspired by

441
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:16,360
Speaker 1: this woman, you can see her features and so many

442
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:20,240
Speaker 1: of his paintings. There's this series of photos of her

443
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:24,159
Speaker 1: where she's topless and he's airbrush painting parts of her

444
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: body so that she's got this kind of biomechanoid appearance.

445
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:31,760
Speaker 1: And I believe that even like that artwork ended up

446
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:35,120
Speaker 1: being part of a show that they did to memorialize her. Yeah,

447
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:39,240
Speaker 1: because in seventies six, she she did commit suicide and

448
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,160
Speaker 1: that was a major traumatic event in his life. Yeah,

449
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:46,639
Speaker 1: and he described it as a terrible emptiness. Uh. He

450
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: and his friends through memorial for her. That was called

451
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 1: the Second Celebration of the Four And then what I

452
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: have seen, you know, titled under this are these various

453
00:24:55,840 --> 00:24:58,120
Speaker 1: photos that were taken from this session with her where

454
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:02,440
Speaker 1: she's covered in this bio mcanoid makeup kind of kind

455
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:04,520
Speaker 1: of like what we think of today as body paint,

456
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 1: but I think he was using different techniques. Um. And

457
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:12,120
Speaker 1: then his friend Friedrich Kon also died in nineteen seventy three,

458
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,399
Speaker 1: So the early seventies were just filled with tragedy for

459
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:19,639
Speaker 1: this guy. Uh. And then he gets to work on

460
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: Alejandro Jodorowski's Dune, the ill fated Dune movie that never

461
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: was made. Yeah, for and for extensive details on that,

462
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:31,080
Speaker 1: definitely check out the documentary that came out about this,

463
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:35,800
Speaker 1: this grand but doomed project that that you know, ultimately,

464
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:38,439
Speaker 1: even though it didn't come to fruition, it ended up

465
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:43,200
Speaker 1: fueling so many other projects, including Alien. It's really the

466
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:46,560
Speaker 1: main bridge for Geeger to Alien because he was paired

467
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 1: with Dan O'Bannon, Mobius a k a J. Jim Garrard,

468
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:54,919
Speaker 1: and Chris Fosse who did spaceship designs and also did

469
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 1: the Joy of Sex illustrations from the classic Joy of Sex,

470
00:25:57,760 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: and I think Ron Cobb also worked on both of them.

471
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:03,159
Speaker 1: I'm not sure Ron Cobb was illustrator. He did some

472
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: the preliminary work on just like the Egg design. Yeah,

473
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: that guy's work is great, Like he Uh. One thing

474
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 1: that I didn't learn until I was working at a

475
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 1: library here in Atlanta that had like this great special

476
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 1: collections archive was Ron Cobb was actually like an underground

477
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:22,400
Speaker 1: zene artist for a long time, like writing for these

478
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: civil rights znes uh. And he did these like he

479
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:29,439
Speaker 1: would basically do like little like one shot panel uh,

480
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 1: comedy things like the kind of things that you'd see

481
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 1: in like The New Yorker nowadays, but they were like

482
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:38,560
Speaker 1: intensely detailed. That guy was pretty fascinating as well. And yeah,

483
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: so just before Alien comes out, he publishes this book,

484
00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:47,160
Speaker 1: it's his big art book, Necronomicon, in nineteen seventy seven,

485
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 1: and it's seen by Dan O'Bannon who had previously worked

486
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:52,920
Speaker 1: with him on Any or Sorry on Dune. And then

487
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: Dan O'Bannon shows it to Ridley Scott and they look

488
00:26:55,720 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: at it and they go, this has got to be

489
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: the inspiration for this the creature that we're gonna have

490
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 1: in this film. Specifically, the painting necronom four is the

491
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:07,200
Speaker 1: main inspiration for the Zeno morph. So all of you

492
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: out there who have you, you've you've totally seen a

493
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:13,119
Speaker 1: zeno more even if you've never watched any of the

494
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 1: Alien movies, you know what they look like. This is

495
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:19,360
Speaker 1: where it originates from. This one guy's like weird obsessions,

496
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: all right, So this leads us to Alien and uh,

497
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: you know, I think everyone is familiar with this with

498
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: this film. But he was brought on to design a

499
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: number of key elements, so an ancient temple, exterior and

500
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 1: interior temple, spore pods, Alien first phase, Alien second phase,

501
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:40,239
Speaker 1: Alien third phase and uh, you know that so far

502
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:45,439
Speaker 1: this sounds like a lot of our artists Hollywood um relationships, right,

503
00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 1: brings them on and do some conceptual designs for the film. Well,

504
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:51,159
Speaker 1: the Giger was was far more demanding than that, and

505
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: he he insisted on a rather large fee. He was

506
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: arguing that his designs would be the star of the film. Uh.

507
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: And you know, and at the time can say, I

508
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:02,919
Speaker 1: think even his lawyer was like, you gotta calm down, gig.

509
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 1: You can't ask for too much money. You're you're just

510
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: doing designs for a monster and some sets. But he

511
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:10,400
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, this is gonna be the star.

512
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,840
Speaker 1: And and really, you know, not to discount Sigourney Weaver's

513
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:16,720
Speaker 1: iconic performance or the or the whole host of fabulous

514
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: character actors that that help bring that that movie to like.

515
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:23,719
Speaker 1: But he wasn't completely wrong, Like his designs are our

516
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 1: front and center because it's everlasting. I mean, think about

517
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 1: how many movies have been made from that franchise and

518
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 1: are still being made. Uh, not to mention all of

519
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: the spinoff work, Like there's hundreds of comics that aren't

520
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: done all because of like the gravitas of that design

521
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:49,479
Speaker 1: combined with this sort of like very interesting sexual horror

522
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:53,680
Speaker 1: sci fi tail that Dan O'Bannon and the other writers

523
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:56,720
Speaker 1: put down. Yeah, everything was just the the synergy of

524
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: his artistic division and the plot. It all came together

525
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: perfectly and and Geeker put a tremendous amount of work

526
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 1: into this. I mean not only that the initial designs

527
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 1: for the film, which alone or pretty pretty large tasks

528
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 1: for any artists, but also in it is the physical

529
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:15,760
Speaker 1: construction of costumes and sets, and this entail just constant

530
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 1: changes and improvements, some of the behest of Ridley Scott

531
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 1: or just the necessities of shooting others fueled by his

532
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: own perfectionism. Plus is, everything was was pretty much caked

533
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: and goo for these shoots. The colors would leach out

534
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,000
Speaker 1: and it was this would require him to repaint everything

535
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 1: each night so it would be fresh and and look

536
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: exactly as Geeger thought it should look and as as

537
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 1: the filmmaker's thought it should appear. Yeah, if you've ever

538
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: seen any of the like special behind the scenes extras

539
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: for Alien, I have the Quadrilogy set and I've watched

540
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 1: almost all of that stuff, if not all of it. Um. Yeah,

541
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: geekers just like constantly there in the workshop, either like

542
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: tinkering around with the Alien costume and painting it or

543
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: I mean he like, I want to say, the scene

544
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,480
Speaker 1: with the space jockey chamber, he hand painted that with

545
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: an airbrush all by himself. Yeah. And those are enormous sets, huge.

546
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:09,040
Speaker 1: I mean, it's easy to lose sight of it. As

547
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 1: awesome as the the set looks like it was. Really

548
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: they really constructed this cathedral out of the man's artwork

549
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: and Uh. Geeger would later acknowledge his fussiness on the

550
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: set and apologize for being a bit difficult uh. And

551
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: he attributes much of this to just not understanding the

552
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: demands and UH and often improvisational aspects of film production. Like.

553
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: One example of this is that Ridley Scott decided that hey,

554
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 1: they we can just use the underside of the derelict

555
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 1: ship set uh and repurpose it as a corridor in

556
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 1: the ship and this sort of thing, which drove Gieger

557
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: crazy at the time because it felt cheap and rushed

558
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:44,520
Speaker 1: to him using his work in ways that were not intended.

559
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: But again, this is this is often what happens when

560
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 1: you're making a film, like the directors saying, all right,

561
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: we need to we need to shoot this. What do

562
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:54,560
Speaker 1: we have. Let's let's just tilt this a different ways.

563
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:59,720
Speaker 1: Like a known best talents to is like, yeah, he

564
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: makes he's like huge budget films, but he really figures

565
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: out how to make them in like a really um

566
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:09,719
Speaker 1: quick production fashion. Like he's noted for setting up cameras

567
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: at multiple angles for each shoot so he doesn't have

568
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: to like constantly be shooting the same scene over and

569
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 1: over and over again. And then yeah, on that set,

570
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: like they were doing everything they could to repurpose things

571
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: and make it look like something else, like these mirrors

572
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:25,840
Speaker 1: in a lot of places so that it looked like

573
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: the corridors were longer than they were. And Scott actually

574
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: got them to double the budget for that film solely

575
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: based on storyboards that he drew himself, so, like you

576
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: think about it, like going into it, they had like

577
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: a four million dollar budget, which sounds like a lot,

578
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 1: and then he himself drew some stuff and showed it

579
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 1: to them. This is even before Giegers involved, and they went,

580
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 1: this sounds a lot cooler than we thought. Here's another

581
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: four million. So they've got eight million dollars to make

582
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: this movie and it looks still to this day, it

583
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: looks astonishing. Now. One of the questions that you have

584
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 1: to ask is what what would Alien have been like

585
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: if Geiger had not been there, if we had not

586
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: had Geeger's designs, And it's it's difficult to say, but

587
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 1: you can consider a few things. You consider the the

588
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: ball monster in uh, you know, An Abandon and John

589
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 1: Carpenter's Dark Star, which is a great film, but it

590
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:22,239
Speaker 1: has a really ridiculous looking alien, and that was one

591
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: of the main reasons why Dan O'Bannon wander write this, Yeah,

592
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: because he felt like like that movie just didn't capture

593
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: what he had in his head for Alien. Yeah. You

594
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: can also consider that, like Ridley Scott's one of his

595
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 1: original ideas that they were testing was let's just take

596
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:39,239
Speaker 1: an adult, We'll strap a bunch of children to him

597
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 1: and then we'll cover him rubber to make dan and

598
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: that would make a good effect. So we can imagine

599
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 1: what if that had taken off. You can say, well,

600
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 1: Mobius was on board, what if Mobius had done the design.

601
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 1: And certainly Mobius drew lots of cool aliens in his

602
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: time and even did some production work I think on

603
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: designing aliens from time to time. Wayne Barlow was around

604
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: at the time time. It's you might say, what if

605
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:03,760
Speaker 1: Wayne Barlow had been brought on, But none of these

606
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine any of these guys like creating

607
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: something that would have been on par with Geegers designs. Yeah,

608
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is like not meant to

609
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:18,880
Speaker 1: be a pun. But there's nothing quite as alien as

610
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 1: the xenomorph design. It perfectly captures the idea of something

611
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:26,680
Speaker 1: that is other than us from somewhere else, but that

612
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,959
Speaker 1: unfortunately comes out of us. And you know, the script

613
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 1: is perfect for Geeger because it really ties into all

614
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 1: of his themes of birth and sex and death. Yeah,

615
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: because and that's something to keep in mind. Here is

616
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: we we we briefly, you know, roll through some of

617
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 1: his his later works. And one of the things is

618
00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 1: that no matter how awesome his design work was, he

619
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:51,479
Speaker 1: just didn't intended to not really jive with the overall picture,

620
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: with the overall project. Uh, that that was utilizing his vision. Okay,

621
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and when we get back,

622
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:01,680
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit about his work after Alien,

623
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: and then we're going to really get into the psychological

624
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 1: sort of matrices of hr Geeger's world. Alright, we're back,

625
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:18,080
Speaker 1: so post Alien, uh, Geeger kind of just has in

626
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:20,239
Speaker 1: a sense, he's got it made. You know, he can

627
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: basically devote his life to his work now. And that's

628
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: not saying it was definitely made in the shade. Based

629
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:28,839
Speaker 1: on the documentary and the uh some of the uh,

630
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: the accounts that his wife gave. Geeger was the kind

631
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:33,719
Speaker 1: of person who when money came in, he would he

632
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 1: would spend it on his art. He would buy some

633
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 1: sort of cool supply or a bone and start creating

634
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: with it. And it was it was kind of, you know,

635
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:44,800
Speaker 1: it was kind of paycheck to paycheck to us in

636
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: a certain extent. What was one of the stories that

637
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: like his assistant came into the house one day and

638
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 1: there was a like rotting lion carcass on ibex or

639
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:55,400
Speaker 1: you know there was an ibex in the bathtubt it

640
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: was a lion carcass by the door because he needed

641
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:00,680
Speaker 1: the lion's spine for one of of the pieces that

642
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 1: he did. I think it was that that furniture piece.

643
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 1: It's like a big chair. So yeah, he was buying

644
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: dead lions. Yeah, you mentioned the furniture. We already mentioned

645
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: some of the furniture designs that that he did. Uh.

646
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 1: You added in here that he made harcone and furniture

647
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: based on his done design. Yeah. I I don't know,

648
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:20,480
Speaker 1: like if this was just specialty stuff. I don't think

649
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:22,400
Speaker 1: there was like a line that you could buy. I

650
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:25,800
Speaker 1: think these were these were pieces that he you know,

651
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: made individually. And then yeah, he made so many album covers. Uh.

652
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: That Debbie Harry record The Dead Kennedy's one I mentioned.

653
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: Uh oh, yeah, we were talking about this over email. Uh.

654
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 1: He was heavily involved with Celtic Frost and then subsequently

655
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 1: tripped to con because that lead guy, Thomas Gabriel Fisher

656
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:49,240
Speaker 1: was his assistant. Yeah. And then of course any Danzig

657
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:51,800
Speaker 1: fans out there probably remember Danzig three. How the gods

658
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:56,040
Speaker 1: Kill that uses one of one of Giger's creations there

659
00:35:56,080 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: on the front. And then this one. I didn't know

660
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:00,399
Speaker 1: about this, that he didn't Emerson Lake and Paul Cover

661
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, um yeah, brain Salad surgery. Uh. It

662
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,239
Speaker 1: seems like he kind of said yes to anyone who

663
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: would sort of get his vision out there, even if

664
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,759
Speaker 1: it didn't necessarily jive with the I don't know. This

665
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:15,879
Speaker 1: is me looking at Geeker's art and trying to figure

666
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,440
Speaker 1: out what what I would pair with it, and right

667
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: not necessarily what another person would or even Gigger himself.

668
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:23,359
Speaker 1: So he made his own film, although I haven't really

669
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: been able to track it down, The Mystery of Sin

670
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: Guitara though, yeah I have, I have not seen this.

671
00:36:29,360 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: And then he was heavily involved in a video game

672
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: that came out in the nineties called Dark Seed. Yeah.

673
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 1: I read a review of this that says that it

674
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 1: was is a game. It was pretty bad, like it

675
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 1: it made the worst choices in puzzle games of the time,

676
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like missed or something like that. Yeah,

677
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:48,640
Speaker 1: less you know, like I guess, less graphically advanced. But

678
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: that being said, one thing that everybody tends to say

679
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 1: is like the look of the game was great. It

680
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:59,799
Speaker 1: really made wonderful use of Geeger's art. He also come

681
00:36:59,840 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 1: to me to do a number of different film projects.

682
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: There's a movie that came out eighty nine, Tokyo The

683
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: Last War, and there's like a big wheel creature that's

684
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: kind of based on his designs um He also was

685
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 1: a creative consultant on the German horror comedy Killer Condom.

686
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: Have you never heard of that until it's? Uh? I

687
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 1: think I saw trailer for it once. Maybe if we

688
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: do a trailer. He also did poster art for Future Kill,

689
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: which is a comedy horror film about mutants hunting frat

690
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 1: boys in a futuristic city. It stars two actors from

691
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, including Maryland Burns, and it's a it's

692
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:41,640
Speaker 1: total USA up, all night material, eighties trash cinema. It's

693
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 1: thoroughly a geeker, but it's it's still kind of the

694
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: trailer is still kind of awesome. And then there's the

695
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 1: infamous stories from poulter Geist to Oh Yeah. He did

696
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: several different designs and really made the best moment in

697
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: poulter Geist Too Possible, where Coach a k Dad from

698
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 1: Poulter guys, he vomits, and the vomit like is this

699
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: thing that quickly grows into this like limbless humanoid creature

700
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 1: that scuttles off after making this horrifying face at him.

701
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: And it's a you can find YouTube clips of this.

702
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:16,359
Speaker 1: It's a it's a wonderful scene. And then of course

703
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 1: there's Species, which is an interesting project to to look at.

704
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: He designed the female alien sill as well as this

705
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 1: ghost train for a gream dream sequence and the sequence

706
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: was going to be cut. They were Gigger was telling them, look,

707
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:32,399
Speaker 1: we have to have this ghost train in the film

708
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:34,640
Speaker 1: and uh, and they're like, no, no, no, we the

709
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 1: budget is shrunk. We we don't have time. So Giger

710
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:40,840
Speaker 1: eventually he just contributes a hundred thousand dollars of his

711
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: own money just to to me to film this scene

712
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: and then forces them to put it in, like or

713
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 1: convinces them to put it in. And it's an and

714
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 1: it's an interesting Uh, it's an interesting scene. But the

715
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: film itself was I believe it was. It was a

716
00:38:56,640 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: success of the box office or five or six of these, right,

717
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: it must have been successful. Yeah, I think it was

718
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 1: financially successful, but I don't think Species is anyone's favorite film,

719
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:10,839
Speaker 1: and um, and and you know it's it's a shame

720
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 1: because this was the only chance we really had to

721
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:17,439
Speaker 1: see what one of Geeger's feminine creations come to life

722
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: on the screen. So I kind of hold out hope

723
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 1: that maybe somebody will reboot Species down the Road, down

724
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 1: the road and do it right, or if if not

725
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: silled in, some other biomechanical female will crawl up out

726
00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: of his work and into a movie. What was that

727
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:33,800
Speaker 1: movie that came out a couple of years ago. I

728
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: never got a chance to see this, but it was

729
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: very similar to Species, and it had uh my wife

730
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: jokingly called it like the b York Baby, uh these

731
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: Sarah pallyis in it, and like there's so it's very

732
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:54,279
Speaker 1: similar plot and like their genetic engineering splice splice, that's it. Yeah. Yeah,

733
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:57,600
Speaker 1: that seems like the closest thing to like re envisioning

734
00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 1: Species that I've seen so far. And then there was

735
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: also that movie with Scarlett Johansson that I've seen it

736
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:05,200
Speaker 1: have seen compared to it Ghost in the show No,

737
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: the one when she plays an alien of some sort

738
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 1: and oh yeah, yeah, yeah, um under the Skin, that's

739
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: the one. Yeah, that's a great movie. Yeah, I haven't

740
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 1: seen it yet. You you should really watch that. You'd

741
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: love that movie. Now. One of the things though, with

742
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:22,279
Speaker 1: with all these gig Gieger films, that my theory is

743
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:24,840
Speaker 1: the reason that none of them really quite work. And

744
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: the reason that Alien worked is that Geeger's paintings, uh

745
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 1: and in the sculptures they involved these these strange creatures,

746
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: but they're also a part of this realm. They're a

747
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:38,320
Speaker 1: part of this landscape, they're part of this setting. And

748
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: if you just have still the alien lady as cool

749
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: as she looked, if you if she's running around the

750
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: streets of l A, it's just not gonna work. Vomit

751
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: monster crawling across a bedroom floor, it's not gonna work

752
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:53,239
Speaker 1: as well. Whereas Alien, you either had scenes where the

753
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:57,160
Speaker 1: monster or the or the the creations are within a

754
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 1: Giger environment or there at least in an in human

755
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 1: spaceship environment. It is a little more in keeping with

756
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: with Geegers whirld and thematically again, like Alien very much

757
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,320
Speaker 1: revolved around the same kind of ideas that we're spinning

758
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 1: out psychologically from Geeger's work. I think Species tried to

759
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 1: do that, but it like ultimately became like an action

760
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 1: adventure film more than any kind of like psychological look

761
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:24,959
Speaker 1: at I mean, it was about birth, sex and death, sure,

762
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: but I don't know, it didn't capture it in the

763
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:31,320
Speaker 1: same way and ended. So you know, before we go on,

764
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: we should just say, like how things sort of ended

765
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,000
Speaker 1: up for him. He opened a museum in nine in

766
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: the Chateau Saint Germain, part of Grier's Switzerland. Uh. This

767
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 1: museum also hoses his private collection of other artists work.

768
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, they added a museum bar there

769
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:50,160
Speaker 1: that features his interior design. This whole thing looks totally awesome.

770
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: I I would love to visit it one day. Uh.

771
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: And unfortunately he died on May after sustaining injuries from

772
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,960
Speaker 1: a fatal fall. He was survived by his wife, Carmen

773
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 1: Maria Geeger, and she is the director of the museum.

774
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:08,480
Speaker 1: And from what we've read, it seems like his wife

775
00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: and his assistants are still continuing his work and they're

776
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 1: running the museum, they're putting on exhibitions, they're working together

777
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 1: and getting books published, you know, but he's no longer

778
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:22,239
Speaker 1: obviously creating new work. Yeah. Now, watching that documentary that

779
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: It makes me wonder how much new stuff is going

780
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: to emerge because one of the one of the the

781
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 1: individuals that they're interviewing, they're one of one of his

782
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:32,919
Speaker 1: assistants or archive is like he just points to something

783
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: on a shelf and it's like, here's a here's a

784
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 1: picture that he drawing that he drew years ago, like

785
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 1: no one's ever seen. So there's no telling how how

786
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: many curios and wonders are are are left to uh

787
00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 1: to emerge from that that house. Yeah again, Like if

788
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: you see the documentary, his home is top to bottom

789
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:53,760
Speaker 1: covered in his artwork, Like it's just filled to the brim.

790
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that strikes me as odd.

791
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: I'm always thrown by artists who surround themselves with their

792
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:04,600
Speaker 1: own art. Uh. It feels, i don't know, somehow egotistical

793
00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: to me, But with Gieger it felt right. It's kind

794
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: of like a Z's I'm sorry talking about hanging out

795
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:12,760
Speaker 1: with Kanye and Kane's listening to his own music. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

796
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:15,839
Speaker 1: The yeah that this is just always weird to me. Huh, Well,

797
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: I guess you could say like Geeger is a guy

798
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:19,240
Speaker 1: who knew what he liked. He knew what he wanted

799
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: and he created it on the canvas and lived in it.

800
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:27,399
Speaker 1: So uh in terms of living in one's art, though,

801
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: this is a good time to to break off and

802
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:34,279
Speaker 1: start discussing some of the psychological and cultural interpretations of

803
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:39,480
Speaker 1: his work. Now, we mentioned Stanislav Graff earlier, UH, psychiatrist

804
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 1: and he uh and he has written about Geiger. Uh.

805
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: There's Hr Geger and the zeit guys to the twentieth century.

806
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 1: This is a book available in German and English, The

807
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 1: Visionary World of Hr Geiger, and you can find that

808
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 1: in PDF form at Stanislav Graff dot com. Uh. He

809
00:43:54,680 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: and he also shows up in the documentary and he

810
00:43:56,880 --> 00:44:00,160
Speaker 1: was you see scenes of him working with Giger and

811
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:03,240
Speaker 1: the rest of the sort of Geeker family to decide

812
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: which illustrations to use in the book. And we're not

813
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:09,200
Speaker 1: going to attempt to to roll out all of standards

814
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:12,399
Speaker 1: law of grows ideas. UH certainly refer to his work,

815
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,440
Speaker 1: but I thought we might touch on the broad strokes

816
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 1: here and a few areas that tie in with previous

817
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,800
Speaker 1: stuff about your mind discussions. Yeah, he especially is really

818
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:26,239
Speaker 1: interested in the theory of psychological birth trauma, which I

819
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 1: feel like lines up very nicely with Geeger's work and

820
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:33,239
Speaker 1: also adds a layer of scientific understanding to what's going

821
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 1: on here. Yeah. Yeah, The the idea here, if you're

822
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 1: not familiar with it, is it runs contrary to older

823
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: notions of infants is clean slates or or tabular razza. Rather,

824
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 1: the idea here is that that birth itself is the

825
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:50,919
Speaker 1: first great physical and psychological trauma for a new human life,

826
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 1: were forcifully ejected from a place of safety and warmth,

827
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:58,560
Speaker 1: pushed screaming into a frightening new world. So Graff is

828
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 1: really routed in this idea that Geeger portrayed the soul

829
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 1: of modern humanity, and in that way he sees his

830
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: art as being about technology, human life, ecology, self destruction, violence,

831
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:16,839
Speaker 1: sexual excess, mass consumption, drugs, and alienation. And yes, birth

832
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 1: trauma is the real big one here, because Graf says

833
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 1: that powerful memory is what influences everything else. I think

834
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:29,879
Speaker 1: it's worth remembering here too that Geeger's work, no matter

835
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:33,319
Speaker 1: how surreal it is, it's always surrounded by human anatomy. Uh.

836
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:36,239
Speaker 1: And that's replicated on such a perfect level, like even

837
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:38,839
Speaker 1: when he distorts it, like I mentioned earlier, he does

838
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 1: it proportionally in such a way that it feels real. Now,

839
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:50,240
Speaker 1: Groff identifies four distinct characteristic experiential patterns, which he refers

840
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:55,759
Speaker 1: to as basic perinatal matrices or bpms, and these are

841
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:59,759
Speaker 1: the stages of of trauma that did an infant, a

842
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:03,200
Speaker 1: new born goes through to this theory, So the first

843
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:07,799
Speaker 1: BPM bp M one is associated with, uh, your existence

844
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 1: before birth, before the onset of delivery. Yeah. So the

845
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:13,879
Speaker 1: idea here is that like, while we're in the womb,

846
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:18,920
Speaker 1: we experience the world as an amniotic universe that's crops words, uh,

847
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:22,560
Speaker 1: and we don't know anything else. And so when you know,

848
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,840
Speaker 1: we're born and we're in the real world. He relates

849
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 1: this to regions that have no boundaries or limits. So

850
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: for instance, like when you're just floating in the middle

851
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: of the sea or outer space, these are places that

852
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: remind us of that room like experience or a bathtub

853
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:44,919
Speaker 1: with Yankee candles burning and on your music playing perfect. Yeah,

854
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: that was exactly what my moving sperience was like. So

855
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:53,400
Speaker 1: the second BPM, BPM two is uh the cosmic engulfment

856
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: and no exit or hell uh. And this is this

857
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: is basically contractions taking place yeah, So it's based on

858
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: you know, we we think of it more of like

859
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:05,359
Speaker 1: from the external perspective of like, oh, the mother's going

860
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:09,359
Speaker 1: through contractions, but you know, we experience those contractions while

861
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 1: we're in the womb. So this is associated with imagery

862
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: of archetypal monsters that devour us in some kind of

863
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 1: claustrophobic nightmare very Geeger uh. And it leads to anxiety

864
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: in a general mistrust that borders on paranoia. So people

865
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: who suffer from this kind of anxiety, it takes the

866
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 1: form of them feeling like they're always caught in a trap.

867
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 1: And in Geeger's work we see a lot of imagery

868
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:36,080
Speaker 1: of tight headbands and steel rings holding together things by

869
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 1: screws and heads and vices and bodies wrapped up in

870
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 1: chords and straps. So this is Groff saying, like Geegers

871
00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:47,359
Speaker 1: really capturing that moment. And then we have the BPM three,

872
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 1: the death rebirth struggle, and this is basically when you're

873
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 1: pulled through the birth canal, right, and this is all

874
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:56,960
Speaker 1: about that propulsion after the cervix opens and the head

875
00:47:57,040 --> 00:48:01,359
Speaker 1: descends into the pelvis. It involves crush pains and suffocation

876
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:05,440
Speaker 1: and reliving it manifests itself. Again, this is Graff not

877
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:10,280
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this, but that reliving it manifests itself

878
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: as sado masochism and deviant sexuality. UH. It's are typally

879
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 1: portrayed as Titanic struggles between light and darkness, as well

880
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:24,280
Speaker 1: as raging forces of nature and technology that wields enormous energy,

881
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:27,440
Speaker 1: so think of like rockets, bombs, power plants, that kind

882
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:31,280
Speaker 1: of thing. He also connects it to the demonic aspect

883
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 1: of mental health, and that's something we've been talking about

884
00:48:34,200 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 1: recently on the show, both with our Exorcism Addorcism episode

885
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 1: and the episode that we recently did on the demon

886
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:45,560
Speaker 1: Haunted Mind. So potentially there's a connection between this third

887
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: perinatal matrix idea and those things that we've previously talked about.

888
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:52,759
Speaker 1: And then finally we have BPM four. This is the

889
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 1: death rebirth experience and this is the actual birth and

890
00:48:56,719 --> 00:48:59,280
Speaker 1: uh and the severing of the umbilical cord. So Graff

891
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:03,239
Speaker 1: he characterizes this as this explosive liberation that we feel,

892
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 1: followed by an emergence into light. He says, this is

893
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:10,920
Speaker 1: just a constant reminder of our vulnerability, our inadequacy and

894
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 1: our weakness. Now. Gruff also notes that it would be

895
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: hard to see Geiger's mother in the same roles that

896
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:21,480
Speaker 1: Geiger places women in his art, even with all of

897
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:25,320
Speaker 1: this sort of application going on here. This convinces Gruff

898
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 1: even more that these themes come from Geiger's primal memories

899
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 1: of being born. So, like, you you meet Geiger's mother

900
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:35,319
Speaker 1: in this documentary, and she seems just like a very

901
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: kind old Swiss lady, right, super supportive of her son.

902
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:42,040
Speaker 1: Her son seems to love without his heart. There's not

903
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 1: some sort of at least there's no apparent like twisted

904
00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: understanding of his mother. There's yeah, it doesn't feel like

905
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: there's um some kind of Freudian impulse that like he

906
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 1: wants to have sex with his mother or anything like that, right,

907
00:49:55,800 --> 00:50:01,239
Speaker 1: Like she's not the image of his sexual sexual at ration. Um.

908
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 1: So Graph translates us then into like it's really all

909
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:09,320
Speaker 1: about birth and memory for Geeger, right, and and he

910
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time just comparing these these theories,

911
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:16,440
Speaker 1: these models, these matrices two Geeger's work, pointing out, of

912
00:50:16,520 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: course that at any stage during birth, there's often the

913
00:50:20,320 --> 00:50:25,279
Speaker 1: possibility of of of death being present. And uh and so.

914
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:28,879
Speaker 1: So you see these symbols and elements throughout his work,

915
00:50:29,440 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 1: infants and birth, vaginas and breasts, tunnels and emergence, mouths

916
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:36,200
Speaker 1: and gateways, all of it sheathed in a sense of

917
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 1: horror and trauma. All of it kind of takes on

918
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 1: this necro flesh kind of feeling where it's alive but

919
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 1: it's dead, it's new but it's old, um, you know.

920
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:48,160
Speaker 1: All at the same time, there's a lot of category

921
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 1: confusion in Geeger's work, and I think that's that's something

922
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: we feel when we look at it, you know, especially

923
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:57,960
Speaker 1: some of these larger tryptic type pieces, where you just

924
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:01,399
Speaker 1: go from detail to detail, form from form, and they're

925
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:03,279
Speaker 1: kind of becoming the same form. You don't know where

926
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: one thing in is and one thing begins, and you

927
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:10,319
Speaker 1: just kind of set there gritting your teeth. Yeah. I mean,

928
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:15,280
Speaker 1: I'm reluctant sometimes to to apply the word Freudian to something,

929
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:19,840
Speaker 1: but Geeger's work seems inherently Freudian. I mean, he talked

930
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:22,600
Speaker 1: about Freud's influence on his work. So much of it

931
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: was born out of dream journals, and it really revolves

932
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:29,160
Speaker 1: around those same themes of birth, sex, and death. Then

933
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 1: you add in the merger of biology and mechanics to that.

934
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:36,560
Speaker 1: Graff takes into account the strange human nature that translates

935
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:40,640
Speaker 1: suffering into sexual excitement too. So you know, he asked

936
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 1: the question, well, why is sex so linked to our

937
00:51:43,040 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: fear of death? And it seems like Geeger is exploring

938
00:51:45,719 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: that question. That's why he's got this fascination with tunnels

939
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:53,000
Speaker 1: and quarters and ghost rides. Graff speculates that it's all

940
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:56,719
Speaker 1: related to Geeger's memory of his own birth. Remember this

941
00:51:56,840 --> 00:51:58,600
Speaker 1: is a guy we talked about this earlier, just kind

942
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:00,719
Speaker 1: of been passing. He built his own ghost ride in

943
00:52:00,800 --> 00:52:02,680
Speaker 1: his backyard and I didn't know what this was until

944
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 1: I saw the documentary. He literally built like a children's

945
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 1: train set that like ran around his backyard but through

946
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:13,399
Speaker 1: like these like haunted house tunnels and stuff. Oh yeah,

947
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:16,239
Speaker 1: And I think graffs Graff's idea here too, that he's

948
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: getting across it's not that the Geiger has this special

949
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:22,879
Speaker 1: background of this special trauma, the ideas we we all

950
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: have this strange entrance to a cavern in the back

951
00:52:26,600 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: of our mind. Most of us don't go in there,

952
00:52:29,239 --> 00:52:30,840
Speaker 1: some of us go in there a little bit but

953
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,399
Speaker 1: gieger Is is one of those artists who really put

954
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:36,880
Speaker 1: on the like the coal mining helmet and uh and

955
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:41,359
Speaker 1: and spend his life exploring those tunnels. Now, this theory

956
00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 1: of birth trauma itself, it has its roots in and Freud,

957
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 1: who called birth quote the first experience of anxiety and

958
00:52:48,400 --> 00:52:52,840
Speaker 1: thus the source and prototype of anxiety. Austrian psychoanalyst Auto

959
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:57,680
Speaker 1: Rank expanded on this idea in and later British psychoanalyst

960
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 1: Wilfred Byan also I'm den so the idea is that

961
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 1: again we're born into trauma. We have this proto trauma

962
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 1: buried inside as primal and potent in our experiences and

963
00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:11,839
Speaker 1: nurturing afterwards, they help us, They help determine how we're

964
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: going to bounce back from all of that, and how

965
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: we're going to understand that trauma. So this might be

966
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 1: a good point for me to ask a question that

967
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 1: I have of you, but also of our audience. I'd

968
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 1: be curious to hear what you all think. Do you

969
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:27,359
Speaker 1: feel that Geegar's work was inherently misogynistic in any way?

970
00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:31,360
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I was thinking a little bit

971
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:34,080
Speaker 1: about this yesterday, and I think one could make a

972
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:37,040
Speaker 1: good case for it just based on the portrayal of

973
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: of feminine bodies, but at the same time, like masculine

974
00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 1: bodies are are kind of equally treated. And I'm talking

975
00:53:44,760 --> 00:53:47,759
Speaker 1: about his core work here, not some of his sketches. Um,

976
00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: there's such a surrealist quality and at times it's like

977
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:53,959
Speaker 1: the feminine body is part of the male body. There's

978
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: hard to iron it down. And yeah, he's just exploring

979
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:02,040
Speaker 1: like all of human an anatomy. That's sort of how

980
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: I felt about it too, until watching the documentary, and

981
00:54:05,520 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 1: then when I saw how he managed his relationships with

982
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:10,600
Speaker 1: women throughout his life, it really dawned on me that

983
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 1: he had this this very strange codependent relationship with his muses. Right,

984
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:18,440
Speaker 1: so you had Lee Tobler and then you had his

985
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:21,920
Speaker 1: his first wife. But who was after Lee Tobler And

986
00:54:22,040 --> 00:54:25,399
Speaker 1: they interview her in this documentary, she basically says like, Yeah,

987
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: there's this point where I got like super sick. I

988
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 1: had to go into the hospital and Gieger came to

989
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:33,879
Speaker 1: me and was so unsupportive. He was essentially like, look,

990
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: when you're sick, it drives me crazy and I can't

991
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:38,279
Speaker 1: do my work. And if I can't do my work,

992
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:41,160
Speaker 1: it drives me even more crazy. So I'm just not

993
00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:44,319
Speaker 1: gonna be with you anymore so I can do my work. Yeah.

994
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,759
Speaker 1: He That was an interesting bit in the documentary, just

995
00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:51,800
Speaker 1: learning about how he approached his relationships. But at the

996
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:56,400
Speaker 1: same time he also I believe that was the same

997
00:54:56,719 --> 00:54:59,799
Speaker 1: uh that was his first wife. He did marry Lee,

998
00:55:00,680 --> 00:55:03,360
Speaker 1: but he ended up like leaving her a house and everything,

999
00:55:04,160 --> 00:55:09,640
Speaker 1: a very cordial relationship. Yeah, but there's just something strange

1000
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:13,200
Speaker 1: about the relationships that he had with these muses throughout

1001
00:55:13,239 --> 00:55:16,719
Speaker 1: his life. And I had not thought of it as

1002
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:19,480
Speaker 1: being misogynistic, And then I kind of wonder if he

1003
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:22,919
Speaker 1: took these women for granted. Maybe I don't know, maybe

1004
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:24,839
Speaker 1: there's more out there on this that I just am

1005
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:27,880
Speaker 1: unaware of. Oh, I'll probably come back to this as

1006
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 1: we proceed, But I kept looking at his work and

1007
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:32,759
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, a lot of this is it's

1008
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:36,400
Speaker 1: not really heteronormative. It's more maybe if you could go

1009
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:39,920
Speaker 1: in the term hetero abnormative, because it's it's very much

1010
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:45,200
Speaker 1: depending on traditional interactions of male and female anatomy. But

1011
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:48,520
Speaker 1: but in a way way that doesn't really line up

1012
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:51,920
Speaker 1: with any kind of certainly not you know, the classic

1013
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 1: examples of misogyny or classic examples of of of heteronormative attitudes. Yeah, yeah,

1014
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:01,239
Speaker 1: that's true too. Huh. I there's somebody out there who's

1015
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 1: written about this, but and we just missed missed it

1016
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:06,920
Speaker 1: when we were doing the research. Um. But yeah, Grap

1017
00:56:07,120 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: is all over all this other stuff, especially concerning the

1018
00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: birth issues, but also the dreams. Right. Yeah. He points

1019
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:17,160
Speaker 1: out that Geiger, we we touched on this a little bit.

1020
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:19,640
Speaker 1: He he engaged in a lot of Freudian dream analysis

1021
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:22,440
Speaker 1: early on, uh, and engaged in a high level of

1022
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:25,680
Speaker 1: self exploration when it came to matters of anxiety and fear.

1023
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:29,279
Speaker 1: A number of his familiar motifs emerged from this, and

1024
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 1: some of them are not not as obvious as others.

1025
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: You if you've looked through a lot of his work,

1026
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:35,480
Speaker 1: you may have run across safety pins or there's a

1027
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:39,320
Speaker 1: there's a picture of of Gieger. He's made sunglasses shaped

1028
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:42,640
Speaker 1: like a safety pin. And uh. There's this quote from

1029
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:45,080
Speaker 1: from Graf's work where Geer is talking about his dreams

1030
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:46,840
Speaker 1: and he says, most of the time in those dreams,

1031
00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:49,080
Speaker 1: I was in a large white room with no windows

1032
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,160
Speaker 1: or doors. The only exit was a doc metal opening, which,

1033
00:56:52,239 --> 00:56:55,040
Speaker 1: to make things worse, was partially obstructed by a giant

1034
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:59,239
Speaker 1: safety pin. So that's that's such an interesting motif because

1035
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: it's so clearly personal, and he's not he's not worried with, well,

1036
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 1: how are how's how's the the viewer or the you know,

1037
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: the the gallery visitor. How is the average person going

1038
00:57:09,080 --> 00:57:11,880
Speaker 1: to react to my symbol of the safety pin? You know,

1039
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 1: he just jumped in like it was all kind of

1040
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: self exploration. Yeah, that it would all kind of play

1041
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 1: out on its own in a different language that we're

1042
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:23,360
Speaker 1: not all speaking. Yeah. And and so Groff argues that,

1043
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:25,320
Speaker 1: you know, all of this is Gieger getting down to

1044
00:57:25,440 --> 00:57:27,760
Speaker 1: the to the root of his fear, following it to

1045
00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: birth trauma. Uh And and there are a number of

1046
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:33,360
Speaker 1: anecdotes in there that are that are pretty pretty cool,

1047
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:36,320
Speaker 1: talking about him looking back on his upbringing. There's a

1048
00:57:36,600 --> 00:57:39,720
Speaker 1: wonderful bit where he's talking about overhearing people talking about

1049
00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:44,439
Speaker 1: subterranean passages in in Sure, Switzerland, where he was born,

1050
00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:48,760
Speaker 1: and so he starts thinking about the possible tunnel connections

1051
00:57:48,840 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 1: to his own basement, and he has dreams about this,

1052
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:55,600
Speaker 1: and again this gets into visions and and uh, you

1053
00:57:55,680 --> 00:58:00,960
Speaker 1: know arguably, you know, a proto traumatic memories of tunnels. Yeah,

1054
00:58:01,040 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 1: and that's the thing that's like a lot of people

1055
00:58:02,800 --> 00:58:04,480
Speaker 1: see his work and they think, oh, this is just

1056
00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: some like total weirdo freak, right, But it's ultimately, like,

1057
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: when you boiled down to it, he's a scared little

1058
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 1: boy who like things like being told that there were

1059
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: tunnels under his home or hey, here's a human skull

1060
00:58:17,600 --> 00:58:20,080
Speaker 1: my six year old kid or whatever, like things like

1061
00:58:20,200 --> 00:58:24,080
Speaker 1: that traumatized him so much that he had to process

1062
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:27,800
Speaker 1: it mentally as an adult through art. And it wasn't

1063
00:58:27,880 --> 00:58:31,000
Speaker 1: like he loved what he was creating. It was like

1064
00:58:31,720 --> 00:58:33,680
Speaker 1: part of the process for him to get over his

1065
00:58:33,760 --> 00:58:35,960
Speaker 1: own fear. Yeah, well to in his own words, if

1066
00:58:35,960 --> 00:58:38,520
Speaker 1: I don't if I don't create, I I go matt,

1067
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. So at this point, let's turn to

1068
00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:44,400
Speaker 1: to one more area of discussion, and that that is

1069
00:58:44,440 --> 00:58:48,960
Speaker 1: trans humanism and cyborgs. We've discussed trans humanism and cyborgs

1070
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:50,800
Speaker 1: quite a bit here on stuff to blow your mind

1071
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: and uh, and just to remind everybody, the two real

1072
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:58,240
Speaker 1: lynch pins for our conversations about cyboards, uh, as well

1073
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:00,680
Speaker 1: as just sort of the roots of of the the

1074
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:03,640
Speaker 1: idea itself come down to two things. So we have

1075
00:59:03,680 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 1: a nineteen sixty paper Cyborgs in Space by Manford de

1076
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:10,280
Speaker 1: Klins and Nathan S. Klein. This is a pivotal work

1077
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:13,920
Speaker 1: of futurism that coined the word cyborg and explored then

1078
00:59:14,040 --> 00:59:17,960
Speaker 1: the necessary transformation of Homo sapiens for life beyond Earth. Yeah,

1079
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:20,320
Speaker 1: we have a whole episode that we did last year

1080
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:24,640
Speaker 1: about this, but also just like this sort of philosophy

1081
00:59:24,680 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: of cyborg ism in general. And then I also wrote

1082
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:31,040
Speaker 1: something that's on our site that is about the superhero

1083
00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:33,880
Speaker 1: Cyberg It's about to appear in all these DC movies

1084
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:38,640
Speaker 1: and how hopefully some of this cyborg philosophy translates into

1085
00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:41,240
Speaker 1: that somehow. The other big piece that we talk about

1086
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:46,760
Speaker 1: in these episodes is Donna Jay Harraway essays Cyborg Manifesto,

1087
00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:51,040
Speaker 1: and this centers around the ideological cyborg identity. So we're

1088
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:54,400
Speaker 1: talking about the realization that personal identity can itself be

1089
00:59:54,520 --> 00:59:59,120
Speaker 1: an intentional hybrid status. It's unbound by the didactic expectations

1090
00:59:59,240 --> 01:00:02,160
Speaker 1: of the past. Now, I think when we we we

1091
01:00:02,280 --> 01:00:03,960
Speaker 1: take both of these into account and we look at

1092
01:00:04,000 --> 01:00:09,120
Speaker 1: Geeger's work, uh, you know, we can recognize elements present

1093
01:00:09,800 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 1: in his work resonates with with so many of the

1094
01:00:11,760 --> 01:00:15,680
Speaker 1: concerns of of twentieth century post war existence. Flesh and

1095
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:19,240
Speaker 1: machine become intertwined, but not in a way that feels encouraging.

1096
01:00:19,720 --> 01:00:23,720
Speaker 1: There's a sense of of parasitism, with breathing tubes shoved

1097
01:00:23,760 --> 01:00:28,840
Speaker 1: into faces, bodies seemingly mutilated by the robotic hybridization. And

1098
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:31,440
Speaker 1: at the same time, Geeger's work is is unflinching in

1099
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:35,080
Speaker 1: its sexuality. So there's such a as we discussed, there's

1100
01:00:35,120 --> 01:00:37,720
Speaker 1: such a melding of individual and identity in his work.

1101
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: It's not always easy to to pinpoint, but you certainly

1102
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:45,840
Speaker 1: run across images where entities are absorbed by this category confusion,

1103
01:00:46,360 --> 01:00:49,000
Speaker 1: or there seems to be some sort of hybridization of

1104
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:54,040
Speaker 1: gender um and more often than not, one sees a

1105
01:00:54,120 --> 01:00:58,160
Speaker 1: masculine figure and a female figure seemingly copulating but also

1106
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:01,520
Speaker 1: becoming one in a way that confus usually confuses whose

1107
01:01:01,560 --> 01:01:05,560
Speaker 1: parts are who's Yeah, absolutely not and not to mention

1108
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 1: too like that. He sort of applies the issues of

1109
01:01:10,160 --> 01:01:15,880
Speaker 1: modern mass production to biology and sexuality. Yeah, and there's

1110
01:01:15,920 --> 01:01:18,640
Speaker 1: a there's a paper that I ran across that explores

1111
01:01:18,720 --> 01:01:22,920
Speaker 1: this that this is a paper by Elizabeth MARGETHA. Borst

1112
01:01:23,120 --> 01:01:27,000
Speaker 1: and it's her PhD In philosophy thesis at the University

1113
01:01:27,120 --> 01:01:30,680
Speaker 1: of Wakato, Hamilton, New Zealand. And she explores a number

1114
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:34,360
Speaker 1: of different cyborg artists, including Gieger. So she points out

1115
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:36,880
Speaker 1: that in looking at cyborgs and art, first of all,

1116
01:01:36,960 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 1: you have to consider Geeger, because she says, quote, there

1117
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: were fewer artists creating cyborg or interface artworks in the

1118
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:47,640
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies comparable to today. Yeah, and she specifically mentions

1119
01:01:47,760 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: the cyborgs or biomechanical babies they're in one of his

1120
01:01:51,200 --> 01:01:54,960
Speaker 1: pieces called birth Machine. Uh. She's pretty focused on it.

1121
01:01:55,120 --> 01:01:57,440
Speaker 1: It has themes of birth and death and production, as

1122
01:01:57,480 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned earlier. But it's this production line of

1123
01:02:01,200 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 1: cyborg babies that are being loaded into a gun like bullets. Uh.

1124
01:02:05,600 --> 01:02:08,320
Speaker 1: And there's a lot to unpack there about the human condition.

1125
01:02:08,400 --> 01:02:11,640
Speaker 1: She also cites Eric Gelberg as suggesting that this is

1126
01:02:11,680 --> 01:02:16,440
Speaker 1: a symbol of humanities increasing coexistence with technology and that

1127
01:02:16,560 --> 01:02:20,480
Speaker 1: our self destructive nature and our incessant desire to procreate

1128
01:02:20,920 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 1: is what's leading to overpopulation and environmental chaos. I'd also

1129
01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 1: add war and violence to that list, especially when you

1130
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:30,880
Speaker 1: note that the cyborg babies and Geeger's work have their

1131
01:02:30,920 --> 01:02:33,360
Speaker 1: own little guns, and then I wonder, well, what kind

1132
01:02:33,360 --> 01:02:36,760
Speaker 1: of bullets are in those? Are they tinier little cyborg babies? Yeah?

1133
01:02:36,800 --> 01:02:39,440
Speaker 1: I saw a quote where Geeger said that the part

1134
01:02:39,480 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 1: of the idea behind that work was he kind of

1135
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:43,920
Speaker 1: viewed He said, he kind of viewed babies as a

1136
01:02:43,960 --> 01:02:48,120
Speaker 1: clean slate um, which you know, that kind of runs

1137
01:02:48,160 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 1: counter to what we're talking about earlier, but but still

1138
01:02:51,160 --> 01:02:53,600
Speaker 1: he was saying that even if you look at a child,

1139
01:02:53,760 --> 01:02:58,400
Speaker 1: is this fresh, uh, you know, untarnished soul, it's still

1140
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:01,680
Speaker 1: going to become something that is part of perhaps a

1141
01:03:02,080 --> 01:03:05,280
Speaker 1: negative and destructive world. Yeah. Well, and then that leads

1142
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:08,360
Speaker 1: into his work with Death Machine. Death Machine is another

1143
01:03:08,440 --> 01:03:10,920
Speaker 1: series he did in Death Machine one is his homage

1144
01:03:10,960 --> 01:03:14,080
Speaker 1: to the synthesis of life and death with machine acting

1145
01:03:14,200 --> 01:03:17,560
Speaker 1: as mediator. This is about the encroachment of technology and

1146
01:03:17,600 --> 01:03:20,920
Speaker 1: production on the birthing process at this time. Rather than

1147
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:22,840
Speaker 1: it being you know, a machine of babies, it's a

1148
01:03:22,920 --> 01:03:26,160
Speaker 1: machine that connects to a birthing woman, taking over the

1149
01:03:26,360 --> 01:03:30,840
Speaker 1: entire biological processes in a very factory like manner. This

1150
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:33,760
Speaker 1: is when I realized that there's something inherently Marxist about

1151
01:03:33,840 --> 01:03:38,000
Speaker 1: his stuff that's criticizing the sort of capitalistic mass production

1152
01:03:38,360 --> 01:03:42,919
Speaker 1: of life. And there's one last piece in there, which

1153
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:45,400
Speaker 1: is this is connected. But it's a bronze sculpture that

1154
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:47,560
Speaker 1: he did that many people have probably seen, called the

1155
01:03:47,560 --> 01:03:52,040
Speaker 1: birth Machine Baby follows similar themes. There's very you know,

1156
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:56,280
Speaker 1: dystopian stuff going on there. It's basically the same babies

1157
01:03:56,400 --> 01:04:00,040
Speaker 1: that were in the gun and the original painting, but

1158
01:04:00,200 --> 01:04:03,760
Speaker 1: they're in sculpted form. And his his second wife points

1159
01:04:03,800 --> 01:04:05,840
Speaker 1: us out in the documentary that if you look closely,

1160
01:04:06,320 --> 01:04:08,480
Speaker 1: the babies are all based on him. They have his

1161
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:11,560
Speaker 1: facial structure. Now, one last thing I want to I

1162
01:04:11,640 --> 01:04:14,520
Speaker 1: want to point out we we mentioned movie The Cat,

1163
01:04:15,240 --> 01:04:17,720
Speaker 1: and if you if you go deep enough into Geeger's work,

1164
01:04:17,840 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 1: you're gonna run across two pieces in particular, one titled

1165
01:04:21,880 --> 01:04:24,960
Speaker 1: Behemoth and one titled Minion. When I first saw one

1166
01:04:25,000 --> 01:04:27,440
Speaker 1: of these, I think on Facebook, just you know, a

1167
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:29,800
Speaker 1: few years back, I thought it was a fake. I

1168
01:04:29,880 --> 01:04:33,200
Speaker 1: thought somebody making a clever joke, because they look like

1169
01:04:33,400 --> 01:04:37,080
Speaker 1: traditional Giger paintings, you know, bio mechanoids and you know,

1170
01:04:37,280 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 1: and and the typical uh category confusion flesh going on,

1171
01:04:41,720 --> 01:04:45,680
Speaker 1: and then in the foreground a big, kind of goofy

1172
01:04:45,720 --> 01:04:49,760
Speaker 1: looking cartoon cat that slightly zombified like some of these

1173
01:04:50,200 --> 01:04:53,000
Speaker 1: strange babies that he created, but it's just staring at

1174
01:04:53,080 --> 01:04:56,440
Speaker 1: you with big cartoon eyes. And yeah, I saw one

1175
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:58,280
Speaker 1: of these for the first time. I thought I was like, oh, well,

1176
01:04:58,320 --> 01:05:00,560
Speaker 1: that's clever. Somebody's having a little but it turns out

1177
01:05:00,600 --> 01:05:03,480
Speaker 1: the person having a little fun was hr Geeger. Yeah. Yeah,

1178
01:05:03,720 --> 01:05:06,360
Speaker 1: this reminds me of Um jungji Edo, who I've talked

1179
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:08,240
Speaker 1: about a couple of times on the show before. He's

1180
01:05:08,280 --> 01:05:11,680
Speaker 1: this Japanese manga artist who specializes in horror stuff. This

1181
01:05:11,800 --> 01:05:14,040
Speaker 1: is the Spiral guy. Yeah, he did Spirals, he did

1182
01:05:14,120 --> 01:05:18,240
Speaker 1: Guio Um, he did Tony, And he has this book

1183
01:05:18,680 --> 01:05:22,360
Speaker 1: that's all about his cats, and it's it's it's not

1184
01:05:22,600 --> 01:05:24,760
Speaker 1: meant to be a horror book because but because he's

1185
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:28,280
Speaker 1: a horror writer and artist. He's writing about him and

1186
01:05:28,360 --> 01:05:30,560
Speaker 1: his wife bringing cats into their home and what it's

1187
01:05:30,600 --> 01:05:34,480
Speaker 1: like living with cats. But his imagination sees these cats

1188
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:37,600
Speaker 1: in these sort of like otherworldly forms. It's fascinating. I

1189
01:05:37,720 --> 01:05:40,800
Speaker 1: love it. Um, and that brings me to a question

1190
01:05:40,840 --> 01:05:42,840
Speaker 1: that I'd like to ask the audience. Maybe I'm answering

1191
01:05:42,880 --> 01:05:45,920
Speaker 1: it for myself here in you too, if you have

1192
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:50,400
Speaker 1: an answer, But who has Geeger's mantle passed on too? Like?

1193
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:55,520
Speaker 1: Who is taking on this transgressive art about the human condition?

1194
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:59,160
Speaker 1: The best I could come up with this early Cronenberg,

1195
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:02,720
Speaker 1: But you know, the stuff Cronenberg's working on right now

1196
01:06:02,880 --> 01:06:05,720
Speaker 1: isn't really like that. And so then I think Jongi Edo.

1197
01:06:06,320 --> 01:06:09,360
Speaker 1: If you look at his work, it's very similar. It's

1198
01:06:09,400 --> 01:06:11,000
Speaker 1: hard to say like some of the artists that come

1199
01:06:11,040 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 1: to mind, like I instantly think of of older artists. Yeah,

1200
01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:16,560
Speaker 1: I think of like Irving Norman, who I've mentioned on

1201
01:06:16,600 --> 01:06:20,160
Speaker 1: the podcast before, who who had a very you know,

1202
01:06:20,280 --> 01:06:24,280
Speaker 1: it's a different, unique aesthetic. But as far as just

1203
01:06:24,360 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 1: surrealism goes in dark surrealism, and it had a similar

1204
01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:30,040
Speaker 1: vibe to Geeker's work. But I can't I'm not aware

1205
01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:33,480
Speaker 1: of anyone out there today who's really working with the

1206
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:37,040
Speaker 1: same energy. But though obviously I would, I would love

1207
01:06:37,120 --> 01:06:40,560
Speaker 1: to explore someone's work if they are so, certainly let

1208
01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:42,960
Speaker 1: us know, Yeah, let us know, send us some examples

1209
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 1: if you've seen them before. Um, I'm always looking for

1210
01:06:45,880 --> 01:06:47,800
Speaker 1: new stuff like this, and I would love to know

1211
01:06:48,080 --> 01:06:50,000
Speaker 1: if there's something like this out there that I'm just

1212
01:06:50,120 --> 01:06:53,360
Speaker 1: missing out on. Now, before we go here, we thought

1213
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:55,840
Speaker 1: we'd just take a few minutes to chat with a

1214
01:06:55,920 --> 01:06:59,520
Speaker 1: friend of the show, um ec Steiner, who's worked with

1215
01:06:59,600 --> 01:07:02,600
Speaker 1: us before, or he did. He recently did uh landing

1216
01:07:02,600 --> 01:07:06,520
Speaker 1: page illustrations for our book on on on Flesh Bound

1217
01:07:06,640 --> 01:07:09,160
Speaker 1: Tombs and uh and he has also helped out with

1218
01:07:09,200 --> 01:07:11,560
Speaker 1: the Monster Science series in the past. Yeah. Yeah, so

1219
01:07:11,680 --> 01:07:14,640
Speaker 1: he's built stuff for the show. Uh. And he is

1220
01:07:15,280 --> 01:07:17,680
Speaker 1: honestly the closest thing to hr Geeger I've met in

1221
01:07:17,800 --> 01:07:20,080
Speaker 1: real life, and I know that it's a huge influence

1222
01:07:20,160 --> 01:07:22,240
Speaker 1: on him. So we wanted to speak to him more

1223
01:07:22,280 --> 01:07:25,880
Speaker 1: about sort of like the process and artistic influence of Geeger.

1224
01:07:26,400 --> 01:07:28,960
Speaker 1: So let's talk to him briefly and then we will

1225
01:07:29,040 --> 01:07:41,800
Speaker 1: end the episode. All right, we're welcoming ec Steiner to

1226
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 1: the show, an artist, a friend of the show. Uh,

1227
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:46,800
Speaker 1: he's uh, he's helped us out with a few things

1228
01:07:46,840 --> 01:07:49,720
Speaker 1: in the past, including prop for Monster Science. Welcome, thanks

1229
01:07:49,760 --> 01:07:51,520
Speaker 1: for talking with us, Hey, thanks for having me today.

1230
01:07:51,560 --> 01:07:53,480
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really excited to come in and talk about

1231
01:07:53,640 --> 01:07:55,960
Speaker 1: Geeger's life and his work. Yeah, we go way back.

1232
01:07:56,640 --> 01:07:59,000
Speaker 1: We've known each other for god like almost ten years now.

1233
01:07:59,080 --> 01:08:02,560
Speaker 1: I think he worked on collaborative projects together. So it's

1234
01:08:02,600 --> 01:08:04,360
Speaker 1: cool to get you in here, because while we were

1235
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:07,480
Speaker 1: doing the Gigger research, I immediately thought, oh, we've got

1236
01:08:07,560 --> 01:08:09,360
Speaker 1: to talk to him. We've got a good Steiner in here,

1237
01:08:09,400 --> 01:08:11,480
Speaker 1: because he knows more about Gigger than anybody I know.

1238
01:08:12,040 --> 01:08:17,040
Speaker 1: And like Eager, you're an artist that works in illustration,

1239
01:08:17,240 --> 01:08:20,360
Speaker 1: in paint and in sculpture, so you're you're you're working

1240
01:08:20,439 --> 01:08:23,160
Speaker 1: in all this different kind of media very similar to him.

1241
01:08:23,320 --> 01:08:25,720
Speaker 1: And I think that's critical too, because when you look

1242
01:08:25,800 --> 01:08:31,920
Speaker 1: at giegers appears and his his influences, they're transisplary artists

1243
01:08:31,920 --> 01:08:34,640
Speaker 1: as well. They're not blocked in the just oh I

1244
01:08:34,720 --> 01:08:37,320
Speaker 1: just do painting or I just do sculpture. They they're

1245
01:08:37,320 --> 01:08:39,280
Speaker 1: truly artists in a sense that they're going to use

1246
01:08:39,960 --> 01:08:43,960
Speaker 1: whatever tools and media they have available to convey that

1247
01:08:44,080 --> 01:08:48,320
Speaker 1: vision as as fully as possible. So let's talk about Yeah, actually,

1248
01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:53,080
Speaker 1: like his influence on you, how it impacted you, how

1249
01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:54,920
Speaker 1: it led to the kind of art that you make.

1250
01:08:55,520 --> 01:08:58,360
Speaker 1: And then I'm also really curious on what his influences

1251
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: are what's the through line, because this is an area

1252
01:09:01,160 --> 01:09:03,880
Speaker 1: we didn't we didn't really discuss, and I think this

1253
01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:06,640
Speaker 1: is this is great because, um, when you look at

1254
01:09:06,680 --> 01:09:09,280
Speaker 1: his influences, and I think the key distinction to make

1255
01:09:09,320 --> 01:09:13,240
Speaker 1: between influence and inspiration is the inspiration is it's the

1256
01:09:13,320 --> 01:09:15,760
Speaker 1: gas and the engine. It's it's what's lit the fire

1257
01:09:15,840 --> 01:09:19,320
Speaker 1: for you to go out and create something. Where influence

1258
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:23,200
Speaker 1: is these little fingerprints all over your work, where if

1259
01:09:23,240 --> 01:09:25,639
Speaker 1: you tell someone, hey, I really like this guy's work,

1260
01:09:25,680 --> 01:09:28,200
Speaker 1: or I've I've really grown up on on this guy's

1261
01:09:28,200 --> 01:09:31,360
Speaker 1: approach to creating things, you can then look at my work,

1262
01:09:31,680 --> 01:09:35,599
Speaker 1: look at that individual's work, and draw very clear lines. Um.

1263
01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:40,000
Speaker 1: And and in terms of of Giger, um, my kind

1264
01:09:40,000 --> 01:09:43,320
Speaker 1: of love affair with with Hans Rudy uh is really

1265
01:09:43,400 --> 01:09:46,559
Speaker 1: at a at a point where it's it was more patronage. Um.

1266
01:09:46,680 --> 01:09:48,960
Speaker 1: I would buy his prints, I would purchase his books.

1267
01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:52,320
Speaker 1: I would go see films that he collaborated in or

1268
01:09:52,439 --> 01:09:54,600
Speaker 1: had some part in, or what we're inspired by what

1269
01:09:54,720 --> 01:09:58,519
Speaker 1: he was doing. Um. But I made a very um

1270
01:09:59,000 --> 01:10:02,400
Speaker 1: real decision in my my own work to avoid developing

1271
01:10:02,560 --> 01:10:06,559
Speaker 1: a gigg Er esque approach, because you've seen it yourself.

1272
01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:09,240
Speaker 1: You can go online, you can type you know, Gigger

1273
01:10:09,439 --> 01:10:12,160
Speaker 1: into a Google image search and not only find his works,

1274
01:10:12,560 --> 01:10:15,760
Speaker 1: but it works with other artists that are rooted in

1275
01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:19,520
Speaker 1: his style and his approach, either through his his applications

1276
01:10:19,680 --> 01:10:23,320
Speaker 1: or just the kind of bio mechanical black flag that

1277
01:10:23,400 --> 01:10:26,880
Speaker 1: he stamped into his creative domain. Yeah. So I would say,

1278
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:29,679
Speaker 1: like it seems like and we talked about this briefly

1279
01:10:29,760 --> 01:10:33,720
Speaker 1: on the show, but that like there's this um affinity

1280
01:10:33,880 --> 01:10:36,640
Speaker 1: for Gieger that rose up through sort of like the

1281
01:10:36,800 --> 01:10:39,879
Speaker 1: dark art and the goth scenes in the eighties and nineties.

1282
01:10:40,439 --> 01:10:43,759
Speaker 1: And I imagine, given what I know about other arts scenes,

1283
01:10:43,840 --> 01:10:47,240
Speaker 1: that there's plenty of Giger imitators out there. Oh. Absolutely there.

1284
01:10:47,320 --> 01:10:51,160
Speaker 1: There are artists who've made fifteen twenty of your careers, uh,

1285
01:10:51,439 --> 01:10:54,639
Speaker 1: replicating that kind of biomechanical style. And you you specially

1286
01:10:54,680 --> 01:10:58,240
Speaker 1: see it in in the tattoo community. How they've really

1287
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:02,280
Speaker 1: kind of grabbed on to that biomechanical style. And I

1288
01:11:02,360 --> 01:11:05,479
Speaker 1: often wonder if it's because Giger so often worked with airbrush,

1289
01:11:05,560 --> 01:11:09,320
Speaker 1: and he he air brushed his his muse lee he

1290
01:11:09,640 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 1: you know, I know we've all seen those photos of

1291
01:11:11,040 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 1: where he airbrushed Debbie Harry in the nineteen eighties. Um,

1292
01:11:14,560 --> 01:11:17,800
Speaker 1: it's just his application applies so well to the human

1293
01:11:17,880 --> 01:11:20,840
Speaker 1: form and then wanting to take that and apply it

1294
01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:23,200
Speaker 1: to yourself. It's just a very easy line to draw,

1295
01:11:23,720 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 1: um from one to the next. But yeah, there's definitely

1296
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:31,360
Speaker 1: an affinity there um both. I think from the uh,

1297
01:11:31,439 --> 01:11:33,920
Speaker 1: the visual themes that he grabs onto his kind of

1298
01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:37,080
Speaker 1: personal iconography that translates very well in anyone who's interested

1299
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:39,800
Speaker 1: in in the occult or in interested in kind of

1300
01:11:39,960 --> 01:11:43,439
Speaker 1: dark visions you obviously see through his techniques uses a

1301
01:11:43,520 --> 01:11:46,400
Speaker 1: lot of bone imagery, He uses a lot of um

1302
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:50,880
Speaker 1: kind of uh mutagenic elements that hearken to a very

1303
01:11:50,960 --> 01:11:56,639
Speaker 1: kind of dystopian post human future of sorts. So when

1304
01:11:56,680 --> 01:12:00,880
Speaker 1: you think about the who's gonna be attracted to it,

1305
01:12:01,040 --> 01:12:03,320
Speaker 1: it's it's not just people from those communities, but it's

1306
01:12:03,320 --> 01:12:06,120
Speaker 1: anyone who has just an appeal for seeing something that's

1307
01:12:06,280 --> 01:12:09,800
Speaker 1: that's off putting. UM For me personally, what I really

1308
01:12:09,880 --> 01:12:12,679
Speaker 1: enjoy about his work and what I find uh fascinating,

1309
01:12:12,760 --> 01:12:14,320
Speaker 1: especially in this time period that we're in where we're

1310
01:12:14,360 --> 01:12:17,200
Speaker 1: talking about trans humanism and post humanism and looking at

1311
01:12:17,280 --> 01:12:23,639
Speaker 1: kind of dystopian futures, is that his work really appeals

1312
01:12:23,680 --> 01:12:27,400
Speaker 1: to different aspects of of our our culture. If you

1313
01:12:27,560 --> 01:12:31,360
Speaker 1: have if you're a deep seated, very religious individual, you

1314
01:12:31,479 --> 01:12:35,360
Speaker 1: may find a sense of existential terror in his work

1315
01:12:35,439 --> 01:12:39,400
Speaker 1: because he grabs so heavily on us maybe satanic imagery

1316
01:12:39,479 --> 01:12:42,439
Speaker 1: or a cult symbolism. UM. If you look at what

1317
01:12:42,560 --> 01:12:47,439
Speaker 1: he's done with UM, kind of just the blending, morphing,

1318
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:50,200
Speaker 1: melding of of two or more figures. If you have

1319
01:12:50,439 --> 01:12:53,760
Speaker 1: a fear of maybe body horror, something like you're afraid

1320
01:12:53,800 --> 01:12:56,479
Speaker 1: of an autoimmune disease or cancer, something else, to see

1321
01:12:56,560 --> 01:12:58,599
Speaker 1: something like that could create a lot of psychological terror.

1322
01:12:58,960 --> 01:13:02,599
Speaker 1: So there's this right um element to his work where

1323
01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:07,280
Speaker 1: it both appeals and repels people UM on different levels

1324
01:13:07,360 --> 01:13:10,439
Speaker 1: because of the symbolism, the approach to his subject matter,

1325
01:13:10,520 --> 01:13:13,040
Speaker 1: and just his application creating these fast worlds. And this

1326
01:13:13,200 --> 01:13:15,040
Speaker 1: is something that we talked a little a little bit

1327
01:13:15,080 --> 01:13:16,760
Speaker 1: about in the end the episode, is that you'll have

1328
01:13:16,840 --> 01:13:20,560
Speaker 1: an individual piece of his that will inspire all of

1329
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:23,120
Speaker 1: these these feelings in you, or at least they do

1330
01:13:23,200 --> 01:13:25,040
Speaker 1: in me, where it's like, oh, well when I focus

1331
01:13:25,120 --> 01:13:28,559
Speaker 1: on this detail, yeah, that's that's that's awesome, that's beautiful.

1332
01:13:28,560 --> 01:13:30,680
Speaker 1: I can get behind that idea. This section of this

1333
01:13:31,360 --> 01:13:34,320
Speaker 1: triptic troubles me more. It makes me ask a lot

1334
01:13:34,360 --> 01:13:37,600
Speaker 1: of questions and uh and and so you get I

1335
01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:39,639
Speaker 1: feel like you get a lot of counter category confusion

1336
01:13:39,720 --> 01:13:42,720
Speaker 1: out of his work and uh. Above all, I I

1337
01:13:42,720 --> 01:13:45,400
Speaker 1: always found his work very very challenging compared to certainly

1338
01:13:45,439 --> 01:13:48,280
Speaker 1: other you know, so especially this sort of sci fi

1339
01:13:48,360 --> 01:13:52,880
Speaker 1: and fantasy artists that are thrown into the same rough categorization. Absolutely.

1340
01:13:52,960 --> 01:13:55,439
Speaker 1: In fact, I think what's what's so valuable about his

1341
01:13:55,560 --> 01:13:57,880
Speaker 1: work is here this guy who went to school to

1342
01:13:57,960 --> 01:14:01,439
Speaker 1: study architecture and interior design. So you look at his

1343
01:14:01,520 --> 01:14:04,599
Speaker 1: work and you're not just dealing with with subjects. You're

1344
01:14:04,600 --> 01:14:07,719
Speaker 1: not just looking at portraiture. You're looking at completely self

1345
01:14:07,800 --> 01:14:11,760
Speaker 1: contained environments that give you a glimpse of this other

1346
01:14:12,040 --> 01:14:14,879
Speaker 1: other world. And it's it's a window, it's a threshold,

1347
01:14:14,880 --> 01:14:17,600
Speaker 1: it's a portal into something beyond. And I think that

1348
01:14:17,720 --> 01:14:21,160
Speaker 1: makes this work so immersive and accessible because it's not

1349
01:14:21,320 --> 01:14:24,880
Speaker 1: just these these concepts are drawings that give you a

1350
01:14:24,960 --> 01:14:27,640
Speaker 1: hint of what's there. He's fully enveloping you in his

1351
01:14:27,800 --> 01:14:30,600
Speaker 1: vision um and you again with his design background. You

1352
01:14:30,680 --> 01:14:34,719
Speaker 1: see how Um, through his his sculptural techniques as design techniques,

1353
01:14:35,040 --> 01:14:37,320
Speaker 1: that he's taken those images and then pulled them into

1354
01:14:37,320 --> 01:14:40,639
Speaker 1: a physical space where they occupy a three dimensional space.

1355
01:14:40,800 --> 01:14:42,360
Speaker 1: You can interact with them, you can sit in them.

1356
01:14:42,360 --> 01:14:44,760
Speaker 1: I think that's why the Geeger Bar had such an

1357
01:14:44,760 --> 01:14:47,320
Speaker 1: appeal for people, Why his museum is is is such

1358
01:14:47,360 --> 01:14:49,439
Speaker 1: a great, you know, kind of destination stop on a

1359
01:14:49,520 --> 01:14:53,280
Speaker 1: European tour, is because you're not just seeing something through

1360
01:14:53,320 --> 01:14:56,960
Speaker 1: the safety of a two dimensional plane. You are now

1361
01:14:57,200 --> 01:14:59,880
Speaker 1: able to circle it and interact with it and feel

1362
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:02,479
Speaker 1: so if it's it's coming into your world, it's crossing

1363
01:15:02,520 --> 01:15:06,120
Speaker 1: that threshold and Um some of that that wonder and

1364
01:15:07,000 --> 01:15:08,960
Speaker 1: fear that he can create in his work is now

1365
01:15:09,479 --> 01:15:11,960
Speaker 1: coming at you in a different way. So this is

1366
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:14,120
Speaker 1: actually like one of the reasons why we wanted you

1367
01:15:14,200 --> 01:15:16,040
Speaker 1: to come in and talk to us is that you

1368
01:15:16,479 --> 01:15:19,280
Speaker 1: understand the process of what he was doing way more

1369
01:15:19,360 --> 01:15:21,080
Speaker 1: than us. And one of the things I was astonished

1370
01:15:21,120 --> 01:15:26,080
Speaker 1: by was watching him work with airbrush and documentaries because

1371
01:15:26,080 --> 01:15:29,200
Speaker 1: he didn't do any under drawings. And it's just to

1372
01:15:29,360 --> 01:15:32,280
Speaker 1: me as like I sort of just like fledgling artists.

1373
01:15:32,360 --> 01:15:36,240
Speaker 1: It's it's insane watching him come up with this, just

1374
01:15:36,400 --> 01:15:41,040
Speaker 1: like meticulous anatomy, just with this like the loosest of

1375
01:15:41,160 --> 01:15:44,599
Speaker 1: possible tools, just going over and over and over again

1376
01:15:44,720 --> 01:15:48,600
Speaker 1: with it until it's just refined perfectly. And so I'd like,

1377
01:15:48,800 --> 01:15:50,880
Speaker 1: you know, can you speak to that and and also

1378
01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:53,320
Speaker 1: speak to you know, just his process in general of

1379
01:15:53,400 --> 01:15:57,800
Speaker 1: also like you know two D to three D work. Sure, well,

1380
01:15:57,840 --> 01:16:01,320
Speaker 1: I think again, what's what's wonderful at his background is

1381
01:16:02,160 --> 01:16:04,600
Speaker 1: and he goes to the university to study architecture and

1382
01:16:04,880 --> 01:16:09,240
Speaker 1: interior design, and you know, when you're presenting those those

1383
01:16:09,400 --> 01:16:13,320
Speaker 1: architectural sketches, those design sketches, you have to be meticulous.

1384
01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:16,400
Speaker 1: The draftsmanship quality of that really comes out. And when

1385
01:16:16,439 --> 01:16:18,000
Speaker 1: you look at his early work, certainly in like the

1386
01:16:18,120 --> 01:16:21,160
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties mid sixties, it's a lot of of pen

1387
01:16:21,240 --> 01:16:25,800
Speaker 1: and egg again very well rendered, immaculate lines. Its just

1388
01:16:25,920 --> 01:16:29,439
Speaker 1: exciting work. So when you look at him, and I again,

1389
01:16:29,479 --> 01:16:31,240
Speaker 1: I have in my studio, I have a photo of

1390
01:16:31,360 --> 01:16:33,920
Speaker 1: him where he's working and he's just right there, going

1391
01:16:34,040 --> 01:16:37,120
Speaker 1: right on the canvas with an airbrush. Um. I think

1392
01:16:37,520 --> 01:16:40,160
Speaker 1: the training and the skill that he had going into

1393
01:16:40,240 --> 01:16:42,759
Speaker 1: that allowed him to just look at a blank canvas,

1394
01:16:42,960 --> 01:16:45,479
Speaker 1: not as something to be afraid of and figure out

1395
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:46,880
Speaker 1: what all, g where am I going to start with this?

1396
01:16:47,479 --> 01:16:50,320
Speaker 1: But actually he could already see I'm putting lines here,

1397
01:16:50,360 --> 01:16:52,479
Speaker 1: I'm putting lines here, I'm gonna deep in this area.

1398
01:16:52,520 --> 01:16:54,840
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go in in shade. So it's again a

1399
01:16:54,960 --> 01:16:58,120
Speaker 1: very organic process, which again it helps contribute to his

1400
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:04,800
Speaker 1: very organic results. Where um, it's it's not all hard edges.

1401
01:17:04,880 --> 01:17:07,160
Speaker 1: Even some of his hard edges seemed very round, almost

1402
01:17:07,200 --> 01:17:09,720
Speaker 1: like the kind of like the thorax of a bug

1403
01:17:09,840 --> 01:17:12,719
Speaker 1: or a carapist of of some kind of exoskeleton creatures

1404
01:17:12,760 --> 01:17:15,200
Speaker 1: we see and you know, certainly his later work. But um,

1405
01:17:15,560 --> 01:17:17,960
Speaker 1: in terms of his process, I I truly believe it

1406
01:17:18,160 --> 01:17:22,640
Speaker 1: was just his um, his comfort and his command of

1407
01:17:23,160 --> 01:17:24,840
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do, and the techniques he added,

1408
01:17:24,920 --> 01:17:27,000
Speaker 1: his disposal that he knew when I put this line

1409
01:17:27,040 --> 01:17:29,599
Speaker 1: down here, I mean it to be there. It's supposed

1410
01:17:29,640 --> 01:17:31,920
Speaker 1: to be there. I trust it's gonna it's gonna work

1411
01:17:31,960 --> 01:17:33,519
Speaker 1: with where I'm going with this. So he could just

1412
01:17:34,200 --> 01:17:36,519
Speaker 1: dive right in and go to town. So tell us

1413
01:17:36,520 --> 01:17:41,679
Speaker 1: a little bit about Geiger's influences. Sure, Um, what's what's

1414
01:17:41,720 --> 01:17:45,040
Speaker 1: fascinating about Geiger's influences. And as I mentioned earlier, you

1415
01:17:45,120 --> 01:17:49,640
Speaker 1: can find the fingerprint of his his peers, his friends, uh,

1416
01:17:49,680 --> 01:17:52,559
Speaker 1: the artists that he looked to as inspirators as well

1417
01:17:52,640 --> 01:17:55,400
Speaker 1: as supporters in his work. And when you when you

1418
01:17:55,560 --> 01:17:57,800
Speaker 1: see their work and just you know, I'm gonna give

1419
01:17:57,840 --> 01:18:00,040
Speaker 1: you some names of people who really impacted what he did. It.

1420
01:18:00,720 --> 01:18:02,960
Speaker 1: When you do, for instance, of Google image search or

1421
01:18:03,120 --> 01:18:04,800
Speaker 1: you you find a book of their work and you

1422
01:18:04,840 --> 01:18:08,400
Speaker 1: flip through it, you're going to see proto gig Or

1423
01:18:08,479 --> 01:18:11,600
Speaker 1: work in those in those drawings and those paintings and

1424
01:18:11,640 --> 01:18:14,040
Speaker 1: those sculptures. Uh. The first one that comes to mind

1425
01:18:14,400 --> 01:18:16,080
Speaker 1: is a gentleman by the name of dado U. And

1426
01:18:16,160 --> 01:18:19,200
Speaker 1: I can't even pronounce his Yuo Slavia names, So I'm

1427
01:18:19,240 --> 01:18:23,040
Speaker 1: not gonna butcher that um. But was what critical about

1428
01:18:23,160 --> 01:18:29,000
Speaker 1: him was that he created these beautiful deformed beings UM.

1429
01:18:29,200 --> 01:18:31,240
Speaker 1: And that's when you look at it, you clearly see

1430
01:18:31,360 --> 01:18:35,040
Speaker 1: some of those kind of blending, melded uh creatures or

1431
01:18:35,360 --> 01:18:38,720
Speaker 1: or beings that Gigger created. There's such a parallel there,

1432
01:18:38,800 --> 01:18:43,040
Speaker 1: and you can almost see Gigger being very um enamored

1433
01:18:43,120 --> 01:18:45,840
Speaker 1: with how he approached the his his designs of these

1434
01:18:45,920 --> 01:18:48,360
Speaker 1: figures and began playing with that in his own work

1435
01:18:48,400 --> 01:18:51,080
Speaker 1: and again filtering that through his creative prism. So you're

1436
01:18:51,080 --> 01:18:54,639
Speaker 1: not just seeing this these kinds of abstract surreal figures,

1437
01:18:55,360 --> 01:18:59,040
Speaker 1: but beings that exist in his his world and his vision.

1438
01:18:59,360 --> 01:19:02,280
Speaker 1: And so they aren't taking on more of those those borny,

1439
01:19:02,520 --> 01:19:06,280
Speaker 1: organic biomechanical elements, while still harkening back to kind of

1440
01:19:06,600 --> 01:19:10,120
Speaker 1: Dato's approach and style. Someone else that I I you

1441
01:19:10,280 --> 01:19:13,599
Speaker 1: really see in his work is Earnest a few Fuchs,

1442
01:19:13,960 --> 01:19:23,479
Speaker 1: who is an amazing Austrian um draftsman, painter, um printmaker, sculptor. Again,

1443
01:19:23,560 --> 01:19:27,160
Speaker 1: one of these these individuals who just wasn't bound into

1444
01:19:27,280 --> 01:19:32,000
Speaker 1: one creative box UM. And what's fascinating about earnest influence

1445
01:19:32,160 --> 01:19:36,040
Speaker 1: on Hans Ruti's work is the way he presents his

1446
01:19:36,280 --> 01:19:40,560
Speaker 1: his women, as you know, geegers women uh, even the

1447
01:19:40,640 --> 01:19:45,000
Speaker 1: pieces he did with UH with his musically UM, they're

1448
01:19:45,040 --> 01:19:49,920
Speaker 1: always presented in these very almost serene, uh commanding, regal,

1449
01:19:50,520 --> 01:19:55,639
Speaker 1: uh sensual and alluring um compositions. Sometimes they're elongated and leaning,

1450
01:19:55,760 --> 01:19:58,280
Speaker 1: sometimes they are reclining. Sometimes they're looking at you head on.

1451
01:19:59,040 --> 01:20:01,320
Speaker 1: And when you look at work and you look at

1452
01:20:01,400 --> 01:20:05,599
Speaker 1: how he approached his female subjects. It's almost as if

1453
01:20:05,640 --> 01:20:10,040
Speaker 1: you're looking at an underdrawing for one of Um Geger's paintings,

1454
01:20:10,200 --> 01:20:13,559
Speaker 1: because you can see right away where now we start

1455
01:20:13,600 --> 01:20:16,639
Speaker 1: adding all of the biomechanical elements on top of this UM.

1456
01:20:16,880 --> 01:20:20,479
Speaker 1: It's just it's such a very clear fingerprint on how

1457
01:20:20,800 --> 01:20:25,840
Speaker 1: Gieger approached his his more feminine subject matter. Someone else

1458
01:20:25,920 --> 01:20:28,720
Speaker 1: it's it's really important to talk about is a guy

1459
01:20:28,760 --> 01:20:31,560
Speaker 1: by the name of Austin Osmond spare Uh and I

1460
01:20:31,560 --> 01:20:34,840
Speaker 1: hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. Um. He was

1461
01:20:34,960 --> 01:20:39,439
Speaker 1: an artist who really embraced kind of these occult themes

1462
01:20:39,760 --> 01:20:45,200
Speaker 1: and symbolism and building on the psychology that that an

1463
01:20:45,280 --> 01:20:48,479
Speaker 1: artwork can have, and I think Geiger really pulled from that.

1464
01:20:49,080 --> 01:20:53,000
Speaker 1: When you look at some of his um some of

1465
01:20:53,040 --> 01:20:55,519
Speaker 1: the work that begins to reach out more into very

1466
01:20:55,600 --> 01:20:58,800
Speaker 1: clear occult realms. You see the repetition of symbols, You

1467
01:20:58,840 --> 01:21:02,880
Speaker 1: see the repetition of certain visual elements that create a

1468
01:21:03,120 --> 01:21:07,479
Speaker 1: visual language that kind of deepen his vision his world

1469
01:21:07,520 --> 01:21:10,000
Speaker 1: that he's trying to share with you, but also challenge you.

1470
01:21:10,080 --> 01:21:11,560
Speaker 1: As I know you guys have already touched on some

1471
01:21:11,600 --> 01:21:14,040
Speaker 1: of the psychological elements of his work. But again that

1472
01:21:14,280 --> 01:21:16,360
Speaker 1: all plays into this. You know, how do you apply

1473
01:21:17,160 --> 01:21:19,320
Speaker 1: uh kind of esoteric themes to your work so it's

1474
01:21:19,360 --> 01:21:23,879
Speaker 1: not just disposable pop culture. There are clear timeless messages

1475
01:21:23,920 --> 01:21:26,439
Speaker 1: in this work that resonate, which again goes back to

1476
01:21:26,520 --> 01:21:28,080
Speaker 1: why I think when we talk about things that are

1477
01:21:28,200 --> 01:21:32,080
Speaker 1: gigar esque, they are ultimately always going to be derivative

1478
01:21:32,160 --> 01:21:37,120
Speaker 1: and in some ways inferior because they lack the message

1479
01:21:37,160 --> 01:21:39,760
Speaker 1: of the work. They're just replicating the artifice. I mean,

1480
01:21:39,800 --> 01:21:42,519
Speaker 1: anyone can sit down with an airbrush or with clay

1481
01:21:42,760 --> 01:21:47,680
Speaker 1: and create these wondrous biomechanical creatures, but they're lacking the

1482
01:21:47,960 --> 01:21:51,920
Speaker 1: very personal, occult themes and kind of the secret messages

1483
01:21:51,960 --> 01:21:55,040
Speaker 1: that Geiger was folding into his work, both to challenge

1484
01:21:55,080 --> 01:21:58,120
Speaker 1: individuals but as well as maybe introduced into things that

1485
01:21:58,160 --> 01:22:01,160
Speaker 1: we're a little uncomfortable. Yeah. I think that's a great point,

1486
01:22:01,200 --> 01:22:04,000
Speaker 1: because when I think of of of stuff that's derivative

1487
01:22:04,040 --> 01:22:06,760
Speaker 1: of Geeger, it is kind of like someone saying, oh, well,

1488
01:22:06,840 --> 01:22:09,800
Speaker 1: these are the parts of this painting that I like

1489
01:22:10,120 --> 01:22:12,600
Speaker 1: and don't have any issues with that. You know, they

1490
01:22:12,640 --> 01:22:14,639
Speaker 1: don't challenge me too much. I'm going to take those,

1491
01:22:15,000 --> 01:22:19,160
Speaker 1: boil those down into into into this work exactly. Yeah.

1492
01:22:19,280 --> 01:22:21,080
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I've noticed, and we

1493
01:22:21,200 --> 01:22:23,120
Speaker 1: talked about this in the episode, is that there's these

1494
01:22:23,160 --> 01:22:27,240
Speaker 1: really broad themes of identification through Geeger's work that even

1495
01:22:27,320 --> 01:22:29,479
Speaker 1: if you look at it and it and it seems

1496
01:22:29,520 --> 01:22:32,599
Speaker 1: repulsive to you, you know, they're themes that every human

1497
01:22:32,680 --> 01:22:37,160
Speaker 1: being can identify with birth, death, sex, biology, right, all

1498
01:22:37,240 --> 01:22:40,400
Speaker 1: of these things. And what I'm trying to think of

1499
01:22:40,840 --> 01:22:45,080
Speaker 1: is somebody today who's working with broad themes like that,

1500
01:22:45,280 --> 01:22:47,880
Speaker 1: but is also transgressive in the way that Geeger was,

1501
01:22:48,040 --> 01:22:50,680
Speaker 1: and that like, you look at their work and you go,

1502
01:22:51,720 --> 01:22:53,640
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm supposed to be looking at this,

1503
01:22:54,080 --> 01:22:57,000
Speaker 1: and yet it has a broad appeal. Is there anybody

1504
01:22:57,080 --> 01:22:58,880
Speaker 1: you can think of? The best I could come up

1505
01:22:58,920 --> 01:23:02,800
Speaker 1: with was John J. E in the episode. Yeah. Jong

1506
01:23:03,000 --> 01:23:06,880
Speaker 1: Eto is great. Um He He definitely exists in his

1507
01:23:07,080 --> 01:23:10,320
Speaker 1: in his own again, his own visual realm. He's created it,

1508
01:23:10,400 --> 01:23:15,639
Speaker 1: he's expanding it with every release. Um I. It's it's

1509
01:23:15,720 --> 01:23:19,519
Speaker 1: very hard to point to someone in particular who it

1510
01:23:19,640 --> 01:23:22,800
Speaker 1: has the same residence that that Geeger has right now,

1511
01:23:22,920 --> 01:23:26,680
Speaker 1: or even anyone who's come before him. Um because with

1512
01:23:26,760 --> 01:23:29,360
Speaker 1: the unfortunate time period that we end, we're losing a

1513
01:23:29,479 --> 01:23:34,400
Speaker 1: lot of those very strong talents who set a tone

1514
01:23:34,439 --> 01:23:38,280
Speaker 1: and a pace for not just pop art or fantasy

1515
01:23:38,400 --> 01:23:41,080
Speaker 1: art or dark art, but for the art world. Um.

1516
01:23:41,600 --> 01:23:44,320
Speaker 1: And I think today, especially when you look at the landscape,

1517
01:23:45,160 --> 01:23:49,280
Speaker 1: so much of art seems to be made for quick digestion.

1518
01:23:49,880 --> 01:23:52,680
Speaker 1: It's I'm I'm going for social media likes, so I'm

1519
01:23:52,720 --> 01:23:56,479
Speaker 1: gonna do something that's derivative of of someone else's work

1520
01:23:56,800 --> 01:23:59,880
Speaker 1: or stranger things art, stranger things fan art. I mean,

1521
01:24:00,640 --> 01:24:02,840
Speaker 1: how many how many waffles and elevens can we see

1522
01:24:02,840 --> 01:24:06,640
Speaker 1: on them? My Instagram is full of that stuff exactly. Uh.

1523
01:24:06,720 --> 01:24:09,519
Speaker 1: And again there's nothing wrong with that, but the artist

1524
01:24:09,560 --> 01:24:11,439
Speaker 1: has to accept the fact that why I'm doing this

1525
01:24:11,800 --> 01:24:16,680
Speaker 1: is I want to appropriate the momentum of some other

1526
01:24:16,800 --> 01:24:21,479
Speaker 1: property and use that cultural currency. It has to perhaps

1527
01:24:21,600 --> 01:24:25,360
Speaker 1: elevate my own uh, my own role. Unfortunately though, and

1528
01:24:25,520 --> 01:24:29,840
Speaker 1: ultimately that's disposable. Are there people who get work from

1529
01:24:29,880 --> 01:24:33,760
Speaker 1: doing fan art from doing derivative work? Absolutely, but are

1530
01:24:33,840 --> 01:24:37,920
Speaker 1: they going to have a timelessness that someone like Gieger,

1531
01:24:38,240 --> 01:24:41,920
Speaker 1: like Mobius um, you think about even you know Georgeowski,

1532
01:24:42,000 --> 01:24:44,040
Speaker 1: who has such an important role for bringing all these

1533
01:24:44,080 --> 01:24:47,800
Speaker 1: guys together and then from that, even though that project failed,

1534
01:24:47,840 --> 01:24:50,720
Speaker 1: and again we're talking about his his Doom project. Um

1535
01:24:51,000 --> 01:24:55,960
Speaker 1: what came out of it alien Uh, some of Blade Runner, um,

1536
01:24:56,720 --> 01:24:59,760
Speaker 1: certainly some of David Lynch's Dune. But you think about

1537
01:24:59,840 --> 01:25:04,720
Speaker 1: in terms of contemporary film Prometheus, because Radley Scott went

1538
01:25:04,760 --> 01:25:07,519
Speaker 1: back to some of those early Dune concepts and said,

1539
01:25:08,200 --> 01:25:11,040
Speaker 1: we need to put these in in this film because

1540
01:25:11,080 --> 01:25:12,640
Speaker 1: they fit. And I believe one of them is like

1541
01:25:12,720 --> 01:25:15,880
Speaker 1: this this giant harcon in um, you know, kind of

1542
01:25:15,960 --> 01:25:18,240
Speaker 1: dome that made an appearance in the film. And again

1543
01:25:18,280 --> 01:25:21,120
Speaker 1: it's it's a great way of looking at someone who

1544
01:25:22,080 --> 01:25:24,920
Speaker 1: has such a fingerprint on that film. And in fact,

1545
01:25:25,120 --> 01:25:28,000
Speaker 1: um there's a great documentary I think you can find

1546
01:25:28,080 --> 01:25:31,480
Speaker 1: like YouTube about the making of Aliens. And what surprised

1547
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:35,280
Speaker 1: me was James Cameron's reaction to questions about, you know,

1548
01:25:35,600 --> 01:25:37,880
Speaker 1: Geiger's involvement. Oh no, no, no, no, no, he we

1549
01:25:38,080 --> 01:25:40,040
Speaker 1: we didn't bring him in this one. It's his design,

1550
01:25:40,120 --> 01:25:41,880
Speaker 1: but we we want to go in the other direction.

1551
01:25:41,920 --> 01:25:45,320
Speaker 1: We want to change things, but you can't because his

1552
01:25:45,920 --> 01:25:50,720
Speaker 1: fingerprint is so strongly and and Scott even has like

1553
01:25:51,040 --> 01:25:53,880
Speaker 1: recognized that now that he's back on that franchise. Like

1554
01:25:54,120 --> 01:25:59,639
Speaker 1: Prometheus and Alien Covenant both have Giger back front and center.

1555
01:25:59,720 --> 01:26:01,960
Speaker 1: And I think in Prometheus, don't they have that big

1556
01:26:02,080 --> 01:26:06,400
Speaker 1: alien mural that he usually Yeah, yes, yes, yeah, And

1557
01:26:06,479 --> 01:26:09,240
Speaker 1: I understand from my understanding is that there's similar stuff

1558
01:26:09,240 --> 01:26:11,599
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be in Covenant. So movie I'm hoping

1559
01:26:11,640 --> 01:26:13,920
Speaker 1: the movie murals. This is a good place for us

1560
01:26:13,960 --> 01:26:17,280
Speaker 1: to end. So yeah, So Mooviie has a huge influence

1561
01:26:17,400 --> 01:26:21,080
Speaker 1: on He has three movies throughout the course of his life. Yes,

1562
01:26:21,120 --> 01:26:23,800
Speaker 1: there are three cats with the same name. Uh so

1563
01:26:24,400 --> 01:26:26,479
Speaker 1: what about you? I know you have two cats, So

1564
01:26:26,800 --> 01:26:30,040
Speaker 1: are you planning to just have cats throughout the rest

1565
01:26:30,080 --> 01:26:32,599
Speaker 1: of your life and name them with various numerals after them.

1566
01:26:32,880 --> 01:26:35,400
Speaker 1: You know that that's probably a great idea. Um, just

1567
01:26:35,800 --> 01:26:39,840
Speaker 1: Draco one, Moxi five. UM. I can't admit though, that

1568
01:26:40,280 --> 01:26:44,040
Speaker 1: when you create what they called plastic arts, the sculpture,

1569
01:26:44,400 --> 01:26:47,719
Speaker 1: or you know, something where it's tactile and you have cats,

1570
01:26:48,439 --> 01:26:52,040
Speaker 1: every time you sell a work of art or you

1571
01:26:52,160 --> 01:26:55,600
Speaker 1: take on a commission, your client is ultimately going to

1572
01:26:55,680 --> 01:26:59,080
Speaker 1: get something that is just filled with cat hair. It's

1573
01:26:59,120 --> 01:27:00,960
Speaker 1: in there. You try to covered up Oh, that's just

1574
01:27:01,160 --> 01:27:03,519
Speaker 1: veins or I you know, that's just a stray hair.

1575
01:27:03,720 --> 01:27:06,240
Speaker 1: You know, it's you know, it'll be fine. But UM,

1576
01:27:06,680 --> 01:27:09,160
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's something fascinating about artists and cats too.

1577
01:27:09,600 --> 01:27:12,880
Speaker 1: Emery hard conan chair comes with one hair from the movie.

1578
01:27:13,160 --> 01:27:15,840
Speaker 1: I kept wondering watching The Dark Started documentary. It's like,

1579
01:27:15,880 --> 01:27:18,040
Speaker 1: how how is movie not just scratching the hell out

1580
01:27:18,080 --> 01:27:20,880
Speaker 1: at everything? Like my cat If I had artwork sitting

1581
01:27:20,920 --> 01:27:23,080
Speaker 1: around on the uh you know, touching the floor. And

1582
01:27:23,120 --> 01:27:25,120
Speaker 1: granted some of this was wood and sculpture and all,

1583
01:27:25,200 --> 01:27:26,880
Speaker 1: but I would just think, oh, my cat would just

1584
01:27:26,920 --> 01:27:29,599
Speaker 1: tear at the pieces. You know what's fascinating is um.

1585
01:27:30,240 --> 01:27:32,679
Speaker 1: I I used to let my cats in my studio originally,

1586
01:27:33,360 --> 01:27:35,439
Speaker 1: and I would find that when they want attention, that's

1587
01:27:35,479 --> 01:27:38,519
Speaker 1: when I would start seeing sculptures on the floor. Arms

1588
01:27:38,560 --> 01:27:41,600
Speaker 1: are blown off, legs are are shattered. UM. So I

1589
01:27:41,680 --> 01:27:45,080
Speaker 1: would would keep them out, but now certainly, UM, in

1590
01:27:45,160 --> 01:27:47,040
Speaker 1: my home where I have my studio, they'll come in

1591
01:27:47,479 --> 01:27:50,519
Speaker 1: and I'm more or less just like a recliner or

1592
01:27:50,760 --> 01:27:53,040
Speaker 1: a bed. Um, why don't get in a chair next

1593
01:27:53,040 --> 01:27:54,519
Speaker 1: to me? The other has to sit in my lap

1594
01:27:54,560 --> 01:27:57,439
Speaker 1: while I work? Um, I've developed an entire kind of

1595
01:27:57,560 --> 01:27:59,840
Speaker 1: postural approach to how I create so that I'm not

1596
01:28:00,040 --> 01:28:03,320
Speaker 1: you know, bumping their heads or unsettling their dreams. Um.

1597
01:28:03,840 --> 01:28:06,679
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's fascinating how and you certainly see

1598
01:28:06,760 --> 01:28:09,880
Speaker 1: with with Geeger he has a strong affinity for cats.

1599
01:28:10,320 --> 01:28:12,720
Speaker 1: And also, um, something else that really to look at

1600
01:28:12,840 --> 01:28:16,559
Speaker 1: his is his home. UM. I know in your research

1601
01:28:16,600 --> 01:28:18,800
Speaker 1: you may have touched this already. Early on he was

1602
01:28:18,880 --> 01:28:21,120
Speaker 1: living in Squalor. It was like he went from one

1603
01:28:21,200 --> 01:28:23,439
Speaker 1: condemned building to the next. And then when he has

1604
01:28:23,520 --> 01:28:26,400
Speaker 1: this very kind of fortuitous moment of receiving an inheritance

1605
01:28:26,479 --> 01:28:29,639
Speaker 1: and buying a house. UM, I think a lot changed

1606
01:28:29,680 --> 01:28:31,560
Speaker 1: for him in that moment because now he has a

1607
01:28:31,720 --> 01:28:34,960
Speaker 1: creative base of operations. UM. He doesn't have to worry

1608
01:28:35,000 --> 01:28:38,280
Speaker 1: about maybe being transient in another week or so when

1609
01:28:38,280 --> 01:28:40,920
Speaker 1: they tear down the building. UM. And I think maybe

1610
01:28:41,040 --> 01:28:45,519
Speaker 1: some of that that pressure, that environmental pressure, was playing

1611
01:28:45,560 --> 01:28:49,519
Speaker 1: onto his work and certainly driving his relationship with Lee together. Uh.

1612
01:28:49,600 --> 01:28:51,920
Speaker 1: And then when he got stable, he had a foundation,

1613
01:28:52,000 --> 01:28:56,519
Speaker 1: he had his his his fortress of creativity. UM. That's

1614
01:28:56,520 --> 01:28:58,439
Speaker 1: when things really changed with this work. I think I

1615
01:28:58,520 --> 01:29:00,519
Speaker 1: think he there was a sense of part minutes, there's

1616
01:29:00,520 --> 01:29:03,560
Speaker 1: a think of this is my my entire studio U.

1617
01:29:03,680 --> 01:29:05,640
Speaker 1: And when you look at the Dark Star documentary, you

1618
01:29:05,680 --> 01:29:08,519
Speaker 1: look at that house and it is just standing room

1619
01:29:08,640 --> 01:29:12,160
Speaker 1: only because the art lives there. He just kind of

1620
01:29:12,240 --> 01:29:14,280
Speaker 1: lives around it. And when you've got art in your

1621
01:29:14,280 --> 01:29:17,479
Speaker 1: sinks and in your bathtubs and um, you know folded

1622
01:29:17,560 --> 01:29:19,920
Speaker 1: up behind you know, dinner tables and art stacked on

1623
01:29:20,000 --> 01:29:22,200
Speaker 1: top of art on top of art, it's you really

1624
01:29:22,240 --> 01:29:24,160
Speaker 1: get a sense that that was his, his creative palace

1625
01:29:24,240 --> 01:29:27,719
Speaker 1: and he uh even his his ghost train in the backyard.

1626
01:29:27,920 --> 01:29:29,920
Speaker 1: And you go out back and that's not a normal

1627
01:29:29,960 --> 01:29:31,800
Speaker 1: patio set up for a lot of people, maybe a

1628
01:29:31,880 --> 01:29:34,840
Speaker 1: couple of chairs and a firepit. Not at Geeger's house.

1629
01:29:34,920 --> 01:29:38,080
Speaker 1: So so thanks for being with us today. Uh where

1630
01:29:38,120 --> 01:29:41,200
Speaker 1: can people find your art online? Where can they find

1631
01:29:41,360 --> 01:29:44,080
Speaker 1: you know, follow you see the stuff that you're working on? O? Great? Well,

1632
01:29:44,200 --> 01:29:46,640
Speaker 1: um again, thank you for having me here today. I

1633
01:29:46,800 --> 01:29:51,160
Speaker 1: love talking about Geeger. Um. He's he's such an important

1634
01:29:51,439 --> 01:29:54,080
Speaker 1: influence on my own work and certainly early on and

1635
01:29:54,320 --> 01:29:56,400
Speaker 1: trying to you know, find my own creative path and

1636
01:29:56,720 --> 01:29:58,840
Speaker 1: my own voice and and and not just replicate what

1637
01:29:58,880 --> 01:30:01,080
Speaker 1: he's done. But if anyone's interested in taking a look

1638
01:30:01,120 --> 01:30:03,200
Speaker 1: at what I've done, you can find me online at

1639
01:30:03,479 --> 01:30:06,320
Speaker 1: caski glass dot com. Uh. That's my my main weight

1640
01:30:06,400 --> 01:30:08,960
Speaker 1: set that I'm I'm going through and doing some alterations

1641
01:30:09,000 --> 01:30:10,640
Speaker 1: with right now. But from there you can link off

1642
01:30:10,680 --> 01:30:13,439
Speaker 1: to my social media account, uh my store where you

1643
01:30:13,479 --> 01:30:14,840
Speaker 1: can you know, take a look at some of the

1644
01:30:15,360 --> 01:30:18,160
Speaker 1: small artworks that I have available for sale and um

1645
01:30:18,280 --> 01:30:20,519
Speaker 1: connect with me there because of course I want to

1646
01:30:20,600 --> 01:30:22,720
Speaker 1: connect with other Giger fans and anyone who's interested in

1647
01:30:22,840 --> 01:30:25,120
Speaker 1: dark art and no kind of promote the scene as

1648
01:30:25,120 --> 01:30:26,600
Speaker 1: best I can. Yeah, and if you're a fan of

1649
01:30:26,720 --> 01:30:28,679
Speaker 1: our show and you've seen some of the video stuff

1650
01:30:28,680 --> 01:30:30,840
Speaker 1: that we've done, especially Monster Science, you're gonna want to

1651
01:30:30,920 --> 01:30:33,800
Speaker 1: check this stuff out because the cyclops head that shows

1652
01:30:33,880 --> 01:30:39,080
Speaker 1: up in Monster Science, that's Steiner. Also the Cathulu of

1653
01:30:39,160 --> 01:30:41,160
Speaker 1: the house stuff works now, that's true. Yeah, it's in

1654
01:30:41,200 --> 01:30:44,559
Speaker 1: our now studio as well, so a lot of good stuff.

1655
01:30:44,600 --> 01:30:47,360
Speaker 1: Go check it out. Well, thanks for coming in chatting

1656
01:30:47,400 --> 01:30:50,559
Speaker 1: with us that discussing Gieger and uh we'll include links

1657
01:30:50,600 --> 01:30:52,800
Speaker 1: to to those websites we mentioned on a landing age

1658
01:30:52,840 --> 01:30:54,400
Speaker 1: for this episode. It is stuff to Blow your Mind

1659
01:30:54,439 --> 01:30:58,880
Speaker 1: dot com. Alright, today you have it, Thanks again Derrick

1660
01:30:58,920 --> 01:31:01,320
Speaker 1: Steiner for chatting with us there. And if you want

1661
01:31:01,360 --> 01:31:03,639
Speaker 1: to check out some of the links we've been discussing here,

1662
01:31:03,640 --> 01:31:05,479
Speaker 1: go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com go

1663
01:31:05,600 --> 01:31:09,880
Speaker 1: to the landing page will include some some interesting gateways

1664
01:31:10,000 --> 01:31:15,120
Speaker 1: to depl deeper explorations, including standars Lav Graff's website standars

1665
01:31:15,160 --> 01:31:18,559
Speaker 1: Lav Graff dot com and the hr Gieger Museum itself

1666
01:31:18,840 --> 01:31:21,720
Speaker 1: hr Giger Museum dot com. And if you want to

1667
01:31:21,720 --> 01:31:23,280
Speaker 1: get in touch with us and talk to us about

1668
01:31:23,320 --> 01:31:25,280
Speaker 1: Gieger or other artists that you think are working in

1669
01:31:25,360 --> 01:31:27,960
Speaker 1: this realm where all over social media, you can find

1670
01:31:28,040 --> 01:31:31,880
Speaker 1: us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. Or you can

1671
01:31:31,920 --> 01:31:34,200
Speaker 1: just write us the old fashioned way, send an email,

1672
01:31:34,520 --> 01:31:37,000
Speaker 1: not a letter. Uh. And that would be at Blow

1673
01:31:37,000 --> 01:31:38,880
Speaker 1: of the Mind at how stuff Works dot com. Yeah,

1674
01:31:38,880 --> 01:31:41,080
Speaker 1: and I say there's a ninety chance we will do

1675
01:31:41,240 --> 01:31:44,920
Speaker 1: a trailer talk episode this Friday in which we look

1676
01:31:45,000 --> 01:31:47,400
Speaker 1: at the trailers for some of these Giger related films

1677
01:31:47,439 --> 01:31:49,800
Speaker 1: we discussed, uh And that will take place on our

1678
01:31:49,840 --> 01:31:53,240
Speaker 1: Facebook page and then later I'll upload it to YouTube

1679
01:31:53,760 --> 01:31:56,120
Speaker 1: and as always, shoot us an email at stuff to

1680
01:31:56,160 --> 01:32:07,680
Speaker 1: blow your mind dot com for more on this and

1681
01:32:07,800 --> 01:32:10,559
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com.

1682
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Speaker 1: The fi