ALMOST PORN. THE LAST FRONTIER OF SEX.  -   by Brandpowder  ©  2013.

Let’s admit it. Porn has said it all. It’s repetitive, patterned, out-of-date, monotonous, trite, prosaic, insipid, self-quoting, in one word: Boring! The maximum variation you can expect from any given story ranges from “hmm, ah, hmm, ah, yes, yes!” to “hmm, ah, hmm, ah, da, da!”  or “ja, ja!” or “hongu, hongu!” depending on whether the film was shot in America, Russia, Germany or Zimbabwe. The rest is just a ‘clash of flesh’ that is just a grotesque parade, a sad mirror of our depleted of fantasy.

A study conducted by the University of Montreal found out that 100% of male population in their twenties watches porn, with an average ranging between 20 and 40 minutes a week (the difference being between the engaged and the single). The word “Sex” comes third after music and travel in search engines’ query, only because people look for sex under an endless list of synonyms, including ‘cuddling’. This is more a sign of a malady than a success. The paradox is that bored people turn to porn which, in its fake excitement, is even more boring. Porn is producing 4o% of the so-called “information overload”on the web – a wave of smut that is destroying the meaning of love and eros, and submerging our own dignity. In a visually inundated society, the satiated eye isn’t imaginative anymore. Everybody’s brain, today, is as full as a tick!

No way out, apparently.  But then, once again, the Brandpowder Team came up with a brilliant alternative.  Always ready to fight fake myths and to improve the overall quality of life on the planet, Brandpowder triggered a counter-culture to porn.  BIG COCK SMALL PUSSY is a film company specialized in “almost porn” movies. Films where, no matter all the favorable circumstances you’d usually expect as a prelude to a steamy hot conclusion, nothing hot ever happens. Every story remains clean, suspended and unconsumed and its lack of sex makes it suitable to all audiences.

The first film is called “Bad Girls Must Be Punished” (below). It stages two young schoolgirls who haven’t performed too well at College. Their teacher, a handsome man halfway between a lifeguard and a bodybuilder, is very disappointed. The girls play with their miniskirts and ask him if there’s anything they can do to recuperate their bad grades. The teacher tells the two spoiled brats they need to learn a good lesson in discipline. They smile at him with complicity but they are not getting the point, evidently. The teacher tells them they must repeat the year! End of the story.

“Devasted by the Plumber” (below) is another short where a lonely housewife wearing sexy lingerie as if it were the most natural outfit for everyday’s chores, calls the plumber to fix the washing machine. A black guy shows up and gives a quick glimpse at the lady. He knows how to fix the leak straight away. That’s a man’s job. The rest of the movie, quite interestingly,  concentrates on the nuts and bolts of hydraulic repairs, making it also a useful manual for household’s maintenance. At the end, the black guy presents the bill and that’s when the lady looks truly devastated. That’s not possible! Three hundred dollars to fix a leak?

“My Husband is a Lesbian” follows an intriguing plot: a married couple is spending their holidays at the beach. She’s a wannabe intellectual who, after reading Aristotle’s Theory of the Syllogism, tries to apply theory to practice. She speculates about her dull husband who, in the meantime, kills time watching younger babes on the beach. The wife’s lousy mumbling follows a crooked path: “Women who like women are lesbians. Women are human beings. Also men are human beings. Therefore, if my husby likes women, may be he’s a lesbian too…” This movie, of course, is aimed to people who like the Ingmar Bergman’s style.

(Three pictures below) : every BIG COCK SMALL PUSSY film comes in a luxury golden case, complete with authentication stamp and introductory booklet that makes it a collector’s must. Graphic design and illustration are by Carlo Muttoni and Monica Turlot, of the Brandpowder Team.

“The Overscrupulous Secretary” (below) stages a stunning girl whose humble job is mainly of the under-desk type. In fact she spends most of her working time picking up stuff her clumsy boss drops on the floor: pencils, pens, ipads… The boss is always on the phone, saying trivial things like: “You are doing a great job!” or “I want you to get it all!”. The secretary, in the end, re-surfaces with all the things she collected from the carpet, but we are not going to reveal the full story.

(Below): “So Innocent and So Dumb”, as you have already guessed, is an unnerving comedy about innocence and stupidity. A young country girl raised in a Midwest’s farm, receives a visit from her cousin, a young man from New York City (where else?). The city guy tries to take advantage of her purity but he won’t be able to get what he’s looking for. The farm girl raises his expectations when she asks him if he would like to see her little ass. He gets very excited. He doesn’t know, yet, he will go back to New York empty-handed.

Every BCSP movie is a disappointment to those who can’t wait to see the beef but, at the same time, a way to re-think ourselves, may be getting rid of our dependance on technology and the sluggish excitement of its visual drugs. The stories are very funny, anyways, and sometimes nothing is better than a good laugh. The Brandpowder Team is currently working – full steam – at new episodes and stories. BIG COCK SMALL PUSSY is opening soon a new, dedicated website where you’ll have access to all content and gadgets. Stay tuned!

PS: This article was going to end up with the line “A new star is porn” but, in the end, we thought the pun was not new, and we opted for something more sober.

We couldn’t find a lot of interesting books around, lately. No wonder the publishing industry is in deep ‘sheet’.  The majority of publishers seems to have developed a certain taste for crap wrapped in a glossy dustjacket. To make things worse, talented writers with something to say are disappearing, just like happened to big reptiles and alcohol-free beer. Good books, very good books, are rarer than astatine. The rest, and we are talking about 1 million titles every year, is just trees sacrificed for no reason. If, to all of the above, you add the fact there are more writers than readers, and that readers mostly read what they write, you get the whole picture. The Brandpowder Team, in a drastic attempt to instill a sense of pride in the publishing industry and to push good writers to abandon Harry Potterism and type some goddam’ good stories, would like to introduce you to the top worst books of 2013. We personally published these books at our own expenses,  as a no-profit experiment to provoke publishers, writers, readers and, why not? hopefully also analphabets, to do something about it.

Opening Picture: The Not So Yellow Pages are a guide to imprecise listing. You can browse them, let’s say, when you are not looking for something in particular and you just jerk around thinking life is about getting lost somewhere, nowhere. Fakebook (below) is a novel talking about demotivation, failure, depression, solitude, despair, staging an anxious, over-perspirating guy with smelly armpits. It sold just one copy, bought by the author.

Below: This opus in two volumes, which comes in a lavishly hardcover leather-bound edition, is a meditation about nothing to say. The 240 empty pages are a masterpiece on silence and creative white out. A must non-read for whoever feels  blocked or simply overwhelmed by data overflow. Mostly unsold.

This book (below) is highly recommended for the daring investor who’s always looking ahead for new opportunities. Unfortunately, also this one didn’t sell a single copy (out of the 50 we printed). We were shocked, since Mars is the next frontier. Not to mention KitKat and Bounty.

The worst-best seller on our list is this rather imposing, meek-looking book with a challenging title aimed to the disobedient. We didn’t find a single customer willing to pay 20 bucks for its precious insight. The cause may be people are much better off than we think, or they are simply convinced they know better?

This project, as many others developed buy the Brandpowder Team, was a complete fiasco. Indirectly, it was a success. It proved our point. Thank you for your attention.

Paper. What a fragile, soft, crumpled and easyburning word. If paper sounds almost outdated, as old as stone or bone, it’s because it has been displaced by the digital efficiency of glass. Our fingertips run on its surface, tapping on contents which magically pop up, slide, zoom and disappear. But none of the content on your tablet, smartphone or computer screen can aspire to the same level of interactivity of paper. Digital content is as fast as a fish you see darting under the translucent icy surface of a frozen lake. We call it “eskimo effect”. You see it but you can’t catch it, unless of course you cut a hole into the ice crust and try to stab it with your harpoon. The access to digital information happens on a sleek, shiny surface that’s also a barrier to deeper understanding. Paper, on the other hand, is  a deep, tridimensional, physical medium you can play with in endless forms.

The Brandpowder Team realized, this time under the supervision of Carlo Muttoni, a series of photocollage that, after photographed,  have been destroyed. This is a selection of pictures inspired by “Paper Surgery”, a theme we already developed before, as a reflection between the evanescence of plastic surgery and ethernal beauty as Nature’s way to endlessly recreate us beyond us.

aaa

Helvetica is the most widely used typeface in the world. Designed in 1957 by Eduard Hoffmann and Max Alfons Miedinger for Haas Type Foundry in Zurich, it was rapidly adopted by graphic designers, ad agencies and printers worldwide for its clean lines, elegance and great readability. Initially it was called Helvetia but Haas didn’t want this type to by identified with his own Country (Helvetia is the latin name for Switzerland) and the name Helvetica – which means “from Switzerland” was chosen.

The Brandpowder Team, to honour the 56° anniversary of this aesthetic achievement, designed the first open source typeface in the world. It’s called Helvetia Drop, and everybody can use it for free. Here’s how it works: start from the Arial Bold MT Rounded, a free typeface which is identical to Helvetica but bears another name for copyright reasons (don’t ask). Write your text or logo on Illustrator. Then select the outline mode and choose the color of your background (i.e. white, if you want it on a white surface). By giving different thickness to the outline (1 up to 20 points, depending on the size of your type) you’ll be able to reduce the type’s appearance. It will be thinner and smoother, as sand shaped by sea ripples. Its gentle contours convey a sleek, modern look to your text and it’s readable also on small type, even if it’s not suitable for extra small print such as in legal notes or pharmaceutical instructions. That’s all folks!

Above: popular commercial logos written on Helvetia Drop acquire a new life.

Above: chromatic torture test. Helvetia Drop is nice also in bright green and pink.

Above: Monica Turlot, photographer and chief designer for the Helvetia Drop project. The Brandpowder Team celebrated a great moment last week. Monica was nominated for the prestigious Hardon Design Award for Excellence. She’s kind of shy and didn’t want to pose for a picture. We had to catch her by surprise. Nice shot! – she said, but when she found out we used her beloved Hassleblad, she got mad at us.

The Brandpowder Team will soon publish a book about John Trefford and his huge oil paintings. It’s a comprehensive retrospective of his work, back from 1967 when he started as a chaffeur for Rotchko. Five years later he was the assistant and lover of Klaudia Klammewitz Obermayer, the Prussian, blue blood gallerist who launched him as the rising star of Mitteleuropean Modernity, the wunderkammer, enfant prodige of a monstruous hyper-reality. She died last year, aged 101 like a rare cognac, squashed under the grand-piano she loved so much to play, which fell from the third floor of her new villa in Wien. Klaudia, better known as K.O. among friends and admirers, left a legacy that will influence the art world for decades to come. John Trefford didn’t attend the funeral because he was painting. And that’s what he basically did for the last 40 years: painting. That’s why there not much gossip about Trefford’s life, apart rumors about a complicated relationship with Susan Dill Don, heiress of the Dilldon empire. He is the prototype of the real contemporary artist: ambitious, selfish, and cursed by his ghosts, mostly when drunk. Trefford paints only on big surfaces made of rough linen he damps into a solution of benzene and plastalc before applying the first layer of paint. He is comfortable to work only with vintage, boar hair, shaving brushes and he prepares his own colors starting from natural pigments and mineral powders he grinds on a marble mortar, following the old school of painters from the Renaissance. John Trefford’s work is considered a safe bet in the contemporary art market, today. Given his laid back attitude, and the fact he doesn’t really need to paint to survive (his last portrait sold for 14 million dollars) collectors need to be patient if they want to bring home one of his marvellous works. We publish here only a few portraits from the 2012 series “Big Faces, Small Pussies”, and a few of his tools. All photos by Monica Turlot for the Brandpowder Team, courtesy of the artist.

Opening picture (top): Lyn Ann, 1999 (10 x 7 ft) – Private collection, New York. Above: Gwenda, 1991 (10 x 7,5 ft) – Recently bought by the MOJA Museum (NJ).

Above: Klaudia, 1971 (12 x 7,5 ft) – Property of the artist. Below: Tyra, 2003 a big canvas commissioned by the China World Fair, and later bought by a Mongolian collector.

Above: Kuwalla, 1988 (13×10 ft) – private collection. This painting was stolen in 1984 and sold twice to the same owner. Below: a rare picture of Trefford at work, while painting Lyn Ann in 1999. (photo archive, courtesy of Life Magazine).

Below: The artists tools, numbered by colors. Boar’s hair is strong and delicate at the same time and Trefford always rinses his brushes with a solution of water, carnauba wax and vinegar. He told us turpentine oil can be ruthlessly harsh on brushes and it shortens their lifespan.

Above: Trefford never travels without his vintage pinewood oil case, a gift he received from Rotchko. Working as a chaffeur was very important for Trefford, a life-changing experience, according to him, because it helped him to find his own way as an artist. “Rotchko was filthy rich and all he did was splashing colors on a canvas. I wanted that kind of life, even if I never needed someone to drive my car.” – Below: some of the natural powders Treford uses for his paintings and a large splash of Terra di Siena during preparation.

Below:  The book about Trefford, soon to be published by the Brandpowder Team. It will include more than 350 paintings, plus many pictures and documents about the artist’s life.

Trefford is now painting at the Mowers Mental Hospital where is recovered after his breakdown in 2007. His psychiatric conditions are stable and, fortunately, didn’t compromize his artistic vein and ability as a painter.  He told us, at the end of our meeting, that things are never like they apPEAR. We laughed together. We couldn’t agree more.