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Barbe-Ark (PICS)

Glenn Close But No Cigar

10:26 / 15.04.07

Tick tick tick BOOM! The world is one the brink of destruction, and you are the curator of the starship Barbe-Ark, an interplanetary museum that will preserve our species' crowning creative achievements.

We're not talking fondly remembered toy franchise-based comics here (unless you can make a very good case for 'em), nor are we talking hilarious All You Base Are Belong to Us-type internet memes, or even the admittedly excellent remixing of the Frosties kid ad to The Prodigy's Firestarter. We might not (*ducks for cover*) even be talking about the work of a certain Gronk Morporkson. Nope, this Barbe-Ark will only be filled with the creme de la creme de la creme.

Just to kick off, I'm putting the following in our space-bound museum:

The Benin Bronzes
Nabokov's Lolita
Beethoven's 9th
Virginia Woolf's 'The Waves'
The paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat

10:47 / 15.04.07

"Deepthroat" starring Linda Lovelace.

11:59 / 15.04.07

Princess, if you include that please also include Linda's book 'Ordeal' with it. She ended up being an antipornography advocate.

12:04 / 15.04.07

I should also like you to read her statements on the entire film being an act of rape. Sorry to derail the thread but it's a fairly important aspect of that particular work.

I imagine a few items nominated for the barbe-ark might be disputed or require additional material to balance the issue.

13:30 / 15.04.07

The Barbe-Archives.

My Mum. (she's a national institution etc)

Your Mum (just for company)

The Landscapes of Gustav Klimt

Some Rich Tea Biscuits

Wuthering Heights (Book and Song, they're quite good you know?)

Yasujiro Ozu's Noriko Trilogy

Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey

Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding

Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ

A bottle of buckfast

a cheap bag of speed

They're all pretty debatable but you have to throw in some oddments (to be wondered at in milennia to come by our culturally diverse progeny), some popular culture and somethings that are pretty much artefacts in their own right.

Kiltartan Cross

14:18 / 15.04.07

A Supermarine Spitfire, as a sublime illustration of the Devil having all the best tunes.

The Carlisle Cursing Stone. Sure had a way with words, that chap.

The epic Kalevala. A perfect thing to save from the midst of an evil age, when time runs out.

A Vincent Black Shadow. Just because.

Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille. If there's room, that is, and if the view outside can be replicated by some supernanomegahologram.

lord henry strikes back

14:26 / 15.04.07

A massive 4x4 (maybe a Hum Vee) with the words 'DO NOT INVENT' written on the side.

A Fender Jazz bass and a Gibson Les Paul guitar.

Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

20:22 / 15.04.07

Good call re: Lovelace, XK.

Caterpillar, there's plenty of room in the Barbe-Ark for architecture. In fact, I'm going to add Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Falling Water' house.

20:42 / 15.04.07

Where would we be without the dreaded Tamagotchi? Nowhere!

21:05 / 15.04.07

I know it's a beautiful house and all, and you know it would be amazing to hang out in, but I see that photo and think: how nice would that place be without that fucking house there?

Glenn Close But No Cigar

21:18 / 15.04.07

Hmm, as nice as Valley of the Kings without the Pyramids, maybe?

Snark off, I see what you're getting at, but I think there are far, far worse crimes against 'nature' committed in the name of human housing than FLW's efforts.

Regarding Falling Water, you might get a kick out fo the fact that the rocks from the waterfall come up through the living room floor.

21:39 / 15.04.07

I've seen many images of the place. It is a master work, amazing in it's integration with the landscape, and yes, I've seen many other houses that are an affront to the places they have been shoved into, like a fat stepsister foot into a glass slipper. The guy was a true artist, and while I may not love everything he did, I can't knock his style or abilities. It's just hard to improve on nature, sometimes, sall I'm sayin. I'm not knocking anyone for thinking it's a beautiful house, my apologies if I conveyed that. As cultural artifacts go, it's hard to improve on.

15:04 / 16.04.07

'Wuthering Heights' and 'Finnegans Wake' get right the fuck in there. And, maybe, the collected Anne Sexton, which some may pretend I'm just throwing in for ballast.

The cheapest free-trade coffee money can buy. One can.

Copies of 'Adolescence Apocalypse', 'Sabrina' (the original, Wilder one), and 'Split Second' with Rutger Hauer and Kim Catrall.

One can, Mountain Dew.

We'll steal the silver-plated .45s off of Tarantino and put those in. Futurefolk and weirdies won't know what to make of them, but when I return from the grave I want to be able to play zombieShadow as easily as possible.

Massive archives of recordings of Jimi Hendrix, Yoko Ono, and Frank Zappa.

One little ceramic baby-on-ice Ann Geddes thing. As a warning to the future.

And the blouse from 'Scorpion's Revenge' (aka 'Satori in USA) from right before her BF is blown up. Because that's the finest cut of cloth ever. And should be preserved as such.

Orson Welles' adaptation of 'The Trial' with Tony Perkins can go in, if there's room for it and all of us. Because I'm coming to your homes and hitting all of you with my suspendo-ray before stocking the archive-ark with you. Like cordwood into the future.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

17:15 / 16.04.07

Seconding your Anne Sexton collection, Desc. Add to it a recording of Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" and "A Supermarket in California."

lord henry strikes back

17:49 / 16.04.07

Actually, partly because it's premise is so similar to that of this thread, and partly because it's such an important novel, I think we need Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.