From Robert Filliou to Mario Merz: The Contemporary Relevance of the Barabar "Caves" (India) in Light of Contemporary Art

December 05, 2025 in Article, Feature

Dominique de Varine

[The below text has been translated from the French. The original French text is at the bottom if you are so interested.]

It took the developments in painting during the 19th and early 20th centuries, from William Turner to Henri Matisse and Georges Braque, for our gaze to be freed and for us to allow ourselves to examine parietal art with an unprejudiced spirit. Similarly, certain developments in art from the twentieth century onward, particularly from its second half, are needed to approach the "caves" of Barabar in their singularity, overflowing any referential framework.

The Void and the Full, the Nothing and the Everything, the Hare and the Rifle

No figuration of any kind, no statuary or engraving adorns the interior volumes with their clockwork precision. Nothing but emptiness. And formal resonance.

Membrane, cocoon, receptor, chrysalis of granite polished to the micron on whose surface your body is reflected, but equally folds and gullies. The Barabar caves defy all interpretation, which remain contradictory beyond their possible assimilation to Ajivika culture (Maurya Empire, around the 5th century BCE). Therefore, this text will offer no explanation of what these caves are, their possible past role, or the reason for their creation. The technical aspects remain a mystery. But an attempt to read their formal deployment.

The Gnostic Manifesto

November 16, 2025 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Manifesto of the Month

You think you know where you’re going but you’re not going anywhere.

The world as presented is not the world.

You’re in a small village in the mountains of Nepal and barely a week ago Kathmandu erupted in violence. You see no violence. You hear no violence. One morning, you walk through the town, and you notice the large white house now has burnt and blown-out windows. A week later, you go into Kathmandu and are confronted by the long arched windows of Singha Durbar (or Lion Palace) framed bonfires swelling out from their neoclassical cage to turn the night red but in the morning all that was left was the scorched aftermath. You are removed from the act and the seeing of the act is filtered—through news that is 6:1 paid PR people to independent journalists—through social media that feeds you a personalized stream of information, misinformation, skewed information—through the chatrooms of your friends and the twitter feeds of your favorite celebrities. What you see is not the thing as it is.

As your day evolves into a haiku of habits. As you wait for the moment when everything turns clear as crystal and a way out of your own decaying self. Who do you think you are? Who are you in truth?

Chapter 15: Every Day a Different Toxin

June 08, 2025 in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz

Welcome to Weltschmerz

In this final installment of Welcome to Weltschmerz, USA, Boyer finds himself at Burning Man on psychedelic mushrooms, through nervous breakdowns and binges and general drug-fueled confession upon the sands of Black Rock, NV. His summer taking theater to bedrooms across America has ended and all he’s got to show for it is a nagging twitch of the eye

You can find Chapters 1 - 14 here.

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available

Buy Now

Interview with Dominique de Varine

March 10, 2025 in Article, Interview, Feature, Press

[This week we thought we’d share an interview with artist, Dominique de Varine, who calls Brittany home, but who we met in the Tibetan colonies of Northern India.]

Mutable: I think a good place to start our conversation is Dharma and Karma, as this was where our conversation began. What is the relationship between Dharma and Karma in your work? Has it always been this way or has their relationship evolved over time? And also, was there a time when these concepts were not important to your work and some moment when they became more so?

Dominique de Varine: Karma, Dharma, I don’t really know what it is. My ideas are fleeting, they fade with time. When I began my work on the Galipettes series, the question that series seemed to me to be answering was this issue of emptiness. Over time, the echo of fullness invited itself to the point of playing equal with emptiness, and as a dialectic. A reading is complementary to it, to be grasped from the side of reality since it is from this material that my research is ultimately made, and simultaneously to be grasped from the side of the order of the narrative, since reality only exists in relation to the form that we lend it. This narratological order can be pointed out from the opposition between engagement (narrative) and disengagement (narrative). The void, disengagement in the here and now. The fullness, engagement with all the shaping of the world. From there, Dharma and Karma.

Home Again Home Again, Jiggity-jig

March 06, 2025 in Article, Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

The American experiment appears to be ending in a not-so-stealthy authoritarian power grab. In fact, the current administration would like you to believe the struggle’s already over and the foxes have already secured the henhouse—as they ramp up libel laws and rule by executive fiat and deport legal asylum seekers to 21st century concentration camps in El Salvador—but these are not the most omnipotent of men, and our newscasters and historians are ringing the bell from their sound stages and social media accounts. The nation you grew up in is no more! The darkness has come and you need to wake up now if you ever want to wake up again. Look into the eyes of your children and align yourself with the light before the midnight of our homeland becomes so complete that you forget where your mouth is and your body becomes strange to you. Now is the time to panic!

But even as we watch the disenfranchised and lost being treated as dogs and less than dogs, as we witness media outlets and our most hallowed institutions of learning being coerced to bend the knee or suffer the consequences, even as the alleged leader of the free world spits bile in the face of the camera like a regular schoolyard punk, as students are disappeared and the threats have only just started threading their way into our mailboxes and through the tinkling glass of our shattered windows—still—as you turn walking wound and angels castrated of their wings—even then—there is nothing there. And there’s not even that.

Because this is how it’s always been. As you marched through the corridor of your life—its graduation ceremonies and heartbreak—from the infinite promise of adolescence and on into any given number of cardboard cut-out futures and their many alternate endings and bonus tracks—bankruptcies and biopsies—the webbing of your daydreams strung with meetings and the occasional colostomy bag—where are you in this equation? At what point are you? Because you are not the person in this corridor—this corridor that never was.

Video: Triumph

January 09, 2025 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“One day we’ll sit back and look at all what we did.” We end our collection of Manson & Madri Song-A-Day songs with a truly great song about looking back, taking stock, and what is left. Triumph is perhaps my favorite of the lot, with its shimmering synths and John’s affecting lyrics performed in his usual understated style. “Leave your conscience at the door and live triumphantly.” Enjoy!

Triumph is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.

John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!

Gabriel Boyer

January 04, 2025 in Article

Tour Dates

Throughout January, Mr. Boyer will be touring the US, visiting old haunts and singing sad sack country classics written by himself and collaborator M. Felder, as well as doing readings from What Light Becomes Me, his post-apocalyptic noir recently released by Montag Press. Dates and venues below:

12/28—Adobe Books: 7PM @ 3130 24th St, San Francisco, CA, (415) 864-3936

1/2—Recreational Psychoacoustic Lab: 7PM @ 601 NW 80th St Unit B, Seattle, WA, (206) 651-5937

1/3—The Cabin Show: By invitation only

1/9—Mutable HQ: By invitation only

1/12—The Mothership: 6 Sergeant Richard Quinn Drive, Woodstock, NY, (845) 679-3392

1/17—The Lilypad: 7PM @ 1353 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, (617) 955-7729

1/19—Pierce’s Hall: 7PM @ 121 East Putney Falls Rd, Putney, VT

Gabriel Boyer has been deluding himself for as long as he can remember. His latest release can be found below. You can read more about him here.

Featured

What Light Becomes Me

January 01, 2025 in Article, Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

“Imagine an AI trained on Quentin Tarantino films, William Burroughs novels, a few bits of David Ohle's weirder surrealism, and a Pittsburgh street map is told to write a dystopian noir, and halfway through that project someone feeds in a bunch of William Gibson and Philip K. Dick, and the AI meanwhile has fleshy arms and is growing sticky and pungent and wet. And imagine this AI hands off a first draft to a wandering poet with an ear for torqued language, a lonely figure, a touch sentimental but with a bitter streak. And then this poet revises the draft while reading abstruse philosophy and accounts of mystic visions. Now speed up whatever you're imagining, such that it becomes a propulsive hyperviolent plunge through fractured layers of perception and possibilities, ends of the world without end, the impossible tortures of the post-post, the indifference of hallucination and prophecy. Perhaps this might approach Devil Everywhere I Look, but it's still unlikely you will have anticipated the bears,” Ben Segal, author of The Wes Letters and Pool Party Trap Loop

Pretty much sums it up. You can find a copy of What Light Becomes Me by Mutable regular Gabriel Boyer … here.

In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.

Video: Crush

November 30, 2024 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“When I first saw you, I was pretty sure I would be crushed.” Some jarring guitar, simmering cymbals, and another poignant word poem from the minds of Manson & Madri. Enjoy!

Crush is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.

John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!

Boston Bands in the 90's: Taylor Ho Bynum Quartet

November 30, 2024 in Series, Boston Bands in the 90s

There was a time when the free jazz was flowing and joyful, and Taylor Ho Bynum was part of that. The trumpeteer and composer went on to play with Anthony Braxton and record an array of influential albums, including The Middle Picture, Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths, Owl Jacket, and Navigation. A reviewer from Next commented that Bynum "deploys a litany of buzzes, whistles, drones, pinched fanfares and garrulous brass muttering in acrobatic arcs that twist and somersault." He has been the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College since 2017.

Billy Ruane was a staple of the scene at one point, and he documented endless shows throughout the 90’s and beyond. These videos came out of that.

Chapter 14: Alone Again, Naturally

November 28, 2024 in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz

Welcome to Weltschmerz

Gabe and Jill wonder about the Pacific Northwest, running out of money, stumbling into dinner parties, working at a buritto shack during hempfest, attempting to spoon, and ultimately saying their final goodbyes. As we approach the end of our Bedroom Theater tour of America, Gabe and Jill have only succeeded in completely breaking each other's spirit in this penultimate episode of Welcome to Weltschmerz, USA

You can find Chapters 1 - 13 here.

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available

Buy Now

The Zulu and the Redcoat

November 26, 2024 in Excerpt, Story, Series

Walker Zupp

Now it was 6:00 a.m. and everyone was tired from weeks of travelling to this benighted spot the locals called Isandlwana and Lorne Novak was wincing before a small parade of his fellow soldiers, including Captain Wallass, whose pocket-watch Lorne had pocketed the night before.

Their superior’s sjambok split the sun in two before whistling through the air and striking Lorne’s hairy spine.

“It didn’t work, sir!” Lorne assured him, referring to the pocket watch.

“Be quiet, Novak!” the Officer replied, raising his sjambok again, cutting the sun, and adding another red bar to Lorne’s skin.

“Twenty-second of January,” Captain Wallass noted inwardly, enjoying the sight of Lorne’s penalty, but also thinking about what the damaged Lorne had in stall for him…

After he delivered the last blow, the Officer replaced his pith helmet, mirroring the submarine-like protuberance that shadowed the campsite. It seemed to have burst though the dry landscape like a modern submarine through arctic ice, and the British soldiers were afraid of the odd dark tower.

Video: Seduction 1

November 18, 2024 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

In this darkly profound exploration of desire and its malcontents, Manson’s signature spoken word is off-set by a disquiet of drum machine and synth. “Our growth is retarded by fantastic tools” We are bombarded by the fake and fakery of the erotic in the accompanying video as Manson & Madri croon their way through another cynical masterpiece. “Nothing’s more important than your feelings feeling okay.” Enjoy!

Seduction 1 is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.

John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!

My Asinine Life: Unrequited Me as Still Life

November 18, 2024 in Article, My Asinine Life, Series

Gabriel Boyer

How do you summarize a life? How do you conclude yourself? Where are you when the boulders come bouncing down the incline? Are you at home and gazing at the glowing screen with some excitement? Are you out on a hike with your long-suffering spouse? Do you have your fingers in many pies at the moment? Have you given up on ever being anything like yourself?

Are you alone in your room and realizing that you are always going to be alone in your room from now on as you nurse your gout-ridden foot? What about that you didn’t end up here because you slid into a giant trap door in the sky or because of some other deception of the scene and the people in it but more because of the general complications of being, some of which very much have nothing to do with you and who you are, and some of which very much do—you ended up here because you just couldn’t help yourself—whatever that means in your specific case—or because you didn’t have the courage to do it differently—or maybe you did and that’s why. ‘Here’ herein meaning wherever you happen to be at the moment.

Could of been you didn’t think it through. Or you just got lonely. Or your mother got sick and someone had to take of her and it ended up being you. Or there came a point in your marriage when nothing made sense any more and now you’ve been divorced for five years and it still doesn’t make sense.

This is where I am.

Submergent 01

November 13, 2024 in Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature, Podcast

Mutable Sound of the Month

Jason Sanford experiments with technology to create new kinds and sorts of sounds with old tones and out of step algorithms, and Submergent is one of these sounds. It’s a sound like the hive has woken and it is hunting around the corner. It is a sound that presents only questions. Mr. Sanford has been bending the minds and metal of the music world for thirty years and he’s not finished twisting your soul into pretzels of itself using methodologies verging on the unacceptable. Enjoy!

Mutable Sound is pleased to present a unique musical experience every month or so by ourselves or someone we’ve been introduced to. These are from the reel-to-reels and tascams of the garages and basements of the world. If you have a track you would like us to hear, please feel free to send it on to mail@mutablesound.com along with credits and a brief description.

Video: Passion

November 13, 2024 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“There was passion in my walk and it hurt in my feet.” With a jangle of tambourines and wailing guitar we are introduced to the many passions of Manson. His deep baritone voice speaks through the passion like a knife cutting through hot butter. “Passion dies like little bird except it doesn’t make a peep.” Enjoy!

Passion is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.

John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!

The Declaration of Independence

October 09, 2024 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Manifesto of the Month

[As we enter the home stretch of the 2024 electoral season, we here at Mutable wanted to pay tribute to a pivotal manifesto that is often overlooked in the history of political and artistic movements, the Declaration of Independence. Presented both as a set of grievances and a rationale for extreme action, it is also presenting a radical worldview wherein we are all equal and that governments exist to serve us rather than for us to exist to serve the whims of monarchs. You could argue that it’s the most successful manifesto. It’s movement is still going strong.]

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Chapter 13: Anarchy for You and for Me

September 19, 2024 in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz

Welcome to Weltschmerz

Jill and Gabe find themselves on an anarchist compound in Saginaw, OR. Do they actually have lamas? Gabe reminisces about the future, when he will one day indeed live on this compound while working as a wildland firefighter while Jill is nowhere to be found. Beer is procured and an anarchist musical is performed. Later, that musical will be filmed. You can view the results of this filming here and the final shot of the Kenny Rogers Rock Opera (also performed in Saginaw) can be found here. Eventually, Gabe gets a haircut. Everything ends in tragedy.

You can find Chapters 1 - 12 here.

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available

Buy Now

A Room That Is And Or Is Not Past Tense

August 11, 2024 in Story, Series

Ben Segal

In the felt room is a softer spot in the soft of the whole. There is a slot there for the cards that poke out each morning and afternoon.

The morning card is Tongue Exercise

So the morning was for flexing and stretching, for folds.

Afternoon was another easy one, Sitting Still. It was a common card. A favorite.

At night the four people in the felt room slept side by side without touching.

In the morning the card said Diamond Mining and the four people who live in the felt room switched on their helmet lamps and entered the mine shaft. They carted diamonds to the softer spot in the soft whole of the felt room and pressed the diamonds to the slot, which was warm and wet, which one of them swore was pulsed with breath, which one of them swore tasted right. The afternoon card read Handcuff Game and that took the four of them to night.

The slot in the softer spot of the soft of the felt room is not mouth or vagina.

Video: Fantasy

June 14, 2024 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“Tell me your fantasy. Tell me your secret.” With Manson & Madri’s signature driving drums and shimmering guitar. “Tell me your dirty secret and I’ll tell you mine.” Manson’s voice lost in the storm of sound continues to coo to the listener his saccharine half-truths with the deadpan candor of grifter at last call. Enjoy!

Fantasy is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.

John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!

Dominique de Varine

The Void and the Full, the Nothing and the Everything, the Hare and the Rifle

Paperback Book8" x 5.25"560 Pages$16.00Now Available

In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.

Billy Ruane was a staple of the scene at one point, and he documented endless shows throughout the 90’s and beyond. These videos came out of that.

Paperback Book8" x 5.25"560 Pages$16.00Now Available

Walker Zupp

Paperback Book8" x 5.25"560 Pages$16.00Now Available

Ben Segal

Product

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available