Month: July 2020 (Page 12 of 14)

 

‘In 1951, Ed Emshwiller (1925–1990), a World War II veteran and fledgling commercial illustrator from Michigan who had studied in Paris and at the Art Students League of New York, bought a house with his wife, Carol, in Levittown, a newly built community on Long Island that offered lines of credit to GIs. A prime midcentury symbol of cookie-cutter conformity, middle-class anxiety, and real-estate redlining, Levittown provided the Emshwillers with a secure base from which to launch their careers, Ed as an artist, Carol as a writer. The Emshwillers were perhaps the sole residents who fully dedicated themselves to the postwar American project of self-fulfillment and integrated personality (in a segregated community). “They were the only beatniks in Levittown,” recalled their then-teenage neighbor Bill Griffith, who went on to create the Zippy the Pinhead comics. His father, Griffith maintains, envied the Emshwillers. They didn’t commute to Manhattan every day.

‘Instead, Ed Emshwiller worked in his second-floor home studio, painting illustrations for the covers of sci-fi magazines, including Galaxy, Infinity, and Astounding Science Fiction, and cheap novels by Philip K. Dick, Leigh Brackett, and Samuel R. Delaney. Emshwiller was good at this, and successful. He won five Hugo Awards. He supported his growing family. Some months, his illustrations accounted for a third of all those published in the sci-fi pulps. He drew aliens on other planets, spacemen in cockpits zipping through the cosmos, and rats controlling men’s brains. He painted women in crazed poses with defiant looks in their eyes. A 1957 illustration titled Disintegration of a Field-Force features a blast of light behind a body-suited woman twisting and reaching in space, and it predicts the dance films he would make.

‘By the 1960s, Emshwiller, like Andy Warhol, had turned from commercial illustration to 16-mm filmmaking, blacking out the windows in his studio so he could make movies, Factory style, in Levittown. His singular body of work experimented with form, dance, narrative, and social psychology; he mixed them together, sometimes uneasily. “Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller,” a film series and exhibition curated by Jesse Pires at Lightbox Film Center and the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, celebrated Emshwiller’s lifework across the popular and the experimental, combining his genre illustrations with his films, videos, and computer animations. Shown together, they reveal Emshwiller as a voracious bohemian workaholic.

‘Self-taught, he first experimented by photographing close-ups of paint, rewinding the film in the camera, then filming dancers so they would move around the brushstrokes. He debuted Dance Chromatic in 1959 at Amos Vogel’s Cinema 16 in Manhattan and promptly won an award. Soon he was part of the New York avant-garde. Jonas and Adolfas Mekas modeled for one of his illustrations, appearing as a space pilot and an emaciated wraith, respectively, on the cover of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Emshwiller returned the favor by acting in Adolfas’s Hallelujah the Hills (1963).

‘Emshwiller was as prolific a filmmaker as he was an illustrator, working on more than seven dozen films and videos in his lifetime. He also became a cinematographer, shooting Jonas Mekas’s The Brig (1964) and several documentaries. He shot black-voter-registration drives in Mississippi, cinema vérité style, and Resnais-like hallways filled with banks of data-crunching computers for a PBS film on mind control. He worked for the United States Information Agency as a director-cinematographer and made Project Apollo in 1968, a stunningly original spaceflight film. Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick both came to visit him in Levittown. It seems like they were the only filmmakers he ever turned down. While he was a dean at CalArts in the 1970s, he worked on primitive computer animations with Alvy Ray Smith, one of the guys who would go on to start Pixar.

“It’s Emshwiller’s body that is vomiting out its existential memories and suspicions,” Jonas Mekas wrote in the Village Voice in 1970. Emshwiller’s busyness, his constant Brownian motion, takes away from his most lasting achievement as a film artist. Post–Maya Deren and pre–Yvonne Rainer, he is the best director of dance films in experimental and expanded cinema. The two dozen or so he made, including Chrysalis (1973) and Film with Three Dancers (1970), surpass his earlier, knottier film work with an otherworldly beauty absent from death-haunted cascades of images like Thanatopsis (1962) and Relativity (1966).

‘His dance films take place “in space”; Film with Three Dancers features Creation of the Humanoids–esque performers in monochrome leotards and silver bathing caps who are lit with colored lights similar to those in Italian space flicks and horror movies. Made with the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company and often featuring the choreographer-dancer Carolyn Carlson, three movement studies connect Emshwiller’s view of natural landscapes and space flight to the human body. In other videos, like Scape-Mates (1972) and Pilobolus and Joan (1973), which was written by Carol, Emshwiller took dance from his homemade stage into the laboratory, where the real world met a virtual one inside his computer.

‘In the latter film, members of the dance troupe Pilobolus crawl in centipede-like formation against a chroma-key backdrop of the twin towers, serenaded at times by a folk singer. In the former, dance figures blip out of colorful grids and blocks. Both films are trippy, complex, and not a little nuts. A final work, Hungers (1988), an avant-garde space opera worthy of Sun Ra, with music by Morton Subotnick sung on-screen by Joan La Barbara, expresses the human soul flying free from corporeality, free from Levittown and any known planet.’ — A. S. Hamrah, Artforum

 

____
Stills

 

___
Further

Ed Emshwiller @ Wikipedia
SCIENCE-FICTION VISIONARY ED EMSHWILLER GETS RECOGNITION AS AN EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER
Ed Emshwiller @ Electronic Arts Intermix
Ed Emshwiller @ IMDb
Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller
EE @ Video Data Bank
9.8 Ed Emshwiller
Book: Emshwiller: Infinity x Two: The Art & Life of Ed & Carol Emshwiller
EE @ Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre
The Films of Ed Emshwiller
EE @ Underground Film Journal
EE @ letterboxd
The Body and the Cosmos
The art of Ed Emshwiller, 1925–1990

 

____
Extras

Screening Room with Ed Emshwiller (Excerpt)

Ed Emshwiller on the Dick Cavett show, May 1978

Art of Ed Emshwiller Panel

 

_______
“Later That Same Life”

 

Peter “Stoney” Emshwiller, is the son of experimental filmmaker and sf artist Ed Emshwiller and sf writer Carol Emshwiller.

When he was 18 years old, his father Ed shot footage of Peter interviewing his future self.

I sat in a well-lit chair in a completely black studio and, like some teenaged Johnny Carson, chatted with an invisible older me. During this one-way conversation, I asked my older self tons of questions about my future – from career to family to art to friendships to sex. Then I recorded many different reactions to each possible answer, ranging from polite nods, to joy, sadness, annoyance, surprise, and outright horror….

My filmmaker father, Ed Emshwiller, ran the camera for me and covered the first half of this interview in various ways – with close ups, wide shots, “two shots” (but with one person), over-the-shoulder foreground shots (with no one in the background), etc. And for 38 years, I waited to edit in my older self’s responses.

He writes, “A recent health scare (happily a false alarm) made me realize I ain’t gonna live forever, and that it’s time to finish this project. So I’m finally going to (gulp) face my younger self and record the other half of the conversation.”

The result is “Later That Same Life,” and he’s looking for crowdsourced funding to put it all together. Toward that end, he’s released a few minutes of highlights. The Emshwillers’ “conversation” is by turns combative, sweet and funny. Be warned that there’s some R-rated language here; on the other hand, those are some of the funniest parts:

At one point, the 56-year-old Emshwiller tells the teenager, “I’m old; I’m fat, and in your mind I’m a failure.” On the other hand, the question “Are you exceedingly rich?” elicits laughter from them both.

Asked whether he marries, the older Emshwiller begins to rhapsodize about his wife. Then, when he realizes whom he’s “talking” to, he turns stern: “Oh my God, she’s 12 years old now. Stay away from her.”

The most affecting part comes when the younger Emshwiller asks, “What’s happened to the family?” The elder version replies, “I don’t know what I should tell you.” After a long pause, he says quietly, “You should spend as much time as you can with them. Spend more time with Dad.” The teenage version stops, wipes his eyes and asks for the camera to be stopped.

On his Rockethub page, Emshwiller writes of some of the questions tackled in the film: “What is success? What is failure? Who decides how to judge a life? … And, while (we’re) chatting, what’s the deal with that beard, dude?”

Valid questions, each one.

 

________________
10 of Ed Emshwiller’s 23 films

________________
Thanatopsis (1962)
‘An expression of internal anguish. The confrontation of a man and his torment. Juxtaposed against his external composure are images of a woman and lights in distortion, with tension heightened by the sounds of power saws and a heartbeat.’ — film-makers coop

the entirety

 

__________
Totem (1963)
‘Ed Emshwiller described this collaboration with composer-choreographer Alwin Nikolais: “A filmic interpretation of a modern dance ballet by Alwin Nikolais. Earth, fire, water and primordial mysteries in a cine-dance.”‘ — IMDb

Watch the film here

 

____________
Scrambles (1964)
‘This biker documentary was selected for screening at the 1964 Flaherty Film Seminar. Emshwiller described it as “a roaring picture of motorcyclists in action. Modern Lancelots and their ladies-in-waiting go wide open for a day at the races. An impressionistic film of guys and gals who get their kicks in direct physical action.”’ — letterboxd

 

______________
George Dumpson’s Place (1965)
‘A poetic portrait of an outsider artist who, in Emshwiller’s words, “created a small universe with what he found and could carry on his homemade wagon.”‘ –– fmc

the entirety

 

______________
Relativity (1966)
‘A man wonders, measures, views relationships, people, places, things, time, himself. A sensual journey through a series of subjective reflections. “[A] beautifully photographed color montage of shots; insect, animal, man and galaxy; a sobering antidote to the orgy of subjectivism going on elsewhere.” — Vincent Canby, The New York Times. “The artist’s search for the meaning of his own existence is never-ending and takes many forms. Ed Emshwiller’s remarkable epic, RELATIVITY, continues this exploration with extraordinary frankness and rare technical skill. The sequence which symbolically portrays a woman at the moment of sexual climax is one of the most beautiful in the literature of film.” — Willard Van Dyke. “RELATIVITY is a marvelously sensual film … it is, I have no doubt, a masterpiece.”‘ — Richard Whitehall

Excerpt

 

__________
Carol (1970)
‘Off and on, Carol and I spent a few days in the woods filming. We got some images of her, some of trees, leaves, twigs and logs. These I combined with sounds from a thumb piano, which were sometimes modified electronically. The results: what seems to me to be a gentle, lyrical film.’ — EE

the entirety

 

_____________
Film With Three Dancers (1971)
‘In this spin-off from his original plan for Relativity (1966), Emshwiller continued with his desire to penetrate “space in a kind of flying camera, a dream of flying, a kind of sensual, sexual imagery where you were constantly going into an unknown space.” A trio of dancers (Carolyn Carlson, Emery Hermans, Bob Beswick) appear “first in leotards, then in bluejeans, then naked, as they “pass through rituals of movement.”’ — letterboxd

the entirety

 

______________
Scape Mates (1972)
‘In one of his first experiments in video, Emshwiller creates an electronic landscape of both abstract and figurative elements, where colorized dancers are chroma-keyed into a mutable, computer-animated environment. Working with the “Scan-i-mate,” an early analog video synthesizer, Emshwiller choreographs an architectural, illusory video space, in which frames proliferate within frames, disembodied heads and hands move within a collage of animated forms, and the dancers and their environment are subjected to constant transformations through image processing. With its witty interplay of the “real” and the “unreal” in an electronically rendered videospace, and the skillful manipulation and articulation of a sculptural illusion of three-dimensionality, Scape-mates introduced a new vocabulary of video image-making.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix

Excerpt

Watch the entirety here

 

______________
Sunstone (1979)
‘Sunstone is a landmark tape. Symbolic and poetic, it is a pivotal work in the development of an electronic language to articulate three-dimensional space. The opening image is an iconic face, which appears to be electronically “carved” from stone. A mystical third eye, brilliantly crafted from a digital palette, radiates with vibrant transformations of color and texture. Sculpting electronically, Emshwiller then transforms perspectival representation: the archetypal “sunstone” is revealed to be one facet of an open, revolving cube, each side of which holds a simultaneously visible, moving video image. Created with what was then complex technology over an eight-month period, this emblematic spinning cube metaphorically describes a three-dimensional, temporal space, both hyperreal and simulated. Emshwiller’s humanistic approach to technology ushered in the 1980s with a new electronic vocabulary for conceptualizing and visualizing images in space and time. Reflecting an image-saturated world, Sunstone marked a new stage in electronic art.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix

the entirety

 

_______________
Skin Matrix (1984)
‘Emshwiller writes that the visually complex and densely textured Skin Matrix is a “video tapestry… a layering of different manifestations of energy: electronic (light, video, computer), inorganic (dunes, rocks, mud), organic (wood, plants), human (skin, hair), individual (faces, eyes), imagination (sculpture, robot).” His intricate electronic transformations of tactile surfaces, landscapes and human faces signify a metaphysical process that simultaneously masks and reveals; he achieves an uncanny spatial illusion of depth through layering and movement. Creating sophisticated image patterns and structures with the simple Bally Arcade computer (used for playing video games), Emshwiller weaves together the lush textures and kinetic energy of the organic and the technological.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Ian, Hi, Ian! Nice to see you. Oh, man, you could’ve made a career out of that practice apparently. Did you document your artworks? Is that a dumb question? Big congratulations on your marriage! Are you doing (or have you been doing) a honeymoon type of thing? Love back from your country’s sibling in arms (kind of) France! ** Scunnard, Glad you liked it. My fave lit. blogs were in my mid-year list in the internet section if you want to turn back some pages. Everyone, Scunnard has a question for you: ‘What are the literary blogs you pay attention to these days? I’m out of date… what ever happened to htmlgiant and the ilk?’ ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, sir. Everyone, David’s FaBlog draws some kind of correlation between Trump’s Mt. Rushmore thing and Wes Anderson’s ‘Rushmore’, so that could be interesting. Here. ** KK, Hey, Kyle! Best of luck with the potential job. Yeah, right? About ‘Death Sentence’. Messed me up in a positive way forever. And Butor is awesome. Have you read ‘Mobile’? Nice reading you’ve got going on there. No, I don’t know Reza Negarestani, but now I will start to know thanks to you. Thanks! The odd balls in writing workshops are the ones most likely to succeed. I mean in the real sense. Cool, great that Bud Smith is being of help. New novel? No, it doesn’t come out until late next year, so I doubt I’ll hear much of anything from my editor until later this year at the earliest. But if there’s news, I’ll share it. Thanks for asking, man. I hope your week is starting majestically. ** Bill, Thanks, pal. Yeah, G&G being big carnivores does not surprise me for some reason. Did you see that recent, self-doctored video of them dancing. Pretty funny. I second the VanDerBeek recommendation. I did a Day about him if that’s helpful at all. ‘Rey’: I’ll see if I can find it. I’ve yet to see a film that was Maddinesque that didn’t suffer greatly by comparison. See: ‘The Wild Boys’. ** h (now j), Hi. Ha ha, I love that that post made you hungry! But I hope it didn’t end with you puking, obviously. Yeah, it’s almost shocking how nice and mild the summer has been so far. Enjoying every precious hour of that. Have an an excellent week’s start. ** _Black_Acrylic, I agree that’s a particularly good Creed. Man, I hope I’m wrong in thinking the pubs reopening is a guaranteed invitation to a massive spike. i just saw that there’s that new Helena Hauff set/album and was about to get it. Cool. Bon Monday! ** Steve Erickson, Hi. No, I didn’t know that. What a terrible film. I don’t if it being a ‘thing’ is good or not. Everybody in the US seemed to be going nuts about all the fireworks. Strange. No, Bastille Day means nothing to me. Closed stores. Maybe I’ll go watch the fireworks. There’s an aerial parade of extremely loud jets in the morning over the Champs Elysee, and I’m two blocks from it, so I’ll get blasted and rumbled, which could be nice. Given how well everything goes here so far and virtually everyone’s dutiful enacting of the social rules, I’m not spooked by moviegoing, although I haven’t been yet. Timely named new song there. I’ll hit it. Everyone, Mr. Erickson’s new song is … Well, I let him tell you about it. Steve: ‘I wrote a song today, “East Village Pyro,” whose title comes from that, but this is the first time I’ve tried polyrhythms. I looped a sample of congas through the whole song, and sometimes layered two of them slightly out of time. It started off as a bunch of noise, and then I wrote a chord progression. Here’s the link.’ ** Okay. I’m going to venture a wild guess that many of you do not know the films of Ed Emshwiller. And I’m going to hope that you take a little time to find out about him and films today, maybe even watch them a little via the embeds or at least pen his work in for future viewing by you. That’s the blog’s goal for this Monday. See you tomorrow.

______________
Millie Brown Vomits (2018)
‘Millie Brown’s artistic expression has gotten many audiences to question if it is really a form of art. An example of this would be on April 8th of 2011, where Millie Brown performed a piece within a company called SHOWstudio where she first showcased her art through a live studio video. The video is around five minutes long and contains Millie Brown drinking a series of 8 different artificially colored milks (ranging from different shades of colors such as yellow, purple, green and blue) and purposely throwing it up on a canvas. In the background of her performance are opera singers Patricia Hammond and Zita Syme singing a symphonic and soothing piece.’

 

_________________
Jakub Julian Ziolkowski Sick of Love (2018)
‘Polish artist Jakub Julian Ziolkowski’s series Sick of Love sees the artist turning to ceramics in a bid to explore vases and vomit. Ziolkowski’s vases provide a “metaphoric receptacles for a cathartic purge” after the excesses of infatuation. Each is decorated with symbols of that physical anguish that accompanies failed relationships, evoking shamanistic and visceral themes.’

 

_________________
Kristofer Paetau Art Forum Accident (2005)
‘I started to feel really bad at the opening of the Art Forum 2005 Art Fair in Berlin. And suddenly I couldn’t help myself, I had to vomit.’

 

_________________
Johannes Kahrs Untitled (‘Nauseous Girl 1’) (2007)
‘The paintings of Johannes Kahrs are always based on photographs or film stills. For years already he has been collecting images from magazines, newspapers or films, and he himself sometimes also picks up a camera.’

 

_________________
Jake & Dinos Chapman Like a dog returns to its vomit (2005)
‘With characteristic self-assurance and thoroughly post-modern irony, Jake and Dinos Chapman get their retaliation in first. ‘Like a Dog Returns to its Vomit’ appropriates a hostile, dismissive cliché, in the tradition of previous collections, ‘Insult to Injury’ and ‘The Rape of Creativity’. The indignant will find more to outrage their delicate sensibilities here. Even the arrangement of the etchings is designed to infuriate; stand back from the walls of the White Cube and one set suggests a dog defecating, the other a dog vomiting (or doing as the title of the show indicates).’

 

_______________
OKEH x Mighty Jaxx Vomit Kid FastFood (2017)
‘In a red, yellow and white theme, Vomit Kid (Fast Food Red) reminds us of a familiar fast-food restaurant mascot. He is painted vanilla-milkshake-white with clown-like nose and lips, and chili-red hair to complete the look. Turn this bad boy around and you’ll find a smiley face imprinted on the back of his red t-shirt, reminding us of the happy mealtimes we had as kids at fast-food restaurants.’

 

_______________
Arthur Simms Portrait of a Politician Vomiting (1992)
Rope, Paper, Wire, Charcoal, Pastel, Pen, Glue, Plastic, Metal, Glassine, Felt, Scre 1992ws, Wood, Burlap, Paint, Lucy Fradkin Drawing, 53 ½ x 55 x 22″

 

_______________
assume vivid astro focus always vomit after formalities (2016)
‘A “uniform” performance that will dress viewers up to other performances on the same night. It is a sort of game with the initials of our pseudonym (a.v.a.f) – a process in our work that is very dada like – by following an inspiration idea by Tristan Tzara: collect different local newspapers from the week of our performance will be happening; then collect words from these newspapers with the a.v.a.f. initials; separate the words in different buckets (two buckets for A words, one for V words and one for F words). These avaf words will be assigned to each visitor and written on aprons given out to them. The audience will be wearing the avaf aprons the whole night long together with black oval masks.’

 

_______________
Gilbert & George VOMIT (2014)
‘They’ve eaten at Mangal, a Turkish restaurant in Dalston, every evening for years on end. “We’re very loyal”, says George. They never look at the menu. “We order the same thing night after night until we’re nearly vomiting, and then we change.”’

 

________________
Peregrine Honig Pukers (2010)
‘The mixed media pieces depict vomiting individuals, their colorful ejections symbolizing the release of excesses acquired in a culture of consumption. Honig admits that she sometimes felt ill when making these works, and we can see in the spirited and sometimes chaotic pieces the emotional and physical force of the artist.’

 

________________
John Knuth Various (2013 – 2015)
‘An artist has created a disgusting collection of work by making more than 50,000 flies vomit on his canvases. The artwork is made by encouraging flies to throw-up sugar, water and watercolour paint. Artist John Knuth, 35, says he is taking advantage of flies’ digestive system to create the paintings – the largest of which measure up to 6ft tall and 4ft wide. Mr Knuth takes advantage of the fact flies cannot chew. Instead, before it can eat, the insect must first regurgitate a mixture of saliva and partly-digested material onto what it is about to consume. This liquidises the food, allowing the fly to suck it up, and leaving ‘flyspeck’ – a small splash of fly vomit. Mr Knuth’s method is to mix sugared water with watercolours to ensure the flies regurgitate sugary paint onto his canvasses.’

 

________________
Daniel Joseph Martinez We Are Dogs in Love with our Own Vomit (2006)
Animatronic sculpture, variable dimensions.

 

________________
Jon Pylypchuk You Live in a Pile of Vomit (2003)
sand paper, fabric, paint, glitter, fur, and pencil, on wove paper. approx. 10 x 8 1/2 in. (25.4 x 21.6 cm)

 

________________
Nathaniel Mellors The Vomiter (Ourhouse) (2010)
‘An animatronic head hooked up to an alimentary system of tubes and vomiting some nameless spume into a bucket. It never stops throwing up, as if permanently sick with itself.’

 

_________________
Unknown Taino Manatee Bone Vomit Sticks (1000 to 1500 CE)
‘Taino spirituality, which focused on the spirit of the ancestors and the god of cassava, their primary crop, was mediated by a class of priests (bohiques), who often engaged in the taking of hallucinogenic drugs to aid in rituals and ceremonies. The Cohoba ritual required this type of special object, designed to induce vomiting to help a shaman purge themselves; this, coupled with fasting, allowed the shamans to have the most pure high from the Cohoba powder. Many of these vomiting sticks were made from the rib bones of West Indian Manatee.’

 

________________
William Hogarth Francis Matthew Schutz in His Bed (c.1755–1760)
‘Extensive analysis undertaken when the painting was acquired by Norwich Castle in 1990 revealed two sets of retouches, one dating from the first half of the nineteenth century and the other from the early twentieth century, with significant overpainting of the central area carried out around the mid-nineteenth century. Once the painting was cleaned and the overpainting removed, an astonishing detail was revealed, which transformed the whole meaning of the painting: Schutz was in fact depicted in the less dignified act of vomiting into a chamber pot, aching head resting on his hand. Moreover, a nineteenth-century label on the reverse of the painting tells us that this is no ordinary sickbed portrait: Schutz’s wife Susan, exasperated with her husband’s addiction ‘to the vice of intemperance’ and ‘under the hope of reforming him’, had commissioned Hogarth to paint him while suffering the after-effects of his debauchery.’

 

_______________
Mike Parr Displacement Activities Part III vi The Emetics (Primary Vomit): I am Sick of Art [Red, Yellow and Blue] Blue (1977)
‘Parr has done more than 240 performances, some of which parodied 1970s minimalism, as when he pushed a line of tacks into his leg at precise intervals; others that parodied himself, as with 1977’s The Emetics (Primary Vomit); I Am Sick of Art [Red, Yellow and Blue], when Parr made himself vomit in primary colours. “I was exploring limit states,” he says. “I wanted to throw out all the crap and get back to the most basic impulses behind self-expression, and induce those sensations in the audience.”‘

 

_________________
Alejandro Almanza Pereda Horror Vacui (2017)
‘Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s Horror Vacui (2010–17) series appropriates existing Romantic-style landscape and genre paintings sourced by the artist from within Istanbul. In the series, each painting is hung on the wall, with a lump of concrete stuck onto it, partially obscuring the image, as though part of a wall is hanging on the painting and not vice versa. Liquid concrete is then splattered on the painting and surrounding wall.’

 

_________________
‘Emetophilia is a paraphilia in which an individual is sexually aroused by puking or observing others vomit. This is commonly referred to as a vomit fetish or puke fetish. Some emetophiles put their perversion of choice into practice by actually doing the technicolour yawn, often on a sexual partner.

‘Vomiting as a sex act is sometimes called a Roman shower, after the commonly held but mistaken belief that regurgitating food was an integral part of Roman feasts. In this urban myth ancient Romans are alleged to have thrown up after binge eating so that they could return to their feasts to eat more!

‘Some emetophiles find the act of chundering arousing; for them, the sequence of “spasm, ejaculation, relief” in retching is erotically charged. Other emetophiles are aroused by seeing, hearing, and/or smelling others heaving up their guts.

‘Some puke fetish enthusiasts desire a partner who will barf on them, while others wish to induce hurling in a partner, or even to force them to throw up. Wanting to be vomited on may be related to a desire to be dominated, while wanting to make someone else puke may stem from a desire to dominate the partner and it can be seen as a form of erotic humiliation. Emetophiles may have any combination of these desires at any time.’

 

_________________
Cory Arcangel Vomit / Lakes (2015)
1920×1080 H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 looped digital file (from 11 lossless TIF masters), media player, 70” flatscreen, armature, various cables

 

_________________
Stuart Pearson Wright Various (2017-18)
‘Brian Sewell described Wright’s paintings as “images of such eccentricity and even madness that they fit perfectly the English tradition of the odd man out: the Blake, Spencer, Cecil Collins line, and the largest of them should at once have been bought by the Tate”. The Evening Standard called him “A Hogarth for our Times”.’

Halfboy Nauseous (2017)

 

Halfboy Vomiting in Debenhams (2108)

 

_________________
Lisa Holzer I come in you (2018)
‘Food has to do with body, and desire, and destruction, and painting as well. What do I tell, the pictures me? Are they weak enough? Vulgar? I have difficulties with/at parties. I have difficulties with a certain way of happiness or lightness. What is the common ground thing? What do parties have to do with regression? It still seems wrong to me to work at parties. As teenager I cried a lot at parties. Emily Sundblad said: “But I think also people drink too much to really cause a revolution. They get too drunk, and they cannot do anything.”’

 

_________________
Martin Creed Sick Film (2006)
‘Sick Film allows us to see the physical differences between men and women vomiting, but the process of the function is the same for each individual. Individuality is not lost and equality is gained. This equality may influence the spectators’ reactions as they connect the films to their intersubjective muscular memories and, perhaps awkwardly, find themselves in a public audience of individuals observing the films.’

 

_________________
Beth Cavener In Bocca al Lupo (2012)
Stoneware, Mixed Media

 

_______________
Gorillaz Sick Vomit Sticker (2016)
Perfect for phones, laptops, computers, or whatever needs a dose of originality.

 

______________
Barbora Kleinhamplová Sickness Report (2018)
‘The whole ship trembles in nausea and discomfort. Stillness can hardly be distinguished from vertigo and acceleration boosts motion sickness of both the crew and the very deck carrying the tortured bodies and minds. For those in pain, it doesn’t sound like a solution to just wait for the boat to fall apart and then start building a better one from scratch. It might take too much time. It might never even happen. Time might bring irreversible damages. The ocean might not be very accommodating. Still, they are the ones on board, while others are drowning. More and more prescriptions of diverse medications clearly aren’t capable of bringing structural change. The symptoms are reoccurring, copy-pasted, spread out on most of the ships sailing turbulent seas. Drowsiness, dizziness, discomfort, restiveness, repetitive yawning, malaise, nausea, pallor, sweating, headaches, fatigue, chest pains or tightness, palpitations, insomnia, apathy. Reducing symptoms has proven easier than searching for causes.’

 

______________
Elijah Burgher Liam vomiting ectoplasm (2011)
‘apart from the fact that it’s comforting to see that other people see ghosts and other unnamed 4th world entities (!!), our new motto: artloversnewyork short on funds, but never short on paranormal activity . . . !! it’s interesting to note his recent shift from magic realism (!!) to magic diagramming (!!) – completely in sync with a SATURN BLACK WATER DRAGON kick-ass start-off week. the dragon, a mythical beast – exists in the mind – remember ? plus it’s cool to see his literature background . . . where dragon myths loom large and colorful.’

 

______________
Armağan Kilci External | Throwing Up Series (20100
Acrylic on Colour Photograph 57×80 cm

 

______________
Bhakti Baxter Imploded Ball Barf (2011)
‘My father was a professional soccer player and later became a professional soccer coach. He traveled to Italy in 1990 as a photographer and literary journalist for a sports magazine. The photos were really good. I remember some shots he captured of Diego Maradona hitting on a super model and they were priceless. Soccer is ever present in the home of Argentinians. Screaming!!! Wild guttural screaming. Simultaneous emotional outbursts erupting from my dad and his friends. But let me be clear, when I made these I was not thinking about fútbol in any way. It was about tearing the old ball open, flipping it inside out (implosion), filling it with concrete, paint, resin, and letting it all meld together. I was thinking of the weight of stars. The scene in the movie Aliens where the eggs start to hatch.’

 

______________
Pretty Puke Various (2020)
‘Pretty Puke’s pictures are flesh caught in flashlight, strange bodily contortions and lewd acts frozen in the shocking brightness emitted with each shutter release – It’s LA at its seediest. But it’s in another space that the pictures have found their following. These images of debauchery have collided with the digital realm, and have been fast absorbed into internet culture. Pretty Puke has gained the attention of thousands of internet users, engrossed in what they see on the glow of their screens.’

 

______________
Brian Zimmerman Sketch for neon (2019)
Sculpy, plastic, paint 8″ x 2.5″ x 5.5″ tall

 

______________
Abel Azcona Utero (2014)
‘In the beginning of the piece, Azcona entered, nude, and began struggling with the coils of a thirty-foot length of coarse rope tied to an overhead beam. After writhing, biting, sucking and twisting with fury and abandon, Azcona tied the rope around his neck and ran through the crowd, to be jerked backwards with a horrible gargling cry, like a mad dog at the end of a short chain. There are many contexts in which young people, particularly young men, express themselves through personal endangerment: from suicide bombing to skateboarding. Where do you draw the line? Unlike many endurance actions, in which the level of danger builds slowly, allowing plenty of time for intervention, the potential of this particular action to turn suddenly, unintendedly fatal was too great. This time, he survived. After three harrowing runs, members of the crowd, feeling as I did, blocked his way, wrestling him to the ground and untying him, allowing him to crawl to a washtub of dirty water in the main gallery, where his wallowing, vomiting, and slithering came as a relief.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Scunnard, Hi, Jared. Oh, good! ** h (now j), Hi. Yes, Tofu Mantra was a fave of mine. We’re having unseasonably cool, lovely weather here for as long as that lasts, and I’m enjoying it as much as I can before the inevitable heatwaves start striking. Crossroads in a great festival. The SF Cinematheque is amazing, and its maestro Steve Polta is a total hero. Stay undercover from your sun. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, yes! ** John Christopher, Hi, John! I’m doing pretty okay, and how about you? Oh, great, the site/magazine is up! I’ll go visit and start regular visits as soon as I exit this p.s. Congrats! Everyone, John Christopher has a hot tip for us who are interested in being inspired and informed. John: ‘Remember I mentioned my class had a magazine coming out w/ Morrisroe stuff (& many other cool stuff) well it’s finally up & breathing! arcmagazine.org will be updated every Friday. I think the Morrisroe stuff will be up next week but not totally sure.’ Highly recommended that you use that link and bookmark the page for your ongoing pleasure. The name June Caldwell doesn’t ring an immediate bell, but I’ll start my acquaintanceship with the story you’re publishing. Great! You have a very fine weekend! ** _Black_Acrylic, Ha. Glad you liked it. Hope you like seeing it all come back up this weekend. Have an excellent coupla. ** Misanthrope, I think the baker still makes those baby cakes, and I think the baker is based in London, if I’m remembering right, so, next time you head over there, if US citizens are ever allowed to cross the Atlantic again, you can find out. I was always quite logical even as a little kid. Saved my mental health a bunch of times. July 4th is almost as overrated as New Year’s Eve. Well, enjoy the cook-out should that happen. I’ll be spending just another weekend over here. Our ‘July 4th’ is in a week or two. ** Bill, The chicken chair was definitely the source of much discomfit bordering on nightmares. Not sure if/how Bastille Day will be configured. I live near Concorde, and they’re building the big viewing stands there for the President and dignitaries to watch the big parade, so that seems normal. Otherwise, I think other than closed stores, etc., the only other big thing is the fireworks over the Eiffel Tower, and I’m pretty that’ll happen. ** chris dankland, Hi, Chris! Yeah, Ed Atkins’s stuff is pretty cool. Your aliens/food thought would make an extremely interesting movie. Maybe a better movie than a novel for some reason. Hm. A bit too plot and action oriented for Zac and me to tackle, otherwise … Not so evil, really, or, well, maybe evil. You tell me. And have an ultra-safe but fun-filled 4th of some sort, pal. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Will do. Everyone, Mr. Erickson’s thoughts have weighed in on Ulrich Köhler’s film ‘Beginnings’, which is ‘ now available to stream in the US.’ I’ll check the Cinematheque’s site. I believe it reopens for actual, in-person film screenings in a week or something, gloriously. I’m not surprised that Damon Packard’s brain has gone that ridiculous route whatsoever. ** Corey Heiferman, Hey, Corey. Glad you liked all the stuff, natch. I … think those LACMA cakes were fund raising, auctioned off things? Hope you get to do that interview. Yeah, what a nice to be queried about. And of course the bear meets bear coincidence hits the spot with a sparkle. This weekend? Today there’s a tentative plan to look at art with Gisele, Zac, and our friend the film director Lucile Hadžihalilović, but I’m not sure if that’s happening. Tonight a powwow at Hard Rock Cafe with a Paris gallerist who wants to show my GIF work. The ICA in London is doing some kid of launch event about ‘Zac’s Drug Binge’, so I’ll coordinate with them. Uh, emails, enjoying the strangely wonderful cool temperature, This and that. You? ** Okay. Here’s the other half of the ‘Food’ post for you all to spend a portion of the next two days with. Strike your fancy, did it? See you on Monday.