‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s installations could be described as oneiric mises en scène. Mise en scène is the process of arranging actors and scenery on a stage or film set. Gonzalez-Foerster combines being a filmmaker with being an installation artist and the intersection of the two media in her work is of interest because in installation art the mise en scène becomes the work of art.
‘Those who enter a mise en scène viewing it as a work of art enter an environment that is profoundly illusory because the illusion does not take place within the evidently immaterial confines of a two-dimensional surface but in a real, physical environment. One remembers the Surrealists deconstruction of photography. Here was a medium thatwas supposed to be a direct imprint of the real: the camera ‘could not lie’. But Surrealist photography showed that the photograph could be the stage for a profound dislocation of our habituated ways of seeing.
Something similar is happening in the work of Gonzalez-Foerster. We enter rooms that are real enough, and experience objects that are real enough such as ladders and artificial grass, but the overall experience is not real but hyperreal. Typically her work will use devices such as painting the walls of a gallery a particular colour to create the effect of a ‘colour field’ with its concomitant psychological effects; using physical materials on the floor such as sand or plastic grass; and using imagery such as photographs or video to introduce a nonlinear narrative dimension into the oneiric mise en scène. Gonzalez-Foerster speaks of these rooms in terms of ‘narrative’ noting that “colour is an entry into a narrative; the colour rooms and the clues they usually contain give a certain number of elements to which the viewer adds what she/he needs to comprehend the work, link those various existing elements. It is not quite like reading, although reading is a possible means of completion; rather it is a way to generate a narrative, therefore emphasizing the importance of interpretation.”
‘But to be more precise, we are not speaking about a linear narrative. We are describing something much more oblique and poetic. It appears that one of the purposes of Gonzalez-Foerster’s installations is to place the viewer in a situation in which she or he has to exercise his or her imagination. Now, of course, we always exercise our imagination when looking at art. But Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms are more demanding because the data is not in one place as is the case in a painting or integral sculpture. And this splitting or fragmenting of the experience into parts differs from immersive experiences such as the instances by Janssens and Eliasson that have been referred to in this text. When we walk into Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms we walk into a ‘picture’ as is the case in an Eliasson installation and we experience immersive-like sensory effects, such as the colour field of painted walls and the feel of sand or Astroturf under foot. But her work does not end at perceptual experience. Instead there is a demand that we exercise our imaginative-cognitive facilities.
The fact that we have to use our imagination, in particular, is significant because in the philosophy of David Hume (1711-1776) imagination stands in between ideas (thoughts) and impressions (sensations and feelings). It is Hume’s interconnection between bodily-sensory experience and ideas which is especially interesting for a consideration of installation art. In the context of Gonzalez-Foerster’s installations what is significant about such philosophical meditations is that sensation, perception and cognition are intertwined, and I think that Gonzalez-Foerster’s ability to integrate perceptually immersive experience with a demand on the viewer’s cognitive-imaginative faculties is a particularly significant feature of her installations.
‘Another facet of Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms is the way in which they can evoke an absent self that is entirely fictive. In that sense the absent self is an empty signifier that the viewer can fill. When the viewer enters one of Gonzalez-Foerster’s rooms she or he becomes akin to an actor on stage who can assume the identity of absent inhabitant. Or one could imagine a novel in which the author left a blank space for the reader to inhabit. One thinks here, also, of the strangeness of Paul Pfeiffer’s videos of sporting events in which he erases principle props and actors. Placed in such oneiric circumstances we reflect upon our identity as a species of construct woven out of a web of influences most of which have become distant memories.’ — Graham Coulter-Smith
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Further
Dominique Gonzales-Foerster Website
DG-F @ 303 Gallery
DG-F @ Corvi-Mora Gallery
DG-F @ Esther Schipper Gallery
‘This was a red jungle.’
‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s grand design’
‘DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER: public-personal space’
‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, chronotopes & dioramas’
‘Soy una escritora frustrada’
‘Clothes as Personal History’
‘interior gulf stream: Housing and studio for Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’
Video: ‘Soleil vert par Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’
‘DOMINIQUE GONZALEZFOERSTER’S TOP 5 PERFORMANCES OF ALL TIME’
‘archive and quotation in the work of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’
‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is taking the town by storm’
‘Subjective Histories of Sculpture III: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’
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Extras
DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER INTERVIEW EXTRACT
Gonzalez-Foerster installation at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster / Atomic Park (2003)
Antonioni Zone 2 par Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster – Blow up
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Interview
from Flash Art
Hans Ulrich Obrist: In a previous conversation, we spoke about moving into fields different from contemporary art. You mentioned Friedrich Kiesler. Let’s start from here.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: I think one reason why Kiesler is less famous than other artists is because he never wanted to be only a gallery artist. He was doing architectural work and all sorts of things, such as windows for big department stores or gallery spaces. The methods he developed have indirectly influenced many artists who don’t even recognize it. Certain artists — such as Kiesler or Isamu Noguchi when making lamps and furniture — wanted to expand the field of experiences. But art history makes it difficult for artists to escape a linear way of developing a career, and usually these artists are rediscovered much later. The art world is very conservative when it comes to behavior.
HUO: You have implemented a lot of these expanded projects: a park has happened in
Kassel at Documenta 11, another park in Grenoble, and a house in Japan.
DGF: I always look for experimental processes. I like the fact that at the beginning I don’t know how to do things and then slowly I start learning. Often exhibitions don’t give me this learning possibility anymore. With the house in Japan, I was constantly confronted with people; they were explaining to me, say, possible grids and at each meeting I was learning something new. I like meeting with people who are very specialized in their field. I don’t find these learning moments in art enough.
HUO: I always felt that routine is the enemy of exhibitions.
DGF: Yes. There is also something very slow in the art world. People build a stage for a concert in one day; they do more in one day than they do in a gallery space in a year in terms of activity. Of course each system has it’s timing, but once you have been dealing with other speeds it is really hard to go back to this slowness.
HUO: When I first came to France I was asked if I wanted a ‘plan d’evasion’! It was a card for buying tickets, like national flights’ tickets. There’s also a book by Laborit, Éloge de la fuite…
DGF: There is something very human in ‘escaping.’ What drives transformation is the fact that at a certain point an environment is not stimulating to you anymore. You feel you need a change; it’s a human drive to escape the too slow or too repetitive or too deadend situations.
HUO: Recently somebody told me about the great landscape architect Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster! They didn’t know that you had an artistic background. There are other people who see your films at film festivals and talk about this young filmmaker. Suddenly you are gathering a multitude of identities.
DGF: I don’t want the films to be seen as artist’s films or the garden to be seen as an artist’s garden. I think it is important for artists to develop their role as producers or directors, which means providing a public situation for an audience — an exhibition, a theater piece or a film serve this purpose too. And for that you get a fee.
HUO: There’s a recurrent question in my interviews… what is your unrealized project?
DGF: The thing I have been dreaming of for some years is a swimming pool on the beach. This is why I went to Brazil; I wanted to make it there. It would be a kind of ‘tropical university’: a place, a swimming pool, with some umbrellas to create shades. You sit in the water on the beach and discuss your ideas and projects! It has never been realized until now.
HUO: What is your next project?
DGF: Writing a science fiction novel together with Philippe Parreno, keep thinking about new sorts of public spaces and playgrounds as I did for the current São Paulo Biennale, working on an ‘opera/exhibition’ with lots of artists and friends for the Manchester International Festival, preparing a proposal for Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, and of course remaining unpredictable even for myself!
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Balenciaga Flagship Store, Paris
‘Balenciaga’s 60th directly operated store — boasting 40 feet of frontage on the bustling Rue Saint-Honoré — symbolizes how the company has quickly accrued critical mass in retail, which now accounts for more than half of its revenues. (Less than five years ago, it only had three locations.) Balenciaga’s space, formerly a gas station, offered the brand a vast, rectangular space of about 3,200 square feet spread over one level — a rarity in a city full of landmark buildings with higgledy-piggledy layouts. As in all Balenciaga units, creative director Nicolas Ghesquière and the French contemporary artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster collaborated on the interior concept. She calls the Rue Saint-Honoré store a “catalogue” of its key boutiques, each of which has a different color scheme and mood. Pedestrians strolling on Rue Saint-Honoré are surely to be struck by the store’s division into vertical strips — like a theater stage with its various backdrops viewed in cross-section.’ — WWD
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Cinema
Belle comme le jour (2012)
‘The story of Severine before she married Pierre and became ‘Belle de jour’. Staying at the Hotel Regina next to rue de Rivoli, she goes to visit the Louvre and has a deeply disturbing conversation with a complete stranger.’
Noreturn (2009)
‘Noreturn is a short film lasting sixteen minutes featuring a group of school children playing, reading, talking and ultimately sleeping in the cavernous space of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. The film was shot during the last days of the artist’s installation for the Unilever Series commission for the Turbine Hall, entitled TH.2058. The beds, books, sound of rainfall, replica artworks and large LED screen that comprised the installation are all used in the film as props and staging for the children’s activities, which appear to be unsupervised, suggesting that the children may have taken shelter in the apparently abandoned space. The film’s soundtrack was specially devised and recorded by the musician Arto Lindsay, and provides a jarring acoustic accompaniment to the visual action.’
Marquise (2006)
‘Marquise is a film that features Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster‘s contribution for the 27th Sao Paulo Biennial in 2006, her work “Double Terrain de Jeu (Pavillon-Marquise)“. The installation consists of several plywood columns Gonzalez-Foerster added to the open groundfloor of a pavillion built by architect Oscar Niemeyer at the public park Ibirapuera in Sao Paulo. The film documents the work “Double Terrain de Jeu (Pavillon-Marquise)“ and fictionalizes it at the same time. While one sees the narrator, a small boy, walking through the installation space with his parents, he recounts the imaginary story of how these columns appeared to him at one point to be movable. But he cannot prove this im- pression to his parents. The film is edited with slight cross fadings, which may give the viewer the impression that the columns appear to move.’
Parc Central (2005)
‘A collection of 11 short poetic psycho-geographic portraits of cities and spaces from artist Dominique Gonzelez-Foerster. Ranging from the revisiting of a scene of Ming-Liang Tsai’s ‘Vive l’Amour’ through the eyes of its protagonist, to a ticker-tape parade in Buenos Aires, from a reflection on the filmic qualities of Brasilia,to an observation of the observers of the 1999 eclipse in Paris. All soundtracked by a sensitive balance of field-recordings and carefully chosen delicate music.’
Atomic Park (2003)
‘Atomic Park is a place in the White Sands desert (New Mexico), not far away from Trinity Site, where the first atom bomb exploded in 1945. This national park provides an ambivalent landscape, as well suited for a picnic as for ballistic tests. A white desert, like a natural exhibition hall every movement can provoke diverse interpretations. Like a faint echo we hear Marilyn Monroe’s desperate monologue and accusation about man’s violence from The Misfits (1961).’
Bashung(s) (2004)
‘Alain Bashung, géant de la musique pop française, nous a quitté en mars 2009. Le plus primé des artistes pop français était considéré comme le meilleur chanteur depuis la disparition de Serge Gainsbourg. Il était aimé de toutes les générations. Sans compromis, excentrique mais toujours très humain et respectueux, il a mélangé tradition de la chanson française, surréalisme et rock & roll avec une dimension poétique abstraite et érotique. Ce dernier documentaire sur lui révèle son travail de création à travers des scènes de composition en collaboration avec d’autres artistes, de tournage d’images projetées en concert, de répétitions de spectacles, de scènes de concert et d’interviews de ses proches. Alain Bashung lui-même se livre à Pierre Lescure et nous aide à recomposer le puzzle de sa personnalité multiple.’
Central (2001)
‘Gonzalez-Foerster has said that ‘I think I’m obsessed with a world through which one walks in spirit’. In one of her favourite books, Adolfo Bioy Casares’ Morel’s Invention (1940), the narrator – a nameless exile – pitches up on a tropical island inhabited by a group of sophisticates, including Faustine, a woman who instantly captures his heart. Like Casares’ novel, Gonzalez-Foerster’s Central ponders the gap between the viewer and the viewed. A sign, slightly weathered, tells us that we’re at the Star Ferry Terminal, Hong Kong. The camera cuts to a boat, then to the waterfront, then to various solitary souls standing on its edge. It’s all very melancholy.’
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Sculptures & installations
Et la Chambre Orange, 1992
“Colour is an entry into a narrative; the colour rooms and the clues they usually contain give a certain number of elements to which the viewer adds what she/he needs to comprehend the work, link those various existing elements. It is not quite like reading, although reading is a possible means of completion; rather it is a way to generate a narrative, therefore emphasizing the importance of interpretation.”
La bibliothèque clandestine, 2013
A revolving door doubles as a bookshelf holding one of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s libraries, La Bibliothèque clandestine, 2013 (Nabokov, Salinger, Bret Easton Ellis, Lovecraft, Verne, etc.). Through this Hitchcockian portal, viewers enter a remake of a show Philippe Parreno saw in 2002 at New York’s Margarete Roeder Gallery, featuring elegant framed drawings by John Cage and Merce Cunningham.
Ludwig II, 1992
Ludwig costume, Stockman bust, projected image, 2 speakers, 1 projector
Tapis de Lecture, 2007
In Tapis de lecture (Reading Carpet), a large orange carpet is edged with unequal piles of books in five different languages: Hebrew, English, French, German, and Japanese. The diversity of languages suggests a multicultural, tolerant, and non-hierarchal approach, as do the books’ casual arrangement and the participatory nature of the work – visitors may sit on the carpet and read as they like. The very personal selection of books includes masterpieces of literature and science fiction. Postcards from different places the artist has visited are planted at random inside some of the books; they add another, autobiographical, layer of memories and feelings to the work. The reading carpet creates a new liminal space – in between public and domestic, outer world and inner realms, and even conscious and unconscious. It melds space, time, color, and personal sensations, thoughts, and associations.
Dominque Gonzalez-Foerster as Bob Dylan
In 2012, Gonzalez-Foerster began a series of performance works, or apparitions as she calls them, in which she embodies figures such as Bob Dylan, Emily Brontë, and Ludwig II of Bavaria, who together create M.2062, a fragmented opera with no beginning and no end, thus effacing any idea of a constant unit of time and action. These performances, in which the artist lets herself be inhabited by other characters, are sometimes in the form of holographic projections that bring iconic performances to life once again.’
Alienarium 5, 2022
In Alienarium 5, Gonzalez-Foerster imagines possible encounters with extra-terrestrials through speculative, performative and visual fiction. Conceived of specifically for Serpentine, the exhibition will feature almost entirely new work situated both inside and outside the gallery. Approaching from the park, visitors will first come across a statue in remembrance of the coming alien developed together with writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado. Inside the gallery, Alienarium 5 will continue as a 360-degree panorama, an olfactive extra-terrestrial collaboration with Barnabé Fillion (Arpa Studios), an otherworldly holorama expanding the artist’s ongoing series of ‘apparitions’, and a new VR piece that, following on from her critically acclaimed Endodrome presented at the 2019 Venice Biennale, marks the artist’s second VR work produced by VIVE Arts.
Repulse Bay, 1999
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster calls her large installation work Repulse Bay (1999) after the famous beach in Hong Kong. The work, in effect, is a blue-lit room with three beach towels laid out next to one another. You enter the room by climbing down a ladder. Once in, you are immersed in a cool, dark world that looks nothing like the bright and warm stretch of beach in Hong Kong. The natural variety and disorderliness one finds on the beach have been drastically simplified into repetitive, anonymous forms. Only one’s imagination can complete it.
Untitled, 2011Book: Robert Bolano’s ‘Los Detectivos Salvajes’ and sand
Dominique Gonzales-Foerster as Edgar Allan Poe
“I work against theatre, I am completely against theatre, I like the idea of mise-en-scène, I like the idea of the stage, but the idea of theatre …. I see very little theatre. I really have trouble with actors, although now I am starting to understand them a bit better.” -DG-F
Splendide Hotel, 2013
In the exhibition SPLENDIDE HOTEL, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster puts forward a journey that transports the viewer into spaces and times, where the imaginary is mixed with reality and where literature maps out the guidelines to follow for inhabiting this oneiric world, taking the artwork beyond the meaning of its objects.
The Hotel Splendide in Lugano was opened in 1887, with the name already coming into being previously in Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Après le Déluge, published in 1886. Splendide was also the name of the hotel in Évian-les-Bains, where Marcel Proust holidayed with his family. This date coincides with the year the Palacio de Cristal was built in the Retiro Park in order to house the plants and flowers for the General Exhibition on the Philippine Islands.
It is this idea that Gonzalez-Foerster wants to transfer, recreating one sole room in this imaginary hotel. A rug covers the floor of the room and its surroundings, various rocking chairs invite viewers to take a seat and become participants in the work, immersing themselves among some of the many books chosen by the artist for the occasion. José Rizal, Dostoyevsky, Rubén Darío, H. G. Wells and Enrique Vila-Matas are just some of the authors submitted by the French artist for this journey.
Bahia Desorientada, 2005
Pynchon Park, 2016
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Pynchon Park envisions a zoo operated by extra-terrestrials for the observation of human behaviour. Caged by a green net roof and automated gates that allow and prohibit access at random, visitor-specimens are provided with inflatable balls and giant book-carpets for their recreational amusement, whilst lighting in the gallery cycles through dawn and dusk to collapse 24 hours into 24 minutes. To a soundtrack of waves, the audience performs first as an empirically inclined alien, as it peers into the space, before becoming an actor in a human-zoo within the installation’s theatrical arena, in which drifting spotlights evoke both a spectacular celebration and authoritarian surveillance.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster as Marilyn Monroe, 2015
Exotourisme, Don’t pretend We are so Special, 2022
Is a Sensodrome a place to stimulate our somatosensory system – a maison de rendez-vous? – a meeting point? Is it a mutant place contributing to the invention of new technologies of consciousness? What if aliens were in love with us? Would it change our relation to our planet and its lifeforms? An immersive, supernatural and sensory environment.
Moment Dream House, 2004
In 2004, Gonzalez-Foerster designed a house, the Moment Dream House, for Daisuke Miyatsu in Tokyo.
Human Valley, 2011
The press release for “Human Valley,” a yearlong installation and screening space created by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera for the Kunsthalle Zürich’s temporary site, describes the project as consiting of “hybrid presentations of borderline topics” and “sentimental research on stimulating links.” In its current iteration, the first of four planned phases, the project mines the oeuvres of Balzac and the French New Wave—the connection being, of course, the deep debt the latter’s fervently literary auteurs owe the legendary writer.
Like late New Waver Éric Rohmer’s film quartet “Tales of the Four Seasons,” Gonzalez-Foerster and Bera’s project is split into four seasonal chapters. Summer inspired the participating Paris-based artists to outfit three petite rooms as, in order: a cinema’s anteroom featuring wall vitrines filled with Nouvelle Vague film posters; a Godardesque mise-en-scène with bed and bookcases filled with old Penguin paperbacks (Balzac novels and related fare—Barthes, Flaubert, Bret Easton Ellis, Catherine Millet); and finally a screening room itself.
On my first visit to the beguiling space, the bookcases were crammed with the aforementioned titles, many of which were noticeably missing on my second visit, pilfered by museumgoers with itchy fingers. It seemed apt that the books were revered enough to be stolen, given that the inspired start to “Human Valley” itself was a welcome acknowledgment of literary and critical influences on other artistic media, and the most persuasive of the self-styled “social projects” I’ve encountered of late.
Cosmodrome, 2000
Cosmodrome is a “spectacle environnement,” a dark room. A comprehensive environment like a “son-et-lumière”, with music especially composed by Jay-Jay Johanson, an experience of audio and visual sequences, lasting 9 minutes.
Une chambre en ville, 1996
Recently, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster created an installation entitled Une chambre en ville: a silent but on TV, a phone that people can call from outside, a clock radio, a few newspapers of the day piled in a corner. Where both the absence of the owner and the multiplication of the modes of communication reign. The whole with changing lights, alternate colors, kind of bright scenario that makes the room a small movie theater: “My rooms are like pictures but in which we can go in. We are physically surrounded by the image, a as in the cinema, and I have an obsession with a narrative, even with a spatial narration, and I would like to be able to generate sensations as strong as a book or a film.”
T. 1912, 2000
Artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster created a site-specific staged audience experience in the museum’s rotunda, inspired by this historic event and wherein the audience played a role. Gavin Bryars’s The Sinking of the Titanic was at the core of the installation, performed by The Wordless Music Orchestra.
Valise Biographique (Hannah Hoch), 1992
Suitcase, comb, toothbrush, mirror, colour Xeroxes.
euqinimod & costumes, 2014
The show is a sampling of Ms. Gonzalez-Foerster’s self-portrait in textiles, youthful artworks and beloved objects, presented in a way that evokes a stretched-out closet, a store window or — thanks to a velvet-covered pouf ottoman — the more formal precincts of a museum. The scene is set with walls painted pale yellow, violet, blue and pink, and a continuous row of Shaker clothing pegs installed at a height of eight feet that creates a disorienting, outsize wainscoting effect.
Hanging from the pegs are articles from Ms. Gonzalez-Foerster’s wardrobe, childhood garments and grown-up designer clothes, all looking well used but glamorous, from Comme des Garçons, Balenciaga and Maison Martin Margiela. Their flow — which resembles a timeline — includes chairs by Thonet and Arne Jacobsen, childhood photographs of the artist, art by her aunt and archival inkjet prints of mixed-media works on paper from 1981 that were part of her application to art school. Her pieces from this period bespeak an admiration for Matisse, Raoul Dufy and Florine Stettheimer, and have each been reproduced in editions of three.
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!!! The return! Oh, whoa, congrats on the live reconnecting with Placebo. Nothing like that lingering buzz. I’m okay. It’s been quiet like it always is in August here with everybody off on their traditional vacations, but life is filtering back in. Zac gets back from his vacation tonight, and then we’ll set to trying to solve the film problems somehow. No, it’s really post-summer here now, so cool that I had to wear my coat outside yesterday. Happiness. Love turns the clock back, oh, 10 or so hours, finds Anita, and holds out her dream of what a birthday cake could be, G. ** jay, Really? They exist, I mean? I do agree that films’ cleanliness are key to how they work. But you never know. I’m tempted by that candle, although not tempted enough to pay that price. Well, yeah, there are those famous extreme haunted houses where you get waterboarded and stuff, I guess they count. Spiderman fetish amongst slaves is weirdly popular. Great day to you too. ** David Ehrenstein, Glad you think so. Respectfully, re: the Delon thing, you are speculating about an incident involving his bodyguard being found murdered in which Delon’s involvement was merely a rumor via which nefarious imaginings ran rampant, but his involvement was never even investigated, and, at least here in France, no one with knowledge of the facts thinks Delon put a hit on the bodyguard. ** Tyler Ookami, Hi, welcome, good to make your acquaintance. My experience of anime is actually far from comprehensive despite my interest therein, so your recommendations are highly welcome. I will go see what they are after I finish this. Thank you so much! How are you? What do you do or like to do especially, for instance? ** _Black_Acrylic, No, I haven’t seen ‘Challengers’. I remember people being quite high on it. PV unfurls in me today. ** Misanthrope, I don’t know, if I live long enough to have a prune face it might be disconcerting to hear a teenage-ish voice come out of that face, but then again Mick Jagger still sounds essentially like he did when he was young, and no one bats an eye. God, am I so extremely glad I’m not on X. ** Lucas, Hey. ‘Atman’ is another really good Matsumoto film, for instance. There’s this weird combo of having patience while really feeling you need to push yourself that’s kind of the ideal balance, I think. I think you’ve got it. Yes, do report back. All the luck you might need today. Sure, uploading your collages to the blog is totally interesting. I guess the only argument against doing that would be if you want to submit them to other zines or sites or anything? ** Måns BT, Hi, rested Måns. I’d maybe watch ‘Atman’ next. Most of his shorts are really cool. The objectively bad can float my boat. I mean, I’m excited to see ‘San Andreas 2’, for goodness sake. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Godzilla + Kong’ in 4DX to the point of forgiving all the boring, move-the-plot-forward parts. Okay, tentative congrats on the promising and already pretty good gymnasiet situation. ‘Thundercrack!’, sure, I like it a lot. I really like that whole San Francisco gang of filmmakers: Curt McDowell, the Kuchar Brothers, etc. I did a Curt McDowell Day here last year, if you’re interested. It’s here. The week is looking good in no smart part because fall seems to have arrived. Also Zac gets back from vacation tonight, so we can hopefully try to start getting our film out of its hell. I guess your week will be pretty school-based? Any highlights so far? ** Steve, Hi. No, he didn’t order anyone’s murder, David’s just doing his David thing. Everyone, Two new reviews by Mr. Erickson. (1) of Uniform’s AMERICAN STANDARD here, (2) and of Peter De Rome’s wild 1970s porn film THE DESTROYING ANGEL here. ** Malik, Hi, Malik! How great to see you! Awesome about the Gamescenes write up. I love Gamescenes and am a bit of an addict. I can’t wait to read it! Everyone, A short film made using the game Skyrim by the fantastic and multifaceted artist Malik has been written up on the great Gamescenes site. And you can watch the short film there too. Super highly recommended. Go here. Awesome, big congrats to you and especially to them! I like ‘Atman’ especially a lot too. Thanks! A great pleasure as ever to get to talk with you. ** Tosh Berman, Hardcore writing on your new book, I guess/hope? I can’t wait to get back to Japan. I hope this winter. Dying to. ** Harper, Yep, yep, big agreement. I know, the ‘Out 1’ ending, so satisfying. Michael Lonsdale is so great. As well as having pretty much the best resume of any actor ever. He should be so much more lauded and revered than he is. Wow, thank you for the hook up to the photos! I’ve only peeked so far, but they/it look super intriguing. I’ll dig in fully in a bit. Everyone, Harper made an art project when they were 17 about Rimbaud/’Season in Hell’ involving masks and props and things, and there is beaucoup photographic evidence that you can peruse, and of course I most strongly encourage you to do that. By going here. Awesome, thank you kindly, pal. ** Darby, No apologies necessary, of course. Good, good, sounds promising and good. I’ll be really interested to hear how it all unfolds for you. Samir sounds like a total bud. All you really need is one or possibly two really close friends, I think, although more is excellent, of course. Then the acquaintances start filtering in. Me at 19? Um, I self-published a little book of my terrible juvenile poetry. My mother was pressuring me to get a job, and I was considering going to college instead of getting a job. I moved in with my boyfriend of the time whose name was Robert in the city next to mine, which was/is called Monrovia. My musical tastes were evolving from ProgRock into GlamRock. There’s four things. What do I think of you? Well, I think you’re great, fantastic, original, super intelligent, deep, fascinating … all the great things. Oh, Helmet. I haven’t listened to them in ages. I will. They were really good live. You should go to the comedy club for all kinds of reasons including the fact that it’s called Dead Crow. ** ellie, Hey, ellie! Cool, I’m glad you love that film too. Whoa, 77 pages, nice! Exciting! Everyone, the great ellie is making a zine, and if you’re interested in submitting or just finding out more about it, you can do that easily by going here. Do. It looks really exciting, as you will see. Great luck if needed with the move to Chicago and the school-based immediate future. Working on a novel: excellent! I’m still trying to get Zac’s and my new film finished and out into the world and working on the script for our next film. And enjoying summer’s lovely death. Take care! ** nat, I like semi-coherence. I aim for its simulacrum. Beautiful talk about Toshio’s values. The excerpt makes ‘Lonely Heart Killer’ most intriguing. Let me see what I can locate of it. I didn’t know that people were named Nat. I mean just Nat. That’s cool. Interesting decision by your parents. ** Oscar 🌀, All credit to Google translate, sadly, Well, most credit, as I do remember a wee bit of Dutch. Ah, horse hay, nice. Did you know that the world ‘hi’ derives from the word ‘hype’? Makes sense, doesn’t it? And did you know that the name Oscar derives from a mispronunciation by a woman in the 1700s who was missing her front teeth and was trying to name her newborn child Boxcar? I bet you didn’t know that. You should watch ‘House’! It’s so much fun. You’ll be very glad you did, Trust me. I put a gold star next to the title’ Longlegs’. Thank you. Nope, no ‘… TV Glow’ yet, but I’m getting there, I swear to god. ** PL, Oh, cool, about the inspiration meets post aspect. I totally believe you about the growing niceness. No, your read of that slave entry is not disconnected to the feeling it gave me when I plucked it from its nefarious site and hoped its power there would translate to here. Very observant. There are occasionally things on those master/slave sites that are sufficiently shocking that I can’t bring myself to relocate them here where they don’t have the narcotic effect that those sites can generate. So, yeah, I get shocked. I just tend to want to explore why rather than turn away aghast. That’s my weirdness. I hope you’re doing great too! ** Right, Today the blog becomes a galerie again, and in this particular galerie there is a show by the very, very interesting and versatile artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foester with whom I (and Zac and Gisele Vienne) spent two years collaborating on an opera that never ended up being finished, much less produced. All of which is to say that I can verify that she’s also a great person in addition to her art’s virtues. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Yeah, I believe smell cameras exist? I’ll have a look later. Also yeah, that candle is definitely cool, but not for 40 quid. The game it’s attached to is pretty bizarre too, it’s got a pretty insane amount of genital mutilation/dismemberment for a mainstream hit.
Huh, that’s pretty interesting about the Spiderman thing. I suppose there’s a sort of bondage aspect to it? But that’s also probably a morphsuit right, not latex? Anyway, crazy.
I will say, Challengers felt a bit like an emperor’s new clothes type of situation for me, it was just a film with a tonne of random shots of twinkish guys making out and sweating onto the camera. Not that that’s bad or anything, it just wasn’t as much of a revelation to me. Maybe mainstream cinema audiences just long for softcore twink porn… The soundtrack was actually pretty great, now that I think about it, but yeah, overall I was a bit taken aback by quite how good people thought it was.
Oh, also! Last thing, but that Skyrim video by Malik was inspired. I’ve been thinking about it all day.
One last thing, you’re being venerated on the literature boards of 4chan as having written one of the “100 best queer novels of all time”!
Hi!!
Wow, I really like this glimpse into the work of Dominique Gonzalez-Foester. So much to explore. Thank you for sharing!
Agreed – if I could, I’d probably exist in this obsessive post-show buzz at all times. Which, I guess, could be achieved if I had the chance to go to a show, say, once or twice every month. Not too much to ask for, right?
Oh, right, everybody’s out of Paris at this time of year! But at least the weather is getting nicer! It’s much the same here today – pretty cool compared to the previous days/weeks.
Anita’s spoiled by love – as she should be on her birthday. Love aiming for a refreshing 10-minute afternoon nap and waking up an hour later, completely disoriented, Od.
She suggests what JG Ballard might have been like had he been a scultor.
The fog in “Red Desert” was real whereas the one in “Identification of a Woman” was created in the film st
Tim Walz
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/tim-walz-gay-students.html
Regarding Delon: it’s not that he contracted a hit, it’s that he could have. That was the heart of the rumors that stoked the scandal. Delon was his whole lie both desired and feared.
Thank you for this DG-F primer! Never seen any of her work in the flesh but today is full of interesting details. My heart bleeds that you guys’ mooted opera has gone unrealised. Truly, if it ain’t one thing it’s another.
hey. I’ll check ‘atman’ out, I don’t think I have enough energy to watch something longer than 12 minutes anyway. oh, thank you for thinking I have that balance. I try. my first day of class was alright, I’m just totally exhausted now. the teachers seem nice but it seems like I’m going to have to do a way ton more work now, which is like whatever, I guess, I hope I can deal with it. I didn’t really meet anyone new besides this one girl: she’s nice to me, I think, we’re probably already friends but I’m really bad at telling. we don’t even have any classes together unfortunately but we get home on the same route and there’s breaks and stuff. there’s a lot more people from my old school than I expected and tbh most people seem like kind of judgy, but it’s not as bad: there’s this kind of silly queer cafe thing on mondays after class, I think I’ll go next week and maybe try to meet more hopefully like-minded people or at least people who won’t be as judgy and normative. my only real problem is with p.e — all the usual changing room stuff, they tried to be comprising and gave me a private room for myself, but now thinking about it just makes me kind of alienated and weird and I suck at sports anyway so I probably just won’t go to it tomorrow hopefully. sorry for writing so much I know this is all like supremely uninteresting. that’s actually a smart idea about submitting the collages to other places, but I wouldn’t really know where to look. although that would be probably very important to know in general.
I am living with parents, between jobs, trying to manage autistic burnout, stuck in my late 20s with adolescent interests and behavior, IDK not great all the time. I do like to go to movies, mostly revival screenings. I like to sing karaoke and have been trying my hand at stand up comedy. I can’t really talk to people but I can certainly perform, I suppose. I want to pick up drums again once I get the executive function to put my kit back together, as it had to be moved when my brother stayed here a few weeks ago.
Hey Dennis,
How’s tricks? I hope the Olympics didn’t get too much in the way of the liminality of summer in Paris.
London is… not a cultural wasteland, for once? Or maybe that just means I’m more outgoing these days. Noise music shows, sewer-dungeon performance art, experimental guerilla birthday buffets, etc. I’ve gotten to know the Infinity Land crew a little, too; it’s reassuring that they’re just nice, interesting people rather than cooler-than-thou artistes.
Tadhg and I thought we’d missed the online Flunker sale, but we found a copy in an honest-to-god physical bookshop yesterday. He’s chomping through it first, then I’ll give it a spin. And—nice full-circle moment—I finally acquired a copy of Predicate. Plus Tom B. gifted me his copy of Lazy like the sweetheart he is. The two very much feel like power objects sat on my desk.
Have you ever read Ad Vat’s work? He’s a pretty cool author, and pretty into sex-doll-ritual-magick (I was never drawn to magic(k), despite my interest in Coil et al., but Ad manages to make it look cool). We might steal your thunder and start a Zoom book club.
I’m gonna be in Paris with Alex at the end of September, I think the 25th to the 28th. Are you and Zac gonna be in town for caffeinated adventures?
Hugs & love to you and Zac from me, Alex, Tadhg, Tom, Golnoosh and other assorted London-dwellers.
hm – i think i maybe disagree (( or pretend to disagree for the sake of the exercise of it )) with the idea that memory is stronger in prose than in film – surely the (( quibling with – rejecting – being judicious towards )) is the friction that is the impetus of the remembering – in contrast – wouldn’t prose be agreeable in it’s living in our heads ? wouldn’t that be less memorable- isn’t memory just .. actually, never mind – i probably do agree – i’m poised to hate film – seeing how the sausage’s made – or being the pork – i probably don’t hate film though – that would be stupid – film’s lovely – listened to the podcast – looking forward to room temperature –
watched the new alien film in 4DX then got drunk – wouldn’t want to watch a better or worse film in the conditions – smell effect when they started bleeding acid wasn’t as good as it could have been – i was very enthusiastic about the film being about the birth rate falling below 2.1 and corporations’ resulting support of fascism – shame it’s not about men being scared of getting fucked by a tranny anymore –
– what was the opera yous didn’t finish ? that sounds interesting – my interest in it obvious -probably –
i didn’t know much about operas until a friend suggested he write one about a short story i pitched to him when he visited me whilst working (retail job) – wrote that book i sent you about the idea of writing it into an opera instead – do tell if you’ve looked at it yet
got slapped in the face by a famous british sitcom writer in that very shop – (( i technically deserved it – it was, however, worth it )) – met a clay artist that same day and he’s now a very good friend –
i’d love to be typing from that cambre orange – i think i tried to break a boy’s heart in an instillation very similar to tapis de lecture
i think this is probably the most meandering of my replies yet – hm – am i even going to send?
An opera by you would be (pardon the expression) a serve I think. Do you have some favourite operas? I’ve recently moved on from Janacek to Tosca, which just thrills you so much when you listen to it. Currently battling nausea at a layover right before I cross the Pacific and land in LA for another layover. Have you ever seen LA Plays Itself? The original Halsted, not the documentary. I’m guessing yes. What an evocative title. Sometimes I can forgive mildly disappointing books/movies if they have the right title. Hopefully see you right here tomorrow. In the meantime I’m attempting to get the word handsome to make a comeback, at least amongst my friends.
Hey. I know nothing about imgur but I got two weird comments on my Rimbaud post thinking I was trying to freak people out. Some guy posted a Skyrim thing calling me ‘maidenless’ haha. Not attracted to women and am no longer a boy anyway so that’s cool. It’s like being in high school again.
Nothing that eventful happened today except my grandmother I rarely speak to emailed me to say that I need to send her money, and a few hours later she emailed to say she’d been hacked. It had her and my name in the email and everything, very strange.
And also I finally got around to reading Joy Williams. I read ‘Harrow’ because it’s one of the few of her books that’s widely available in the UK. I really want to read ‘The Quick and the Dead’. We were talking about great dialogue writers the other day but Joy Williams will definitely be one to study. I find I get really excited by dialogue that seems completely unnatural. But the effect in ‘Harrow’ I found really interesting was that none of the sentences by themselves were structured that unusually, it’s just that within the dialogue each sentence completely disregards what was said before it. In movies as well I really like how the dialogue is delivered in John Waters and David Lynch movies, and I’m really interested by the effect of that.
Anyway, Williams’ prose is obviously great as well. Concise and confusing at the same time.
Hey, Dennis! Yeah, I would say I like to explore rather than turn away too. Even though there are things that I draw the line of course, like pedophilia and bestiality. I’m sure there is a lot of pedos in those sites, as you showed some here, but is there bestiality? Not that they are the same, but now I noticed that I can’t remember seeing a furry on here. Do you see them there sometimes? I was thinking about furries just yesterday, that I understand why they do what they do, even though it doesn’t thrill me, I get it. As you know I am fascinated by animals, so I understand why someone would want to feel like one, specially in sex, but you know, there are furries and furries. There is a kind of furry that specially bothers me because the design of the animals that they dress up as is very similar to Disney characters from the 90s style of animation, which is very boring. So they take an already boring thing and transform that in a vulgar fanart, or whatever, and make porn. Boring furry porn. And all of that leads to the fact that Disney post-Walt is a cancer to the illustration community even in porn. On the other side, Asian furries are the best, you can see they really care about that and it’s not simply to get off, there is artistry. I saw this page on Twitter and it’s amazing, check it out when you have the time; https://x.com/suolaxier?t=IIFRvpXFhe7oNCNEXpJusg&s=09 It’s the real thing! It’s cool, chic, you know, it’s really something. It’s even sexier than the vulgar Disney stuff. What’s your take on furries? I got distracted and I forgot to say, I think that your slaves entry is very inspiring to me as an illustrator, because it makes me think that no matter how awful something can be, there is someone in the world that will jerk off thinking about it. I don’t draw explicit erotic stuff yet, but I think it’s implied, and I think get the inspiration from here, so thanks for the work, Dennis! I’m actually planning on making a book with erotic illustrations in the future, after Salomé and college, I think I’ll have a good portfolio by then. Oh, yesterday I saw a Marcell Jankovics short that I’ve been looking for years, I know you like him, so maybe you’ll enjoy it as well. Here’s the link: https://gofile.io/d/kxSQd5
Nice talking with you!
hiii, inspiring work here. i will be returning to this a lot i think. i think i got some screengrabs from her cinematic work and repulse bay in my inspiration folder. it’s basically a folder of contextless photos in some way inspire me, some of them ive made myself, and i know where the context is from, and other is just collated from years of scrolling random places. i wonder how the inspiration from these will effect em.
thank you for your appreciation, it is funny reading my older comments and seeing myself slowly devolve from me trying to talk to an author i want to be prim and proper to (… yeah i don’t get it either now) just… i guess myself? something akin to that.
lonely hearts killer is very very good, the author knows how to really express how alien the familar can feel.
spying on other comments — i liked the skyrim video. i like creating works from video games, as in i’ve been taking pictures of ff14, nothing too crazy but it does give me a some sense of reverie posing my dolls in the game. maybe ill work up the courage and send some here. — also checked out egoyan, started with Exotica, very interested to see how he slowly falls down.
funny story today happened to me, one tourist with his family — honestly i was a bit spooked, bad vibes — asked me for some proper norwegian resturants. the thing about us norwegians is that if we eat out, it is mostly becuse we wanna eat other cuisines than norwegians, but being pelted by these questions made me basically memorize every resturant in town. so pointed to the nearest one, and he said something to his wife; “see? thats how the locals eat, not pizza, proper norwegian food. why would people go here to just eat pizza?”;
so i got a pizza, and while i was walking back home, i was interrupted by this huge party of like 30 people, very good vibes, and the first guy asked me where i got the pizza. i pointed it out, and i almost burst out laughing. i got a crowd saying thank you, i hope i gave both of them good directions, maybe just the second one but still.
that should be all.