_____________
Peter Saul Wall Street Suicide, 2012
Acrylic on canvas
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Jose Legaspi Untitled, 1995
oil on canvas
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Maurizio Cattelan Bidibidobidiboo, 2012
‘a suicide squirrel appears in a miniature stage, with a gun at his feet.’
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Aziz Hazara Monument, 2019
‘Monument takes place at a collective graveyard and memorial, a place where families have gathered the bodies of their loved ones, killed in a suicide bomb attack at a tuition centre, which took more than forty students’ lives. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) the day after the event.’
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Patricia Waller Suicide II, 2020
Sequins, pins, styrofoam, polystyrol board, cardboard
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George Grosz Suicide, 1916
‘Mario Vargos Llosa: Grosz shared Baudelaire`s romantic fascination for underground, outsider characters – criminals, gangsters, soldiers, suicide victims, the proletariat and whores. In that sense he was Germany`s poète maudit. A great example of this is his painting Suicide (1916). There is a prostitute standing by the window – a bottle in one hand. On one side a body is hanging from a lamppost, while another person, well-dressed, is lying on the street. (In his work, the theme of sex is always closely related to violence.) It has all the classic Grosz elements – dead people, prostitutes, perverted millionaires. All the characters have escaped the conformist respectable life. I think this is the reading that we should give to his gangsters, his killers – people who are outside the conventional social world. He thought, a bit like the Black Panthers 50 years later, that the criminals were the social fighters.’
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Bjarne Melgaard Construction to Commit Suicide with a Great White Shark, 2000
molded fibreglass, and bronze with enamel graffiti inscription
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Joanna Rajkowska The Suiciders, 2016
‘The exhibition does not simply diagnose or recount suicide cases. It describes the artist’s relationship with the women who attempted suicide themselves or sent other women on suicide missions.According to Rajkowska, the essence of the work is “(…) a feeling of inability. It concerns the inability to feel true empathy, the inability to understand a woman (…) who attempts to destroy herself, at the same time terminating the lives of others. My point is that I have never reached such border, such state of body and mind. Sitting in a comfortable European country, we can only feel Schadenfreude, an inner satisfaction these atrocities do not happen to us.’
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Vassan Sitthiket Committing Suicide Culture: The Only Way Thai Farmers Escape Debt, 1995
wood, paint, rope, metal
______________
Timothy Jackson Suicide, 1977
Spray paint and ink on paper and mylar with collaged elements
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Richard Bosman Suicide, 1980-81
Color woodcut
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Sarah Lucas Is suicide genetic?, 1996
mixed media
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Ed Atkins Ribbons, 2014
high-definition video
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Andres Serrano Morgue, 1993
photograph
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Richard Prince Good News, Bad News, 1989
Acrylic and screen print on canvas
______________
Mark Jenkins Untitled, 2017
‘As soon as the summer show was mounted at Arsenal Contemporary in Toronto, concerned neighbors began calling the police. They were worried about two people sitting on the roof of the building, a sheet thrown over their heads, seemingly about to jump to their deaths. Despite their perch atop an art gallery, and their obvious lack of movement, onlookers were convinced these were real people. Perhaps the couple was just really unsure about suicide, or worse, maybe they had been killed and left in that position.’
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Vito Acconci Note for a potential suicide, 1973
Chalk on cardboard
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Luke Duggleby For Those Who Died Trying, 2020
‘In this low-slung image, a framed portrait of a human rights defender who killed himself appears in the exact location where he was last seen alive.’
_______________
Andy Warhol A Woman’s Suicide, 1962
Silkscreen ink and pencil on linen
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Cai Guo-Qiang Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks, 2008
‘The artist mixed gunpowder with glue to draw various pictures in the Danger Book and placed a bundle of matches on a striking strip along the base of each book’s spine. A dangling string was attached to the bundle of matches to entice the reader to pull on it and thus ignite the book. The concept described by the artist is as follows: ‘Be careful of books. Be careful with books. Be careful or one can become a weapon-wielder. Be careful or one can become the victim’.’
________________
Alexander Chekmenev Attempt of Suicide, 1994
gelatin silver print
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David Byrd Suicide (260), 1996
Oil on canvas
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Samara Golden Suicide Masks, 2013
Rmax, acrylic, Gorilla glue
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Lizzi Bougatsos, Rob Pruitt Help Me Lift You Up, 2024
ceramic cat and plastic sheet
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Eugenio Merino For the Love of Go(l)d, 2009
silicon
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Erika Rothenberg America’s Joyous Future, 1990–91
Plastic letters in aluminum and Plexiglas notice case
________________
Mike Parr Cathartic Action: Social Gestus No. 5 (the “Armchop”), 1977
Photograph
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Katsuki Nogami Self-Homicide, 2025
‘Experiencing Strangling an Avatar with Your Own Face. This piece deals with the sensitive subject of death. Please only participate if you have given your full consent. At this stage, the avatar features the artist’s own face, but in the final version, it will have the same face as the participant.
‘Since the advent of video games, the moral implications of killing in a virtual space have been widely debated. However, such discussions have largely faded as it has become an accepted norm. All you need is a finger pressing the A button—perhaps even enough to launch a missile. In online games, players kill their friends’ avatars daily, and on social media, the same fingers that press buttons are used to slander and attack others, sometimes to the point of driving them to death. This disconnect between the real world and the digital display may be the underlying cause.
‘However, in this Mixed Reality experience, your real hands will carry out the action directly.’
________________
Bill Thomas from Suicide Series, 1991
black and white print
‘Tub and Toaster’
‘Rats and Syringes’
‘Sleeping’
‘Dog and Shotgun’
‘Gasoline and Candles’
‘Tractor and Plow Disc’
*
p.s. RIP the great Yasunao Tone ** Carsten, I remember you used to talk about Ken Jacobs. Well, I’m very interested in tone/sound and rhythm in my writing, but I guess I think of it more in terms of what text triggers in the reader’s imagination rather than an actual sound the language creates in the mouth or something. I’m all for no-budget filming with a phone camera. There have been some incredible films made that way. Scott Barley’s films are extraordinary looking, for instance, and they’re all shot with his phone albeit heavily worked visually afterwards. I too agree with Flaubert there. ** Misanthrope, Having lived in NYC twice, I personally think visiting is a whole lot funner and a better use of that place. The usual and obvious prayers-in-quotes re: Mr. David. ** _Black_Acrylic, Happy to enrich your so respectable radar. If I saw someone wearing an Underground Resistance badge, I would certainly do a double-take and possibly even say, ‘What’s up?’ ** Steeqhen, I’m fine today, I think. In my experience, when your sickness wettens (that’s not a word?), that is a sign of upswinging. Hope we’re both right. A friend of mine saw Britney Spears on her last tour and said during the dancing parts they ‘secretly’ snuck out a lookalike stand-in Britney to do them, and I once had a dream in which that ‘stand-in’ made an appearance if that counts. Good morning from a morning person. ** Steve, Okay, that is one novel celerity dream cameo indeed, haha. No, I don’t know of anyone who’s done that field recording film score thing, which is why we need to do it. I mentioned it to Aki and he smiled and went ‘Mmm’ like the idea had made him hungry, so who knows. I don’t actually have floaters. That was my terrible attempt at describing how my muse manifests itself. But my muse is nowhere to be seen today if that answers the question. ** PancakeIan, Now you’re yourself and a pancake simultaneously. Best of both worlds. Floridian heat is a horror. I’ve only ever been to Florida twice, both times only to Orlando to go to Disney/Universal, and it was hell from above. I am going to dive back into Florida when Epic Universe opens, but not until the fall assuming it’s cool enough there to count as cool by then. I’m into the negative karma idea, but I keep that to myself because most of the meat eaters I know are very militant about it. I’m pretty sure James’s silence isn’t personal since he bailed on the blog too. Hopefully he’ll resurrect himself at some not too distant point. ** julian, Hi. Well, I went to the SD Zoo and Sea World mostly. A bit of La Jolla beach going. A few concerts. I did a few readings at UCSD, but that was post-childhood obviously. In the 70s there was a record store there that was so great that my friends and I would drive all the way down there to buy our hard-to-acquire punk and proto-punk records. Word vomit, great. I always start with word vomit. I liked Courtney when I was hanging out with her. I thought she was really smart and funny and complicated. But it later turned out that a whole lot of what she told me was a lie, and that she was using me to get the story she wanted about herself out to the public, so my liking of her turned into suspicion. ** Uday, Cool, glad you dug it. Congrats on finishing the paper! And awesome that some friends of yours will be the reason you get to NYC. I like silent movies. I don’t have a big thing for them especially. Well, except for more contemporary silent experimental movies. I like them a lot usually. It would be interesting to make a silent movie, yes. It would be challenge since my talent is mainly the writing and dialogue and stuff. But yes! Let me wish you a mosquito free day in return. The mosquitos are already back here for the summer, and it is not a happy marriage. ** HaRpEr //, Hi. Well, it was Catherine saying that, and Catherine is a dominatrix and can be very catty, so she might’ve been just trying to fuck me. It’s highly possible. Funny/telling about Hanif Kureshi. I’m big on trying not to think about that which makes me worry about myself, so yes. My pleasure on the Onda intro. ** Adem Berbic, Okay, I’l email you at that address. But, dude, make it easier for people to buy those books somehow, if you want my advice. At least with me, when there’s an invoice involved, I’ll usually just bail. Oh, I don’t know, you guys’ll sort it, and I know how much work that stuff can be. Well, ‘RT’ is getting a theater release in France. Like an actual theater release from a very cool distributor and everything! Crazy. Towards the end of the year, they’re saying. I will certainly see ‘Final Destination 6’ just to be a completist if nothing else. Good, tolerable? Zac’s in Nice, but I’ll hug him when he’s back in the hood, and I am confident he will boomerang a hug your way. ** Justin D,Hi. Happy you liked Onda’s stuff. ‘Violet’ looks tempting indeed. What a good opening shot in that trailer. Dinner? Capellini pasta doused with a combination of Mushroom sauce and Basilic Tomato sauce and loaded down with a ton of Parmesan cheese. What cereal did you eat? My favorite cereal is Grape Nuts. ** jay, Hey. A weekend is a whole better than nothing, but that is a very short time to take in Tokyo, assuming that’s the destination. But still, amazing! A taster hopefully not too hazed over by jet lag. How is your week building up? ** Nicholas., It was a banger. Thank you for occasioning it. Oh, no, I don’t note what books I read, etc. I do have an agenda/log where I briefly note what I did every day or have coming up to do. But I don’t mention what books I’ve read. I should, why not. 5ever, yes! Strangely, someone else asked me what I had for dinner just north of you, so do a little cm-length scroll backwards and you’ll find out. It was pretty so-so, so don’t get too excited. ** Right. Today post has spoken for itself, so I’ll just leave you there and see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis,
Congrats on finishing the current (or final?) draft of the film script. Do you expect to start making it fairly soon?
I’ve have a crazy couple of weeks. Lyle’s, the restaurant where I work, announced it’s closing down. So we’re all getting laid off. And it’s been crazy busy since then because it’s a well-loved place and lots of people are coming in for one last meal. Long story short I’ve been working crazy 15-hour shifts and “clopens” (where you close at like 12/1 am and are back in to open at 9am). Anyway… this Sunday is my last shift and then I’ll be taking a month off before looking for another day job. I’m exhausted and so looking forward to being unemployed for a while.
More importantly – yesterday I went to the print studio and made some advance proofs of the first Ssnake Press book, “How to Inject” by Kate Kiernan. I would love to send you a copy. Maybe I can get your mailing address over email? I also have a pdf I can send, but I thought it would be cute to do some physical proofs. I want to start approaching some other writers and publishing people I admire (probably on Instagram) to ask if I can send them a proof. Success rate for cold approaches like that can be patchy though. If you have any advice please send it my way!
Also, I made contact with Adem from on here and am going to meet him and buy his books, which is nice. Thank you Dennis, thank you blog!
Have a good one,
xo,
me
Suicide. I remember having a bit of a surreal feeling when we were having that serious conversation about suicide in La Favorite, whilst over the top pop songs like APT by Bruno Mars and Rosé (?) were playing… Samara Golden’s suicide masks are gorgeous, amongst a lot of things they evoke for me, the strangest is this pokemon called Yamask, who is this spirit that holds a mask of it’s face as a human… strange.
I’m feeling slightly better but still sick today. Went back to my parents last night just to spend time and rest instead of continuing to hang out with friends and draining myself of energy to care for myself. Bought tickets for Lorde, who i loved since she debuted in 2013, but have never seen. Though I try to avoid weird parasocial connection to celebs — thinking that their public persona is indicative of how ‘relatable’ they are to me — I tend to slip with Lorde, who is only a few years older than me and always felt a bit like an older sister who would usher me into a new era of my life with each album. I will say that the parasocial sheen is wearing off, as her tickets were ludicrously priced (€90) for a show in a relatively small venue. Guess the capitalism bug has bitten her.
I totally believe that they would replace Britney with a stand-in, though I’ve never heard it myself. I find it a bit sad that people became so defensive and caring for Britney and how those around her were using her for profit, but then immediately try to reframe her as crazy for her erratic instagram posts: people only care about people being mistreated or abused when they’re defensive and a passive victim, but the moment they show uncomfortable emotions, they’re villainized. As for a Britney stand in showing up in your dream, I think that makes sense considering the amount of doppelgängers and ‘fake’ people that show up in your fiction. Also it’s just such a fascinating thing, someone existing and being paid to fake an identity… how strange that must feel. Maybe you could get someone to fake being your lost identity, and they have a fake, and they have a fake…
I cant get the ucc library job coz im not in the system for jobs there, whole admin shit i cant be bothered to deal with, but i may have a better shot at applying for the city library; i have experience with customer service, with filing, with organizing and running events, and i seem to be the only person i know that knows what the Dewey Decimal System is. I applied to a proofreader position for a magazine and they didnt choose me, and i both don’t care, and also believe they have some vendetta against me as they never got back to me about a different thing I sent to them months ago… I’m being a bit delusional though!!! Ultimately I’m fine about being ‘rejected’, as I have a lot of other things to do anyway!!!
Thanks, Big D. Yeah, we’re hoping he gets the job and does the right thing.
I feel like I could live in the city and I’d love it. But part of that living would be working like a dog every day, so yeah, that gleam would fade pretty quickly, I think. But who knows?
Anyway, it’s not happening anytime soon, so I can only speculate.
Man, my company just told us we’re not getting paid Friday because of technical issue on the payroll company’s end. They said we’ll get paid Monday. I don’t believe them. I’m going to look into it today. Detective Wines is on the case.
Good stuff here. Suicide is an interesting topic, I think. It makes me think of high school when nearly everyone is or has been suicidal in some way, you know?
Today I had to help a bird off my porch, which is surrounded by clear plastic sheets in the spring. She flew onto the porch and couldn’t find her way out again, and when I found her was just flying into the plastic repeatedly. Birds are my favorite type of creature in the world, behind some people I know. Honestly, the whole situation terrified me. A big fear of mine is accidentally hurting an animal, in a car or while trying to help or something. Birds are so fragile, especially little sparrows like this one, but I think you don’t really register just how fragile until you’re holding one. She was fine in the end. Maybe now she won’t go flying onto porches. What kind of birds do you have around there? I want to go to Europe birdwatching someday.
I decided to read Dream Police after Idols, because poems are easier to find time to read than an entire book, but Closer is next, for sure. The poems are great, of course.
Ken Jacobs actually reached out to me (!) when my teen self’s rave review of his self-produced Star Spangled to Death DVD generated an uptick in sales. He was incredibly generous & kind. Some time later I spent the better part of a day with him in NYC, where he showed me all the old haunts, the spots where he & Jack Smith cavorted back in the day… a magical stroll to say the least, the Ken Jacobs 50s/60s bohemia flashback tour of NY. My favorite anecdote: we stopped in Chinatown for lunch, where we sat at the counter & he ordered beef guts in a bowl. After the order took some time to arrive he turned to me & said in a perfect dead-pan “You should tell them I’m a pretty big deal.” The man’s a prince.
What you said about wanting to trigger something in your reader’s imagination makes total sense in regard to your writing. You create whole structures in the imagination. I always aim to make the sound of my words invoke a tangible presence, & for that rhythm is always key, which is why I perform everything I write out loud–or ideally the reverse, where I hear it first & write it down after. My goal being to basically function as an oral poet who does his own transcribing.
Scott Barley is someone I know I need to dig into, maybe tonight or this weekend.
Interesting suicide art up there, but I better not get started talking about the subject because that always leads to a 10-minute monologue about the myth of Quetzalcoatl’s immolation.
Makes me think of Angus Fairhurst, one of the original YBAs who took his own life at the age of just 41. His work looked to have a kind of deadpan humour that I always liked.
I once saw a guy wearing an Underground Resistance T-shirt up there at the Springs. To this day I feel I should have said something to him, because here I am still going on about it.
HI!
Very sobering subject in art , today . Most of us have this cross our minds, at one point or another, sad to say. I love ‘Monument’. And ‘Construction……with a Great White Shark’ reminded me of the Planet of the Apes franchise.
Uh huh, Florida heat is indeed brutal . That became the main reason I had to finally call it quits there ……physically I couldn’t acclimate anymore. Cool that you’re planning on visiting Epic Universe. Universal has been beating out Disney in Orlando, as a theme park , lately . I heard you say in an interview that Epcot Center reminded you of a dated 80s mall, or something. Which is true . Although they’ve been slowly renovating that park. As a whole, WDW resort has become very much a bottom line company, which is sad. From being on the inside for so long, I could see how they cut corners a lot, quality -wise. Walt would not be happy . It must have been neat for you, getting to go to Disney Land while the man himself was still alive .
I mentioned the meat/karma theory to you because I knew you’d understand. But yes, it’s best not to risk offending anyone. I’m super strict, because I don’t consume meat, fish , or even eggs.
I hope you’re right about James w/o the surname. He did say that final exams in the UK are pretty killer. Instead of lasting just a few hours one morning, like America’s SATs, they go on for an entire month . Yikes. But I guess one has to take them to get into a decent university over there. Beyond that, I tend to have terrible luck when it comes to any type of relationship. People lose interest in me quite quickly. C’est la guerre.
I figured I should alter my username slightly………Happy Pancake sounds vaguely like an escort name .
I live walking distance from the SD Zoo, actually. Do you remember the name of the record store? I’d like to see if it’s still open. Probably not. There are some good record stores in San Diego today, but there are better ones in other cities. Chicago, where I am for college, has some of the best I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I know Courtney has always had a reputation for lying, which must make her difficult to interview. Have you ever thought about getting back into journalism or nonfiction? I always really enjoy your interviews from back in the day. The Brad Renfro and Keanu Reeves interviews come to mind as particularly interesting ones. Today’s post is making me realize that I’ve barely made any art about suicide, which is surprising to me. I should see what I can do with that.
Hey. My major obsession today: trying to come up with a name for a ventriloquist’s dummy in my novel. It’s taking days, and names aren’t normally an issue for me. I’ve just put ‘X’ as a placeholder in the manuscript so it doesn’t distract me from actually writing. Names are the sort of contemplation best kept to the moments when you’re trying to sleep or are eating dinner or going for a walk or something, at least for me. I’m doing a thing where only objects/toys and non important characters are given names. The rise and fall of the hyperpop thing is also an implicit backdrop in the book so there are real music figures mentioned and re-named. HeleNDMA is my favourite, and you’ll have to guess who that could possible be.
I’m actually really excited about it, because I see an end in sight for this draft, and due to the way I’ve set this project up, I don’t think the editing process will be too strenuous. I’m actually very happy with how the sentences are turning out. They’re coming out of me in a way that I didn’t expect.
Suicide is one of those things that people can’t talk about directly. When someone jokes about suicide the room goes a very particular kind of silent. I knew a kid who made suicide jokes all of the time and he actually did kill himself, so I always wonder about how ‘real’ jokes really are. But when you’re a kid everyone makes crazy jokes, so it’s hard to tell.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this but my generation often says things like ‘unalive’ instead of suicide because TikTok makes it so that you can’t make videos with ‘controversial’ words and make it into the algorithm, and I’ve had real conversations with people who have actually said things like ‘they unalived themselves’.
Thanks for today’s post. Have lost a few people I know to suicide and maybe the most selfish desire I’ve ever had is that I hoped for one of them that she remembered me in the lead-up because even though that clearly wouldn’t have been enough, I want some memory of me to at least have tried. But I’m at peace with death lately, or at least individual death if not structurally. Yeah I was thinking of contemporary experimental silent films too, but now I’m amusing myself with the thought of Buster Keaton being directed by Dennis Cooper. I feel like you would do something cool with the dialogue screens in the middle. Your wishes for a mosquito free day are unfortunately unsuccessful. This is the least I have been bitten this week, but that could be in part because I was streaking earlier in the week and also because I haven’t been to the woods today. Hoping for no mosquitos for either of us tomorrow. I don’t have enough hydrocortisone to keep up.
Hey Dennis,
Phew, I thought my last reply got sacrificed at the altar of Cloudflare, but looks like it landed safely after all.
Hard agree for the ordering — my plan for this weekend is to go into caffeine psychosis and rebuild the site, register us as a company, and put some kind of proper ordering system in place — as opposed to the current one, which is both off-putting for customers and probably an act of tax fraud. We were in such a mad scramble and going off the assumption that, initially, we’d just be selling them off at events and to people we know, so it was no biggie — and then we had this penny drop moment where maybe, actually, the situation calls for a little more ambition. So, who knows, maybe by the start of next week you’ll be able to place your order in a way that’s halfway normal. (Not that I don’t have an over-romanticised soft spot for the idea of books being hard to get hold of, but I think in this case it’s just in an annoying way, rather than an aesthetically validating way).
Cinema release, shit! Keep me posted on that front, definitely — if I haven’t seen RT by the time it comes out that way, I’ll definitely book another Eurostar. Speaking of cinemas — I had a stronger reaction to FD6 than I thought. Maybe I have a little begrudging respect to it for trying to do one or two things differently, but in the main I thought:
1) It was way too meta and exposition-y; the concept has been totally formulaic since the first one, sure, but this one went in a little too hard on that, a little too reductively, to the point of a sort of attempt at self-parody which I’m not sure worked;
2) All the dialogue was in that zippy, quippy, Marvel-Netflix style, which made it feel very tonally homogenised;
3) It liked its characters way too much — for me, one of the hallmarks of these movies is that they’re populated by awful people that treat each other awfully for no reason, but this one actually gave them emotional beats and treated them with compassion (if of a very facile and 2D kind) — what the hell? What gives? (By the way, have you ever seen ‘Mouse Hunt?’ From memory, that’s peak mean-spirited, ‘everyone is awful’ cinema, even though it’s a kid’s film);
4) The deaths were all sort of forgettable no-budget CGI whatever with almost no pacing or restraint, although I guess some were okay.
So yeah, maybe 30% the right kind of dumb and 70% the wrong kind, but I still don’t regret seeing it. Let me know what you think. Alright, I’ll let you know more about my Parisian movements when I have more info to give. Thank you for the suicide squirrel, catch you around.
Another great post. What can I say? Everything I know, every artist, every writer, every passion, I learned from you. You were the one who introduced me to a world I longed for, but didn’t know actually existed, and initiated my endless hunger and hunting for new artists, new writing,one thing leading to the other, all thanks to you. Tbh, I was also a suicidalist, or well, I did attempt suicide with alcohol and a large dose of my medication, which landed me at hospital. Also cut my wrist, but a member of the family grabbed the swiss knife from my hands, so I just saw the inside of my flesh, the yellow of the fat, which was both disgusting and fascinating but had no time to take pics bc lots of blood you know,lol? Also I started self harming, a behaviour I didn’t indulge in as a teenager but suddenly, in the last 6-7 years, and I’m close to forty now. So, yeah, this post fascinated me and I felt this rapport. For me, George Grosz stood out, and yeah, I’m gonna google him (it’s a familiar name tbh), hoping he will lead me to further meandering through dark paths of art. Thank you, Dennis. I’ll be forever grateful to you. For all I know, for all I am.