Note: The site Best Deaths first appeared in 2005. It disappeared for reasons unknown in 2022.
‘You have the cool story idea, we have the equipment and the know-how. Our team reviews your request taking into consideration the length of the video, the cost of actors, crew and other production costs. Then, we will send you an estimated cost for the video. Once the script and costs are agreed to you make payment. Then we shoot it. The next day we send you pictures from the set. Then we edit the film in 30 days or less. Then we send your custom film to you via download or DVD or both (your choice). These custom videos start at $500.00 USD. All of the unedited footage may be available at an additional cost. Have fun and let’s get started…’ — Best Deaths
Have you ever wanted to direct a film or found yourself editing the scenes in some of your favorite movies? That’s me. There never has been the “perfect” film and those big-budget ones are no exception. The next best thing? That turned out to be easier than I thought get Best Deaths to make one for you. The nice thing with Best Deaths was that I was able to write the script and be involved all the way through. If any of you fantasize like I do, you’ll appreciate how much it adds to have an actor say exactly what you want to hear him say or be able to tell the filming crew what kind of angles and closeups you want. It makes all the difference in the world. Even things like clothing. I happen to like leather and I was able to send Best Deaths numerous things that I wanted to see the actors wearing or use. That worked out beautifully and everything got returned to me. They proved to be 100% honest and dependable and I was able to be involved in the whole production process. I got everything I had hoped for and then some. I’ll definitely be back for more.
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I ordered one custom video of Chris. It was the best throat slash video online anywhere. I was thoroughly satisfied and very happy to have spent the money. This website really knows what they are doing. Thanks Best Deaths.
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I don’t know what to say, that was perfect, just totally perfect. Luke was the perfect victim, I can think of other ways I’d like to kill him, I’ll be watching this one over and over. His killer did a fantastic job, I think I’d like to see more of him too, has he been in anything yet? He doesn’t look familiar.
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Kyle was absolutely incredible with the fear in his look and voice, the struggling, and the facial grimace. The strangle scene was great as well and was exactly what I was looking for in that scene.
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What can I say? The video is incredible. You guys did an amazing job! Chris is in fantastic shape and you guys captured him beautifully. He’s never looked better, if you ask me. I loved the way his strength slowly fades and he stumbles as he tries to get away. His performance really makes the story. You guys also got some incredible camera angles. You really captured the struggle well and knew exactly what I wanted to see.
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What you do is medicine to the minds of those of us who are sometimes even just a little unsure that in a more public arena, the privations of a “perversion” would appear so acceptable. That is no small thing! Thank you!
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Wow, that was real good. Like the twist in the beginning where the kid sees his execution. Pretty good acting too. Like the tube and the yellow extraction.
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Would like to extend my appreciation to Greg for his realistic scream and reaction when he was stabbed. Really love it. Of course, not forgetting Hunter as the psychotic killer. He is so perfect for the role. Would love to cast Greg in another video to watch his navel being tortured again.
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Well done. Didn’t expect them all to end up dead…but that was a nice touch. Especially seeing the guy in the white wife beater getting stabbed. I didn’t realize how big his arms were.
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The acting was perfect. Both actors did a great job in selling the scenario, and I think the actor who plays Greg is witty, athletic and convincing: he lived up to my expectations. When he was lifted into the torture rack he looked fantastic!
_______ Interview w/ Viktor of Best Deaths Collective
Is the site popular?
Victor: Well, yeah. I think because there aren’t that many sites with this theme, and there are people who look at, maybe not the actual deaths, but more the fetish. Maybe they like to see some feet focused videos, belly button, or even method-wise they like to see some guys getting strangled, hanged and whatnot. What about safety and making sure you don’t actually kill anyone?
The safety of our actors is primary – that’s the main thing. We try to shoot everything as real-looking as possible, but we always take measures, like if we’re going to use a knife, or knives, they are not sharp at all – but we always tell the actors to be careful with a knife or any kind of prop. Like, in drowning [scenes], we take a lot of breaks, because we submerge the actor underwater for, I don’t know, five, ten seconds – as long as the actor can hold their breath. The actors aren’t at any risk at all throughout the whole production. Do the actors have to sign liability waivers?
They sign an agreement, but an image agreement. We never put anyone at risk, so they don’t really have to worry about getting hurt, because that doesn’t really happen. What’s the best thing to use as fake blood?
We found a stage blood that we actually buy, which is great because it’s thick, it has great colour and it tastes good as well. It’s mint flavour. Do you have any female users?
Yes, there are female users. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what percentage of the users, but yeah, we have a female fanbase – which is not very large, but they exist. Would you say murder is a misunderstood fetish?
Definitely. Not many of the users have [only] this death fetish – they also link it with another kind of more specific fetish that they have, like stabbing, so stabbing someone to death or strangling someone to death. Maybe people understand the “standard” fetishes, like feet fetish or muscle worship, but [not] something more aggressive, or something that you wouldn’t actually be able to do without hurting anyone if you wanted to do it for real. When you involve death, some people might misunderstand that because they might think that they really want to kill someone. I guess it’s difficult to understand where the line is drawn between fantasy and wanting to act things out IRL. That’s where people are going to struggle with it and be concerned.
It’s a very underground thing, and people are afraid of what they don’t know or understand. You seem to deliberately avoid the word snuff – is there a reason for that?
We never use the word “snuff”, because what we do is not snuff videos, but death performance videos. Many fans have even expressed that they like to watch guys being killed, but not for real, and that’s what they like about our productions. We try to portray realistic deaths, which the fans enjoy, knowing that it’s all staged, but also getting the rush of watching such action, with even more detail and length than what they would get from a video with a real death. If you were going to be murdered, how would you prefer to be murdered?
I think strangled. Yeah, I’m a strangling fan.
______ Examples
THE DOCTOR EXECUTES ANDY THEN ACTS AS HIS MORTICIAN
MARK IS CAPTURED AND DRUGGED TO DEATH BY DR. Z
MITCH SUFFERS, CPR, STRANGLE, INJECTION AND STABBING TORTURE DEATH
TWO TEENS ATTACK THEIR FRIEND JAMIE, PUNCH HIM, HIT HIM WITH AN AXE, HANG HIM, STRANGLE HIM TO DEATH AND BURY HIS DEAD BODY IN THE YARD
DR Z HYPNOTIZES A STUD TO DROWN AND STRANGLE A BLOND HIGH SCHOOL GUY AT THE POOL
HYPNOTIZED DREW KILLS DR Z AND THEN HIMSELF
DR Z TAKES A VACATION AND STRANGLES DONNIE
NEW SKATER TEEN MEETS DR Z ENDS UP DEAD IN MORGUE AND TOE TAGGED
SOLDIER IS STRUNG UP, CHLOROFORMED, ELECTROCUTED AND STABBED
COACH SHOOTS A JOCK IN THE BATHROOM
BAD ASS WRESTLER KT WRESTLES YOUNG SMALLER HUNTER AND KILLS HIM WITH A SNAP OF HIS NECK
REVENGE ON THE TRAIL YOUNG COWBOY IS SHOT AND STRANGLED BY POWERFUL OUTLAW
REVENGE, SHOOTING AND ASPHYXIATION BY TRAINED ASSASSINS
GREG KILLS DREW THE SKATER KID THEN KEEPS HIS CORPSE AS A LIVING DOLL
KEVEN DRESSES HUNTER’S NAKED CORPSE IN THE MORGUE THEN ABUSES IT IN HIS CASKET
KILLER LANCE CHLOROFORMS, STRIPS, DROWNS AND ELECTROCUTES JOSH
MARK PISTOL WHIPS JOSH THEN HANGS HIM DEAD
ALL CHOKED UP PART THREE
DREW’S NIGHTMARE TIED TO THE BED AND STRANGLED TO DEATH BY MR JENKINS
EDDIE MEET POGO NOW DIE
HUNTER CHLOROFORMED, TIED DOWN, AND STRANGLED TO DEATH BY MR. JENKINS WHO RAPES HIS DEAD BODY
MITCH DRUGS MARK INTO CARDIAC ARREST THEN PERFROMS CPR AND OTHER MEDICAL TORTURE ON HIS CORPSE
PAUL POISONS STRAIGHT TOM, TIES HIM TO A BED, SUFFOCATES HIM WITH A PLASTIC BAG, STRANGLES HIM TO DEATH WITH A ROPE AND RAPES HIS DEAD BODY
*
p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. The Hede is very, very good. See, now, ‘Golden Idol’ sounds up my alley. I’ll take a peek. Over the weekend I switched from ‘Luigi’s Mansion 3’ to ‘Paper Mario: The Origami King’, and I’m much happier. That’s interesting about your hypnotist friend’s focus. The mind rewriting was the most interesting part of my experiences. A friend would rattle off a string of like, 40 numbers once, and when I was post-hypnotised I could repeat the long string of numbers without even thinking. Or I was told a certain record that I knew really well was an entirely different record, and they’d out it on, and sure enough, I heard the record it wasn’t. Wild stuff. And fantastic that your experience inspired you to write, of course. ** Dominik, Hi!!! As always, you’re very welcome. Maybe tarot isn’t supposed to facilitate communication with the dead and my friend was just an overachiever. Still waiting to hear the fate of the film, hopefully any day now. Love staggering around drunk with a McDonalds burger clamped between his teeth, G. ** iwishiwasanon, Hi. Yeah, the blog’s entrance is very finicky, and it’s annoying as hell, and I apologise on its behalf. I walk by Serge Lutens all the time because it’s on the route to the supermarket. Its interior seems intimidating, but maybe I’ll step inside. I didn’t know he was a photographer. I look his work up. I’ve lived here for ages, and I still don’t speak French other than some minimal things I can say to cashiers in stores, and I can read French a little, so you’ll survive. Well, if you ever want to meet just say the word. I’m pretty easy-going in person. Oh, right, the snow. Well, I think the show is there for months? The blog inspiring a writer to write is the best compliment it can get. What town did you go to? I like getting out of Paris, but I’ve been mostly stuck here recently because of working on a film. But I did go to Los Angeles and New York. And my friend Zac and I are going to my favorite amusement park, Efteling, in Holland, pretty soon. ** James, 11 hours, sweet. Rain here too. The heavily drizzly, not so interesting kind. Agree with you about writing being the fucking best. Uh, I just keep up on what’s coming out, focused on smaller more daring writer and presses, and people sometimes send me books, I guess hoping I’ll like them and put them on my blog or something. ‘Videodrome’ is worth a watch. I hope you did max out the three-fer of days off and are now, what, raring to … work? I don’t know. ** Steeqhen, ‘Summoning Salt’: Great, thank you, I’ll get all over that at the soonest opportunity. I’ll check the Wiki scoop on ‘Motley’. Kind of a nice name. I ended up quitting the game I was playing, at least for now, because I tried about twenty times to beat one Boss and couldn’t make a dent in him. Now I’m playing a game (‘Paper Mario: The Origami King’), where, so far, the bosses are relative pushovers. Yes, ‘PM:TOK’ cost 59 euros, for Christ’s sake, and it’s four years old. Did you read in the poetry night? How was that? How did it go? ** nat, Well, hi, my blurry friend. I was assuming the Cloudflare monster was what was keeping you at bay. So sorry for the gif-y month+. Surely, fun is stretching out endlessly before you now. Exciting about what you’re writing both due its topic and via the mere fact that you’re both writing and seemingly fired up about that. Let me know how it goes. ‘Racing Lagoon’, I’ll check it out. ‘PM:TOK’ has really smart, clever writing, and that’s a lot of its charisma. Anyway, thanks, looks super interesting. Pleaureableness to you until hopefully soon. ** _Black_Acrylic, The Joy Williams rules, of course. We’re very wet here in Paris, but it’s kind of standard fare wet so far. Oh, man, I’m so behind on PT, fucking hell. I’m going to do a marathon post-haste. Exciting! Everyone, _Black_Acrylic’s great musical podcast has been updated with a new episode, and, as always, this is me strongly suggesting you accept its spate of sonic glory. Here’s _B_A to enhance my suggestion: ‘The new episode of my show Play Therapy v2.0 is online here via Tak Tent Radio! Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson wants you to relax deeply and watch the light. That’s good. Let yourself go down deeper. Listen to your tone and make it go deeper. Deeper, deeper, deeper.’ ** Lucas, Hi, L. Oh, shit, I’m so sorry about the weekend besetting you. Definitely sounds your moving-out plans are crucial and destiny. New story! I’m sort of drawn to writing things that are emotionally hard for me to do, i.e. ‘I Wished’, so … but if it’s hard in a crushing way, be careful. It sounds really enticing though. All the luck necessary re: the week of exams. What do they require you to think and write/talk about? xo, me. ** Steve, Trying to get into this blog is like playing a video game. A very buggy game. My weekend was okay, I guess. Mostly played videogames and did my biweekly Zoom book/film club with US friends wherein we watched/discussed Gregg Araki’s ‘Totally Fucked Up’ and an essay called ‘THE NEW MONSTROUS: Biotechnological beings are challenging our boundaries’. Is ‘The Umbrellas …’ being restored or something? I haven’t listened into the new KL album yet, no, but will. Your take? ** Diesel Clementine, I’ve read Oe, but I can’t remember if I’ve read ‘Nip the Buds, Kill the Children’. It seems like I would remember that title if I had. Sounds great, I love Oe. Ha ha, that interview sounds …. most curious. If you want to paste it, I will certainly read it. Thanks. Really nice to see you, of course. ** HaRpEr, Well, of course. Illusion of plot, yes. Plot employed judiciously and subversively as mere fuel to help keep the reader moving forward can work. Personally I never know what I’ve achieved until I’m in the work spate’s aftermath. You just have maintain a basic faith, I guess? Wow, is that storm over? We’re just wet, but it’s dead still wetness. Things are mostly ok with me if not exactly exciting. This week: hopefully get through a huge film-related problem solving attempt, an idea has been floated of doing a selected short fiction book by me and I’m going to think about what would be in such a book, hopefully see a lot of art because there’s a lot of good things about and I’m way behind. Your week? ** Uday, Hi. Is McCormack hard on the stomach? I suppose I’m not the best judge. I did read ‘Quarry’, okay! I blanked. I’m going to go find it on my shelves and refresh myself. Have you piled up more Kafka wordage? Don’t sweat it. My weekend had low expectations, and I suppose they were met. Thanks. Have a big week. ** Right. People have been asking me occasionally for a few years to restore the post up there. And, seeing as how the site in the spotlight died between my originally having made the post and now, and seeing as how its stuff has kind of disappeared from view, maybe it’s time. See you tomorrow.
‘Adorable is a book which documents life. By this I mean from birth to death. Generally when there are such novels both these two occasions are presented in a sanitized way, everything is restrained and dealt with tastefully. Not Adorable.
‘With this book we readers get the real deal. From the minute you are born you are covered in shit and piss and all that crap will make appearances in different forms throughout your life. Then later on it’s the body juices and fluids that accompany sex and then it’s the rotting flesh of death,
‘The book is divided into 4 parts. The first part consists of a couple becoming a family and all the ups and downs of rearing a child. Like I said, there’s a lot of scenes involving poo. Adorable does go deeper as it focuses on the dynamic of the couple – here called, simply B and Q, with the child being called Æ, .
‘The next 2 sections are about death, one part is a meditation and the other is an essay: how do we approach it, why is it in our minds? how integral is it to our lives?
‘The book ends with B and Q and their relationship, with an emphasis on the more corporeal aspect of their partnership. The book starts with a description of bums and ends with one too, thus, like life, we come to a full circle.
‘Ida Marie Hede’s view on life is an honest one. I agree that it is one filled with bodily functions, skin and liquids and I enjoyed reading her descriptions of them (or they were translated well). In between these sections, there are paragraphs on films, music and art: things that are also a part of life.
‘Adorable is a very organic novel: everything flows smoothly and despite the myriad of references and topics mentioned, it all feels natural on the page, no matter how detailed or graphic, all subjects are pulled off (maybe not the right term) with ease.
‘Despite all the descriptions, Adorable is a beautiful book. We all know that life does have its ugly moments and a lot f them are documented here but it’s what also makes life, oddly special. In its own way Adorable is a celebration of all things human, poo and all.’ — The Bobsphere
‘From one of Scandinavia’s most innovative writers, a shimmering journey into the absurd phenomenality of family life – and the human microbiome
Now that Æ exists, B wants to survive the apocalypse everyone is talking about. She wants to grow old and wrinkled and withered and shrunken so she can stay in the world with Æ. She wants to communicate with an adult Æ on the phones of the future. Maybe through some form of telepathy, maybe through small strands of DNA – conversing as mother and daughter will, in the future that might be.
‘Adorable is a haunting, transmundane portrait of a young family told in four parts, in Copenhagen and London. The love between B and Q is tender but worn. When their daughter Æ is born, the everyday lights up in a new way. In its second part, the dead are animated in B’s brain. When B’s father dies, the news is delivered to her by phone and an essayistic, collagist meditation on death and transmission ensues. And then, it’s finally Friday. B and Q descend below the living room floor and wander through a cracked and skittish underworld.
‘In Ida Marie Hede’s porous world, which is our world too, grime, bacteria, and even death are intimately bound up with health and renewal. Fusing the commonplace and the profound, the material and the spiritual, the elegiac and the conceptual, Adorable powerfully insists that it is impossible to tell where death and life begin or end.’ — lolli
Excerpt
B’s BELLY IS FLAT NOW. She really loves its doughy flatness. The punctured white softness that will never be tight again.
Before the flatness her belly is temporarily full, absolutely bulging. A piece of skin around something kicking and living, which is Æ.
Æ is pulled out of B’s womb with forceps that grab her temples. Small red indents on her temples. Æ comes out coated in bacteria from B’s vagina and arse. Bacteria seep into Æ and trigger an immune response: now Æ can live for a thousand years. But it’s almost like Æ doesn’t want to come out — her head won’t turn the last bit of the way in B’s pelvis; a head is actually stuck, pushing on her cervix. Warm, drawn-out spasms of pain, and Æ will have to be taken out by C-section.
If Æ comes out through B’s sliced-open belly, there won’t be enough bacteria. The doctor needs to stick a finger up B’s arsehole, rotate it deftly and then smear a wet finger caked with bacteria across Æ’s shrieking lips.
It doesn’t matter how Æ was born, her lips quickly locate B’s nipples and start sucking. Milk and cracked skin, gums gnawing on breast flesh.
B would like to live for a thousand years too. She holds Æ in her arms, Æ is so new. B can barely figure out how to hold her. As long as she doesn’t drop her: lose hold of her head and break her neck.
Now that Æ exists, B wants to survive the apocalypse everyone is talking about. She wants to grow old and wrinkled and withered and shrunken so she can stay in the world with Æ. She wants to communicate with an adult Æ on the phones of the future. Maybe through some form of telepathy, maybe through small strands of DNA — conversing with each other as mother and daughter will, in the future that might be.
B no longer doubts the future or its new technologies. Æ’s presence moves the lifespan of all things infinitely outwards.
B says she wants to be stronger too, to have bacteria from a body that is not her own. Bacteria is like a life-giving elixir: faecal bacteria from X are transplanted into Y’s digestive tract and changes are observed in Y’s mood and metabolism.
Her belly skin is nowhere near tight again, the lacerations on her uterine walls not even slightly healed. B bleeds into her big mum-nappy, long slimy strands.
Maybe she needs to go home and rest, to lie down with her legs up and with Æ balanced on her belly and a croissant in her hand. Æ’s mouth on her breast and stiff splashes of milk on her baby face.
Or maybe she’s too eager and can’t relax. After Æ is born, she can’t get enough life. She’s taken directly from the delivery room to the gastroenterology ward.
There, a probe is inserted through B’s oesophagus and into her stomach. Down here, the party is already in full swing! There are billions of faecal bacteria in B’s stomach, more than there are humans on Earth, bacteria that have lived for millions of years, which moved into B the day she was born, and which will move on when she dies. In that sense, the word human isn’t very accurate. She’s not mostly human, not at all. Bacteria bounce around, frolicking with half-digested food, as if inside a centrifuge. But it’s not enough, she needs more! Inside the tube, there’s shit from a shit-donor whom B doesn’t know. As the shit descends into her system, B is dangerously close to the brown mass: only the plastic barrier of the probe separates her from the stranger’s shit, sliding through her to become part of her intestinal flora.
She might as well have eaten the poo herself.
B is waiting for a change. Bacteria gives everyone a second chance.
So the skinny person can become a chubby person, the aggressive person can become a calm person, the restless one even-keeled, the depressed and anxious person can become optimistic and impulsive, the optimistic and hopeful person can become deadly serious and thereby increase their sex appeal.
And the person who loves long black lace opera gloves and full polka-dot skirts and big white plastic hairclips will want to wear tracksuits and shrunken woollen vests and sexy black baseball caps that make your eyes really round and blue.
And the person who loves T-shirts with bleach stains and pasty everyday faces and post-humanist theory will want to dance the lindy hop, a dance that makes your cheeks rosy-red.
The person in Buffalo boots puts on an old fisherman’s sweater, the person with acne gets glowing skin, the person with raised eyebrows can have them lowered, the too-pretty person can get a little more asymmetrical.
The person who’s always been missing a crooked and compelling scar on their cheek gets a crooked and compelling scar on their cheek, the person with big boobs gets small boobs, the person with a flowering arm gets a shrivelled arm.
The wildly hairy person loses all their hair, the person who feels too white gets darker skin, the woman who’s had multiple abortions loses her ability to conceive, the person with a belly flat like a pancake gets a swollen belly that’s doughy like sandwich bread.
So that everyone will be able to achieve their desires, so that all of us, the oppressed, can transform ourselves and become the upstanding humans we all secretly dream of being.
So that all of us, the ones in power, can transform ourselves and become the courageous underdogs we all secretly dream of being, and maybe already are.
Who sent the poo? Just as they’re always in the process of producing semen, bodies keep producing shit. If there’s a shortage of shit somewhere in the world, more is likely to turn up soon somewhere else.
More babies, better mood, worse smell.
B doesn’t know who donated her faecal sample, the hospital won’t give her that kind of information. Whether it was a hopeful gift from an old arsehole, sweetheart, I’m giving you the best-cut stuff I’ve got.
B is back home. She watches movies on the couch while she nurses Æ.
In Pasolini’s Salò, a group of teenagers are held captive in a castle. They’re served swollen chunks of shit on porcelain platters and they eat them slowly from porcelain plates, revolted, punctuated by fits of vomiting, down goes the shit.
Æ gurgles, milk spouts out of her and soaks a cloth nappy, a shirt, baby eyelashes, peach fuzz.
Extras
Ida Marie Hede: Vær så modig, som du kan
The Familiar & The Absurd: Literature from Copenhagen
______________
‘SEARCH FOR INGRID CAVEN’S name in the credits of the first feature film in which she appears, and disappointment will be in store: it is nowhere to be found. Her role in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) is too small. A little over 20 minutes into the film, Bruno (Ulli Lommel) is trawling through the inky Munich night, looking for a sex worker named Joanna (Hanna Schygulla) in the hope of then tracking down her pimp (Fassbinder). Caven emerges out of the darkness as if from nowhere. She stands alone in the frame, her exsanguinous face piercing the obscurity. The petty criminal addresses her from offscreen:
— I’m looking for a girl called Joanna.
— Why Joanna? Why not me?
— Because she’s the one I have to find.
— Joanna, Joanna … I saw her just now, in a yellow dress.
‘After this exchange, lasting but some 20 seconds, Caven turns away and vanishes into the void. She is never seen again. The film moves on without her, establishing a pattern that repeats many times throughout the actress’s extraordinary career, whether in works by Fassbinder or others: in appearances as captivating as they are brief, she streaks through films like a meteor in the sky. She is fragile and formidable, worldly and wounded. She is there and then gone, unforgettable.
‘Change a few letters in Caven’s first line in Love Is Colder Than Death and her questions slip out of the fictional universe and into the thorny thicket of offscreen relations: “Why Hanna? Why not me?” It was Schygulla that Fassbinder deemed “the key to everything” in that early film, Schygulla that he went on to make his star, Schygulla that he placed atop his 1981 list of the 10 best actresses of contemporary West German cinema. (Caven is there, too, but in last place.) It is as if Caven’s inaugural appearance in a feature film already confronts the fact that she would rarely perform principal roles.’ — Erika Balsom
‘From Ingrid Caven’s start in cinema alongside Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the myriad extraordinary roles that followed, to her theatre performances and legendary concerts, the German actress and singer has been a force of inspiration and a vital collaborator for artists across five decades, including Werner Schroeter, Yves Saint Laurent, Jean-Jacques Schuhl, Daniel Schmid, Bertrand Bonello, Albert Serra, Claire Denis, Jean Eustache, Rita Azevedo Gomes, Raúl Ruiz and André Téchiné.
‘The book features a new in-depth interview with Caven by Cyril Neyrat and Tsveta Dobreva, a dossier of photographs and other material from her personal archive, a career-spanning essay by Erika Balsom, a conversation between Jean-Jacques Schuhl and Albert Serra, and creative texts on individual films by Philippe Azoury, Renato Berta, Bertrand Bonello, Luc Chessel, Bruce Hainley, Rachel Kushner, Nathalie Léger and Audrey Wollen.’ — Fireflies Press
Excerpts
Extras
Ingrid Caven 1978 / 2001
Ingrid Caven – Chambre 1050
_______________
Diagnostics
I’ve consumed my own body weight in weight-loss tablets. I tell myself a lifelong flirtation doesn’t constitute marriage, that I can let this shit go. I’ve seen how they send them home once the final diagnosis has been made. I know what an end-of-life package looks like. A man disowns what’s left for the sake of an armchair. His bowel sits inside the cancer it made. The cannibal in the mirror is off his food. Tell them I come from a long line of infecund suicides. Tell them to bury me in a salt mine, and come get me when I’m cured.
Viral
There’s something almost homely about a giant virus in Siberia that’s waited till now to wake up. I think of it like the Capgras syndrome I’ve been trying to cultivate—as if I wouldn’t love the imposters just as much. You see, it’s all nerve agents out there, and my gas mask is fogging up. I was counting the dead bodies amassed in the Grand Canyon, and that had something to do with it. They were everyone that had ever lived. The sight of billions of dead anything is vernacular for the superficiality of giving anyone what they want. Poetry is impossible or it isn’t. Its possibility is a joke. It would be like actually laughing out loud. Like a vacuum with nothing in it.
Coda
How is it your horrors are not mine? And how is it that they are? Trying to exchange suffering for words is like marking your own homework, and still getting it wrong. It’s not true that genetically engineered mice will improve our nightmares. They can’t even sing in a straight line. Not that your expectations were high, but this illegal trade in miserablist anecdotes isn’t as lucrative as you might think. As soon as I’m destitute enough I plan on being happy with all the things I don’t have. Right now I have a terabyte of examples that show how examples are misleading. Right now this something on the edge of my experience is ten times the size of itself. It’s a kind of uncomfortably-dimensioned kind of thing. My incompleteness is about the size of its confusion. Encompassing this uncertainty, as a strain of precision, I repeat myself until the only meaning left is modulation. I get up from my chair. I go in no directions at once. — Gary J. Shipley
‘Stab Frenzy is about four members (once five) of an art collective bent on destroying their own identities, the complacency of humans, and art itself. It is a book about art and writing as art, and how our destructive impulses can sometimes be manifestations of a begrudging love.
‘Stab Frenzy is a brilliant, brutal satire of the art world, but it’s more than that, too: it’s a work of art in itself, an ingenious and gory paean to the author’s favourite artists—the shut-ins, the suicides, the spree killers, the daydreamers who dream of destroying the day. Art bleeds into bodies and bodies bleed into the book: Gary J. Shipley’s an artist à la the artists he loves, a force for delightful deformation. This book deformed me, and for that I give thanks.’ — Derek McCormack
Excerpt
Extras
The Face Hole by Gary J. Shipley
BRIGHT STUPID CONFETTI by Gary J. SHIPLEY
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Matthew Kinlin: In Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, Death states to Max von Sydow as the medieval knight: “Most people think neither of death nor nothingness.” Your new collection of stories, Red Flags (House of Vlad, 2024), offers characters the opportunity to think about their own deaths as experienced, often occurring in gruesome and funny ways. What motivated you to write about this confrontation with death and non-existence?
Charlene Elsby: I was at home when the Facebook group for the neighbourhood started showing up in my notifications, as a woman had been hit and dragged at the intersection outside my apartment. Now I’ve always been a little taken aback at how we’re all able to go about our lives, given that death threatens us nearly constantly. And it reminded me of a pamphlet that I was given at a palliative care house when we were watching my stepmother pass. For a couple of weeks we were there nearly constantly, my father sleeping in a chair next to her bed, and I going home nights and returning in the day to bring food and allow him time to go home to bathe. The pamphlet told us that we should not expect our loved ones to have any new or profound thoughts or insights as they approach the other side–and that while we often expect this of the dying, it is unfair to impose upon them like that. Thus I wrote the first story of the book, and the other seven following the same general theme.
Now it’s interesting that you should bring this up now, as I’ve just awoken in my chair and, in that space between sleep and waking, I saw my stepmother’s head in what turned out to be a scarf bunched around a hanger on the drying rack. A psychic told me three months ago that there was a woman with short, curly hair watching over me, and I believed that it was her. When she passed, I used to have dreams that she was calling me from farther and farther distances away, until one day she appeared in full opacity, to tell me that she was fine. Those dreams completely ended after that final encounter, so it was strange to be thinking of this when you wrote to me.
Does the air seem to have a strange scent where you are?
Charlene Elsby Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances House of Vlad
‘Red Flags features eight new stories and three out-of-print chapbooks by the “scream queen of wild psycho-philosophical transgressive lit.”’ — House of Vlad
‘One of my favorite contemporary writers—Elsby’s voice winds its way into your head and smashes about like a trapped heron.’ — B.R. YEAGER
‘Elsby’s voice is daring, original, and wholly uncompromising. — PAULA ASHE
‘Depraved, stark, and dripping in blood… Unique prose, dark musings, and an experimental structure blend beautifully with the layers of grief and bodily autonomy.’ — SARA TANTLINGER
Excerpt
from AGYNY
I knew it from that moment and there’s always time to think while fucking not looking around not thinking about the paint or the curtains there isn’t anything about those things to think about but real thinking and real fucking they go together, like drinking and fucking except drinking and fucking it’s one first then the other but thinking and fucking you do those at the same time and I started thinking, fucking, when the hell it would be over and then trying to move around some under him make it all go faster but fuck if he didn’t like that fuck if he didn’t put his hand down on my mouth to hold me still like that and thinking fuck if that didn’t make it for me like hold that there let’s just lie still and let him fuck me let him fuck me to death and let his hand stay there forever as I pulled my lips back so he could feel that I had teeth and I could feel it flesh on bone not that I didn’t want to bite him but I wouldn’t if I didn’t then he might fuck me to death and that would settle it, settle it forever.
It’s not fair when you’re damaged goods that no one wants you anymore but hell, I know what it’s like to put something back on the shelf because someone else has already fucked it up. —- What they don’t tell you is how when you’re damaged goods you start to think that maybe it’s supposed to be that way and maybe you’re supposed to like it. —- There’s always a way to be happy and if you’re going to be damaged and happy better happy to be damaged, like the damage, like it, like it, do it again. —- Thinking of his hand on my mouth like maybe he thinks he got away with something but maybe there’s something I could do to make it happen again let it happen again but more so, grab my hair and pull it back and fuck my face just use it make it cry and scream and stop it can’t much scream like that now can you. Like a pussy that can tell you when it wants it. —- Damaged goods got off the shelf and wants to fuck. —- That’s when I knew I was fucked is when it didn’t seem like damage any more at all, not damage, this is all scratches, bruises and blood.
He said, “If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it,” and that meant a lot to me, because it meant it didn’t matter I was all over the sheets and floor and his cock most of all but he could always shower that off no matter but the sheets I felt worse about. He’d choked me with his hands and then his cock and then his hands and his cock and then I felt it all come out and tasted every flavor at once and now that was all that was all over the cock and sheets and floor, but he was very nice and said, “That’s what laundry machines are for,” and still I thought that it might take a couple cycles and some really good soap but I thought that he might know a thing or two about it because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have done it. Probably.
Extras
Black Telephone TV: Charlene Elsby
Not Worth Living – 001 – Charlene Elsby
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‘With sparse, focused prose emphasizing striking physical details, Williams creates stark portraits of senselessly slaughtered dolphins, razed forests, and overrun holy sites. There is a clear warning here about the cost of damaging our environment. And it is not just a physical toll. As once solemn traditions lose their meaning and places of reverence are turned into tourist traps, it becomes obvious that failing to respect what we find in the world may be costing us a part of our humanity. Amidst this devastation a feeling emerges that it is the soul of the earth itself that is in danger of evaporating completely and that Azrael feels woefully ill-equipped to save it. And the question lingers in his mind if it is even right for him to do so. Is there not a divine plan at work here?
‘God seems frustratingly distant, both in the celestial stories and in the stories of regular people. It is made clear from the very beginning that Azrael is distinct from other angels. Heaven is not his realm. He and Jesus are not well aquatinted, we are told. Just as importantly, Azrael is not Death. Azrael’s purview is the living world and the souls that fill it. In this regard, he is not unlike the Devil. And this results in an oddly touching camaraderie between the two. As they snipe at each other, execute petty revenges, and argue philosophy it becomes clear that they rely on one another’s company to keep back a void of loneliness. It is a need for connection that feels distinctly human.
‘Silence doesn’t just echo from the divine in these stories, it prevails in the mundane world as well. From a father afflicted by laryngitis to a man awed into silence by the sight of two elephants, people struggle to find their voices in these stories. As with most things in this collection, there are two faces to this silence. At times it provides a sense of calm and reflection, while at others it becomes a fearsome, devouring force. It is the silent drip of grains through the hourglass, as the feeling builds from one story to the next that time is running swiftly out—for the world and for the souls trying to find their way back to it.
‘The mixing of the celestial and the mundane in these stories makes the smallest moment feel significant, while the weightier concerns of the Devil and Azrael take on a degree of irreverence. Illustrious figures such as Bach and Dylan Thomas often appear hapless or absurd, while anonymous characters carry themselves with a humble dignity. These stories sometimes feel like bizarre fever dreams, others arrive with startling clarity. The result is a strangely beautiful kaleidoscope, refracting the question of what it means to be human into ninety-nine bejeweled rays.’ — B.B. Garin
Joy Williams Concerning the Future of Souls Tin House
‘Balancing the extraordinary and the humble, the bizarre and the beatific, the book presents Azrael as a thoughtful and troubled protagonist as he confronts the holy impossibility of his task, his uneasy relationship with Death and his friendship with the Devil. In this follow-up to Williams’ 99 Stories of God, a collection of connected beings – ranging from ordinary people to great artists such as Kafka, Nietzsche, Bach and Rilke to dogs, birds, horses and butterflies – experience the varying fate of the soul, transient yet everlasting.
‘Profound, sorrowful, witty and ecstatic, Concerning the Future of Souls will leave readers awestruck in their confrontation of life in the face of death.’ — Tin House
Excerpts
1
They lived in New York City in an apartment overlooking a park. It was the park, his parents said. You were always supposed to say the park. His father was sick. He began being sick a year before when he had laryngitis. His father had been interested in the sickness for awhile but now he was not. His mother had never wanted to understand it and did not want to learn anything about the machines his father required. This was not because she didn’t love his father, he was told. People who knew the machines and how to care for them came in every day but they did not spend the night. His father spoke little to his mother but he would talk to him in his strange new voice. He did not like it. He did not like trying to talk to his father about school or soccer or the doorman’s puppy which he had only seen pictures of anyway. —-Every few weeks they would leave the city and visit his grandmother who lived with her brothers in a large house by the ocean. You could not see the ocean except for a tiny part of it and even that sometimes disappeared. Everyone in the house was old—or elderly was a word he had learned— and there were no children anywhere. Still, he did not mind these visits, he was somewhat hypnotized by them in fact. —-They didn’t seem to know each other well though they must have known each other better than anyone else. They would make popcorn for him in a pot on the stove and not the microwave. They didn’t have a microwave. His mother had confided in him once that his father’s family were rich oddballs and that their home was full of kitsch. —-“Kitsch,” his mother had explained, “isn’t in itself beautiful but instead elicits its emotion from the beauty it depicts. Like that black ceramic pan-
ther in the bookcase.” —-“I love that panther,” he said. —-“Of course you don’t love it,” his mother said. —-He did and one of his great uncles had given it to him but he broke it playing with the necklace it wore and he did not cry. They showed him a photograph of his father as a boy. When he was the same age you are, they told him. His father’s eyes were dark, even disbelieving. He wanted to ask what he had been looking at, though he did not, because he didn’t believe it either.
KITSCH
2
What is your name?
Alph.
Ralph?
Alph.
How do you spell that?
A. L. P. H. as in: Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.
I don’t think you’re right for this position.
HUMAN RESORCES
3
He had four thousand wings. This was simply a fact. The feathers of each wing— innumerable. As they should be. The wings sheltered the souls so they could not be viewed in transit. This too was correct. He also had a thousand eyes but not, as has been rumored, four heads. Azrael was spectacularly made and looked nothing like Jesus as was so tirelessly depicted though in truth the Nazarene was not at all as rendered either. Jesus and Azrael were not well acquainted. They traveled in different circles. Jesus was surprisingly unfamiliar with death other than his own. —-The birds of the air were terrified of Azrael.
His murmurs of assurance were incomprehensible to them. Their bones were hollow and filled with air. The sweetest air. Wasn’t that enough?
IN LOVELY BLUE . . . AROUND WHICH LIES MOST LOVING BLUE . . .
*Hölderlin
Extras
Live! At the Library: Joy Williams
UA Prose Series: Joy Williams
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! ‘Badlands’ is great. It’s one of the best written films ever too. Zac’s still sick, but I think he’s swinging upwardly. The tarot reading: It was when I was working on ‘I Wished’. A tarot expert friend suggested doing one to try to put me ‘in touch’ with George. But the actual reading, as I mentioned, disturbed him too much to go through with it. He said the cards were saying that trying to communicate with George was very dangerous and that it shouldn’t be done. Naturally, even though I don’t really believe in the spirit world, etc., I’ve wondered about that incident ever since. Squirrels are magicians, I think? Love making this thing we’re attempting to do to free our film and that looks like it’s likely to collapse at the moment not collapse please, G. ** James, 10 am here by my French clock. If you get a small, handheld vacuum cleaner, you can use it to vacuum up mosquitoes. Neat little trick. I like the idea of the blog’s internal organs being bloody, but, practically speaking, nah. Paris somehow looks even better when it’s nippy. Not sure why. I guess a gray light suits it. I’m fine with, like, herbal tea, but tea that’s supposed to be caffeinated and is instead censored is kind an abomination to me. Good, you’re writing. Fuck pre-determining categories. I always think of what a write as a thing until it tells me it’s something in particular, if it ever does. So, Saturday is your second day off in a row. Max it out, and I have no doubt you will. ** _Black_Acrylic, That’s true. I think the only voicemails I get are from utility companies telling me to pay my bills. I’ve never heard of George Grossmith, but that book does sound entertaining. Enjoy. ** Tyler Ookami, Nice: that specified nostalgia. Those are some great answering machine song adds, I must say. Good eye or ear or both, I guess. Melvins are god. I went on a reading tour with Foetus in the 80s. Boy, was he a complete fucking prick back then, and now he’s like the nicest guy. Getting off coke can make such a difference. Good take on Gaga. That ‘she actually can sing?!’ prioritising seemingly brought on by those American Idol, etc. shows is maybe the greatest malady of contemporary music, I think. Mike and I talked about possibilities re: who would write the Goth Rock Opera score — Mike himself plus friends, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of The Cramps, Patrick Mata (Kommunity FK), a few others — but we never got as far as commissioning the music, unfortunately. Stellar weekend to you. ** jay, The best thing about answering machines was that it was de rigeur to leave messages for people, and people would get quite creative, or leave very drunken embarrassing messages, and you could pull the tape out and keep the best messages stored and on hand, not that you ever ended up doing anything with those tapes, but still. I’ll set my sights on ‘MGS2’. I just met a Big Boss in ‘Luigi’s Mansion 3’ that I don’t seem to be able to beat no matter what I do, so I might have to bail on that game and move on. So your friend hypnotised you? I’m apparently very susceptible to hypnosis, and when I was a teen my friends would hypnotise me if we got really bored and couldn’t think of anything else to do. It’s an interesting state. It was interesting to find out what I was willing to do when it was something I was just shy about doing normally and what I absolutely wouldn’t do even under hypnosis. Was your weekend one of note? ** Kosten Koper, Hello, Kosten! I’m grateful for this rare treat! Nice list of phone messages there. Somewhere in my boxes of shit in storage somewhere is a saved phone message of a very drunk William Burroughs singing happy birthday to me. Thanks for that link. I’ll definitely check it out and will give the folks here the option too. Everyone, the great Kosten Koper passes along an answer machine-related link of total note. In his words: ‘AUTOMATIC CONFESSIONAL VOICEMAIL PROJECT – ANYBODY AND EVERYBODY WELCOME TO PARTICIPATE. Call The Automatic Confessional and leave a one minute message of any words and sounds that you want. I (Hal McGee) will not edit or restrict or censor the messages in any way. I want you to understand the full implications of what this means. I will allow any form of expression, no matter how offensive, objectionable, or tasteless — this includes hate speech, racism, sexism, ageism, etc. This does not mean that I personally condone or approve of or agree with any content of any of the messages.’ Here, Thank you, kind sir. Try not to be such a stranger if the odd mood strikes again. xoxo. ** Steeqhen, Those videos sound so exciting. Seriously up my alley. I am on the hunt starting in … however long it takes me to finish this p.s. Thanks, yum. What’s the magazine you’re editor on, only if you don’t mind saying? I liked ‘Hell House LLC’. In our film, the home haunt is very disappointing and not scary. The family’s aspiration and their failure is kind of what the film’s about. Quiet sounds okay. I’m going to maybe take one last stab at beating this impossible seeming Boss in ‘Luigis Mansion 3’ and then probably give up and download another game. I hate when that happens. ** HaRpEr, Funny, the first thing I thought of when Ferdinand sent me that post was the Replacements song too. Your description of the book makes sense, yes, and I’m serious down for it. Like ‘Time Remaining’, very interesting. Definitely dig in and do that. It sounds pretty crucial. Plots that can only be observed from afar are always the goal. Well, for me, and for 90% of what I read. You sound really jazzed and inspired. That’s so exciting! Kudos, kudos. Did you make good progress during the weekend? ** Uday, You poked through. ‘Quarry’ by Jane White … wow, I feel like I’ve read that, but I’m not absolutely sure. It sounds so familiar. I’ll check and try to make haste through its pages if it’s a stranger. Are you better or at least better-ish now? I hope. I like Kafka, sure. I never fell in love with him, but it might’ve been my mood. Funny books? Mm, I have an odd sense of humor maybe. Let’s see … off the top of my head maybe Ivy Compton-Burnett, especially ‘The Present and the Past’, Derek McCormack, especially ‘Castle Faggot’, Ronald Firbank, especially ‘Valmouth’. I don’t know that they’re laugh out loud funny, but I found them highly amusing. ** Lucas, Hey. Oh, I was sad to wake up and see your message. Shit, I’m so sorry and sad that I don’t get to see you so quickly and sad that you’re missing the concert. I shouldn’t besmirch your mom, but that really sucks of her, I’m sorry. Yeah, you just have to find your way here when the time and opportunity allows. That’s all. Your ideas about the ghost boy story make it seem kind of imperative that you proceed with it and throw yourself into it, etc., because it sounds pretty monumental. I hope you managed to have a weekend that made the weekend you were going to have seem like a small miss. xoxoxo. ** Okay. Up there are five recent or new books that I really liked and really think would be worth your time if you look through them and think you might agree with me. See you on Monday.
FLUNKER, six fictions, 124 pp., coming from Amphetamine Sulphate in July. US, July 4: Preorders open. UK/Europe, July 19: Preorders open. Cover by Michael Salerno.
* POSTPONED: May 27 – 31: Paris @ Théâtre du Châtelet: THIS IS HOW YOU WILL DISAPPEAR * POSTPONED: October (dates TBA): New York @ Brooklyn Academy of Music: CROWD
Ida Marie Hede Adorable
Ingrid Caven: I Am a Fiction
Gary J Shipley Stab Frenzy
Charlene Elsby Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances
Joy Williams Concerning the Future of Souls
Now available in North America 
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