Author: DC (Page 51 of 1086)

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Jory L. Bertram Lines Upon Lines (2016)
Extreme anxiety can lead to hallucinations. In the case of 16 year-old French artist Jory L. Bertram, the hallucinations took the form of thousands of lacerations all over her body. This piece is an attempt to convey those experiences.

 

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Agata Jarosławiec I never touched my father like that (2020)

 

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Fábio Magalhães various (2011 – 2014)
Salvadorian artist Fábio Magalhães paints inconceivable acts and positions in a truly gruesome yet astonishing manner. In which, he creates contours of a very disturbing reality. His hyper-realistic rendering and conditions, metaphorically connects images of his own body, feelings and banal situations.

 

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Hal Flesh Love (Vacuum sealed Couples) (2007)

 

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Smiling robot face is made from living human skin cells (2004)
A smiling face made from living human skin could one day be attached to a humanoid robot, allowing machines to emote and communicate in a more life-like way, say researchers.

 

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Shen Shaomin Summit (2010)
Summit comprised life-sized hyperrealistic sculptures of deceased communist leaders on their deathbeds (or in Fidel Castro’s case, clinging to life).

 

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Adriana Varejão various (2007 – 2015)
Adriana Varejão, (born in Río de Janeiro in 1964) has -for more than two decades- engaged in an aesthetic discourse that has delved fearlessly into controversial topics such as European Colonialism in Brazil, human slavery, and the body as a mediator for history’s untold violence. Varejão’s work evidences material as well as historical concerns; her paintings, drawings, and sculptures are physical and often, confrontational objects.

 

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Andra Ursuta Crush (2011)
Cast Urethane, wax, sneakers, wig, silicone, 152 x 102 x 23 cm

 

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Gina Pane various (1974 – 1983)
Gina Pane (1939 – 1990), a French artist of an Italian origin, was one of the main representatives of what is widely recognised as Body Art, the artistic trend characterised by the practise of self-mutilation and sadomasochism. Working with/on her own flesh and blood as an artistic media, Pane laid bare the human body’s fragilities; undressing, hitting, hurting, dirtying her own body, she was able to show the sense of danger and pain. Gina Pane, with a distinctive composure and a rational attitude, used the sufferance as a way of representing spirituality, carrying a deep emotional and symbolic charge. In Sentimental action (1973), the proto feminist artist, dressed totally in white, takes a bunch of roses in her hand and hurts herself with their spines. The blood dripping on the bouquet turns the roses from white to red. At that point, the artist cuts herself with a razor blade. An even higher pathos is represented by Action Psyché (Essai), a performance from 1974 – documented by sketches, photographs, notes – where Gina Pane injures her eyelashes to simulate tears of blood, and then engraves her belly. Some prim viewers could be disarmed and shocked by the narcissism, aggressiveness and exhibitionism displayed in such a rough and direct way.

 

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Choi Xoo Ang Islets of Aspergers Type XIV (2009)
Xooang Choi’s Islets of Aspergers series, each with a serial number, shows the characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome by exaggerating and distorting a body part. These images constantly give doubtful stares to the outer world or act indifferent to everything else besides themselves.

 

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Regina José Galindo Goose Flesh (2012)
Regina José Galindo began her artistic evolution as a poet. It was in 1999 that she started to use her body as part of her work in a more direct manner by adopting performance as her chief medium of expression. Her work leads us into the problems of current society, into a stark reality, through the discourse of her own body and by means of a series of actions that are equally stark, unrestrained and full of symbolism and which lead the artist to place herself in extreme situations that are also intense points of reflection for spectators.

 

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Santiago Sierra 250 cm line tattooed on six paid people (1999)
In 1999, Spanish artist Santiago Sierra paid six unemployed young men in Cuba to take part in one of his installation pieces. The men were offered $30 each to participate, and stripped to their shorts to become a part of its human experiments, this time in the Espacia Aglutinador, Havana’s oldest art space. Santiago Sierra had the men tattooed – one straight, horizontal line reaching across each of their backs. “Having a tattoo is normally a personal choice. But when you do it under ’remunerated’ conditions, this gesture becomes something that seems awful, degrading—it perfectly illustrates the tragedy of our social hierarchies. The tattoo is not the problem. The problem is the existence of social conditions that allow me to make this work. You could make this tattooed line a kilometer long, using thousands and thousands of willing people.”

 

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Daniel J. Martinez redemption of the flesh, its just a little bruise; the politics of the future as urgent as the blue sky (2008)
The hypnotic mechanical nihilism of a masterful Daniel J. Martinez installation, “redemption of the flesh, its just a little bruise; the politics of the future as urgent as the blue sky”, a 2008 animatronic sculpture that squirts what appears to be blood onto the walls of the museum. Behind this carnage are hand-scrawled recounts of the known plagues of history that have taken a million or more victims each.

 

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Cao Hui various (2011 – 2015)
Beijing-based artist Cao Hui insists that people used to be given the title of “artist” based on their “degree of mastery in imitating nature” though now, he says, “It seems artists are no longer happy just being artists, but are driven by their inborn love of performance to try out new roles, such as philosopher, scientist, doctor or perhaps even engineer. I think artists really want to play god more than anything else, and will stop at nothing to construct a truth that validates the self.”

 

 

 

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Karen Paddington Taxidermy (2011)
A woman dressed in white clinician’s overalls methodically flays the skin off a mannequin.

 

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Michael Zajkov various (2013)
Artist Michael Zajkov worked making puppets for a theater since 2010, after graduation from Kuban State University of Russia, who made his debut at the “Art Dolls” expo in Moscow, 2013, where he presented a few creations and attracted the attention worldwide. By using French mohair as hair and hand painted glass from Germany as eyes, Zajkov makes these extremely realistic Russian dolls dressed in exquisite costumes.

 

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Elmgreen & Dragset Death of a Collector (2009)

 

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Yang Shaobin Body (2009)

 

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Berlinde De Bruyckere various (2004 – 2015)
An unsettling, reconfigured concept of the body, helpless yet contorted, takes centre stage in Berlinde de Bruyckere’s faceless sculptures. Abject deformation is turned into beauty as if the artist is trying to wrestle a shape from abstract form. That each body, whether human or equine, stands on a plinth or inside a cabinet, as if posing for the viewer, emphasises their monumentalised objecthood and the tension between what these objects represent and what they actually are. De Bruyckere began making work around ideas of the human figure in the early 1990s, first through its absence, stacking and draping woollen blankets on furniture, symbolising shelter and vulnerability. Then she added bodies made of wax, almost completely covered in wool; imperfect, sexless and headless.

 

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Alex Katz Boy with Branch 2 (1975)

 

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Andrei Molodkin various (2012 – 2015)
Russian contemporary artist Andrei Molodkin is taking body art to a whole new level with a machine that boils corpses down to oil, which can then be poured into molds to become sculptures. Paris-based Molodkin says that he has tested his high-pressure invention, which in three to six months turns a corpse into “yellowish, sweet crude”. BBC reporter Sasha Gankin has already signed up, saying he wants to be turned into a sculpture of a brain, and French porn star Chloé des Lysses has asked to be made into a model of praying hands. According to Molodkin, who will represent Russia at this year’s Venice Biennale, a few HIV-positive New Yorkers who are expected to die in a year or two have agreed to the project as well.

 

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Tony Matelli Double Meat Head (2008)
Tony Matelli’s sculpture “Double Meat Head,” a self-portrait diptych, represents the two stages of Matelli’s existence — the first stage signified with live, fresh meat, the second stage signified with decay, in which the flesh decomposes, consumed by maggots.

 

 

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Isidro López-Aparicio Learning How to relate (2012)
Two hundred people hanging head-down in random group sizes, as human relation close groups.

 

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Andrew Krasnow various (2001 – 2013)
The Nazis at Buchenwald concentration camp did it. And so did serial killer Ed Gein. Now, Andrew Krasnow is making sculptures and lampshades out of human skin, all in the name of art: His works include human skin lampshades – a direct response to the belief that similar items made from the skin of Holocaust victims were found at Buchenwald concentration camp. Using skins from white men who donated their bodies to medical science, he has created freak versions of mundane items including flags, boots and maps of America – in effect using skin like leather. His work, he says, is a commentary on human cruelty and America’s ethics and morality.

 

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Marilyn Minter Green Pink Caviar (2009)
It is difficult to tell if Marilyn Minter’s subjects are meant to make viewers uncomfortable—or turn them on. A self-proclaimed “still life art photographer,” Minter’s pornography-inspired portraits of women seemingly possessed by the voyeuristic lens all appear to be objects of her wildest hallucinations. Yet, upon closer inspection, the images reveal the simplest reality that exists in beauty: imperfection. Her camera catches, with peephole discretion, tongues and fingers intermingling with precious stones, body hair and birthday cake, rendering her subjects in a miserable yet erotic state of disarray.

 

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He Yunchang One Meter of Democracy (2014)
He Yunchang performance One Meter of Democracy, he had a 0.5 to 1 centimeter deep incision cut into the right side of his body, stretching one meter from his collarbone to his knee. A doctor assisted in this procedure, though no anesthesia was used during the entire process. Before the surgery, he held a satirical “Chinese democracy-style” vote, using the farcical methods of Chinese elections to ask the roughly twenty people present whether or not he should carry out the procedure. The final tally was 12 votes for, 10 against and 3 abstaining, passing by two votes. The process was shocking to watch. He used a self-abusive, self-mutilating method to push himself to the edge, near the brink of death, and attained a self-redemption of both spirit and flesh. Perhaps this is the price of democracy, and perhaps He Yunchang is using his own suffering to awaken and probe the languishing soul.

 

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Folkert de Jong The Dance (2008)
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones.

 

 

 

 

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Lucy Glendinning Skins 1 (2010)
Rubber

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Lucas, Hey. No big, I know how busyness goes. Good luck getting through the torture days, yikes. Yes, you can message me through WhatsApp. Morning/midday should be good for me. Zac would like to meet you, if that sounds interesting. He’s very nice. I remember ‘The Gift of Death’ being tough and great. My weekend was mostly playing a video game. Yesterday too, and seeing a pal. And I’m smack dab in then middle of ideally solving a huge problem for our film, but it may not work. Snow! Gosh, maybe it’ll snow here too, but don’t count on it. Survive and even transcend your week. xo. ** jay, Hi, jay! Yes, the last section of ‘Sodom’ is what it’s all about for me too. It seems possible that I could get in the mood for something like Nora Ephron’s thing, but it may take some concentration. I played a couple of ‘Metal Gear Solid’ games during a short stint when a friend lent me his Xbox, I can’t remember their titles. And ‘Policenauts’. ‘LM3’ is very goofy in the Nintendo style, but I’m a bit of a Nintendo Head, so I enjoy it. Also, it’s a pretty basic game, which is good because it’s my first game in a couple of years and I need to rebuild my thumb callouses. ‘Resident Evil 5′ is great. Did you play RE8’ aka ‘Resident Evil Village’? I loved that one. I thought it was one of the series’ best. Enjoy the role play, sounds fun. And thanks for filling in James. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Has that book appeared here before? Hm, yes, that’s possible. Dude, that hat so works on you, as expected, but even more so. And its jaunty tilt is a lovely touch. ** James, Hi. Wow, that’s an essay if I’ve ever heard of one. Speaking of, my standard tea of choice is Russian Earl Gray. Nintendo is the only system I’ve ever owned from the beginning, so you could say I’m a Nintendo guy, yeah. The trick with Sade is to skim his books until the intense stuff pops up, then dwell there until he starts pontificating fancily again. Thanks about my voice. I think growing up in LA gets all whatever credit. I sort of love ambiguity. ‘Confusion is the truth’ is my motto. Mont-mart-ruh is close, and is the best I can do, but there are all these tiny missing sound inferences in there that are the hard part. No worries about Sade dissing, he’s fully dissable. And no worries about length, I do the p.s. because I obviously like to. Big day! ** Dominik, Hi!!!! Yeah, the Steely Dan thing is funny, right? I guess she and the SD guys went to university together. The ‘Frisk’ film … long story short: A film producer bought the rights, and I liked the work of the director who was supposed to direct it, so I said okay. Then he dropped out. Then two other directors I was okay with came in and then dropped out. Then they brought in the guy who ended up directing it. And he refused to talk to or consult with me, which made me very suspicious. And they made all these excuses to not let me see the film until the day before the premiere when they had to. I hated it and was very angry, but I told them if they read a statement from me at the premiere, which basically said ‘I wish the film well, but it’s not an accurate representation of my book’, I’d be chill about everything. They didn’t read my statement at the premiere, so that started a war between the film and me. Then the director did an interview where he said the novel was horribly written and a piece of shit that he’d rescued it with his film, and it’s been ugly ever since. There you go. Oops, hole bag + dog poop = Urgh. Love in mourning because he just found out the Paris Hard Rock Cafe closed for good last night, and he always went there on his birthday to eat nachos, and now he’s sad, G. ** Bill, Howdy. I think with that descriptor of your gig you’d better get those extensions, otherwise there might be a riot. ** Dom Lyne, Hi. The cast crew screening went really well. Everyone seemed very happy with the film, and it seemed like they were being totally sincere. Zac still hasn’t read the new script. Long story. But he promises he will any second now, and he’d better. Oh, okay, I’m so bad with email. I’ll go find your email with the attachment. Sorry. I’m hopeless on the email front sometimes. Thank you! The story of ‘Haunt’ is enough to get it under my belt. I’ll search. And thanks for that tip too. ** Måns BT, Bonnest jour, Måns. Don’t translate it just on my account, but if that seems like a generally good idea at any point, I would be a pleased recipient. I haven’t seen any new films recently for some reason. A friend and I were going to see ‘Terrifier 3’, but it’s already out of the theaters. I’ve only seen older stuff. A couple of Lucrecia Martel films because her retrospective is happening. I’ve been going to these programs of experimental films from 60s/70s @ the Pompidou. I’m behind. ‘Places That Were Anime to Me’ has a really title and premise, so noted on that one. Lucky you re: pot. It just makes me totally paranoid so I have to avoid it. I liked watching films on MDMA. We definitely will hit you up about showing ‘RT’ in that circumstance as soon as we’re through this rough patch. We’re excited about that idea a lot. So, yeah, and thank you, thank you. Stockholm has deep dish pizza? Damn, what is wrong with Paris. If I trusted the French mail service, which I don’t, I would, yes, ask you to pop a slice in the post, but just eat and enjoy it for me. ** Justin D, ‘Guffman’ is big fun. All the early Guest films are great. Up though ‘A Mighty Wind’. The game I’m playing is ‘Luigi’s Mansion 3’. Favorite documentary … hm, maybe either Chantal Akerman’s ‘No Home Movie’ or Thom Anderson’s ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself’ or Frederick Weissman’s ‘Monrovia, Indiana’? Maybe? Yes, the cast & crew have seen ‘Room Temperature’, or the ones that were in LA at the time, and it seemed to go really, really well. And it was so great to get all those people together again. I hadn’t seen any of them in the flesh since we finishing shooting in early May of last year. Thanks for asking sir. ** Uday, I know, I know, the blog is relentless. Pierre Clementi is a big hero of mine, and also kind of the star of my novel ‘The Marbled Swarm’, so yeah. Anyone who gets the genius of ABBA is royalty in my book. Here’s to you guys’ friendship! I’ll look for Peggy Gou’s ‘Lobster Telephone’. I don’t know it. Tell him thanks. Yes, there’s a film producer also named Dennis Cooper. He produced some big TV series: ‘Miami Vice’, ‘Chicago Hope’, others. Every once in a while, some interviewer will say to me, ‘It’s so strange that you wrote those books and also produced ‘Miami Vice’ at the same time, please explain.’ ** Okay. I thought the old post that I’ve restored up there was maybe a good one to resurrect, but perhaps I’m wrong? See you tomorrow.

 

‘There are certain writers who are deliberately out of pace with the literary lockstep that characterizes a period, certain writers who instead of going with the flow of the narrative current or trying to hitch a ride on the trends of the moment end up swimming their way upstream or coming downriver at a slant in a way that leads them into very different waters. Rather than, say, investing in American Minimalism or Dirty Realism, they pursue Italo Calvino’s notion of lightness and the more complex lucidity that this opens for them. Rather than settling into the easy chair of realism, they stand up and stare into the foxed tain of a mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of something more magical. If all writers, like Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, are propelled into the future while watching the ruins of literary history pile up behind them, then these non-conformist writers are the ones who manage to catch a glimpse in this wreckage of undiscovered and still-unruined avenues that offer them shortcuts to new, impossible futures.

‘The curious thing about literary history is that writers who buck against the accepted norms of their time are often the writers who survive. And, paradoxically, they are often the writers who later come to characterize a given moment. They come to feel necessary partly because we sense in them a particular and peculiar visionary quality, a method of transforming all they touch into something that feels uniquely and complexly their own, and allows it to keep unfolding for the reader.

‘Rikki Ducornet is such a writer, mercifully and productively out of step with her time. She brings to her work a sense of curiosity that many contemporary writers have forgotten. Every object for her, as for Blake, has the potential to be an immense world of delight, opening perpetually up, with this delight being mirrored in the twists and turns of the language that both reveals and evokes it.

‘Ducornet admits, in her essay “Waking to Eden,” to being “infected with the venom of language in early childhood.” Her charged language, textured and deft, has the complexity and resonance of the best eighteenth-century authors. It fulminates and fulgurates, refusing to be polite or to stay still. It is perhaps not surprising that she began her literary career as a poet; she continues to handle her words with an almost mystical respect, with great care and precision. She is able to take everything in with an almost mystical openness, to see the beauty in a dead fox covered with wasps. As a result her work replicates the enchantment we felt when hearing fantastic stories as children or when we first fell into books considered too mature for us.

‘Thematically, her work spools out the struggle between the doctrinaire impulse to control and contain—an impulse leading at its worst to a resentful and deadly fascism in Entering Fire—and the more dynamic (albeit sometimes equally dangerous) impulse to transgress, struggle, and create. In The Jade Cabinet, this impulse is explored in the struggle between reason and imagination, in a man’s lust to conquer and possess all he touches, a struggle that ultimately leads to him being unable to have the very thing he most wants. In books like The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition, there is a struggle between nature and civilization—that which frees and that which binds—but this is coupled with an awareness of how freedom can open into death, and the knowledge of how certain boundaries can be productive. …

‘The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade (1999), centers on Gabrielle, a fan-maker who had created fans with erotic scenes on them for the Marquis de Sade, and who is now accused by the French revolutionary government of taking part in the now-imprisoned Sade’s debauches. The eroticism of the fans and Gabrielle’s descriptions of them are counterpoised to the philistinism of the new order itself and to Bishop Diego de Landa’s genocide of the Mayans in the sixteenth century (about which both Sade and Gabrielle have publicly written). The first half of the novel is presented in dramatic form, as a non-narrated transcript; the second half is narrated by Sade himself, after Gabrielle’s execution. This novel is the most overtly political of Ducornet’s works, though the pleasures of her beautifully rendered style keep it from ever becoming too polemic. …

‘By being out of step with the literary world, Rikki Ducornet has created a genuinely unique world of her own, one of a tension between Eden and its loss, one in which wonder and magic still tenuously exist. A consummate stylist, she has created a body of work that is unique, dynamic, and important, and, above all, that will continue to impact readers for many years to come.’ — Context No.22

 

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Further

Rikki Ducornet Website
A Conversation with Rikki Ducornet By Sinda Gregory and Larry McCaffery
‘Rikki Ducornet explores transformation’
‘Memory and Oblivion: The Historical Fiction of Rikki Ducornet, Jeanette Winterson, and Susan Daitch’
Rikki Ducornet @ Literature Map
‘Rikki Ducornet’s “Literary Pillars”’
‘Portals, Labyrinths, Seeds’
Book Notes – Rikki Ducornet “The Deep Zoo” @ largehearted boy
Rikki Ducornet @ The Reading Experience
‘Cunnilingus (Rikki Ducornet)’
Rikki Ducornet in conversation
‘”Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” by Steely Dan: Songfacts
‘Surrealist Rikki Ducornet Plumbs Depths of Psycho Trauma’
‘Angela Carter’s American Inheritance; Rikki Ducornet’s World of Fiction’
‘The Dickmare’, by Rikki Ducornet
‘Burning Love’
‘Imagined Bodies in Rikki Ducornet’s The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition’
‘from Rikki Ducornet’s “The Fan-Maker’s Inquisiti
on”‘
Rikki Ducornet interviewed @ BOMB
Buy ‘The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition’

 

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Extras

Rikki Ducornet Reads for the Bard College Program in Written Arts (04/10/14)

&Now; Conference: Rikki Ducornet, 10/16/09 1/5

Rikki Ducornet & Robert Cohen

 

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Interview

 

How does the process of writing work for you? How does your writing germinate, and then come to fruition?

Rikki Ducornet: My first novel, The Stain, was set into motion by a powerful dream. That dream unleashed enough energy to fuel four novels—and this to my astonishment. I was an artist, after all, not a writer. Entering Fire, Phosphor in Dreamland, and The Fan Maker’s Inquisition were driven by an irrepressible, irresistible voice. Writing a novel can be a little like speaking in tongues! For example, I woke up one morning with the phrase “A fan is like the thighs of a woman: it opens and closes” running through my head. My novel’s narrator, a fan-maker, had arrived fully formed and clamoring for attention. She kept me busy for two-and-a-half years.

As a girl I lived in Cairo for a year, and my most recent novel, Gazelle, came from memories of that extraordinary time and place. It took decades for the book to surface. The process of writing is as mysterious as it is dynamic. Sometimes I think of it as alchemical—transforming the stuff of life into something new, possibly clairvoyant, hopefully lucid.

You paint and draw, in addition to writing. Is your process of painting similar to your process of writing?

RD: The art I dream is always technically impossible, unless, perhaps, I knew how to work in virtual reality. Then I could recreate my dreams: things made of minerals, water and flames! For me the creative process is always about exploring new territories, blind and without a map. As with writing, I have no interest in repeating myself, although I do return to museums of natural history and old books on botany and biology for inspiration each time—just as I return to Gaston Bachelard when I am writing a novel. But each picture, each book, is its own creature. And if my painting is not driven by words, my writing owes a lot to painting—Vermeer’s luminosity, Goya’s deep shadows.

On a recent visit to Brown University I saw a series of marvelous virtual reality projects—I’d like to call them ‘events’—that made me realize, once again, how infinite, how mutable the process of the imagination is. It is perfectly possible that there will always be new vocabularies and new ways of seeing and being in the world.

Do you think that virtual-reality experiences like that, and forms of electronic communication, will ever take the place of “the book”?

RD: I think there is something profoundly satisfying about holding a text in one’s hands—a book, or a clay tablet, or a piece of knotted string. And although the new technologies are fascinating, there is no reason why the book will not persist—that is to say, if anything persists the current madness! After all, the cinema hasn’t destroyed our love of reading, just as photography has not destroyed painting.

When did you first start writing fiction?

RD: Late. When I began my first novel, I was close to forty. I had been writing poetry and odd, short fictions, but it wasn’t until that book seized me by the scruff of the neck that I realized I was a writer. It felt like coming home. The process was terrifying; I was scared to death for over three years! But also a little giddy with pleasure.

You’ve traveled all over the world—as a child, as well as an adult. Did those experiences have an influence on your fiction writing?

RD: An enormous influence. My father was Cuban and his birthplace, Havana, held an immense fascination for me. It was a stunning city, and I think its architecture ignited my longing for mystery and complexity. As a young adult I lived in Algeria for two years right after the War for Independence. Very few people know that the French used more napalm in Algeria—at the border between Algeria and Tunisia—than the United States used in Vietnam. Torture and genocide—these exemplified that war. I saw what this had done to the Algerian people and, for that matter, what it had done to the French. These are things one cannot forget. The novel I am currently writing is about this.

One of the things I love about your novels is that they are so full of other voices and other cultures. Sometimes a place that writers are told we can’t go is writing from the point of view of someone else. For example, an Asian told he can’t write from the point of view of a white Texan, or a European told she can’t write from the point of view of an African American.

RD: It breaks my heart when one writer tells another what she can or cannot do. I once knew a woman, a professor of literature, who said that Flaubert had no right to write Madame Bovary because he was a man. Such dangerous foolishness! This is just another form that dogmatic thinking takes. And it seems to me that the imagining mind—which is also a profoundly human mind—must be unfettered, boundless. To write from the perspective of another’s world demands a generous and a rigorous leap of the spirit; it demands empathy and mindfulness. Writing is so much about subverting dogmatisms of all kinds, above all the ones that insist you cannot go there! You must not say that! Writers need to go anywhere, to take anything on. And the only rule is to do it well.

Recently a young Navajo writer asked me if he “had to write Navajo.” As if every member of his tribe were a brick in a wall without an autonomous, living imagination. He is a writer of real capacity and he was being made to feel guilty for his unique and restless way of being and creating. I told him that not only did he have the right to write about anything at all, but that it was his responsibility to himself—and to his world—to do so. To, as Italo Calvino asks of us, “dream very high dreams.” I asked him to imagine a novel about Heian Japan written by an American Navajo. What would that, could that, be like? The idea delighted him. To tell the truth, I often feel our species is terrified of the unfettered imagination. Perhaps because it is a place of such sublime privacy. I really think that to write responsibly with an unfettered imagination is one of the most moral things a person can do.

New at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference this year is an emphasis on the creation of new pieces, rather than the workshopping of old work.

RD: It is a great idea. The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to be workshopped to death. Ideally, a workshop should be a place where the writer feels invigorated and safe enough to take risks. The first time I taught at Centrum—and I had a great group of talented and delightful people—I proposed they create an encyclopedia of an imaginary place. The group was eager to experiment and the project took off in really exciting and novel—and unexpected—ways. They invented a geography, a history, religious festivals, a mythical imagination, nursery rhymes, erotic play, philosophies, mountain ranges, banquets, music—and, above all, were writing without the burden of preconceived ideas. It was an exemplary exercise in a kind of lucent playfulness! And it was tough because within the week they had a good-sized manuscript to give cohesion to. I loved the experience we shared, and the writing was very, very good.

As a teacher, what do you hope that students take away from their time with you?

RD: A new fearlessness. The awareness that writing really matters, even now (and perhaps more than ever!). That writing is a place to think. That a moral vision is part of it. That their responsibility is to their imaginations, the demands of the work itself; that the work must be allowed to reveal itself as it is being written and not burdened by received ideas, dogmatisms of any kind. The understanding that writing is a marvelous vehicle for transformation.

 

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Book

Rikki Ducornet The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition: A Novel of The Marquis de Sade
Dzanc Books

‘The Marquis de Sade, notorious Frenchman and sexual libertine, makes for a sensual, irreverent and politically illuminating subject in Ducornet’s (Phosphor in Dreamland) lushly imagined seventh novel. This sumptuous tale is equal parts testimonial, epistolary exchange and reminiscence, opening in 1793 with the eponymous Fan-Maker (Gabrielle) facing an unidentified interrogator from the Parisian Comit? de Surveillance, attempting to defend her friendship with Sade, who’s already been condemned to prison for his sexual crimes. In addition to being accused of creating blasphemous, erotic fans for Sade, Gabrielle is also known to have collaborated with him on a denunciatory book exposing Spanish Inquisitor Bishop Diego de Landa’s vicious treatment of the Mayas in the Y#catan in 1562. Landa is accused of torturing and murdering the natives of the New World and stripping the Mayas of their pagan belief system, all in the name of the Church. While it is the notorious book that immediately endangers the composed, eloquent Fan-Maker, she’s also vulnerable as a known lesbian and libertine. At the Comit?’s request, she reads and explains the raging missives she’s received from Sade; they are tantalizingly detailed and incendiary. The theatrical format exacerbates the polemical tone of the book, in which the excesses of French Revolutionary philistines and the Spanish Inquisition’s barbarism are made exhaustively clear. In the latter half of the narrative, Sade becomes narrator, treating the reader to his perspective on the courageous Fan-Maker. He reveals the letter she composed on the eve of her execution, and he lovingly describes her devotion to Olympe de Gouges, a radical playwright and fellow victim of the Comit?. Ducornet’s prose is necessarily and carefully shaded toward purple, often starkly ribald or phantasmic. She convincingly interpolates Sade’s audacious, epigrammatic voice, his passion for carnal freedoms and hatred for banal taboos. Her language is an ecstatic performance, with transformational potency that begs to be read aloud.’ — Publishers Weekly

 

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Excerpt

“There is no explosion except a book.”
–Mallarme

–A fan is like the thighs of a woman: It opens and closes. A good fan opens with a flick of the wrist. It produces its own weather–a breeze not so strong as to muss the hair.

There is a vocabulary attendant upon fan-making. Like a person, the fan has three principal parts: Les brins, or ribs, are most often of wood; les panaches, or, as courtesans call them, the legs, are also made of wood, or ivory, or mother-of-pearl (and these may be jade: green–the color of the eye; rose–the color of the flesh; and white–the color of the teeth); the mount–and this is also a sexual term–which is sometimes called la feuille, or the leaf (another sexual term, dating, it is said, from the time of Adam)–the mount is made of paper, or silk, or swanskin–

–Swanskin?

–A fine parchment made from the skin of an unborn lamb, limed, scraped very thin, and smoothed down with pumice or chalk. The mount may be made of taffeta, or lace, or even feathers–but these are cumbersome. A fan trimmed with down has a tendency to catch to the lips if they are moist or rouged. A paper fan can be a treasure, especially if it is from Japan. The Japanese made the finest paper fans, and the most obscene. These are sturdier than one might think. Such a fan is useful when one is bored, forced to sup with an ailing relative whose ivory dentures stink. It is said that the pleated fan is an invention of the Japanese and that the Chinese collapsed in laughter when it was first introduced to China. The prostitutes, however, took to it at once.

–Why is that?

–Because it can be folded and tucked up a sleeve when, having lifted one’s skirt and legs, one goes about one’s business. Soon the gentlemen were sticking theirs down their boots–a gesture of evident sexual significance. One I saw a fan from India: The panaches were carved to look like hooded cobras about to strike the naked beauty who, stretched out across the mount, lay sleeping. That was a beautiful fan.

–Earlier you referred to the three parts of the person. Name these.

–The head, the trunk, and the limbs.

–Exactly so. Please continue.

–Little mirrors may be glued to the fan so that one may admire oneself and dazzle others. It may be pierced with windows of mica or studded with gems. A telescopic lens may be attached to the summit of a panache; such a fan is useful at the heater. The Comtesse Gimblette owns a fan made of a solid piece of silver cut in the form of a heart and engraved with poetry:

Everything

Is to your taste

You snap up the world

With haste!

A red fan is a symbol of love; a black one, of death, of course.

–When the fan in question–the one found in the locked chamber at La Coste–was ordered, what did Sade say, exactly?

–He came into the atelier looking very dapper, and he said: “I want to order a pornographic ventilabrum!” And he burst out laughing. I said: “I understand ‘pornographic,’ monsieur, but “ventilabrum’?” “A flabellum!” he cried, laughing even more. “With a scene of flagellation.” “I can paint it on a fan,” I said, somewhat out of patience with him, although I have to admit I found him perfectly charming, “on velvet or on velum, and I can do you a vernis Martin–” This caused him to double over with hilarity. “Do me!” he cried. “Do me, you seductive, adorable fan-maker, a vernis Martin as best you can and as quickly as you can, and I will be your eternal servant.” “You do me too much honor,” I replied. Then I took down his order and asked for an advance to buy the ivory. (Because of the guild regulations, I purchase the skeletons from another craftsman.) Sade wanted a swanskin mount set to ivory–which he wanted very fine.

–Meaning?
–The ivory of domesticated elephants is brittle because the animals eat too much salt. Wild ivory is denser, far more beautiful and more expensive, too. For pierced work it cannot be surpassed. Then the mount needed thin slices of ivory cut into ovals for the faces, les fesses, the breasts…

–This request was unusual?

–I have received stranger requests, citizen.

–Continue.

–The slivers of ivory, no bigger than a fingernail, give beauty and interest to swanskin and velum–as does mother-of-pearl. I am sometimes able to procure these decorative elements for a fair price from a maker of buttons and belt buckles because I have an arrangement with him.

–Describe this arrangement.

–I paint his buttons.

–Continue.

–The making of buckles and buttons is not wasteful; nonetheless, there is always something left over, no matter the industry. I also use scraps to embellish the panaches–not where the fingers hold the fan, because over time the skin’s heat causes even the best paste to soften. But farther up, the pieces hold so fast no one has ever complained.

–And this is the paste that was used to fix the six wafers to the upper section of the…mount?

–The same. Although I diluted it, as the wafers were so fragile.

–The entire fan is fragile.

–So I told Sade. He said it did not matter. The fan was an amusement. A gift for a whore.

–Some would call it blasphemy. Painting licentious acts, including sodomy, on the body of Christ.

–We are no more living beneath the boot of the Catholic Church, citizen. I never was a practicing Catholic. Like the paste that holds them to the fan, the wafers are made of flour and water. They are of human manufacture, and nothing can convince me of their sacredness.

–Your association with a notorious libertine and public enemy is under question today. Personally, I don’t give a fig for blasphemy, although I believe there is not place in the Revolution for sodomites. But now, before we waste any more time, will you describe for the Comite the scenes painted on the fan. [The fan, in possession of the Comite de Surveillance de la Commune de Paris, is handed to her.] Is this the fan you made for Sade?

–Of course it is. [She examines fan, briefly.] It is a convention to paint figures and scenes within cartouches placed against a plain background or, perhaps, a background decorated with a discreet pattern of stars, or hearts, or even eyes–as I have done here. In this case there are two sets of cartouches: the six painted wafers, well varnished, at the top, and the three large, isolated scenes beneath–three being the classic number.

–And now describe for the Comite the scenes.

–There is a spaniel.

–The girl is naked.

–All the girls are naked, as are all the gentlemen. Except for the Peeping Tom hiding just outside the window.

–And the spaniel.

–He is dressed in a little vest, and he carries a whip in his teeth.

–His master’s whip?

–His master’s whip.

–And the…master is in the picture, too?

–Yes! Smack in the middle. It is a portrait of Sade with an enormous erection!

–As specified in the agreement?

–Exactly. “Have it point to the right!” he said. “Because if I could fuck God right in the eye, I would.” And he laughed. “Point it right for Hell,” he said. So I did.

–The Comite is curious to know about your continued service to the Marquis de Sade.

–I paint pictures for him, and I–

–What is the nature of these pictures? Why is he wanting pictures?

–Because he is in prison! He has nothing before his eyes but the guillotine! All day he has nothing to occupy his mind but executions, and all night nothing but his own thoughts.

–Explosive thoughts.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, she’s even good in that horrible film based on ‘Frisk’. Every time I buy a new bookshelf thinking that I’ll then be okay for a while, it gets filled to the brim with a week. Urgh. You/love picked another of my faves too. Love aka the perfect escort meeting love aka the perfect client, G. ** James, Morning from central France. So far my Monday has been waking, drinking lots of coffee, checking email, and diving into here. My impression is that it’s A-okay to read all the p.s./comments and respond to anything should sees fit to. The escorts posts appear once monthly in the middle of the month. There’s also a somewhat more confrontational monthly slaves post that appears at the end of the month. I think it’s only logical that self-identifying gay or straight guys are not in fact a billion percent locked into those categories, but who knows really. Montmartre is a fun word to pronounce because if you don’t speak French it’s hard to pronounce correctly. And it is pretty in the winter. The Paris sewer museum is kind of cool. A bit overly gentrified, but beggars can’t be choosers. I have not read ‘Portrait of an Englishman in His Chateau’, but I’m assuming I should? Actually, some of the best literary critics couldn’t write good fiction themselves even with guns to their heads. The French call hot chocolate ‘chocolat chaud’, which sounds so much fancier, at least when you don’t speak French. Someone told me where the banner gif came from, and I don’t remember. I just found it randomly without a credit. Your comments are clearly the length they need to be, and that’s all that counts. I hope your Monday makes Cloudflare your bitch. ** Bill, Haha, yes, I chose its descriptor wisely. The description of your gig is irresistible. But not as irresistible as the thang itself no doubt. ** jay, It’s a good film: ‘Amateur’. Nora Ephron … I just checked, and I have never seen any of her films. Dare I test her? 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Paris is putting on its Xmas drag as I type, and it never looks better. xo, a guy who wants to eat a deep dish pizza in a city where such a thing does not exist. ** Justin D, Hey, hey to you! I think my fave PP films are ‘Waiting for Guffman’ and ‘Best in Show’ I think maybe probably. My weekend was spent inside a video game after having not played videogames for gosh, a couple of years, so it was a relatively excellent weekend, thanks. ** Dev, Dev! Holy moly, you conquered the Cloudflare monster! I was worried that it might have exiled you forever. Excellent! I don’t know the Skeleton House in NO, but you can bet I’ll find out what I can about it. Hooray for your daughter, if you don’t mind me rooting her on. I’ve been vegetarian for the vast majority of my life, and I’m in tiptop shape for a dude my age, so she’ll be fine. How have you been? What have been doing this whole time? You don’t need to tell me every detail, but does anything particularly stick in your memory? So great to see you! ** Okay. Today the blog aims its spotlight at a very interesting novel by Rikki Ducornet that I suggest you look into. Trivia: Rikki Ducornet is the ‘Rikki’ in ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ by Steely Dan. See you tomorrow.