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Millie Brown Vomits (2018)
‘Millie Brown’s artistic expression has gotten many audiences to question if it is really a form of art. An example of this would be on April 8th of 2011, where Millie Brown performed a piece within a company called SHOWstudio where she first showcased her art through a live studio video. The video is around five minutes long and contains Millie Brown drinking a series of 8 different artificially colored milks (ranging from different shades of colors such as yellow, purple, green and blue) and purposely throwing it up on a canvas. In the background of her performance are opera singers Patricia Hammond and Zita Syme singing a symphonic and soothing piece.’
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Jakub Julian Ziolkowski Sick of Love (2018)
‘Polish artist Jakub Julian Ziolkowski’s series Sick of Love sees the artist turning to ceramics in a bid to explore vases and vomit. Ziolkowski’s vases provide a “metaphoric receptacles for a cathartic purge” after the excesses of infatuation. Each is decorated with symbols of that physical anguish that accompanies failed relationships, evoking shamanistic and visceral themes.’
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Kristofer Paetau Art Forum Accident (2005)
‘I started to feel really bad at the opening of the Art Forum 2005 Art Fair in Berlin. And suddenly I couldn’t help myself, I had to vomit.’
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Johannes Kahrs Untitled (‘Nauseous Girl 1’) (2007)
‘The paintings of Johannes Kahrs are always based on photographs or film stills. For years already he has been collecting images from magazines, newspapers or films, and he himself sometimes also picks up a camera.’
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Jake & Dinos Chapman Like a dog returns to its vomit (2005)
‘With characteristic self-assurance and thoroughly post-modern irony, Jake and Dinos Chapman get their retaliation in first. ‘Like a Dog Returns to its Vomit’ appropriates a hostile, dismissive cliché, in the tradition of previous collections, ‘Insult to Injury’ and ‘The Rape of Creativity’. The indignant will find more to outrage their delicate sensibilities here. Even the arrangement of the etchings is designed to infuriate; stand back from the walls of the White Cube and one set suggests a dog defecating, the other a dog vomiting (or doing as the title of the show indicates).’
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OKEH x Mighty Jaxx Vomit Kid FastFood (2017)
‘In a red, yellow and white theme, Vomit Kid (Fast Food Red) reminds us of a familiar fast-food restaurant mascot. He is painted vanilla-milkshake-white with clown-like nose and lips, and chili-red hair to complete the look. Turn this bad boy around and you’ll find a smiley face imprinted on the back of his red t-shirt, reminding us of the happy mealtimes we had as kids at fast-food restaurants.’
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Arthur Simms Portrait of a Politician Vomiting (1992)
Rope, Paper, Wire, Charcoal, Pastel, Pen, Glue, Plastic, Metal, Glassine, Felt, Scre 1992ws, Wood, Burlap, Paint, Lucy Fradkin Drawing, 53 ½ x 55 x 22″
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assume vivid astro focus always vomit after formalities (2016)
‘A “uniform” performance that will dress viewers up to other performances on the same night. It is a sort of game with the initials of our pseudonym (a.v.a.f) – a process in our work that is very dada like – by following an inspiration idea by Tristan Tzara: collect different local newspapers from the week of our performance will be happening; then collect words from these newspapers with the a.v.a.f. initials; separate the words in different buckets (two buckets for A words, one for V words and one for F words). These avaf words will be assigned to each visitor and written on aprons given out to them. The audience will be wearing the avaf aprons the whole night long together with black oval masks.’
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Gilbert & George VOMIT (2014)
‘They’ve eaten at Mangal, a Turkish restaurant in Dalston, every evening for years on end. “We’re very loyal”, says George. They never look at the menu. “We order the same thing night after night until we’re nearly vomiting, and then we change.”’
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Peregrine Honig Pukers (2010)
‘The mixed media pieces depict vomiting individuals, their colorful ejections symbolizing the release of excesses acquired in a culture of consumption. Honig admits that she sometimes felt ill when making these works, and we can see in the spirited and sometimes chaotic pieces the emotional and physical force of the artist.’
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John Knuth Various (2013 – 2015)
‘An artist has created a disgusting collection of work by making more than 50,000 flies vomit on his canvases. The artwork is made by encouraging flies to throw-up sugar, water and watercolour paint. Artist John Knuth, 35, says he is taking advantage of flies’ digestive system to create the paintings – the largest of which measure up to 6ft tall and 4ft wide. Mr Knuth takes advantage of the fact flies cannot chew. Instead, before it can eat, the insect must first regurgitate a mixture of saliva and partly-digested material onto what it is about to consume. This liquidises the food, allowing the fly to suck it up, and leaving ‘flyspeck’ – a small splash of fly vomit. Mr Knuth’s method is to mix sugared water with watercolours to ensure the flies regurgitate sugary paint onto his canvasses.’
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Daniel Joseph Martinez We Are Dogs in Love with our Own Vomit (2006)
Animatronic sculpture, variable dimensions.
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Jon Pylypchuk You Live in a Pile of Vomit (2003)
sand paper, fabric, paint, glitter, fur, and pencil, on wove paper. approx. 10 x 8 1/2 in. (25.4 x 21.6 cm)
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Nathaniel Mellors The Vomiter (Ourhouse) (2010)
‘An animatronic head hooked up to an alimentary system of tubes and vomiting some nameless spume into a bucket. It never stops throwing up, as if permanently sick with itself.’
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Unknown Taino Manatee Bone Vomit Sticks (1000 to 1500 CE)
‘Taino spirituality, which focused on the spirit of the ancestors and the god of cassava, their primary crop, was mediated by a class of priests (bohiques), who often engaged in the taking of hallucinogenic drugs to aid in rituals and ceremonies. The Cohoba ritual required this type of special object, designed to induce vomiting to help a shaman purge themselves; this, coupled with fasting, allowed the shamans to have the most pure high from the Cohoba powder. Many of these vomiting sticks were made from the rib bones of West Indian Manatee.’
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William Hogarth Francis Matthew Schutz in His Bed (c.1755–1760)
‘Extensive analysis undertaken when the painting was acquired by Norwich Castle in 1990 revealed two sets of retouches, one dating from the first half of the nineteenth century and the other from the early twentieth century, with significant overpainting of the central area carried out around the mid-nineteenth century. Once the painting was cleaned and the overpainting removed, an astonishing detail was revealed, which transformed the whole meaning of the painting: Schutz was in fact depicted in the less dignified act of vomiting into a chamber pot, aching head resting on his hand. Moreover, a nineteenth-century label on the reverse of the painting tells us that this is no ordinary sickbed portrait: Schutz’s wife Susan, exasperated with her husband’s addiction ‘to the vice of intemperance’ and ‘under the hope of reforming him’, had commissioned Hogarth to paint him while suffering the after-effects of his debauchery.’
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Mike Parr Displacement Activities Part III vi The Emetics (Primary Vomit): I am Sick of Art [Red, Yellow and Blue] Blue (1977)
‘Parr has done more than 240 performances, some of which parodied 1970s minimalism, as when he pushed a line of tacks into his leg at precise intervals; others that parodied himself, as with 1977’s The Emetics (Primary Vomit); I Am Sick of Art [Red, Yellow and Blue], when Parr made himself vomit in primary colours. “I was exploring limit states,” he says. “I wanted to throw out all the crap and get back to the most basic impulses behind self-expression, and induce those sensations in the audience.”‘
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Alejandro Almanza Pereda Horror Vacui (2017)
‘Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s Horror Vacui (2010–17) series appropriates existing Romantic-style landscape and genre paintings sourced by the artist from within Istanbul. In the series, each painting is hung on the wall, with a lump of concrete stuck onto it, partially obscuring the image, as though part of a wall is hanging on the painting and not vice versa. Liquid concrete is then splattered on the painting and surrounding wall.’
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‘Emetophilia is a paraphilia in which an individual is sexually aroused by puking or observing others vomit. This is commonly referred to as a vomit fetish or puke fetish. Some emetophiles put their perversion of choice into practice by actually doing the technicolour yawn, often on a sexual partner.
‘Vomiting as a sex act is sometimes called a Roman shower, after the commonly held but mistaken belief that regurgitating food was an integral part of Roman feasts. In this urban myth ancient Romans are alleged to have thrown up after binge eating so that they could return to their feasts to eat more!
‘Some emetophiles find the act of chundering arousing; for them, the sequence of “spasm, ejaculation, relief” in retching is erotically charged. Other emetophiles are aroused by seeing, hearing, and/or smelling others heaving up their guts.
‘Some puke fetish enthusiasts desire a partner who will barf on them, while others wish to induce hurling in a partner, or even to force them to throw up. Wanting to be vomited on may be related to a desire to be dominated, while wanting to make someone else puke may stem from a desire to dominate the partner and it can be seen as a form of erotic humiliation. Emetophiles may have any combination of these desires at any time.’
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Cory Arcangel Vomit / Lakes (2015)
1920×1080 H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 looped digital file (from 11 lossless TIF masters), media player, 70” flatscreen, armature, various cables
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Stuart Pearson Wright Various (2017-18)
‘Brian Sewell described Wright’s paintings as “images of such eccentricity and even madness that they fit perfectly the English tradition of the odd man out: the Blake, Spencer, Cecil Collins line, and the largest of them should at once have been bought by the Tate”. The Evening Standard called him “A Hogarth for our Times”.’
Halfboy Nauseous (2017)
Halfboy Vomiting in Debenhams (2108)
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Lisa Holzer I come in you (2018)
‘Food has to do with body, and desire, and destruction, and painting as well. What do I tell, the pictures me? Are they weak enough? Vulgar? I have difficulties with/at parties. I have difficulties with a certain way of happiness or lightness. What is the common ground thing? What do parties have to do with regression? It still seems wrong to me to work at parties. As teenager I cried a lot at parties. Emily Sundblad said: “But I think also people drink too much to really cause a revolution. They get too drunk, and they cannot do anything.”’
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Martin Creed Sick Film (2006)
‘Sick Film allows us to see the physical differences between men and women vomiting, but the process of the function is the same for each individual. Individuality is not lost and equality is gained. This equality may influence the spectators’ reactions as they connect the films to their intersubjective muscular memories and, perhaps awkwardly, find themselves in a public audience of individuals observing the films.’
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Beth Cavener In Bocca al Lupo (2012)
Stoneware, Mixed Media
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Gorillaz Sick Vomit Sticker (2016)
Perfect for phones, laptops, computers, or whatever needs a dose of originality.
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Barbora Kleinhamplová Sickness Report (2018)
‘The whole ship trembles in nausea and discomfort. Stillness can hardly be distinguished from vertigo and acceleration boosts motion sickness of both the crew and the very deck carrying the tortured bodies and minds. For those in pain, it doesn’t sound like a solution to just wait for the boat to fall apart and then start building a better one from scratch. It might take too much time. It might never even happen. Time might bring irreversible damages. The ocean might not be very accommodating. Still, they are the ones on board, while others are drowning. More and more prescriptions of diverse medications clearly aren’t capable of bringing structural change. The symptoms are reoccurring, copy-pasted, spread out on most of the ships sailing turbulent seas. Drowsiness, dizziness, discomfort, restiveness, repetitive yawning, malaise, nausea, pallor, sweating, headaches, fatigue, chest pains or tightness, palpitations, insomnia, apathy. Reducing symptoms has proven easier than searching for causes.’
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Elijah Burgher Liam vomiting ectoplasm (2011)
‘apart from the fact that it’s comforting to see that other people see ghosts and other unnamed 4th world entities (!!), our new motto: artloversnewyork short on funds, but never short on paranormal activity . . . !! it’s interesting to note his recent shift from magic realism (!!) to magic diagramming (!!) – completely in sync with a SATURN BLACK WATER DRAGON kick-ass start-off week. the dragon, a mythical beast – exists in the mind – remember ? plus it’s cool to see his literature background . . . where dragon myths loom large and colorful.’
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Armağan Kilci External | Throwing Up Series (20100
Acrylic on Colour Photograph 57×80 cm
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Bhakti Baxter Imploded Ball Barf (2011)
‘My father was a professional soccer player and later became a professional soccer coach. He traveled to Italy in 1990 as a photographer and literary journalist for a sports magazine. The photos were really good. I remember some shots he captured of Diego Maradona hitting on a super model and they were priceless. Soccer is ever present in the home of Argentinians. Screaming!!! Wild guttural screaming. Simultaneous emotional outbursts erupting from my dad and his friends. But let me be clear, when I made these I was not thinking about fútbol in any way. It was about tearing the old ball open, flipping it inside out (implosion), filling it with concrete, paint, resin, and letting it all meld together. I was thinking of the weight of stars. The scene in the movie Aliens where the eggs start to hatch.’
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Pretty Puke Various (2020)
‘Pretty Puke’s pictures are flesh caught in flashlight, strange bodily contortions and lewd acts frozen in the shocking brightness emitted with each shutter release – It’s LA at its seediest. But it’s in another space that the pictures have found their following. These images of debauchery have collided with the digital realm, and have been fast absorbed into internet culture. Pretty Puke has gained the attention of thousands of internet users, engrossed in what they see on the glow of their screens.’
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Brian Zimmerman Sketch for neon (2019)
Sculpy, plastic, paint 8″ x 2.5″ x 5.5″ tall
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Abel Azcona Utero (2014)
‘In the beginning of the piece, Azcona entered, nude, and began struggling with the coils of a thirty-foot length of coarse rope tied to an overhead beam. After writhing, biting, sucking and twisting with fury and abandon, Azcona tied the rope around his neck and ran through the crowd, to be jerked backwards with a horrible gargling cry, like a mad dog at the end of a short chain. There are many contexts in which young people, particularly young men, express themselves through personal endangerment: from suicide bombing to skateboarding. Where do you draw the line? Unlike many endurance actions, in which the level of danger builds slowly, allowing plenty of time for intervention, the potential of this particular action to turn suddenly, unintendedly fatal was too great. This time, he survived. After three harrowing runs, members of the crowd, feeling as I did, blocked his way, wrestling him to the ground and untying him, allowing him to crawl to a washtub of dirty water in the main gallery, where his wallowing, vomiting, and slithering came as a relief.’
*
p.s. Hey. In a couple of hours I’m training up to Amsterdam for a ‘Room Temperature’ screening and a couple of other events, and I’ll be there through Wednesday. So the blog will taking a vacation for that duration, and you’ll get a new post and see me here again on Thursday. ** Carsten, France needs to adjust to the new, but the enormous cost of doing so makes me worry. Right, the lake there is huge and nice. Marseille is really interesting, and I guess you can handle the high heat du jour? My July and August are dependent on whether some film prospects come through or not, and hopefully I’ll have a better sense soon. I’ll definitely be away in Norway for film stuff and ideally a Scandinavian amusement park road trip in later August. Thanks. Have a lustrous next days. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, I remember it being the same story with The Offspring back in the day. Resilient, those guys. The niceness weather-wise at least here is apparently not going to last all that long. Let’s max it out. Amsterdam is supposedly 19, 20 degrees, yum. Ha, we didn’t finish the script, but Zac promises we will while we’re up north. ‘Prayers’. You recontextualised a swell set of words there too, or I mean love did. Love patiently waiting for that post-vomit ‘ahhh’, G. ** laura w, It was a weird week. Do people hate Duras? Interesting. Certainly she shouldn’t be judged by ‘The Lover’, which is hardly up there with her best work. For most of the week, I was in survival mode. Now I’m in traveling and hosting and being on show mode, which hopefully will be significantly better. I’ve never read or looked at ‘Moomin’. Crazy, right? I’m happy your body and mind are righted again. Make the best of the blog’s short vacation time, and I look forward to the mutual catching up. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! I read all of Duras’s novels in a flurry back in my mid-80s Amsterdam days. They were a big help. I especially like ‘Destroy, She Said’, but I guess I would. I hope your legs keep powering up. It’s the least a pair of legs can do, surely. xo. ** Adem Berbic, It was stressful because for a while the powers that be were saying they had no clue as to when the power would be fixed. You’re here just as I’m putting the last personal items in my backpack. I hope the weather stays friendly, or the French equivalent of friendly. Good goal with the interdependent sentences, but, just to warn you, that won’t stop others from turning your sentences into logos for your work. But make that hard, yeah. If there are groupies for conventional writer stars, I’ve never met one. But they probably exist. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, and quite an excellent filmmaker to boot. I’ve never seen that ‘Crash’ cover image before. It’s so nice. Would it be preferable to have a carer with whom you can excitedly discuss books and music and art and so on? Or is it like with Uber drivers where one prefers that they quietly do what’s needed and share a ‘thank you’? ** Hugo, Hi. I guess I prefer fiction where the contrived plot is something to have to hunt in order to find. Or I guess when it’s present but distorted like in Robbe-Grillet or something. ‘Tripticks’ is a great role model. Like they say, writers who think they’re being imitative tend to be the writers who least need to worry about that. Clavicular seems to be fading from my feed replaced by far right Zionist stuff, which is much, much worse. ** Alice, Hi, Alice. Yes, the blog made a heroic if rather short lived return to dailiness. Great book pick ups there in Brussels, as I don’t need to tell you. Thank you about ‘My Loose Thread’. It’s a favorite among my stuff that’s kind of my most overlooked thing. Congrats on the acceptance and the physical evidence! The current swing toward empowering racists to spit and act out their idiocy will die out, but not for a while, I guess. I’m sorry you’re so close to that stuff. I fear that trying to reason with them is kamikaze. I hope the person you’re meeting with about career is a big thinker. I’ll go find the stuff you’re posting on your Instagram in my next downtime. Take care, pal. ** HaRpEr //, The earlier Duras films are the best ones, I think. As someone who spends a ridiculous amount of time pre-planning structural stuff, I hear you. The Westmoreland book is lovely, yeah. I wish he’d written more, but he started having a difficult HIV battle pretty much as soon as he finished it. Thanks, hopefully Amsterdam will pony up for the film, yes. See you relatively pronto. ** Bill, Hi. Yes, the Paris power grid got overly taxed by the heatwave, and happily it waited to crash until it got liveable outside again. I think the temp is going to rise in the next days, but I don’t believe it’s going to get hellish, so hopefully your friend won’t spend their time here sweating and whining. I do know ASCO, but I’ve never see a ton of their actual work. The doc might be the best and only way in, so I’ll look for it. Thanks. Yeah, you have to try to ignore the explanatory stuff in ‘Backrooms’ and kind of all the dialogue in general. But there’s something in the spacial stuff that’s interesting. I hope the young director continues in that direction, but with the big success, I’m seriously doubting he will. ** Right. So you have five days to clean up the mess around here until I see you again on Thursday.
Now available in North America 
Greetings from a couple arrondissements away unless you’re already burrowing down on the train/plane.
A friend of mine back in London does some pretty brilliantly self-destructive performance art — last one, she sowed her eyes shut — and in the last year she’s taken to closing them by vomiting black gunk on herself or whoever she’s performing with. The amazing bit isn’t even the actual vomiting but the sense of shock and audacity when she starts jamming her fingers down her throat and you realise what’s coming. I think she’s pretty genius. It feels a little like that Mike Parr quote above in that it’s very, this is what it is, take it or leave it. Except it’s so full-on you can’t leave it. I can dream of attaining that with words, but she definitely has the advantage.
Safe Dutch travels. I hope it’s productively potent, or does going to place on film business sort of preclude you from getting in whatever zone feels productive? In any case, yes, that sounds gruesome. Were you just having to live off cafe power sockets and the like? I don’t think I’ve experienced a power cut since I was a kid, but for some reason I associate them with a sense of limp wonderment.
Hm, okay, I’ll make my attempt, or rather continue to do so. I often think about Gass’s line about wanting ‘The Tunnel’ to be like an indivisible solid object or something to that effect. But Gass had a lot of pithy lines that stick in my head. ‘I’m a slow writer because I’m a bad writer,’ very relieving. My return Eurostar departs at 7.30am Tuesday, so I’m betting on that making me the perfect mix of groggy, annoyed and clear-minded. Speaking of annoyed, my train last night was so delayed I couldn’t make my friend’s film screening, and also missed closing time for my favouritely soothing slop-house restaurant here. Oh well.
PS, T let slip that ‘A Boy Wins His Body’ and ‘First Sex’ from ‘The Dream Police’ are two of his favourite poems to exist.
Hey Dennis! I sure picked a stomach-churning day to return to your blog. Vomit stuff grosses me out. I do like the Jake and Dinos Chapman piece, maybe because it’s not actually a depiction of vomit, lol.
Recently found out I’m going to be presenting some research at a conference in Los Angeles in October. I’ve never been to LA, so I’m gonna try to make time to visit some bookstores while I’m there because that’s what I like to do when traveling. The Last Bookstore is definitely on my list, but I was wondering if you had any other recommendations. There are so many it’s hard to narrow them down!
A Good Used Book, Alias Books East, Skylight Books (new), ARTBOOK @ Hauser & Wirth, and there are others. Los Angeles is having a great bookstore moment these days.
Stories LA!
Haven’t thought about Elijah Burgher in years. I remember he was visiting and meeting him at this big group dinner with Kevin Killian. Hmm, maybe you were in town? And those Chapmans drawings actually look more interesting than a lot of their other work.
Yeah I did like the structures in Backrooms, like the nooks where you can’t tell that a plane is a steep incline because the lighting is so flat. But all that cliched dialog, argh.
Have a fine Amsterdam trip!
Bill
I still have to see the movie, but I’m pretty sure I prefer my Backrooms content on youtube…
There’s some proper gems on there, without any mainstream audience pandering.
Hey Dennis! I’m back yet again. How are you doing? And when you’re back here, you’ll have done the Amsterdam screening and events, so how did that go?
This post was fun, I love me some vomit. ‘Gerorisuto’ is a great piece of vomit art, which inspired my failed short filmed Papaya, which I think I talked to you about pre-failure when I first started commenting on your blog! The puke scene in ‘964 Pinocchio’ is also an all timer! Kilci’s and Burghers stuff here was beautiful!
I’m in Spain right now (with my family now, will come back with friends in a couple of weeks, which will be more exciting), which made me remember that it was almost exactly 2 years ago that I first commented on here and we started talking. I was in Spain then too, so I’m kind of getting Deja-Vu! It was also during that first week on here that we started talking about the Zita screening, and the film wasn’t even completely finished then if I remember correctly! Can you imagine that? 2 years passed by so quickly, and what a lovely series of events that me commenting here led to!
Also, you talked earlier about the possibility of you and Zac coming to Scandinavia this summer: is that still a thing? Would be lovely to meet if so.
Wishing you luck in Amsterdam!
Måns
Im alive haha I didn’t wanna talk closed heart stuff but its back open now. Im falling but theres inertia so I can’t feel the falling and the impact wont hurt but its the lack of cause haha ive been blinded pre cognitively. I was reading a story ahead but never my own book haha im not really interested in the characters the way I’m supposed to be so they can’t exist even if it stops the story. I realized haha Im from the realm of the perfect and well nothing here can be thats a disconnect I fixed by becoming nothing and having nothing cause well thats the truth then your everything haha ill be back whats been up. yawn xoxottyl.
Hi!!
Have a lovely trip, Dennis—and how was it?
It’s quite nice waiting for your return in this barf-filled space. I really like Pretty Puke. I’d also add Gerorisuto by Shozin Fukui to the mix, although it’s a short film, not an artwork.
Love finally getting around to watching Blue Film, Od.
Greetings from Marseille, which hit me like love at first sight as soon as I entered town. What a cool, vibrant, colorful city! I’ve only seen a thin sliver of it so far but it seems right up my alley. Arrived late & after checking into my Airbnb stepped out to eat, which was at this fantastic Moroccan joint right around the corner. A plain sandwich would’ve been just fine but as luck & location would have it I got tajine with roasted potatoes which was tremendous.
I’ll be here till Thursday, which is when I fly back home to Malaga. Plan is simply to soak up the vibe & do a lot of walking. The Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde looms right over my street, so I’ll check that out. Plus Le Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens is an obvious must for me. So more impressions to come. I’ll just say it’s a night & day difference to be here versus Switzerland. There I felt like some alien animal, here seems right at home, spirit-wise that is.
But as luck would have it the water is shut off in my bnb right now. The host says there’s a leak in the neighborhood & so while that’s being fixed the firefighters had to cut the water. Annoying, especially in this heat & after traveling. Not sure whether to wait a bit more or step out sticky & unshowered, haha.
Enjoy your travels!
Oh & regarding the heat, yeah it honestly doesn’t bother me that much. I know I know… I’m a weird lizard, but I’ll take this over winter any day of the week.
Well today (Wednesday) tested even my limits, as we had 40 degrees Celsius here in Marseille. A gusty wind made it manageable & I took it easy, after doing some heavy walking the past two days (4.5 km on Monday). The water in my bnb did come back on Sunday afternoon, so luckily I didn’t have to sit in my juices…
Some scattershot impressions:
– The museums at the Vieille Charité are great: Musée d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne has cool Egyptian stuff, while some of the ritual masks at Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens are genuinely stunning.
– Re. the talk of bookstores above, I checked out two today, L’Odeur du Temps being the standout. Highly recommended if anyone here ever comes to Marseille. It’s right by the old port. At the very start of their impressive poetry section there it stood, “Technicians of the Sacred” in French translation, as if to say: this is the foundation of all that we call poetry.
– Don’t shoot me but I may like Marseille more than Paris. I have a thing for port cities, mostly because of the cultural mixing they invite & the cool sea breezes. There’s a hipster vibe to my neighborhood for instance, but it seems genuine & lived. The variety of food is amazing. So yeah, all & all very happy I went.
Have you spent much time here? Anyway, flying home to Malaga tomorrow afternoon. Hope you too had a good one in Amsterdam.
Despite all the other issues but come with having MS, vomit has never been any kind of a problem. But then I do know the post-puke euphoria is worth it, just about.
I do have a carer that I get along with and she even reads the occasional book. Very into 50 Shades and I did explain who the Marquis De Sade was, so I am doing my best. Funny because I obviously have my own set of interests that I am uniquely passionate about but everything needs to be so strictly compartment that’s it’s kind of bizarre really. But everything is cool.
*Compartmentalised, I mean to say.
i’ve heard some people say duras is a narcissistic writer but i think that’s unfair! i will confess to having a big soft spot for the lover, though, though i think my favorite by her may actually be the easy life, because of my interest in, uh, “sad spinster books”.
i still need to get to destroy, she said…
it’s reassuring what you said about imitative writers- i worry a lot about not having a distinctive voice and if i am just a mockingbird writer. at the same time, a lot of writers i adore are also writers whose prose just clicks in my brain- the first time i read thomas moore, i thought “goddamnit” because the way he writes (not necessarily the content) was like how i think.
things have been mostly better around here and i hope they’ve also improved on your end with traveling and presenting and signing and being a special guest at a gallery opening (with whatever privileges/duties/taxes/fees that entails). hope you have a lovely trip in lovely(?) amsterdam! hopefully the reason you’re back is because they couldn’t get enough of rt the first time and you’ll have a good showing. excited to hear more on thursday!
Oh nice theme!
I remember this time when I was hanging in Cologne with some other kids and I got sick off Goldschläger (cinnamon schnapps with flakes of 24 carat gold floating in it). Most glamorous puke I ever deposited!
Speaking of being sick, Laura was expecting to get a health boost today, but she instead has to deal with an unexpected hurdle or two…
She can’t wait to get back into the fray here though. She sends love and when she does, you know she means it. <3
How was the Amsterdam screening?
Will this be your first trip to Swedish amusement parks?
Have you had a chance to see Stillz’s BARRIO TRISTE? It starts off like CITY OF GOD and turns into experimental cosmic horror, winding up closer to SKINAMARINK. Where many recent horror films overdo narrative, it lets the story dissolve and moves towards abstraction.
Rough rough post for me because I’m always nauseated, but one must slog through regardless, and really by Sketch for Neon the weird power that nausea has over me was beginning to fade. How is Amsterdam? A friend of mine just got back from the Netherlands and their twin also just got back so it’s been very nice to hang with them. Many birthdays this week, and then eventually it all fades down again. Diminuendo.
Hey Dennis. Definitely made me appropriately queasy to scroll through – which I guess is synecdochal/ironic/whatever, delete as appropriate. Agreed with Black_Acrylic about post-vomit euphoria, though.
Hope you’re well. Finally finished Proust, which was really amazing. Have read everything he ever published, was weirdly painful to finish, given the fact he was writing the last few words on the day of his death. Have started reading “Memoirs of Hadrian”, which you might know. Finished “Debt to Pleasure”, which was good, but not super revelatory. Hope you’re well, good luck for your event, if that’s something I can say post-hoc. Adios.
Memoirs of Hadrian is excellent! Excited for you to read it.
Career nadir for Bret Easton Ellis… he’s being adapted by Ryan Murphy. Maybe the soundtrack will be decent?
Every writing session, I start my notes/jotting on a new page with the title “Writing vomit/barf’
Perhaps I’ll do a deep dive on Endless Dismal Moan one day for your blog since I feel it would match your style perfectly.
(PShtsts, my new pfp is the leas singer from Dismal moan!)
.b I think my “illness” (as I dont quite know, and frankly, hate labels to define what is wrong with me) is both a detterent and gift when it can be. Over the last three days Ive manifested about 50 new ideas, and frankily if I dont be mindful of what i can achieve in the moment I end up spiraling and losing the passion for these things.
Anyways that to say ive had at least dozens of different writing/research ideas this last month, and not yours but for my own website, because the last large article I wrote was that body mod one and I kind of miss that in depth research and it would be cool to have that energy focused on music or movies themes.
Just had an odd possibly shallow thought: You think Luka Magnotta read your books?…Or no—I think its more like he couldve came out of a character in your book, that is if we assume he held one elaborate non-shallow train of thought.
I have to see Clive Barker before he dies of lung cancer. I was watching a video on the history of body horro, and though expected, I squirmed in my chair as soon as they mentinoed him following Cronenberg.
I like when Feel things like that. It helps me remind myself that I am a body, and not just anybody, a body who happens to be morbidly intense and a somewhat freak obsessed with abjections.
Starting to realize something
I am a writer and can write about anything I want. If I want to write two books about someone who thinks they are a corpse yet delve in different directions, then why the fuck cant I ? No, I can!!! ANd it gives me a reason to live longer in this life, haha.
(Novel working on now) more spiritual/emotional involving a boy’s delusions stemming from his desire to be loved, intense self hatred leading to perceiving rotting flesh, and the control of another abusive partner who makes him feel “I feel something, I feel like I have meaning from the pain you inflict on me, giving my repulsing body meaning…is this love?” from his numbness. As for the physical and gruemesome idea 2:, that one involve a guy with no trauma, no insecurities, rather just a bleak and almost sociopathic observation of himself and the peope around him. “Oh, reader, by the way, I see as your nose crinkles, yet try as you can to just ignore the rancid smell of my putrifying feet as I explain this to you.” so happens to believe he’s a corpse and will pay someone to desecrate him the way he “should be”. That would be the plot of the story…(granted I havent done research yet on books out there like that, but im sure its quite a frequently pondered story from its grimly evocative foundation)
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There are people out there who believe their body parts are “not theirs” It happened to me once but thats a whole thing that happened when I was 17 (A lot of stuff is a blur)
I thought it would also be cool in the future to write a book about a drug addict who’s castrated following him being tortured while under the influence.
I was listening to a story about online castration cults, and that definitly happened to a guy, which just sounds horrifiying (not just cuz its his penis but because its such a powerless, defiling, degrading, humilitiaing, act to have your own physical essence taken from you, or idk thats my assumption) which is why its alwasy so shocking to see scenes in movies where people take something away from someone and flaunt it in their face, make them eat it, or another aspect,
a little boy wakes up on his birthday
He finds his parents sitting at the kitchen table. Their dismembered arms rest gingerly on the table like a folded napkin. Now besides his parents is a man with a large smile.. He grabs a fork and starts shoveling the cake into his mothers mouth as sloppily as he can, all the while his fathers head slips from the table and into the man’s crouch.
I like that body horror. Just the complete lack of autonomy of somrthing so ingrained into you as the most fundamental aspects of control, i.e, walking, eating, peeing,
Afsfb
I think I really like focusing on the concept of body horror, outside the science fiction aspect, more like where your dealing with the reality and the existentially humilitating consequences of having your own body defiled and shaped into an undesired form by some other hands.
Even a story on rape can constitute themes of body horror, if you consider it psychological.
Oh I had an interesting converstion with—-them—- the other day, but I fear I speak so much already I’ll have to wait till tommorow!
My pianoing has been fun.
James Duvall was castrated after the end of Doom Generation (spoiler)
Maybe there is something to build off there, but my mind is just wondering
Hey! I hope Amsterdam treated you well. If you got some time to explore I hope it hasn’t been totally killed by gentrification?
And I just saw the announcement for Leeds. The Halloween dress code is great haha.
‘Barf’ is one of my favourite words for some reason. I’m remembering that Mike Kelley series ‘Reconstructed History’ where he wrote ‘barf’ on an illustration of the founding fathers. Can’t find an image online, but I remember distinctly that I saw it in the flesh.
Over the past week I properly gathered together my notes and realised that I needed to start the novel because I knew deep down that I had everything I needed but was just putting it off. It’s all in fragments so I haven’t written anything like this in long form before. I’m not writing linearly at all, I’m just writing, because that’s what I have to do right now. Ideas come to me as I write and I go back and rework things. I’m in a trance. Very strange, emotionally.
Also over these past weeks I’ve been doing a thing where I’m listening to every Autechre album and EP in order of release. I’m already a fan and know many of their albums well already but I wanted to do an extremely exhaustive deep dive. I’m up to ‘Exai, and so far ‘Confield’ is still my favourite. ‘Draft 7.30’ was one I hadn’t heard all the way through that really blew me away and I’m a bit obsessed with now. If I feel like it I might go through their live material later, but that’ll probably take a lifetime.