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Monica Bonvicini Never Again, 2005
Galvanized steel pipes, black leather, black leather men’s belts, galvanized chains, clamps 350 x 1600 x 1100 cm
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Genevieve Belleveau Sacred Sadism, 2021
‘Sacred Sadism: a Proposed Methodology was commissioned by Lindsay Howard for NewHive.com as a series of gif performances created in collaboration with Sarah Sitkin. This new media piece illustrates and explains the methodology and proposed practices of Sacred Sadism as an alternative BDSM based healing modality.’
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Nayland Blake Various (1988 – 1994)
‘Take Blake’s early sculpture Restraint Chair (1989), for instance. To a sleek Breuer chair – the classic coil with two taut pieces of black leather for one’s back and buttocks – Blake attaches extra leather restraints, presumably to hold the sitter’s arms and legs. Rope hangs below the base of the chair for another user or play partner. Blake conflates Bauhaus minimalism with restraint play, turning sleek modernist design into an erogenous zone of sexual enactment. The work articulates their private preferences concerning sexual behaviour while also functioning within a porous public space – that of the gallery – as a realization of possibilities originally created within queer spaces. As Blake writes in a 1995 essay about Tom of Finland’s drawings of well-hung, half-naked men, these works provide ‘the props for the viewer to hang a fantasy on rather than a specific person for the viewer to be aroused by’.’
Restraint Chair, 1989
Breuer chromed metal, leather, chains, steel cable and mirror, 84 × 61 × 62 cm.
Work Station #2 (Restraint), 1988
stainless steel, rapier, galvanized iron and leather, 30 x 39 x 48 inches
Restraint: Ankle, Wrist, Ankle, 1988
metal, leather, 54 x 8 x 8 inches
Satanic Ritualized Abuse, 1994
two stuffed bunnies, wood, leather, rope, plastic knife, birthday candles and plastic bell, 31 × 31 × 24
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Emma Sulkowicz The Ship Is Sinking (2017)
‘For Sulkowicz’s new work,, titled The Ship Is Sinking, she wore a white bikini adorned with the Whitney logo. An S&M professional who goes by “Master Avery,” playing a character called “Mr. Whitney,” bound Sulkowicz tightly and hung her from the ceiling on a wooden beam, periodically whipping and insulting her. As Sulkowicz explains below, the piece was meant as a multilayered exploration of ideas surrounding sex and consent, societal standards of female beauty, the personal nature of making and sharing art, and the art world in the age of Donald Trump.’
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Xu Zhen Rainbow, 1998 & Play-Expectation, 2014
‘Xu Zhen came to prominence at the 49. Biennale di Venezia with Rainbow, a visceral video performance of his back being slapped, turning red, with hand marks visible but never the hands.’
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Catherine Opie O, 1999
‘Opie created the dreamlike O series in 1999 as a reaction to Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio, which focused on the gay S&M community in 1970s New York. O, the title of the series was meant to engage with Mapplethorpe’s X series to form the colloquial X-O, meaning hugs and kisses. O could also represent various orifices, or stand in for Opie, as the artist often places herself in her work. She sees O as being more inclusive than Mapplethorpe’s series, which focused almost exclusively on gay men. “Mine is about the whole queer community,” the artist said about the series.’
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Taietzel Ticalos While the Future Unfolds, 2018
‘How does technology shape the way we perceive sexuality? Talking about VR sexual experiences, the use of deep learning in porn movies, tech-domination and gray areas of sex work, Romanian digital artist Taietzel Ticalos focuses on findom – financial domination – an online BDSM niche. For her latest work While the Future Unfolds, she developed the 3D character Cherie Pie to artistically examine how an online environment influences fetishization and sex work differently.’
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Tom of Finland Various (1968 – 1988)
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Tiona Nekkia McClodden Various, 2019
‘THE FULL SEVERITY OF COMPASSION (20190 is made of a manual cattle squeeze chute similar to those used by animal scientist and autism advocate Temple Grandin to calm cows before slaughter. The piece ties together McClodden’s interest in ideas of security with the diagnosis she received earlier this year that she falls somewhere within the Autism Spectrum.’
‘In this work, titled ‘SORT OF NICE NOT TO SEE YOU BUT TO FEEL YOU AGAIN’ (2019), a Bauhaus-style leather chair is punctured by a razor blade. “Quite frankly, I consider the S&M community to be the intellectual powerhouse of the LGBTQ+ community in terms of the development of literature, thought, practice, engagement in space, etc.,” the artist told ARTnews earlier this year.’
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ADI 3 APRILE, 1479
‘Two female figures, standing on either side, were holding the arms of a blonde child (a young Christ, a child-saint, or a puer sacer, a sacred and mystical infant, I really couldn’t say). The kid was being tortured by two young men: each holding a stiletto, they were slicing the boy’s skin all over, and even his face seemed to have been especially brutalized. Blood ran down the child’s bound feet into a receiving bowl, which had been specifically placed under the victim’s tormented limbs. The child’s swollen face (the only one still clearly visible) had an ecstatic expression that barely managed to balance the horror of the hemorrhage and of the entire scene: in the background, a sixth male figure sporting a remarkable beard, was twisting a cloth band around the prisoner throat. The baby was being choked to death! What is the story of this fresco? What tale does it really tell?’
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Jeanelle Mastema Various (2008 – 2009)
‘Jeanelle Mastema is a Mexican American experimental body and performance artist from Boyle Heights, in Southern California. Mastema incorporates ritual into her work through play piercing, hook suspensions, urination and sacred objects. She performs internationally solo and with groups often acting as a medium for group intentions or a symbolic altar for channeling energy. Through performance Mastema enters into a meditative head space to disconnect from mundane consciousness.’
Trust Us, 2008
She Walks The Streets, 2008
AMF Korsets, 2009
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kenji siratori Deviations from Code on Geographic Hardweb (2020)
‘corpse state only internal head acid hyper crazy world gram recognition infectious genome body chemical technocrisis emulated convergence and consciousness at the location of script code plug-dog nightmare protocol is a medium-sized dna omotya error hunting mechanism that causes in human cities to break down into apoptotic water mania disease chromosome killing that does malice to the sun virtual horizon of the memory of the memory of the man horizon of the flesh of the man is opened streaming to her mitochondria of world absolute vagina space of the inherited boy breaks the body inoculated endosporoid embryo ecstasy and state brain form hive already shortens the planetary abolition of regional natural system scope of the definition is < grotesque abandoned brain odor artificial down:::abolishes intercourse meat with accelerated brain boy down gene general suck emulated performance artificial nightmare then bit break speed chloroform black roid break secondary acidhuman silence her asphalt embryo bio fly stage of techno suicide eyeball drug pupil herself achieved life of growing pupil retro nature down animal chemical browser acid storage code sec machine down and plug emulation apoptosis tear storage heart penetration nightmare dog …’ (cont.)
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Will Munro from Inside The Solar Temple of the Cosmic Leather Daddy (2010)
‘The center-piece is a bum sex sling! You usually see that in a bathhouse, or sex club. You don’t see it in an art gallery or a living room. And you don’t see it with these bright and cheerful colors. I think the colors and the spider plants in macramé holders do create an intimate vibe, but then there’s the leather sling! I made those macramé plant holders myself, and all my friends really helped with the building of the sling and putting all the elements together. My friend Rick constructed the structure and his wife first thought I was making a macramé hammock. It’s not exactly a hammock, but you can lie in it!’
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Nancy Grossman Heads (1971 – 1975)
‘Nancy Grossman has been making art for more than fifty years and is best known for her leather-wrapped sculptures of heads, which the artist made from the late 1960s through to the 1980s. This exhibition brings together fourteen sculptures, highlighting the formal and expressive range within the series. While Grossman regularly refers to the heads as self-portraits, they are not made to resemble the artist herself. They speak to the malice and subservience of both psychology and worldly conflict. Though the works are often rendered blind and mute, they still allude to the role of the silent witness amid cruelty and disorder. The creation of the sculptures was inspired in part by the liberation movements of the late 1960s and the Vietnam War, responding to the violence and social upheaval of the era. Today, Grossman’s heads continue to address the anxiety and turmoil that weigh upon the individual and contemporary society. Each head was carved from a block of wood and overlaid with sections of found leather-often sourced from articles of clothing or even boxing gloves-which are sewn, nailed, or zippered together. The life-size sculptures are startling for what they obscure as much as for what they expose. Eyes, ears, and mouths are typically covered, bound, sewn shut, or otherwise restrained. Some heads incorporate found objects that result in horns and other protrusions. The unsettling works have been a source of inspiration for her fellow artists and those of younger generations, and have been notably photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe and Richard Avedon.’
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Miss Meatface Various (2017)
‘Using BDSM as a healing ritual, artist Kat Toronto aka Miss Meatface, presents a body of work that evokes cinematic visual poetry. Her performance-based images explore cultural ideals of feminine beauty and the objectification of women. By toying with the push and pull of dominance and submission, and the act of revealing and concealing, her artwork presents a voice that uniquely addresses her fantasies and unravels her performance with equal doses of drama and mystery. Miss Meatface recalls the past while celebrating the present through the juxtaposition of contemporary and historical references.’
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Toni Schmale waltraud, 2016
‘Vienna-based sculptor Toni Schmale has been thinking a lot lately about ‘transitional objects’, the term coined by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in 1953 for the items that young children seize as tools for psychological comfort: dolls, stuffed toys, even blankets. She has created her own ‘family’ of ‘transitional objects’, she explains. It’s a punishing constellation that reaches out to the inner machine. Schmale’s objects dissolve the last vestiges of industry – a language of pulleys, racks, levers – into their simplest elements, rearranging them into compositions that invoke, in equal measure, exercise and BDSM equipment, finished with a military-black polish.’
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Wong Ka Ying Various (2014 – 20190
‘Wong Ka Ying has graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013. Because of her young age and her constant desire to provoke her viewers, the focus of Ka Ying’s works has always been quite explicit and radical. She likes to shock and she wants to have a conversation with her audience. Teachers don’t like me, my father doesn’t like me either. I always got fucked up by boys. I hate men the most! Is there anyone out there who would keep me as concubines?, Ka Ying wrote on one of her social media profiles. She maintains an active profile on Behance network, where her most popular pieces are available.’
Buy Feed Me I Am So Cheap I Am So Low, 2016
And you are now a star and I’m still no one, 2014
Ain’t No Your Fortune, 2019
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John Waters Bill’s Stroller, 2014
‘Not only is Bill’s Stroller built to be baby’s first bondage buggy, but the stroller also features fabric covered in the logos of former sex clubs in New York and San Francisco. It’s never too early to teach your baby about Blow Buddies! As John Waters explained in ArtForum, Bill’s Stroller was inspired by Provincetown’s Gay Family Week, commenting on the drive of many in the gay community to conform to normative middle class values. In recent years, the mainstream gay community has exchanged sex clubs for play dates, tubs for kiddie pools and slings for strollers. As Waters himself described to ArtForum, “I’m trying to pay tribute to the passing of time for an outlaw minority that is now eager to be middle class.”’
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Hajime Kinoko Cyber Performance (2011)
‘Hajime Kinoko is a Japanese bondage/shibari artist and a photographer, now considered the leading modern rope artist of Japan. Japanese bondage is usually perceived as erotic, but Kinoko prefers to interpret it as “pop” and endeavors to sublimate it into art.’
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Brendan Fernandes Restrain (2019)
‘Fernandes uses his knowledge of the human form to remove its pains and pleasures from public discourse. With bronze, leather, walnut, and steel, Shibari bondage sculptures symbolize resistance, pain, pleasure, and freedom. Through the absence of a physical body, Brendan seeks to highlight the marginalized queer communities and demonized BDSM practices.’
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Nolan Lem Tentacle, 2017
”Tentacule’ is a site-specific sound machine that houses ten speakers which are mechanically driven by Velcro extrications that occur on top of the speakers’ paper cones. The kinetic dynamics of the Velcro becoming hooked and unfastened is transmitted through large plastic tubes that resonate and transfer the acoustic energy into different parts of the space. The imposing cephalopodic presence of the black machine suggests a cyborgian instrument somewhere in between an organ, a music box, and a Luigi Nono noise machine. The installation examines the sonic materiality of Velcro as it is situated within the ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and BDSM (bondage, dominance, slave, master) communities. This “BDSMR” object complicates our awareness of sound and sensuality by casting materiality as an erotic fetish, one that derives from our darker, more lurid impulses.’
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Shawné Michaelain Holloway Target Practice (2017)
‘I believe we are all attracted to certain things we don’t immediately have access to whether that’s physically or intellectually. The power of newness and desire mixed with responsibility and/or fear is really powerful. It fades in and out of being a form of self-reflection. It’s clearest when this “protective distance” becomes absolutely necessary to be able to make room for observation and decision making for or against interacting with the desired object. In some ways, and perhaps this what keeps many maintaining the distance instead of breaking through it, it is safety from the active escalation of that desire. Sexually, that’s the foundations of taboo. Protective distance has a lot to do with restraint and restraint is a very desirous quality to be able to maintain. It is my fundamental belief that restraint is the basis of all taboos, all desires, and all pleasure. If we see restraint as in service to itself, it is either the letting go or the maintaining of it that is foreplay in pursuit of a desire. That’s why the separation between screen and reality is so powerful.’
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Allen Jones Hatstand, Table and Chair (1969)
‘Hatstand, Table and Chair are three fibreglass sculptures of women transformed into items of furniture. They are each dressed with wigs, and are naked apart from their corsets, gloves and leather boots. Each is slightly larger than life-size. For Chair the woman lies curled on her back, a seat cushion on her thighs and her legs acting as a back rest. Table is a woman on all fours, with a sheet of glass supported on her back. For Hat Stand the woman is standing, 1.85 metres (73 in) tall, her hands upturned as hooks. Each fibreglass figure was produced from drawings by Jones. He oversaw a professional sculptor, Dick Beech, who produced the figures in clay. The three female figures were then cast by a model company, Gems Wax Models Ltd, who specialised in producing shop mannequins. Each figure was produced in an edition of six. Jones explained that they weren’t illustrations of scenes, but rather that “the figure is a device for a painting or a sculpture. It’s not a portrayal of someone – it’s a psychological construction.”‘
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Deyson Gilbert Questão de Ordem (2019)
‘In Questão de Ordem, Deyson’s dubious physical game of fitting and unfitting; of fragmentation and alienation in body representation; of textual directives and invectives; of the fairly superficial figuration of so-called ‘non-conventional’ sexual practices reveal — not without irony — the dimension of literality typically associated with minimalism: a sort of pornography of form. The same happens with the use of materials: the slippery movement of his monochromatic leather surfaces simulate the scrolling of LED screens; the incessant buzz of a background engine exposes the compulsive mechanics of feeds, posts, and tweets; the tactile appeal of leather conveys the objectively fetishist sociability in which screens offer themselves to the touch: as if skin to the eyes.’
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Jim Dine My Angel, 2006
enamel on wood
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Ultraviolence BDSM Is Extra, 2013
Harsh Noise and Databending video
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Jacques-Andre Boiffard Various, 1920 – 1943
‘Jacques-André Boiffard (1902-1961) was a French photographer, born in Epernon in Eure-et-loire. In the mid-1920s, Boiffard decided to dedicate himself to research in the Bureau of Surrealist Research. Preferring photography to literature, he served as Man Ray’s assistant from 1924 to 1929. During the 1920s, he took portraits of the English writer Nancy Cunard and photographs of Paris which Breton used to illustrate his novel Nadja. In 1928, Boiffard was abruptly expelled from the movement for taking photographs of Simone Breton. He co-founded a studio, Studio unis, with photographer Eli Lotar in 1929, although the studio went bankrupt in 1932. From 1929 onward, Boiffard was closely associated with Georges Bataille and the circle of writers involved in Documents, in which his best-known work was published, illustrating articles such as Bataille’s “The Big Toe” (1929, issue 6), Robert Desnos’ “Pygmalion and the Sphinx” (1930, issue 1), and Georges Limbour’s “Eschyle, the carnival and the civilized” (1930, issue 2). In 1930, he contributed to Un Cadavre, a pamphlet that attacked Breton.’
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Peter Clough Peter (you are what you eat), 2017
Digital ink-jet print, acrylic, wood, electronics 60” x 74” x 14”
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! The promise of that is so amazing. Of course it helps me dream of when all of Trump’s horrors will be dismantled. Thanks, yeah, I have an appointment to get my visa on May 7th, barring any last snags, of course. That ‘not for long’ tag, so stealable. I don’t know why the sexiest fuckmeat in Germany ended up with love’s body, but it did, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Bieber isn’t big in the UK? Really? I guess I assumed his success was a world blanket. So he’s like the American Take That? ** Laura, Hi. You nailed the escorts’ ideal effect. Maybe not for them but for me. I think I’m as physically ok as a lad my age can be, thank you. ‘Intracast’ … I don’t know. Did that term come up? George’s astrological category was Aquarius. They say the LSD when I was young was enormously more pure, and, based on the reports from more contemporary trippers, I assume that’s true. Uh, I don’t know how to describe what it’s like when I write. It just feels like concentration. Your modus sounds much more lively. I would say Aronofsky’s and Lanthimos’s suckiness is apples and oranges. And I would add Refn’s and Eggers’s, just to name two more. Thanks for the link to the short film. I’ll watch it when I’m free. I have wished you luck. xo. ** kenley, I bet there’s a Swiss billionaire out there who would bankroll your wildest dreams. How to find him, that I don’t know. Newfoundland will live forever in your heart? That’s what my mom would have said. I did see ‘Spun’ when it first came out. I don’t remember much about it though. I remember being disappointed by it, but I don’t remember why. You dug it, I’m guessing? Should I re-try it? ** Carsten, I’ll count my chickens once the visa is actually hatched, but it looks good. Oh, the doctor wasn’t obnoxious about my smoking. She’s a doctor, she’s not going to say, ‘You smoke? Whoopie’. Yeah, the head bobbing guys sketch. Agreed re: Reed, but yet another reason why he’s not a Gen Z influencer. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi, pal. Free time! Victoire! How was the Transgender Underground Cinema Cultural Event? It sure sounds exciting. I’d be very happy to see anything you make, maestro. Great if you can get to the Davidson screening. The film’s not confrontational and stuff like my fiction, so I don’t think your sister would be freaked out. I’ll give you the coordinates when I get them. Don’t delete, it’s all good! ** Ghostofcock, Hi. I was wrong, George was born on January 31. Strange. I do lots and lots of planning and structuring and things before I start a novel, and then when I’m writing I follow those rules but I let myself be very intuitive about what I’m writing about. Hm, I think the last time I did drugs would have been in the very early 00s, and I think it was probably Ephedrine ‘the truckers’ speed’. Or Ecstasy. One or the other or both. Do you write, and if so, how? And when’s the last time you did drugs? ** Steve, This soap2day link works: https://ww25.soap2day.day, or it does for me. Like I said, I think a lot of films at Rotterdam are never or very rarely ever seen again. Or the really interesting ones anyway. And it’s a very friendly festival. ** Gustavo, Hi. Your usual stuff sounds pretty nice. Bill Jones is an old friend of mine. I like his films a lot too. I’m happy you liked Sparks, 7038634357 and Guided By Voices, especially GbV since they’re my all-time favorite band. Yeah, the texts are all found. I just edit them a little sometimes to help them be better writers, although a lot of them actually write pretty well. It’s strange. I’m doing fine. All my little physical maladies seem to have faded away. Otherwise, I’m always busy getting Zac’s and my film shown. And today I’m talking/Zooming with a class of students in Madrid who read my novel ‘The Sluts’ to answer their questions I guess. That should be interesting. Have a swell day! ** Hugo, If/when you have enough cash on hand, it’s a cool book. ‘The Ghost Writer’ still sucks. The comments were all different sizes in the old days just like now, I think. Depended on the post/day. When they were extant, the audience for Oingo Boingo was almost nothing but beer swigging jocks, at least in my world. God, they’re horrible. You take care! ** HaRpEr //, Hi. No, the doctor was pleasant in her ‘don’t smoke’ stuff. Caring or whatever. It’s weird, I guess, but I think my understanding of the class and North/South stuff in the UK is mostly informed by The Fall and Mark E. Smith’s lyrics. I feel like he got into that a lot on his oblique-is way? Yeah, I wouldn’t know how to verbalise how I deal with sex’s complications in my writing, and when I try it sounds simplistic to me. You actually said great things about that. I love what you’re aiming for. I feel like I’m going to learn a lot from your novel. ** Bill, The biggest escort site I use for the posts is based in Germany, so I actually have to try not to include to many Germans, although their profiles are often the best for some reason. I’ll get ‘Blame!’ first then. Cool. Thanks! ** Nicholas., When I met you, I felt like you have a bubbling serenity. Mm, no, I don’t think I write down my goals. Except for an agenda to remind myself what’s going to happen and when. And except for when I’m about to travel: ‘RER ticket, toothpaste, magazine for plane, …’ etc. My brain seems pretty good at retaining future tasks. I hope. Favorite tense? Hm, present, I guess? Yours? Future, maybe? I will wait up for you. It will be my honor. ** Okay. Today you get the very belated second entry in the blog’s BDSM franchise. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Thanks for the reply. Well, the man I mentioned is also an Aquarius, and we’ve had a complicated, tangled relationship for over ten years. Yes, I’m writing, but I don’t have a strong idea or structure yet, so these are pretty rudimentary sketches. Plus, I live in Ukraine, and they’re constantly catching men for war; a couple of my friends died that way. It’s a bit of an uncomfortable situation for creating art) Do you have personal rituals of discipline when you write? I recently finished reading Ellis’s Shards and I felt a strong influence from your work in it. Haven’t you read it? And now I’ve started Vollmann’s trilogy about whores. What do you think of it? Have you met Vollmann in person? Judging by what I found online, he’s a very extraordinary, interesting person and respect your work
Power of the BDSM aesthetic is undeniable!
Don’t think Bieber’s much of a thing here, although word is he did play a big concert at Hyde Park in 2017. I do follow some gossip via Popbitch and that’s about all. Never heard a note of JB, Taylor Swift or anything. Maybe it’s me, or it’s the kids who are wrong?
Saw this interview with Lucy McKenzie the other day and she recommends the historian Eric Hobsbawm. Have abandoned Netflix now and so got the audiobook of his Age of Revolution for before I go to bed at night. I’m onto the French revolution now and am enjoying it a great deal.
Never met LM but she’s had a big influence on my life, spurring me to move up to Dundee back in 2001 because of her youthful success. Remember I somehow thought everyone there would be supercool hipsters, but it ended up being much better than that.
Hey Ben, Lucy was at DC’s screening in Ghent, making out with her beau in the row right in front of me. Thought you’d enjoy that little bit of celebrity gossip – haha. BTW I think her work is awesome and she’s quite unassuming.
I like today’s post! I don’t often seek out art about BDSM so it’s cool to see it collated. It’s not that it isn’t a subject that interests me or that’s rife for artistic interpretation, but I see so much content related to it in the normal course of my daily life that art *about* it rather than *engaging* in it often feels like it’s trying to communicate something to someone who isn’t me. Also, the most visually shocking or unmistakable symbols of kink (e.g. the gimp masks) are not usually ones I find appealing. Favorite piece is the squeeze chute for cattle, I remember reading about that as a child and thinking it would be cool to go in one of those.
I write about sex occasionally. Frequently arousal is a motivator or a component but the act of actually writing usually means that state isn’t maintained. The concentration needed to actually write is too great and even if I’m essentially trying to transcribe a fantasy to the page, the speed at which I write moves so much slower than the picture in my head (and the process involves so much self-editing) that it’s a boner killer.
I missed a day — and escort day, no less — for shame. Kenji featured! That makes me happy. I feel like I have a weird relationship with BDSM and adjacent practices in that I consume a whole lot of culture which is centred around it (in a couple of hours I’m seeing some kind of immersive theatre thing involving shibari and whips and so on), and a big chunk of the people I know have that kind of sex, but my own interest is pretty much just intellectual and spectatorial. So I often feel like a tourist, not least with all the discourse (here, at least) which attaches a kind of moral imperative to kink and binds it up pretty tightly with gay/queer/etc. identity. I dunno. But then I also sometimes see a kind of hypocrisy about very loud rejections of ‘normalcy,’ whatever that might mean in context, from people who in a lot of ways are actually pretty thuddingly normal.
I think you said in that interview or in a recent re: that you find cruelty boring, and I sort of get that? I mean, there’s something in it or in its vicinity which fascinates me, but when I try and think about how I’d probe it in writing, it suddenly seems very one-note.
I think writing is restarting after a short hiatus (shorter than it’s been known to be, at least). I’m going to a noise festival in Brighton tomorrow, so maybe I can sneak some time to write by the waves. Right now I’m battling with this stylistic tic which is basically just ripping off that one line in Guide that goes, “Those characters are dead. Forget about them.” Unfortunately the cat hasn’t been found despite daily patrols. So him having been spotted the other day is even more bizarre.
So many fantastic works here today! The medieval fresco is especially fascinating, I wish we knew more about it. Just looking at it I feel lots of inspiration coming to me, I’ll see if I can make something out of it. I also remember Peter Clough from a previous post and thinking his work was super interesting and impactful. I’m reminded to do a deeper dive into him. I’ve been listening to a few songs by The Left Banke because I’ve been getting very into 60’s baroque pop, but I’ve taken your suggestion and I’m listening to their debut album while writing this and I’m loving it. That whole genre is also a huge influence on this new project; baroque instruments playing non-classical music.
You did a Q&A with students in Madrid? How cool. University students? How’d it go?
So Tom Waits came out of musical hiding with this Massive Attack collaboration: https://youtu.be/L-57FrioeuE?is=PJsyNEzgwqqERWNR
Can’t say I expected a protest song like that from Waits, but desperate times call for desperate art. The song didn’t blow me away—it’s quite plain for Waits—but I deeply appreciate the spirit behind it. I miss artists who take the burning ship-state of the world seriously. Gotta say though, this line-duo is pretty neat: “Well, something goеs tink when the cartridge is spent / Where do you think all your cartilage went?”
On that note, “CIA Man” by The Fugs has been on heavy replay in my car recently. Which led to a greatest hits album, only to find, much to my shock, that they’ve never done another song anywhere near as good. Am I missing something obvious? Tuli Kupferberg had a hell of a voice, Ed Sanders was brilliant, yet the other songs, for the most part, sound like the kind of stuff that gives protest music a bad rep. To be honest, a lot of it fits the (unkind) bill of white-boy tone-deaf.
And yes, I say that as a white boy myself, though one who’s made rhythm his religion, if that counts as a defense, haha. Have a good weekend brother.
Hi.
Didn’t know GbV was your favorite, I really liked the album Alien Lanes.
You know Jones? Man, that’s so cool. I am thinking on getting his book on Boyd McDonald, this man seems very unique and intriguing.
Nice about your Q&A. I liked The Sluts, it has a really engaging format and it is less thin in plot than your other books, not sure if you agree with me there, although is still mostly about prose, fantasy and the style of internet communication I guess. I can imagine the wild questions being made.
About the post, didn’t know John Waters was also a visual artist, I liked it and the things he said. Interesting imagery today, Wong Ka Ying in particular got my attention, also Tom of Finland but I knew him already.
Good luck on your Zoom session and have a nice weekend.
Hey. I love Sarah Sitkin. She’s sort of the platonic ideal of art being broadcast through the internet. And lots of great stuff here in general.
Yeah, I was going to bring up The Fall but I was listing examples of extremely ‘cold’ artists in relation to the north, and to me MES was a genius humorist, though I think people who aren’t British might miss a lot of that. I’m of course a very big Fall fan which I’ve said here before. And MES is a real example of someone who resented London. I think he was deadly serious when he said ‘the north will rise again’. It’s probably ridiculous to Americans that England is so small but the rivalries are huge. Me, I’m one of those people who doesn’t really feel like they’re from anywhere. I grew up in London and definitely feel like a Londoner, but then my family moved around a bit into surrounding suburbs and so I feel no homely connection to a specific place. When someone asks me where I’m from I pause for a moment and say London, which probably makes it look like I’m lying, but I’m telling the truth.
I really need to get this book right. I’m thinking of sending it to someone at the point when I think it might be done (no idea when that will actually be) to get feedback. Perhaps you would take a look? Somewhere down the line, of course. The reason being that publishers really don’t tell you if they think something is good or bad or not and I’d like feedback from someone I trust the opinion of, and I don’t have many friends at this moment who will tell me the truth.
Have a great weekend! I’m supposed to be doing a lot of fun stuff but what I thought were just my sinuses are really bad and I’m worried I’m getting sick AGAIN. Whatever. I’m going to try and not let it stop me.
Hey Dennis,
Been awol for a while but mostly coz I’ve just been sleeping a lot! Feel a lot more calmer mentally, and on the up when it comes to the obsessive compulsive stuff that had been plaguing me. Obviously not gone, but a lot more manageable through my perseverance. I read 3 books in the past 2 days, although the main one that seemed to have a big impact on me (especially with the aforementioned issues) was Lena Dunham’s new memoir. I listened to the audiobook and I don’t know, the way she describes her OCD and how she just wanted to make people feel seen and understood, yet kept failing and suffering from bending and breaking really resonated with me. Her myriad of scandals, whether it be being accused of molesting her sibling, or being racist, or having a statement put out defending a rapist whilst you were high on meds post hysterectomy made me develop a view of life that frankly any of my worst fears — that i’m a bad person and will be caught out, that i will be misunderstood and framed as a terrible person, that i am a terrible monster and i don’t even realize it — are not death sentences, nor will the opinions of strangers and detractors be more credible or concrete than those who know you. It was almost a bit of exposure therapy, along with seeing The Drama which, whilst a bit of a flick, was a pretty thrilling experience as it felt like a prolonged episode of Peep Show (cringe, second-hand embarrassment, “please ground, swallow me up” comedy). There was a baby in the screening too, which added a surreal quality that made the film feel less like a movie and more like a 4th dimensional theatre performance. As if the film was not just light on a screen but was reality, and my reality was a reflection of the absurdity where a toddler is babbling and giggling at sex scenes and mass shooting imagery. I think she might have even been changed during the film too… so yeah, a very unique experience and possibly another one that helped bring me out of my frenzied stupor.
The other books were this one Sally Rooney chapbook we had at work, and Concrete Island by JG Ballard. The Rooney one was short and very much a Sally Rooney text of wistful conversations that meander around the point, questionable relationship dynamics, and melancholy in Dublin, which I can enjoy, and I think the younger/older, almost socially incestuous dynamic of the relationship was something I found titillating and intriguing. Only 30 pages too, which looking back shocks me as she fit in a lot (though perhaps she did so by leaving so much up to the reader). Concrete Island was my second Ballard, and I’m a bit stumped on; the split between the solo Robinson Crusoe survivalist story in the first half, and the Lord of the Flies power struggle with the introduction of two other characters in the second half are both fascinating ideas, but the combination left a bit to be desired for me. Like I’d rather just have had one or the other. Perhaps I should give it a second read as I went in somewhat blind — I had heard other people were there in a synopsis for the novel, but after getting so far with no one else there, I started to believe it would be a solitary story. I don’t know. I’ve heard High Rise does some of what Concrete Island does but to greater effect, so I’ll try prioritize that before a reread.
I always loved that Tom of Finland artwork, possibly because of how it really exaggerates and deifies the buttocks. It reminds me of when I was 8 or 9 and found myself noticing when a man had an ass that would bounce when he walked, or would protrude out when he wore shorts or tight pants; I would just be captivated and confused on why it fascinated me, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring. Also whilst I probably was consciously aware that it wasn’t a “modern” thing, I am always so shocked that fisting was a thing pre-internet! To me it really seems like the type of thing that could only really take off with chatrooms and anonymous info to develop techniques, but that’s really showing my 21st century baby attitude!
Hi Dennis.
If I remember correctly, Polanskis last movie was something with John Cleese and Mickey Rourke. I think it got panned. I have a theory that most people are ok with morally questionable people making things if they think the things are good or cool. I dunno if that’s cynical though. People are very selective with their standards (see Kanye West). I wonder sometimes if moral safeguarding is also enforced so people learn to never get too attached to things, to not let things hurt and linger, and to not feel culpable when they are exposed as potential accomplices to something they never intended or thought was bad.
I was thinking about this while reading my journal recently from 2023, which I found in my desk. I was struck by how little my sense of lonliness has changed and how weird I still feel when I think about being employed or being sucked away into something too respectable. Going through the journal I noted how some Israeli friends I once knew justified their causes to me while giving themselves a future albi of “I’m gonna be far away from the fighting,” as if they knew that in the future it might be something they would regret supporting. I guess it made me depressed, the way they threw themselves into a repugnant nationalism so quickly. I worry my life is stagnant, and my only constant is this want to be a “writer” or “artist” – yet never feeling like I’ve affected anyone or anything – and feeling like my words are just kinda out there indifferently. But I also just don’t know how to give myself up to a world that feels like it isn’t worth the effort a lot of the times.
I am in a “The Devil, Probably” mood if you couldn’t tell.
I also had a dream in September 2023 that I was being interrogated by William T Vollmann and the cast of Icarly. My journal mentions that I was waterboarded in this dream. I don’t mean to undercut myself with humor. I just thought it was worth mentioning.
Cya.
The Peter Clough piece reminds me of the feeding chair in Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. Probably the highlight of the movie for me.
That’s *the* Jean Painleve? What a curious clip about Boiffard. I remember those Nayland Blake classics.
Greetings from Taipei. I was wandering through a nice bookstore, and spotted the cover of an issue of Artreview Asia. I don’t know the artist Li Yi-fan, but his work looks interesting. Turns out the article is by Travis Jeppesen:
https://artreview.com/li-yi-fan-poet-of-the-enshittosphere-taiwan-pavilion-venice-biennale-2026-feature-travis-jeppesen/
Bill
d-
today’s post is all sorts of yummy fun. tom of finland is interesting to me as a historical curio, but he enjoys to draw my least favorite body type. i like skinny guys. and i have a bit of a thing for chubby guys, but not so into the muscle man top thing. i guess i just like natural-looking bodies.
missed work today, my feet are in so much pain that i can’t hardly walk, so this weekend will be spent off my feet and liberally applying lidocaine cream and steroid ointment to my piggies. watched some movies. dino jr doco, SLC punk, drugstore cowboy. currently on harold and maude, which i’ve never seen if you can believe that. talking to my dad about work and getting yelled at by my cat because i’m not in bed with her.
my second-favorite slowcore band, knife in the water, from austin, TX, just released a new album and it’s really good.
i’m gonna get back to my movie, just wanted to pop in and say hey. trying to be more disciplined and dilligent about creative things because i’ve decided my 40s are a time for much art and creation, and writing to you serves as a diary-of-sorts/place where i workshop ideas and ruminate on things, for which i am always super grateful to you.
hope yr weekend kicks all sorts of ass in all the best ways. talk soon. lub you.
-me.