The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Fountains 2


In Doug Aitken’s “Sonic Fountain” water drips from 5 rods suspended from the ceiling, falling into a concrete crater dug out of the gallery floor. The flow of water itself is controlled so as to create specific rhythmic patterns that will morph, collapse and overlap in shifting combinations of speed and volume, lending the physical phenomenon the variable symphonic structure of song. The water itself appears milky white, as if imbued and chemically altered by its aural properties, a basic substance turned supernatural. The amplified sound of droplets conjures the arrhythmia of breathing, and along with the pool’s primordial glow, the fountain creates its own sonic system of tracking time.

 


Howard, Kansas

 


weird ass water fountain

 


Christopher Madden: A very short video capturing the motion of water as it is ejected in pulses from a conventional garden hose spray nozzle with the head set to different spray modes. The brevity of the water pulses makes it possible to see patterns in the spray that are normally concealed or are absent when the water is ejected as a constant flow.

 


Klaus Weber’s fountain installation titled ‘The Big Giving’ was set up at the Southbank Centre in London, UK, in the autumn of 2007. The fountain includes a group of different figures displaying a variety of human bodily functions including sweating copiously from the armpits, urinating, and post-nasal drip.

 


‘Evil Eye of Water’, Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania

 


Virginia Overton, “Untitled (Cement Mixer / Water Fountain)” 2019

 


Blood Fountain, Swansea, Wales

 


Cleveland, Ohio

 


If you’re in New York this summer there’s a rare chance to see one of Bruce Nauman’s largest ever sculptures. ‘One Hundred Fish Fountain’ is a fully functional fountain comprising 97 bronze casts of fish suspended throughout the air which noisily shoot water out of their mouths into a large basin below. Measuring 25 feet and 28 feet on its sides, the sheer scale of the work alone is impressive.

 


Maha Mustafa, Black Fountain, Wood and water fountain, 2009-10

 


Entrance of the Swarovski Headquarters, Austria

 


Suddenly, a 9-meter Sand fountain (geyser) apparead, in the Al-Ahsae City, Eastern Saudi Arabia. Immediately, Armaco geological teams and scientists hurry to deal with this strange phenomenon, but they did not succeed in explaining what happened.

 


Osaka, Japan

 


On a small square paved with dark basalt stone in front of a house built in 1763 Ettore Spalletti erected a fountain made of white marble. The fountain’s slender conical stem brought to mind Spalletti’s abstract vase-forms from previous years. Looking more closely, one could see that around the top rim of the column the artist had built a model architectural stage-set of a fictional piazza. Eleven simplified and tightly packed gabled houses encircled a round hollow with a miniature fountain bubbling at its centre.

 


WHAM-O Water Wiggle

 


Revolution (Martini Fountain), Alicia Frankovich, 2010, Martini Rosso, pool lining, tray, pump, piping, fixtures, silicon

 


Rome, Italy

 


Boise, Idaho

 


‘Electric Fountain’ is a public artwork by acclaimed British artists Tim Noble & Sue Webster. Inspired by the Plaza at Rockefeller Center, this 3-D light sculpture is in the form of a monumental fountain measuring 35’ in height and 30’ in diameter. The design and sequencing of the work, fabricated from 3,390 LED bulbs and 527 meters of neon tubing, replicates the movement of water.

 



The ‘Kindlifresserbrunnen’ (Child Eater Fountain, in German) or Ogre Fountain dates from 1544 and is one of many Gothic fountains dating from Bern’s golden age. The ogre that sits atop a tall tower is depicted biting hungrily into the head of a squirming baby while other fearful infants peek out from the bag slung over his shoulder.

 


Alexandria, Egypt

 


teamLab, 2014, Digital Installation, Continuous Loop, H: 19000 mm

 


‘Piss Fountain’ displays two men with rotating dongs on either side while urinating. This statue is installed just in front of the Kafka Museum entrance in Prague. The robotic dongs make shapes in the water below in a pond that has the shape of the map of Czech Republic. You can get your own phrase or message typed in the water if you message on a special number.

 


Bedside water fountain

 


Duisburg, Germany

 


Et pour finir en beauté, l’artiste japonais Fujiko Nakaya a réalisé une installation atmosphérique dans les bassins du square Jean Perrin, devant le musée. Son outil: des brumisateurs d’eau potable à haute pression qui pulvérisent de minuscules gouttelettes pour créer cette sculpture de brume. Retrouvez toutes ces œuvres au Grand-Palais à Paris dès maintenant et jusqu’au 22 juillet 2013.

 


‘Fontana del Facchino’, Rome

 


‘Shit Fountain’, Chicago, Illinois

 


‘Water Fountain of Burj Dubai Lake’ is the world’s most expensive and largest water fountain. It is over 900 feet (275 m) long and can spray jets up to 500 (150 m) feet high. The fountain can spray as much as 22,000 gallons (83,000 l) of water in the air. It has 6,000 super lights and 25 color projectors.

 


La Canada, California

 


‘The Neptune Fountain’, Bologna, Italy

 


Lisbon, Portugal

 


Nicolas Couturieux Untitled (Rome) (2016)

 


Plovdiv, Bulgaria

 


GTA weird fountain cheat

 


Chocolate fountain, Jean-Philippe Patisserie, Las Vegas

 


‘Nation for Itself Forever’ also known as ‘Narod sobe navzdy’ created by David Cerny is located in Prague atop the national theater. It was placed there in 2002 and shows the sculpture pleasuring itself and spraying water all over the city below.

 


Amazing Indoor Water Features Water fountains indoor for the home create the very best water fountains indoor that optional based on preferences in how to design and decorate home interior spaces. Outdoor water fountains for the home are now applicable into indoor home spaces and purchasing at Walmart will give you the very best references.

 


‘Charybdis’ is an unusual inverted fountain designed by William Pye for Seaham Hall in Sunderland, England. It is made of a massive transparent acrylic cylinder filled with water flowing in a circular movement, which forms an air-core vortex in the centre. One appears to be looking at a solid uncontained block of water as the acrylic seems to have no substance.

 


Arctic conditions have turned a geyser at Letchworth State Park in western New York into a five-story “ice volcano”.

 


Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada

 


Quilpue, Chile

 


Greenville, Kentucky

 


Bern, Switzerland

 


‘Troika Rope Fountain’ by Eva Rucki, Conny Freyer and Sebastien Noel in the Hoog Catharijne mall, Utrecht, Holland.

 


Kosice, Slovakia

 

 


‘Mustangs at Las Colinas’ is a fountain by Robert Glen, that decorates Williams Square in Las Colinas in Irving, Texas. It portrays a group of wild Mustangs at 1.5 times life size, running through a watercourse, with fountains giving the effect of water splashed by the animals’ hooves.

 


Waterfall fountain at Dubai mall

 


Highway 71, Ohio

 


When I was driving across the greenest part of Holland, I stumbled upon a great piece of Bronze art by accident. Right there in a pond stood 4 statues of famous Dictators like Stalin, Franco, Louis XIV.. and they are all spitting in each others faces in a symbolic way by using water from the pond. The Spanish artist Fernando Sanchez Castillo is responsible.

 


Rafael Ferrer ‘Deflected Fountain for Marcel Duchamp’, 1970: He diverts the spray of an outdoor fountain at set times, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 


Donetsk, Ukraine

 

 


Recirculating ketchup fountain at Ronald’s McMansion, Dayton, Ohio

 


The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) recently lost one of its campus’s most subtle and unusual piece of public art. An untitled fountain by the late conceptual artist Michael Asher, created for the university’s Stuart Collection of site-specific art, was reduced to rubble earlier this month when a masked vigilante wielding a sledgehammer rampaged through the campus, San Diego 6 reported. During his spree, the perpetrator also broke eight surveillance cameras surrounding the campus’ Mandeville Center and left behind a message scrawled in golden spray paint that read: “YOU CAN PAINT OVER ME YOU CAN CATCH ME YOU CAN EXPELL [sic] ME I WILL STILL BE HERE.” The sculpture, a granite and steel replica of a generic indoor drinking fountain, subverted the conventions of outdoor fountain design while also serving a practical function for thirsty students.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. There are a couple of new things online about Diarmuid Hester’s WRONG, if anyone’s interested. (1) An excellent piece about the book by Emily Colucci @ Filthy Dreams here. (2) The very fine writer Grant Maierhofer (subject of a recent ‘welcome to the world’ post here), interviews Diarmuid about the book here. ** JM, Hi, pal. No, I’ve never heard of Tender Wolves Society. The title ‘Tenderness of the Wolves’ was swiped from an old (1973) film of the same name by Ulli Lommel about a German serial killer. Begin your week inimitably! ** David Ehrenstein, Howdy. ** Sypha, If you play Mario Kart online you’ve probably raced against my friend Joel Westendorf who has been playing MK online several times a day for about 14 years. I can’t remember his player name. My obvious pleasure about the restoration. Seemed like it needed to be alive for all the fans and curiosity seekers out there. You’ve become so squeamish, James. Amazing that my books and you are still friends, ha ha. A few folks had comments directed to you over the weekend in case you didn’t see them. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I heard the album Krazy Karl was out and have been naturally intrigued as I quite like NNAMDÏ, but I’ve yet to crease his new one. Will do. He seems almost, or sort of almost, as prolific as Pollard. Thank you, bud. And, really, thank you so, so much for those great words about ‘Zac’s Drug Binge’. The things you say about it are exactly the things that excited me about making it and that I hope are visible and exciting in some way to people reading it. Amazing, thank you, and so amazing to hear that from coming from the great you. I’m infinitely bouncy in my seat! Ha ha, if you know Zac, that title has an extra charming wrongness. Yes, the French citizens’ thus far dutiful behavior — the government just lifted the long state of emergency on Friday, which is quite something — will definitely be tested come Bastille Day. Eek. Very best of luck with the seemingly never ending nightmare of your version. Jesus. ** cal, Hi, Cal. It’s been ages since I read ‘OtR’, but I distinctly remember that the particular charge of his rushy, rambling prose ran out of charge pretty quickly, and I don’t think I made it through the whole thing, actually. I don’t know that book by his lover. I’ll see what I can find. Evicted, urgh, yeah, went through that the last place I lived. Super stressful, but it’ll be fine, I’m sure. Great about your novel’s preliminaries! That’s the best news. Hope the brews and the brawls were combustible. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Oh, my god, that photo of you as a Whitehouse-r is great. Everyone, Click this to see a photo of Mr. Ben ‘_Black_Acrylic’ Robinson back in 2010 doing a visually uncannily Whitehouse-like performance of their ‘Just Like A Cunt’. I have that Lil Peep doc cued up on my laptop for today, actually, coincidentally enough. And I’ll go find out why Marcelo Bielsa is a god. Thanks for the gifts, man. ** Ian, Hi. I didn’t see the ‘Shaft’ remake, but the original is a pretty cool blast. I’ll put spit and art together in the blender of my weird imagination and see what shoots into view. Life’s pretty good here, yeah, and I’m happy it’s the same Montreal. You and I can definitely count our lucky stars. Thanks about the podcast. ‘God Jr.’ almost got adapted into a family friendly animated film by the great animation studio Laika, amazingly enough. They had it under option for about ten years, but it never happened. Bon day! ** Nick Toti, Hi, Nick! Sypha did a helluva job, yeah. I don’t know Blackhouse, which seems weird. But you can bet I’ll investigate them post haste. You good, man? Hope so. ** Steve Erickson, Hi, Steve. Happy day to ya. ** Right. I’ve got a whole bunch of fountains for you to look at and sometimes read about today. See you tomorrow.

10 Comments

  1. JM

    you are KIDDING about laika wanting to adapt god jr that’s so awesome wtf??????? now imagining what a kids animated film of the marbled swarm or guide might look like :)))))) it actually makes a lot of sense imagining God JR in that style ???? what are your own views on adaptation processes regarding your work? liberal, do what you will with it? or are you more reserved re:how your work is used? apologies if these questions are over-probey into the administrative side of your life! who would you like to see tackle your work if you could choose anybody, alive or dead? i guess you could do it yourself but just for the sakes of curiosity?? okay, these are my questions today. they spewed out from me like a fountain!

  2. David Ehrenstein

    Don’t forget the Fountains of Wayne

    My sale of books, CDs and DVDs is still very much on contact me at cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com for full information

  3. David Ehrenstein

    Interesting pieces on “Wrong” (which I hope to read shortly) and Dennis. Insofar as his work is”autobiographical) it proceeds from a place independent of conventional “facts” (ie. birth, education, “upbringing” et.al.) That Dennis’ father ran a company that produced the equipment responsible of satellite technology is all I need to know, for obvious reasons Dennis his corporeal self is quite different from the creature anyone might imagine after reading the George Miles cycle. He’s the image and temperament of the sort of guy some “woke” family or other would like their gay son to marry. What this image doesn’t reveal is that underneath it all Denis is actual (wait for it) FRENCH!

    It’s not just his love of Rimbaud. t goes deeper, working its way through Bresson and Robbe-Grillet. That the French have adopted him and the fact that he’s been living in Paris for the past 11 or so years is no surprise. “Permanent Green Light” ( dark masterpiece suggestive of what Bresson and Demy would have come up with had they been assigned a “Youth Runs Wild” movie) cements this. Fpr me it evokes an image of Dennis seated at the far exterior corner of a Saint-Germaine-des-pres café, intent on luring some unsuspecting schoolboy to his doom.

  4. Sypha

    What was that Kenneth Anger film with all of the fountains? I did like that one quite a bit…

    Dennis, no, have never played Mario Kart online, just solo or with family members, though that’s a cool story about Joel. I did go back and read the comments after the fact, yeah. Well, I think I can tolerate (that’s probably not the right word) your work better because there’s not much animal abuse in your books (one of the few examples I can think of is when a cat is sacrificed in a black magic ritual in PERIOD, but because you gave no details at all about it I could cope with it). Anything involving cat abuse (and there are a number of instances of this in some of Sotos’ earlier books IIRC) is kind of a dealbreaker especially for me, because as you know I’m very much a cat person (which is also one of the reasons that the ancient Egyptians are my favorite of the old ancient civilizations).

  5. Brendan

    Hi Dennis,

    I’ve come away from this day thinking about how there really are a lot of holes in the human body of which liquid can come out.

    Hope you are good. I’m stuck at home of course. Nothing is happening in LA. Though I have vague hope of baseball actually starting in some form next week. Giants/Dodgers four game series starts it all off. I’ve never needed it more than I need it now.

    I got the nerve up to send you a bunch of my new photos. They are both practical and topical, and a little bit creepy. All the things I want. I hope you liked them.

    B

  6. _Black_Acrylic

    As mentioned there by Sypha, Anger’s Eaux d’Artifice is a definite fave. Classical beauty meets X-rated filth.

  7. Misanthrope

    Sypha and his cats…

    Dennis, I’m back. Didn’t go anywhere. The week, as expected, got really fucking busy at work. Just slammed and swamped and working that full 8 hours. But like I said, expected. It’s that time of year for tax products -yes, we refer to them as products, haha- to get put into circulation and proofread, edited, prodded, and poked. This will be ongoing until a point later in the year -October/Novemberish- where we’ll suddenly be like, “What the fuck, nothing to do.”

    Of course, if they do another stimulus package in DC, we’ll have a whole other set of worries. (Essentially, all the products will be pulled back and have to incorporate the new legislation in it. This is so serious that several of these products go straight to the Treasury Secretary’s desk. “Um, er, excuse me, Mnuchin wants it on his desk…NOW!” Have had that happen just recently.)

    Anyway, so no more wedding cake as number one, eh? Sad. I understand, though. The really sugary and sweet stuff just doesn’t set well with me anymore either.

    To back up, yeah, I don’t think my parents were evil. I guess giving us everything we desired was unintentionally evil, but I kind of think evil has to be quite intentional. I don’t think they were that.

    I like fountains. Went out with a friend Saturday night and then we went back to her place and watched a movie with her husband. It was the Eurovision movie with Will Ferrell. I remarked on the lovely fountains in that movie. Said at least once, “I wish we had fountains like that here.” They just kind of looked at me.

  8. Bill

    This is a very fine Monday-brightening kind of day, Dennis. I love the Prague fountains, but don’t remember them from my 3 days in Prague, duh. The Spitting Leaders piece is awesome. The postnasal drip fountain, eeewww. And of course, the dancing Cleveland boy, haha.

    My nephew used to love chocolate fountains when he was a kid, but I’ve never understood the appeal. A waste of good chocolate, if that’s what they’re using in the things.

    By the way, I’m not sure you heard from h (now j) recently. He’s dealing with some visa shit, and is a little tied up to be participating here. Fingers crossed.

    Just saw https://letterboxd.com/film/the-northerners/

    Very odd and enjoyable, like Warmerdam’s later movie Borgman.

    Bill

  9. Corey Heiferman

    This was gallons of fun. Whenever I can travel again I’ll try to make a point of seeing fountains.

    I’m pretty into fountains. I guess I had a 21st century equivalent yesterday of fetching water. I don’t have room in my kitchen for a quality water filtering machine so I haul in bottled water up a hill and then up three flights of stairs.

    I’ve been disappointed that this colorful fountain in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square has been replaced with a dull one for the past few years. This is supposedly temporary but who knows.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRgcGgbzhKY

    I enjoyed the Fountain of Time in Chicago. It’s literally an overwrought allegory.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Time

    Last but certainly not least, my favorite fountain of what I saw in Rome was the Fontana della Tartarughe. It’s super homoerotic even by Roman standards and much less tourist-thronged than the bigger splashier fountains.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Ri1w5kqng

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontana_delle_Tartarughe

    I enjoyed Patrick Bokanowski’s films very much. I’ve never seen anything else like them. Have you ever done a day and/or crossed paths with him and Michele?

    I have an idea that’s just a dream at this point but should be quite doable once the virus is done doing its thing. I’ve looked at the Light Cone website and see that they rent 16mm prints for reasonable rates, especially, I assume, if you don’t need them to ship. I thought whenever I visit Paris to find somebody with a projector, rent some prints, and do an experimental film marathon. I’m optimistic about finding both a projectionist and donors even though at the moment you’re the only person I know in Paris.

    I also saw Paris is Burning. I was impressed and a bit disappointed by how slickly it’s edited. Where you ever at a ball?

  10. h (now j)

    Dennis & Bill!

    I’m briefly here! Yes, with visa issue. I can’t say much about resolution bc it’s a collective crisis, but fingers crossed. I’m also very busy with other duties (however hopelessly), so I’m unable to process the urgency much. In any case, beautiful & strange post today. Everything looks just rightly erotic. And the wild boar (?) dripping water is a favorite of mine. Hopefully, see you later soon.

    Bill, thanks for mentioning me to Dennis!! Take care. Stay safe! It’s upsetting to see the surge of COVID cases in some states. Stay in! See more interesting movies. (Get everything delivered!)

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