‘After being senselessly attacked by strangers and experiencing terror of imminent death, artist John Duncan felt a range of intense emotions: panic, fear, anger and also relief. Such emotional high made him feel so alive that he wanted to share these sensations with others. That was the origin of Scare (1976), where Duncan was knocking on friends’s doors in the middle of the night, while wearing a mask, and shooting them in the face with a gun loaded with blanks.
‘In 1980, Duncan had gone through a horrible break-up. On many levels, he was not equipped to deal with it. According to the artist, he felt as if he failed at something very essential to being human, failed at love. That led to the Blind Date (1980), the most controversial act of his career. “I wanted to punish myself as thoroughly as I could. I’d decided to have a vasectomy, but that wasn’t enough: I wanted my last potent seed to be spent in a dead body. I made arrangements to have sex with a cadaver. I was bodily thrown out of several sex shops before meeting a man who set me up with a mortician’s assistant in a Mexican border town…” Having done that, he proceeded to have a vasectomy.
‘In the last room of the exhibition, references to the above-mentioned two performances are surrounded by large 4-meter (about 13 feet) photographs, three on each side, of female genitalia, which the artist called Icons (1996) and saw them as objects of veneration. Each photo is copied in a drawing, placed next to it and executed in artist’s own blood. Though smaller in size, the choice of medium delivers a punch, suggesting the magnitude of the human tragedy behind the act. Duncan came from an abusive household, which led him to develop many troubled relationships not knowing how to deal with women. One example of that is in the next room, presented by 3 large tablecloths from the artist’s 3rd wedding. Quotes from his now ex-wife, such as “Fear of Life”, “La Vita è Bella” (Life is beautiful), “It’s All Good” (2013), were traced in his own feces. Nearby, there is a Self-portrait, also from 2013, in mold crusted around the outline of his body after his assistants smeared yogurt on and around him.
‘This attitude of inadequacy, self-shaming and vulnerability comes across in his staged events as well. One of such, Maze (1995), is documented in the retrospective by two still photographs done with infrared cameras. Here, Duncan told people to strip naked and enter a maze, which in reality was just a pitch-dark room. Without telling the participants, he planned to keep them there overnight. It seems that instilling panic and making his performers share his feeling of being exposed and powerless was the goal.
‘Rage Room (2010), which is assembled in the middle of the gallery as a wood-walled roofless container, was proposed as a larger design outlined in the schematic drawing attached to the wall near the installation. Duncan wanted to configure several containers in the shape of a human brain, and at the center locate the Rage Room. The violent anger almost palpable inside it as vicious splashes of cow blood on the walls and smashed furniture on the floor recreate the debilitating resentful wrath.
‘Such state of mind is understandable: after the Blind Date performance, Duncan was shunned not only by the Los Angeles art world, but also his closest friends turned against him. That led to a self-imposed exile to Japan. The only documentation that exists about the Blind Date is an audio-recording. In Japan, Duncan continued working and had dived into audio, exploring the ways of how it affected the body and how one feels. A lot of the work since then evolves around sound. In Japan, Duncan is considered a godfather of Japanese Noise Rock.
‘“These experiences — the acts themselves, the shame that inspired them, isolation in Japan soon afterwards, suddenly in a completely alien culture unable to read, understand or communicate with anyone — all taught me far more that I could possibly have anticipated. As a result, my perception of all existence, including my own, has permanently and fundamentally changed. […] I’ve come to understand the act and experience of learning as sensual, as a form of beauty.”
‘Duncan is a complex and interesting character, sensitive to reactions of others, but not crazy. According to Benjamin Handler, Director of Nicodim gallery and the curator of this exhibition, in the past he attempted suicide a number of times, but in the last decade, he’s been sober, grew more adjusted and comfortable in his own skin.
‘Duncan is a controversial artist, who pushed the boundaries of what could be considered art. Looking at his output challenges viewer’s morals and artistic taste. One either likes it or doesn’t. Emotional response to his work is so strong that remaining indifferent is not an option. So I devised an alternative approach, for myself, to processing and reacting to it – I looked beyond all of it and tried to see a human being, who was creating his art in response to life and growing in the process.
‘“Since Blind Date, all forms of my work are created to raise questions, to find out everything I can about who I am without fear or judgement, and to encourage you to do the same. Think of me as you will.”’ — YABNYC
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Further
John Duncan Site
A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN DUNCAN
John Duncan @ instagram
John Duncan @ bandcamp
John Duncan @ Nicodim Gallery
John Duncan – Digital in Berlin
John Duncan: The properties of sound
Podcast: Artist John Duncan Talks About His Art and Travels
Book: ‘John Duncan’
John Duncan Interview by email with Massimo Ricci
John Duncan @ Special Interests
Edge of Vision: An Exchange with John Duncan
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Extras
John Duncan Live [Full set] @ Magazzino sul Po, Torino (IT), 2021
MANTRA (2015)
John Duncan – Tap Internal [Touch]
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Interview (1994)
What are your thoughts about the idea of creation: why does anybody do anything?
For me, the reason why I create things is to stimulate change in some way; in myself first and, for someone who’s listening, hopefully in them as well.
OK, then why change and what sort of change?
Firstly, to become aware that a lot of what I think is what I’ve been taught or told to think. It doesn’t come from me; it comes from something that I’ve been led to believe comes from me. And the difference between the two is so hard to see. I push myself into some sort of action to find out the difference, to find out just how much I’ve been taught and how much is mine.
And what are you left with; how far are you with this process, this change? How far have you affected it? Have you affected it?
In a sense, yes. I know a whole lot more about what I’ve been led to believe, and I don’t accept it at face value like I used to. To get there, I’ve had to commit crimes, among other things.
What sort of crimes?
Assault, necrophilia, to some extent pyromania. I’m calling them crimes because that’s what they’re considered by somebody else, not me. It’s something I felt that I had to do.
Is that not counter-productive? This approach makes it easy for people to stick you into a little box and say, “This man does this”. Where it’s never totally defined what you do, then nobody can really do that. Maybe that’s a more effective weapon – but this is something I’m putting to you as a question, rather than something that I think.
It’s true that people have tried to put my work into categories that create some confusion, but I think what they’re doing is using these labels to escape from thinking about the issues I’m trying to raise.
No question.
This is something I learned in Japan. Before I went there, I made a lot of judgements about people who evaded questions in this way; I felt that it was weak. I don’t think so anymore; I think it’s their perogative. I had been expecting a level of understanding from them that they weren’t prepared to try for, and allowed my disappointment with them to override what the work had taught me personally.
Why was that particularly because of Japan?
When I went there, I also started making a lot of judgements, about the way people were treating me, things that I was seeing, and it turned out that my perception of what was happening was completely different from what their intention was; from what would be considered normal there. Communication through spoken language made impossible. I’d get whatever understanding I could from gestures and facial expressions: I was using interpretations of these from my own culture and often this, too, turned out to be inaccurate at best. In this kind of isolation, it became clear that I was seeing what I wanted to see, that I was doing exactly the same thing that the people I was calling weak were doing, refusing new information by judging it from irrelevant past experiences. For example, when I’d play someplace there, the audiences usually didn’t respond. There may be a packed house, there may be 10 people, and the audience of 10 may be the packed house. After you’re finished, there’s silence; like playing in a church. Then everyone gets up and walks out. The first time that happened to me, I thought, “Good God, everybody hated this!” I thought so for a couple of years, until people started coming up to me and saying they’d been in the audience, heard what I’d done and liked it very much, that they’d thought differently about music after they’d heard it.
Would you not say that to make something involves a kind of judgement anyway? I remember Brian Eno saying that music, or sound creation, was one of the best ways of working out philosophies and attitudes towards life because you could take a strip of tape, which is a certain length of time, and then within those parameters you could work out any philosophy you wanted to and it wasn’t going to harm anybody. But you still had those parameters; you still had to decide when it was going to start and when it was going to end. So you’re making a kind of judgement and, to my mind, putting something out on a piece of tape or a record or whatever implies a kind of judgement.
For myself, of course; I judge myself all the time.
Where do you draw the line, then? Or don’t you draw one, or don’t you see it as being a line – between judging for other people and judging for yourself. This is why I asked about creation: why does anybody do anything? You can say it’s to try and change yourself and to try and change other people, but that implies another kind of judgement because that says these people should change. It’s a judgement about people you’ve never met, people who are going to be affected in some way by something that you’ve put out.
Yes, but by putting something out I don’t want to make judgements about someone else: I have no right to do that, anymore than they have a right to judge me.
But if you say that you want them to be changed in some way, does that not imply a kind of judgement about the way that they are before they’ve heard your record, or whatever?
Let me put it this way: in a lot of ways I’m asleep. My reason for making work is.to wake up. I know that I’m not the only one who is asleep, so if I put work out then someone else who’s asleep might respond to this. But I can’t tell this person, ‘you are asleep”. I don’t have any right- to do that because I’m asleep.
What can anybody hope to achieve by doing that kind of operation. This goes all the way along the line; you have the wonderful example of Handel’s Surprise Symphony – do you know that one? He was absolutely sick of London audiences falling asleep during these very long soirees, etc., so he made this piece where, da dum da dum dum dum BOOM! and everyone jumped, “what?!”. What can anybody hope to achieve now, with the fact that if people are asleep – of course, how and whether you know somebody else is asleep are separate questions – but what can anybody hope and expect to achieve if people are asleep anyway? And if you do not have the right to judge and tell somebody else that they’re asleep, what right do you have to make them wake up?
Well, I don’t; that’s the whole thing. For one thing, if someone wants to stay asleep, who am I to tell him he’s wrong?
What if someone wants that person to stay asleep and that person doesn’t know they’re asleep? Does the dreamer know they are dreaming? The old zen story where “I dreamt that I was a butterfly and then I woke up: am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man, or am I a man dreaming that I am a butterfly?”. Where’s the in-point, where’s the button?
That’s why I make work, to find out.
What have you actually managed to find out? What have you encountered?
Well, one thing I learned from Blind Date, having sex with a cadaver, was that I started asking myself a lot of things, such as why would I choose that punishment and what’s the point of such punishment in any event?
Could you say that you saw it as a bigger metaphor, for something else?
Much bigger. I still learn new things about that. One was that sex and death are very connected; they’re the two inescapable events in the life of a human being that bring a human being back down to an animal, into blood and guts. Everything else that we build up, philosophies, societies, technology, government, religion. Is to explain and filter these two things, to try to give ourselves an illusion of diluting their power. And these things are just that, they’re an illusion. Sex and death come back; they take their time but they come back. If we just accept these, really accept them, then there’s a strong temptation not to do anything.
Yes, I can see that. If you say, “that’s all there is.”
So I learned that we need this illusion; I need this illusion of a sense of purpose. I see it as an illusion, one that’s essential for my ‘being’, to have a sense of value.
It also gave me an entirely new understanding of what ‘beauty’ is, and made it clear that my creative actions up to then, of criticising hypocrisy or making issues of social behaviour, were a form of one-dimensional thinking. The sex experience itself, the sense of hopelessness driving events leading up to it and its presentation in public, the co-ordinated attempt by several of my friends and former lovers to have me tried in Mexico on necrophilia charges, the attempt to cast me as a pariah when extradition proved too impractical, my move to Japan, et cetera, et cetera… The entire episode was the opening of a door. Beyond it turned out to be a realm, inconceivably vast. What began as a determined effort to degrade myself beyond anything I thought I could survive became an affirmation of life.
It’s interesting: you say sex and death are the two – I’d say there are three. You missed out birth.
That’s true.
But you say that sex is just meat: there are 2000 years of a certain kind of relgious thought that would say that sex is actually the highest, something that is so far away from meat and bones and blood to be totally unrecognisable from that.
The same thing is true of death.
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Show
_____________
BLIND DATE (1980)
‘I wanted to punish myself as thoroughly as I could. I’d decided to have a vasectomy, but that wasn’t enough: I wanted my last potent seed to be spent in a dead body. I made arrangements to have sex with a cadaver. I was bodily thrown out of several sex shops before meeting a man who set me up with a mortician’s assistant in a Mexican border town…’
‘BLIND DATE was performed in order to torture myself, physically and psychically. The sound recording of the session in Mexico was made public to respond to what I saw as a general situation created by social conditions, and to render any further self-torture of this kind, especially psychic self-torture, unnecessary for anyone to perform as a creative act.
‘These experiences — the acts themselves, the shame that inspired them, isolation in Japan soon afterward, suddenly in a completely alien culture unable to read, understand or communicate with anyone — all taught me far more than I could possibly have anticipated. As a result, my perception of all existence, including my own, has permanently and fundamentally changed.
‘These experiences have shown life in all forms to be an incredibly rich, timeless, continuous cycle, with death and corporeal existence interwoven as part of the process. I’ve come to see myself as a microscopic and insignificant part of that process, while at the same time the very embodiment and center of it. I’ve come to understand the act and experience of learning as sensual, as a form of beauty.
‘Since BLIND DATE, all forms of my work are created to raise questions, to find out everything I can about who I am without fear or judgement, and to encourage you to do the same.’
____________
Under the Influence of Torture (2014; Video: Michel Le Libraire)
‘A torture device based on the Apollo Chair used by Iranian secret police SAVAK is set, with the victim (Bryan Lewis Saunders) strapped to it, his head inside a metal bucket to amplify his screams to his own ears, on top of a 1000W subwoofer mounted onstage. He attempts to recite the Rules of the Geneva Convention from memory as Duncan powers oscillator frequencies through the subwoofer and touches a 5 million Volt taser to both Saunders’ exposed skin and the metal chair he’s strapped to. The event ends when the victim, shaking in uncontrolled tremors, stops reciting to scream and is carried offstage.’
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OUT (1979)
‘Reichian exercise performed under a Los Angeles freeway bridge.’
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The Garden (2006)
‘Hydrochloric acid is constant inside Building 18. All metal corroding. Workers told to enter in pairs with no protection. When one passes out, his partner drags him outside and returns to the job. Workers never told what they’re dealing with. Bicycle tires leave rotting rubber on the road. Surviving family members say over 800 employees died. Toxic waste from the plant hauled away by tanker trucks with “milk” painted on the side. Dumped in the river nearby. Kilometers downstream, rocks a meter below ground stained blue, green, pink. Tankers sequestered as evidence. The company begins to fail. To save it an immense incinerator is built to burn toxic waste. Smoke released directly into the atmosphere.’
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HORROR OBSOLETE: ENDLESS MARDI GRAS (2017)
‘Image sequences interwoven between drone images of destroyed cities and visually amplified pornography to contrast the illusion of human affection with the reality of its absence, to cut between alluring promise and total despair, punctuated by sudden, stark narration and edited to the soundtrack of Mantra.’
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The Grateful (2009)
‘Unexpectedly, the entire theater goes completely dark. For several seconds everyone sits in silence, blind. Duncan and the chorus members, sitting throughout the audience, begin to to whisper to themselves. In a moment, continuing to whisper, they stand up in the dark and undress loudly enough for the strangers sitting near them to hear. Nude or semi-nude, they turn to the strangers and start screaming. Some stand up and scream back. Cellphone camera strobes flash throughout the audience. Screaming and strobes continue for several minutes. Then whispering again, Duncan and the chorus move through the crowd to the exit to end the event.’
_________
Maze (1995)
‘Seven participants and I are locked naked and completely blind overnight. The other participants have no knowledge of what to expect, or information about how long the event will last.’
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See (2002)
‘John Duncan’s SEE is a video installation made up of four separate and simultaneous projections of sequences taken from the John See Series, a series of adult movies he directed in 1986-87 during his stay in Japan. On entering the dark exhibition space, the viewer is assailed by immense flashes of images and sound cut-ups… In those moments in which the sound is softer, a voice emerges, whispering Japanese phrases until it is drowned once again by the wave of louder sounds.’
_______
Caged (2021)
____________
BUS RIDE (1976)
‘A small amount of fish extract is poured into the ventilation system of a Los Angeles city bus shortly before the bus begins its standard route. Set in buses with windows that cannot be opened, the subliminal odor acts as a subtle aphrodisiac on the unsuspecting passengers. A normally passive commuter kicks a stranger, a pregnant woman, off of the seat they’re sharing in order to put up his feet. This causes a fight among the other passengers, half of whom side with the commuter. A group of normally quiet ultra-polite children, going home from a school specializing in disciplined behavior, tear college career ads from the inside of the bus, shred them and attack each other with the scraps.’
____________
JURASSIC (2022)
‘A 60 minute edit by John Duncan of Stephen Dwoskin’s 1974 feature film Dyn Amo, focused on a group of performers onstage in a run-down strip club, filmed by Dwoskin when polio still made it possible for him to balance on crutches hoilding the camera waist-high. Duncan’s edited version emphasizes the particular attention Dwoskin gives to the performers’ faces, from cynical contempt to naïvely lost to sweaty staged hostility, as they put on a show for a seriously jaded audience that remains invisible. Featuring a soundtrack by John Duncan.’
___________
Voice Contact (1998)
‘Event with live action and 4-channel surround-sound audio for single voluntary participants, nude, alone and blind, in a direct confrontation with actual vs. recorded voice in a completely dark, 5-star luxury hotel suite stripped of furniture. All clothing and possessions given to a uniformed guard stationed at the suite entrance. Rendered blind and vulnerable — by choice. The surround sound constantly changes, making the suite seem to fluctuate between a large hall and a smaller, intimate space, making echolocation impossible.’
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Rage Room (2010)
‘Informed by the seismic shift in his livelihood after Blind Date, Rage Room was created as a prototype for the center room of a seven-level structure based on the architecture of the human brain, constructed from 495 shipping container modules, designed to reflect or invoke specific states of mind. The core container—Rage Room—is dedicated to abject rage, and has been recreated at the center of Nicodim’s gallery space. The walls are bloody, furniture is smashed and broken on the floor.’
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The TOILET EXHIBITION (1985)
‘Solo installation of A1 poster-size collage-images of war atrocities and pornography, mounted on the doors inside stalls of mens’ public toilets in the fashion, financial, government and entertainment centers of Tokyo: Shibuya, Hibiya, Kokkaigijidomae, Shinjuku.’
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Narcomantic (2012)
‘An 8 hour nonstop all night event that breaks down the boundary between dream and reality for a sleeping audience.’
__________
ACCESS DENIED (2000)
‘Stereo sound coming from behind the locked doors of two separate rooms at the top of the villa’s main stairway (one channel per room): a couple whispering, laughing, shouting, having long, slow, repeated sex, with a mixed-shortwave drone in the background, playing back loud enough to echo through the area and be heard from the base of the stairs, encouraging visitors to defy the ‘ACCESS DENIED’ sign on the staircase steps and go up to hear better. Which of course they did.’
__________
Downhill (2004)
‘Imagining the mindset of a contemporary slave.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** jay, If you can find the film somewhere, I second your instinct to rewatch. In the research I did on cannibals for ‘TMS’, I didn’t come across a single cannibal who didn’t express at least a slight disappointment in the meal itself. Okay, good if the blood thing is de rigeur. In type, it brings horror movies to mind, or did to some degree to me, apparently. Maybe something therein about the visual vs. written porn conundrum. I hope you have a very spruced up day. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha, oh, no, Brad wasn’t flirting with me, quite the contrary possibly. But thank you for imagining the possibility. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, paintings need to be seen in general, I think. Sometimes photo realist paintings are better in jpegs. But it’s possible to add the requisite textures and proper colors and stuff maybe. Or I hope so for painters’ sakes in this 80% life by proxy post-internet world of ours. What was kind of interesting was that I had actually seen Brad Pitt in the flesh years ago in a 7-11 when he wasn’t yet hugely famous, and he had a quite visibly acne scarred face, and now let’s just say he doesn’t. I had to look up mukbanger. I’m out of it. But I will certainly follow love’s budding career. Love eating a muckburger, which is what my insufficiently coffeed-up eyes thought you were saying at first, or rather a very, very delicious muckburger, G. ** Lucas, Hi. I’m still holding out hope for my ear’s self-healing abilities, but my faith is definitely waning. No, but I peeked through a hole in the fence around the skateboarding stadium and saw a little slice people cheering. I will for sure go see the ParaOlympics skateboarding in a couple of weeks when the prices are much lower, sadly. Yeah, you’re obviously so right about your dad. I hope you can channel the anger into something creative or … I don’t know. I emotionally divorced myself from my parents in my early teens for all kinds of reasons, and after that I just thought they were ignorant and intellectually limited and kind of sad really. People that life was gradually leaving behind. You’re right to be angry, needless to say. I guess just keep knowing you’re the one in the right, and he’s just an embattled fortress of a person or something. I talked to Zac. He won’t be back until next week, but we talked about everything, and he’s 100 in agreement with what I think we should do, so hopefully next week we’ll start to de-sink the ship. Thanks, pal. Hang way in there. ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s fun. Well worth a watch if you can find it. ** Diesel Clementine, Oops. I’m glad I wasn’t the ‘Beautiful Room’. I have yet to place a VR set on my head that didn’t make me take it off within 30 seconds. Yikes, your childhood brain condition. As you might know, I got hit on the head with an axe when I was 11, so I can sort of somewhat relate maybe. I only know the band Death in June. Thanks for the archive.org-occasioned educational field trip. The truncated version of your comment had plenty going for it, no worries whatsoever. ** Charalampos, I’ll have to go do a visual mix and max with those two to see if I agree. I’m blurry without the props. I do like it. Thank you for the gift of synchronicity. Greetings from the many loud helicopters flying over Paris. ** Thomas H, It is really fun and good. It’s hard to locate and see, but it’s worth the hunt. Maybe it’s because I grew up near the Rose Parade and always went to watch them being built and always went to look at them parked afterwards and wilting that I think that parades aren’t parades without floats. But I do think parades are parades without marching bands, so my opinion is obviously quirky. The French don’t prize shitty deserts. It’s very hard to find them here. Even their donuts are too laden with fanciness. I’m so, so sorry about your friend. Is there no one to take over the gallery? Could people organise a benefit or something? Worst comes to worst, maybe there’s a university or LGBTQ archive that would accept and preserve the works? I don’t know, that’s very sad. I’m so sorry. ** Uday, Hi. Woody, interesting. Yes, I suppose if I did spritz myself, it could be woody. I basically swore off writing non-fiction about, oh, 17 years ago, so, no. Other than the non-fiction part of ‘I Wished’. I was never so good at non-fiction, and I write too meticulously to be an efficient non-fiction writer on deadline all of that. Thanks for wishing to know. What’s happened to you since you lost blood? ** Nika Mavrody, Is that true about Dostoyevsky? How interesting. Thanks! ** Steve, Hi. No, I don’t know why. The book is very good. I’m early into it, but I think it’ll come up with Baldwin’s reason at some point. Like I said, keep saying, the festival circuit is a total racket if you’re an actual filmmaker making actually interesting films with no clout behind you or friends in those high places. What sucks is there’s no other clear, productive way to get your film out without having spend large amounts of time basically inventing another way. But I’m pretty anti-festival right now. Or anti-so-called-big festivals. It was invigorating: your track. Everyone, For Gay City News, Steve interviewed GOOD ONE director India Donaldson here. ** Joseph, Oh, right, the hurricane. That’s been a top news story even over here. So it does sound impactful and taxing. You know how it is: I remember when people would read there was a big earthquake in LA and call me to ask if I was alive and okay, and I’d be, like, ‘Earthquake, really?’ I think the only time I ever kayaked was in a huge bay full of icebergs in the Antarctic, but it’s in my top five ever greatest things I’ve done without a pen in my hand or an open WordDoc. Great you’re finished editing. Late-September! Whoa, so soon. Very nice. Excited! ** Harper, Being a medical marvel sounds appealing. Or a least being contextualised as one does. Whew. My LA roommate smokes weed every waking minute, but he’s mellow, and I wouldn’t even know what he’s like when he’s not stoned, and he vapes it so the apartment still smells fresh. Glad ‘Out 1’ hooked you. I used to wish Leaud was my boyfriend. ** Bill, Right, local legend as well as international less known legend. I’m still on the fence and mostly on the other side of the fence about ‘Longlegs’. May ‘Flunker’ do the opposite of flunk you. ** Oscar 🌀, Best cat ever, it sounds like. Did you know that The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ was originally called ‘Hi There Oscar’, and, in fact, that’s what Paul McCartney is actually singing when it sounds like he’s singing ‘Helter Skelter’ but George Martin was so against that uncommercial title/chorus that he used an early, primitive equivalent of AI to revise McCartney’s voice until it said something else, which turned out to sound like ‘Helter Skelter’ to undiscerning ears, but it’s really just gibberish with ‘Hi There Oscar’ as its internal organs. Do you ever wonder if you’re a robot that’s so sophisticated that it doesn’t even know it’s a robot? I don’t. 22 degrees … sigh, yum. We’re supposed to be getting our last heatwave of the year this weekend. So be glad you went home. xoxo. ** Today my galerie presents a show by the very intense artist John Duncan, and I leave you to discover why he’s intense. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Haha, you’re right, very very intense art. It’s nice of the interviewer in that conversation with him to actually engage with him, rather than just ask questions about that 1980 artwork, I very rarely see that for people with such shocking “portfolios”, or whatever the term is for performance art.
I know what you mean about cannibals, I’ll try and hunt down that article. I’m sort of less fascinated by cannibals and moreso the people who consensually agree to be partially eaten. Actually, on that topic, is Julie Decorneau (I’m sure I’m spelling that wrong) someone you watch/follow? I remember her film Raw about sexual cannibalism being pretty incredible, even if it did sort of go in for shock value at points.
Yeah, I know what you mean about blood! I think that maybe when you have a medical condition that makes you see quite a lot of blood, it maybe changes as a symbol. But I do about 3 injections a day, and I’m still petrified of needles, so maybe that isn’t true. Honestly, it’s sort of fascinating, I always kind of forget other people are incredibly upset by it, I’ve accidentally answered the door once or twice with blood on my chest entirely without thinking. Anyway, you too, RE the spruced up day thing!
Hi!!
Ah, today’s post is amazing! Just so good, really. Thank you!
Agreed – about paintings.
Hmm. Maybe now we know where Brad Pitt’s early earnings went. I mean, it isn’t surprising that no acne scars can be seen in any of his movies, considering the amount of makeup he must be wearing, but in real life…
I hadn’t known the word “mukbanger” until two days ago when I heard it on a Korean reality show. Honestly, it’d be way more intriguing to watch people (or love) eat muckburgers, though, haha.
Love once again – and hopefully for good this time – repairing the elevator in our building, Od.
Dennis, The gasps never stop with you!
The relationship has passed the “Flunker” test. I randomly opened it to a couple places and started reading. David was in the room, too. He laughed. Alex was like WTF? He said, “That’s wild as fuck.” But he eventually liked it.
First part was about Dmitry and his father. Second was about the kid whose dog eats his asshole.
I have a 3-day weekend this weekend. I’m off tomorrow. My birthday is on Saturday. I’ll be 53. Erf.
Duncan is rather Bataille-esque
And for International Cat Day , here’s Rufus with Pink Martoni
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=kitty%20come%20homesong%20videos&view=detail&mid=42BC8DAED6C916C0573C42BC8DAED6C916C0573C&ajaxhist=0
Finding it quite cathartic to read about John Duncan’s work. Thought I had problems and maybe I do, but this guy performs a valuable service.
The folk at Tak Tent Radio will be coming to the end of their summer break next week, so I’ve been putting together the latest episode of Play Therapy v2.0 ahead of its broadcast on the 18th. What with the football season coming back and the English riots seemingly over, it’s good to be returned to a feeling of normality.
LOL yr note to Oscar !!
I’m sorry I keep messing up ,so I’m just to paste what I wrote yesterday and leave it here because I think I did it for the wrong thing. It’s still storming outside . So peaceful
Are you saying there is a typhoon in your ear? Like, “sea”
Oh it’s very in theme you say that right now im in a state of harmony because we have a storm and flood warning where I am. And lots of rain! imagine if, like, it ended up flooding like inthe movie Ponyo? That would be something
I saw the cake post yesterday. I like the one with the teddy bear face down on the surgery bed.
What books you been reading? Ive been studying drawing books, but the last book I started was a manga.
Oh no, my classes start on the 19th of this month. Very soon.
That breakfast in America place sounds interesting. Was it like a Denny’s? Oh btw I never told you but I did get an interview at that pet place. It went well. I think working with pets would be great because I can’t do anything else.
My mom has a dog named Cooper now,have I mentioned that? He’s so odd because he’s a manic bubbly creature always with a smile yet he’s got a huge damn sack between his legs and it’s alarmingly human looking to be on such a small little creature ha-ha
I’m really sorry for being so boring I wish I had things to say do that it would be less tedious reading.
What things do you enjoy in life?
When this storm ends I want to go somewhere.
Ive been doing a lot of ink art and stuff! It makes me wish I used ink instead of charcoal for my older stuff. I like writing words on my skin on ink like “Dote” or “bourgeois” or “Effigy” oh and ” Ecorchè” all very uncommon but eccentric words
Hmm, yesterday it was raining and I watched Cecil B Demented for the first time and I don’t even really remember it. I forgot it was Roger Waters halfway through and thought maybe I was dreaming but like I said it was raining and I was passed out.
As you can see if had a lot of free time on hand ha ha! But it’s good because when school starts I’ll be ready.
Movie suggestions?
Hi There Oscar! When one thinks that surely I have heard every Beatles story, narrative, and inner secret, and not once have I heard about “Hi There Oscar.” That alone, proves that Paul McCartney is brilliant! And, of course, “Hi There Oscar” is a great line and/or song title. How would Charles Manson translate “Hi There Oscar?” Now back to today’s blog subject. Will read and see now.
First, if I may… hehehe woody. Now, with that out of the way, thanks for today’s post. Saved it to read en route on the family trip tomorrow. Not much has happened to me since the blood. Met friends, started revision on my first finished novel. Frantically reread Adler’s criticism (I know David Ehrenstein is NOT a fan but I enjoy its forwardness). Time to go read some more before I have a week of spending time with everyone constantly (might just go off by myself for a day/night every now and then). Wishing you well wicking underwear.
hi. yeah it sucks that people aren’t as interested in the paraolympics but at least you won’t have to shell out. I don’t know why people are so weird about it but I guess the answer would just be old fashioned ableism. thanks for those words re: situation with my dad. I’m now resigned to him being an asshole but it’s so mentally exhausting and stuff. I won’t have to stay with him this weekend thankfully because my mom’s being understanding and everyone else is also out of town so that’s good for now. I’m not really usually an angry person, kind of the opposite in fact, so I’m not really sure how to channel that creatively but I’ll figure it out somehow. I’m maybe more seriously thinking of making another zine but I don’t know if I could finish it in time before my classes start. here are two collages I made in the last week; I just finished the first one a few moments ago. https://imgur.com/a/oOKZJkZ
it’s good to hear you’re at least on the way to de-sink the film ship. much luck on that!
p.s I also used to (and still do a little) wish jean-pierre leaud was my boyfriend. I probably have already told you this but my friend who also lives in paris met him after a screening and a q&a he did of one of his movies (‘the departure’ I think) early this year. they got to shake hands with him and everything. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so envious as when they told me that haha.
oh, also apparently there’ll be a new xiu xiu single early next week. I’ll have to be on the lookout for that and report back to you 🫡
Hi, Lucas. That second collage is so good! Love it.
thank you!
Wow. Please tell me more about how you even found yourself kayaking in an Antarctic Bay filled with icebergs and what that was like. This sounds awesome in the classic sense and like a dream of mine (not to say I had a dream where that happened, but it’s something I would absolutely love to do). Winter is my favorite time to go on the water for a lot of reasons, but I’ve never done anything remotely comparable to that.
This must’ve been before Pitt was a star.
Festivals also profit off fees from films they probably don’t even bother watching, while their biggest entries get ushered in for free. Would self-distribution be an option? The micro-cinema model of Spectacle has taken off in some American cities. (Of course, trying to do this in the U.S. from Paris would be tough.)
Tonight, I’m seeing THE DEVIL QUEEN, a 1974 Brazilian film about Madame Sata, a femme gangster. Should be fun.
Hi. Yeah I know people who are only their version of normal when high. I remember being a kid and the idea of smoking weed being one of the most exciting things in the world, but I’ve had too many unpleasant experiences to do it regularly. A few puffs is cool, but then I want more because I feel good, and before I even know it I go non-verbal and am having paranoid fantasies about everything.
Tomorrow I will commence my reading of Pynchon’s ‘Against the Day’ which I picked up at the post office today. Quite a brick, you could build houses with this book, it’s Pynch’s longest and one of the few I haven’t read. I’ve been getting through so many books lately and running out of the books I brought with me (most of my books are in storage until I move into a new room), so I figure there’s no better time to delve into a thick book. I’ve heard good things about this one so I’m excited but at the same time have no idea what to expect.
Did you know that John Lennon and Paul McCartney used to masturbate together? They used to get together with the homies and pull their dicks out and shout out the names of famous famous actresses etc. to get each other horny. Then John Lennon would shout out ‘Winston Churchill!’ or something. This is all by Paul’s own admission. Kind of touching that he isn’t ashamed of it, I don’t know why I say that though.
Oh, I’ve reminded myself of this Richard Bernstein montage that I believe The Beatles sued over or something like that. Bernstein also did a great piece with Candy Darling
https://www.artnet.com/artists/richard-bernstein/the-beatles-qNIsR7xtwdO57S0wMZzWCQ2
“Plan of the Novel ‘The Life of a Great Sinner'” in Eliot’s first ‘Criterion’ issue was excerpted from Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press… you mentioned her recently; and there are letters from him with Woolf’s record evidencing a negotiation.
Yes ! I was aware aha – I heard it before I read any of your books and it was the impetus to begin reading – partly why I started with I Wished. Related very strongly. I can’t help but read everything else you’ve written through that bed-bound lens. Head ache synecdoche. I hallucinated a head wound on one of the figures in Triptych August 1972. Visions of ‘A’ post-botched-surgery most likely. I can’t remember getting a CAT scan in case the vertigo was a tumour (not knowing what it was) without remembering backwards. Benjamin buttoning till I’m 8 and I forget what a brain tumour was and why it’s sad. I’ve got a headache and my mum tells me to drink a glass of water.
Loved today’s post btw. Last night, me and a friend (named after the last day of the week) said we’d go to the gym at 9am. Instead I went over to his at 11 and made NYC style bacon egg and cheeses. (Lidl didn’t have hot sauce so we bought little packets of buffalo sauce from the pizza shop next to it) – lost the plot here – point being we read about John Duncan on my new phone (as small as a credit card) with red and grease dripping down our chins. My favourite was Maze. Fabulous image. (Non image). I’m playing his noise music the now. I’m a bit drunk and the keyboard is so tiny. Idk if I’m being very coherent. My boyfriends are in their underwear, smoking a joint, gossiping about boyfriend 1’s dayjob at the hospital. Throwing amputated arms in bins. Wheeling the body bags down to the morgue. He’s a telling boyfriend 2 a story I’ve heard before. Someone’s arm got sent down to the bins by accident. They went down and rummaged. But it was too late to re-attach He’s saying “Sometimes you just got tae laugh you know ?” I’m typing on this tiny phone and he’s telling me he’s got a story he forgot to tell me.
Hi again Dennis! Turns out I was worrying too much; the medical interview grade is just participation-based this time so the pressure on us should be pretty low. No, we don’t get to pick the patient complaint (I wish!). The idea is to ask questions and elicit the complaint and symptoms from the patient. Med school is kind of surreal; all the responsibility of future doctorhood is suddenly dawning on me.
Re: Brad Pitt, my partner’s father is a somewhat prominent businessman who used to party with celebrities, so there are pictures of child Adam with Brad Pitt at a party in the 90s. That whole world is foreign to me though. I don’t think I’ve met a single celebrity.
You ever listen to Denzel Curry? Bumping his latest album right now and loving it lol.
Hi Dennis,
Thank you for the kind condolences. I was never particularly close to Dragoneer, but the online spaces he ran provided for countless relationships to bloom – including, by butterfly-effect, many of my own relationships, including my boyfriend. I am sorry to have saddened you with the news. It sounds like the rest of the team running the gallery sites are working on keeping continuity, so hopefully they’re able to keep everything running. The only news article I could find about this was an online newspaper based out of Pakistan, but it’s in English, so – https://tribune.com.pk/story/2486294/death-of-fur-affinity-founder-dragoneer-ignites-us-healthcare-debate
Funnily enough, I know a few furries who are fans of your work, so that’s a neat coincidence. Have you ever had much connection/experience with that subculture? Were the “Flatsos” from ‘The Marbled Swarm’ a pastiche?
I did productive things today, which feels strange. Went for a checkup and it took the nurse four tries to draw blood, and I’ve never had this problem before. What on earth happened to my veins?
Be good to yourself, Dennis. Until tomorrow.
Oh, and DAMN, this John Duncan sounds like a fascinating and kind of frightening man. Some of those pieces and performances seem like they might have been made up by some puritan scaremongers to warn people away from the art world. The end of the interview, when he talks about sex and death and ‘just meat’. Chilling.
Hey, Dennis! “Duncan is a complex and interesting character, sensitive to reactions of others, but not crazy” — Yeah, I think I’d have to agree based on this introduction — thanks for that, by the way. Art from trauma certainly has a unique charge to it, and his work definitely has a heady charge. His philosophy about confronting, exploring and learning from our emotions, thoughts and desires is really fascinating. I wonder if he ever felt like he’d gotten to the bottom of exploring these themes. Sorry your ear continues to be a bother. How close are you to seeking medical intervention? Hope you’ve been having a fruitful week otherwise. I think I’m going to watch ‘The 400 Blows’ in a bit. It’s been on my list for ages.
What he said in the interview is genius:
“I push myself into some sort of action to find out the difference, to find out just how much I’ve been taught and how much is mine.”
This is one of those quotes one can project so much of themselves into and get wonderfully lost in the best way possible. Nearly chilling what the “mine” could be once you strip the indoctrination away, and to think of what you have less control of: what you’ve been taught or what you were born with; the latter much harder to escape from, compared to “unlearning.”
Hey, Dennis. I love the sound of ‘ACCESS DENIED’. Big genre of Roblox “games” (more like environments) based off this propensity to freely investigate curiosities, with a creepy factor emerging out of the foreknowledge that it’s a video game and the uncertainty as to basically anything else. I haven’t been able to find them since first discovering them a few years ago. The big one was called “MUGEN”, though that’s more just plain esoteric rather than environmental and thus isn’t quite what I’m talking about. Kind of a bummer. Some non-bummers: finished my summer class (with great success), and nearing the end of my dull-ish internship. I still need to get back to you on my thinking w.r.t Europe. I really should’ve kept a journal. Uh, I guess I’m still reeling a little from how much of a lingua franca English is. I got a neat looking book from the Pompidou bookstore titled “Coder le Monde”, and it kind of postures itself as an artist’s introduction to computer art and information theory. It winds up being more informing as a reference, but I’ve always liked this stuff because it has the tendency toward mad ponderings on the nature of technology and communication re: Serial Experiments Lain. People go batshit crazy over “the computer”. My suspicion concerning humanities philosophizing was that it’s mostly, still, reinventing the wheel w.r.t phenomenology, and in this book, it, uh, is. Read an article recently that said there’s a reason all art students know Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, and Heidegger but not Mill, Shannon, Rawls, or Carnap. (Or something like that. Can’t find it now, of course.) Obviously, the author didn’t provide the reason. I think philosophers are a bit too personality cult-y. Did/do you ever engage with philosophers? I assume you’ve, like, read a philosopher.
Going to Memphis this weekend! Apparently, it will be the start of Elvis Week. I don’t really care for Elvis, but the febrile crowds and garish attractions that appear around his legacy are striking. Hope to see a good Elvis impersonator. Maybe a Graceland-themed haunted house, too. I didn’t see any impersonators in Europe, an absence that quietly struck me just now. Tough luck? Besides that, I learned that there’s some long abandoned park-exhibition recreating the Mississippi River basin near my house, so I’m going to go there sometime before I return to school. I think my dad went to it when he was pre-adolescent and it was still functional; he says they must’ve been paying a handful of Army Corps engineers each hundreds of thousands to maintain the thing. I’ve decided it will be there where I burn offerings in y’all’s favor.
You know, I actually know very little about The Beatles, but I’ve heard there’s a lot of theories/conspiracies/etc about hidden messages in their music — so it’s nice to be sort of involved. And also cool for that little note to be noticed (hi Jack and Tosh!). While I’m definitely glad to be missing another bout of Parisian heat, I’m kinda bummed about missing the fact that they’re renaming Strasbourg–Saint-Denis to Heyyyyyyyy-There-Dennis for one day only. I’m not sure what day it is, though, so you’ll need to keep an eye/ear out for it.
RE: robot thoughts, I also don’t really think about it. I did go through a really short stint of occasionally wondering if I was in some kind of Truman Show scenario after I watched the movie for the first time, but there’s just not enough slapstick in my day-to-day for that to be the case.
And, jeez, John Duncan. Intense is definitely a word for it. That’s a really great interview though. Super interesting guy.
How’s your Friday/weekend looking? :3