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Helene Schjerfbeck The Door (1884)
Oil on canvas
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Ida Idaida I both leak and receive. perfectly happy, in a circle, complete. (2022)
‘It started with myself and mental problems; I have various types of memories, images, thoughts and ideas, which were a lot to handle and it limited me. To utilise this and apply it, work, research and production became a way for me to deal with my contorted thoughts and physical symptoms. I had a power and energy that I had to direct outwards, so not to obliterate myself. Since then, I have worked with handicrafts, images, sculpture, electronics, drawings, sound, spatiality: wrought through everything I could get my hands on, in order to establish inner processes beyond myself.’ — Ida Idaida
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Johanna Hedva If You’re Reading This, I’m Already Dead (2024)
‘Hedva is coming to the end of their story. In a few hundred pages, they will be gone. They worry that the people of this world will never have sex, sex with anyone, sex with a person, a robot, a ghost. By sex, they mean death, dying. They got to know a bit about what death would really be like. “It’s like this, like grief.” It’s like a very long time, but different. If death is like the sky but if life is like the sky—if life is like the sky—it’s never the right one.’ — Joan
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Luna Moth Untitled (2025)
‘Neo-Gothic is a good name for the tattoos I create. I keep classic Gothic elements and add different shapes on top, creating layers. It’s something experimental with Gothic elements. A controversial visual composition allows the viewer to experience a search for form through their own perception, so everyone can find something within the abstraction that resonates with them personally.’ — Luna Moth
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Precious Okoyomon To See the Earth Before the End of the World (2022)
‘The Gothic, after all, has long framed nature as an active, significant force, capable of unsettling and influencing the human. Where Romanticism idealised wilderness, Gothic narratives foregrounded its weirdness, transforming nature into far more than passive scenery: a site in which rationality frays, the subconscious surfaces, and moral or psychological dissolution reigns free. In doing so, they manifested modern anxieties about the natural world—its excess, its resistance to mastery—while exposing the ideological violence embedded in centuries of patriarchal domination.’ — Clot Magazine
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Tim Shaw Beyond Reason (2018)
‘This is a truly gothic work; like the genre’s best literary or filmic practitioners, Shaw adopts the formal conventions (claustrophobia, shadows, scale, even the play of surfaces that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has identified as central to the gothic) to speak of disintegrating histories and taboos, triggering our basic emotions and fears to subvert the possibility of a passive response. And, honestly, finding oneself alone with this two-story specter was frightening.’ — Gilda Williams
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RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ The Gasolear (early 1990s)
‘It’s tempting to label Rammellzee’s artwork as science fiction. But Rammellzee, whose birthname remains unknown to even his closest friends, might have disagreed with the term ‘fiction’. The artist, who died in 2010, created his own universe, one meant to subvert power structures through iconoclastic writing and futuristic narrative. Renowned in Manhattan’s 1980s downtown scene, Rammellzee called his esoteric cosmology ‘Gothic Futurism’, a term that aptly evokes his diverse influences: medieval scribes, hip-hop, comic books.’ — Art Review
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Uri Nir Heat Archer (2012)
‘Heat Archer by Uri Nir was filmed with a thermal camera, which does not see light but rather senses heat. Nir creates a scene inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Gold Bug, in which the characters have to pass a sculpture of a gold bug through the eye socket of a skull in order to recover the location of a buried treasure. In a departure from the original story, Nir presents us with a water jet that passes through the eye of a human skull and hits the pool. The fraught image of the water piercing the skull is captured using scientific means, and so the work brings together the polar opposites of science and mythology that are often at odds with one another when it comes to archeology.’ — outset
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Hugo Simberg The Dance on the Quay (1899)
watercolor and drawing on paper
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David Panos Gothic Revival (2023)
‘Mr Panos told BBC Radio Northampton he was interested in “how we find ourselves in the past” with gothic architecture in the Victorian era, and then gothic music in the latter 20th Century. “I was a goth way back when, and Bauhaus was the first thing I knew when I came to Northampton, so that provided a framework for me,” he said.’ — BBC
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Anne Imhof Do Not Disturb (2021)
‘Imhof’s performance work is a dissonance. It is a dysfunctional path that welcomes a lonely audience, more confused than ever, who can no longer recognize their place in the world.’ — PdT
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Tereza Zelenkova Various (2017 – 2028)
‘Tereza Zelenkova is a Czech artist whose work examines, memory, doubling and the occult roots of image-making.’ — Nearest Truth
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Stacey Steers The Stars Watch from Long Ago (2026)
‘A tiny farmhouse spins through the cosmos, carrying silent film icon Lillian Gish into the vast unknown. Meticulously crafted from thousands of handmade collages, this dreamlike, uncanny epic evokes wonder, loss, and longing against the shadow of wildfire. The film features Gish along with Janet Gaynor and Ana Torrent whose images are seamlessly lifted from their early films and cast into a contemplative, uncanny epic.’ — ASIFA
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Robert Longo Untitled (Gothic Tree) (2018)
‘Charcoal is this incredibly fragile material. I’m making images of paintings out of dust.’ — RL
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Paul P Untitled (2024)
‘Paul P. is contemporary Canadian artist known for his drawings and paintings of young men. Influenced by the works of John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Paul P. creates gothic imagery of bohemian youths and their milieu.’ — Massimo Minini
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Masaki Iwana Vermilion Souls (2007)
‘Vermilion Souls is like a grown-up, goth Studio Ghibli movie. It’s about a boy who accidentally finds himself in a strange new world with four adults suffering from a mysterious disease. It has that same adventurous magic Studio Ghibli films have where the world feels like anything could happen. The filmmaking is top-notch here too. The story takes place in the 40s and they captured that well. This was clearly shot digitally but they made it look great and much like black and white film. Similar to a Guy Maddin film. I loved the mix of that wonderment with the intensity of some other scenes. The entire movie was switching between genres in a way where I never knew where it was going to go. I couldn’t tell if this was an adventure movie, horror, thriller, drama. It’s completely unique in that way and makes for a really memorable and exciting experience. Just maybe don’t watch this with your mom.’ — evilbjork
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花久 宗次郎 Halloween Night (2026)
AI
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p.s. Hey. ** Alex Osman, Hi, Alex. Cool that you’re a Korine aficionado. I actually own a copy of ‘The Bad Son’, but it’s in LA and I don’t think I want to part with it. Although $600 … yikes. Oh, and, word to the wise, you might want check out the blog again tomorrow. I hope your weekend was enormously affecting. ** Steeqhen, And, among its other virtues, ‘Spring Breakers’ contains the only satisfying performance by James Franco. ** Adem Berbic, Hey. I think the two recent videogame-like Korine films are fantastic. They’re linked to in the post if you want to check them out. The metro trainwash was cool, but we didn’t get to see a train being washed, just the washing machinery in motion. ‘Too dangerous’ to observe, they said. Busy good and how so? ** Bill, Letterboxd really should allow groups so all those snark-merchants could snark at each other and not just foist their ‘too cool for school’ shit on the innocent public. Not a traditional doc is only good news, at least in theory? ** _Black_Acrylic, Korine’s unpredictability is nothing but exciting to me, yeah. ** Carsten, Hi. Me, I love all of Korine’s film with the single exception of ‘The Beach Bum’ which I think was his one big mistake. I think the two video game films are fantastic. They tap into his daring, visionary side, and fuck knows contemporary film desperately needs artists trying to reconstitute the medium like him. I found them very inspiring. I think he might be America’s most exciting current filmmaker. I think Jane Bowles is as good as Paul, but there you go. Haha, classic Ehrenstein observation, and he’s kind of totally right. I had watched ‘LC’ several times before, and I still think it’s a masterpiece. My weekend was fairly uneventful by urbanite standards too. ** Thom, Hi. I didn’t know Dorothea Tanning wrote books. Huh. But maybe I’ll leave her writing to my imagination. I really liked Korine’s two recent videogame-tapping films. They’re crazed. Halloween EP, ooh. No pressure, but … ooh. ** Steve, I jumped the gun on the ‘Resident Evil’ movie. It hasn’t opened here yet. This week, I think. I remember ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’ being the original Star Trek’s peak? Thank you for the new ear gift. Everyone, Here’s Steve: ‘I’ve got a new “Radio Not Radio” episode out. This one features Flute & Voice, Sarah Davachi, Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra, Patricia Brennan & Sylvie Courvoisier, Ibukun Sunday, Janel Leppin, Matilda Tjader, Danielle Dax, Broadcast, T. H. Ligeti, Bilal Nasser, Chrome Chasm, John Barry, Hugo Largo, khhllr, Vanessa Wagner, Henry Threadgill/Vijay Iyer/Dafnis Prieto, Caravan, Daevid Allen and Lex Walton.’ I’m putting together a gig post but it might not gel until early October. ** James Bennett, First week of October, so soon! Great! Congrats, pal. No, ‘RE’ hadn’t opened yet, but I think it’ll be out there starting on Wednesday? I’ll let you know. ** Dominik, Hi!!! You know me, things that fry my brain are the ultimate. Well, not always. My windows just face the building’s vestibule. I would need to get up on the roof, and I don’t think my building offers a way to do that. So I’ll just have to mosey down to the edge of the gigantic crowd and stand on my tiptoes and see what I can see. So love’s not a twink is what you’re saying? Love deciding something qualifies as Goth even though it probably doesn’t because he’s love so he can do anything he wants, G. ** HaRpEr //, Hi. I think ‘JDB’ is my favorite too. I like Korine enough to believe that if he goes down the AI path, which he almost for sure will, he’ll make it work for him. Interesting, I’ve been thinking I should restore the Zulueta post, and I think I will. Maybe I’ll rewatch ‘Rapture’ in the meantime. Sounds like what my brain is ordering. Obviously high hopes that the scouring and typing turns out to be an inspired experiment. ** Malik, Hi, Malik! ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ definitely made me wish I still smoked weed or dropped acid or ate mushrooms. Whoa, a poem a day for 100 days! I’m guessing there’ll be more haikus than epics? Wow, crazy, amazing. Are you going to see anything at the New/Next Festival this year? I think it starts pretty soon? ** Uday, Having pretty much sworn off more than friend type relationships, I think being a voyeur re: such things is preferable so far. I think I probably always subconsciously at least felt that way, but my body + heart had other ideas. My art is my boyfriend. ** Right. Today you get something that is vaguely inspired by the approach of Halloween and how that affects my post-making aspect. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hi Dennis! Wow, that Luna Moth tattoo is so lovely… I’m a changeable person, so tattoos are a bad idea for me, but that one is extremely fun to fantasise about having. The Tim Shaw artworks are great too, I once bumped into him on the train as he transported a set of sculptures to the London RA show, and he was lovely. His more recent art is great too, I love the way he’s started to combine occultism and conservative aesthetics into one form – less creating a fusion, and more accentuating aspects of one so that the other shines through. Me and my friends were also amused by “Halloween Night”. So cool!!!
Hope you’ve been well. I’ve been playing a lot of Well Tempered Clavier, which is crazy hard and a little incomprehensible while playing. As a kid, I was always told it was music that was only pleasurable for the listener and not the player, but I’ve been enjoying it as a sort of acrobatic finger dance routine reasonably well. So cool! Adios!
Hey Dennis! Hahaha I was kind of jumpscared by today’s Instagram preview post- those poor anime boys, someone save them! Really interesting selection of things for the category of today’s blogpost. In recent years there’s been a bit of a goth revival facilitated by short form video platforms- and while I’ve enjoyed a lot of the cool stuff this trend has brought my attention to- there has been an odd homogeneity brought about by internet consumer culture or what have you. I saw someone say that goth has been “pug-ified” hahaha. All this to say I really like your take on the theme as it’s the opposite of that :^)
I thought I’d update you on the situation with my guy too. I was able to see him last month, but I’m quite confused emotionally. Apparently he’s moving to Texas. He says he’s known it this whole time we’ve been talking, and that he’s surprised he forgot to tell me…. Argh. Somehow he never thought to mention it all the times he would tease me about moving to Chicago. I’m trying not to be too spiteful or anguished about it, as I want to enjoy my time with him when he visits me out here, but I’m heartbroken.
I got him a copy of Closer for his birthday by the way- I’ll let you know what he thinks if I fail to convince him to comment here himself haha. I did have another question about the book though. I remember reading about how with room temperature none of the characters were written to be homophobic… With Closer I was wondering if you had similar intentions with its characters/setting? Cause on one hand, I think homophobia is present through implication (George’s teacher being closeted, a lack of transparency between George & his father, depictions of cruising culture iirc), but most of these implications involve adult characters who are behaving inappropriately (& in turn would have other reasons to be secretive)… with the students in the story, being gay doesn’t seem like a big deal at all to my memory. I remember reading it to a roommate and this setting aspect really stood out to her, but to me it’s kind of what it was like to go to an art charter school for a year. Sometimes I joke that my charter school experience was kind of like Closer but instead of listening to badass music like Swans and TJAMC we were listening to the Hamilton soundtrack (booo)
Hope all is well with you Dennis- apologies if any of this is incoherent, I’m quite tired but I wanted to say hi. Have a really awesome day!
Goth was invented in Leeds! Well it’s where the Sisters of Mercy were formed, Le Phonographique (The Phono) goth club opened in 1979, the 1st kids used to hang around dressed in black around the market drinking snakebite and swapping love poetry. Quite a claim to fame and I don’t think the place makes enough of a big deal out of it.
Hi!!
Oh. Well. If you need to brave the extreme crowds to catch a glimpse of some of the happenings, it might not be so much fun…
Shit. I didn’t think of that. But love needs to be a twink, doesn’t he? And love’s approach to Goth is perfectly reasonable. I don’t think today’s post had a single element amiss.
In fact: love changing his address to today’s post and living there indefinitely, Od.
I get what you like about Korine, & I sure as hell agree that we need more radical approaches in contemporary film. But I just can’t with the synthetic imagery. I looked at a few minutes of “Aggro Drift” & couldn’t take it. But I’m allergic to video games & CGI too, so…
No I agree that Jane & Paul Bowles are equally fine writers. What I have a problem with are those who feel that in order to champion Jane they have to shit on Paul, which makes no sense to me.
Cool about “Lonesome Cowboys”. I got sucked into a bit of a Zodiac rabbit hole over the weekend. First with Fincher’s film (very enjoyable) & then with this doc “This is the Zodiac Speaking”. And I have to say that as far as mainstream filmmakers go, Fincher’s still pretty good in my eyes.
Question about the “welcome to the world” post: I looked over some recent ones & most of them were for prose works, where excerpts make sense. With my poetry collection, do you think it’s wiser to present excerpts too or a couple of poems in their entirety? Just want your advice, since I’m not sure what makes more sense within a promotional framework.
Hi Dennis!
Thank you so much for these latest posts, especially the one on Leonora Carrington. I love women Surrealist artists, and I’m so happy to see their work being brought back into the spotlight more and more! The exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg looks wonderful; there’s also another exhibition dedicated to her at Almine Rech Gallery until October 8th!
Today’s post on the Gothic made me think of the work of the artist Jenna Kaës. She conceptualizes objects (particularly funerary objects) as emotional receptors. Her work is really wonderful; here’s her website: https://jennakaes.com/
So exciting about the translation of Lucie Rico! I can’t wait to hear what you think of her writing.
I’m heading to Lyon at the end of the week to see the Biennale de l’art contemporain; the most interesting section is, of course, the one dedicated to emerging artists at the IAC in Villeurbanne.
I hope my week will be either full of art or artfully orchestrated, at the very least.
I hope the same is true for you!
Noted. The ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ trailer definitely seemed magnetic to me. Although I get why other people might say the only thing it could magnetise is a migraine. It’s so bracing how fully he’s followed the evolution of the ‘trash’ aesthetic(s). There’s also this interview from the Spring Breakers era where he spends the whole thing just gushing about how much of a genius Gucci Mane is. A man of taste.
Okay, I guess it must have still been funky to clamber into the tunnels. Isn’t the Paris Metro known for being especially open to urban explorers and graffiti artists? I think most of the lines have connecting tunnels and they don’t really bother to guard it at night. At any rate, there’s a lot more graffiti than in Tube tunnels.
Busy good, I think so, yeah. Friends, positive work developments, Lacanian commencement, heavy music. I was worried I’d have to skip a friend’s techno thing for the RT screening, but fortunately (or not), it’ll run from 11pm to 5am. If you and Z wanna get your dancing shoes on between the screenings, I guess I’ve got your back. Tickets are out end of this month, right?
I’ll have to be elliptic about it here, but the situation I mentioned about a friend in a probably-definitely-abusive relationship seems to be getting worse, or at least more complicated. I don’t think it’s going to be painless, not for them and not for me and their other friends, either. How’s your just-hatched week looking, though? Busy? Abusive? Hopefully not.
@HaRpEr, ‘Rapture’ is so fantastic. A university professor sprang it on me in, like, 2020. I probably ought to follow DC’s lead in rewatching it.
Hey Dennis! Hope you are doing well, finally got the chance to read up on your Harmony Korine and Goth posts. Loved Heat Archer!! As always, my eyes and mind are glued onto any current talks of experimental film; I do worry about the state that Korine is taking his new video game projects, I just think he should solely work with the cool creators he is with right now instead of sprinkling in the AI commentary. The brink between modern video games and war propaganda, love it, total sucker for it too.
Anyways, I started reading Naked Lunch and was totally reminded of your writing. I will say that William S. Burroughs is just plain crazy and totally incoherent sometimes, but the headspace is an interesting one nonetheless. I will be reading Guide after Naked Lunch, I need to put a bow on all this magick stuff I have been researching way too much into.
Have you ever played or heard of the game Cruelty Squad? What about Hotline Miami? Kinda goes hand and hand with Aggrro Drift (lovely movie btw). I love my psyop’d killer narratives.
Have a nice rest of your day 🙂
Going through old writings is a strange and difficult process where I’m re-awakening things and feelings that I forgot, and it’s all very spontaneous but very rewarding. No matter what it looks like in future drafts, I know it’s an important thing to do, and I will say that everything I write is organised pretty chaotically.
I do like gothic imagery a lot. The likes of what you see in Guy Maddin films, German expressionism, and even some specific scenes in ‘Rapture’, all tingle something nice in my brain. I was never a goth but I was friends with the goth kids at school because we were dressed equally as crazy and we respected that in each other even if I wasn’t quite let into their ranks. I just remembered the other day that I went through a period where I used to wear all of my clothes inside out and backwards for some reason. Of course, I got shit for that but it was fun.
Actually, I remember now that several people in the past who I’ve shown my writing to have said that it was gothic and I didn’t really know what they meant. I don’t really know if any imagery in my writing is overtly gothic. It’s not something I think about, anyway. That said, the novel I just wrote sort of involves a vampire, so maybe they have a point.
OOH I like this post (as a goth)
Im wondering, as a superficial layer Ethel Cain enjoyer, If Ethel took/was inspired by the photographer Tereza Zelenkova for her Perverts album (On second note,..I think that is a photo from her)
Ive seen similar neo goth tattoos and I actually want one like that one day! Not quite sure which cathedral I’d do tho. Or any building, castle, etc bunker.
this weird sense of anhedonia has froze like ice over me the past days. I feel my body untethering from the world, but to my happiness, its only creating a inspirationally positive spell from its melancholic detached magic. Still on a good note, I feel my structure and motivation unfreezing slowly from through the fogIts like ima ghost ship,, slowly trudging through ice. Admiring the shapeless opulent ghost while im here But im finding a magic within this wonderland.
Just lit up a blunt, in my case, this could only augment my comment, although I just got off work from “the noodle” and kinda wanna anchor some sort of “expectation” or “routine” at least for now while. Like purple swirls in the sky!
So blunt and Cocteau twins.
So that spooktober macabre themed post im planning has three themes OooOh…cuz I couldnt decide. Wont tell u which ones tho..well maybe one….
Human skin…gasp!!
Maybe you can post it if I feel im able to October it in time with my current hecticness.
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If I’m crazy enough to bang out a long, multipart poem, it could happen but I’d bank on a few of these hundred poems to be part of an epic. The end goal is at least having a bunch of poems to edit into some selections for a decent enough manuscript.
New/Next Fest is indeed coming up next weekend! Some good selections to be had from the schedule this year. The first portion of Castration Movie Chapter iii about the couple will be screened, but part of me wants to wait for the full thing. Definitely want to check out “There’ll Likely be Michael Jackson Vigils Throughout the Night.” Just the concept of a film centered around vlogs and videos from that time period of the internet is fascinating. Arguably the second most memorable date in the 21st century.