Quotes:

“I am no man as I am every man.” – Caligula

“To forbid is forbidden.” – Sade (or a paraphrase of Sade, I read it in an article about Sade’s relation to French protesters in the 60’s)

“..so one person out of two is born in shit.” – Gaspar Noe (describing childbirth, which he filmed for an early film)

“I always knew we’d get AIDS together.” – a close friend of mine
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“Suicide is all theory until you fall in love with a piece of shit.” -Sean Kilpatrick, in a review of La La Land

“Judy would.” -Overheard conversation

“Dont fuck nobody who looks like your cousin.” -Overheard phone conversation

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation, is normal behavior.” – Hannibal on the instance of a man sewing his social worker into a horse

“Vivo! [I live.]” -Caligula’s last word

 

Lyrics/Poems:

“Existence, as we know it, spins
A fatal warp, a woof of woe.
There is no place for God or soul.
Works, hopes prayers, sacrifices, sins
Are jokes. The cosmos happened so:
Innocent of guide or goal.
Else, what were man’s appointed term?
To feed god’s friend, the coffin-worm!”

Aleister Crowley, Images of Life: Prologue sec. III

 

“You never liked the thought of being human anyway.
Death is one more option to explore.”

From Bent Knee’s “Being Human”

 

Anon, with each pronunciation
Banners were smoldering, then dying
And burning my intestines
Taking away, alas,
All that kept me alive
Hast thou not crept up upon me?
Cruel poison of Life!
Thou hast taken everything.
But what hurts me is that
You’ve slobbered filthily
O’er the delicate lips of a delicate girl

From maudlin of the Well’s “Gleam in Ranks”

 

Brownish spider,
Brownish leaf
Confirms my deepest held belief.
No more spider,
No more leaf,
No more me,
No more belief.

From mewithoutYou’s “Brownish Spider”

 

Photos:

Courtyard of Lunatics – Francisco de Goya

 

paintings by Zdzisław Beksiński

 

Aggravation (1896) – Briton Rivière

 

In Hoc Signo Vinces – Zdzisław Beksiński

 

Videos/Movies:

Heaven’s Gate propaganda, specifically “Last Chance to Evacuate Earth (Before It Is Recycled)”

 

Feherlofia

 

In the Name of Satan – and other Bob Larson anti-satanism propaganda

 

The Pig Fucking Movie

 

Songs/Albums:

The Republic of Wolves – “A Weather Vane”

 

Sun City Girls – Horse Cock Phepner (full album)

 

Kayo Dot – “Marathon”

 

Giles Corey – “The Haunting Presence”

 

Killer Fox – “Killer Fox”

 

Golden Avant-Garde – “Born to Be Wild”

 

Philemon Arthur & The Dung – “Om Ni Tycker Jag Undviker Er”

 

Pearls Before Swine – “Translucent Carriages”

 

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p.s. Hey. Today we get the great pleasure of sharing in some inspirations and writing prompts and muses of the fine writer and d.l. Cal Graves. A special look behind the scenes for us DC’s cognoscenti, both insiders and bypassers. Please enjoy and talk shop in whatever ways you like with Cal, okay? Thanks! And ultra-thanks to Cal! ** Monday ** Rewritedept, Well, hey there, Chris! A sight for sore eyes you are, sir. Yeah, busy on my end are the words. But good busy mostly. Oops about the call center thing, but it sounds like the oops resulted in an upgrade so, cool. Fun sounding stuff with your friend. Oh, I don’t really know Ween’s stuff much at all, no opinion. Deerhunter, well, you know I like them guys. Thanks for your 90s list. Good stuff, some very interesting, unexpected (to me) picks. I only heard one track off the new Chavez so far. Reminder to get it. Yeah, lots of casting and other work for the film. My time is gradually being completely occupied by the film stuff, which is necessary. Still waiting to hear about the TV series. We’re told by the end of this month, but I’m not holding my breath. Knife story: yikes. Okay, yeah, awesome to see you, buddy. Take it way easy. ** David Ehrenstein, Good morning, Mr. E. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien. I don’t think they have Satanic sex cults in France, even mythical ones. I wonder why. I’m going to ask around about that. ** Nick Toti, Hi, Nick. A great pleasure to see you. The Mike Warnke thing was particularly interesting to me among the stuff in that post. I’ve been thinking of tracking more down about him, so your info re: him is super interesting. Obviously, yes, indeed, I would love a Mike Warnke Day on the blog, if you want to do that. That would be fantastic! Thank you a ton for the offer! I’m good, and I hope you’re good too at the very least. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. That’s both very interesting and obviously unfortunate about the difficulty you’re having connecting with your parents on that awakening in your identity. It sounds like they have a lot of complicated built-in roadblocks and that you’re causing them to deal with a lot internal stuff of their own that they’ve already built barriers around and don’t want to access. That’s a tough one. I personally never expected or wanted my parents to understand me or or who I really am, but I know that desire is deep in most people. It sounds like you’ve done what you can for now, and now you have to wait and see whether they’ll engage with you and, more importantly, with themselves about that? Which might take some time? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thanks a bunch for engaging and taking to Bb. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I swear, like, 80% of everyone I know has a bad cold right now. I started to get one a few days ago, and then it seemed to decide that I wasn’t an interesting vessel and took off. I hope you’re feeling more up to speed by now. Are you? ** Tuesday ** Chris dankland, Howdy, Chris! Yeah, tricky/trippy/silly/serious project, right? I’m glad it tweaked you. Hugs from France. ** Ferdinand, Hi. ‘Lallend flees’ sounds quite intriguing. Maybe I’ll pick it up and try to use it to try to reawaken whatever remains of my ability to understand Dutch. Sometimes I suspect there’s more hiding inside my head than I think. Thank you! ** Bernard, Hi, B. Yikes! The jaw/grafting thing. Although I suspect the operation’s power of suggestion is far more alarming than the thing. But still. Jaws, disturbing things … ? Whatever do you mean, Mr. Welt? Oh, wait, I suppose the jaws are somewhat involved in what springs to mind when you suggest that. Cannibals must have amazing jaws, no? ** B, Hi, Bear! You good? Me, I would defnitely choose immortality. I guess how the physical aging thing works in that situation would need to be figured out first, but I’ve always wanted immortality. I think it’s objectioonable and unfair that I have to die. I know that’s weird. I think maybe I feel that way because I’m so interested in and excited by new things? And maybe it has to do with the fact that a lot of my closest friends are younger than me, sometimes much younger? I don’t know. But, yeah, if you ever bump into someone who has the power to bestow immortality, feel free to give them my contact info. Ha ha. Thanks, man, and I hope everything is flying high on your end! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Wow, another Bresson related book. There’s been a windfall lately. What’s going on, I wonder? I’m so excited for the new Godard film. I think it opens here next month maybe? ** Steevee, Hi. Well, finding out if he’s gay seems like the big first step. Personally I don’t see how it would be weird at all if you see if he wants to have dinner. Or at least a coffee if you want to play it safer. ** Bill, Hi, Bill! Things went very well in Bas Normandie, thank goodness, yes. Snippets of their hands! I like the sound of that. I really like that. Ooh. ** Wednesday ** David Ehrenstein, Strangely, yes, right? ** Bernard, That is a sweet New Yorker cartoon. Ha. Thanks, B. ** Steevee, Hi. Yeah, like I said, I think maybe just accepting that you’ve said and done what you can say and do and now waiting to see if they want to access this new truth about you or not is all you can do? But, again like I said, parental understanding is not something I ever expected in my life. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. Cool, glad Mrs. Claus, wherever he or she is, sublimed you. ** Thursday ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, Dóra! Oh, let’s see … Well, the possible ‘Tim’ had to cancel for Monday, so we’re seeing him tomorrow instead. But we did officially sign up the guy who will play another one of the main roles (Guillaume). The Bas Normandie trip was very successful and quite exhausting. We now have more of our cast in place. We filled four roles, three smallish and one fairly large. And I think we might have found the guy to play another of the four main roles. We’re bring him to Paris soon to try out with the actor playing the main role, but I think that’s going to work out. And we scouted locations in Cherbourg for a very long day and found some very good places. Now we have to wait and see if the owners of the houses and apartments we’d like to shoot in will agree to let us or not. That’s a big question. But we nailed down a wonderfully terrible little nightclub for one scene, and we found a lot of the outdoors places (park, streets, a mine, a carnival/fun fair, etc.) The hardest one is a river. We need a pretty-ish river with a spot that’s big/deep enough to swim in for one scene. There don’t seem to be any rivers like that around Cherbourg, so we’ll have to look further away. Anyway, it was a very successful trip. My head cold died out fast, thank goodness. No apartment news yet, and my stress about that is getting bigger. Ugh. I’m looking at yet another possible place today. You started writing a book! That’s huge! Awesome, really exciting! As is the new gig with you being a co-leader of the transsexual self-help group! When does that start? Do you have to prepare for it? So, you’ve been doing really, really well since I last got to talk with you! Fantastic! Did today follow suit, and how? ** Kier, Hi, Kier! I’m good, a little pooped, but not too bad. How are you? Oh, wow, Rimbaud was the winner. That’s funny, that’s fortuitous. I’m really glad my weird little idea clicked. My reading is tonight. I’m going through my usual ‘why the fuck did I agree to do this reading?!’ pre-event anxiety but hopefully it’ll be okay. Oh, and Zac and I will be in touch soon about the next step of our wondrous collaboration with you! Loveliness to see you, my pal! ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you, I will use that Fassbinder link wisely and greedily. ** Jeff Coleman, Howdy, Mr. Coleman. Oh, wow, New Juche’s book is official announced! Everyone, Superb writer.artist and d.l. New Juche’s new book ‘Mountainhead’ is coming out in April from Nine Banded Books, and we’ll be doing a birth celebration around that event here, but, in the meantime, if you want to look at the cover or pre-order it, you can do that by first clicking this. Yeah, I think it’s funny and interesting that Chip Smith is wisely publishing writers who hang out here considering that he used to despse me and everything I stood for. It’s a nice, unexpected ending. ** New Juche, Speak of the non-devil! Hi, Joe, My week was productive and good, yeah, thank you. Great about the day job being largely behind you. How are you going to use and decorate your remaining down time there? The apartment situation is unchanged, and the fear grows, but the determination remains, so, yeah. Yes, the Kiddiepunk Reader should be really good. I’m cool with ‘French Hole’ being reprinted. It’s a very particular thing, probably only of interest to people who want greater access to the secret substrucrure of ‘The Marbled Swarm’. It’s like a little book of cookies and clues. Very, very exciting about the April release date! Whoo-hoo! ** Bernard, I noticed that a Facebook friend of Mr. Dallesando’s alerted him to the post’s existence yesterday. It’s exciting to imagine him scrolling through it. ** Steevee, Hi. All sounds good with your actor, cool. Do you like prepping with the actor? I kind of really like starting to work closely with the actors in our film. It’s an interesting forming relationship. ** Raymond, Oh, my god, Raymond, I’m so sorry. That loss is just unimaginable. I don’t what to say. I send you all the love and support and hope for strength for you and your wife that I can. Jesus, I’m so incrediby sorry and sad to hear that. ** Okay, wow. Um, please enjoy thinking about Cal’s creative inputs today, and speak to him in whatever fashion you wish. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

 

‘Born in 1965, Morton Viskum is considered one of the most provocative and controversial contemporary artists from Scandinavia. The artist’s unconventional choice of materials, themes and artistic expressions often seduces and invites the viewers to experience a range of unexpected emotions, causing shock, amazement and uncontrollable curiosity.

‘For his first London solo exhibition ‘The Hand with the Golden Ring’, the artist did a live performance during the evening of the private view; the thrill was caused by the fact a dead human hand was used live as a paintbrush, demonstrating how the new series of paintings were created. It was not the first time the artist made use of a severed human hand as a paintbrush to compose paintings; Viskum actually owns several hands, they are not merely tools; the idea of the hand being linked to an immortalized personality is absolute central to those occasions when Viskum paints with it.

‘Viskum gained notoriety in the art world when back in 1999 he showed at an exhibition in Copenhagen the very first series painted with a dead hand: ‘The Hand that Never Stopped Painting’. Carefully the hand used was placed in a metal box with a lid and the viewers decided for themselves if they wanted to see it or not. Over a decade later, the hand is still a strong and a significant part of his art projects; when painting with them each hand expresses a different style and the paintings embody a certain personality.

”The Hand with the Golden Ring’, unlike the others, evidences an aggregated object: the golden ring suggests vanity and affluence of the diseased; the golden ring acts as a counterfactual narrative; the object put contingency back into an obsequy, serving as a necessary antidote to traditional deterministic tendencies. The presence of the ring initiates an obituary and for the viewer it evidences a sense of the human futile materialism. Who the hands belonged to initially, is one of Viskum´s well kept secrets.

‘By this approach, the art appears performative, more as an action, and not as much as an object-related material presence. By using one hand from a dead human being as a paintbrush, Viskum draws attention towards the work process. One can easily recognize the patterns caused by the hand’s presence, formed by abrupt lines, applied vertically in many layers and in many colors, adding a vibrant feeling of rhythm to the surface of the scintillating painting. These paintings bring to mind American Action Painting, an art form where the painting finds no premeditated composition and the focus is set on the event that created the art rather than on the object itself.’ — Vegas Gallery

 

____________

Morten Viskum’s ‘Immortal’

 

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Further

Morten Viksum Website
Morten Viskum @ Facebook
Morten Viskum @ Vegas Gallery, London
‘Morten Viskum / in retrospect’ @ Artpulse Magazine
Morten Viskum @ FAS, London
‘The Female Hand’ @ ME, Denmark
Book/video: ‘Morten Viskum (Antenne Books)

 

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Interview
from Don’t Panic

You are generally regarded as one of the most controversial contemporary artists in Norway. How do you describe what you do to people who don’t know you?
I usually start by describing my background as a veterinarian before I started at the Art Academy in Oslo. At the same time I tell people that a lot of the things said about me originates from the tabloid press. The projects written about here only make up a small portion of what I do as an artist. Many of my projects concern everyday phenomena within medicine and science, things that the public are not used to seeing and hearing about.

Is controversy an important and intentional part of your work?
No. To shock is not interesting in it self.

But the projects have lead up to a lot of interesting discussing that have made the projects worth seeing though. When the projects are exhibited for the first time, I sometimes get insecure if I have lost sight of the primary goals within the projects. And revealingly it seems that the projects get better over time. I take this as a good sign.

Can you tell us a bit about ‘The hand with the golden ring’?
The different Hand – projects develop, both concerning concept and technique, based on the background information I have.

The hand with the golden ring is hand number 6. All the paintings are new and made for this exhibition. First the canvas is painted with animal blood, using the severed hand as a brush. Then I place some gold glitter in the palm of the severed hand. Then I blow the glitter over the blood. At the end I paint over the glitter again with different colours, again using the hand as a brush.

How easy is it to source dead people’s body parts for the work?
That is a part of the project’s secret.

The nature of your work inevitably is going to divide audiences. What is the most common criticism that you hear? How do you deal or react to it?
Most of the time the people that criticize my work are the people who do not come to see my exhibitions and who do not make an effort to enter into the problems the projects discuss. Other people fear death too much and therefore do not want to touch the subject. Others again think using the severed hands is just a cheap trick. Luckily, a large group of people, growing after each exhibition, are fascinated by and interested in the work just because they are not made in a traditional sort of way.

The people who have been following my work over time also know, of course, that most of the time the projects are concerned with what you can not see, more than what is actually there.

Throughout art history artist have visited mortuaries and autopsies to paint and draw the human anatomy. I extend this tradition a bit further. I remove the body parts from the morgue and use the body parts directly as tools. The performative aspect is therefore the most important part of the work and what happens when the audience encounters the remains of the performance.

 

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The instruments

The first hand

The black hand

The hand with the golden ring

The new hand

The female hand

 

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The paintings

 

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Extras

The Black Hand

Maler med død hånd

Morten Viskum Vernissage Absolut Viskum III Unplugged

13 Weirdest Works Of Art

 

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p.s. Hey. Welcome to first of my three days away from the blog due to work in Bas Normandie preparing for Zac’s and my new film. Today’s star is the Scandinavian artist Morten Viskum and his unusual ‘Hands Project’. I hope you … enjoy?