______________
Crappy Boy Untitled, 2013 felt tip pen
______________
Tala Madani Cupid piss with goggles, 2011 Oil on linen
______________
Henrik Plenge Jakobsen White Love, 1994-95 ‘A smelly set-up of household products and body fluids. This installation was the conclusion of a series of works dealing with body fluids. In this case, the fluids were put into different types of circuits, either in household mixers where the knifes of the mixers would cut the molecules of the blood into fragments, or in a closed circulation where a washing machine combined with an external tank washed urine over and over.’
______________
Jennifer West Emoji Piss Film, 2018 ’35mm film print soaked and corroded with urine by Andrea Bowers, Symrin Chawla, Micah Espudo, Chris Hanke, Eli Joteva, Jack McGuinn, Peyton Regan, Julian Toca, Vidhi Todi, Bob Viera, Cameron Wells, Ariel West., Fleurette West, Peter West, Jwest’
______________
Haseeb Ahmed A Fountain of Eternal Youth III (Urinal), 2022 ‘V back, Human Growth Hormone, strobe lights, 3D prints, polycarbonate, polyethylene, MDF, aluminum, electronics, outdoor urinal, and custom software’
______________
Helen Chadwick Piss Flowers, 1994 ‘During a residency at the Banff Arts Centre, Canada in 1991, Chadwick and her partner David Notarius made daily visits to snowbound locations. There they would place a flower-shaped metal mould onto a mound of snow, taking turns to urinate into it. They then poured plaster into the shapes created. From these casts, bronze versions were made and mounted onto pedestals resembling bulbs. The downward path of the hot urine through snow is inverted to form a flower reaching upwards.’
_______________
Daniel McDonald Erik, Piss-Crazed Maniac, 2007 Graphite on paperboard and stained glass
_______________
Nicole Anona Banowetz Excretia: The Piss Crystal, 2022 ‘Inflatable fabric sculpture of a giant crystal formed in urine.’
_______________
El Morgan The Discovery of Nun’s Urine, 2023 ‘In the late 1950’s retired nuns in an Italian convent were asked by the Vatican to donate their urine to a fertility company, which was part owned by the then Pope’s nephew. From this urine, the company extracted a hormone to inject into infertile women. Gallons of urine was collected. Morgan’s multimedia work The Discovery of Nuns’ Urine includes an edited excerpt from a screenplay written by an employee of the drug company about their discovery of the power of nun’s urine.’
________________
Charles Demuth Three Sailors, 1951 painting
_______________
Gilbert & George Piss Piss Piss, 1996 hand-dyed silver print, in artist’s frame, in 6 parts
_______________
Egle Rakauskaite В жиру, 1998 three channel video
_______________
Jean-Michel Basquiat Dealer’s dog, 1983 ‘In 1982, the year before Dealer’s Dog was executed, Jean-Michel Basquiat decided to leave his first dealer, Annina Nosei, following disagreements about the sales of his paintings. Though he had not yet met Bruno Bischofberger, the legendary gallerist immediately became the young artist’s exclusive art dealer worldwide and remained so until Basquiat’s untimely death six years later. Basquiat frequently stayed with Bischofberger at his home in St. Moritz. During one of his stays in 1983, Madame Bischofberger’s Lhasa Abso dog urinated on a large pad of paper that had been left on the floor. Basquiat took the ruined paper and drew the little dog next to its puddle, calling the piece Dealer’s Dog. He gifted the work to Bischofberger, who installed it in his dining room.’
_______________
Carolee Schneemann Interior Scroll, 1975 Photo collage with text: urine and coffee photographic print
_______________
Arthur Guilleminot Piss Soap, 2022 ‘Piss soap challenges our understanding of the binary of dirtiness and cleanliness. Can an object be made out of “gruesome” material but be beneficial to our health? Using only waste, Piss Soap invite the maker and user to realign their vision upon discarded matter. Are we constantly trashing matter that has the potential to be repurposed, recycled, and reused? Piss Soap proposes a deviant and yet conscious approach to tackle our waste issue, asking you to think twice next time you flush.’
_______________
Candice Lin The Mountain, 2016 ‘Before the show, Lin held a dinner in the space where she fed and hydrated her guests, collecting their urine in return. She amassed 15 gallons of piss, which she then distilled, and used to hydrate two types of mushrooms that were cultivated during the exhibition: one type enhanced memory and the other, the immune system.’
______________
Vunkwan Tam 78i78, 2022 ‘Lying on the floor in a room near the gallery’s entryway is a bedraggled L-shaped blanket, which a gallery assistant dutifully spritzes with synthetic doe urine every day to keep it pungent and sodden. The exhibition text describes the work’s performance of “a perpetually drenched sadboi minimalism” – artificial excreta as a metaphor for dramatized emotional wallowing. The work also apparently winks at “insider signifiers of contemporary art discourse,” as doe urine is attractive to stags but displeasing to humans, just as artspeak is somewhat legible within art circles but generally repugnant.’
______________
Tomokazu Matsuyama Holy Urine, 2012 acrylic on canvas
______________
Gavin Turk Artist’s Piss, 2021 ‘Over the last month, The Artist has been canning his own urine in a modified canning factory at his studio in Canning Town, East London. Through this act, the artist has created a minimal impact artwork for a profligate society that has everything the heart could desire. The body waste has been put through the recycling of art history, canned in a limited edition super shiny recycled aluminium can with the title of the work Artist’s Piss translated into 30 languages.’
______________
Katherine Bauer Teenage Dream Sequence: Seduction of the Eye, 2013 milk, egg, urine, champagne on b/w photosensitive fiber paper
______________
David Hammons Pissed Off, 1981 ‘Richard Serra was on a roll in NYC in 1980. In the run-up to the debut of Tilted Arc, he had two Cor-Ten sculptures installed in Tribeca: St John’s Rotary Arc was in the exit plaza of the Holland Tunnel, and T.W.U. (above) was in front of the Franklin St. entrance for the IND subway. It was named for the Transport Workers Union, which had just gone on an 11-day strike as the sculpture was being installed.
‘By 1981, T.W.U. was looking a little beat, strewn with empties, and covered with wheatpasted flyers and graffiti. That’s when Dawoud Bey shot a series of photos of David Hammons pissing on the sculpture. The sequence apparently begins with Hammons in khakis, Pumas, and a dashiki, with a matching shoulder bag, just standing there in the south-facing space of Serra’s sculpture. In the next photo, he’s turned away from the camera, doing his business.
‘Then we see Hammons, talking with an NYPD officer, presenting papers, maybe a passport? The caption reads, “David Hammons receiving a citation from a police officer.” Which might have happened! But really, we don’t know. These photos are not journalism; they’re documentation of a performance Hammons titled Pissed Off. I don’t know when or how the title emerged; it’s hard to trace the historic trajectory of Hammons’ practice apart from the art world’s later embrace/interpretation of it.’
_________________
Nick Black Super-Awesome Urine-Recycling Alien, 2012 ‘A giant floating bulbous faced alien with a raygun peeing pink pee into a giant vat. The pee is constantly recycled, so there is never an end to the urinating.’
_______________
Elsa Sahal Fontaine, 2012 ceramic, hydraulic system
_______________
Joaquin Abella Urine Jigsaw Puzzle, 2013 ‘Challenge your brain with a jigsaw puzzle designed by an independent artist!’
________________
Anthony Goicolea Pisser, 1999 Colour cibachrome from a black and white negative, laminated, mounted on sintra
_______________
Cassils Pissed, 2017 ‘This tank of glowing urine manifests what may seem abstract in discussion: the physical burden placed on an individual body when bathroom access is restricted by discriminatory policy. PISSED is a collection of all the liquid excreted by the artist in the 200 days following the Trump administration’s 2017 rollback of an Obama-era executive order allowing transgender students to use the bathroom matching their chosen gender identities.’
______________
Agness Buya Yombwe Two Lizzards | Sharing One Stomach, 2019 ‘Agness Buya Yombwe explores indigenous knowledge systems, especially Mbusa taboos, placing the woman’s voice at the center.’
______________
Kiki Smith Pee Body, 1992 ‘A work in which Smith “explores” (as the sign says) “the female body and its private performance of basic functions.”‘
_______________
Alice Potts Boxers Sample, 2018 ‘Alice Potts combines sports equipment and fashion materials with crystallized objects, composed by the act of urinating. By utilizing a ‘unique materialization [process] of the individuals own biology,’ Potts bridges a visual representation of the unseen beauty of urination with a natural process to ‘create our own accessories.”
_______________
Jay Rechsteiner Three boys & two girls are torturing, beating disabled girl & making her drink urine, 2013 acrylic on canvas
_______________
Motoyuki Daifu untitled (pee), 2021 ‘untitled (pee) ‘It is very hard to live freely ‘without being trapped by the world. ‘I hope that the scorching sunshine ‘will shine on the concrete and make it all go away.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, I first read MIKA’s work in SCAB. Where would I be without it/you? Good, good, your body is cooperating again, but wood (specifically my desk) knocked. What a thoughtful gift from love and from you? Hm, how to choose …? Unfortunately, given our film’s rather desperate needs, I think I would have to choose some multibillionaire with deep, dark secrets that I could use to blackmail him. You have a brain you’d love to pick? Love popping by my place and urinating gold doubloons, G. ** MIKA, Hi, MIKA. My pleasure, my honor. I loved your book, as, well, you already know. Thank you so much for coming in here that day and getting me to score it. Everyone, If you’re curious about who made those two terrific artworks I included in the Extras area of my entry on MIKA’s book, here’s MIKA to fill in the blanks: ‘The gif collage you posted from “Haircut Stream” was made by Rachel Lilim (@VOIDTHROAT on twitter). She was a frequent collaborator with surfacescx and I released much of her work on there. The author (@magmartsa on instagram) of the piece, also providing images for the collage, is a young Filipino poet that makes some beautiful writing and visual work. They’ve been a big influence on my own work and especially Rachel had a massive, massive impact on it and surfaces.cx.’ Thank you again. I can’t wait to read more by you. Do you have another book in the works? All the luck in the world wth the dark and the cold. ** _Black_Acrylic, ‘Lambda’ is crazy and wonderful. And he’s a fantastic visual artist as well. Farage meets his destiny. How appropriate. ** Dee Kilroy, Hi, Dee. Being very much a day person, I heartily approve. A star no doubt. I can say I knew him second hand when. Wow, you’re way into the books, that’s fantastic. Not to mention on the tarot project. I feel the earthquake. I’m good, still all film almost all the time, but that’s good. The sun’s finally out here today and I gift you with a solid portion of its positive aspects. ** 🏃♂️DArby, Hi, buddy. How were the two hours? Are you ready to work the floor? I mean if your gig involves working the floor. I’m good. Mostly. Lots to do. I am so beyond 100% positive I will like your elefant. That’s money in the bank, as they say. The name Kathe Kollwitz doesn’t ring a bell, but let me go check. I might know the stuff but not the name. Unpredictable is the best, thank you, and same to you, pal. ** Charalampos, Hi. Eternal excitement regarding the future is the answer. Congrats on finding ‘The Man of Jasmine’. I haven’t read it, so I’ll see if I can find it out there too. As long as it’s almost impossible, it’s not, I guess? Or so I try to think. It’s chilly here, but not, like, ice cold yet. Best vibes from here on your book’s journey. ** Steve Erickson, The last time I asked John, he said there wasn’t funding in place. That was in May, I think. Maybe the Roth would be fun. Okay, sure, it’s on soap2day, so, easy peasy. No, the bank card hasn’t arrived yet and things are getting rather desperate on that front, but thank you for asking. I guess avoid hugging and kissing anyone for a little while longer. underscores: on it. I don’t know No Bells, but I’ll go find it today. Sounds kind of crucial. Speaking vaguely of, Playboy Carti just cancelled his concert here, bleah. ** Mark, Hi, Mark. Your weekend and your tomorrow kick my respective stints of time’s ass(es). Which is good. I miss American donuts. Europe! Come to Paris, need I even say. Envy on seeing that zine show. I think there’s a bunch of zines borrowed from my NYU archive in the show, if I’m not mistaken. Later gator. ** Audrey, Hi, Audrey. No, I’m actually and usually about a week and a half to two weeks ahead on the posts, so the Radu Jude post will appear not this week but next week, I think on that Tuesday. I think the recent ‘The United States of America’ is one of Benning’s greatest. It’s a shame that you know the twist before you see it. I saw it projected here and didn’t know the twist beforehand, and my mind was totally blown when the twist was revealed. Benning’s ’11 x 14′ is in my top 8 or 10 all time favorite films. I saw it in the early 80s, and it kind of changed my life or my writing at least. Yes, I hope to get into Remover/underscores very soon, and I’ll share my thinks. ‘Priscilla’ just opened here, so I’m going to go see it ASAP. Thanks! I do really like rain, but it was raining here non-stop for days, and it’s a walking around kind of city, and I must admit I’m kind of over wet shoes and umbrellas for the time being. But love it, yes, even so. Love, Dennis. ** Right. I think today’s post’s title tells you everything you need to know. See you tomorrow.
‘A novice police officer assigned to watch over a refugee group tries to figure out whether the refugees have been framed for terrorism—and where the real killers are lurking. Technically, this is an accurate description of the plot of David Musgrave’s debut novel, Lambda. Sounds like a pretty straightforward potboiler, right? But from its first page, Lambda is up to something weirder and more unwieldy, ditching a linear narrative and setting the story in an alternate-universe Britain where you can get in trouble with the cops for damaging a talking toothbrush.
‘In Lambda’s bizarro-world 2019, advances have been made in artificial intelligence to the point that “sentient objects” have been granted rights, including said toothbrush, aka the ToothFriendIV. Meanwhile, the police test out an AI system that will both accuse someone of a crime and go ahead and assassinate them, although the government prefers to call this mitigation, neutralization, deactivation, or closure of agency. It may sound like a Philip K. Dick pastiche, but Musgrave’s debut is more ambitious than the tropes it borrows, arranging them into original, arresting literary sci-fi.
‘Lambda follows a cop named Cara Gray as she grows all too familiar with the official jargon for murder. She joins the force after she abruptly swaps an activist’s life on a left-wing commune for detective work, then winds up enmeshed in a shadowy governmental program involving a rogue cybercrime haven in the desert called the Republic of Severax. Her personal life is as messy as her professional entanglements. She dates a misanthropic coder named Peter who obsesses over two things, neither of which are her: a talking toothbrush and Severax. (Musgrave shades in a fine portrait of a specific strain of dirtbag techie with Peter, whose main personality trait is interrupting documentary films to add his two cents.)
‘That’s a lot of plot to follow, and Musgrave’s stylistic choices are as byzantine as his narrative ones. The writing itself is crisp, bold, and proudly odd. The opening EyeNarrator passage indicates that the story we’re reading is software-generated prose, and Musgrave hints at this not-quite-human narration through conspicuously strange language choices. The characters’ blood pressure levels are mentioned, and movements are described in strangely technical language: “Carolyn revolved 12 degrees anticlockwise” one sentence reads. Another: “Cara’s eye saccades took in the woman’s highly reflective brown irises.” This book may have set the world record for usage of the word “saccade,” which appears with surprising frequency, considering it’s something nobody ever says.’ — Kate Knibbs
‘Whoever the lambdas might be, and wherever they really come from, they’re already here among us.
‘Outwardly alien arrivals from a distant sea, the lambdas are genetically human. They slip quietly into low- to middle-income jobs and appear to want nothing more than to be left alone. For Cara Gray, they are first a haunting presence in her otherwise ordinary childhood, then the inscrutable target of her police surveillance work.
‘When a bomb goes off at a school, a nebulous group of lambda extremists claims responsibility for the attack—but how could a vulnerable community of tiny aquatic humans, barely visible in society and seemingly indifferent to their own exploitation, be capable of something so horrific?
‘In Cara’s world a toothbrush can be legally alive, a quantum computer has the power to decide who dies, and a government employee made of slime mould protein needs help to relieve his neuroses. As Cara’s relationship with the lambdas deepens, she must decide whether to accept her place in a pattern of technology, violence and deceit, or to take action of her own.’ — EE
Excerpt
Extras
Book Trailer: LAMBDA by David Musgrave
LUHRING AUGUSTINE – David Musgrave
_______________
Logan Berry: I’d like to start with general questions before digging into NO TIGER. How did you first get into writing?
Mika: I first got into writing in high school, I had never really cared much for English class until I was like, 16-17? Really, my first love of writing came from fanfiction and sci-fi. My dad had this old bookshelf in our basement full of old 70s and 80s military sci-fi he was always pushing on me. Shit like Starship Troopers and Armor. I was enamored with guys lugging around big weapons in faraway planets, etc. An appreciation for literature – then writing itself – came when I had Ulysses by Joyce pushed on me by a particularly favorite teacher. After that I became obsessed, I read the book twice through and couldn’t get enough of it. Then I started writing these dumb little micropoems on impulse in notebooks. That’s all it was for about a year, and then I discovered the soon-to-be disaster that was ‘alt lit’ like Tao Lin and Roggenbuck. Pending self-destruction aside, alt lit showed me there was more literature “could be” than Shakespearan sonnets and such. I made a Tumblr and began posting my small poems and actually got a small following going for a while. I even released a chapbook at one point (it was bad, never bringing it back). Ever since I’ve never been able to stop writing, it’s like a compulsion. I tried stopping several times, actively, but it never stuck. I’d always come back. I write because I have to, not because I want to
LB: How did growing up in Indiana shape your work? Do you think it still influences your work?
M: I’m not sure. A lot of my earlier work, which isn’t really present or available anymore, dealt a lot with that small town ennui that overtakes you where I’m from. A lot of cigarettes outside of empty lots while listening to coyotes in the distance. Overwhelming restlessness to be found in a forgotten town. I think the lasting effect is less on my actual work now and more on how I view literature and run Surfaces. I’ve no patience for academia or people with disgusting pretense to them. The random freaks you’d meet at 2am in the only gas station open that late are more “my people” than someone comfortably in an MFA or whatever. Nobody in those types of places really reads “literature” very much, and I’ve always felt compelled to both write and run Surfaces targeted more towards the people that aren’t already embedded in literature, don’t have a stake. I want to write stuff that excites somebody that doesn’t read every new issue of the Paris Review.
‘A girl is under fire from terrible psychic weaponry. Lizard women fornicate under corroded skylines. Gore & bodypower is the present order. Identity fragmentation within forever violence. Evil bodies cannibalized in the space of hostile entities. NO TIGER is sending urgent transmissions from the infinite battlefield. It wants to communicate something to you. Standby.
‘Mika is a trans experimental writer from Indiana. She tweets about blood and military weaponry @coyote_actuaI and runs the online literature project Surfaces.cx.’ — Apocalypse Party
Excerpt
Extras
_____________
‘”Horror is the place where I found people were talking about the things that felt honest to me. Everything else felt like it was about other people having a nice time,” says Hogan, who earned a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University in 2016.
‘”It’s about people outside of a thing or experiencing something completely different from what people around them experience,” they continue, particularly noting the genre’s effectiveness in sharing trans stories. “Especially body horror. Something’s happening to your body, and no one else fucking understands. In fact, they think you’re crazy.”
‘In One or Several Deserts, the Oregon native imagines industrial pig farming, the Greek myth of Pasiphaë, party game boar torture, and shame-riddled evening rituals. The grotesque situations reveal daunting truths of human experience, and positive outcomes are few and far between.
‘”Even the happy endings in horror are the worst,” they laugh. “What’s the happy ending? Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The happy ending is that she’s not dead. Now she has to deal with everything.”
Nevertheless, Hogan consistently depicts an ultimately hopeful survival instinct in their harsh, intimate tales. As the writer places characters, human or not, in threatening situations, they still attempt to reclaim their own autonomy.
‘”Watching somebody choose something, I think, reminds us that we also can choose things,” they say. “We can opt in or opt out but it is actually our decision. It doesn’t get made for us. … It’s very empowering, especially for someone who once thought they had no options, had no choices.”‘ — Laiken Neumann
Carter St. Hogan One or Several Deserts 11:11 Press
‘Queer, strange, grotesque: eight intimate fictions give voice to bodies at the margins as they yearn and claw at their own flesh. Some of these bodies flicker in and out of reality; some find rebirth in a sentient disease; some consume the bowels of their lovers; others wrestle with sexual awakening at the hands of a giant stone in the wide American prairie. Bristling with defiance, cruel but tender, “One or Several Deserts” bends reality with a logic all its own.’ — 11:11
‘ONE OR SEVERAL DESERTS IS THE DEBUT OF AN EXTRAORDINARILY GIFTED WRITER WHO MANAGES BOTH SURFACE AND DEPTH IN WAYS FEW OTHERS EVEN TRY. HERE IS SOME OF THE MOST DAZZLING PROSE I HAVE READ IN QUITE SOME TIME. WITH THIS COLLECTION, CARTER ST. HOGAN EMERGES AS A LITERARY ARTIST OF SIGNIFICANT ORIGINALITY AND ACCOMPLISHMENT’. – GARIELLE LUTZ
‘A STARTLING DEBUT FULL OF STORIES THAT REFUSE TO BE POLITE AND THAT CHALLENGE WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT GENRE, ABOUT FICTION, AND EVEN ABOUT PROSE ITSELF. CARTER ST. HOGAN PUTS THE MAGIC BACK INTO MAGICAL REALISM AND THEN CRACKS IT BACK OPEN AND TURNS IT INSIDE OUT AND LEAVES ITS GLORIOUS INSIDES STREAMING IN THE WIND OF THEIR WORDS. TRANSGRESSIVE, SACRILEGIOUS, TOUCHING ON A UNIQUE AND PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN FLESHY GNOSTICISM: THIS IS A ROADMAP FOR WHERE THE FANTASTIC HAS YET TO GO.’ – BRIAN EVENSON
Excerpt
Little Skin Bag
Little Skin Bag stood on the stoop, trying to shove the ghost back into her mouth. It was a slippery ghost. It squeaked its tail out of her mouth, picked a piece of spinach from her teeth, yawned.
“Fuck off,” hissed Little Skin Bag.
Inside the apartment she could hear Cubist spinning disco classics. Shadows of arms akimbo splashed onto the covered windowpanes; every so often a strobe light flashed pink. The ghost laughed in her face with late-night tuna breath. “Too late,” declared the ghost. If the ghost had knuckles, it would be cracking them one by one. “Go home and smoke from your roof until your lungs get so black you deflate and fall to your small, pitiful death.”
“No. This was a butt-dial,” said Little Skin Bag. “Metaphorically.”
“The world will be grateful if you never enter this lame shindig,” sang the ghost.
This was not going to be like last time. She was not going to freak out. She was not going to get deleted from address books, or email chains, or Instagram feeds, or whatever. She would not be a pariah. “Stop freaking me out,” she said. “Merry Wife will be here. She likes me.”
“Merry Wife,” spat the ghost.
“I think she’ll leave him,” said Little Skin Bag.
“Really.”
“You didn’t see her face last time,” said Little Skin Bag.
“You are so cute,” said the ghost. “So cute and so ugly. Not even your mother loves your cute ugly mug.”
“Shut up,” said Little Skin Bag. “They’re coming.”
The front door wrenched open. Lips and Right Tit. Black liquid spilled from their red plastic cups. They wore leopard-print dresses tight enough that Little Skin Bag could see pubic bones pronouncing themselves between two pairs of healthy, full thighs. Their mouths were laughing.
“Oh thank God,” said Lips, her trademark shade smeared all over her teeth. She swatted playfully at Little Skin Bag’s arm. “That suede! Ugh. What took you so long!”
“Totally,” said Little Skin Bag. She held up her six-pack, which had by now dripped a lake onto the concrete step.
“Oh, I love swill!”
Right Tit grabbed her by the collar and yanked her inside.
“Where’s Left Tit?” said Little Skin Bag in the foyer. She blinked four times. It felt like one time too many.
“Stop blinking so much,” said the ghost into her ear hair.
“You know her,” said Right Tit. “She’d rather watch documentaries about fish. Besides,” she added, rubbing her right nipple, “there’s only room at this party for one twin, you know?”
Lips nodded, nose scrunched. Little Skin Bag tried not to cringe. She really hated when Right Tit got too drunk. “And Merry Wife?” she asked, going for nonchalant.
“Oh sweetheart,” laughed Right Tit. “Merry Wife might not even come, something about Gutting Man being over disco.”
Lips rolled her eyes. “He’ll show up for the Boar, though.”
“There’s a Boar at this party?” said Little Skin Bag.
“Totally,” said Right Tit.
Lips patted her cheek. “Merry Wife knows where you are. Soon we’ll bring out the Boar and you can face fuck that.”
Little Skin Bag flushed an ugly color; the ghost rubbed itself on her eczema. She scratched at the patch and a few flakes fell loose onto her shoulders. A roar sounded from the kitchen.
Creekbed Carter Hogan – Burn For You [NPR Tiny Desk Contest 2021]
_____________
‘Aina Hunter’s haunted novel, Charlotte and the Chickenman, is a David Lynchian grotesque that unfolds in a surreality that hovers between dream and nightmare. Charlotte, the protagonist, oscillates between realities and identities throughout the book. Her fragmented nature is reflected in the world she inhabits that fractures into vignettes in different spaces and times. She moves between the Haiti of the near-future (2048 to be precise) and moments in her past that span from her time at school to her inauspicious birth. The book reads like a fever dream fed by the anxiety of today: festering with horrible election results, an infectious virus, as well as maternal and/or ecological anxieties.
‘Race, sexuality, and gender are inextricably entwined in this book. Hunter is masterful in capturing the nuances of these identities, depicting them in across a full spectrum rather than the binary that most discourses center upon (i.e. black/white, gay/straight). Charlotte, whose name and age change throughout the story, is a light-skinned black woman who is bisexual and sometimes is described as masculine and others as feminine. The fact that she changes identities mirrors the fact that she lives in a nebulous world in-between the extremes of a binary. The intersectionality of Charlotte’s identities truly capture what it is to not fit in squarely in any part of the constructed world. Shades of skin tone are seen fluctuating in the characters but also in the landscape. Parts of her world become ‘white’ spaces or ‘black’ spaces; ‘female’ or ‘male’. The surreal nature of Hunter’s prose allows the reader to explore these spaces as someone would who does not ‘belong.’
‘Another common thread is pedophobia; a generalized anxiety, or sometimes even revulsion, towards children. At different moments, we see Charlotte struggle with her sexuality and being attracted to women in the same moments that she is aborting or losing a child. Several times, the fetus or embryo is referred to as a homunculus, an alchemical miniature but fully-formed human being. Like a golem, this is a constructed man used in folklore to illustrate an aberration of man’s creation and to remind us about the dangers of ‘playing God.’ While not inherently evil, there is something nefarious about this creature and the connotation is important as Charlotte contemplates her baby or the idea of a baby. At one point, the characters discuss the fetus as a “hybrid tumor” or a “kind of sex tumor . . . [that] develops hair and fingernails as it grows . . . [and] [s]ometimes part of an eye or a tooth in random places.” The thought of babies, unwanted babies, and gestation as a cancer is nothing new but, through the unorthodox narrative, Hunter gives us different angles of this thought. In this novel, we see the blood but we also see the magic.’ — Jesi Buell
Aina Hunter Charlotte and the Chickenman Whisk(e)y Tit
‘It’s November 2, 2059 in Baltimore and Charlotte-Noa Tibitt, the downwardly mobile, adult daughter of a popular HelloCast lifestyle coach, feels like death. A few months back Charlotte and her Eurindigenous girlfriend scored a sweet subsidized apartment in a building chock full of fellow queer-radical-feminist animal rights activists. But when an unspeakable right-wing candidate again wins the US presidency, Charlotte seeks refuge in a luxury roof-top hotel bar and life begins to unravel.
‘So now it’s time to stop mourning. Get back on the bus, make a plan, start over.
‘All this on a screaming planet divided into ethno-states mostly controlled by South Africa’s ruling Economic Freedom Party and their right wing, anti-black opposition – the Eurin supremacists of the New Broederband.
‘Charlotte could probably use some trauma therapy, but first a quick trip to Haiti for a medical thing. And while she’s there, maybe she can find some comfort at the receiving end of a controversial reparative food justice initiative, which may or may not be sanctioned by New Caricom’s shadow government.’ — Whisk(e)y Tit
Excerpt
Extras
Black Writers Read S4 E3: Aina Hunter
_____________
‘Every book has an inherent design that searches for an author/publisher to realize it1 true to form. 1/ 4 i am ĐNA is a stopgap draft of the first ¼ of an overarching work-in-progress tentatively entitled U/X, a proposed 64-bit oracular “user guide of changes.” In the event that the author dies or the computer/software being used2 crashes irreversibly before the book’s completion, this hard-coded 16-bit blueprint can serve to reverse engineer at least the 1st quarter of U/X, which, in a holographic sense, also contains bits3 of the whole (the future book with ISBN 978-1-940853-88-8).
‘In the formulation of this quartered precursor (with ISBN 978-1-940853-22-2), the author (in8 iĐ) pushed the software (Adobe InDesign, referred to within as i.Đ.) to the limits of its capabilities,4 to the extent that it kept crashing and the source files were corrupted beyond repair. Some of what you see in this document is a result of this software stress-testing. In addition to being subconsciously indoctrinated by the i.Đ. software, it should also be noted that the biological being of in8 iĐ suffers from Ménière’s syndrome (and perhaps also a rare form of undiagnosed clanging disorder5 and/or numeric synesthesia),6 which afflicts them with near-constant vertigo, brain fog, vestibular migraines, tinnitus, and deafness in their right ear, disorienting them, but also perhaps enabling them to channel transmissions that “normal” humans don’t hear (or so in8 iĐ thinks… obviously they are far from a reliable narrator). Perhaps a “dog-8-my-homework” excuse, but this is why 1/ 4 i am ĐNA could not be actualized in readable, grammatically correct English. In effect, it is an as-is “ALT+PrintScreen” of the underlying code, intended to be deciphered after the fact by posthuman entities—for other sentient animals, cyborgs, and/or alien life forms trying to unravel and make sense of Homo sapien DNA/gene expression, at least of this singular, perhaps deranged, posthuman in training. And it’s this putting of pen to paper that is the catharsis by which in8 iĐ unshackles from the human condition.
‘In the same fashion that the overarching (and perhaps ever-unfinished) U/X is nonlinear and can be read in various alternative rearrangements,7 it is suggested that the enumerated chapters in 1/ 4 i am ĐNA can be read sequentially in this prescribed order:8 1, 13, 9, 2, 12, 8, 5, 3, 7, 4, 10, 16, 11, 15, 14, and ending with atomic # 6, carbon (corresponding to the elemental chemical sequence H, Al, F, He, Mg, O, B, Li, N, Be, Ne, S, Na, P, Si, C). Or read into it however you will.’ — 4word
————————————————————————————-
1 Where “it” = information technology. 2 Or, rather, it is the computer/software that is using the author’s fingers to manipulate the text and images in 1/ 4 i am ĐNA. 3 16 bits, in fact; or in the language of early-American settlers, “2 bits” = 1 quarter (0.25 of a dollar, or 12½ cents), so $2 worth. 4 Or, again, reversing the roles, the software pushed the user/author to the capacity of sanity. 5 Where word associations are formed based on numerology, not on meaning. For example, when in8 iĐ thinks “to associate,” they write “2 associ8,” and when they think “form,” they write “4m.” 6 Where one doesn’t see the color of a word, but the associated alphanumeric value of the word’s spectral wavelength. 7 See http://5cense.com/22/1048.htm, which also provides additional background material useful for understanding this book. 8 Or, in the binary numbering system used in this book: 000-000, 001-100, 001-000, 000-001, 001-011, 000-111, 000-100, 000-010, 000-110, 000-011, 001-001, 001-010, 001-110, 001-101, 000-101.
‘As with any book, 1/ 4 i am ĐNA is no more than the tree-based, carbon-copy embodiment of a user/author’s indoctrination by the man-made technologies we use to attempt to replicate life experience into 2-dimensional visual language. ¼ of the way (or ½-way to ½-way) thru the overarching 64 chapter work-in-progress, U/X, the author (in8 iĐ) pushed the word processing software (i.Đ.) to the point of irreversible failure as they attempted to construct elemental (in a periodic tabular sense) multi-directional source code (for example, the 64-character string “and ma, i 4 1 live 2 emit ½ loops + flow H-self 4 tides reversed on 8 set animal peels” backwards reads “sleep laminates (8 nodes) reversed it 4 flesh wolf + spool ½ time 2 evil 1, 4 i am DNA”). The exact moment the i.Đ. document crashed beyond repair was when in8 iĐ copied and pasted the umlauted ö into the word “Möbius loop,” in effect the equivalent of dividing by 0. 1/ 4 i am ĐNA incarnates ¼ of a contingency rollback, a stopgap snapshot in ¼ time, a soft copy made hard, a hard-coded blueprint that can be used to “recre8” the original nonlinear 16 chapters of text/image back into self-organized, non-binary, re-sequenced neuroplasticity adaptable to even the uninitiated reader’s mind frame (to answer Hendrix’s “are U/ Xperienced?”), to digest and “re4mule8” in their “one mined, 2” fuse with the silicon-based mainframe to become posthuman, for the book itself to have life beyond binary bytes on a crashed hard drive, to be decrypted and interpreted by any sentient entity.’ — Calamari Books
Excerpt
Extras
Sound Furies—Niger
Sound Furies—O U R [sic]
*
p.s Hey. ** Dee Kilroy, Hi! Me too, I guess obviously, re: ‘GP’. Oh, I guess the only reason ‘Shoot the Sun Down’ isn’t there is because I was using 1976 as the stop date. From what I read, Acid Western aficionados tag that as the genre’s death date, why I don’t know. How are you? ** Damien Ark, Hi! Right? I think I may have already said that when I was in Iceland there was not a place or time when I couldn’t turn my head and see something incredible. I’ve read into your book, but not too far yet for the only reason that the film works is eating my time and brain at the moment. But I love it so far. I mentioned you in an interview I did for Hobart the other day. Wow, I guess you’re in prison or ‘prison’ or both right now. How long were you there? And, you know, what transpired? Right, I need to start doing my 2023 list soon. I’ll try the Tesseract and ‘Music for a cosmic garden’, which I don’t know. Welcome back to the so-called free world. Love, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, My pleasure. Excellent, excellent about the new courses. Music to my ears or, you know, eyes, buddy. ** Jack Skelley, Jacky! Did I include that just for you? Well, err, sure, man, just for you, of course. ‘Green Acres’! A two-word synonym for the word genius. I did Taylor last night. Oh boy. See you in a while. ** James Bennett, Hi, James! That premise has a lot there. Including Paris, font of lots of everything. You can always go back to the unused stuff later and make short fictions or something. Or I’ve done that many times. I’m actually trying to put together a collection of exactly unused/revamped things right now. My pal Zac does that: uses stints in a library to focus him on work. And it works. Um, Taylor Swift. I think the biggest surprise for me was how relentlessly bland and samey her stuff is. It’s like she writes her songs and calculates her image/show using AI. Every song of hers is basically the same song. She has, like, three melodic ideas and every song has the same topic with lyrics slightly shuffled from song to song. Absolutely zero experimenting. Really strange that she and hers create such passion. It’s very interesting but kind of grim too, to me at least. Thank you being here and sharing your thoughts and stuff with me, sir. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thank you about the interviews. Wait, you were seriously puking and shitting simultaneously? Hopefully emphasis on the word ‘were’. Well, that was an emergency, so I trust love was all over ending that. Love giving Taylor Swift the idea to record an album of Throbbing Gristle covers, G. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Cool about the Jude interview and the venue! Maggot Brain is so great! Obviously smooth in-and-out on the booster shot if possible. We’re finished with the film’s edit for the time being. If we edit anymore, it’ll just be the most minute fixes. I have my bi-weekly Zoom ‘book’ club tonight where my writer friends, including Mr. Jack Skelley, and I will, on this occasion, discuss ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ and a story by Nabokov. I will be ‘praying’ very hard that my new bank card arrives today. A Zoom with the Assistant Director of ‘Room Temperature’. Visit to the Xmas Fair @ the Tuileries if it ever stops raining. Enjoy munching with your friend. Cure meets Oi? Okey doke, I’ll have to test that. ** Misanthrope, Me too, and same to yours. The mall! You have a nice mall there, do you? Skateboarders and shit? There’s no other directions than up and on. ** ellie, Hi. Well, honestly, I think my novels are only novels because they’re novel length. So I approve. It sounds really exciting! My stuff is quite influenced by sculpture. I used to be very close friends with the great sculptor Charles Ray, and his work and how he thought/talked about his work and how it uses space and particle physics and so on sort of totally changed the way I thought about fiction, and that effect remains. Rosalind Krauss knows. Very happy to hear anything about your novel as you work on it. Wow, Martin Arnold, you have superb influences. I’m sure you know all this stuff, but here’s the blog’s Martin Arnold Day. A little bit of wear and tear there, sorry. I love his work. Cornell: Kind off an obvious choice, but I do really love his film ‘Rose Hobart’. And art-wise, hm, maybe ‘Soap Bubble Set’, but it’s hard to choose. You have fave(s)? You found an affordable copy of that ‘Dennis’ CD? Crazy. I know someone who bought one a couple of years ago for $450. Thanks you about the film finishing. We need a lot of luck right now. Honestly, Xmas in Paris is where I like to be. It’s kind of at its best then. Although I wished it still snowed (more than for maybe 18 seconds a year). When I first moved here, they still got blizzards. Sigh. How about you when it’s cold/Xmas? Are you in NYC through the holidays? ** xo,D. ** Mark, Hi, pal. I was in an Acid Western once. It was called the Rainbow Gathering. And it was hell on earth. Thank you for the knowledge that I utterly lacked before you shared it and which I am going to employ to improve my life whatever that takes. Weekend fun? ** Barkley, Hi, Barkley! Wow, it’s you! How the heck are you? I’m good, busy, good. Oh god, someone put ‘ToE’ on archive.org? That’s a little terrifying. I was so, so, so not good yet when I did that. Oh, well. I did draw the cover. Yeah, I used to draw a lot. When I was in high school, I was sort of known as the school artist, which is weird because I wasn’t very talented at drawing and painting. But it was a very small private school with no art classes. I eventually accepted that I wasn’t talented at visual art and stopped completely when I was 19. I love visual art though. It’s like the main thing I pay attention to in a way. Uh, that’s a complicated question. let me think. Well, I think Ron Mueck is a horrible artist, but I saw this giant crouching boy sculpture he made once and got kind of obsessed with it. And I hate Anselm Kiefer’s work, but, again, I saw one little sculpture thing by him once that I had to admit insinuated itself into me productively. Can I ask you the same question? May I? It’s so nice to see you! Ultra-best wishes to you! ** malcolm, Hi, m. Well, there you go, on the differentials, but I feel like I can assure you that it’s not your problem. Anyway, god love contrarians. They’re very instructive. Maybe I’m even one and I just don’t know it. I too can not find the logic in John not being able to fund his films. And sometimes I think he just doesn’t want to make films anymore or is spooked by the idea after ‘Dirty Rotten Shame’ was so unliked and he’s just using that as an excuse. But I don’t know. I’ve told him to just make really low budget films again, but he doesn’t want to. He wants the big bucks, and he sure deserves them. Huh, yeah, that lyric you quoted is nice, and, yeah, in a perfect world that’s true too. What can I say, we rule, man. ** Don Waters, Hi, Don! Maybe you saw that I’ve been chatting here the last couple of days about the ‘Dennis’ CD. Everyone, If you know or were paying attention to the little chit-chat here about the ‘Dennis’ ‘tribute’ CD, this guy, superb writer and person and etc. Don Waters is the person who made that happen and deserves all the credit there is. Thank you again, man, from the future. And I’m happy you like Acid Westerns. And I can totally see that knowing your work. How are you? ** Audrey, Hi, Audrey. I’m going to make the Radu Jude post today. Fingers crossed. Yeah, James Benning its great like that. In addition to being one of the greatest filmmakers ever in my opinion. Curious to hear what you think of ‘Monrovia, Indiana’ when you get to it. Thank you so much! I don’t know Jane Remover (wonderful name) or underscores, and I’ll make fast work of that. Of course I know and like Arca and SOPHIE and Charli XCX. I haven’t heard CXCX’s new one yet. Is it good? Enjoy that weekend. I’ll do my best with mine given it’s raining like an avalanche. Love, Dennis. ** Okay. I loved the five books pictured up above there, and I do urge you to give them a chance. See you on Monday.
David Musgrave Lambda
MIKA NO TIGER
Carter St. Hogan One or Several Deserts
Aina Hunter Charlotte and the Chickenman
in8 iĐ 1/ 4 i am ĐNA
Now available in North America 