Susan Alcorn
Conflux Coldwell
Feminazgul
Ono
Luca T. Mai
Pumpkin Witch
Ron Nagle
Eyvind Kang
Kassel Jaeger
Christine Ott
BLÓM
chra
Sonic Boom
Aki Onda

 

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Susan Alcorn The Royal Road
‘Susan Alcorn has taken the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music. Having first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands, she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of 20th century classical music, visionary jazz, and world musics. Struck by the music of Messiaen she began transcribing classical music from recordings and scores on her instrument. Soon, she began to combine the techniques of country-western pedal steel with her own extended techniques to form a personal style influenced by free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and various folk musics of the world. By the early 1990s her music began to show an influence of the holistic and feminist “deep listening” philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. As her records gained a cult following she moved to Baltimore, MD. She performs internationally and is a key figure in the free improv scene in the US.’ — Ideologic Organ

 

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Conflux Coldwell Fantasmograph
‘The phantasmagoria was a form of photographic theatre that used magic lanterns to project ghostly images The music is Fantasmograph by Conflux Coldwell, created using tape loops of a 19th century-style penny toy tin music box.’ — Michael C Coldwell

 

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Feminazgul The Rot in the Field Is Holy
‘The patriarchal nature of rock and roll has been well and truly established for some time. Women have been unwillingly assigned a supporting role in the musical universe, but recent years have seen an increase in the number of artists standing up and stating plainly that they’re not going to take this bollocks. Maggie Killjoy of Feminazgul and Nomadic War Machine is one such artist. Amongst the endlessly male and violent world of black metal, she’s defiantly taken a frontline stance against the resurgent right-wing beliefs that seem determined to permeate everyday life in an age that should definitely know better.’ — ASTRAL NOIZE

 

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Ono I Dream of Sodomy
‘Red Summer, named after the period of anti-black white supremacist attacks in 1919, thus exists on the edge of a breaking point. As if a mind confronted with the continued (meta)physical violence towards black people splintered its own reality in which 1619, 1919, and the present overlap. It is an abstract, bizarre vaudeville of eternal strife. Like the band’s composer and multi-instrumentalist P. Michael Grego revealed in an interview to The Wire, it’s “a show meant for and put on by people who are insane, a litany of atrocities that are going on.” Under his baton and with the help of an array of musicians, fragments of heavy industrial noise find footing in funk, gospel, jazz, post-punk, techno, weaponised ambient soundscapes, and anything in-between. Idiosyncratic and anachronistic, this music is not of any time or form in particular. Rather, it belongs to a continuum – an endless thread of pivotal, different but same moments – in which the struggles and merry auctions of the first slaves in America depicted on the carnivalesque ’20th August 1619′ live forever alongside the deviously funky ‘I Dream of Sodomy’ and travis’s memories of abuse in the military.’ — Antonio Poscic

 

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Luca T. Mai Gazzeloni
‘Luca T. Mai is best known for his membership in the mighty Italian avantrock trio ZU. On his solo-debut album he is shifting his probing and powerful saxophone artistry from energetic sound scapes to celestial layered sax drones. Immersive and deep, including ‘Gazzeloni’, his performance of an Eric Dolphy composition.’ — deejay.de

 

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Pumpkin Witch Jack O’ Lantern Smasher
‘Three piece dungeon synth outfit centering around a story based around three mysterious figures who may be linked to the disappearance of children during Halloween night.’ — sputnik

 

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Ron Nagle Marijuana Hell
‘Ron Nagle is known for his intimately scaled sculptures, each made up of ceramic elements that are slip-cast, fired, and embellished with epoxy details. Some are glazed to a hot-rod finish, others textured like stucco and then airbrushed. Nagle is also cultishly revered for a series of psych rock albums, especially 1970’s ‘Bad Rice’. Your sample for the great Ron Nagle song is “Marijuana Hell,” with Ry Cooder sliding around on guitar. Like Zevon, Randy Newman and a few others, Nagle has the ability to stick his tongue out, or in his cheek. Is he laughing at the anti-marijuana bunch, or does he see the dangers? Or both?’ — xnyl

 

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Eyvind Kang Push Off
‘The point here is not to produce a drone but to delve into the question of life in sound. This apparent emergence of life is due to the apparatus, what Marx calls a “social hieroglyphic”, which brings forsythia and silk together in technique, cultivated by practices which are themselves sustained by the real relations of student to teacher to student. The recording engineer too, by placing one mic below and one above each Ajaeng, bifurcates the listening space; the mix, one Ajaeng in each speaker, again produces a bifurcated image of the sound. Thus the sound is split in four directions, to be reconstituted in the cochlea, but with the center of the body as the real target.’ — Eyvind Kang

 

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Kassel Jaeger River Wensum Roe Deers
‘Over the last decade, Kassel Jaeger, the moniker of the Paris-based composer, writer / theorist, producer, and director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), François Bonnet, has meticulously sculpted a body of multidisciplinary work that rests at the forefront contemporary electronic and electroacoustic practice. Rigorously experimental without sacrificing the intimacies of self, his efforts as a composer and musician extend across live contexts and numerous critically heralded solo releases, as well as collaborations with Jim O’Rourke and Lucy Railton, both contributing to the record, alongside Stephen O’Malley, Stephan Mathieu, Akira Rabelais, Oren Ambarchi, and James Rushford, and others.’ — Shelter Press

 

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Christine Ott Pulsar
‘Among the myriad futures waylaid by the unidirectional discourse of technological progress lies that of early electronic instruments that promised new worlds different to those we got. Such is the case of the ondes martenot, developed throughout the 20th century by Maurice Martenot in a bold, modernist attempt to power expression with electricity. It was not to be simply a piece of gear, but a fully-fleshed extension of human sentiment in an age of wires and radio waves. In parallel with other instruments like the théremin, the ondes martenot pointed towards an unexplored aural expanse unimaginable for (and unavailable to) the traditional universe of classical instruments. The myths they built in their wake are incomplete, withdrawn, lessened by the continued primacy of both the classical and a unified, settled form of the modern. Musicians like Christine Ott have become the keepers of faded histories, showing us, time and again, that their energy still glows beneath the dead weight of progress, waiting only for a spark to trigger strange, old wonders.’ — a closer listen

 

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BLÓM Be Kind
‘The more I try and brainstorm Newcastle trio Blóm’s position in rock’s hellish landscape, the less they sound like anyone else within it. Certainly they remind me of other groups, are analogous to others, can be talked of in the same breath as more again – all of which is different from sounding like them. On the face of it, there’s nothing especially unusual about how Blóm set up: Helen Walkinshaw, Liz McDade and Erika Leaman on vocals, drums and bass respectively, their guitarless status adding sharp focus to the bottom-end sludginess of songs which have precedence in punk, noiserock, no wave and psychedelia. Yet Flower Violence, their five-song debut album on local label Box, seems to harbour its own distinct tics of rhythm, arrangement and instrumental interplay.’ — Noel Gardner

 

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chra Let Sharks Sleep
‘Chra is the artist moniker for Austrian Christina Nemec (Bray, Shampoo Boy). SEAMONS is the latest missive in her ongoing exploration of suffocating abstract audio. At once designed and falling apart SEAMONS is rough and crude, a stumbling and staggering electronic expedition where nothing presents itself explicit in intent. It’s a tense obscure record that teases you into it’s peculiar vortex from it’s suggestive nature of exploring the enigma beyond it’s haunted facade. LET SHARKS SLEEP is not only a great title but a mind tickling adventure of descending/rising digital dance that builds in intensity with it’s relentless repetition.’ — Editions Mego

 

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Sonic Boom Tawkin Tekno
‘All Things Being Equal is Kember’s first album as Sonic Boom since 1990’s Spectrum, a sort of solo record made with his bandmates in Spacemen 3 as that legendary psych combo broke up. He followed up Spectrum with a new band called Spectrum, before heading into the noise lab with Kevin Shields and others for Experimental Audio Research and branching out through collaborations with Stereolab, Delia Derbyshire, and Beach House. In each case, the personnel was less the focal point than the sound and the equipment making it: vintage ’60s and ’70s analog synthesizers, the odd guitar, and racks and racks of gizmos to oscillate and phase and flange. All Things has all of these—some 11 machines are listed in the liner notes, including two vocoders and a toy called Thumbs Up Music—and they perform Kember’s pop songs but also become them, as veins both determine a leaf’s survival and define its shape.’ — Jesse Dorris

 

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Aki Onda For the Souls of The Dead
‘It’s a ten-minute video work. A requiem for NYC. During the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this was shot with iPhone myself near the Hurricane Point along the Brooklyn shore of the East River on May 16, 2020.’ — Aki Onda

 

 

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p.s. RIP Keith Sonnier, Brigid Berlin, Emmitt Rhodes. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Super happy that you found his work of interest. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Tom Burr was almost included in that post, and I can’t remember he didn’t get in there ultimately. ** Misanthrope, I think all of my sexual fetishes are either components of a human body or must be worn by a human body to become fetishes. I can’t think of any external things that are sexual fetishes for me. There are a lot of things I’m obsessed with, but the interest isn’t sexual at all. A failure of my imagination, I guess. I think your compromise willingness re: David and the car seems sensible if you think you should help him out re: that. I only really know him through you, but I do kind of have this general feeling that trouble is part of the outcome of everything he does. ** David Ehrenstein, Bizarre is good. Everyone, Mr. E’s FaBlog pays tribute to the very great and extremely heroic John Lewis RIP here. Well, Had Mary Martin been my mother I wouldn’t exist in my current form, although, knowing my father’s ego, I would surely still bear his name (Jr.) ** Bill, I did, indeed! And excited to see it upon fruition. Glad you dug the trove. Jeff Burton’s commercial stuff is pretty yawn. Disappointing that he went that watered down route, but a guy’s gotta pay the bills, I suppose. Good weekend? ** h(now j), Hi. I’m happy you liked those works. I hope you do get to get away. That sounds so, so nice. It had been predicted that we would have a murderously hot summer, but, so, far, it’s been wondrously and almost shockingly mild. Yesterday was a hottie, but today it’s back to totally okay. In normal years, summer starts dying away in August over here, but I fear we’re in for a late summer murder-by-sun phase, though no sign of it yet. Good about their acceptance of your piece! I love editing. I enjoy editing about a million times more than I like writing first drafts. Good luck! ** Steve Erickson, Hey. Glad you liked the shebang. I do know Gaika’s work and like it, yes, but I wasn’t aware he’d dropped a new thing, which I will go gather up. Thanks! One has to hope that people and higher ups in and around Portland will fight what’s going on to its death, and it does seem like that’s happening so far. The latest completely shocking thing in the US’s daily menu of completely shocking government mandated things. ** Okay. I made a gig for you, as I regularly do, featuring mostly new music that I think would be highly worth your investigating, and I hope you will obviously. See you tomorrow.

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Cecilia Bengolea & François Chaignaud Sylphides (2019)
‘ Bengolea and Chaignaud are as interested in academic techniques as they are in more colloquial bodily expressions. In Sylphides, they are literally entrapped inside vacuum sealed latex bags, forcing them on the verge of breathlessness.’

 

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Maryam Jafri Depression (2017)
‘Jafri’s surreal sculptures include cupping equipment set in an egg carton, a roll of “toilet paper” made out of a strip of purple yoga mat, and, yes, those realistic-looking human feet, purchased from a fetish-object merchandiser and stabbed with acupuncture needles that look, here, like instruments of torture.’

 

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Jason Briggs Various (2007 – 2017)
‘i work with porcelain to create objects. art objects, if you must. it’s up to you to label them: sculpture, fine art, fine craft, ceramic sculpture, figurative, abstract, surrealism, eroticism, non-traditional, biological, fucked-up, pornographic or, worst of all, decorative.’

 

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Doreen Garner A Fifteen Year Old Girl Who Would Never Dance Again (2017)
‘Garner speaks of her work as being in conversation with that of Harriet Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid. In her book, Washington gives the account of a fifteen-year-old enslaved girl who became the victim of W. H. Robert, a physician and instructor in Georgia. When the girl was brought to him with a minor injury, he decided to amputate her leg for his class. The surgeon told his students that amputation should be considered according to race and class, and had administered the amputation not because it was necessary but in order to teach a lesson to his students. This is the story that inspired Garner’s A Fifteen Year Old Girl Who Would Never Dance Again; A White Man In Pursuit of the Pedestal: a silicon, bloodied leg inlaid with beads and Swarovski crystals atop a rotating, metal operating table whose presentation conjures images of a car for sale at a dealership.’

 

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Sam Jackson Various (2018 – 2019)
‘Some are clearly supposed to represent a tattoo. Other writings on the face are language based thoughts; or scribblings in the same way Cy Twombly might utilise the line as a mode to form a personal language that also acts on a purely aesthetic level. They are texts that allow for something to take place, for the painting and viewer to communicate by using the subtle conventions we know: line, form, composition and colour; as well as more blatant digging, scrawling and marking of graffiti and doodling. These aspects of nonchalant daubing are important to me – they reveal an attitude not just from the characters, but also from within the painting’s actual construction. This is also interlinked with opposing words / sentences, which sets up a distancing between me and the audience. Its open to debate whether I agree with these statements, or whether they are personal to me or the character depicted. I like the ambiguity.’

 

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Natalia LL Consumer Art (1972 – 1975)
‘In the 1960s and 1970s, Natalia LL was one of the first artists to step forward and criticise conceptual art for excessive rationalisation and avoidance of physical sensuality. In Consumer Art she also refers to the imagery of popular culture, where consumption and erotic motifs are often paired. Probably the most notorious work by Natalia LL, Consumer Art presents models delighting in bananas, frankfurters or ice-cream. Obviously, this seemingly innocent activity acquires a strongly erotic edge. Combination of a “cold” film recording with a “hot” sensual motif stands for a rejection of the purely analytical character of conceptual art.’

 

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Jeff Burton Various (2012 – 2020)
‘Although Jeff Burton’s photographs leave almost everything to the imagination, they are records of an industry that certainly does not. Taken on the sets of porn movies, Burton’s images cleverly play with the idea of the explicit. Although the artist frames them so that sex is only ever suggested, it is, of course, taking place beyond the margins of his compositions.’

 

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Eriko Matsumura WebFare (2007)
‘90% of children between the age of 8 to 16 years old, have accidentally viewed unwanted websites. It is becoming popular for parents to set up internet filters (e-mail protection, pop-up blocking and chat room monitoring between others) which block unsuitable violent or adult websites. However, there are still a large number of websites which can easily pass through the filters and allow children to reach unsuitable material.

‘Eriko Matsumura’s WebFare is the dream tool for parents who want peek into their children’s web surfing. The application and product looks like an electric torch that parents can shine onto the computer screen. A halo will unpeel one after the other the websites recently visited by their child. It gives parents a glimpse into their child’s interests and surfing habits, rather than restricting their web access. Parents can then choose which topics they may want to discuss. As a result, WEBFARE can help parents to protect their children in their absence.’

 

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Ever The Contemplation of the Arrival III (2017)
‘Crayons on paper of 90gr’

 

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World of the Giantess Various (2014)
‘Andreas is the creator of a German forum called ‘The World of Giantess’ which explores a fetish for men being scaled down to the size of insects and women being a totally normal size inducing the notion of the female turning into giants and men becoming vulnerable objects of insignificance. I found Andreas through flickr where his computer generated images of cinematic scenes showing ant sized men run around the normal sized feet of women in an office space completely blew my mind. On further inspection I found out that Andreas manages a forum for a cross section of men who all share this fetish and express it though home-made fan art which they share among one another. Andreas’ work explores domestic settings of men trying to escape the attention of these gigantic women, running underneath desks naked and hiding underneath high heels. However the art exhibited on this blog from its various members all explore many different themes of the amazon woman/merciless man relationship.’

 

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Melissa Vogley Woods Various (2007 – 2009)
‘Woods’s videos take place in domestic, architectural and institutional environment all of which become fodder for her class of foot fetish revolt.’

Catch, 2019

Boxed, 2016

Peel, 2016

 

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Anne Imhof Sex (2019)
‘Imhof has explained that the title Sex refers to new, emergent frameworks for rethinking sex and gender identity, rather than to having sex, reproducing, or having sexual desire. Indeed, when one of her troupe members slipped off his shirt, donned a black mask, and descended a column like Saint Symeon the Stylite, I was initially fascinated: his was an ideal male body, like the ones I see and admire in magazines. But as he passed by, the lack of erotic charge was palpable; like the other bodies in the arena, this one felt a bit plastic. Sex is dramatic, even melodramatic, yet its drama is not sensual; it removes bodily urges from the mix. According to researchers, millennials are having significantly less sex than many previous generations. Teen pregnancy is down. Perhaps other forms of erotic activity or fantasy or interpersonal connection have taken priority. With her signifiers of millennial hipness and downplaying of carnality in favor of blank-faced ritual, Imhof has given this generation exactly what they deserve, which is also exactly what they want: a picture of themselves.’

 

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Thomas Hämén Asstral Traveler (2016)
‘Thomas Hämén sculpted coprolite (fossilized faeces from animals that lived millions of years ago) from a dinosaur that lived about 140 million years ago to create a device for anal stimulation, in an attempt to make us connect with geological or “deep time”.

 

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Leigh Ledare Pretend You’re Actually Alive (2002 – 2006)

Mom Spread with Red Heels, 2003

Mom Fucking in Mirror, 2002

Mom with Hand on Bed, 2006

Mom as Baby Jane, 2005

Mother and Catch 22, 2002

 

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Jennifer Chowdhury and Mehmet Sinan Ascioglu Intimate Game Controllers (2007)
‘Intimate Game Controllers, by Jennifer Chowdhury and Mehmet Sinan Ascioglu, is a platform where game controllers are built into undergarments so that players must physically touch one another to play. The woman’s controller is a bra with 6 sensors. The man’s controller has 6 sensors as well but in a pair of shorts. Man stands being woman and each has access to others sensors. The project will be presented at the ITP show on May 8 and 9, but with mannequins so visitors can try the interface out without having a partner with them.’

 

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Toshio Saeki Various (1979 – 2006)
‘An unusual and mysterious atmosphere that shrouds Saeki, and his isolation from the world undoubtedly enabled him to produce the work that he did, free and distant—a quality that is rare in our hyper-connected age. Despite Saeki’s influence in the underground scene (his first exhibition was in Paris in 1970), his work has still not received much critical investigation, either in Japan or abroad. This lack of attention is partly, of course, down to the content of his work; he digs into the darkest depths of the subconscious, creating glaringly authentic nightmare scenarios even Freud couldn’t dream up.’

 

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Mika Rottenberg Squeeze (2010)
‘Grinding industrial machinery and sweat­ing bodies merge in a bizarre assembly line in Mika Rottenberg’s new video Squeeze (2010). The 20-minute piece runs on a loop, shifting between documentary footage of female factory workers in India producing gelatinous slabs of rubber, migrant workers in Arizona hacking heads of lettuce from their stalks with long blades and staged vignettes shot in several make­shift chambers in Rottenberg’s studio. The artist edits the footage in such a way that the point of view frequently shifts and physical distances seem to collapse, con­necting all of the workers in a byzantine network of labor. For instance, the rubber workers in India thrust their arms into holes in the ground to receive manicures from a row of Asian women filmed in Rottenberg’s studio, where large women sweat, are squeezed between contracting walls and meditate, their energies seemingly har­vested to fuel the pulverizing of lettuce, rubber and cakes of makeup that are then compressed into a repulsive new product.’

 

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Dimitris Stamatis, Pei-Ying Lin, and Špela Petrič Plant Sex Consultancy (2014)
‘Plant Sex Consultancy is exactly what its title suggests: a series of design interventions aimed at ‘augmenting’ the sex life of plants, through long discussions with ‘plant clients.’:

‘For all empathic and philosophical purposes, plants are the incomprehensible aliens living amongst us, which we experience daily but perceive through their ubiquity, their slow pace, immobility, at best as a source of food and their potential applicability to reduce our detrimental environmental impact. We see, taste, smell and touch the otherness of plants, but spend very little time daydreaming to comprehend it. And even if we did, we’d hardly find a point of identification, of justifiable commonality between humans and plants that would spark a comparison, which would release plant agencies from the murky bottom of the anthropocentric valorization of living beings.

‘Then, there is sex. In the abstract realm of biological sciences, which seeks commonality in processes across the living world, sexual reproduction stands out as a staple principle of natural selection. Using a gastronomy facsimile, sex results in genetic cocktails of individuals. It is one of the crucial steps in the recipes of species under pressure to suit the changing taste of the environment. This applies to all organisms, from bacteria to humans and, of course, plants.

‘We recognized the uncanniness of likening plant and human sexual reproduction as an agora to juxtapose conceptions of “unique” human cultural practices to cross-species biological necessities, and the design process, promoted as a widely applicable approach, to the limits of its meaningfulness.’

 

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Jung Yoonsuk 정윤석 Lash (2018)
‘A two-channel documentary video from a (probably Chinese) factory producing life-size sex dolls. The seductiveness of the image was the main attraction of the work: Hands touching artificial skin, pushing and pulling and tearing and cutting of silicone made skin substitutes, etc… The morbid and fetishistic attraction with skin and flesh was everywhere. The workers featured in the film remained silent, and most of the time they were also pictured as body parts: hand that shape matter, robot-like. Occasionally there was a glance of a factory worker at rest, sipping his noodle soup in between of pink silicone carcasses. The film documented how sex toy dolls are made, but it did not reveal anything about the working conditions or context of why this should be important to see or discuss. Lash did not make me feel to know anything about the artist: What is his position, interest, approach… only plastic flesh fetish.’

 

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Kevin Francis Gray Face-Off (2017)
‘High Polished Bronze, Automotive Paint and Wood.’

 

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Trevor Brown Various (1996 – 2017)
‘Brown’s paintings of funny, cute, but sinister doll-like creatures, lolitas and teddy bears inhabiting a bizarre world of medical, masochistic and macabre imagery seem to emanate from a perpetual Halloween twilight zone, where innocence is inextricably enmeshed with — but never fully corrupted by — evil. Yet even though this fascinating cocktail is an addictive passion for Brown’s fans, who religiously buy his paintings and books, it is definitely not everybody’s cup of tea. Over the years, the artist has received death threats and been accused of everything from pedophilia to Nazism, via Satanism and sadism. Reflecting the hysteria that Brown sometimes attracts, one reviewer said, “The toilet bowl inside this artist’s brain is overflowing with blood culled from a massive fetish orgy starring a horde of underage Japanese goth sluts for whom the more freakish, unimaginable terrain of human behavior is the norm.”’

 

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Kris Knight Various (2014 – 2015)
‘I think my interest in androgyny stems from looking and sounding quite feminine as a kid growing up in the country. I matured out of this stage in my later teens, but I can still remember the confusion others had (and how angry people got) when gender is blurred. My first series of works dealt with androgyny and gender neutrality because I rarely saw it portrayed from a rural perspective. Today my interest in neutrality goes beyond gender as I am much more interested in conveying ambiguity in terms of physiognomy, mood, atmosphere, and sex.’

 

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Mark Woods Various (2017)
‘Mark Woods produces highly elaborated artefacts that blur the boundaries between top end jewellery, fine arts, Fetish and items from a cabinet of curiosities ending in luxurious objects of desire. As the art critic, Mónica Sánchez-Argilés, says: “Woods’ sculptures seem to echo to perfection the fraudulent simulation phenomena of a society increasingly obsessed with glamour and pornography”.’

 

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Eli Craven Various (2016 – 2018)
‘Currently, I am returning to a thread of research about images unseen, restricted, hidden, or unwanted. I’m thinking about death and ritual, secret societies and the desire to see the unknown.’

 

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Jean Tinguely La Vittoria (1970)
‘Art claims to the machine the opposite of what it was invented for: the unproductive, the idle, the absurd, the random or amoral behavior. In the same vein, Jean Tinguely made in the 1950s his robotic, chaotic and, not rarely, self-destructive sculptures. In La Vittoria (1970) his desacralizing sense extends to the phallic cult, with an ephemeral monument that looks like a nod to the ancient Greco-Roman priapic processions or the Japanese Hounen Matsuri, but erected before the cathedral of Milan to stage a “sexual fire”: The virile symbol of fecundity consumed by fireworks, steamers and sirens of firemen.’

 

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Wei Dong Various (2010 – 2015)
‘A personal obsession with the female body is one of Wei Dong’s many complex interests. Growing up in China under the watchful eye of Mao’s red guard, sexual fantasies and freedoms were forcibly repressed. Socialist realism was the standard fair in the art academies of the time, and as a result, any hint of sexual or erotic expression was taboo. Upon entering the United States in 1991, Wei Dong’s preoccupation with the root of erotic desires as a young adult were given free reign over his canvases, resulting in grandiose explorations of the flesh.’

 

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Clementine Keith-Roach Belle Dam (2018)
‘Milk substitute trickles from the breasts of Belle Dam, while hands and feet reach out to the environs at all angles. Clementine says: ‘Just as the mother’s breast lactates at the infant’s cry, Belle Dam spurts arcs of milk substitute in response to the groan of the city.’’

 

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Shoplifter & Múm Nervescape (2013)
‘As a teenager, she couldn’t convince a hair stylist to colour or cut her hair the way she wanted. “So perhaps, my fetish has developed out of these unfulfilled desires for sculptural and more colourful looks,” says Shoplifter. In the 90s, the artist started out using brown hair for her sculptures but she soon turned to colourful synthetic hair extensions. She used them for their colour but also what they symbolised: the difference between high and low art and our own preconceptions about what they signify. “Hair represents the beast in us, and once it’s off the body, it’s so creepy,” she says. “It’s a memory of who you are.”‘

 

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Méret Oppenheim My Nurse (1936)
‘Dinner is served – and it is a pair of white high heels. Displayed sole-up, on a silver platter, and trussed like an oven-ready chicken, they are white (i.e. pure), but scuffed (i.e. dirty). Our reflection bounces back to us from the rim of the silver tray, implicating us in a bizarre cannibalistic ritual. The symbolism unfolds before us like the plot of a sinister novel. The artist has encapsulated nearly every imaginable sexual fetish. Bondage is perhaps the most obvious, but of course, there is the foot fetish. The oval form of the tray and deep crevice between the shoes is vaguely vaginal (and, especially in a dining context, hints at oral sex). The white shoes and their scuffed appearance might reference the Madonna/whore complex. Oppenheim knew her Freud backwards and forwards. Her references are intentional.’

 

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Will McBride Various (1972 – 2018)
‘Will McBride was an American artist known for his black-and-white photographs documenting youth culture in postwar Germany. His work remains controversial for its frank and explicit depiction of sexuality. Many consider McBride’s working method as a forerunner to the visceral self-documentation seen later in the photographs of Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Wolfgang Tillmans.’

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ha ha. Well, well, well! Greatness! Everyone, Excellent news from _Black_Acrylic for your weekend and, well, forever even. To wit, ‘Happy to announce the inaugural Play Therapy show with Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson is now online here via Tak Tent Radio! My dulcet tones introduce Chicago house, power electronics, Hi NRG, Italo and more besides.’ See you there by osmosis? ** David Ehrenstein, I’m pretty sure he did. I think I’ve mentioned before that he seriously dated Mary Martin who apparently came very close to being my mother. ** Misanthrope, I just knew that post would hit somebody’s spot. Ah, meds plus/minus short term amnesia. It might be partly psychological, but if I don’t take my milligrams of Melatonin every night, I’m dead. Or the opposite of dead, more like. Not that I need to even say this, but, dude, do not buy LPS a car. Holy moly what a bad idea. ** h (now j), Hi. Indian dinner got pushed to tonight because I forgot I had a deadline. Oops, well, I hope their deadline was extendable. Is travelling within New York state a no-no? We can travel within the EU for the moment, and Zac and I are going to train to Koln to go to an amusement park there soonish barring the borders re-closing. Enjoy your weekend as the weekend allows. ** Ferdinand, Hi, F. Good, thanks. I’m behind on my email, but I see yours there, and I’ll get to it this weekend, thanks. Oh, a share, cool, okay … Everyone, Ferdinand has a share for you. Take it away, Ferdinand: ‘I want to share this gayadult archival podcast Ask any buddy with the blog.. havent seen the compilation film out of which the podcast has sprung (headsup it should be available on youtube ) butheres the podcast which looks at each old gay adult film individually which feautured in the gay adult archival compilation film. Podcast link here: or You know what just type ASK ANY BUDDY on apple podcasts or spotify or stitch (whatever that is) Should be fun!’ ** Bill, Ha ha. Your preview piece was even more great the second and third times I watched it. Totally ace, sir. ** Max B, Hi, Max! Happy you came back. Cool, thanks for the fill in. Obviously best of luck galore with the bachelor degree completing. God, yeah, I have a lot of musician friends who have had their futures and bank accounts totally fucked by this. Even over here where things are pretty open again, music gigs are still a far away dream. So sorry. Great, thank you a lot for hooking me up with your work. I’ll heavily indulge this weekend. Everyone, Get to know the work of Max B by hearing him out and joining me in a solid listening session where he indicates. Max B: ‘Some music I made a year or two ago with a friend is getting put out by an english label over the course of the summer, here’s some.’ Check it out, folks, why don’t you? ** Steve Erickson, Yes, indeed. Oh, shit, about your anxiety reaction. Crank some brutal techno and dance it out? That’s worked for me a few times. The Portland thing is ultra-awful and spooky. I guess try not to jump to the most apocalyptic conclusion since it’s out of your personal control? I realise that seems to be a tall order over there at the moment. Sympathetic stalker films almost seem to be becoming a genre unto themselves. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Thanks, man. I’m loving the stuff you’ve been posting on FB of late, doncha know. Great, thank you about the Setagaya Murders post. That would be treasure. Zac and I discuss our longing to go to Japan every time we see each other. Obviously, it just depends on how the COVID thing goes both here and there. So we’re watching and waiting. Surely not before Nintendo Land opens at Universal Osaka because we’re both almost literally dying to go to it. Thank you so much about ‘ZDB’, that means really a lot. And I’m glad Diarmuid’s book pleased. Wow, your kid turns 13! That’s so old. In the good sense. Time is intense. It would be a thrill if he likes ‘God Jr.’ although chill if he doesn’t. Yeah, I would love to meet him as a non-baby when I finally get down there. Maybe he (and you) would be down for Nintendo Land? Great weekend, maestro. ** Corey Heiferman, I would guess an extraterrestrial anthropologist would look at those models and ask themselves a billion hugely critical questions. Obviously, I’m imagining they would have gigantic brains like we used to think back in the ’60s. If the muse ribs, you know what you’ve got to to do, man. I think Bill is one of those lucky ones who can see the comments, at least most of the time, so that should work. ** Right. This weekend you get another one of my thematic post thingeroonies. See you on Monday.