‘My work slips inside and outside of history and into imagined futures, creating hyper-glowing, artificially saturated visions that are both nauseatingly positive and cheerfully grotesque’. — Rachel Maclean

‘Glasgow-based artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean works largely in green screen composite video and digital print, often exhibiting this alongside props, costumes and related sculpture and painting. She is often the only actor or model in her work, playing a variety of characters that mime to appropriated audio and toy with age and gender. These clones embody unstable identities: conversing, interacting and shifting between cartoonish archetypes, ghostly apparitions and hollow inhuman playthings.

‘Her current work is about contemporary British culture and she recreates work in broadcast media, entertainment, and advertising genres such as talent competitions, science fiction animation, children’s shows, royal messages and fireside chats, and product marketing. Her work tends to comment and parody culture through the vehicle of these genres. Fantasy, role playing and humour feature heavily in her work. She works with green screen technique and digital animation. She creates sounds tracks with music and dialogue to accompany her films. Additionally, she makes digital prints of images related to her projects that resemble either out-takes/stills or advertisements and marketing posters. Text is often included.

‘In her videos such as Over The Rainbow, Rachel create synthetic spaces in which Katy Perry discuses teeth whitening with an aristocratic cat, a decapitated diva dances to hip pop and a pastel blue dog sings for The Queen. Stylistically her work explores the aesthetic of Poundland, Youtube, Manga and Hieronymus Bosch, spliced together with MTV-style green screen and channel-changing cuts. Maclean is fascinated by representations of other worlds and unearthly embodiments, and explores the ways in which they project contemporary anxieties and ideals into a mysterious and seductive beyond.

‘”My work is inspired by a number of things at once,” Maclean explains, “and often hinges on a bizarre combination of two apparently conflicting influences, for example Susan Boyle and Heavy Metal in my video I Dreamed A Dream. Where I live at the time I make work is also very influential, as I believe different cultures have different fantasies related to place. For example, I stayed in America for 6 months and became much more concerned by an idealised notion of Scotland, as a land of castles, lochs, monsters and kilts. Whereas I found growing up in Scotland, you are very divorced from this fantasy, and instead the imagination is much more directed to the US, and the glamour and intrigue it conveys to the outsider.”‘ — collaged

 

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Pix & Stills

 

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Further

Rachel Maclean Website
Rachel Maclean’s tumblr
‘RACHEL MACLEAN AND MULTI-COLOURED EXCRETIONS OF HYPER-KITSCH’
Ben Robinson interviews RM @ Yuck ‘n Yum
‘Rachel Maclean: GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN!
‘Where I Make: Rachel Maclean’
‘Rachel Maclean wins Margaret Tait Award’
‘Rachel Maclean Interview: Going Bananas’
‘5 Questions for: Rachel Maclean’
‘Artist Review ONE: Rachel Maclean’

 

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Extras

5 questions with Rachel Maclean

The Skinny Shop: Rachel MacLean video interview

Rachel Maclean interviewed by Summerhall

Rachel Maclean directed music video for Errors’ ‘Pleasure Palaces’

 

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Interview
from Daily Metal

 

Can you tell us how would you describe your work?
Rachel Maclean: My work slips inside and outside of history and into imagined futures, creating hyper-glowing, artificially saturated visions that are both nauseatingly positive and cheerfully grotesque. I am a Glasgow based artist working largely in green screen composite video and digital print, often exhibiting this alongside props, costumes and related sculpture and painting. I am the only actor or model in my work and invent a variety of characters that mime to appropriated audio and toy with age and gender. These clones embody unstable identities: conversing, interacting and shifting between cartoonish archetypes, ghostly apparitions and hollow inhuman playthings. My videos attempt to stylistically unify the aesthetic of The Dollar Store, Youtube, Manga, Hieronymus Bosch and High Renaissance painting with MTV style green screen and channel changing cuts.

What has prompted you to create your beautifully grotesque beings?
RM: I’ve always been fascinated by images which are at once compelling and repulsive. I like to toe a fine line between an aesthetic of benign, saccharine cuteness and a distastefully baroque form of grotesquely. I take inspiration from a whole range of sources, everything from Disney Princess to William Hogarth. I think the expression or experience of disgust, whether at a work of art or a bodily function, is very interesting and is indicative of our complex social relationship with others. It is also often reflective of the desire to recoil and distance ourselves from the experience of a particular class, race, gender or sexual orientation. I think someone like Katie Price is a good example of this relationship and in many ways performs the function of the Victorian Freak Show for the 21st Century. She’s reflective upon a certain kind of social class that are regarded as wealthy but tastelessly brash by the conservative middle classes. Everything about her image and actions entertains us through it’s grotesquely exaggerated performance of this stereotype and confirms for many the sense of their own relative superiority.

Do you consider your work political?
RM: Yes, in some ways. Although there is some work that is more directly political than others. For example, the recent video I made called The Lion and The Unicorn explores the interrelationship between Scottish and British national identity. This is obviously a very contentious issue given the upcoming Referendum on Scottish Independence in 2014 and I was keen to couch the work very clearly within this debate. However, in this case I intended that my opinion on the issue was left ambiguous, as I was more interested in provoking discussion and at some level unveiling the absurdity of the signifier and semi-historical fictions that play into contemporary political decision making and help form an abstracted sense of national pride.

Would you consider your work is related to the feminist cause? A clear example would be Skin & Bones? Can you explain what is this about?
RM: Yes, I intend for my work to be feminist. Again, this is made explicit in some works and maybe less so in others. In the example you mentioned from the series ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, I intended to create images of woman who appear sexually available and with all the basic masquerade of sexiness, but nonetheless fail in their achievement of this ideal, rendering them tragic, ugly and grotesque. Here I was keen to look at the representation of what I would regard as the Spice Girls, ‘Girl Power’ brand of feminism or to update things a bit, what Beyonce would refer to as a powerful ‘independent woman’. I’m pretty cynical about this kind of pop feminism and believe the it is in many ways it is just a rebranded sexism, which drives an ideal of liberation through financial success, but still expects women to fulfill their role as sexual objects.

In your work you’re the only model and the only actor. Why is it that?
RM: At some level it’s playful and childish, I like dressing up, there is something liberating and interesting about pretending to be someone else. It helps you reflect in a more open way on your own sense of self and question fixed ideas of the person you think you are or want to be. I like to play out and explore the idea that identity and gender are at some level a performance or masquerade and try to create narratives in which very fixed notions of self are exaggerated to the point they become absurd, or alternatively begin to fall apart and are gradually revealed to be unstable and fraudulent.

How do you prepare all your characters?
RM: I design all the costumes, props and face-paint for my work and the characters are usually tied into the larger aesthetic idea for the video. All my characters are an amalgam of reference points and never just a simple imitation of a specific person or typical costume. For example, in my recent video The Lion and The Unicorn, the character of ‘The Queen’ at once references Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elisabeth, wearing a costume recombined from an array of Union Jack merchandise available to celebrate the 2012 Diamond Jubilee.

Most of your work is via digital print and video. How important for an artist is the digital era?
RM: I think the digital era is as important as you want it to be as an artist. I love the possibilities that are opened up by programs like Photoshop and After Effects, but I also think that what interests me about this kind of software is the sense in which it is only ever an adaptation or simulation of methods and techniques available in non-digital media. Almost every tool in Photoshop exists in a physical form, take for example the paintbrush, the pen, the paint-bucket and the hand tool. They don’t necessarily perform exactly the same function, but they use material tools and processes as a starting point. When working I’m often keen to bring styles and processes from older media, particularly painting, into a digital space. Additionally, I think with any celebration of an advance in technology there is always a concurrent denial and nostalgia for the past. For many artists, computer generated images only highlight the nuances of older technologies, for example a lot of people are going back to work in analogue video and film as they recognize it has a quality that can’t be achieved through digital video.

 

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Show

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The Lion and The Unicorn (2012)
‘A central strand of Maclean’s work addresses the ideals of Scotland and Scottishness and their reality as portrayed by contemporary mass media. “The Lion and the Unicorn” is a short film in which three archetypal characters debate points of view on nationalism, trade and finance, natural resources and politics. They each use Scotland’s history to expound their arguments, yet their views cannot be reconciled. Maclean uses costumes, makeup and digital retouching to embody each of these Scottish national stereotypes. The video uses audio from television broadcasts, dubbed over Maclean’s performances: the Lion is given Jeremy Paxman’s voice and the Unicorn Alex Salmond’s, as they squabble over the future of Scottish governance.’ — Open Source

Trailer

 

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Over The Rainbow (short edit, 2013)
‘Inspired by the Technicolor utopias of children’s television, Over The Rainbow (2013) invites the viewer into a shape-shifting world inhabited by cuddly monsters, faceless clones and gruesome pop divas. Shot entirely using green-screen the film presents a computer generated environment, which explores a dark, comedic parody of the fairytale, video game and horror movie genres.’ — RM

Excerpt

 

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Germs (2013)
‘Germs (2013) is a 3-minute green-screen video, which follows a glamorous female protagonist through a series of advertising tropes. Moving from a perfume to a bathroom cleaner commercial, she converses with a persuasive masked woman and becomes increasingly paranoid about the omnipresence of microscopic germs. Rachel plays every character in the piece.’ — RM

the entire work

 

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The Phantom Band Everybody Knows It’s True (2013)
‘Psychedelic shenanigans ensue when The Phantom Band – who let’s face it, are not known for their retiring attitude to performance – don the face paint, tights and some fairly outlandish costumes in a visual accompaniment for their latest single ‘Everybody Knows It’s True’ directed by artist Rachel Maclean.’ — chemikal

the entire thing

 

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Please, Sir… (2014)
‘There are dozens of ‘Lady Janes’ in the young Scottish artist Rachel Maclean’s Please, Sir …, a two-screen film dialogue recently exhibited at Rowing, London, and previously shown at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts. Maclean plays each of the ten or so characters in the film, which are then copied in as extras, involving a meticulous process of disguise and a camp restaging of self. She is multiplied in mega-pixels but overburdened by objects: flowing peroxide wig, rotting teeth with gold filament, fake tits framed by a nylon ruffle, a market stall necklace that spells the word RICH. Maclean’s Lady Jane – more pub landlady than failed scholar or real life sovereign – also wears a sleazy white gown, complete with all the necessary leopard print: the anti-matter of virginal embodied.’ — Frieze

Excerpt

 

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A Whole New World (2014)
‘“A Whole New World” visualises the fantastical ruins of a fallen empire. Combining grand narratives with cheap product placement, the work explores themes related to British imperial history and national identity. Shot entirely using green-screen, the film presents a computer-generated landscape littered with fallen statues and the distressed paraphernalia of a bygone age. Narrated by a statuesque Britannia Goddess, the narrative adapts a variety of existing tales, including St George and The Dragon and Tarzan. The action frequently shifts genre, moving from all singing, all dancing musical score to dry political debate, sedate period drama to battlefield conflict. Maclean plays all the characters in the work, miming to audio in variety of languages and bedecked in an elaborate combination of prosthetic make-up, historical costume and Union Jack encrusted tourist tat.’ — D&C

Excerpt/short edit

 

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Eyes to Me (2015)
‘I recently did a film called Eyes to Me for Channel 4’s Random Acts (commissioned by Film London) where artists are invited to make a three-minute video to be shown between ad breaks on a popular British TV station. With this in mind, I was keen to create something that referenced the pace and spectacle of television, specifically kids’ TV, but gradually shifted tone, becoming darker, weirder and more disturbing as the film progressed, seeming to slowly undermine its formal appearance.’ — RM

the entire work

 

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Feed Me (2015)
‘Rachel Maclean’s dystopian fairytale Feed Me is a sixty-minute film set in a world run by a malicious toy corporation called Smile Inc. Maclean plays all the characters herself, from a Scottish granny to a blue-skinned business executive and a hoard of little girls. She dons rubber gloves, face paint and the occasional prosthetic nose, filming against a green screen before adding backdrops and special effects in postproduction. The smiley appears everywhere, a mutating, feel-good emblem stitched into clothes, transferred onto foreheads, flashing on phone screens and rotating in the sky like a great emoji god.’ — Elephant

Excerpt

 

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Again and Again and Again (2016)
‘A supersaturated satire with a look into the land of data-addicted monk-like figures and dance-crazed rabbits.’ — letterboxd

the entire work

 

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Spite Your Face (2017)
‘Referencing the Italian folk-tale The Adventures of Pinocchio, ‘Spite Your Face’ (2017) advances a powerful social critique, exploring underlying fears and desires that characterise the contemporary zeitgeist. Set across two worlds – with a glittering, materialistic and celebrity-obsessed upper world, and a dark, dank and impoverished lower world – the lure of wealth and adoration entices a destitute young boy into the shimmering riches of the kingdom above. Written in the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, and during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the story is steeped in the political flux and uncertainty of our time. Shown as a perpetual 37-minute loop with no definitive beginning or end, ‘Spite Your Face’ raises issues including the abuse of patriarchal power, capitalist deception, exploitation and the destructive trappings of wealth and fame, all in Maclean’s typically direct and acerbic style.’ — arts-news

Excerpt & interview

 

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Make Me Up (2018)
‘Multimedia artist Rachel Maclean ambitious film unfurls in a seductive and dangerous world where surveillance, violence and submission are a normalised part of daily life. In saccharine pastels, this darkly comic film exposes the heteropatriarchal ideologies embedded in prevailing narratives of gender and beauty. Siri and Alexa have been made over at a hyperreal beauty clinic where the candyfloss décor cannot mask the more sinister happenings. Maclean delivers a searing performance as Figurehead, the splendidly attired pedagogue who presides over the clinic and speaks with the voice of Kenneth Clark, from the high-minded 1960s BBC series Civilisation. Intent on educating her girls on art’s construction of female beauty, Figurehead also remodels them in its image. Cleverly referencing the suffragette Mary Richardson’s 1914 attack on the Rokeby Venus, Make Me Up is on a mission to deconstruct the tradition of patriarchal art criticism.’ — ica

Trailer

Audience reactions

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. The Epstein thing is completely accessible here. It’s not remotely a media obsession here as it is in the States, but it’s getting mentions. ** Steve Erickson, Thank you, Steve. Yes, it’s intense, and, coming on the heels of Kevin Killian’s not at all dissimilar passing, it’s just very strange among many other things. My opinion is that we must recast the role, as difficult as that will be, and continue. We’ll need to have a big meeting about what to do, but I feel very strongly about that. ** Tosh Berman, Thanks, Tosh. Yeah, it’s been a very disorienting, difficult time lately. ** Dominik, Hi, D! Thanks, pal. Yeah, I’m in a bit of a confused daze about it all. Oh, I see, about their expertise and that they’re away. Well, theoretically it seems like you guys could get a lot figured out and done in two weeks if you’ll have a fair amount time to work during those weeks? In any case, it’s so exciting! It’s going to be so fun for you, and so great! Ooh, that’s a really good gif! Thank you. Hm, a fuck you/off themed gif stack sounds mightily appealing to my imagination. I might just look into that and hit you up. Thanks for the great words, my friend. Have a lovely day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you, Ben. Oh, so, as you see, I made a new Rachel Maclean post. She whose work you introduced me to. The old one was too out of date and full of dead videos to restore. Good, I’m glad there are new possible options on the treatment front. Right, I do know that very cool track you linked to, and I can only think that’s thanks to you. ** Bill, Thank you, Bill. Oh, so you were the artist of that art-like looking installation. Nice work! Yes, we’re enjoying tolerable skies at the moment, but, you know, you can’t get complacent about the sky anymore, so … Yes, right? About the gifs and the title’s corralling? That’s what I was thinking too. High five. ** Misanthrope, Hamster. Interesting that hamster owning is still a rite of passage for young’uns. I think even I have heard of Belvis, but I don’t know how. Sounds cool. I’ll go hunt down what surely must be many videos of him singing the ‘King’s’ hits and obscurities. ** Okay. If you don’t know the work of the extravagant Scottish artist Rachel Maclean then today’s your lucky day. See you tomorrow.

 

Antonin Artaud’s Heliogabalus is simultaneously his most extreme, revolutionary and deranged book, and likely now also to prove his most influential in the contemporary moment with the publication by Infinity Land Press of this first complete English-language translation, by Alexis Lykiard.

Dating from the period when Artaud was preparing his legendary ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ experiments, Heliogabalus anatomises and recreates the sperm and blood-constellated life of the infamous Roman emperor who was assassinated by his own guards at the age of 18 after four years spent relentlessly deriding and disintegrating the empire’s power. Artaud asserts that ‘The entire life of Heliogabalus is anarchy in action… fire, gesture, blood, cry… Fanatical, a real king, a rebel, a crazed individualist.’

Artaud explicitly wrote his account of Heliogabalus’s acts as an embodiment of himself and of his own insurgency in art. Three years after the book’s publication, he was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum, emerging only shortly before his death in 1948.

This edition includes an introduction by Stephen Barber and his translations of all of the surviving letters written by Artaud about his work on Heliogabalus.

Translated by Alexis Lykiard
With an introduction by Stephen Barber
Artworks by Martin Bladh
Photographs by Karolina Urbaniak

Hardbound, 196 pages, 190 x 148mm
ISBN 978-1-9160091-1-0
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/heliogabalus-by-antonin-artaud

 

 

From the introduction by Stephen Barber

The grandiose and arbitrary abuse of unlimited power, the overriding infinite desire for immediate sexual ecstasy and oblivion especially through violence and subjugation, and the nonchalant eradication of entire populations, are now ever-more familiar preoccupations. Of all the Roman Emperors, it is the figure of the anarchist child-god Heliogabalus (along with the crazed Caligula and the matricidal Nero), with his ephemeral and implosive reign of gold, blood, semen and excrement, which most intimately infiltrates contemporary manias, panics and desires. The four-year reign of Heliogabalus, who was slaughtered by his own guards at the age of eighteen, was characterised by performances and spectacles of incest, sodomy, butchery, debauchery, and an anarchic ridicule for all powers of government. Of all the many responses to the Roman Emperors, it is Antonin Artaud’s extraordinary account of the life and work of Heliogabalus which most exactly aligns those forces of uncontrollable uproar with the seisms that now seize and impel contemporary voided empires, corporealities, audiences and art.

 

 

EXTRACTS

If there was around the corpse of Heliogabalus, tombless, its throat cut by his police force in his palace latrines, a heavy flow of blood and excrement, there was around his cradle a heavy flow of sperm. Heliogabalus was born in an era when everybody slept with everybody; and it will never be known when or by whom his mother was actually impregnated. For a Syrian prince like him, consanguinity came from the mother’s side; – and as regards mothers, around this newborn son of a charioteer was a pleiad of Julias; – and whether or not practising when in power, all these Julias were highclass whores.

The father to them all, to the female wellspring of this river of rape and infamy, must, before he became priest, have been a coachman, since otherwise it would be incomprehensible – the zealousness which Heliogabalus, once enthroned, put into being buggered by charioteers.

 

 

A mass of gold flung into a pit fed by the Cyclopeans, at the very instant the Grand High Priest frantically ravages a vulture’s throat and drinks its blood, intimates a theory about the alchemical transmutation of feelings into forms and forms to feeling, according to the ancient Egyptians’ sacred ritual.

But to this notion of bloodletting and the material transmutation of forms there corresponds an idea of purification. It has to do with isolating the very essence of any sensual ecstasy experienced momentarily and individually by the priest, so that this explosion and this rapid outburst of frenzy may return, unencumbered by matter, to the first principle from which it’s been born.

Then there are the innumerable rooms consecrated to a single action or even to one simple gesture, with which the underbelly of the temple and its rumbling bowels seem to be crammed. The rite of ablution, the rite of abandon, diversion, renunciation; the rite, in every sense, of absolute nakedness; the rite of the biting power and unforeseen bursting forth of the sun, parallelling the sight of a wild boar; the rite of the savagery of the Alpine wolf and that of the stubbornness of the ram; the rite of the warm zephyrs and that of the great solar conflagration at the time when the first male scored his victory over the serpent; all these rituals, in ten thousand chambers, are observed daily or monthly, biennially, – they link a robe to a gesture, a stride to a spurt of blood.

 

 

With hindsight one can pour scorn upon the blood-drenched rites of the Tauroboli, to which – in a sort of mystical line whose course has never been superseded, running from the High Plateaux of Iran to the exclusive precincts of Rome – the adepts of the Mithraic cult devoted themselves; one can hold one’s nose in horror at the mingled emanation of blood, sperm, sweat and menses, combined with that intimate stench of putrefying flesh and unclean sex rising from the human sacrifices; one can exclaim in disgust at the sexual pruritus of the women stimulated to frenzy by the sight of a member freshly torn off; one can deplore the craziness of people entranced, who, from the rooftops of the houses into which the Galli flung their members, tossed them down onto the shoulders of women’s garments, the while invoking their gods; which is not to say that all these rites didn’t contain a certain amount of violent spirituality that went beyond their sanguinary excesses.

If in the religion of Christ heaven is one myth, in the religion of Elagabalus at Emesa heaven is a reality, but a reality that acts like another, and reacts dangerously upon that other. All these rituals unify heaven – heaven or what is separated from heaven, man or woman, under the sacrificial knife.

That is because there are in heaven gods, forces in other words, which are seeking only to swoop down.

The force that builds up tidal waves, that makes the sea lap at the moon, that has lava rising from the depths of volcanoes; the force that shakes buildings and creates deserts; the force red and unpredictable that sends thoughts like so many crimes seething through our heads, and crimes innumerable, like lice; the force that supports and aborts life – these are concrete manifestations of an energy whose heavier aspect is the Sun.

 

 

In the sun, there’s war, Mars – the sun is a warrior god; and the ritual of the Gallus is a rite of war: man and woman melted in blood, at the cost of bloodshed.

In the abstract war of Heliogabalus, in his battle of principles, in his war of semblances, there is human blood as in real war, not abstract blood, unreal blood of the imaginary, but real blood that flowed and can flow; and if Heliogabalus shed no blood in defence of territory, he paid with his own for his poetry and ideas.

The entire life of Heliogabalus is anarchy in action, since Elagabalus the unitary god who brings together again man and woman, the hostile poles, the ONE and the TWO, is the end of contradictions, the elimination of war and anarchy, but by way of war, and that’s also – on this earth of contradiction and disorder – the putting into action of anarchy. And anarchy at the point to which Heliogabalus pushes it, is poetry realised.

There is in all poetry an essential contradiction. Poetry is pulverised multiplicity and it produces flames. And poetry, which restores order, first revives disorder, disorder with semblances ablaze; it causes appearances to clash in restoring them to one singular point: fire, gesture, blood, cry.

To restore poetry and order to a world whose very existence is a threat to order, is to bring back war and the permanence of war; it is to bring in a state of enforced cruelty, to arouse a nameless anarchy, anarchy of things and appearances which awaken before sinking anew and melting into unity. But he who arouses this dangerous anarchy is always its first victim. And Heliogabalus is a diligent anarchist who begins by devouring himself, and ends by devouring his excrement.

 

 

Whenever Heliogabalus dresses as a prostitute and sells himself for forty pence at the doors of Christian churches, at the temples of Roman gods, he’s not only seeking the satisfaction of a vice, but humiliating the Roman monarch.

When he appoints a dancer to head his praetorian guard, he’s thereby establishing a sort of incontestable yet dangerous anarchy. He exposes to ridicule the cowardice of the monarchs, his predecessors, the Antonines and the Marcus Aureliuses, and finds that a dancer’s perfectly fit to command a bunch of policemen. He calls weakness strength and theatre, reality. He’s overturning the received order, ideas, the everyday notions of things. His is a meticulous and dangerous anarchy, since he reveals himself to all eyes. To tell the truth he’s risking his own skin. And that’s a courageous anarchist.

He continues his enterprise of the debasement of standards, of monstrous moral disorganisation, in choosing his ministers by the enormousness of their members.

“He placed at the head of his night watch”, says Lampridius, “the charioteer Gordius, and made chief steward a certain Claudius, who was censor of morals; all other preferments were dependent upon the outstanding size of member of those recommended. He appointed as collectors of the five per cent inheritance tax a muleteer, an athlete, a cook and a locksmith.”

It didn’t prevent his taking personal advantage of this disorder, this shameless slackening of morals, nor of making a habit of obscenity; and into broad daylight, like a maniac and a man obsessed, he brought what is normally kept hidden.

 

 

There’s a strange rhythm to the cruelty of Heliogabalus; this initiate does everything with art and everything is doubled. I mean that he does everything on two levels. Each of his gestures is double-edged.

Order, Disorder,

Unity, Anarchy,

Poetry, Dissonance,

Rhythm, Discordance,
Grandeur, Childishness,

Generosity, Cruelty.

From the top of the newly erected towers of his temple to the Pythian god, he scatters corn and male members.

He feeds a castrated people.

There are certainly no theorbos, no tubas, no orchestras of citharas accompanying the castrations he decrees, but which he decrees each time like so many personal castrations, and as if it were Elagabalus Himself being castrated. Sacks of male sexes are cast from the tops of the towers with the cruellest abundance on the day of the festival of the Pythian god.

I couldn’t swear to it, but an orchestra of citharas or squeaky-stringed, hard-bellied nebels might have been concealed somewhere in the darkest cellars of the spiral towers, so as to drown the shrieks of the parasites being castrated; but these shrieks of martyred men almost simultaneously match the acclamations of a rejoicing populace to whom Heliogabalus distributes the equivalent of several fields’ worth of corn.

Good, evil, blood, sperm, rose-wines, embalming oils, the costliest perfumes, all create, alongside the generosity of Heliogabalus, innumerable irrigations.

 

 

Letter to Jean Paulhan
1 June 1934

Dear friend,

With boredom, I notice that you understand me less and less, and from my side of things, I no longer understand your reactions. Supreme Truth: I’m looking only for that – but when someone starts to talk to me about what is true, I always ask myself what kind of ‘true’ they’re talking about, and I ask myself to what extent the idea that you can have some kind of delimited, objective truth hides another truth which obstinately eludes all capture, all limits, all localisation, and finally eludes what is called the Real.

So that’s what I wanted to say to you – and while your letter irritated me and made me say to myself: whether it’s true or not shouldn’t matter to him as long as it’s beautiful and as long as you can find in this book the idea of the true and of the Superior Real, I’ll tell you anyway that the dates are true, all of the historical events are true in their origins and then interpreted, with many invented details; I intended that the Esoteric Truths are true in their spirit, while they are often intentionally FALSIFIED in their form – form is really nothing; the imagining is excessive and exaggerated, with desperate affirmations; but then, an atmosphere of panicstrickenness establishes itself in the book, the rational loses its footing, while the mind advances forward, armed to the teeth. In the end, a kind of desperate sincerity underpins the book even in my apparent deformation of the truth, which happens rarely in really being a deformation. I’m not going to say anything more to you – but I’m simply astonished that when you are confronted with a book written with my heart and the skin of my entrails, you dare – you – to ask me if it’s true. I believe that you can either feel it, or not.

I’m going to have to tell you that for the past three weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed by demonstrations of authentic enthusiasm. Whether he’s ‘true’ or not, the figure of Heliogabalus is alive, right through to his depths, I believe, whether those depths are those of the historical figure Heliogabalus or those of a figure who is myself. You’ve liked books of mine which are less alive, less accomplished, less complete, and I don’t understand why this particular book – in which I think I’ve been able to incorporate myself, even with my deficiencies and my excesses, as well as with the qualities that I may possess – provokes your resistance. By contrast, I liked very much this letter from Daumal – forwarded on by Vera – whom many passages in the book touched deeply.

Yesterday evening I took charge of the lighting design for the dances of Helba Huara at the Salle Pleyel. The dances were a triumph in that immense auditorium which was almost full and my lighting design contributed to that success, despite the poor means at my disposal.

Your friend,
ANTONIN ARTAUD

 

 

***

About the Author

 

Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud’s work has a world-renowned status for experimentation across performance, film, sound, poetry and visual art. In the 1920s, he was a member of the Surrealist movement until his expulsion, and formulated theoretical plans across the first half of the 1930s for his ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ and attempted to carry them through. He made a living as a film actor from 1924 to 1935 and made many attempts to direct his own film projects. In 1936, he travelled to Mexico with a plan to take peyote in the Tarahumara lands. In 1937, preoccupied with the imminent apocalypse, he travelled to Ireland but was deported, beginning a nine-year asylum incarceration during which he continued to write and also made many drawings. After his release in 1946, he lived in the grounds of a sanatorium in Ivry-sur-Seine, close to Paris, and worked intensively on drawings, writings and sound-recordings. He died on 4 March 1948. His drawings have been exhibited on several occasions, notably at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna in 2002 and at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris
in 2006.

 

Biographies

Alexis Lykiard
Alexis Lykiard (born 1940) is a British writer of Greek heritage, who began his prolific career as novelist and poet in the 1960s. His poems about jazz have received particular acclaim, including from Maya Angelou, Hugo Williams, Roy Fisher, Kevin Bailey and others. He is also known as translator of Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont, Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud and many notable French literary figures. In addition, Lykiard has written two highly praised intimate memoirs of Jean Rhys: Jean Rhys Revisited (2000) and Jean Rhys: Afterwords (2006).
http://www.alexislykiard.com

Stephen Barber
Stephen Barber’s books have been acclaimed as ‘brilliant, profound and provocative’ by The Times newspaper in the UK, and he has been called ‘a writer of real distinction’ and ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’ by The Independent newspaper. The Sunday Times newspaper hailed his books as ‘exhilarating and disquieting’.

He is the author of many fiction and non-fiction books, including studies of Antonin Artaud, Pierre Guyotat, Jean Genet and Eadweard Muybridge. Among his recent books are England’s Darkness (SunVision Press) and Berlin Bodies (Reaktion Books). He has also collaborated on books with the poet Jeremy Reed and the photographer Xavier Ribas. His books have been translated into many languages and have won numerous prizes and awards. He is currently a professor of art and film at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London.
https://stephenbarber.me/

Martin Bladh
Martin Bladh is a Swedish-born artist of multiple mediums. His work lays bare themes of violence, obsession, fantasy, domination, submission and narcissism. Bladh is a founding member of the post-industrial band IRM, the musical avant-garde unit Skin Area and co-founder of Infinity Land Press. His published work includes To Putrefaction, Qualis Artifex Pereo, DES, The Hurtin’ Club and Darkleaks – The Ripper Genome and Marty Page. He lives and works in London.
http://www.martinbladh.com/

Karolina Urbaniak
Karolina Urbaniak is a visual artist and co-founder of Infinity Land Press. Urbaniak’s published work includes To Putrefaction, 2014, Altered Balance – A Tribute to Coil, 2014/15, The Void Ratio, 2015, Artaud 1937 Apocalypse, 2018 and Death Mort Tod – A European Book of the Dead, 2018. Her recent multimedia projects include the soundtrack for Darkleaks – The Ripper Genome and the audio/visual installation On The New Revelations of Being inspired by the work of Antonin Artaud. She lives and works in London.
http://karolinaurbaniak.com/

 

 

https://www.infinitylandpress.com/

 

 

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p.s. Hey. The writer Rob Halpern has written an interesting essay about New Narrative pioneer Bruce Boone’s and my books in the new issue of Tripwire, and anyone can read it in pdf form if anyone is interested (starting on p. 224). There’s also a special section on the amazing writer Renee Gladman and work by all kinds of excellent authors like Robert Gluck, Isabel Waidner, Julia Bloch and many others. Here. ** JM, Hey! Thanks a lot, man. ** David Ehrenstein, Here’s hoping LA-ers pony up for your no doubt great booty before it’s too late. ** _Black_Acrylic, Very happy you liked them. I don’t think that’s a facile comparison at all. I think it’s only interesting to think about club environmental transformation and abstract films in cahoots. Have a great weekend! ** Steve Erickson, That was my situation with WWD until just recently too. Everyone, Steve Erickson weighs in on ‘the Quad’s June series of ’70s and ’80s queer German cinema’ in a place that can be accessed through this. Don’t know about ‘Dare to Stop Us’, or rather didn’t until now. It’s a fiction film, I’m guessing? I’ll look into it. ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. Obviously very happy that the intro/post on WWD stuck with you. I’m glad Julien Calendar is now officially back on the live circuit. That does sound like a tricky and vexing space. Can’t think of any excuse for the fully lit aspect at the very least. No, I don’t believe I’ve even heard of ‘Red Shift’. Of course I’ll a do a hunt to see what’s what. Very interesting. Thank you for the good thoughts. It’s inescapably dire. I don’t really want to go into it because it requires a complicated explanation that isn’t suited to this situation, but, once it settles, it’ll be easier (or something) to elucidate about. Hope your weekend rules. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I’m very happy you liked his work. Me too, I mean obviously. Happily packed or unpacked weekend ahead? ** Misanthrope, We get those kinds of rain storms here a lot. Not recently because it’s fucking summer, but in most seasons Paris gets rain bursts most days. We’ve crept up into almost horrible heat here, but it’s supposed to get bored with Paris and go fuck with Germany or somewhere starting tomorrow. The talent to save up money is a real talent that I do not have, so respect to Kayla. That place by Hyde Park does sound like quite a bargain. I’m sure there must be a catch, but it’s hopefully a catch that you/we laissez faire Americans won’t even notice. Ah, LPS is up to his old … I was going to say tricks but it’s more like a lifestyle, I guess. Thanks about the Halpern piece. Curious piece. ** Corey Heiferman, Hi, Corey. My pleasure, and thank you again for giving me an ‘in’ with your video. Any news? Cool you watched ‘The Fall.’ It’s been ages since I saw that one. I think Whitehead considered it his best work. Enjoy your folks. Speech therapist, interesting. I interviewed a few speech therapists ages ago when I was trying to develop my writer ‘voice’ and to get the inexpressible-but-linguistically-present thing finessed. Ha ha, nice old guy exercise. Yours. That’s cool. Oh, man, thank you about that poem. Boy, that’s an ancient one. I think I was 16 or 17 when I wrote it. Amazing that it ended up having anything going for it. The weather is supposed to reenter fairly pleasant territory tomorrow. I don’t know if I know that particular Chris Ware book. I can be bad with titles. I’ll check. He’s pretty amazing. What a completely odd TV ad. So much stuff in it I can’t decode. Huh. Thanks for that. That’s got me weirdly thinking. Have a swell weekend. ** Right. The fine people at Infinity Land Press, whose books are always among the most superbly designed and visually presented out there, are just now putting out the Artaud book you see up there. I believe it’s the first translation of that Artaud text, so it’s a real occasion. Be with the book’s evidence over this weekend and see what that leads you to do. See you on Monday.