Suicidalists

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Peter Saul Wall Street Suicide, 2012
Acrylic on canvas

 

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Jose Legaspi Untitled, 1995
oil on canvas

 

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Maurizio Cattelan Bidibidobidiboo, 2012
‘a suicide squirrel appears in a miniature stage, with a gun at his feet.’

 

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Aziz Hazara Monument, 2019
‘Monument takes place at a collective graveyard and memorial, a place where families have gathered the bodies of their loved ones, killed in a suicide bomb attack at a tuition centre, which took more than forty students’ lives. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) the day after the event.’

 

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Patricia Waller Suicide II, 2020
Sequins, pins, styrofoam, polystyrol board, cardboard

 

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George Grosz Suicide, 1916
‘Mario Vargos Llosa: Grosz shared Baudelaire`s romantic fascination for underground, outsider characters – criminals, gangsters, soldiers, suicide victims, the proletariat and whores. In that sense he was Germany`s poète maudit. A great example of this is his painting Suicide (1916). There is a prostitute standing by the window – a bottle in one hand. On one side a body is hanging from a lamppost, while another person, well-dressed, is lying on the street. (In his work, the theme of sex is always closely related to violence.) It has all the classic Grosz elements – dead people, prostitutes, perverted millionaires. All the characters have escaped the conformist respectable life. I think this is the reading that we should give to his gangsters, his killers – people who are outside the conventional social world. He thought, a bit like the Black Panthers 50 years later, that the criminals were the social fighters.’

 

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Bjarne Melgaard Construction to Commit Suicide with a Great White Shark, 2000
molded fibreglass, and bronze with enamel graffiti inscription

 

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Joanna Rajkowska The Suiciders, 2016
‘The exhibition does not simply diagnose or recount suicide cases. It describes the artist’s relationship with the women who attempted suicide themselves or sent other women on suicide missions.According to Rajkowska, the essence of the work is “(…) a feeling of inability. It concerns the inability to feel true empathy, the inability to understand a woman (…) who attempts to destroy herself, at the same time terminating the lives of others. My point is that I have never reached such border, such state of body and mind. Sitting in a comfortable European country, we can only feel Schadenfreude, an inner satisfaction these atrocities do not happen to us.’

 

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Vassan Sitthiket Committing Suicide Culture: The Only Way Thai Farmers Escape Debt, 1995
wood, paint, rope, metal

 

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Timothy Jackson Suicide, 1977
Spray paint and ink on paper and mylar with collaged elements

 

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Richard Bosman Suicide, 1980-81
Color woodcut

 

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Sarah Lucas Is suicide genetic?, 1996
mixed media

 

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Ed Atkins Ribbons, 2014
high-definition video

 

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Andres Serrano Morgue, 1993
photograph

 

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Richard Prince Good News, Bad News, 1989
Acrylic and screen print on canvas

 

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Mark Jenkins Untitled, 2017
‘As soon as the summer show was mounted at Arsenal Contemporary in Toronto, concerned neighbors began calling the police. They were worried about two people sitting on the roof of the building, a sheet thrown over their heads, seemingly about to jump to their deaths. Despite their perch atop an art gallery, and their obvious lack of movement, onlookers were convinced these were real people. Perhaps the couple was just really unsure about suicide, or worse, maybe they had been killed and left in that position.’

 

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Vito Acconci Note for a potential suicide, 1973
Chalk on cardboard

 

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Luke Duggleby For Those Who Died Trying, 2020
‘In this low-slung image, a framed portrait of a human rights defender who killed himself appears in the exact location where he was last seen alive.’

 

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Andy Warhol A Woman’s Suicide, 1962
Silkscreen ink and pencil on linen

 

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Cai Guo-Qiang Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks, 2008
‘The artist mixed gunpowder with glue to draw various pictures in the Danger Book and placed a bundle of matches on a striking strip along the base of each book’s spine. A dangling string was attached to the bundle of matches to entice the reader to pull on it and thus ignite the book. The concept described by the artist is as follows: ‘Be careful of books. Be careful with books. Be careful or one can become a weapon-wielder. Be careful or one can become the victim’.’

 

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Alexander Chekmenev Attempt of Suicide, 1994
gelatin silver print

 

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David Byrd Suicide (260), 1996
Oil on canvas

 

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Samara Golden Suicide Masks, 2013
Rmax, acrylic, Gorilla glue

 

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Lizzi Bougatsos, Rob Pruitt Help Me Lift You Up, 2024
ceramic cat and plastic sheet

 

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Eugenio Merino For the Love of Go(l)d, 2009
silicon

 

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Erika Rothenberg America’s Joyous Future, 1990–91
Plastic letters in aluminum and Plexiglas notice case

 

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Mike Parr Cathar­tic Action: Social Ges­tus No. 5 (the ​“Arm­chop”), 1977
Photograph

 

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Katsuki Nogami Self-Homicide, 2025
‘Experiencing Strangling an Avatar with Your Own Face. This piece deals with the sensitive subject of death. Please only participate if you have given your full consent. At this stage, the avatar features the artist’s own face, but in the final version, it will have the same face as the participant.

‘Since the advent of video games, the moral implications of killing in a virtual space have been widely debated. However, such discussions have largely faded as it has become an accepted norm. All you need is a finger pressing the A button—perhaps even enough to launch a missile. In online games, players kill their friends’ avatars daily, and on social media, the same fingers that press buttons are used to slander and attack others, sometimes to the point of driving them to death. This disconnect between the real world and the digital display may be the underlying cause.

‘However, in this Mixed Reality experience, your real hands will carry out the action directly.’

 

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Bill Thomas from Suicide Series, 1991
black and white print

‘Tub and Toaster’

‘Rats and Syringes’

‘Sleeping’

‘Dog and Shotgun’

‘Gasoline and Candles’

‘Tractor and Plow Disc’

 

 

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p.s. RIP the great Yasunao Tone ** Carsten, I remember you used to talk about Ken Jacobs. Well, I’m very interested in tone/sound and rhythm in my writing, but I guess I think of it more in terms of what text triggers in the reader’s imagination rather than an actual sound the language creates in the mouth or something. I’m all for no-budget filming with a phone camera. There have been some incredible films made that way. Scott Barley’s films are extraordinary looking, for instance, and they’re all shot with his phone albeit heavily worked visually afterwards. I too agree with Flaubert there. ** Misanthrope, Having lived in NYC twice, I personally think visiting is a whole lot funner and a better use of that place. The usual and obvious prayers-in-quotes re: Mr. David. ** _Black_Acrylic, Happy to enrich your so respectable radar. If I saw someone wearing an Underground Resistance badge, I would certainly do a double-take and possibly even say, ‘What’s up?’ ** Steeqhen, I’m fine today, I think. In my experience, when your sickness wettens (that’s not a word?), that is a sign of upswinging. Hope we’re both right. A friend of mine saw Britney Spears on her last tour and said during the dancing parts they ‘secretly’ snuck out a lookalike stand-in Britney to do them, and I once had a dream in which that ‘stand-in’ made an appearance if that counts. Good morning from a morning person. ** Steve, Okay, that is one novel celerity dream cameo indeed, haha. No, I don’t know of anyone who’s done that field recording film score thing, which is why we need to do it. I mentioned it to Aki and he smiled and went ‘Mmm’ like the idea had made him hungry, so who knows. I don’t actually have floaters. That was my terrible attempt at describing how my muse manifests itself. But my muse is nowhere to be seen today if that answers the question. ** PancakeIan, Now you’re yourself and a pancake simultaneously. Best of both worlds. Floridian heat is a horror. I’ve only ever been to Florida twice, both times only to Orlando to go to Disney/Universal, and it was hell from above. I am going to dive back into Florida when Epic Universe opens, but not until the fall assuming it’s cool enough there to count as cool by then. I’m into the negative karma idea, but I keep that to myself because most of the meat eaters I know are very militant about it. I’m pretty sure James’s silence isn’t personal since he bailed on the blog too. Hopefully he’ll resurrect himself at some not too distant point. ** julian, Hi. Well, I went to the SD Zoo and Sea World mostly. A bit of La Jolla beach going. A few concerts. I did a few readings at UCSD, but that was post-childhood obviously. In the 70s there was a record store there that was so great that my friends and I would drive all the way down there to buy our hard-to-acquire punk and proto-punk records. Word vomit, great. I always start with word vomit. I liked Courtney when I was hanging out with her. I thought she was really smart and funny and complicated. But it later turned out that a whole lot of what she told me was a lie, and that she was using me to get the story she wanted about herself out to the public, so my liking of her turned into suspicion. ** Uday, Cool, glad you dug it. Congrats on finishing the paper! And awesome that some friends of yours will be the reason you get to NYC. I like silent movies. I don’t have a big thing for them especially. Well, except for more contemporary silent experimental movies. I like them a lot usually. It would be interesting to make a silent movie, yes. It would be challenge since my talent is mainly the writing and dialogue and stuff. But yes! Let me wish you a mosquito free day in return. The mosquitos are already back here for the summer, and it is not a happy marriage. ** HaRpEr //, Hi. Well, it was Catherine saying that, and Catherine is a dominatrix and can be very catty, so she might’ve been just trying to fuck me. It’s highly possible. Funny/telling about Hanif Kureshi. I’m big on trying not to think about that which makes me worry about myself, so yes. My pleasure on the Onda intro. ** Adem Berbic, Okay, I’l email you at that address. But, dude, make it easier for people to buy those books somehow, if you want my advice. At least with me, when there’s an invoice involved, I’ll usually just bail. Oh, I don’t know, you guys’ll sort it, and I know how much work that stuff can be. Well, ‘RT’ is getting a theater release in France. Like an actual theater release from a very cool distributor and everything! Crazy. Towards the end of the year, they’re saying. I will certainly see ‘Final Destination 6’ just to be a completist if nothing else. Good, tolerable? Zac’s in Nice, but I’ll hug him when he’s back in the hood, and I am confident he will boomerang a hug your way. ** Justin D,Hi. Happy you liked Onda’s stuff. ‘Violet’ looks tempting indeed. What a good opening shot in that trailer. Dinner? Capellini pasta doused with a combination of Mushroom sauce and Basilic Tomato sauce and loaded down with a ton of Parmesan cheese. What cereal did you eat? My favorite cereal is Grape Nuts. ** jay, Hey. A weekend is a whole better than nothing, but that is a very short time to take in Tokyo, assuming that’s the destination. But still, amazing! A taster hopefully not too hazed over by jet lag. How is your week building up? ** Nicholas., It was a banger. Thank you for occasioning it. Oh, no, I don’t note what books I read, etc. I do have an agenda/log where I briefly note what I did every day or have coming up to do. But I don’t mention what books I’ve read. I should, why not. 5ever, yes! Strangely, someone else asked me what I had for dinner just north of you, so do a little cm-length scroll backwards and you’ll find out. It was pretty so-so, so don’t get too excited. ** Right. Today post has spoken for itself, so I’ll just leave you there and see you tomorrow.