Category Archives: culture

Erotic (un)possibilities in an Antioch world

Over the past few days I’ve been mulling over Siri Hustvedt title essay A Plea for Eros which is a rumination on the effability and ineffability of sex in connection with the Antioch Ruling. Since January 1, 2006, the Antioch College in Ohio, United States, requires students to gain consent at each stage of a sexual encounter.

Hustvedt’s essay on the unreliability and ambiguity of language in relation to sexual ethics reminded me of Georges Bataille when he said that “sex begins where speech [or words] ends”, a statement I tend to agree with.

[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=q7SNOX9W3WY]

Emotionally charged scene in A History of Violence (French version)

Which brings me to Cronenberg penultimate film A History of Violence, the Straw Dogs of the 2000s. It is the story of Tom Stall, his wife Edie and their two children. Tom is a good-hearted impostor with organized crime roots. After his family finds out his true identity they initially reject him. He is finally accepted in a superb silent scene which is a celebration of the nuclear family; but not until after an emotionally charged fight between Tom and Edie followed by rough sex on the stairs. Notice the absence of adherence to the Antioch Ruling.

However, as Hustvedt points out at the beginning of her essay, an Antioch world can be full of erotic possibilities.

Imagine asking a female love interest “May I touch your left breast?”; patiently and eagerly waiting for the answer.

Dutch director Warmerdam’s cult film Little Tony predates Hustdvedt’s sentiments by 8 years. In this tragicomedy the erotic possibilities of explicitness in sexual encounters is illustrated by a key scene in which Brand, the protagonist illiterate farmer asks Lena, the school teacher who has been hired by Brand’s wife, “May I see your left breast?“. After a putative “Why?” by Lena, Brand answers: “So I can remain curious about the right one.”

History of Violence flotsam: Steven Shaviro gives a roundup of cinerati such as k-punk, girish twice, Chuck, Jodi — followed by k-punk’s reply and Jodi’s counter-reply — Jonathan Rosenbaum and his own view here.

Carnography #4

No particular narrative …

Antoine-Augustin Préault‘s La Tuerie (The Killing) (1834) is a relief sculpture first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1834. Its thematic violence and stylistic daring shocked conventional taste at the Salon, one of whose visitors characterized the work as an “incredible farrago of every horror, wretchedness, misery, extravagance, monstrosity.” Tuerie was supposedly admitted to the Salon of 1834 at the insistence of the academician Jean-Pierre Cortot. Since no particular narrative was associated with the work, it was perceived by contemporaries as gratuitous carnography.

See previous carnographies

WYWWYWI

Diario di un vizio (1993)

Fiction is consumed by the hours or days. People cocoon entire weekends to watch six seasons of Sex and the City. With an average length of 22 minutes per episode and a total of 94 episodes this comes to about 34 hours for the whole series. Talk about killing time.

I ask of the current media outlets to publish box sets of anthologies or series I want to watch. On demand. WYWWYWI, which is analogous to WYSIWYG, and stands for “What You Want, When You Want It.”

In my current mood, I’d like to order the box set of the complete oeuvre of Marco Ferreri. I’ve only seen two of his films: La Grande Bouffe and Tales of Ordinary Madness. I sadly missed a retrospective [1] of his work last December in London. Marco Ferreri has made about 27 films, with an average running time of 90 minutes each this gives a total viewing time of 40 hours. Slightly higher than the total time of Sex and the City. But a lot more satisfying.

About the photograph at the top of this post. It’s a screen cap from the 1993 Ferreri film Diario di un vizio starring Sabrina Ferilli. The nude female/dressed male motif is explored in it.

Mediaeval popular culture

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFBWMjodkFo]

The Canterbury Tales by Pier Paolo Pasolini

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRm3jtRhrNU ]

The Decameron by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Between Edie, The Science of Sleep and The Velvet Underground

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTpIUTLjv_I]

In our six degrees network this song occupies the interstice between Edie, The Science of Sleep and The Velvet Underground. I watched Sleep and A Scanner Darkly within the space of a couple of days and in a comparison, Sleep was fantastic and Scanner bland. Am I the only one or did Scanner feel like an update of Soylent Green?

Necrotourism

A 2004 photograph of the grave of Walter Benjamin at Portbou, Spain, photo taken by Klaus Liffers, sourced here.

Little Caesar 7

Dennis Cooper says:

“I think most of you know I used to edit a literary/ art/ music zine back in the late 70s and early 80s called Little Caesar. Issue #7 was a kind of unofficial Andy Warhol themed issue. I got Warhol superstar Gerard Malanga to give me a little interview he’d done with Warhol in the 60s and write something about Nico. Lou Reed gave me a long poem he’d written. Taylor Mead gave a long piece of writing. I did a special section on my all time favorite Warhol superstar Eric Emerson, who’d died not long before I put the issue together. The section on him included pix, writings, excerpts from his diary, and a transcript of his amazing scene in ‘Chelsea Girls‘ Below I’ve posted scans of select pages from the issue. This will be the first of a series of posts concentrating on various Little Caesar products.” Dennis Cooper in 30 pages of Little Caesar # 7

He was always tinkering

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbo1uOuxG8&e]

Via >dmtls Merzbau

Active since April 2007, DMTLS is my kind of blog. His tags (upon tagging considered a fine art) tell much of the story:

20th century composer art avant-garde bizarre book cinema culture erotic-grotesque erotic art experimental fetish fluxus gothic grotesque Hermann Nitsch horror industrial jazz John Zorn John Zorn related modern classical music musick neofolk noise NYC photography surrealism video Vienna Aktionists

Already linked at another Jahsonic favourite Esotika Erotica Psychotica, >dmtls Merzbau is off for an promising start.

Headpress Guide to the Counter Culture

Headpress Guide to the Counter Culture : A Sourcebook for Modern Readers (2004) – Temple Drake, David Kerekes [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Subject matter will appeal to a broad cross section of interests, and includes cult film, outsider music, graphic art, photography, adult comics, fiction, eroticism, crime and the occult.

This is a collection of zine and book reviews that previously appeared in the Headpress zine during the nineties. Most of the material was familiar to me. Some pleasant surprises were Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Google gallery, and this, his work is similar to fellow American Charles Burns), mentions of Colin Wilson, a portrait of the work of Roy Stuart, (Google gallery who put narrativity back into erotic photography by making use of vignettes).

Most of the books/mags reviewed are from the nineties and early 2000s.

I am very much intrigued by this:

Bechamp or Pasteur: A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology (1997) – Douglas E. Hume
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

This book claims that virtually every serious and minor ailment known to humanity has been linked to vaccine damage, and there’s an “unaccountable” connection between the AIDS epidemic in Central Africa and the massive vaccination campaigns that occured there. — Mikita Brottman via Headpress Guide to the Counter Culture (2004). See also anti-vaccination.

And thankful for turning me on to this:

The Art of the Nasty (1999) – Nigel Wingrove, Marc Morris
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] […]

Conclusion: I liked the non-fiction reviews the best. In that field, Adam Parfrey (Apocalypse Culture) is somewhat a central figure.

If you like Headpress you may also enjoy Dalkey Archive Press – Atlas Press – Jörg Schröder – John Calder – Sylvia Beach – Creation Books – Edmund Curll – Lawrence Ferlinghetti – Maurice Girodias – Glittering Images – Grove Press – Eric Losfeld – Headpress – New Directions – Obelisk Press – Olympia Press – Jean-Jacques Pauvert – RE/Search publications (V.Vale and A. Juno) – Barney Rosset – Taschen and Semiotext(e).

Headpress elsewhere: at giallo fever.