Today's Topics:
The history of shock art
SubGenius Digest #370
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Message-ID: <9002032255.AA08675@schubert.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 90 17:55:00 EST
From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: The history of shock art
This is a companion piece to the previous to the previous article.
This guy sounds like some kind of latent SubG trying desperately to be
Pink. Yuk.
>From the Boston Globe Living|Arts section, November 1, 1989:
When shock art goes too far
Fear and loathing in the audience
By Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff
Back in 1972, Alice Cooper hacked up plastic baby dolls filled with
fake blood during the song "Dead Babies" and later was guillotined
during "Killer." A roadie proudly held up Cooper's bloody "head" for
all to see: The Killer had paid for his crimes. During Cooper's last
tour in 1987 his centerpiece was "Chop, Chop, Chop"/"Gail," about a
maniac who tracks women named Gail. He hacked up the baby dolls
again, "decpaitated" a woman and sent the fake blood spurting a good
20 feet into the front rows. He was hanged this time.
"We've upped the ante," Cooper chortled to the Globe at the time.
"And the pressure of the valves. I'm becoming the Stephen King of
rock 'n' roll, which is not a bad place to be."
Welcome to the world of shock art, and the mind of one of its most
noted progenitors. But, of course, shock art didn't begin - and
certainly doesn't end - with either Alice Cooper or rock 'n' roll.
Generally, shock art - which aims to disturb, provoke and entertain -
is traced back to the late 18th-centory French cabaret Theatre du
Grand Guignol, which specialized in short plays of violence, murder
and rape. [I'm sure the Yetis enjoyed shocks for loosening up the
left/right brain connections. And the middle ages certainly didn't
lack for violence presented as public entertainment.] According to
the Oxford Book of Theatre, the Grand Guignol came to London in a
modified form around 1908, and has since come to signify art aiming
for macabre and gruesome effect.
Its popularity with both undergrounbd and mainstream audinces relates
to our desire to glimpse the taboo, to experience a forbidden thrill.
It asks the question: How much is too much? How far can too far go?
In the case of Hoe Coleman, whose literally explosive performance at
the Boston Film/Video Foundation Sunday sparked the current
controversy, "too far" is the operative term. As the fireworks
exploded from Coleman's chest, the danger felt real, palpable. The
noise was deafening; embers flew into the crowd; smoke filled the
room. If Coleman set out to terrify, he hit the bull's-eye.
Shock art appears primarily in film and fock 'n' roll, but also in the
world of dance and performance art. In the later, the grisly can
take on a very visceral tone. The most gutwrenching modern examples
of shock art are included in the 1987 film "Mondo New York" (available
on video), a collection of confrontational live performances that
feature sado-masochism and violence. Also in that film is a tam- [See
HISTORY, Page 78]
====================
When fireworks exploded from Joe Coleman's chest Sunday, the fear in
the audience was palpable. Now there are other fears - including the
possibility of criminal charges against Coleman, and concern that the
respected arts organization that rented him the space might encounter
controversy over its public funding.
====================
[History continued from Page 75] er version of the mice-biting and
explosives act of Coleman.
The cinematic world began to rev its engines in the early '60s.
Introducing "The Psychotronic History of Film," a book about offbeat
and violent movies, Michael Weldon wrote, "Critics searching for art
comdemn most of these reatures for the very reason that millions
continue to enjoy them: violence, sex, noise and often mindless
escapism."
Herschell Gordon Lewis set the stage in 1963 with "The Blood Feast,"
of which Wendon writes, "This is it! The infamous first gore form.
... A tongue, brains, and a leg are removed in disgusting and
convincing full-color detail." Lewis turned out a slew of
similar-minded films, paving the way for the early wave of horror,
best exemplified by Wes Craven's terrifying "Last House on the Left"
and "The Hills of Eyes," and the genre masterwork, Tobe Hooper's 19074
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre." A deluge of lesser-quality so-called
splatter films followed, such as the "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th"
series.
Rock 'n' roll, the traditional outlet for frustrated youth, has, in
one form or another, operated outside the mainstream since its
inception. At one time Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Jerry Lee
Lewis were shockeing. But as they and their descendants became more
accepted, those who wanted to keep the shock quotient were moved to
greater extremities - the Rolling Stones posing in drag, Screaming
Lord Sutch being carried on stage in a coffin, Frank Zappa singing
tales of exploits with groupies.
Rock 'n' roll shock art hit the mainstream with Cooper in the early
'70s, and thrived along the fringes with Iggy and the Stooges. Both
Iggy Pop, whose act included cutting his chest with broken glass and
smearing peanut butter on his chest, and Cooper, whose act included
more theatrical blood-letting, were inspired by the Doors' Jim
Morrison, infamous for exposing himself during a Florida concert.
The heat was turned up a notch when the punk rock revolution began to
take shape in 1976. The new York-based Plasmatics, fronted by nearly
nude ex-porn star Wendy O. Williams, wreaked havoc with chain-saw
music, chainsaw props, violence and sexual explicitness. John Cale
bit the head off a chicken during one show. The Sex Pistols' Sid
Vicious sliced up his chest on their US tour; Johnny Rotten blew his
nose all over the stage. Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel forced stomach
turning by simply choosing its name. Singer-performance artist Lydia
Lunch, girlfriend of Foetus' Jim Thirlwell, has unveiled multiple
tales of rape and degradation on stage, the intent being to hold up a
mirror to what she perceives as the ugliness all around us.
Although Ozzy Osbourne is well known for biting into a bat on stage -
it was a mistake, he thought it was rubber - heavy metal's version of
shock rock tends to be more theatrical and outsized: Hence, the
dramatic, semicomic fake bloodletting of acts such as Cooper, KISS,
King Diamond and GWAR, the latter of whom was at the Channel last
Saturday. In metal, you'll find allusions to Satanism, general mayhem
and inverted morality tales. The idea is to provide an outlet for the
unspeakable, an escapist, cathartic fantasy.
The world of dance has its shock troopers, too, most notably Japan's
postwar Butoh school. The members of Sankai Juku, a troupe perhaps
best recalled for the death plunge of one [of] its members in 1985,
used to dangle terrifyingly from skyscrapers. Another Japanese
artist, Saburo Teshigawara, has danced upon a bed of broken glass. In
the photogrtaphic world, the late Robert Mapplethorpe has become the
shock celebre for his controversial, often homoerotic, work, one
example of which depicts an man urinating into another's mouth.
It's in the performing-arts field, though, that the going gets most
gritty. The Kipper Kids, known for showering themselves and others
with debris, have pelted audiences with eggs, paints and ink; Harry
Kipper gleefully relates in "Re-Search No. 11: Pranks!," "There was
horror, litertal panic, people were tripping over each other trying to
get out of the room."
Chris Burden, whose exhibits were at the Institute of Contemporary Art
recently, once was crucified atop a VW [pretty wimpy for a cricifixion
-- he's still alive], among other self-destructive experiences. Karen
Finley has crammed yams into her rectum on stage [what's strange about
that?]; Boston-based painter and performance artist Alex Grey once
painted "Necrophilia," [details?] and performed an act that included
skeletons and chicken corpses - proving, wrote the Globe's Christine
Temin, that "even in this jaded age, art can still startle and even
shock."
Which is, it would seem, the bottom line of shock art: to keep pushing
the extreme, redefining limits, redefing revulsion. The antics of
Cooper are relatively harmless fare, comic-book escapes; the tales of
Finley and Lunch are disgusting, but gripping. The explosions of
Coleman bring shock art into a whole different realm - where the
danger is in your face.
Globe dance critic Christine Temin contributed to this article.
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Message-ID: <9002040612.AA02070@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 90 01:13:15 EST
From: Michael Turyn <mturyn@psyche.mit.edu>
To: SubGenius%MC.LCS.MIT.EDU@MINTAKA.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: SubGenius Digest #370
Well, _Three-Fisted Tales of ``Bob''_ is out. They 're pretty good,
mostly in--jokes and snipes between Hiestarchy ``people'' from ``the''
SubGenius Foundation.
On another note: anyone seen B. Black 's _Get Smart_ yet?
``Bob'' got my job to quit me yesterday, and I got to see a Con Dupe
smiling to himself, packing up a SparcStation.....
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End of SubGenius Digest
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