Three Studies for a Crucifixion (2007)

INJURY (2006)

A video work in three parts.




1:1

In spite of everything I was smiling when I was little. I can tell from photos. But inside I felt bad . It’s like I had two personalities. On the outside I was a good little boy, steady, good at school . Inside, I felt different from the others. I was apprehensive.

1:2

I was often in tears because of the fights at home. My mother used to say that boys don’t cry. To punish me she would stand me in front of the mirror, while she humiliated me in front of my brothers and sisters, she would say: “Look at that cry baby, see how you look! You’re not even a man, you’re nothing but a scared cat…” There was no tenderness or love in our house. Not for me anyway. My mother was sounding off all the time. I never could do anything right as far as she was concerned.

1:3

One day we had visitors at home, I had to sleep on the sofa in the living-room and let someone else have my bed. That’s when it all began. I was sleeping on my stomach, in my underwear. Half asleep, I felt someone come up behind me, pull down my shorts, and penetrate my rectum. I was so afraid that i didn’t dare to turn over. I could hear his heavy breathing, feel his breath, but I couldn’t see him. I believe it was my father because I knew how he smelled, how big he was. I had no idea what to do, what to say. I hurt all over. I was bleeding from the rectum. The next day I stayed in bed, I couldn’t stop bawling. For a long time after that, whenever I got nervous, I would mess in my pants. Maybe it was a physical problem because of the dilated rectum, perhaps it was psychological. I don’t know, but I had the problem for years.

1:4

What my brothers asked me to do was disgusting. I don’t know where on earth they got such ideas. One of them urinated in my face. Another time he shat on me. He was laughing, he found it amusing. I was crying and I ran away from them. A bit later my oldest sister asked me to have sex with her. She was laughing at me because I still didn’t have erections. She said I had a small penis. It felt ill at ease. I find it hard being humiliated.

1:5

For a few years, I admit, I didn’t question what was going on, but when I was about twelve or thirteen I often thought about what was happening and wondered about it. I compared myself to others and realised I wasn’t normal. When I might have wanted to talk about it, I figured that nobody else talks about anything, so why should I?

1:6

Around the age of eleven, I started hitch-hiking on the big highway. I was looking for attention, for affection. Anybody would do. Sometimes cars would stop and pick me up. I didn’t dare to say no when they asked me to fellate them. First, they would touch me, checking me out to see how I would react. When they could see that I appeared to be okay with the idea, that I wouldn’t make a fuss, they would pull over and stop further on. They would do what had to be done in the woods or in a field.

1:7

I don’t want to be with anyone, man or woman, who would want sex with me, when someone seems to be interested in me, I imagine it’s just for sex. I would like to meet someone, but I can’t get away from the idea of abuse, the fear of sexuality. I am not used to receiving pleasurable caresses. I fell bad when someone touches me. A person who touches me disgusts me. And sperm, even my own, I find disgusting. I don’t like kissing on the mouth either.



2:1

I don’t like my body. Maybe it’s because I haven’t appreciated the sexual relationships I’ve had. I’d like to have a different body, a complete makeover so I can say I’m starting my life over from zero.

2:2

I would have liked to have a girl interested in me, but I didn’t attract girls. I must admit I wasn’t comfortable too with myself. I was full of complexes, fears, and sensitivities. My brothers were making fun of me because I still wasn’t ejaculating at the age of eleven. I was wondering how to go about getting involved with girls.

2:3

Men, they’re always ready for sex, and afterwards it’s like “Don’t know him, never seen him”. If I went about it the same way with a girl as I do with men, she’d think I was a sex maniac. My favourite trick is to wait in the park or in a public toilet until a man comes in. Then, if he hangs around, it he’s looking at me… there are lots of ways to tell if he’s interested… and since I’m quite good looking…

2:4

What excites me is a sense of danger. I get a thrill out of it. Actually, men probably excite me less than the context in which things are happening. Getting it on with a guy, undisturbed, in a bedroom, with a little background music playing, that’s okay for homosexuals. But that doesn’t interest me. What I want is the risk, the fear of being found out, being surprised.

2:5

I like to masturbate. Like to play the exhibitionist, too. I’ve done that since I was a teenager, I’ve been arrested by the police for it. It always happens in a special context. When I’m drunk, on drugs, something inside me wakes up. I stand outside a house, in the garden, in front of peoples windows and show myself off. Then I masturbate, sometimes even ejaculate in front of them. It’s always women, just women. In the beginning I used to leave the windows and curtains open at home and parade about in the nude. I liked the turn-on. Then i went out to do it. I found that even more exciting.

2:6

I put on a tough front. People think I’m hard but I’m just acting a role, like in a drama. I identify to great extent with Jim Morrison of the Doors. I would love to write music and write like him. The essential is that I will have to be myself. But it’s though I no longer have an identity, that I’ll have to glue on one, so to speak. I do have a made-up identity, but it’s only a role I play.

2:7

Ideally, I would like to find myself on my own in a place where everything is beautiful and pure, where everything that happens is agreed upon. There at least I could be with someone without risk. I am bisexual, perhaps, but I don’t want sex.




3:1

A homosexual picked me up and took me in. After a few days, he asked me to have sex with him. I didn’t say no. Having sex had become a habit for me. I no longer even asked myself if I preferred males or females. I don’t consider myself a homosexual: in my fantasy life I prefer women and children.

3:2

I must admit I’ve had fantasies about younger boys also. At a certain point I had a dream: I was abusing a young fellow the way I was abused. That’s really not my thing. I reacted badly. It was as though I’d been hit on the head with a sledgehammer. I thought of killing myself. I cut my veins. But I stopped in time. This went on for about eight or nine months. I said to myself: If I’m capable of doing it in a dream I could do it awake. But I don’t want to be involved with young boys. I’m in therapy for that. I try not to think of the past. It’s like putting on a suit of armour. I’ve had other similar dreams recently, with girls in the dreams too. I wake up and feel excited. But now, instead of panicking, I try to make connections. I ask myself what happened the day before to make me think of that. I keep a journal to help me understand, to make connections between it all.

3:3

When I had homosexual fantasies I couldn’t control, I had the idea of hiring a male prostitute. At night, I would cruise the streets where they hang out. A prostitute was abetter solution, less distressing for me. The prostitute was okay with it and after, for me it was out of sight, out of mind. I wasn’t accountable to anybody.

3:4

To me they’re all sluts, like my mother. When I make love, you know, I’m a very gentle fellow. With certain women some vengeance will surface, but not with all. Most of the women I made love with were not aware of what was going on inside me.

3:5

As an adolescent, began to cut me myself, to carve into my arm because I was mad at myself. I wasn’t unable to express my violence except against myself. I had other problems. I had begun to masturbate more or less anywhere, openly, in the classroom, on the bus. It was like an experiment for me. I was putting objects into my rectum too. That way, I wasn’t hurting anyone else. I find it difficult to accept my sexuality.

3:6

The first time a masturbated on a child was when I was babysitting the daughter of one of my brothers. She must have been about two or three. I took off her diaper and rubbed my penis against her private parts. I didn’t want to penetrate her, just to feel her next to me. I did it again a few more times before I began to be afraid of what I might do. I stopped. I realised I wasn’t normal. To put it out of my mind I used to drink. I was taking pills, taking drugs. Perhaps it was the softness of the baby that attracted me to her. Still today, with women, I never feel completely satisfied sexually. It is children who excite me the most, although I don’t want to touch them, anymore.

3:7

I have violent thoughts about buying weapons and getting some revenge. I know there’s something missing, something dead inside me that I’ll never get back. I rail against this. But you know, when I was little, I was a romantic… wrote poetry for my friends’ girlfriends. I would have turned out quite different if these things hadn’t happened to me.

Sensation is Everything (2004)

A white sheet lies on the floor (6 x 3m). Three circles have been drawn at the sheets’ respective short ends; they have all been marked with a number 1 to 6. Besides every circle lies 2 raw eggs and a container (1/2 litres) filled with blood. A large circle has been drawn on the middle of the sheet.

Part: 1 (M)

The music starts (volume 1). After approximately 5 minutes the Actor is led into the room; his hands are tied together with nylon rope. The Actor kneels in front of circle 1; he breaks an egg and pours the content into his mouth; picks up the container and pours blood into his mouth. The Fellow Actors give a sign; they start to drag the Actor from circle 1 towards circle 6; the Actor slowly releases the blood from his mouth - making a straight blood line on the sheet; every time the Actor is dragged into a new circle the Fellow Actors give a sign; the Actor kneels in front of it; picks up an egg; pours the yolk into his mouth; picks up the container and pours blood into his mouth. When the Actor reaches circle 6 (music; volume: 2) the same ritual proceeds until the Actor has been dragged back to circle 1 again. The Fellow Actors drags the Actor diagonally over the sheet to circle 6 (the Actor still spilling blood from his mouth) and from there diagonally into the circle in the middle of the sheet.

Part: 2 (S)

The Actor lies still for two minutes. The Fellow Actors give a sign; they approach the Actor in the middle of the sheet; empties two buckets of pig intestines over the Actor. (music; volume: 3). The Actor lies still for two minutes. The Fellow Actors give a sign. (music; volume: 4). The actor rises to his knees inside the mid circle; attacks the intestines, ripping them into shreds during a five minute period. (music; volume: 1). The Actor kneels inside the mid circle; stares at the sheet in front of him.

Silence.

Stop.

Anthology:

Gilles Deleuze - The Logic of Sensation: sensation acts immediately upon the nervous system, which is of the flesh, whereas abstract form is addressed to the head, and acts through intermediary of the brain, which is closer to the bone… As a spectator, I experience the sensation only by entering the painting, by reaching the unity of the sensing and the sensed. Colour is in the body, sensation is in the body, not in the air. Sensation is what is painted. That which is painted on the canvas is the body, not in inasmuch as something represented as an object, rather as the subject of that particular sensation.

Francis Bacon quoted in an interview with Peter Beard: If you see someone lying on the pavement in the sunlight, with the blood streaming from him, that is in itself – the colour of the blood against the pavement – very invigorating… exhilarating… In all the motor accidents I’ve seen, people strewn across the road, the first thing you think of is the strange beauty – the vision of it, before you try to do anything. It’s to do with the unusualness of it. I once saw a bad car accident on a large road, and the bodies were strewn about with broken glass from the car, and the blood and various possessions, and it was in fact very beautiful. I think the beauty in it is terribly elusive, but it just happened to be in the disposition of the bodies, the way they lay and the blood, and perhaps it was also because it was not a thing one was used to seeing… It was midday, when the sun was very strong and on a white road.

Georges Bataille – Madame Edwarda: In order to reach the limits of ecstasy in which we lose ourselves in bliss we must always set an immediate boundary to it: horror. Not only can pain, my own or that of other people, carry me nearer to the moment when horror will seize hold of me and bring me to a state of bordering on delirium, but there is no kind of repugnance whose affinity with desire I do not discern. Horror is sometimes confused with fascination, but if it cannot suppress and destroy the element of fascination it will reinforce it. Danger has a paralyzing effect, but if it is a mild danger it can excite desire. We can only reach a state of ecstasy when we are conscious of death or annihilation, even if remotely.

Sigmund Freud - Basic Writing: Sadism and masochism occupy a special place in the perversions, for the contrast of activity and passivity lying at their bases belongs to the common traits of the sexual life.

That cruelty and the sexual instinct are most intimately connected is beyond doubt taught by the history of civilization, but in the explanation of this connection no one has gone beyond the accentuation of the aggressive factors of the libido. The aggression which is mixed with the sexual instinct is, according to some authors, a remnant of cannibalistic lust – that is, a participation of the domination apparatus….

The most striking peculiarity of this perversion lies in the fact that its active and passive forms are regularly encountered together in the same person. He who experiences pleasure by causing pain to others in sexual relations is also capable of experiencing pain in sexual relations as pleasure. A sadist is simultaneously a masochist, though either the active or the passive side of the perversion may be more strongly developed in him and thus, represent his preponderant sexual activity.

Study for a Theatre of Cruelty

MARTIN BLADH.
STUDY FOR A THEATER OF CRUELTY
$10.00
This is the long-delayed and anticipated solo release by the genius frontman of Swedish industrial legends IRM.
Aktionist, provocateur, visionary: Martin Bladh has composed an eerie score for impossible performance art, incorporating sparse, stringed drones and chilling atmospheres similar to Bladh's work with performance artist Bo I. Cavefors. Standard edition jewel case cd release, does not include tshirt or special edition packaging.
Limited to 300.

MARTIN BLADH.
STUDY FOR A THEATER OF CRUELTY CD/TSHIRT
$20
This long-delayed and anticipated solo release by the genius frontman of Swedish industrial legends IRM.
Aktionist, provocateur, visionary: Martin Bladh has composed an eerie score for impossible performance art, incorporating sparse, stringed drones and chilling atmospheres similar to Bladh's work with performance artist Bo I. Cavefors. Jewel case cd release housed in a large vinyl album. Shirt is limited to 36 copies, cd is not.
Audio preview coming soon.

Email APEXORDERS@aex.org for purchase information.

Deadringer 2; after Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Crucifixion (mid panel 2006)

Music: drone; Study for a Theatre of Cruelty (playing for 30 minutes before the action starts)

Wall projection: Francis Bacon; Three Studies for a Crucifixion (mid panel)

A spotlight lights up the bed on the middle of the stage. The bed is made with white sheets, pillows and blankets. Rows of foot lights have been fetched to the bedsteads (the light goes on as soon as the spotlight has been lit). (Association: a theatre stage (a stage on the stage), peep show, blood red curtains, an altar of sacrifice).

In front of the bed stands a table covered in black cloth. On the table stand/lie:

1 metal bowl containing 1 animal heart,

3 glass framed photographs of the Actor as a real young boy,

1 ponytail of the Actor’s hair,

1 hammer,

1 pair of scissors,

1 bottle of talcum powder,

1 bottle of light fluid,

1 box of matches,

1 white rag,

bandages.

Behind the bed on a round column stand/lie:

10 containers containing blood (5 litres; every container contains ½ litres; association: the human body contains about five litres of blood, doppelganger),

5 eggs,

1 white plastic tube with 1 funnel.

The Actor and the Fellow Actor enter the stage. The Actor wears a pair of old white underpants, naked otherwise. The Fellow Actor wears a white protection overall, a pair of white plastic gloves and a green protection mask covers his mouth (association: antiseptic, doctor/executioner, post-mortem dissector, cleaner – picking bodies; forensic detective). The Actor sits down on the edge of the bed spreads his arms like crucified. The Fellow Actor takes the bottle of talcum powder from the table and approaches the Actor on the bed. The Fellow Actor rubs the powder on the Actor’s chest. The Fellow Actor walks over to the table picks up the heart and some bandages and approaches the Actor on the bed; he places the heart on the Actor’s chest (over the Actor’s heart) and fetches it with bandages. The Actor lies down on the bed; places his right hand on the heart and his left arm over his head (imitating the Bacon painting). The Fellow Actor picks up the plastic tube and puts it into the Actor’s mouth; he climbs up onto the column behind the bed and starts pouring blood into the funnel; the blood runs though the plastic tube into the Actor’s mouth; the Actor slowly releases the blood from his mouth, it pours out into the bed. After 1 litre has been poured through the tube into the Actors mouth the fellow Actor picks up an egg and climbs down from the column; he breaks the egg over the Actor and lets the content pour into his mouth; the Actor releases the egg yolk from his mouth; it pours out into the bed; the Fellow Actor rinses the actor’s mouth with bandages; puts the tube back into his mouth and climbs unto the column. The same ritual proceeds until no blood and eggs are left. (With each blood container the Actor’s behaviour becomes more and more dramatic; from just letting the blood pour from his mouth into the bed to violent spewing and vomiting; he also starts clawing at the heart with his right hand). The Fellow Actor walks over to the table, picks up the scissors and the white rag, approaches the bed and cuts the bandages holding the heart to the Actor’s chest and covers his head with the rag. The Actor pisses his pants. The spotlight goes out. The Fellow Actor picks up the heart and walks over to the table; he rinses the heart with lightning fluid; wraps it in bandages and places it in the metal bowl. He picks up the hammer and smashes the first of the three framed photographs; picks out the photograph from the broken frame, cuts it into pieces with the scissors and presses the pieces into the animal heart. The same ritual proceeds until all the photographs have been cut up and pressed inside the heart. The Fellow Actor picks up the pony tail; cuts it into pieces over the heart in the metal bowl; pours lightning fluid over the hair/heart and lights it (intensive smell).The Fellow Actor steps back; watches the fire until it is extinct.

Lights out.

The music stops.

Anthology:

Thomas De Quincey - The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey , vol 11: …any of us would be jealous of his own duplicate: and, if I had a doppelganger who went about personating me, copying me, and pirating me, philosopher as I am I might be so far carried away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his carcase: and no great matter as regards HIM. But it would be a sad thing for me to find myself hanged: and for what, I beseech you? For murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often.

Fray Diego Durán – Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar: After dawn all those who were to be sacrificed were dressed in the garb and habit of the main gods and according to seniority they were placed in a row next to the great fire … Then came five other ministers and one called Tlehua. (This possessor of fire) swept carefully around the glowing coals. When he had finished sweeping, they took the ‘gods’ one by one, alive as they were, and cast them into the fire. Half-roasted, before they were dead, (these victims) were pulled out and sacrificed, their chests opened.

Francis Bacon – The Brutality of Facts¸ Interviews with David Sylvester: I’ve always been very moved by pictures about slaughter houses and meat, and to me they belong very much to the whole thing of the crucifixion. There’ve been extraordinary photographs which have been done of animals just being taken up before they were slaughtered; and the smell of death. We don’t know, of course, but it appears by these photographs that they’re so aware of what going to happen to them, they do everything to attempt to escape. I think that these pictures were very much based on that kind of thing, which to me is very, very near this whole thing of the crucifixion.

John George Haigh quoted in Brian King’s – Lustmord; The Writings and Artefacts of Murderers: The first dream I vividly recall was experienced when I was in the choir at Wakefield Cathedral. At nights after I had got into bed and closed my eyes I would see again the tortured Christ on the cross. Perhaps that day I had sat in the stillness of the great nave of the church, and had contemplated the High Altar. Now in my sleep the vision would return, and I would see either the head or the whole body of Christ with blood pouring from the wounds. I was startled and horrified and dared not disclose what I had seen….

Once acquired, the taste (for blood) obsessed me, and the recollection of it, with certain intervals, pursued me down the years…

But none of these experiences crystallised into a frantic uncontrollable urge until after a motor accident Three Bridges, Sussex, during Easter of 1944.

My car collided with a lorry, and turned over…. Blood poured from my head down my face and into my mouth. This revived in me the taste, and that night I experience another awful dream.

I saw before me a forest of crucifixes, which gradually turned into trees. At first there appeared to be dew, or rain, dripping from the branches, but as I approached I realised it was blood.

Suddenly the whole forest began to writhe and the trees, stark and erect, to ooze blood…. A man went to each tree catching the blood…. When the cup was full he approached me…. “Drink,” he said, but I was unable to move. The dream faded….

Always there was a consciousness of the ebbing away of the life force, and the urge to follow the man holding out the cup; the inability to reach it, and the feeling of frustration; the waking up to a state of semi-coma with a feeling of frustration still palpable; the hand still before me, and the urge to satisfy the appetite for the life force in my mind.

Henry Darger - In the Realms of the Unreal: the boy was then carried before Jennie and the Glandelinians made her plunge the knife into his body. She was helpless and the man was holding the dagger with his own hands. “The boy’s abdomen was gashed open, and taking out the heart the cruel Glandelinian with a cruel laugh threw it in my face, and then slicing it up forced it bit by bit down my throat nearly choking me … These Glandelinians were human cannibals … Oh how I looked tward heaven begging God to let me vomit up the fragments of the hearts. The rest of the poor little boys were strangled and fairly hewn to pieces before our very eyes, their bodies being torn opened their very insides pulled out. They forced sliced fragments down the throats of my sisters who were fairly strangled almost to death. But God overheard our prayers and we vomited to the anger of the Glandelinians who saw us…I swooned."

Lisa Cross quoted in Marilee Strong’s A Bright Red Scream – Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain: Vomiting leads to remorseless hunger … Overuse of laxatives leads to intransigent constipation and laxative addiction. Weight loss leads to an escalating compulsion to lose even more weight. Self-cutting is never as satisfying as emotional catharsis and leads to a strong temptation to cut more frequently or to find other modes of bodily communication. What began as an attempt to resolve the paradox of a body that feels alien to the self now falls into deeper paradox. In a truly vicious cycle, body and self constantly shift roles between victim and victimizer, slave and master.