The breath of the dead bones has a center and this center is the abyss Kah-Kah, Kah the corporeal breath of shit, which is the opium of eternal afterlife.

Antonin Artaud, Ouevres completes d'Antonin Artaud



Postmodernism opens with a sense of irrevocable loss and incurable fault. This wound is inflicted by the overwhelming awareness of death...

Mark C. Taylor, Erring



The dreamer's association to the dream in analysis brought out the remarkable fact that the sight of the dissected body reminded him of his meal of the evening before, and especially of a meat dish he had eaten.

Karl Abraham, "A Short History of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders"

The Dissecting Room

With ironic detachment, a double agent, in the presence of witnesses, guts the shared id of hir hostage spilling desire onto the stainless steel tabletop of high technology, hoping, like the others, to discover the daimonic among the unbounded ent rails and their own reflections.

Above it all, tracking the operation with robotic precision, an occult eye focuses and refocuses its gaze on the details of their self-mutilation; through a language of industry-standardized gestures--pans, tilts, zooms--the machinic eye miscreate s meaning and eorganizes the appetite of the morgue's monitors to better accomodate their collective denial of any intent to co-opt prime-time ennui, or to induce cannibalistic impulses in themselves and/or their audience. Always predisposed to feed on d isplaced nervous desires and daily production quotas, or, lacking all else, on the severed pieces of recurring dreams, what unfolds is the unthinkable announcing itself as business as usual.

Each newly recorded cut and incision begins another process of gruesome morphing from violated body part (synecdoche) into one or another of a number of multiple video personae that are always immediately busying themselves deciphering clues as to which of the many screen personalities they might be: the one fixated on blood and urine; or, some other--masterbating wildly while imagining a world without boundaries, a world of infinite love; or, perhaps, the one dancing, swirling in nightflowers, attempting to make sense of absurdity, to discover the power of femininity, etc., etc. , etc.

Without losing a beat, with the smoothness of a slow dissolve, naked eyes, naked cheeks--with just the suggestion of life--become tres chic. It's a celebration. Oceanic. Beautiful.

DEFINITION: 'Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes to lineaments the properties of objects described by their own virtuality.

Alfred Jarry

Just one more page heavy with mock "couture" energy? Another nod n the direction of fashion musts--OR--an embarrassing example of some DON'T that only next week will be all the craze, a definite "rage"? f nothing else--at the very least--here's l icense for a night of hoods, boots, lace, feathers and fantasies. Yes. New improved ways to weather bad weather; to capture beauty by force; to dare to dream of velocities that escape time.

DEFINITION: autopsy, n. pl -sies [Gk autopsia act of seeing with one's own eyes, fr. aut- + opsis sight, fr. opesthai, to be going to see] (1678) 1: POSTMORTEM EXAMINATION 2: a critical examination, evaluation, or assessment of a past event, institution, work, or personality autopsy vt

It has been said that modern architecture died of essentialism in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m. Later, toward the end of the next decade, it was reported to have taken on new form, as a haunting: a deep absence and feverish c old spot--felt, but never seen--lingering within a clearing created by extensive arrays of complex and miniaturized circuitry--the in-site of a new and expanding "nothingness"--an electronic field of cultural influences sprawling beyond the bounds of urba nization into dimensionless e-space. Here, not buildings, but whole worlds are under-constructed--cartoons of electronic universes.

These trans-other-worlds are detailed mindscapes conjured from a vast store of memories variously archived as virtual myths and updated by means of media-inspired, gibsonian hallucinations derived from databases of hitech salvations and techno-dys topian despair. Within e-space the cupids and gargoyles of (all?) past baroque maximalisms are being supplanted/reinvented/animated as fallen cyberangels hell- bent on liberating information into the digital flux of a throbbing syncopated beat: a late-capitalist, industrial-noise, grunge-rhythem dance-mix orgy of electronically syphoned sexual energies fashioned completely on the fly, in real-time, into ready-made identities that promiscuously fuck each other with a certain stylish nonchalance.

The "/" between Neither/Nor [CUT]

Body-or-not? Truth-or-not? Every death is always a disappearance. A reappearance would be/is...horrifying? Obscene? A nightmare? Farce?

The house/body, leaky as it may(be), is at least a place to reside/hide, seek shelter, find company, avoid the wierd, or, if not any of these, warp a personal style. They're out there and they're coming, and their numbers are growing. The more o f them there are, the more hungry they seem for flesh and blood and there's really no way to keep track of them without the aid of receiving devices: radio, or even better, T.V.

These are the emergency communication links to what's happening-- everywhere. The only means of knowing, of describing whatever ghoulish scene may be unfolding.

Eventually they'll break through. Push their way past every defense...it's a given...it's understood...it may even be desired...

Sometimes, maybe quite often, they're found among those who were once thought to be above suspicion. Maybe they're not only outside, but already inside.

A side effect of technology? Of experimentation? Of exploration?

The galleries open around 11:00 a.m. in order to accomodate thelate night lifestyle of the owners and to remind patrons that the establishment is no ordinary business. During openings there is usually an assaulting army of legs, ties, arms, cleav age, rolexes, perfumes, Armani suits and Amalfi shoes desperately seeking satisfaction through contact with whatever fruit and wine laden lazy susans are available--a kind of groping in the low life of mellow drama that's neither reminiscent of romance no r of decent fiction, and that later makes memorable out-takes from the evening seem like cuttings swept up from the floor of G. Romero's first edit room.

Good radiation (t.v coverage) and bad radiation (cosmic rays from the other side of Venus) constantly bombard these businesses and their communities causing them to be poised always on the brink of crisis.

Public Guardians, usually in cowboy hats, form the small, self- appointed investigative parties that, more often than not, last too long and never deliver anything but the most stale returns. For them, death, like style, is market driven. Living ...is considered to be a scarce commodity. Poverty, of course, is taken for granted. And, as usual, women work harder for less.

Which of the diverse appearances (of money?) is really and truly the in-itself and which is the home box office version? Which one is indispensable if your going to catch a thrill on your next ride? Which is an image makeover? A body in the thr oes of overcoming camouflaged rigor mortis in order to reinvent itself as capital?

Show hir a bright pink ticket, it's said, and s/he'll deconstruct hirself right in front of you. O.K., as you have probably already guessed, none of this bodes well for aging bodies--especially those that are now in the process of being ground into data and converted into statistical raw material for capitalist exploitation. On the other han d, to hir credit, Alice knows when she's been taken for a ride and will say so--most of the time.

Other people (not Alice), if you were to ask them, would say, yeah, art should have some sort of spiritual value, and like T.V., it should be about either sex, death or beauty. Animated objects fucking in a room wallpapered with penises and vagin as, they would say, is more or less pornographic and ties knots in formal logic, and speaks acerbically to the loss of integrity that presents itself in the quiet clusters of spaces that punctuate the contradictions of official reality.

And furthermore, near every ending, they would say, after the death of Superman, amid the lush, artificial foliage of a bright, cinematic space that often, but not all at once, darkens into the vivid neon splendor of a technicolor sunset, the dead inevitably converge again on the light drenched malls of Amerika. No insightful representations here. Only television dada performed publically by a microphoned, hip-hop dj doin' serious rap about the horrors of the cannibalism occurring everywhere as a result of expeditions into the beyond, however near at hand that always turns out to be.

With an attentive ear to the ground, it's clear there's a need for an urban techno-shamaness to do hir trance thing and afterward announce hir vision over late-night schlock radio so that the whole process can be understood by everyone involved as an opportunity to ask questions about many otherwise unspeakable matters--matters known to bring "whomever" very near the edge.

What kind of special relationship to reality, to the other, to the future is this all about?

One should ideally ask this question alone, in a fit of sudden rebelliousness, and then, having gathered one's courage, ask out loud whether or not to postpone or even indefinitely defer departure, or, willy-nilly, to accept that every tool of the imagination is a blade that's all cutting edge and no handle. Of course, be prepared to sacrifice any notion of a science of nature; what's relevant is really some variation on the child's game of "let's pretend", or, more simply, a science of humankind's ur-knowledge of nature, however uncertain, however undecideable.

What can it mean, then, to speak of the dead? What, who died? Who continues to ask this embarrassing stuff about identity, presence? Must one protect oneself against invasion by the other(s)? Be on guard? Play exhausting mind games?

If architecture is indistinguishable from a hanged man's erection, then who is it that keeps getting so excited about new opportunities to design yet another steel and glass yanker? Why another tomb to house decaying consciousnesses? It's all too clear, it would seem, to those in the know, that the dread-locked children at play in psychedelic fields of dreams who ask such questions are merely intent on sabotaging corporate productivity, and should, therefore, be subjected to t herapy and institutionalization for their own good, and the good of society, and especially for the good of their therapist's indebtedness. Afterall, what's useful about their agenda?

Sadly, all of these frauds (including the children) know that every "here and now" has, at least for a long while, no longer been truly here and now. And that's a fact. Let's face it. People buy Japanese cars because they're better, NOT because they're Japanese. To reinforce the point, let's underscore that it is almost always by utilizing distinctive imagery, evocative text and virtual results, that a content-rich experience is produced by artists for others who appreciate fine workmanship. T here can be discouraging exceptions, but just how would these be defined? By values offered to meet the market's needs? The implication, above all, is that lifestyles are now more volatile, subtle and varied, and are more than ever dependent on intangib les and nuances oriented toward consistency, dependability and safety; however, even those communities that are no longer included on funky home tours, or mentioned in believe-it-or-not fact lists, are equally at risk of being attacked by the growing num ber of walking corpses that mysteriously resume life and seem intent on ingesting anyone who happens onto their path.

Neither authorities nor the viewing public can tell the good guys from the monsters anymore, and so heroes and anti-heroes alike keep getting shot between the eyes, their bodies thrown onto pyres along with those of the twice dead. The flames, wi th out regard to race, religion or national origin, hellishly consume good and evil alike, again and again...until the tape breaks...or...all our heads get clogged and dirty.

The Stage : The Body [DISSOLVE]

The body, during any stage (of development), is ultimately a foodstuff. Consumers are consumable. The dead, reawakened by the energies of bad cosmic rays, instinctively avoid the half-eaten, and prey on the intact living. Remains = WASTE. Ever ything is poison. Nothing is poison. Zombification occurs primarily because zombies are believed into existence through the invention of theoretical machines. These same machines are the source of all advertising foofaraw, and give rise to the analyses t hat produce authorities and experts that are the excremental byproducts of lust and their own avarice.

The inventors of these machines, the Machinators, are recognizable because their bodies are obscured by protective garb, and because they wear cotton nose plugs; they are those who have "died from rage", but have returned from the grave (after fir st eating a snake and tuga toad that were ceremoniously buried with them in a jar); immediately following their burial and resurrection, they cleverly grind dangerous words and handfuls of analogies into unutterable webs of belief. These, in effect, make them authorities--sources of ad hominem arguments that are then liberally quoted in support of ever new machineries.

The abject horror of their word salad is that it is obligatory and coersive; there are no accidents in language, and no event has a life of its own. Interpretation becomes laudation: too loose, too entertaining, and, all too often, too descripti ve of little other than another vague beyond at the threshold of inhuman psychological and physical limits, or of reality.

Immediately following their staged emergence as liberated worms of consciousness (from the longed for hole at the center of the Merge) they begin to exchange new knowledge of old truths for money amid the penetrating moans of trumpeted voices and the eery, shrill ritual laughter of back-up vocals. From their followers comes a monotonous chant:

In the name of the Great Diabolic Power,

Take our power to go and use it outside,

Take the power,

We are drowning,

We are hungry,

Nothing can hurt us,

We are naked,

Money is only for Power,

Throw a trap to catch the fish,

Save the life/death of this child,

Tie up our stomachs,

Feed us on knots.

Despite their hideous crimes of reason, the Machinators are not the fantasies of sick imaginations, nor are they isolated and abnormal, though there is little doubt that they are sociological monsters. This said, it should come as no surprise tha t they are interested only in digestibles that have the most dramatic characteristics, and that attract the attention of brain machinery (the structures of cooperation within human language that are thought to be valuable aids in decoding science and other complex analogies, and absolutely vital to the creation of theoretical, viral machines). Result: the integral coincidence of aestheic reflection and production in accord with the legends of encoded consumption that reanimate the zombie's unblinking, nonthinking stare, and lend credibility to the rumors of imaginary depths beyond the transient screens on which his/her destructive addiction to anything cinematograhic is hidden. The relatio n of any such process to any other translation is, of course, a source of deliberate dread.

Living bodies, designed to be consumed directly and reabsorbed, do not provide full performance, and should be reclaimed; the importance of relying on the incorporation of built-in diagnostics is dubious and undecideable. Less persuasive ideas ma y carry some weight with others, but are never whole. There application can cause unnecessary downtime, and reduces the likelihood of providing a full array of fault detection.

Yes?

No. It is precisely this obsession with downtime that has created the body as stage. To a radar gun every body looks exactly the same. Forget the fact that the zombie on the left isn't really a full performance, and that the body on the right i s too fat. A gun doesn't notice minor differences like that. It focuses only on one thing: the speed of the moving target.

Speaking bluntly: What a war zone! History is a slobbering mess. It's the unedited, unending story of eating. Sex, like violence in that respect, is so much cake. To have and to eat?

Yes and No.

There is apparently no difference at all between a horizontal body and a theatrical stage--a zombie eating the still warm breast of a decapitated infant is able to stand on either one with the same degree of indifference.

More performance. Mere appearance. Another night of dead living.

Vogue, baby; and, bon appetit. Voila tout.