WILL SELF THE GIRLS MCCARTHY SLAUGHTER BALLARD PRIVATE

MY IDEA OF FUN ISSUE O1

INTRO
I have told myself a thousand times not to be shocked, but every time I am by what people will do to have fun for reasons they cannot explain. And I am guilty too. Welcome to the first edition of Meatre; where mindless reblogging of others is encouraged. Delve into the depths of self indulgence, everybody is watching. And what is our primary intention? To rub the face of the human race in its own smut. When sex and violence become acceptable and we are completely lost in our own bordeom, what is left? We arent bored were boring. Sanguinary creeps take the stage. Were all terrible human beings, we are all disposable, we are all meat; and meat is theatre.

SLAUGHTER

So what is your idea of fun then, Ian? It was the woman diagonally opposite me, the one with the Agadir tan. For a halfsecond or more I thought I hadnt heard the question right but then she repeated it. This woman who I dont even know, she wats to know what it is? Hey, if only she did know. See me tearing the time-buffeted head off the old dosser on the Tube. See me ripping it clear away and then addressing myself to his corpse. See me letting my big body flop over his concertinaed torso, and then see me arching like a boy whose hard little belly muscles provide him with a fulcrum when he leaps on to a metal post. Thats what I was thinking and at the same time I was wondering, idly speculating, how I could convey this particular sensation to her, this idea of fun. Shed probably never even seen a neck without a head on it, let alone felt one.

GIRLS

The guy on the other end of the line, some old dago, assures me that someone blond will be at my door within the hour. After flossing and changing into a pair of silk Polo boxer shorts and a cotton Bill Blass sleeveless T-shirt, I walk into the bathroom, where Christie lies on her back in the tub, sipping white wine from a thin-stemmed Steuben wineglass. I sit on the tubs marble edge and pour Monique Van Frere herb-scented bath oil into it while inspecting the body lying in the milky water. For a long time my mind races, becomes flooded with impurities - her head is within my reach, is mine to crush; at this very moment my urge to strike out, to insult and punish her, rises then subsides, and afterwards Im able to point out, Thats a very fine chardonnay youre drinking. After a long pause, my hand squeezing a small, childlike breast, I say, I want you to clean your vagina. She stares up at me with this seventeen-year-olds gaze, then looks down at the length of her body soaking in the tub. With the mildest of shrugs she places the glass on the tubs edge and moves a hand down to the sparse hair, also blond, below her flat porcelain-smooth stomach, and then she spreads her legs slightly. No, I say quietly. From behind. Get on your knees. She shrugs again. I want to watch, I explain. You have a very nice body, I say, urging her on. She rolls over, kneeling on all fours, her ass raised up above the water, and I move to the other edge of the tub to get a better view of her cunt, which she fingers with a soapy hand. I move my hand above her moving wrist to her asshole, which I spread and with a dab of the bath oil finger lightly. It contracts, she sighs. I remove the finger, then slide it into her cunt, which hangs below it, both our fingers moving in, then out, then back into her. Shes wet inside and using this wetness I move my index finger back up to her asshole and slide it in easily, up to the knuckle. She gasps twice and pushes herself back onto it, while still fingering her cunt. This goes on for a while until the doorman rings, announcing that Sabrina has arrived. I tell Christie to get out of the tub and dry off, to choose a robe - but not the Bijan - from the closet and meet me and our guest in the living room for drinks. I move back to the kitchen, where I pour a glass of wine for Sabrina. Sabrina, however, is not a blond. And standing in the doorway after my initial shock subsides, I finally let her in. Her hair is brownish blond, not real blond, and though this infuriates me I dont say anything because shes also very pretty; not as young as Christie but not too used up either. In short, she looks like shell be worth whatever it is Im paying her by the hour. I calm down enough to become totally unangry when she takes off her coat and reveals a hardbody dressed in tight black peg pants and a flower-print halter top, with black pointy-toed high-heeled shoes. Relieved, I lead her into the living room and position her on the white down-filled sofa and, without asking if she wants anything to drink, bring her a glass of white wine and a coaster to place it on from the Mauna Kea Hotel in Hawaii. The Broadway cast recording of Les Misrables is playing on CD from the stereo. When Christie comes in from the bathroom to join us, wearing a Ralph Lauren terry-cloth robe, her blond hair slicked back, looking white now because of the bath, I place her on the couch next to Sabrina - they nod hello - and then I take a seat in the Nordian chrome and teakwood chair across from the couch. I decide its probably best if we get to know each other before we adjourn to the bedroom and so I break a long, not

unpleasant silence by clearing my throat and asking a few questions. So, I start, crossing my legs. Dont you want to know what I do? The two of them stare at me for a long time. Fixed smiles locked on their faces, they glance at each other before Christie, unsure, shrugs and quietly answers, No. Sabrina smiles, takes this as a cue and agrees. No, not really. I stare at the two of them for a minute before recrossing my legs and sighing, very irritated: Well, I work on Wall Street. At Pierce & Pierce. A long pause. Have you heard of it? I ask. Another long pause. Finally Sabrina breaks the silence. Is it connected with Mays or Macys? I pause before asking, Mays? She thinks about it for a minute then says, Yeah. A shoe outlet? Isnt P & P a shoe store? I stare at her, hard. Christie stands up, surprising me, and moves over to admire the stereo. You have a really nice place here Paul, and then, looking through the compact discs, hundreds upon hundreds of them, stacked and lined up in a large whiteoak shelf, all of them alphabetically listed, How much did you pay for it? Im standing up to pour myself another glass of the Acacia. Actually, none of your business, Christie, but I can assure you it certainly wasnt cheap. From the kitchen I notice Sabrina has taken a pack of cigarettes out of her handbag and I walk back into the living room, shaking my head before she can light one. No, no smoking, I tell her. Not in here. She smiles, pauses slightly and with a little nod slips the cigarette back into its box. Im carrying a tray of chocolates with me and I offer one to Christie. Varda truffle? She stares blankly at the plate then politely shakes her head. I move over to Sabrina, who smiles and takes one, and then, concerned, I notice her wineglass, which is still full. I dont want you to get drunk, I tell her. But thats a very fine chardonnay youre not drinking. I place the tray of trues on the glass-top Palazzetti coffee table and sit back in the armchair, motioning for Christie to get back on the couch, which she does. We sit here silently, listening to the Les Misrables CD. Sabrina chews on the truffle thoughtfully and takes another. I have to break the silence again myself. So have either of you been abroad? It hits me almost immediately what the sentence sounds like, how it could be misinterpreted. I mean to Europe? Both of them are looking at each other as if some secret signal is passing between them, before Sabrina shakes her head and then Christie follows with the same head movement. The next question I ask, after another long silence, is, Did either of you go to college, and if so, where? The response to this question consists of a barely contained glare from each of them, and so I decide to take this as an opportunity to lead them into the bedroom, where I make Sabrina dance a little before taking off her clothes in front of Christie and me while every halogen bulb in the bedroom burns. I have

her put on a Christian Dior lace and charmeuse teddy and then I take off all my clothes - except for a pair of Nike all-sport sneakers - and Christie eventually takes off the Ralph Lauren robe and is buck naked except for an Angela Cummings silk and latex scarf, which I knot carefully around her neck, and suede gloves by Gloria Jose from Bergdorf Goodman that I bought on sale. Now the three of us are on the futon. Christie is on all fours facing the headboard, her ass raised high in the air, and Im straddling her back as if I was riding a dog or something, but backward, my knees resting on the mattress, my dick half hard, and Im facing Sabrina, who is staring into Christies spreadopen ass with a determined expression. Her smile seems tortured and shes wetting her own lips by fingering herself and tracing her glistening index finger across them, like shes applying lip gloss. With both my hands I keep Christies ass and cunt spread open and I urge Sabrina to move in closer and sniff them. Sabrina is now face level at Christies ass and cunt, both of which Im fingering lightly. I motion for Sabrina to move her face in even closer until she can smell my fingers which I push into her mouth and which she sucks on hungrily. With my other hand I keep massaging Christies tight, wet pussy, which hangs heavy, soaked below her spread, dilated asshole. Smell it, I tell Sabrina and she moves in closer until shes two inches, an inch, away from Christies asshole. My dick is standing straight up now and I keep jerking myself off to keep it that way. Lick her cunt first, I tell Sabrina and with her own fingers she spreads it open and starts lapping at it like a dog while massaging the clit and then she moves up to Christies asshole which she laps at in the same way. Christies moans are urgent and uncontrolled and she starts pushing her ass harder into Sabrinas face, onto Sabrinas tongue, which Sabrina pushes slowly in and out of Christies asshole. While she does this I watch, transfixed, and start rubbing Christies clit quickly until shes humping onto Sabrinas face and shouts Im coming and while pulling on her own nipples has a long, sustained orgasm. And though she could be faking it I like the way it looks so I dont slap her or anything. Tired of balancing myself, I fail off Christie and lie on my back, positioning Sabrinas face over my stiff, huge cock which I guide into her mouth with my hand, jerking it off while she sucks on the head. I pull Christie toward me and while taking her gloves off start kissing her hard on the mouth, licking inside it, pushing my tongue against hers, past hers, as far down her throat as it will go. She fingers her cunt, which is so wet that her upper thighs look like someones slathered something slick and oily all over them. I push Christie down past my waist to help Sabrina suck my cock off and after the two of them take turns licking the head and the shaft, Christie moves to my balls which are aching and swollen, as large as two small plums, and she laps at them before placing her mouth over the entire sac, alternately massaging and lightly sucking the balls, separating them with her tongue. Christie moves her mouth back to the cock Sabrinas still sucking on and they start kissing each other, hard, on the mouth, right above the head of my dick, drooling saliva onto it and jacking it off. Christie keeps masturbating herself this entire time, working three fingers in her vagina, wetting her clit with her juices, moaning. This turns me on enough to grab her by the waist and swivel her around and position her cunt over my face, which she gladly sits on. Clean and pink and wet and spread, her clit swollen, engorged with blood, her cunt hangs over my head and I push my face into it, tonguing it, craving its flavor, while fingering her asshole. Sabrina is still working on my cock, jacking off the base of it, the rest of it filling her mouth, and now she moves on top of me, her knees resting on either side of my chest, and I tear off her teddy so that her ass and cunt are facing Christie, whose head I force down and order to lick them, suck on that clit and she does. Its an awkward position for all of us, so this only goes on for maybe two or three minutes, but during this short period Sabrina comes in Christies face, while Christie, grinding her cunt hard against my mouth, comes all over mine and I have to steady her thighs and grip them firmly so she wont break my nose with her humping. I still havent come and Sabrinas

PAUL MCCARTHY
Paul McCarthy has a certain cachet in the art world. He is also a bit of a shocker. The interview below appeared in Bomb Magazine, Summer 2003. One of the performance pieces illustrating the interview is called Grand Pop. It shows Paul, seated on a bench, wearing the mask of an older man --- presumably his grandfather. The artist has his pants down, pouring a bottle of ketchup on his groin in which stands the headless torso of a tiny girl doll. The caption says she is rising out of his crotch while her head sticks out of his finger near his mouth. Like one suited executive conversing with another, Paul talks intimately to the dolls about sex, love, and family, and also how to run a company efficiently.

Q. The pulsing id. Thats what I think about when I think about your videos. Partly achieved through minimal dialogue. A generalized wound is articulated, or dug up: anxiety, sexual tension, humiliation, bodily fluids, consciousness. You get a lot of mileage out of words via a spare, fragmented mumblelogue thats more like chanting than dialogue, drilling words into the ground rather than at other characters, and there is something repetitious about this method, within a single work, then from piece to piece, year to year. Can Pauls Anxiety Channel accommodate a fuller script, or would that throw your characters into the acting deep end and deflate the luscious fucked-up universe you invent? A. In high school I did a drawing of a mans face looking out of the picture plane straight at the viewer. Behind him in the landscape I drew a square hole in the ground. I have always been interested in digging. I remember finding a rock in a vacant lot when I was five years old. I tried to break the rock. I pounded it with another rock. At one point I stopped pounding it and picked up the rock to carry it home. After a short distance, a head appeared from the rock. I think I was dressed in white. All the houses around me were white. It was a very bright day. Ive talked to myself in performances since the 60s. But this auto audio babble got louder in the 70s. At times I would talk from the moment it started until the moment it ended. A muttering faceted language serving a number of purposes, directed at me and for myself. Its a multitude, a kind of runabout. A mother, father, brother, sister this and that. In Santa Chocolate Shop there were five performers including myself. In Saloon there were five performers. There was a script, but during the performance the scripts are improvised, repeated, and become language appropriation trying to be mediated into the other.

Q. When you say language serving a number of purposes --- what purposes? A. A purpose, B purpose, C purpose and so on. Q. Back in the day a ton of interesting artists were doing performances. Now that energy seems to be directed toward video and film. Artists acting up for the camera. Where has performance gone? Why arent people working with the live, high-risk moment? Why do the majority of artists insist on being mediated? Why the distance and safety, why behave on a big installation screen, or a monitor on the floor or a pedestal? I know its hard on a performer (physically draining) but that used to be the appeal, the rush, which is why all actors want to perform in plays, the venue of the real. Its odd to see a whole form almost disappear. There used to be performance magazines and regular venues at museums and galleries for performance. Not too long ago theater and performance were blurring; it was a fertile time. A. When I perform for the camera there are others standing on the sidelines in the void. Its very Hollywood to stand and watch a movie being made. I am planning a performance in a theater in Berlin this year at Christmastime. I dont know yet whether it will be on the stage or not. I think I would like to use the entire theater as a performance room, the theater as a set. Maybe I will extend the stage out into the audience, reduce the seating. I am interested in blurring our positions. Ive always been interested in the audience being a prop. Q. Youve been teaching art for over 25 years. Talk about the new finishing schools weve got going here in LA and the hunger for immediate commercial success in favor of the slow brew, the long haul. Whats the difference between an art student today and the younguns of the 70s and 80s? How has thinking about art

changed? How has UCLA changed as a school? And while were at it, what do you think about curators obsession with youth? A. Penis clam envy. The students are a congregation. Its a religious experience --- the galleries, the museums, are religious temples. The galleries are all on the prowl. Wholl get picked? Artists declare themselves regularly as misunderstood. Its a pot of victims. As painters, they face a rectangular canvas each day, themselves, the canvas and the studio. Its an old problem, with a history and a tradition. There is an old feud boiling, painters versus conceptual artists. The doctrine of painting and beauty versus the doctrine of Michael Asher. Its all locked up in this age-old flickering. Then there is technology --- the Unabomber, theory, fear of theory. The artists affect theory versus theory affects the artists. Who controls the castle? Its a laugh a minute .Q. You were afflicted with a pretty strong case of dyslexia. Reading and writing has always been an arduous process for you. You mainly consume art books, not novels. This harks back to Question One, about the repetitious speak of your characters in videos. Your characters dont talk to each other and converse; they talk to themselves, they go on for a while, stop, and then another character utters something, but they talk to no one, just the human wall. Communication becomes animal. Characters hear each others sounds and maybe react, maybe not. Theyre all in their own universe. What do you make of this style? Also, whenever you use text in your drawings, the words are misspelled and twisted up; it seems more about sound, a textured phonetic thing rather than words with a relatively fixed meaning. You take language that is already slippery and grease it up even further, shoot it out of the esophagus and let it fly into the air as if it were a material.

A. Repression and annual animal communication --- dyslexia is a boring subject. A more interesting subject is the fourth grade. One of my earliest memories of a drawing by a fellow artist was a pair of glasses rendered on the top of my desk at Woodstock Elementary School, fourth grade, second floor, middle of the room. I dont know who did the drawing --- a pencil drawing etched into the wood. I have no interest in conventional language, only when it is an appropriation to illustrate something else. Language is architecture as an institution for repression. I/we cant talk seriously. Its a grid of snakes. A tictac-toe grid. Verbal tic-tac-toe. Who has the janitor by his toe? Marvin Marick had a huge hose. During seventh grade in the boys shower room, Gerald Cook clenched Marvins hose, his penis, and pulled him through the locker room.

A. No more than any other Tom, Dick or Harry. Q. I like how you think of sexual trauma as an architectural problem. A. I think of architecture as a frame and/or stage for trauma. As a frame and/or stage, architecture contextualizes and effects trauma. Q. Isnt conventional language just a medium? A. Yes, a medium --- for science, for theory, for advertising soup. Q. The first 30 years of your art practice was a private solitary act. Things are more complicated now. Youre an industry. You employ lots of people. Youve got a dozen projects going on at the same time. Deadlines and commitments up the wazoo. Its getting kind of hectic, as they say. You could ease the pace if you wanted to --- its your life and career --- but you choose to keep it in high gear, pedal to the metal. Have things gotten out of hand, or is it all exactly where you want it? A. Sometimes I know why, how, this, that. Sometimes I dont. I collect telephones. Send me your phones. Some days I like my shoes. Some days I hate them. Not enough time to think about him or her. Pushing the wrong button signifies a squint. If you squint it muffles my voice --- wipe yourself on the carpet, and yoga is good for you. Hold your knees and scoot forward. Q. Your practice is kind of a family business. Karen and Damon (wife and son) are central to the enterprise, as well as Mara (daughter), who has recently pulled up a chair in the office. This is a unique setup. Ideal for you, but inconceivable for other artists with families. Talk about that one, Pop.

Q. Beuys as patina, Beuys as clich. A. Boy as patina, boy as clich. I was interested in Beuys in the 70s and early 80s. I havent really looked at his work in the past few years, but I have thought about his career and his effect. Beuys was critical to European artists being looked at by the art world. This began in the 70s. The shift from the emphasis on New York to Europe began with Beuys. He was an art star, the first European art star since the prewar period. However, it is curious that he is totally dismissed now. Its convenient for the art world to have lapses in memory. Its good for business. His work has an effect on artists today. Its part of the trickle-down effect. You can see it in the installations of artists now. I am not interested in art being a cure-all. Q. Talk about holes. Theyve appeared in your work consistently for 30 years. Holes drilled or dug up, holes to peer through, gawk at and poke, holes like empty eye sockets, portraits to consciousness, the edge of a frame, a cameras lens. You made this metaphor about cultural control, what you can see and what you cant. Please explain further. A. Holes are access from one space to another --- outside to inside --- inside to outside-inside to inside. Round and square holes, body holes and architecture holes, mouth, ears, eye sockets, rectum, vagina, penis hole, front door, back door, windows. Holes are also openings to sleeves, deposit chambers and pockets. Donuts and rods, as sexual mechanisms, rub devices. Drilling holes, making a hole with a drill bit. its about sex and confusion.

Q. Earlier you mentioned that your scripts are improvised, repeated and become language appropriation trying to be mediated into the other. What do you mean by that? Along the same lines there was this gem, repression and annual animal communication, when I asked about your use of spoken and written language. That seems like a bulls-eye. Please elaborate. A. Appropriation often comes first. The blah blah, the other, is often the objective. Communication and self-realization as hacky hack. Q. It seems like your interest in making films and videos started when you stopped doing performances. A. No. My interest in film and video goes back to the 60s. For the most part film, video and performance were always connected. I have always been interested in the presence of the camera. But there were performances that were not recorded. The action was spontaneous and there was no time for equipment. After the late 80s I started to make videotapes that were directly related to a production set, a location, a television studio or a sound stage. It was about appropriating Hollywood. I wanted to make a film on Paramounts lot. Q. Do you find it strange that people have such strong reactions to fecal matter, blood and mucus? The slightest thing that pops out of us is a total horror. Arent these standard human materials? Why the shock of whats inside us? A. Maybe it is a conditioned response: were taught to be

disgusted by our fluids. Maybe its related to a fear of death. Body fluids are base material. Disneyland is so clean; hygiene is the religion of fascism. The body sack, the sack you dont enter, its taboo to enter the sack. Fear of sex and the loss of control; visceral goo, waddle, waddle.. Q. Walt Disney the man, the freak with the harsh, right-wing politics, and Walt Disney the creator of all those remarkable characters and the cheerfully perverse world of Disneyland. Share your Disney thoughts? A. Disney has something to do with the future. Its a virtual space, not unlike the Acropolis. The Disney characters, the environment, the aesthetic are so refined, the relationships so perfect. Its the invention of a world. A ShangriLa that is directly connected to a political agenda, a type of prison that you are seduced into visiting.

PRIVATE COLLECTION

A story by J. G. Ballard, as you know, calls for people who dont think. One begins with characters who regard the physical universe as a mysterious and arbitrary place, and who would not dream of trying to understand its actual laws. Furthermore, in order to be the protagonist of a J.G. Ballard novel, or anything more than a very minor character therein, you must have cut yourself off from the entire body of scientific education. In this way, when the world disaster be it wind or water comes upon you, you are under absolutely no obligation to do anything about it but sit and worship it. Even more further, some force has acted to remove from the face of the world all people who might impose good sense or rational behavior on you, so that the disaster proceeds unchecked and unopposed except by the almost inevitable thumb-rule engineer type who for his individual comfort builds a huge pyramid (without huge footings) to resist high winds, or trains a herd of alligators and renegade divers to help him out in dealing with deep water.

YOU NEED A FRIENDLY HAND AND I NEED ACTION.

I WANTED TO RUB THE HUMAN FACE IN ITS OWN VOMIT, AND FORCE IT TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR.