That’s an image from the video installation DeadSee, which was on display earlier this year (and may be still, for all I know) at MOMA in NYC. And here’s a video of the latter portion of the work, probably best viewed with the sound off, because of all the tourist-generated rhubarb in the background:
And the artist’s statement:
In the wall-sized projection DeadSee (2005), a cord connects five hundred watermelons, creating a six-meter, spiral-shaped raft on the salt-saturated waters of the Dead Sea. Secured within this sculptural configuration, the artist floats with an arm outstretched toward a collection of “wounded” fruits, their intensely red flesh revealed. The nautilus form gradually unfurls, leaving the surface of the water a nearly monochromatic azure and the artist’s body exposed.
I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide. God knows it was not of this world – or no longer of this world – yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its mouldy, disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even more. HP Lovecraft, The Outsider
MistressCowfish suggested I start a group, because after Friending people, Grouping is teh hawtness on Facebook, which sounds to my elderly ears like a rave gotten completely out of control, but whatever.
I have Grouped.
If you’re on Facebook, you’ll find me at The Deadbeat Club (cue Metro‘s bitter humour…).
Inspired by glorious deadbeats throughout history such as the authors of Frugal Indulgents, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Quentin Crisp, Vincent Van Gogh, and that guy … you know … that guy whose name I can’t remember, who destroyed his priceless collections and then killed himself rather than let the collection fall into Ceasar’s hands. See, if Boris would join the group he could tell us who that was.
Yes, surely in a Deadbeat Club there’s some room for rich, sore losers. Especially if they’re buying.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Undecided, please raise your glasses, mugs, or sippy cups to our anthem:
I was good, I could talk
A mile a minute,
On this caffeine buzz I was on
We were really hummin'
We would talk every day for hours
We belong to the deadbeat club
Anyway we can,
We're gonna find something
We'll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rain
We're the deadbeat club
We're the deadbeat club
Going down to Allen's for
A twenty-five cent beer
And the jukebox playing real loud,
"Ninety-six tears"
We're wild girls walkin' down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big time
Let's go crash that party down
In Normaltown tonight
Then we'll go skinny-dippin'
In the moonlight
We're wild girls walkin' down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big time
Anyway we can
We're gonna find something
We'll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rain
Chorus
Oh no! Here they come
The members of the deadbeat club
I am thrilled to the very core of my being to report that thanks to the mysterious workings of the intertubes this humble blog is now #1 in Google searches for
“Helen Mirren Naked.”
Once again, that search term is Helen Mirren Naked. For the hard of reading, we repeat: Helen Mirren Naked.