Fire in the Belly by Cynthia Carr

Author:Cynthia Carr [Carr, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2004-09-23T07:00:00+00:00

When Flash Art commissioned Carlo to write yet another East Village roundup, he got David to collaborate on it. They decided to feature, said Carlo, “anyone who was not making an object to sell in a gallery.” David started the piece with the image of a flashbulb bleaching the life out of a scene. “We were basically saying that the art world, so driven by money and fame, cast this blinding soul-sucking light on artists,” Carlo said, “so we were moving to the shadows where certain artists made work that was so extreme they inherently resisted such market forces.”

Therefore, they discussed the odd drawings of Lung Leg.

And Tommy Turner’s rat bags. He worked in a medical lab where he had access to abundant dead rats, though he had to skin them and tan them at home. Each bag used two. The front rat kept its paws; the back rat kept its tail and had its head folded over to close the bag. Turner lined each with red silk or satin and attached a leather strap. He had also made an entire jacket of rat pelts, tails intact, by sewing their tanned hides to a jean jacket.

David and Carlo also lauded the unknown Montana Hewson. He had covered the windows of his apartment with hundreds of photocopies of planes crashing. He had written a film script related to voodoo myths and deities, “making use of the psychological properties of light.” He had covered his lamps with construction paper chains of “spiritual figures from voodoo history … jagged frenetic energy explosions, bodies in lotus positions with enormous hard-ons.”

They wrote about Tessa Hughes-Freeland, then just beginning her association with the Cinema of Transgression with short films like Baby Doll. (Two go-go dancers get ready for work and discuss their job, intercut with footage of their dancing feet.) Tessa happened to be married to Carlo, but David really liked her work and even bought her her first good Super 8 camera when they passed someone selling it on Avenue A.

Naturally, the article included Kern. “His films stripped all the tedious build-up from Hollywood movies whose essential draw for the ticket-buying public was five minutes of graphic violence,” David wrote later. “His films were the five minutes of blood-letting and mayhem. He also explored the power plays embedded in the sexual act.”

Carlo speculated that they may have also discussed Kembra Pfahler and others then working the margins. But none of this was what the Flash Art editors had in mind, and they rejected it.

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