Book Club: E-Coli Edition

“It feels good,” says Danielle Pafunda, “to conduct the world’s violence on the page. It’s my response to violence without doing or incurring much violence. It’s how I navigate through it.”

My favorite poet Danielle Pafunda just released her fifth poetry collection, Natural History Rape Museum. According to Bloof Books, the digest centers around an unnamed speaker and her intimate/adversary, the fuckwad, in pieces interrupted (or violated) by their boxed-in titles. Further interrupting this narrative are a prose sequence and a menagerie of objects/animals/elements borne as totems by the speaker—a lump of coal, a stingray, a cord of wood, a wolf spider, an earthworm, the fly. The volume culminates in four linked essays on the subject of pain: The Bid for Pain, The Manner in Which Pain Becomes Me, Pain Beak-Pecks a Figurine, and Extraterrestrial Painsake.

Exploring the more grotesque corners of the Gurlesque aesthetic, in Natural History Rape Museum Pafunda ventriloquizes through the unstable identities of her characters to create creepy tableaux that resemble—despite their vivid, violent excesses—the world we know.

(If that didn't intrigue you, I don't know what will!)

I really didn’t know much about Genesis B. P-orridge other than s/he’s in the band Throbbing Gristle and has adopted one of my best friend’s dogs (until recently). Perhaps the public best knows the reborn artist as a pandrogyne with h/er other half Lady Jaye, the two of whom caused much controversy for their perhaps boisterous artistic pursuits.

First Third Books has published this stunning collection of Genesis’ personal photography, artwork and life stories and it’s available from their shop. They specialize in high-quality limited edition books.

“There is so much possibility we don’t realize we have access to or even that have the right to access. So, to us, the artist is a signifier of the ability to short-circuit all those filters of social control we inherit, long enough for a new vision to come through.”

This is a great interview from The Brooklyn Rail featuring Genesis.

THIS DELUXE EDITION INCLUDES:

• a 323 page book, printed in Italy, in 6 colours (including silver Pantone) on 170gm Gardamat paper in 20cm x 27cm hardback, with a white linen spine, a matt varnished debossed cover and offering
• more than 350 selected images from h/er very personal archives and portraits from renowned international photographers
• an introduction by Mark Paytress exploring the motivations that drive Genesis to surrender h/er physical body to art
• personal commentary by Genesis on photographs throughout the book.
• The book will be numbered and signed by Genesis.
• a 96 page catalogue of h/er artworks and h/er collaborations with Lady Jaye, many appearing in a current retrospective at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA.
• three 7 inch singles, pressed on colored (white, orange and silver) vinyl with original picture labels and presented in specially-designed record sleeves. Four tracks have been created specifically for this project, and the third single is comprised of conversations recorded by Mark, with both Genesis and fellow pandrogyne Lady Jaye.
• a 51cm square poster of intimate and explicit Polaroids revealing Genesis and Lady Jaye’s exploration of their bodies in their spiritual quest. Suitable for framing, but not for the easily-shocked.
• The deluxe edition is housed in a linen bound Japanese-inspired presentation box with a cut-out PTV logo and weighs over 2.5 kilos.

From The Waverly Press, FACTORY FOTO: photographs from Andy Warhol’s Factory- A collection of rare photographs by Billy Name from Andy Warhol’s Factory featuring Andy, Edie, Gerard, Ivy and much more. Each photograph is presented as mirrored positive/negatives.