I had this idea I wanted to recreate the rape scene from Irreversible. Then I watched it. It’s not often I am reduced to tears and have to stop watching something, but this scene did it to me. Is it because Monica Bellucci does beauty and female so well, and dressed so exquisitely she has her face pounded into the concrete over and over? Is it that representation of femaleness that is responded to, is it her, herself, is it the careful single shot, framed in crimsons and soft golden light? Is it the simple unrelenting barbarity the camera never wavers from? Whatever the reason, there was no way I could work with that today. Just lucky I also brought in a copy of Jess Franco’s Vampiros Lesbos.
I had three dancers for the day, all female, which brought up some questions about what I did with them. There’s a scene in the film where one of the lesbian vampires is performing in a club, and the drugged up sacrificial chick just stands there naked getting writhed all over and slowly dressed in black, lacy lingerie, the music going into a stoned, sitar groove until lying on the floor she has her throat ripped out. My kind of performance.
Again it was remaking a scene from a film, which is my present interest, which is a process of losing your own identity to become the unconscious performance of the actor. The end result was 6 minutes of graphic pelvic grinding and slutty frottage which I have a strong feeling is going to make an appearance in hell.
Two hours for vampire lesbians, lunch, then two hours on a task I professed no love for at all. I’ve never been interested in voice-work, and to have such a specific task from Nigel, saying places, times, yes no, swearing, and “I think I’m falling in love with you,” “It’s not your heart, it’s your cock”, just left me dead.
Lucky I also had a DVD of Rammstein and Agoraphobic Nosebleed making 19 seconds of careful and elaborate noise. Yes, there was headbanging, yes, it was loud, yes it was very short, and it filled the criteria of the task exactly. Once when I was a student, I made a whole head-banging piece to AC/DC Back in Black. The panel refused to mark it. There are more enlightened places than Melbourne.
Watch everyone dance, Martin is still doing strange stuff. Eat, talk, eat, go to the river, drink, talk, laugh, laugh some more, the sky is getting dark, it’s 10pm, go home, sleep.
