{"id":1119,"date":"2012-05-15T00:41:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T07:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/?page_id=1119"},"modified":"2012-05-15T00:41:54","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T07:41:54","slug":"edward-colless","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/transdisciplinary-imaging-conference-2012-2\/speakers-2012\/edward-colless\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Colless"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><strong>The Corpse Bride and the Human Centipede<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">As a noisy unstable montage of found objects, the splendid monster of Mary Shelley\u2019s <em>Frankenstein<\/em> demonstrates an enduring aesthetic as well as scientific romance. By the re-animated and remediated (and remedial) conjoining of its corpse parts we could construe this phallic creature \u2013 with the erotic pataphysical and alchemical recipe of Duchamp \u2013 as a \u201cbachelor machine\u201d: an allegorical image as well as working diagram of art as a \u201cchemical wedding\u201d even if, like the bride of Frankenstein, Duchamp\u2019s famous bride stripped bare remains \u2013 isolated in the upper storey of <em>The Large Glass<\/em> \u2013 a virgin muse. This is the masturbatory discipline of an art dedicated to her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">I propose a new image of art that interferes with this erotic chemistry: necromantic rather than romantic and thus a catastrophic undoing of the bachelor machine. The muse in this case is the notorious \u201ccorpse bride\u201d: the instrument of a legendary mode of execution in which a putrescent cadaver is tightly bound in actual intercourse with the victim. Consider the notorious scatological exploitation movie by Tom Six, <em>The Human Centipede 2<\/em> (2011) in which a demonic pervert kidnaps and crudely attaches with sculptural surgery, mouth to anus, a dozen victims in a phantasmic image inspired by Six\u2019s first film, <em>The Human Centipede 1<\/em>. While the first movie typifies the camp style of the \u201cmad science\u201d horror genre derived from <em>Frankenstein<\/em>, the brutally explicit sequel is a metafictional if not metaphysical disquisition on the camp sexual diagram of the first film. With the second human centipede, eros is transfigured into an appalling aesthetic rage \u2013 yet in a manner suggesting more affinity with the stage kitchen of <em>Master Chef <\/em>than with the Marquis de Sade\u2019s chateau, the orgiastic assemblage of bodies is transposed into a singular extrusion of the alimentary canal. I propose \u2013 in a gesture that is transdisciplinary rather than transgressive \u2013 that we make use of <em>The Human Centipede 2 <\/em>as a caustic satire on contemporary art \u2013 in particular debasing contemporary art\u2019s diagrammatic, relational and participatory practices \u2013 and use it as an unpleasant antidote to the new <em>doxa<\/em> of Deleuzian aesthetics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Corpse Bride and the Human Centipede \u00a0 As a noisy unstable montage of found objects, the splendid monster of Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein demonstrates an enduring aesthetic as well as scientific romance. By the re-animated and remediated (and remedial) conjoining of its corpse&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":538,"featured_media":0,"parent":1081,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1119","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1253,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1119\/revisions\/1253"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/tiic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}