Paul Hameline’s monthly culture dispatch: “Think Fassbinder. Think cabaret. Think brothel”

Date: 6th November 2023
Location: Paris
Music: Severed Heads, Paris Hilton, DMX
Book: Acide by Victor Dumoit
Cigarettes: a little under a pack
Meal: roasted vegetables, salmon, quinoa
Exhibition: Paris Photo

The first piece I see by Os Espacialistas reminds me of the breakout death scene in 2005 film House of Wax starring Paris Hilton. Nuclear tryouts, fake towns and their plastic inhabitants.

Paint the town red and beat my face up. Irises lit by our slimming hope. Hair and make-up remain untouched.

Andres Serrano presents a visceral Pietà, with bowels and guts drenched in thick honey-like fluids. A downward spiral into Dante’s bursting flames. A place he calls home sweet home.

Helmut Newton’s Gustave Courbet, The origin of the world. The origin of the selfie?

Mapplethorpe’s flowers: 50 shades of grey, 50 shades darker. Hitchcock grey versus Hollywood grey. The act of buying an eternal flower from a long-gone florist. Flowers seen as cars speeding through Paris. Is a bullet faster than a wink? I recall Virilio’s theory of how perception relates to movement.

Then I see Ed Ruscha’s Anchovy, like a metallic, sporadic visual sound.

How noise affects us differently. What kind of roar will we hear out in space?

The death of a star? The mermaid-like chants of a black hole luring planets into their abyss?

Deana Lawson’s spectral Boombox (2020) is acidic. Acid House is fun. Acid changes you (think Joker, Woodstock etc.).

A corrosive toxicity, an addictive tendency. Fetishising the reenactment of past incidents.

A dream-like state reminiscing of passed euphoria.

Pete Turner’s exquisite corpse. It’s like a mixtape featuring Versailles + Blade Runner 2049 + Ludwig II’s Disney Castle + Last Year at Marienbad.

In Alana Fields’ work there’s is repetition of certain parts of the original picture, it’s as if they all tell a different story within the same frame. A mise en abîme and a juxtaposition of emotions.

You need to feel your feelings as intensely as you feel a stranger’s touch or a lover’s fist.

Pleasure and pain are old friends. A constant conflict of ongoing hypocrisies. The Science of bodily movement and behaviour. Perhaps rhythm remains the oldest language on earth, or at least the only universal one.

Date: 8th November 2023
Location: Paris
Music: Yves Tumor, Hole, New Order
Book: Burning in Water Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski
Cigarettes: a bit over a pack
Meal: Caesar salad, smoothie

Pol Taburet, how we laugh, how we joke. I tell him I’m his biggest fan.

His piece in a show at Mendes Wood reminds me of Rodin’s Gate of Hell versus evil DC Comic characters.

Baby it’s cold outside, you’re warm. Soft yet rugged. Cold yet warm. Imposing without menacing.

An ever-changing mass of steel, depending on where you stand physically + metaphysically.

A Paloma Bosquê painting evokes the desolation of Tarkovsky’s Solaris waltzing with Herzog’s soiled Earth. Seashore, glistening moon. Where the sky and the earth meet. Gasoline stains everywhere. Don’t strike your match nearby or you might turn to ashes.

Lisa Brice’s show at Thaddaeus Ropac. I wished the floor had been sticky and cigarette smoke had veiled the canvases and crowds. Worn out leather, ladders in stockings, beer stains.

Think Fassbinder. Think cabaret. Think brothel.

The film Fox and His Friends was made in 1975, Lisa’s foxy friends were born in 2023.

A combination of the Musée d’Orsay’s Impressionism collection and Cardi B’s Wet Ass Pussy.

Blue sailor, moonless night, cigarette embers serving as a lighthouse.

Like Fassbinder’s Querelle embracing Curtis Harrington’s Night Tide.

Or Courtney Shayne in Jawbreaker (1999). Everything is keen, everything is peachy fucking keen.

At the Arcane magazine launch, I find Valentina Vaccarella’s portrayal of the financial crash. The notion of constant reinvention.

Experiences are key. What matters is what you make of them.

Treasures of our own making. Secrets of our own being.

How much fun we had. How much fun will we have?

How big a smile will you have when they take you down to your resting place?

Date: 14th November 2023
Location: Paris
Music: Young Fathers, PM Dawn, Kendrick Lamar
Book: My Education by William S Burroughs
Cigarettes: 13
Meal: miso soup, berries, Perrier
Exhibition: Mike Kelley at Bourse de Commerce

Mike Kelley’s sculptures remind me of The Wizard of Oz. Emerald Cities. Emeralds.

Considered the Witches Stone, the most fragile gem. A breakable stone.

Expensive stone made from pressured carbon. Ash’s main chemical component: carbon. Some diamonds are made of ash.

‘Ashes to ashes, funk to funky we all know that Major Tom’s a junkie.

Strung out in heaven’s high hitting an all-time low.’

They resemble Kryptonite. Past weaknesses reconsidered as strengths. Nothing’s ever set in stone, besides the names of the ones we miss.

Who’s the (un)lucky person who remains unchanged by life through time and space?

I hope you enjoy rollercoasters, we all live on one. Better buckle up.

Patterns of protection for a world destroyed by ourselves.

What are you doing in here? We’re all just passing by. Gotta get a taste of that sweet yet bitter thing called fun.

Try to leave your loved ones with a smile on their face, or in their memories at least.