Source: Letters to the Editor
By: Chelsea Romersa
Dear Steve Nelson,
I would so much prefer to be able to speak with you — but in the meantime I’ll give you a little background. In fact, I’ll copy the treatment of the project into the body of this letter below. It’s a little artsy/long-winded, but it’ll contextualize the role.
We’re looking for a man with a lot of stamina — actually I have a job description I’ll copy below as well. We are located in NYC and would prefer to audition people this week here at our studio. Several people have emailed us about this position, but I wondered if you’d have a group of local potentials that you think would suit the role perfectly. It’s an older man (no teenagers) — hopefully a bit seedy looking — white or not-white (but not Asian) — but mostly someone who’s tough and daring and could perform under these extreme circumstances.
I’ll just copy a bunch of stuff for you below, but if you’d like to peruse it and phone me or provide me with your number, I’d be grateful.
Best,
Chelsea
Phone [redacted]
Fax [redacted]
West 13 Street in West Village, NYC
Job Title: Porn/Stuntman for (filmed) Carnival in Brazil
Positions: 1
Industry: Art
City: New York
State: NY
Country: US
Pay: $1,500/day and all food/travel/lodging expenses paid
Employment Term: Contractor
Sex: Male
Age: 18+
Job Description:
Stunt experience necessary. Auto-erotic scene filmed under slow moving vehicle within an extremely confined set during Brazilian Carnival. We will be filming masturbation/ejaculation scenes in the middle of the chaos of Carnival. Looking for a fearless, focused person. The Carnival parade is approximately 4 hours. Endurance is a must. This scene would be surrounded by a full band and vocals, 30 percussionists and 1000 dancers. The under-vehicle scene will have a 2nd day of filming, in advance of the Carnival presentation, which is 22 February, 04.
Job Description:
Must be agile and have great endurance. Must have the ability to become auto-aroused and give multiple ejaculations in a public setting (although the set for this scene is partially/mostly enclosed). The setting is ultra loud and boisterous–it’s mayhem. Person must be able to remain calm and communicative in an extreme environment. Must be reliable. Must have the ability to travel internationally (we can assist with passport and visa).
Employer Details:
CR3NYC
425 West 13 Street
New York, NY 10014
Tel: [redacted]
Email: [redacted]
Contact: Chelsea
Barney/Lindsay Trio: Bahia Carnival 2004
Treatment Draft 24 October 2003
Matthew Barney and Arto Lindsay are collaborating on a trio electrico for the upcoming Carnival in Salvador, Bahia. The trio will perform one night only on February 19th, on the Beach Route. Their trio provides a stage for Arto Linday and his band, and for the Cortejo Afro Drum Group.
Barney and Lindsay are inspired by Carnival in Bahia, where they interpret sharp social contrasts and aspiring social paradigms. As artists, Barney (American) and Lindsay (an American transplanted to Brazil) are moved by the inter-blending of culture, as internal Brazilian traditions embrace and respect the influences of Africa and other nations. In this xeno-celebration, Lindsay and Barney hope to bring their language into the context of the Bahia tradition, and, in turn, to have the extraordinarily porous and politically colorful customs/lore infiltrate their work and resulting trio. The ecological implications conveyed through symbols and metaphors (for example an excavated tree with exposed root and soil), are intended to be speculative, to raise questions and awareness. These items are porous abstractions and are not offered as solutions. They are a result of the artists’ passions and respect for the reverence for nature as found in Candomble. The architecture of the trio positions the musicians at a physically lower height, whereby the drummers, the dancers, and the musicians can be together communally–to, emotionally, de-mystify the more popular hierarchical set-up and reference an abolition of class division.
About the bloco:
Barney and Lindsay are structuring their bloco around the image of a tree. An enormous forestry truck leads the bloco with an uprooted tree held high in its front mandible. The forked tree top has no leaves or signs of new growth, yet appears to have been recently uprooted. The core of the tree and the center of its root structure are made of a pristine, milky-white plastic. A crystal clear plastic ruffle enwraps the tree trunk where the earth once held the tree in the ground. The body of the vehicle is splattered with fresh mud. Its massive earth-caked tires have been fitted with white plastic cleats which slap against the asphalt as the truck rolls slowly through carnival, creating an audible, amplified samba beat with the spacing of the cleat pattern.
Five horsemen surround the sprawling roots of the tree. They are costumed in long red cloaks with high arching collars. Each horseman has a small flame emanating from the top of his head, and his face is shrouded behind a long beaded veil. Peering over the high collar of each horseman is a Golden Lion Tamarin Monkey*. Perched high on the shoulders of the horsemen, the monkeys will appear to be part of the flaming headdress.
* Due to their endangered state, the Golden Lion Tamarin Monkeys will be anamatronic
A lone figure is suspended at the top of the tree between its two upright branches – this is Julia Butterfly Hill, an ecological activist who spent two years (1997-1999) living at the top of a two hundred foot Great Redwood Tree in California in efforts to save the tree and its neighboring forest from clear cutting. Both Julia’s character and the team of horses are out-growths of the plastic core, and will wear costumes of Teflon and prosthetic plastic.
Underneath the forestry truck lives a character who is situated around the moving hydraulics of the truck’s articulating midsection, and beneath its spinning drive shaft. He will be nearly invisible to the carnival audience, but will be simultaneously filmed in private as the trio moves through the carnival course. This character is a large-machinery fetishist. There is a small subculture of men with strong sexual affections for heavy machinery, who tend to give their trucks affectionate names, write poetry to them, and in extreme cases are physically intimate with the machines. A tinted glass compartment would be constructed under the truck where a single camera could privately capture this character as he is intimate with the truck in close-up while glimpses of the carnival crowd will be captured in the background as the truck moves along the streets.
The forestry truck pulls the band’s stage on a logging trailer. The stage is a 15-foot-high cast cross-section of earth. Within the walls of this casting one can see roots and cultural debris, both growth and detritus.
The sound system, which amplifies the music, is broken into four satellite towers. The satellites are pulled by four All- Terrain Vehicles, which will resemble miniature versions of the central truck. With a live mixer on-board the central truck, the music will move from tower to tower creating a more three-dimensional dynamic, than will the usual trio set-up.
Three different costumes will be designed for the team of horses, the drum corps, and the bloco membership. The costumes will be made of tyvek, and will be die-cut and screen-printed with microscopic patterns and colors derived from the tree character.
Through metaphor, the elements making up the trio and bloco attempt to create an abstract political inquiry. The explicit politics of Julia Butterfly Hill’s presence and her love for the tree (geographically re-contextualized in its relevance to Brazil), is abstracted by the deforestation machinery, the endangered primate species which relies on the progress of reforestation in order to survive, and by the relationship between the deforestation truck and its lover. In this constellation, all of these disparate characters become one character of undifferentiated conflict.
"Heal the knife that cuts the wound."
–Joseph Beuys
"Leib (body), Lieb (love), Beil (axe)"
–Hans Bellmer
Ogun, master of the world, support of the newborn child
Ogun is virile
Ogun, master of the yam I cuts
Ogun, with coronet of blood
Burns the forest, burns the bush
Leaves the forest screaming in the sound of flames
Hoe is the child of Ogun
Axe is the child of Ogun
Gun is the child of Ogun
–praise chant for the African/Atlantic deity Ogun
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the world will eventually die, decay, fall into drift, come to a hopeless end, burn out, slide into disorder.
According to Ilya Prigogine, Nobel chemist, under certain circumstances and within certain localities the Second Law fails. Energy increases. An organism is able to reorganize itself into a higher level of order, to transcend itself. What it is that conducts this self-organization, implicit in evolution, seems to be an inherent property of matter itself, as if, indeed, matter has mind. As if, indeed, the thrust of evolution is will.
