Let’s talk about desire
And simulacra.
Let’s talk about objects
And language
As object.
Let’s talk about
The abject,
The grotesque,
The ugh what’s that smell?
I don’t know,
Let me smell it.
Ugh why did I do that?
Let’s talk about
Bad copies
And Venus
And bad copies of Venus.
And let’s talk about
“the physical and symbolic properties of language”
And Beckett
And Peter Cooke
And Dudley Moore
And the Viz
The Viz.
The. Viz.
Let’s talk about
Time and space,
Manipulated, shrinking, growing, twisting, spitting out new meaning
That we didn’t expect to extract.
Let’s talk about Brown Humour,
Lavatorialisms,
Toilets,
Reading on the toilet.
Consuming
And excreting
Words
And knowledge.
Eating your research.
Let’s talk about the art world.
No, let’s not.
Ok let’s talk about the art world
But when we talk about the art world
Let’s take the piss.
Let’s talk about piss
And all those bodily fluids we don’t like to admit we have in us
And on us
And outside of ourselves.
Let’s talk about shit tv
And getting in from the pub
And watching something on Channel 5,
A bit kale-eyed.
Let’s talk about VHS
And “technological obsolescence”.
Dead formats
And waste
And all the things we throw out
That others treasure.
Let’s talk about The Object.
The Object as research.
Masticating concepts
And swallowing
And waiting
Until you shit out an idea
Until an idea floats.
Let’s talk about
Dystopia
And how we’re already in it.
So let’s laugh about it
Before we cry
And shit ourselves.
Let’s talk about the Solar Anus.
The line that joins us to the earth
Through the place
We excrete from.
Let’s talk about nonsense
And finding truth
In nonsense
And trusting in
Nonsense
No sense
No sense of order.
In the wrong order
Episode 4,
Before Episode 3,
Before Episode -1.
But back to Episode 4.
And then the DVD extras.
The director’s commentary.
Let’s watch a mutant soap opera.
A melodrama,
A Sunset Beach
Of Monty Python gags
And migrating eyebrows.
A palimpsest of references
From heavy metal
Gameshows
Radio comedy
Avant garde performance art
Nihilism
The eerie
The uncanny
The prosthetic
The animatronic
The medieval
The ancient
The neanderthal.
Let’s talk about a modern family.
A true son,
A fake son,
A girlfriend
And an artist.
And the council.
And a jobby.
A Bobby Jobby.
Let’s stop talking about it.
Let’s watch Truthcurator.
And then let’s watch Ourhouse, Episode 4, Internal Problems
And then let’s watch Ouhouse, Episode 3, The Cure of Folly.
And then let’s go to the pub.
And then let’s go home late
And put on some shit tv
And feel like we’re doing art while we watch it.
Because it’s all research.
Because we consume all the time.
Because we ingest all the time.
Because whatever we absorb or eat
Becomes us,
Becomes our narrative.
Let’s talk about all of this, after.
Let’s watch an art.
Let’s watch three arts
One is very short.
Two are a bit longer.
You’ll be in the pub by 8.
Let’s watch three arts
By Nathaniel Mellors.
Text written as an introduction to a screening of films by Nathaniel Mellors at the Royal College of Art, London on 23 January 2018.
appear to disappear 