In this issue, we are exploring the shock factor in Contemporary art, our writers are exploring this theme, in text, prose, zine and poem…
Throughout the ages, shock has been used as a mechanism to engage and horrify the viewer and make them sit up and look (and think). From the use of blood and gore in 17 century paintings as a political statement or to show the prowess of the sitter or in the case of Michelangelo's fresco at the Sistine Chapel, of the “Second Coming of Christ” the use of nude figures in such a holy place which so shocked the Catholic church that after Michelangelo’s death they painted over genitalia.
Fast forward to recent times and the YBA's work was a de rigour of shock installations - Marc Quinn's "Self" - using his blood to create a cast of his head, Emin’s, "My bed" (1999), and the multiple installations of the Chapman brothers. There are so many examples. But, is this more than a movement as discussed by the philosopher Stephen Hicks "as the inevitable conclusion of trends initiated in the late 19th-century modernist art movement", or is it a much-needed way to agitate and make the viewer think about key issues? Is it created just because it can be or is the motivation frustration and a reflection of the zeitgeist - think The Sex Pistols?
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The Intimate Shock
By Resident writer Michaela Hall
When we ask ourselves what it is to be shocked, the mind tends to be immediately drawn to negative thoughts, things that may be disturbing or unpleasant. This is something that’s been utilised by artists over the years to draw an audience’s attention to serious socio-political issues. So, what happens when an artist focuses on creating this element of shock for the audience in a more playful way, in a way that lulls the audience into a sense of security before obscuring their experience? The audience experiences a shock of a different kind that stays for longer. This is something that both Jonathan Yeo and Jeff Koons achieve in their pieces that focus on intimate and explicit material.
British artist Jonathan Yeo is a famously renowned portrait artist, creating figurative paintings and collages that are high in detail, glamorous, shiny, and enticing. Yeo who is usually famous for using paint as his medium made a striking departure from this in his move to a focus on college in 2007 and there’s something rather interesting about the collage elements used. As seen below ‘Paris Hilton’ (2008) and ‘Hugh Hefner’ (2008) appear as expectedly beautiful celebrity portraits. Something that you could expect to see as a centerpiece on a fan’s wall or in a family home. Thus, we are lulled into a sense of comfort and familiarity with the faces we recognise presented to us in such away. However, all is not as it seems…as you explore the pieces closer in a great deal, it soon becomes apparent that the portraits are entirely made up of cuttings from pornographic magazines. Explicit body parts, fishnet tights, and skin and the materials here. The shock of this is lasting, something that is taboo, yet the viewer can not stop exploring as their complete perspective has changed, a long-lasting shock that provides an unforgettable viewing experience.
Similar to Yeo, American Artist Jeff Koons intends to shock with the disguise of an inviting pop art style set up that hides a more intimate story. In this case, we refer to a specific installation of Koon’s work in the Newport Street Gallery in London in 2016. Koons made a conscious curatorial decision in this show that caused viewers to take a second glance and question what they were seeing in front of them. In the large white space in which we refer to sat Koon’s sculpture ‘Bowl with Eggs (Pink)’ (2016) all at first seems innocent. Although slightly unusual, this sculpture is far from shocking, its soft and pastel colours with soft edges are the opposite and are inviting if anything. When a viewer entered the space, the sculpture was so large in scale that until they had walked at least halfway around the sculpture they couldn’t see what was on the walls behind. At this point, a lot of viewers were probably wondering why there were explicit content warnings at the start of the exhibition, what could be more innocent than a bowl of giant eggs? However, the confrontational images that follow soon shock the viewer with their explicit and unapologetic nature. The pieces are from the ‘Made in Heaven’ series and are saturated, attention-grabbing, advertisement style detailed photographs of Jeff Koons himself and his ex-wife Iona Staller, a famous pornstar in various explicit and intimate positions. The images are so colourful, high definition, and loud and proud that their shock factor stays in the mind for the rest of the exhibition, setting the tone of playfulness, cheekiness, shock, and the unexpected.
What both artists manage to achieve in these works is a lasting shock that transcends the exhibition space in which the works live. Even though these images are highly shocking in an unexpected and taboo sense, they aren’t similar to those elements of disgust and fear that we may usually associate with shock. Therefore, the mind allows these images to replay in the viewer’s mind, like a puzzle, how was it possible to not realise what I was looking at in the first place one may ask themselves over and over. It’s ironic that this intimate content creates this kind of a more personal and intimately shocking experience, something that isn’t temporary and stays with the viewer for some time. What is clear is that the use of shock as a tool for engaging viewers here is undeniably powerful, a one which would have future audiences flocking to see what they might discover in the next exhibition that provides an air of uncertainty, and excitement that truly allows the modern and contemporary to live up to its carnivalesque reputation of showmanship and thrills.
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Poet – Claire Fearon 2020
Trump
An orange fool, a clown, an impostor
This is how he was described
But who is the fool now
As a predator in their house resides
When people are poor, forgotten and left behind
Watching endless Kardashians and Real Housewives
Knowing they have no path, to the new American ideal
They are easily enthralled by an evangelical dream spinner
Who uses the web, to ensnare his prey
And all the while, the isms rise
A dictator's power grows with lies
It’s so easy for us, to look away
But when democracy crumbles
The dominos tumble
And
We
All
Fall
Down
More of Claires work can be seen on her website here https://www.clairefearon.com/
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Artist name CAR ACT AIR
Title. Crawling back to you
MANIFESTO 28
We’ve set up ramparts away from the world.
Inexhaustible tiredness, euphoric breathlessness.
Alone in our hole, speaking to our head, we won’t see the sky any more. Eyes removed,
We’ve stretched them to see more clearly.
Black eyes for enlightened vision.
Killjoys we are, we’ve gnawed our veins and champed at the bit by swallowing our sorrow.
Rejected strangers, we don't talk about anything anymore,
Emptied.
So we rewrite history in an endless loop.
No more conflicting choices, no more questioning, the road is laid out.
Let’s take hits to breathe easier. We are going off the rails.
What we see then are collapsing towers,
But we won’t move. We are mended into marble.
No escape for us, we’re just lunatics locked in a cage.
Who cares? We don’t mind, we don’t feel, anymore.
We fed ourselves before even staring at the sky.
Our eyes have opened in an oppressed world where our values are being mangled by dehumanized monsters.
We’ve pulled down the fences around us, to face our distress, fearless.
Wading in troubled waters, our eyes are now recovered, and we see clearly.
The film replays, over and over. Once again, we face our failure.
CAR ACT AIR
@car_act_air
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Here we have snippets of a zine by Andrew, and a piece he wrote for use specifically, he’s a forty-something bisexual man from Pendle in the UK. he create’s art and zines which have his nude body in the fore. His work covers a number of themes but usually deals with disobedience, finding freedom, and losing faith. When things get back to normal, he is also hoping to be involved with re-opening Burnley Zine Library.
His zines are limited and quickly out of print but you can find a flavour and read more about him here:
https://weirdobrigade.com/2021/01/07/meet-this-zinester/
or here
By Andrew Nicholas
I'm trying to picture the most shocking thing I've ever seen. My mum's dead body? The time she cat fought in the local pharmacy with my step mum? Or perhaps something less close to home? The first thing that actually sprung to mind was the time someone drank their own vomit on 'The Hopefuls'. A grim late night scene from a salient programme. Who knew there'd be a million people like this in subsequent years? Reality TV star? Reluctant idol cum non-entity? Influencer? It's always the same. Over time shock gets repackaged and sold back to us as golden age. I always add a caveat to what I create by explaining that I'm the least shocking person around. I'm a middle aged man who works in records management for fuck's sake. Unremarkable and yet I do one thing that is out of the norm. That has had many a place reaching for a 'CENSORED' stamp. That has made me social pariah at times. I use my naked body as a way to talk about acceptance, imperfection and male insecurity.
I feel it makes sense to take things right the way back to day one. In the summer of 2017 I took part in a body positive art project. A young illustrator called Alyce Wood was asking for volunteers. She was planning to draw people's torsos with the intent of desexualising and presenting them as 'just a body'. Not erotic or indecent just this mass of cells that keeps us alive. For my part I had a desire to redress the balance. I figured there wouldn't be many men taking part so I could use the back story to write from a male perspective. Tackle 'measuring up' and erectile dysfunction. Inspired by this I then set about creating a zine called 'Torso' on a similar theme. The first issue hit the 'shelves' in October of the same year. A mixture of thought piece / poetry, photography and collage. The photos were taken on my mobile. The idea being to use anti picture perfect selfies to show what my body has been through. Words wise I wrote about teenage angst and masturbation.
I hit so many brick walls at first. It was always the same argument. What if a child came across your work? I got the impression it wasn't an obscenity thing more that they didn't want to have to awkward discussions with parents. Let's face it, what exactly is a child going to say? Are they going to recoil or be scarred for life? Thankfully there were also plenty people who loved my work. Curiously often in other countries and predominantly female. Some drawn to the imagery, others to the darkness and honesty in my prose. After a few months the style started to change. It became more about juxtaposition and shape. More free form and throwaway at times. Yet ultimately I was still asking the same questions: what is masculinity? Why are we fed bullshit terms like virility and potency? Do real men feel lost / emasculated post #metoo? And does how we feel about nudity change depending on the model's gender? Let's not beat about the bush here: is a penis more shocking than a vagina?
I don't know whether it's made me feel any different about my body. If anything my body has become immaterial. A way of touching on much broader themes like wanderlust, change and how things fall apart. It's become a way of documenting the fluctuations in my weight and my not caring. I know there will be people who won't want to see nudity especially if they have been in abusive relationships. Does that mean I should stop what I'm doing? I will hopefully put a zine together to mark my fiftieth birthday in November. That was another appeal. To mark the passing of time. I can't see any reason why I won't be doing this when I'm seventy. Would seeing an image of a naked elderly man be so much of a shock? I often say that it's not so much the content of my zine that is shocking more that it was me who made it. Me, an introverted bisexual male. Me, who was told at school I didn't have a creative bone in my body. Me, who often felt like he had nothing to say. But maybe that's the thing. Rebellion doesn't always come from snarling punks but from lost souls who find their voice and then act. How cool it is to be different, proud and outrageous to some.
There's obviously a million other ways to tackle shock. Focusing on it as wake up call. Focusing on it as catalyst. Focusing on it as a valid response to enforced conservative family values and the ghost of Mary Whitehouse. I'll stop before I start rambling about video nasties or section 28. Perhaps shock is born from the apathy that exists in a messed up world? I'm not sure what I've achieved. Perhaps that's for other people to answer. I'm definitely less fearful. Like I said I'll keep going until it feels forced. Until I feel as though I have nothing left to say. Nudity may always be problematic to some. I'd say it's freeing but others will argue otherwise. Say that bodies should be covered. And that's fine. Like the 'c' word I wouldn't want nudity to lose its power as act of protest. As a way to say this will not be tolerated. As a way to rock the boat or confront whichever fool is being a prick at the time.
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SHOCK, HORROR!
By Poornima Manco
Shock value is described as the potential of an image, text, action, or another form of communication to provoke a reaction of sharp dis- gust, shock, anger, fear, or similar negative emotions.
As a writer, I have sometimes had to resort to shock tactics to convey the depth of my anger or despair. Take the story that set me on the path to writing - ‘Parvathy’s Well’ - where the nine-year-old protagonist is horrified to see her mother in an intimate position with what she perceives to be a beast from the netherworld. Of course, the real shocker is the consequence of the events the innocent girl sets into motion unwittingly. A classic twist in the tale which catches the reader unawares, leading to the exact reaction I’d wanted.
Is shock the only way to jolt a reaction out of your audience? No, not at all. But it is highly effective and should be used sparingly.
The last story in my book ‘Damage & Other Stories’- ‘Like a Boss’- is graphic and brutal in the way it portrays a sexual attack on a young woman. This isn’t gratuitous sex but an examination of what creates these monsters, how far they will go, and how little rape is about sex and how much it is about power. If I hadn’t detailed the attack in the way I that I have, the story would lose its potency, and be nothing more than a dry and didactic text on the damaged youth of India.
Interestingly, not everyone responds well to shock tactics. I remem- ber a friend being completely put off by the story and my need to be as explicit as I was. Yet, to the audience I wanted to reach, and the ones who understood where I was going, it was a powerful indictment of a society and a nation where such brutal crimes are a common occurrence.
Not everything I write is shocking, because that would soon become boring. When I do decide to include a shocking element, or end with a twisty denouement, it is with good reason. I know that nothing else will suffice
Sex, violence, death, bodily harm, incest, illicit relationships are the many themes that I have explored in my darker short stories. These are also fertile ground for shock tactics - those jaw-dropping moments where a reader may clutch at her pearls with a ‘what have I just read?’ consternation. But after the initial shock has faded, I hope there is a bit of soul searching, a bit of pondering life, luck, circumstance, and conditioning. That is the endgame for me.
In my latest book, ‘Eight - Fantastical Tales from Here, There & Everywhere, the element of shock comes through the supernatural in the stories. Here, the shock isn’t an in-your-face event, a loud and shouty “Boo!”. Instead, it creeps up on you stealthily and taps you gently on your shoulder, whispering, “Come on, follow me. Let me take your imagination on a wild ride.” The real and the unreal amalgamate into the surreal. The shocking bit is how easy it is to accept the impossible, to let our rational guards down just enough to allow for the possibility of the fantastical.
In art, as in life, moments of shock stand out in sharp contrast to everything else. They are the crimson red against the everyday grey, the lone soprano to the gentle choir, the unmade bed against the stark gallery. This deliberate juxtaposition is a useful tool, a hammer to the chisel, a way to underline the bold amidst the in- nocuous.
However, it is important to note that the use of shock tactics is like adding a bit of spice to a dish. Too much and you can overpower the taste buds. Too little and you might as well have not bothered. Used in the right quantity, it can make the dish (or the work of art) unforgettable.
Ultimately, all art reflects the world, and when we deliberately provoke through our imagery or our words, it is to leads to a deeper understanding of humanity. Of where we are placed, and where we really need to be headed.
“The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way be- tween a sense of history and an experience of the world.”
- Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New
contact
www.poornimamanco.com https://www.instagram.com/poornimamanco/
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Artist: Kit Brown
Bio: Works attempt to constitute an experimental practice of ontological investigation. The ongoing activity is: sceptical, 'autogenous', and multidisciplinary (incorporating various: visual, sonic, spacial, kinetic, and conceptual components). The aesthetic intention and disposition of works are purposely simplistic, amounting from an aim to assimilate the complexities of expanded thought in a distilled and fundamental essence. Questions concerning: 'necessary and sufficient conditions for the making of art', and 'the construction and composition of experience', are often prominent subjects of consideration.
London-based artist, b. 1989, Southport (UK). BA (Hons) Fine Art [first class], University of Central Lancashire, 2012.
A script for shock
The intended purpose of such a text, is to induce, by means equating to nothing but the physical and formal properties possessed by such, a genuine experience of shock by the reader. Like a chemical reaction, or, like the conclusion of a logical argument (of a deductive, valid, and sound variety), the instigation of this proposed occurrence must be inevitable once the necessary conditions have been met. These specifications are not to result in a provocation revealed by some 'surprising' event illustrated in prose, which reacts against the expectations primed by the preceding context provided therein, nor some grotesque (and emotionally influencing) description of 'actual' horror, but rather something 'physical', or at least comparatively so, in relation to the functional potential of the medium in question. The product of this 'material disposition' should be 'primitive': meaning that no additional interpretation regarding its meaning, further to that experience generated by the occasioned 'physicality' itself, be intended. The nature of the shock should be 'visceral': closer to that which electricity can cause, than anything usually associated with the potential effects of written language. The careful placement of: sentences, words, and even letters themselves, should together act to compose the prerequisite state of affairs, that once the completion of reading has concluded, the shock will ensue automatically; this is not however such a text.