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Wed, 10/01/2008

Homestory: 5 (and 1/2) trippy images around me by Adriano Sack:

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1. My own bookcover, blown up for the booklaunch (as seen in the last blog entry). On a scale of self obsession, staring at it ranks (hopefully) significantly lower than googling myself and I'm simply in love with the acid blue. Our designer Judith Banham started with the so-called smiley, a simplistic logo that was around on coffee mugs and as a jeans sticker for more than two of decades before it got taken hostage by the rave culture in the late 80s. The broad and somewhat pointless smile became symbol for the profound and seemingly everlasting happiness caused by a new drug called ecstasy. Later came the stories of pill-popping people dying in clubs of dehydration and a guy in England took so much ecstasy that years later he suffered from depression and memory loss. Also his jaw muscles were so stiff, that he could hardly open his mouth (see "Alleged maximum doses, survived").

2. A photo of Andy Warhol taken by his companion Christopher Makos. The artist is wearing a white Farrah-Fawcett-wig, heavy make-up and lipstick. Warhol was a so-called narcovoyeur. He enhanced his performance in the early days by taking speed but later his main vice was watching other people getting messed up. "I wonder if Edie will commit suicide", he said about his former muse Edie Sedgwick. "I hope she lets me know so I can film it". When Steve Rubell, the owner of Studio 54, gave him Quaaludes, Warhol kept them and considered selling them. His most efficient drug after all was money.

3. A recent issue of the New York Post in which Lindsey Lohan's father is complaining about his daughter's girlfriend: he claims Samantha Ronson to be "dark, hideous and a disgusting representation of humanity". Since the actress and the DJ got together, Lindsay Lohan's drug excesses have stopped ("I have overcome a lot...") but apparently not her capability to provoke turmoil: "My father obviously needs to be on medication to control his moods", she was quoted as saying.

4. Amanda Lepore. A genderbending performance artist, photographed by David LaChapelle. Her gigantic lips are wide open so you can see the depth of her throat. Lepore takes our conception to the absurd maximum (how much silicon makes "sensous" lips lose their appeal?). And she provokes the question if plastic surgery is a drug: it is irreversibly altering to the mind and body and it seems to be highly addictive.

5. Another photo, taken at "Happy Valley", New York, circa summer 2006. This club was a self-referential extravaganza hosted by Susanne Bartsch, who historically represents the ideology that a party should be about diversity, outrageousness, and a certain amount of uncontrolled fun. Today there are as many security people as paying guests at a normal New York club night. Being always ahead of the game, Bartsch married fitness icon David Barton in the 90s.

P.S. Picture below: my coauthor Ingo Niermann enjoying the German late summer. On October 31st 2008 he has his first solo show at Gallery Zern, Heidestrasse 46-52 (http://zern-berlin.com/). Ingo will open a recruiting office for the U.S. Army.