. HOME .

Paul Chan
'THE HAITIAN PIG (BECKETT, BRETCH, BELLADONNA)'
head gallery
April 17 - may 23
165 e. broadway
new york, ny 34887
+212 477 5006
info@headgallery.org

Skimming low across the scorched surface of the Texas abyss – mile after mile of featureless desert and petrified tumbleweeds - the hovva-pod double-zeroes Raz Dalman on his two-hour journey to the reception of the new Paul Chan exhibition. Chan’s first exhibition in ten years, since he travelled back in time to create Hurricane Katrina (using post-poc seismic technology) to allow for his retrospective critical re-staging of “Waiting for Godot” in New Orleans in 2007. Dalman leans back in his E-Z boy massage-foamette chair, watching the stone and dust flick by below, his hand absent-mindedly caressesing the luxuriant materiality of the head gallery invitation card, fingering the slick gilded edges and running his tips over the embossed lettering: “head gallery is thrilled to present a suite of twelve short films by Paul Chan, titled collectively "THE HAITIAN PIG (BECKETT, BRETCH, BELLADONNA)," documenting the artist’s attempt to reintroduce the indigenous Haitian Creole pig to the island following the animal’s eradication by the Americans two millennia ago.”

As the press release indicates: "...the films are shot in obsolete and high-fetishized 35mm stock, each film is housed in its own handmade pig-skin case with self-lubricating, self-adjusting beating plastic-and-flesh dildo-pig heart. Viewing of these hardboiled structuralists films is therefore facilitated by the pleasures these artifacts hold in store."

Absent-mindedly Raz unties the leather straps on his faux-Medieval mock-peasant trousers and draws out his impressive penis/vagina refurb – his hand then moves between the tactile pleasures of his semi-erect member and/or the expensive girth/texturing of the head gallery invitation card. Other passengers exchange puzzled looks but Baz is not someone who lives his life discretely. Two hours later he takes his place amongst the throng as the first of Chan’s films is screened.

Number one of twelve is titled, "Play It Again, This Time with the DISEASED CLITORIS of CAPITALISM presenting a vaudeville of SHIT". It follows Chan as he talks with defective cyborg Haitian farmers and explains what he is going to do. Chan, mimicking an autistic math genius, bobs his head erratically, speaking one syllable every 24 seconds, inverting the 1 second/24 frames cinematic ratio (this no longer needs to be timed as Chan went through antiquated Pavlovian therapy to condition himself to the pace). He has little success in conveying his plan. Although he does start a new head bobbing dance craze that grows rather exciting as the metallic dreds of the deficient cyborg farmers glint when the disco lights bounce off them. Most of the farmers now work in low-paid urban work. Chan’s plan is finally conveyed to them when he convenes a meeting in the main square and plays a film of his autistic speech sped up. He offers them a chance to return to their ancestral lands. The movie closes with a slow pan of a winding caravan of deficient cyborgs limping into the mirage glass forest - the remnants of a failed theme park. Chan is now 190 years old. Every part of his body has been replaced at least once – “except the hole in my ass” as he explained in Artforum. He has a visible limp on the film from his latest foot transplant.

The second film, “WATT was AFRICAN and WELL-HUNG,” involves a series of rolling informational texts, unreadable since they are in Morse code--or rather in what seems to be Morse code, but adhering to the demand for obtuse self-referentiality, are only images of the notches at the edges of the film stock. If these could be deciphered, the gallery notes tell us, they would read as follows: "In 1978 the pigs of Haiti were diagnosed as having Asian Swine Flu (ASF) and AIDS by the IICAC (Inter-American Institute For Cooperation on Agriculture and Culture), and all the pigs were subsequently mass-slaughtered. This action was claimed to be necessary to protect the pork industry of both Haiti and the rest of the region, including the United States. Prior to their extermination, the indigenous stock - the small, black Haitian Creole pig - was at the heart of the peasant economy. Formidably resilient and well adapted to Haiti's climate and conditions, they ate waste products and shit, and could survive for thirty days without food. 85% of rural households raised these pigs; and they played a key role in maintaining the fertility of the soil and blah blah blah.

In 1984 the IICAC and USAID/Haiti undertook a Swine Repopulation Project (SRP). The new pigs came from Iowa, having primarily been used in the animal porn industry. These pigs offered improved "feed conversion efficiency" but required clean drinking water (unavailable to 80% of the Haitian population), imported feed (costing $90 a year when the per capita income was about $130), and special roofed pigpens. The repopulation program was a complete disaster, coupled the U.S.inspired destruction of Haitian rice production to create a major market for dumping heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. What followed was a 30% drop in enrollment in rural schools, a dramatic decline in the protein consumption in rural Haiti, a devastating decapitalization of the peasant economy, an incalculable negative impact on Haiti's soil and agricultural productivity and blah blah blah. Rural conditions steadily deteriorated blah blah. Drought and erosion become more severe each year. The farms become less productive. More and more people abandoned the land to suffer and die in the slums of Port-au-Prince – forced into low-paid work. And what was once lush tropical forest is now desert and theme park.

The third film, “MOTHER COURAGE SUCKS GOOD COCK,” shows Chan arriving on the Haitian coast in a landing craft (at first glance it seems the sort featured in 20th century war movies, but it is really a giant version of the baby carriage in Eisenstein's “Odessa steps” scene). The ramp is lowered and there is a slow motion shot of Chan running down the ramp naked into the sea. He’s followed by a herd of 30 to 40 Haitian pigs hopping on their hind legs. Chan runs up onto the beach and falls over. He reenacts the famous beach kissing scene in “From Here to Eternity” with an imaginary partner. Looking up at the camera, his face covered in sand, Chan speaks the closing credits as a reenactment of the opening credits of Francois Truffaut’s “Farenheit 451”.

The fourth film, “ASS to MOUTH is the ONLY TRUE VERFREMDUNGSEFFEKT,” involves documentation of Chan’s attempts to reintroduce the flamingo to HAITI. Arriving on the Haitian coast in a landing craft - the ramp lowers to reveal a slow motion shot of Chan running down the ramp into the sea, surrounded by a pink cloudburst of flamingos. An exuberant display of flapping and leaping. Only two of the birds are real; the others are cyborg-flamingos. Chan jogs erotically up onto the beach and falls over, repeats the beach scene of “From Here to Eternity,” and smiles coquettishly as the birds flood past him, and reassemble on the beach spacing out and feeding in the shallows.

The fifth film, “I MOUTH YOUR COCK: A RADIO PLAY for DEEP THROATS,” documents Chan’s reintroduction of the armadillo to HAITI. Arriving on the Haitian coast in a landing craft - the ramp descends to reveal a slow motion shot of Chan running down the ramp into the sea, his face cracked with infectious joy. He’s flanked by a snuffling horde of armadillo, long snouts tracking their route onto the beach. Chan leaps onto the beach and dives forward into the sand, reenacts the beach scene from Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” and looks up mock-sadly at the camera, as the armadillos bundle past milling about on the beach, foraging in the sand and rolling into balls.

The sixth film, “EAST GERMANY was a GIANT GLORY HOLE with a RIM OF CAKED SHIT,” involves documentation of Chan’s attempt to reintroduce the koala to HAITI. Arriving on the Haitian coast in a fiber-glass replica of the crap vessels that Haitian’s once used to cross the Florida Straits- the ramp is lowered to reveal a slow motion shot of Chan striding elegantly down the ramp into the sea in a blue wet suit and carrying a bundle of bamboo stalks, followed by an adorable gang of the furry marsupials, twitching their black noses at the salty air as they skip into the sea. Chan runs up onto the beach, flings the bamboo, and jumps into the air. He is silhouetted against the sky as the furry koalas lollop past grinning and laughing and splashing each other in the shallows. He stops, drops, and reenacts the video from Destinys Child's “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)” mashed up with a scene from the porn film “Ass Munch II”. The koalas watch him baffled.

The seventh film, “MONEY SHOT of the PROLETARIAT - or How To Masturbate without Missing a Beat on the Assembly Line,” involves documentation of Chan’s reintroduction of the pedigree Andalusian horse to HAITI. Arriving on the Haitian coast in a vintage troop carrier landing craft – the type used by American soldiers when they saved Europe from the nazis. The ramp lowers luxuriantly to reveal a beautiful slow motion shot of Chan leaping forward, down the ramp into the waves, surrounded by a beautiful herd of white pedigrees, charging behind him, shaking their snow-white manes and baring teeth to the sky. Chan strides athletically forward onto the beach, his naked body caressed by the sunlight. He tumbles forward. Looking sideways at the camera, his features silhouetted against the sky as the horses gallop past him into the freedom ahead. He slides into the sand and makes a series of hand movements, this strange semaphore is in fact a composite of every gesture made by the protagonist in the Disney film “Pocahontas,” cross-referenced with Sade's description of masturbation techniques in “120 Days....” The camera moves to a horse in the distance.

The eighth film, “WORKING CLASS Girls Put Out For Money, But Only the Bourgeois Are Whores,” shows Chan reintroducing the mountain puma to HAITI. As the landing craft approaches - it’s the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars with the roof crassly sawed off - the ramp is lowered coyly to reveal a slow motion shot of Chan as he runs down the ramp into the sea, the majestic pumas hang back in the interior. Chan looks back and laughs at the cats’ hesitation. Then encouraged by technicians the elegant animals leap across the water moving across the sand to the trees. One of the cat pounces on and kills a koala. Chan reenacts the beach scene from “From Here to Eternity” again, as the slaughter unfolds behind him. He adds a vague reference to the crotch scene from “Fatal Attraction”.

The ninth film “BEAVER is What the Boss Wants After He’s Done Ramming Me In the Ass (A Three Penny Opera for a Reduced Lunch Break),” involves documentation of Chan reintroducing the otter to HAITI. Arriving on the Haitian coast in an antique landing craft, Chan beats the slowly descending ramp by leaping over the side of the boat, in nothing but silver speedos and running shoes. He dashes toward shore as the otters slinkly swim behind him, in no particular direction. Chan collapses on the sand in mock-exhaustion. He pants, looks up. His lips are covered in sand. He reenacts the beach scene from “From Here to Eternity”, mixed up with some of Nauman's 1960s studio performances.

The eleventh film, “Molloy is Our New Top-Selling Dildo, But The Unnamable is a Classic for Experienced Practitioners and Discerning Consumers,” shows Chan re-introducing the wildebeast to HAITI. Arriving on the Haitian coast in a Viking ship – Chan jumps over the side and runs along the oars and then there is a slow motion shot of Chan leaping forward into the sea, as the noble wildebeasts trot down the ramp and into the shallows. Chan sits on the beach masturbating, watching as the animals move up the beach. One large male shakes its shaggy head at the sunset. Chan reenacts the beach scene from “From Here to Eternity,” before he drops into a endurance-test reenactment of the entire length of Warhol’s “Sleep”.

The twelfth film, “Porn is Didactic Theater in an Age of Rampant Downsizing,” shows Chan reintroducing the Boa Constrictor to HAITI. Arriving in a Duck Tours amphibian bus, Chan dashes out into the sea, a large bow constrictor wrapped around his naked body. He reaches the shore and drops into a perfect reenactment of Natasha Kinski’s photograph with a snake. He is about to switch into a different reenactment, do his beach scene, but it becomes obvious that the constrictor is suffocating him. The film crew runs in to help. The cameras keep rolling. Chan, refusing to break character, attempts to voice the closing credits as he is turning blue. He pulls a boner in a last effort the save the scene. Before he can tug at it, he passes out. Behind the frantic screams of the film crew, a rescue pod can be heard hovering in. Film runs out. Two minutes of white leader.

As the films are screened the crowd at the head gallery is uptempo from the happy-narcs and the stay-up powders in the drinks. Watching the technicians decant Chan's films one by one, looping them around the spools of the projector and flicking the switch to reveal the lush colours and clicking. A deep nostalgia of the 35 mm film format swells.

It’s an impressive turn out. Raz Dalman is impressed. Hela and Heli are here. They are two art-Berlin fuck-ups, who turn up everywhere and always dress in outlandish synchronized retro-alien outfits. Then, there is a tall woman who has long gold dreds and permanently blue-rimmed nostrils. She is flanked by a group of determinedly dressed down boring-fucks, including a few well known writers in there like Pippelino Esto from the polit-mag “Battleship Potemkin” and Chingo Dessa who organizes The East Berlin pinball commune (radicality of play, etc). And a small guy whose thing was that he looks like a small version of Elvis Presley or Morrissey--it depends on the day. Then there is Yellow, Green and Blue, Brown--an art collective who always have there hair died those colours, except when brown dons actual turd-dreds. Surprisingly, Katarina Anaractica came out. She rarely does. She’s dressed like a raccoon. She seems to be escorting Bloopo Wong who’s dressed like a kitten. (He is often described as the most intellectual and influential international collector - lot of glossy black on his walls). And also there’s a man called Monkee-heed who has a very small head, about the size of an orange, and a booming voice with vestiges of an accent of the long-disappeared Israeli people. There was also a striking woman standing to the left with enhanced ebony skin, emphasizing fluoro-white motion-serpent hair growing out her anus-hole, peeking through a slit in her plasto-jeans. She has a smoothed off nose with her breathing holes relocated to the back of her neck and her ears transformed into faux-vagina slits. She is talking to Dazro Hellman the owner of the ultra fashionable ultra-hip Blap Gear from Nu-Cologne, and the hip german artist Fazhion Fashion. There are also 1001 defective cyborg Haitian farmers that Chan flew in for the event.

In the crowd Chan is making strange faces in the middle of it all. He seems a bit miserable. Aloof. Not going in for his usual kissy kissy routine. In fact it turns out that he is trying to shit himself. He has 2 kilos of high explosives strapped into his pants designed to react with his shit and piss. He has already pissed himself, all he needs to do now is take a shit ... OK there we go. The turd squeezes out reacting with his urine and the explosives and ... The explosion is catastrophic. For everyone in the gallery. Contained by the specially strengthened head gallery walls the blast of the explosives is quadrupled. Caught by the ultra slo-mo cameras fixed behind ultra-tuff bomb glass in the walls of the gallery the split-second event of the explosion is stretched to forty-five minutes. This begins with Chan's legs being blown off and downwards, spiraling elegantly like seed cases caught in the wind, his body erupting and head splintering - bits of bones catching the glare of the reinforced gallery lights as they spin away like stars. The slo-mo catches in close-up the eruption of his head as it expands, bone pushing through, skin slowly parting and disintegrating. Five minutes as the face is transformed into disorganized matter. Pulverising outwards the force of the split-second blast is caught in its Bacon-like distortion as it moves through the transforming bodies of collector's and artists alike - smashing and pureeing in an instant blending of flesh and bone and blood and cloth, pulped around the walls and floor. Until the final scene where the camera tracks a drip of blood as it falls through the air, its mirrored surface reflecting the interior, doubling the meat scene and itself exploding on impact with the blood-swilling floor. As the drop hits the floor the room is turned to zero-grav. All the bits suddenly rise, as if in slow motion, and sit suspended in the air, in the middle of the room. It’s like a giant post-Bacon mural, cast in 3D. Awesome.

The screen goes black, but not before the film is eaten by a gangrened hole that spreads from the center out. It will never be seen again. The crowd applauds thunderously and laugh as the scene goes black and Chan voiceovers the credits (the Chan in the film was a clone). There is an exuberance in the air. Something this momentous hasn’t been screened since Chan’s shadow-play movies of another millennia. They all know Chan’s magic combination--a cold interest mixed with a warm heart, an objective eye tempered by a loving voice, a sharp intellect couched in boundless patience. There is no trace of insolence or indulgence in what he does. It’s all necessary and just.

As Chan mouths the copyright date on the film, the room seems to go out of focus. Architectural contours turn fuzzy. Reality warps. And then, unexpected, unannounced, a torrent of offal-what was left from the scenes just seen on the screen--drops on the crowd. (It was zero-grav suspended on the ceiling.) Everyone is slimed. Cinematic space collapses into real space. The Head Gallery is now the sequel to the movie. The lights and the cameras flick on. Chan yells: Action! No one is sure what to do. Suspicion grows. Glances dart about the room. Another bomb is a possibility. Another massacre. Everyone starts looking around for whomever looks like they are in the throes of taking a shit. They start to pounce on whoever grimaces or simply alters their facial expression. People start being torn apart at the limbs. The uncertainty has sanctioned all kinds of beatings and slayings, frenzied disembowelments, limb severances, tongue and eye excisions. Between these attacks, everyone remains stiff. Blank faces. Tense muscles. Immobile and expressionless. The slightest gesture--a twitch, a pursed lip, a nod, the flash of a nervous smile--can get you killed.

Everyone standing still, the innards still draped on them, a blast of insta-freeze is shot through the vents of the Head Gallery. Bodies becomes frozen statues. All the animals from the films, famished after being kept in crates for two weeks, are released in the space. As the bodies of the art crowd start to thaw, the pigs and the wildebeats and the pumas start nibbling away at the exposed parts. They start eating legs, fingers, hands, thighs, ribcages. And, of course, the screams are trapped in the ice. Or almost trapped. They managed to get through as the feeding frenzy revs up, but as strange burps and silly onomatopoeias.

Paul Chan (the previous Chan was also a clone) wearing a silk Mao/Bruce Lee button-up shirt, steps up to make sure all is going right. He attempts to stay out of the shot, but we can see the dead flamingo that is hanging out of his wandering third eye since he’s wearing ass-less chaps. He has stuffed the length of the bird’s neck up his rectum. He loves the death throes and the post-mortum reflexes. The neck suddenly stiffens or the carcass pecks some lining deep in his intestines--the pleasure of this is immeasurable. He grows lost to it.

But suddenly, a deep and irregular fissure begins to split the Chan clone. A burst of concentrated white light colors the fissure and shoots out if it. Chan stands transfixed, arms outstretched, miming the crucifixion. A large bulging in his stomach, new shoulders splitting out from Chan’s skin. In a blinding emanation of light another figure materializes: Chan has become Tom of Finland. The bulging curves couldn’t be contained by Chan’s puny contours; the massive crotch ball, like a curled and hibernating otter, split his dick at its seams. A halo drew itself around the new body and was slowly absorbed by the tight pink shirt with rolled up sleeves (quickly discarded to revealed a neatly trimmed hairy chest) and the painted-on jeans. Dust motes in the air begin to glow, like microscopic fireflies startled awake. The only glitch was that the skin of this new clone, discernible beneath the body hair, took on a vague faux oak pattern. Faint knots and waves mark it. But its a soft woodeness. It undulates with every step Tom of Finland takes. It’s a flexible membrane, it quickly becomes obvious, holding in amber liquid insides. Small turbulences--bubbles rushing up--are visible beneath the neat tufts of hair. It’s hard to tell what is keeping this body up. Maybe the stiffly starched jeans. A diaphanous resin skeleton somewhere deep in there. Glass tendons.

“Ladies and Gentleman,” starts Tom of Finalnd, “I wish I could tell you that I feel Oceanic tonight, but I feel like a pool that’s been pissed in.”

He pauses, looks down at Chan’s torn shirt and chaps and feels a tingle of sympathy, relief. Poor Chan, he thinks, finally unburdened of the yoke of keeping all this exuberance caged.

He hesitates. His own thoughts are mixing with some of the residue of the Chan clone. He decides, instead of going on with what he was saying, to order one of the women sitting in the front row to rub him stiff. He orders this with such conviction that she doesn’t hesitate. She drops to her knees, cups his cock with her two hands and begins to slide them up and down on his massive shaft. He, then, inserts a plastic hose into his artificially enlarged urethra and pulls a young boy, enthralled with all this, from the crowd. He pushes him to his knees and demands, without even uttering a word, that he siphon all the yellow liquid inside Tom of Finland through it. The boy sucks as hard as can. Eyes wide open, the red veins around the pupils increasingly noticeable. His neck muscles hardened. His fists clenched. And Tom of Finland devilishly holding back, refusing the boy until he passes out. And without even being asked another boy steps up to take his place. And then another. And then a girl. Then an old man. Gender/age/sexuality cease to matter. And Tom of Finland continues to hold out, but it’s growing increasingly difficult. His own eyes are now bloodshot, his neck stiff, his clench fists pounding his pliable chest. He starts ripping out his carefully well-tended body hair. He screams. And the legion of siphoners grows. An impatient queue forms. And, finally, at the moment that no one expected, but also at the moment of highest intensity, Tom of Finland blows his load--a jet of gelatinous amber liquid that starts shooting out of his urethra until it splits it and his entire crotch becomes just a giant gaping hole out of which a thundering spray of coagulated piss is shooting out. Everyone is doused. Everyone is so euphoric that they open their mouths to take it in. A golden shower for the millennia. And everyone is dripping jelly-piss. And poor Tom of Finland, split in half, is agonizing on the floor, in fetal position.

A third birth. A flower grows out of Tom of Finland’s midriff, petals unfurling like moth wings, and stamens growing and extending away from the petals with the stamen-heads transforming into likenesses of the screaming heads of Chan and Finland, coated in pollen, joined together in the same flower, which pushes upwards, masturbating the inner petals and then shrinking back down, with the whimper of a dying animal. Before long, the body of Finland/Chan with its hybrid flower trailing behind is dragged out and tossed into an improvised pyre on the street just outside the gallery.