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Writing
Burning Gold – Reflections on Lookout
Robin Finch Pickering’s solo show Lookout has its foot in clusterfuck aesthetics, the pre-show babel confirms this with allusions made toward world building which would seem to align it with such a doctrine. However, within the latter's legacy is this theatrical intent: a desire to put on a show, where chaotic and incompressible allusions are in an ironic twist highly orchestrated and pre-determined. Finch Pickering’s body of work differs from that, yes a world, a messy, nauseous, anxious and paranoid one at that is shown, but each object, document and thing is treated, not necessarily with anatomical cleanliness, but more so with room to breathe and a tender care that lets it depart from the above mentioned rigid ethics ; A world can be built, but as a spectator we’re given enough credit to fill in the gaps ourselves - departing from the inevitability of world building to align itself with Oxford Street art experience shlock (which for another time is actually poetic in a way I can’t quite put my finger on yet).
As a spectator, then, to this museum crawl of a civilization and people, who are obfuscated but also exalted, what do we see from the lookout? Not much really, but that’s sort of the point, just vestiges and remnants, Finch Pickering’s lookouts are already gone by the time you even knew they were a thing. What we’re left with, much like the typical museum (excluding of course sumptuous wax renditions of the people/culture in question) is the artefacts, images and day-to-day dross of a culture that leads to their interpretation via-negativa. But it’s this act of looking, with intent and lack of passivity, that ingratiates us into the world of the lookout in a way that exceeds fidelity and simulacra. By spending time with the curated slice of lookout life we’re able to empathise with their furtive nature while also wondering where the hell they’ve got to, a quick look over to the window and a green two-tone Hammerite sheened staircase, encrusted with dusty footprints gives me the sad answer I was looking for.
Moments of comfort are fleeting and far between in a paranoid world of constant vigilance, unlike the Waldean notion of the romantic retreat, which later served as tacit approval for agoraphobic, hyper-consumer neo-liberal individualism, no I’m not going to substantiate that, Finch Pickering’s lookout has a sense of begrudging duty, in which it’d be far nicer to relax in the iconised stability of an under-table heaven indulging in bounties of mint vienetta, instead we’re faced with a world in flux, of sad instability and furtiveness; flaccid crowbars, forensically lit tents stripped of their capacity for respite and mobilised dining all imply a necessity to keep moving - this isn’t to say that Finch Pickering is harking for the suburban safe and solid idyll, anything but, a Croydon Neighborhood Watch sign, presides over a motorised disco ball panopticon, reminding us of the frothing subterranean fascist intent of pebble-dashed castles.
It’s more so, that although exhausting, the adrenaline-fueled, darting-eyes world of the lookout is the lesser of two evils, but that shouldn’t be seen as a problematic slip into poverty-tourist aesthetics, there’s no love for skip-dwelling Southwark luddites here and certainly there’s no glamour in being a lookout, advantages yes and I will get to that, but ultimately there’s a tragedy to the whole thing, home and safety are fetishised in crayon, the informal history of etching your initials into a wall, sublimated via casting to the precious status of trinket; safety and continuity is desired, its lack thereof, obscured by the intrusion of capital into the necessity of home, is frustratingly ameliorated by the burden of searching for Jerusalem.
The term lookout is funny, because within the passive/active matrix of looking/seeing you could easily lead yourself into thinking that the role is the former, just keeping an eye out sort of thing and tentatively allusions are made to that, with wafts of adolescent cig smoke abound. But really what’s encouraged is a stance of activity, with inevitable revelations leading to the horrors of space-privatisation being the ‘reward’, harking back again to the dogmatism inherent to world building. But Lookout doesn’t fall into sanctimony however, nothing’s given to you, but when breaching the threshold of active engagement, the most bombastic of which will make my closing remarks, you’re rewarded. Before that though, there are two pieces that have a loose and associative connection to them, that in my opinion acts as a far more erudite summary of Lookout than these 756 words have done thus far.
Enter the gallery and to your left, below the sad formality of explanatory blurb, is a device that looks like it’s been plucked from John Kramer’s wet dreams, a stack of paper sits beneath a crudely welded punch, every sheet lacking a double ‘O’. Opposite that, almost hidden, resting on a windowsill is a fly punch with two bits of sheet metal shaped in the positive form of a keyhole. We’re given everything we need, the means to detangle it being an active eye.
And so, unto the elephant in the room. The whole show takes place in the prestigious Camberwell Space, which from personal experience and reflecting on others is a cursed site. It is by all accounts the ‘shop front’ for Camberwell College of Arts yet what’s being ‘sold’ to ingratiate myself into UAL’s wonderfully entrepreneurial ethics, is shit to be honest. The space itself, devoid of context, floating freely within architectural intent, is fine, it’s well lit, both naturally and artificially, it’s flexible and finally it’s visible and open to all, theoretically that is and if you’ve been to the show, you can see where I’m agonisingly drawing this point towards.
However, beyond flattering Dezeen lingo, the space lacks any sort of positivity, with a general attitude ranging from a reluctance to enter, bolstered by its insidious pomp, to intense bureaucratic frustration that arises from coming about by trying to use it and in general a sort of malaise, Camberwell Space is undoubtedly contentious. In an art school of all places, it’s criminal to have a space devoid of experimentation. Ideally and with ease it could be a co-operative led space, it’s honestly not even that utopian. But instead I’ve seen its role range from ad-hoc studio spaces for the disgustingly oversubscribed painting course, which is obviously a kick in the teeth for fee paying students but also for the act of creating, the above mentioned architectural praises are anything but appropriate for a studio, and to that, I suggest a stake through the heart of ad-hoc studio culture and furthermore, I’ve seen it used just as a general dumping ground, the space is simultaneously exalted via its bureaucratic grandeur, but simultaneously abused and disregarded by the very systems that were designed to make it into a ‘special’ place in the first place; I think you can see where I’m drawing this. Oh, and finally before a Shepard's crook yanks me off stage, in a weird breach of educational morals, the space has been favored towards showing the work of tutors, a topic for another time.
Descending from my soapbox, Finch Pickering opens up the space with a cynical and surgical wit, the lookouts have left, remnants and artefacts confirm that the space is okay, hostile yes, but enough to do something with at least, and that doing is done by our first encounter of the show which could be quickly overlooked, but critical, the green two-tone Hammerite sheened staircase, has a blue twin, acting as our portal, for the freakshow of post-industrial Frankenstein aesthetics. You leave - - a punctured map in hand.
Mushroom Walks into a Bar... : Expressions of Systems
Watching The Matrix in my early teens perhaps produced a stabilised reading of the film – namely, it was my introduction to solipsism, in conjunction with a burgeoning adolescent angst, it was an interesting sensation to realise that the walls around me weren’t as solid as I’d assumed. And while it’s still valid to have this as the only takeaway from the film – and indeed I’ve done this for many years, treating Neo’s actions as an allegory for the constructed nature of cultural consensus, there is perhaps an emergent theme that was only able to flourish via the two-decade hiatus between the 3rd and 4th instalments of the franchise that allowed The Matrix to exceed the realms of fin-de-siècle post-modernism.
Okay, quick roundup of The Matrix – or at least the pertinent points to my proposition. Sometime in the near future humanity has created an advanced artificial intelligence (A.I.) things get out of hand though, so humanity blocks out the sun inhibiting the A. I’s ability to produce power via solar energy. The response from the intelligent machines is to capture all of humanity, placing them in a catatonic state that allows for their energy to be harvested, in essence acting as organic batteries. The malicious twist being that in order to placate any human revolutions a shared projected reality is created: The Matrix. Via Deus ex machina (arguably, according to the lore of the franchise, this is an oversimplification, but nevertheless for the sake of brevity this justification will suffice) some people can see beyond this constructed reality, ultimately being able to liberate themselves from their induced catatonia and awaking unto the ‘real’ world.
Neo, our protagonist, is one of these such people going through the hitherto mentioned process of existentialism 101. Our antagonist is Agent Smith, The Matrix’s manifestation of super-ego authority, whose sole purpose is to eliminate any threats posed to the projected utopia of 1999. Some leather-clad fight scenes and a couple of throat jabs later and it’d be reasonable to assume that this is the essence of The Matrix – malicious authority (evil) posed against the triumph of the human spirit (good). The sequels, however, disrupt this myopic interpretation.
In The Matrix: Reloaded, it’s revealed that Agent Smith is only a manifestation of a certain quality of The Matrix, which problematises his hitherto antithetical status. Again, after some leather-clad fights (this time with vampires and werewolves) Neo confronts the real bad-guy (really), The Architect, who via a lot of exposition reveals that he is in fact the mastermind behind The Matrix, the one who’s programmed the simulated reality that humanity finds itself in. This fits neatly into a post-modern reading; Neo has exceeded the immediate confrontation posed by Agent Smith and has instead opted to expose the hierarchy of the systems that govern us. This neat little bow is where we’ll leave The Matrix for now.
The Architect (Wachowski & Wachowski, 2003)
“In the depths of labyrinthine caves, embedded in gigantic rocks, buried in the hottest geothermal vents, and in the cold stellar dust of space, life is stealthily creeping.” (Thacker, 2014, p.101)
Eugene Thacker offers an elegant summation of an emergent field in biology focused on a category of life known as extremophiles. Often found in conditions hitherto deemed uninhabitable, the study of these strange instances of life push the boundaries of what is considered to be a living entity. The philosophical takeaway from this is that it destabilises the anthropocentric perspective that we inhabit a “world-for-us”. (p.108) Instead, the existence of extremophiles weakens a reliance on affirmation – these creatures exist regardless of where we put the boundry between living and non-living and they disrupt notions of discrete classification.
One of the largest discovered living organisms is Armillaria ostoyae, with one specimen occupying some 2,384 acres of land (Casselman, 2007). Possessing similar meta-qualities to extremophiles, Armillaria ostoyae puts a reliance on affirmation into question. To be more specific, we should look at the biology of this organism:
The fungus primarily grows along tree roots via hyphae, fine filaments that mat together and excrete digestive enzymes. But Armillaria has the unique ability to extend rhizomorphs, flat shoestringlike structures, that bridge gaps between food sources and expand the fungus’s [sic] sweeping perimeter ever more. (Ibid.)
Although this parasitic network expansion is fascinating, there is one quality omitted from this description; Armillaria ostoyae blooms the relatively benign looking honey mushroom. This is the quality that is most pertinent to the point I’m trying to articulate. Imagine going for a walk in the woods, for the sake Armillaria ostoyae, let’s say Eastern Oregon. As you amble through the wilderness, you notice a mushroom, nifty, you might even crouch down and have a look at it and admire its form and to the untrained eye (myself included) that’s the end of the story, you continue your stroll. The conceit to this of course is that the process of affirmation (viz. just looking at the mushroom) doesn’t and arguably cannot express the totality of Armillaria ostoyae. As it continues its parasitic creep underground, we’re only able to glean fragments of its existence via its sporadic blooms. In a similar manner to extremophiles, Armillaria ostoyae exposes the inadequacy of a world-view contingent on affirmation and categorisation.
Armillaria ostoyae (USDA Forst Service, 2007)
20 years have passed, and the 4th instalment of The Matrix is out; in that time the cynical optimism of fin-de-siècle art and media has waned and to a large extent many of the problems that the movement sought to expose are still persistent today...to an extent. Once more, I’ll do a whistle-stop tour of the latest addition to the trilogy turn quadrilogy. It was all just a dream The Matrix is a video game which follows the plot of the previous instalments of the franchise, the creator of this world is Thomas Anderson (formerly Neo). The Matrix as we knew it, was revealed to be the delusional power fantasy of an isolated and lonely game-developer. However, Anderson is plagued by vague memories centred on the events of the previous instalments of the franchise, believing them to be real – so much so that in an act of desperation he attempts to recreate Neo’s ability to fly, resulting in a near-suicidal experience and a subsequent referral to therapy. Large portions of plot later, abundant with slow-motion fighting and uh-oh it turns out The Matrix has been here the whole time. Anderson/Neo was kept in a fugue state in an experimental new approach that would increase the efficiency of human bio-cell power production. The progenitor of this new approach in a shocking twist, is Anderson’s therapist, also known as The Analyst.
The transition from The Architect unto The Analyst is something that could only have been possible with a two-decade hiatus between instalments. As mentioned earlier, the intentions of fin-de-siècle political and cultural paradigm shifts (of which the original trilogy was heavily enmeshed within) have waned and have largely been archived into history. The 4th instalment reflects this, but still maintains a position of exposing how hierarchy is constructed and more importantly how society can interface with this. The Architect embodies the modernist/ paternalistic tendency to structure society via a project-orientated methodology. The externalised position of The Architect almost begs for them to fulfil the role of antagonist, particularly in a film focused on collective awakening. And indeed, this would have been sufficient if the (myopic) tendencies of structural criticism had persisted in a linear manner. However, two decades into this new millennium and it’s apparent that this has not occurred – hierarchal institutions contingent of oppression persist. The Analyst reflects this, demonstrating a transition of the powers of institutions from an external position into an internal one.
In the second instalment of the franchise, The Architect assumes a dethatched position, to the extent that they function in a pseudo-panopticon, the choice to display them as such furthers an agenda that the structures of power are a discrete phenomenon that can be rationalised and in the case of the film be dealt and reconciled with. The Analyst’s more personable quality namely that they are manipulating Anderson/Neo’s emotional state blurs the previous assumption that oppressor/oppressed is a binary function. In the two-decade hiatus it’s become apparent that the structure of power has morphed; institutions and means of control have assumed a modality of the banal, so much so that they can be easily overlooked and obscured. Without getting into the murky terrain of political theory (as that is not the purpose of this writing) let us just say that the new modus operandi of The Matrix is that of subsuming itself into itself, the extent of its control is unknown, and the role of a determinable antagonist has been made redundant.
The Analyst (Wachowski, 2021)
There’s an abundance of literature detailing the celebritification of politics, and although fascinating, that is not the intention of this writing. Instead let’s recall that there’s a chunk of this writing focused on a big mushroom – in short, the antagonists of The Matrix are unto The Matrix what honey mushrooms are unto Armillaria ostoyae. Every time Neo confronts an antagonist, we as an audience are led to believe that this is the means for conflict resolution, however we can’t really understand why it keeps happening. The polymorphic qualities of the antagonists within the franchise suggests that recognition (of the structures of control) does not equate to reconciliation. Agent Smith (whom incidentally has a near-cameo status in the 4th instalment), The Architect and The Analyst are the blooms of a larger, obscured, network. If we’re to continue with the Armillaria ostoyae analogy, they’re mere fragments of a complex system, confrontation with them is superficial and to be dour, a waste of time.
This pessimistic conclusion could of course be read in terms of fatalistic resignation, the systems that surround us are far too complex to understand and when we think we’re reconciling with them, we’re acting out a fantasy of control. However, I would arguably be the worst sort of nihilist to write 1,600 words just to say it’s all for naught. Instead, perhaps an optimistic perspective might end this writing on a somewhat cheerier note. A flaw within the analogy of Armillaria ostoyae and The Matrix is that I implied there’s in infinitude to both. However, this is not the case, yes, Armillaria ostoyae destabilises the notion of discrete reason, but it’s certainly not supernatural to the extent that rationality vanishes. What Armillaria ostoyae introduces is more subtle, in short it alters the assumption of immediacy. If we’re to carry this logic over to The Matrix then we can see a similar phenomenon, yes, the simulation is vast and complex, but ultimately Neo is able to reason with it (namely his infamous ability to fly). With this in mind, let’s extrapolate this to the hungover fin-de-siècle world of politics we find ourselves in. Besieged by personalities, it’s easy to assume that immediate confrontation equates to reconciliation, and while I’m not proposing that those who hold positions of power should not be held accountable, I am suggesting that this may not be the end of the story. An altering of perspective, one contingent on the dreary, but nevertheless brilliant in its abstraction, world of data, beyond the scope of the ‘blooms’ of politics may well allow us to understand how hierarchy is formed and allow for the possibility of structural change.
Bibliography:
Casselman, A. (2007) ‘Strange but True: The Largest Organism on Earth Is a Fungus’, Scientific American, 4 October, Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/ (Accessed 7 April 2022).
Thacker, E. (2015) Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 2, Alresford: Zero Books.
Images:
Wachowski, L & Wachowski, L. (2003) The Matrix: Reloaded. USA: Warner Bros, Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234215/characters/nm0048127?ref_=tt_mv_close (Accessed 7 April 2022).
USDA Foerst Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. (2007), Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/ (Accessed 7 April 2022).
Wachowski, L. (2021) The Matrix: Resurrections. USA: Warner Bros, Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10838180/ (Accessed 28 April 2022)https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10838180/
Playing with Dead Things: Ode to Paul
To say that the genre of horror resides exclusively within the realm of ‘low’ culture might be somewhat of an oversimplification; however, it can also be argued that finding ‘high’ horror (to continue the use of an outdated binary) is difficult. One such reason for this is the very matter by which horror proliferates, for example, pulp novels, and schlock home-movie slasher films. But, paradoxically, the abstract, metaphorical content of horror often finds itself grappling with the loftiest notions of human culture; religion, aristocracy and wealth, to name a few. This awkward relationship, has, according to Eugene Thacker, resulted in a split within the horror genre where we find “extreme horror and supernatural horror, people doing things to people, and non-people doing things to people”. (Thacker, 2015, p.18) However, Thacker is hardly enforcing a binary and instead proposes that the “slipperiness” (ibid) between the two poles is where we find the most exciting and potent forms of horror.
Let’s travel back to the 1960s, specifically to the USA; Pop Art has destabilised the notion of propriety, celebrating camp, kitsch aesthetics, simultaneously the re-emergence of minimalism grappled with otherworldly, interdimensional geometry. In the middle, is the prodigal son, occupying Thacker’s terrain of “slipperiness”: Paul Thek and his Meat Pieces/Technological Reliquaries. An initial reading of Thek’s Meat Pieces can be twofold, on the one hand, Thek introduced an unwanted substance to the dethatched irony of Pop Art, most notably in Meat Piece with Warhol Brillo Box, while also defiling the pristine forms of Judd-esque sculptures as seen in Untitled. Thek’s indeterminate position, often wavering between two diametrically opposed schools of art, makes his oeuvre hard to classify, but that’s precisely the point and in his own words Thek stated: Occasionally there is a horror of my skin, an unpleasant surface, a loathing + a frustrated violence. But also there is the semblance of order + shiny functioning. The part between is the part to watch. (Thek, 1965, p.298)
Meat Piece with Brillo Box (Thek, 1965)
Untitled (Thek, 1966)
As exemplar as Thek was in bringing horror into the art-world, it would be erroneous to say that his work positioned itself neatly within the parameters of horror established by Thacker, instead we could propose that the Technological Reliquaries demonstrated a third branch of horror: people doing things to non-people. In order to substantiate this claim, let’s break down the components of Thek’s oeuvre. Firstly, by starting with their very name: Technological Reliquaries. “In Catholic tradition...reliquaries are sculptural containers intended to contain relics of the saints, often parts of their bodies” (Whitney Museum of American Art, 2021). The addition of the prefix ‘Technological’ recontextualises these unique forms for the modern era, while additionally suggesting a transition from the hitherto Catholic context of their existence.
Reliquary Arm of St. Valentine
With form determined, let us examine their function, which turns out to be rather strange. Firstly, we find that rotting flesh has been imbued with the desire for the cessation of time, that is, the allegory attached to the bodily parts of saints can be seen as a device to ignore the very immediate substance of decaying bodily parts. Secondly the meta quality of these objects, namely, notions of sublimation and the divine, appear to be at odds with the substance they’re composed of - the taboo ephemera of deceased humans. This argument could be enough to act as a basis for exposing the seemingly illogical qualities of the medieval, theistic perspective and indeed this venereal (pardon the pun) view has been used as a mode of argument typically situating itself within the Newtonian-Cartesian Paradigm. However, there is, within the reliquary, a surprisingly contemporary quality as illustrated by Caroline Walker Bynum:
In contrast to the modern tendency to draw sharp distinctions between animal, vegetable, and mineral, or between animate and inanimate, the natural philosophers of the Middle Ages understood matter as the locus of generation and corruption. (Walker Bynum, 2011, p.31)
This idea resonates well with the contemporary (re)emergence of pantheistic modes of thought, namely focusing on the destabilisation of the assumption that God and universe are separate entities. Returning to Thek’s work, however, it is important to state that the Technological Reliquaries aren’t purely mimetic, instead, they take the function of the reliquary and recontextualise it to a western perspective, still entrenched within the strict parameters of Enlightenment thinking. Instead of being ornate and celebratory (as was seen in their Catholic incarnation) Thek’s reliquaries, via the use of plexiglass and orthographic geometry adopt the cool, dethatched and clinical position of scientific investigation. Additionally, the subject matter being contained has morphed too, instead of being body parts, that, despite their degradation still maintained recognisability (even if it was in the form of allegory) Thek has instead displayed indeterminate and often fantastical, hunks of flesh. These two deviations served as an opportunity for the Meat Pieces to be simultaneously critical of the alienated and industrial world Thek was situated in while also allowing for a celebration of the spiritual qualities associated with folk culture, the latter of which would see it’s blossoming in Thek’s proto-participatory Processions.
However, the intention of this writing was to examine how Thek articulated horror within the world of visual arts. In order to articulate this point attention must be focused on the indeterminate subject contained within Thek’s vitrines. The term indeterminate has been repeated for a specific reason as, in conjunction with Julia Kristeva’s definition of abjection as that which “does not respect border, position [or] rules” (Kristeva, 1982, p.4) it becomes apparent that Thek is neither purely romantic, nor working entirely for shock. This point can be articulated by the theoretical notion that Thek could have used real meat within his containers, this would arguably serve the same function as a critique of capital and spiritual idealisation. However, the indeterminate nature of Thek’s Meat Pieces returns us to the initial proposal that Thek is articulating the third branch of horror: people doing things to non-people. Within abject theory, the term ‘non-people’ can be viewed as problematic, however, it is not the intent of this writing to reinforce the qualities evoked by societal abjection, nor is it to dismiss its internalisation as a form of resistance, instead, this writing seeks to expose the verb to abject as a form of horror-reconciliation.
Untitled (Four Tube Meat Piece) (Thek, 1964)
Contra to abjection’s ability to breakdown order, comes of course, the creation of classification. With Thek’s pristine containers in mind, once more we can refer to Kristeva, who states that “the speech of the phobic adult is also characterized by extreme nimbleness...Travelling at top speed over an untouched and untouchable abyss.” (p.41) This position reaffirms the notion that abjection isn’t merely the sensation of shock, but more importantly refers to the reconciliation of encounters that exceed assumed reality. Applying this to the Technological Reliquaries is quite easy: Thek’s indeterminate hunks of flesh function as the semiotic breakdown and the containers demonstrate a reconciliatory act that seeks to return to the subject/object binary. To expand on this notion and perhaps to relate it back to tropes existent within the horror genre we can say that the ‘meat’ within Thek’s work has been othered, or categorised into the non-zone of alien, the plexiglass vitrines serve as a clinical act of obsession, examining and categorising and ultimately containing these frightening encounters.
The dirty secret of the horror genre is that it is often contingent on allegory, with the ‘real’ horror not being immediate confrontations, be they monster, slasher or alien, but instead what lurks beneath the surface. This too can be applied to Thek’s oeuvre and by peeling away the layers we are rewarded with the horrors of abjection, not necessarily in the act of disgust, and certainly not in a manner, that in Thek’s own words “reek[ed] of guilt” (Thek, 1966, p.347) but instead in the act of control, containment and a neurotic adherence to classification. However, what Thek presents doesn’t fall into conventional categories of horror, which are typically anthropocentric, but instead Thek demonstrates, to a hyperbolic extent the horror of assumed norms.
Bibliography:
Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
Thek, P. (1965), in Brehm, M. (2008) Dear Baby – Dear Sister – Dear Susan Excerpts from Paul Thek’s Letters to Susan Sontag, in Falckenberg, H. and Weibel, P. (eds.) (2008) Paul Thek: artist’s artist. Hamburg: ZKM/Center for Art and Media.
Thek, P. (1966) Interview with Paul Thek. Interviewed by Gene R. Swenson for ARTnews, 2 April, pp. 35, 66-67, in Falckenberg, H. and Weibel, P. (eds.) (2008) Paul Thek: artist’s artist. Hamburg: ZKM/Center for Art and Media.
Thacker, E. (2015) Tentacles Longer Than Night: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 3, Alresford: Zero Books.
Walker Bynum, C. (2011) Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe, in Thacker, E. (2015) Tentacles Longer Than Night: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 3, Alresford: Zero Books.
Whitney Museum of Art (2021) ART & ARTISTS Paul Thek. Available at: https://whitney.org/collection/works/8323#:~:text=This%20untitled%20work%20is%20from,often%20parts%20of%20their%20bodies. (Accessed: 28 April 2022)
Images:
Thek, P. (1965) Meat Piece with Brillo Box. Available at: https://whitney.org/media/597 (Accessed 9 May 2022).
Thek, P. (1966) Untitled. Available at: https://whitney.org/collection/works/8323 (Accessed 9 May 2022).
Reliquary Arm of St. Valentine. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/464332 (Accessed 9 May 2022).
Thek, P. (1964) Untitled (Four Tube Meat Piece). Available at: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/paul-thek (Accessed 9 May 2022).