I’m suddenly aware of my true artistic purpose: to survive the temptations of the past opening up in blatant integrity. The yes, the no, the not yet are still very challenging as my nature is a paradox of mental impatience coupled with a physical lack of verve. But everything moves at such high speed, and the moment fades as fast as my camera’s shutter so I have no time for defending old beliefs and assumptions. What comes up to my eye is reckless, and sometimes offensively bold, but if I censor the input or pay too much attention to the detail, if I black out in allegiance, trying to appear perfect, trying to get public attention, I become part of the majority that loses the day and closes the window to the wondrous failure that art is, that love is, that life is.
Despite the collateral damage, I was able enough to bounce, to take the leap, to bear off from the death house and wave my flag of rebellion from the distance. I’m still awfully scared, but I’ve never felt so mindful, so willing to put up with the truth of what is at hand. Faithfully, precisely, immediate and even religiously. So ready to conjure reality in it’s wholeness: thunder and shadow.
Txema Rodríguez
photographer
Thunder and shadow
Thersites
Luka gouged Nastia’s mauve eyes with a dented knife and put them into a ziploc, right after the body heavily hit the floor, just as Konstantin ordered -not only a proof of death, but also a fetish-, washing his blood stained hands pouring a bottle of mineral water over them and the blade.
He drove from Jávea to Alicante, entering the port harbor at half past five.
Konstantin was waiting his arrival at the deck of the yacht and held out his left hand without even looking at him.
‘Ladno’, he said, and threw the ziploc bag overboard.
No checking, no touching. Anything at all.
That night he got drunk as usual. He cried and babbled in Russian on the silicone breast of a Dominican prostitute, feeling like a ghost. Feeling weary and sold out.
Next day he found Nastia’s lover and hit his face until he spit half his teeth to the ground and the jaw was broken into three pieces.
Luka used to read Nietzsche before engaging the mob.
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster”. What a truth.
He also used to love Nastia from a distance.
Luka has always been a faithful servant. Utterly devoted. Silent. Stoic.
Now he is almost in his way back to the East. The train is leaving in about ten minutes.
Every man has a limit, even though it makes him a deserter, a runaway, a renegade, the next target shot.
He misses Mamulya a lot. She is like death itself. She always has some borscht to put on the table and a warm, quiet, forgiving embrace. Kak pazhivayesh, VazliublEnnyj Luka?
Every man has a a word, a heart, a limit and a mother waiting for him at home, somewhere.
Ya sebya nekhorosho chuvstvuyu, Mamulya.
Ya sebya nekhorosho chuvstvuyu.
T.R
It’s what I can’t name in these photographs what haunts me when I am not watching them.
All the questions that rise up (stories, exotic nature of strangers, serendipious glimpses of night dreams) are symbols of my faith. All this beauty offered to me, all these secrets, tangled, abounded, inexhaustible, like mirages over the shadows of a desert.
Kinky comforts
It all started decades before failing in love with you. As a child, being true to my desire and asserting my will would lead to bitter harvests. It was my choice to be your servant so I could forget myself and rest from the burdens of responsibility.
I made you my only focus. You scheduled my breath. You payed the bills. You named my needs and picked up the suitable toys: the collar, the crop, the handcuffs.
I could secretly blame you for all mistakes while rejoicing in moral superiority.
You were the iron curtain before all things forbidden and disquieting. You set the rules to follow with subtle or blunt narcissistic chinoiserie, depending on the days, depending on your moods.
Safe, sane limits saved my craving for perfection from unexpected blunder.
But, was it really of mutual agreement? I was so eager to please, emotionally numb, voiceless and narcotized. I can barely remember what I really wanted, if I really wanted anything at all.
Maybe the problem is a virtual absence of desire. Maybe you were just a woeful detour in the search for God.
Some nights my mind feels like a a play of macabre and horrific nature. I won’t forget you hold hostages. From time to time I wonder about your new acolyte and imagine the terms of the actual bondage, praying for him.
Now, what? Now that I am truly loved, what?
Now that I’ve realized I had always been the master, what?
Sometimes I look at the mirror and I see a lottery winner with no aim, a door-to-door salesman faking the perfect smile. At last, I resolve to pay the ransom and talk to you respectfully.
It’s raining heavily in Las Vegas now. A young couple has just got married in a quirky chappel near the liquor store. Elvis lights a cigarette as they turn the corner and the small bouquet shrivels on top of a garbage dump.
Psychology of mass murder
Keep the gun in the bag. Sit down there and wait. Take a mental account of humilliations.
Remember the time she laughed at your face. Remember the time the russian doll faked it and then said while putting her bra on: you have plenty of time to make it grow thick and hard.
Think of all that people looking at you from the privileged stance. Think of the taste of being dumped. Feed your resentment as you would feed a wild animal in a cage. Let your anger set off slowly.
Plan everything about the killings. Imagine yourself taking out the gun and killing as many people as possible in the least time. Stockpile ammunition. Let the sense of failure creep up and blow your mind. Make yourself a man through destruction.
Photographers and reporters will make you the whole focus of attention. You will always be remembered. Your face will be shown to the whole world with a soundtrack of sirens blaring.
They will give the killing massive coverage. The blood spilled and the body count will be the leading story of the season. Come on. Stand up. Load your gun. Choose your first target. Start shooting. Think of all those nerds deconstructing your background in lectures.
He was a lonely boy. His father was abusive. His mother was alcoholic. No one cared a dime.
Make this your turn. They will shoot anyway.
Dressing Tunick up (or how to make crazy money as a photographer)
Consciously develop a pattern of grandiosity in both fantasy and behaviour.
Seek for admiration or adulation.
Feel entitled to success and notoriety.
Get as many people as possible to be part of your pictures.
Get as many people as possible to see them.
Get them naked (play with their need for love, approval, self-comparison, rebellion, narcissistic supply).
Be sure they are average.
Get yourself arrested several times for disorderly conduct.
Make your lawyer get all your charges dropped for the sake of art.
Make the whole crap newsworthy. Make the front pages of almost every national newspaper.
Call it an ‘installation’.
Work at sunrise when the traffic jams are utterly annoying.
Establish a record of naked people.
Then establish a record of naked people in a single photograph.
Then beat your own record.
Unintentionally recall the photos from Nazi concentration camps.
Remember that it’s not the telling but the showing that counts.
Hire or invite celebrity guests to your installations.
Proclame yourself an artist, regardless of true merit.
Define the whole thing as “a living organism of hundreds of bodies forming a landscape, the relationship between the anonymity of public space and the human body”.
Rinse and repeat.
Anyone can do it.
The eighty folds of oblivion
Who are you?
Where am I?
Don’t tell me I have the age I deserve.
I slowly crossed the street.
I slowly took the spoon to the mouth.
I wanted to be clean this morning.
I wanted fresh lavander water on my hair.
Who is that staring at me from the other side?
How did you get me to this noisy place?
Where do we come from?
What is your name?
I feel like drowning, so confused.
How is that thing called.
In his hands.
Take me home, I don’t want to be late.
You look familiar. What’s your name?
I can’t remember your name.
Don’t stare at me.
Where’s my soup?
What happened to the table?
