The Divine Punishment (1986) by Diamanda Galás. Design by Paul White/Me Company.
What the Catholic League and certain members of the House presumably wish to remove from their consciousness is thirty years of death sentences handed down to their parishioners and citizenry, who were told not to wear condoms, and the mistreatment of those stigmatized as miscreants and sinners by their viral status and/or homosexuality and/or status as drug addicts.
• Diamanda Galás responds in her usual forthright manner to the censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s film (and her music which accompanied it) by the Catholic League and members of the House of Representatives earlier this week. Related: Demonstrators gather to protest removal of Wojnarowicz art from NPG | Is the censored David Wojnarowicz video really ‘anti-Christian’? | Vengeance is hers: a conversation with Diamanda Galás.
• Update: Hide/Seek: Too shocking for America. One of the exhibition curators speaks out against the censorship.
“Their attitude is: ‘Next time you think of writing about sex, don’t,'” said Susie Bright, who was the editor of the Best American Erotica anthology series for 15 years. “I can’t think of any other fundamental human experience that writers would be encouraged to keep to themselves.” Melissa Katsoulis, a literary reviewer for the Times of London, certainly seemed to conform to Bright’s impression when asked to comment on the award by the BBC: “Sex is a subject best avoided altogether,” she said. “If I was writing a novel, I wouldn’t attempt to write it except in the most Victorian and prim way, because it’s awful. It’s a cliché, but the moments of genuine frisson in books are when hardly anything happens.” Speak for yourself, missy.
• Laura Miller dissing the Literary Review‘s annual Bad Sex Award. Good to find more voices being raised against this drivel and the admission of failure which it implies.
• The latest offbeat experiment from filmmaker David Lynch: pop singles. He gets crazy with the vocoder here. Related: David Lynch talks new music projects.
Scena Illustrata (1914). Cover by Ezio Anichini (?). Via this set of magazine covers from 1880–1920.
• Tumblrs of the week: Heart Killer and Pretty Pictures from the Paleo-Future Blog.
• The Big Picture’s 2010 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.
• National Geographic‘s Best Underwater Views of 2010.
• A seasonal gift from a famous Northampton resident.
• Paris versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities.
• This is your browser on drugs.
• Double-Barrel Prayer (1988) by Diamanda Galás, with a video directed by the late Peter Christopherson.