We're Not Crazy — Robert Longo, ZG magazine and the long tendrils of No Wave
Mapping underground connections with past periodicals...
Back in the late-ish 1990s, I put out a one-shot zine called Majestic Carnal Backwash. On the front and back cover, I reappropriated images from Robert Longo. I can’t remember from where I cut them out, but on the front I used one that featured a woman in the throes of a violent spasm, or perhaps dodging a bullet, and on the reverse was a man in a suit being hung from an invisible noose (the necktie remains innocent). I placed these striking images in fields of visual static. [I’m not sure if I’ve ever scanned them, but I’m 99% sure I have the originals, still.] At the time, I didn’t know the name of Longo’s series (Men in the Cities), just that these images struck a nerve deep inside. Within these pictures, there is a sense of rapture achieved, but only through violence—the arching panic of avoidance, the sudden movement of escape, but also an acceptance of pain, of discomfort and the reality of being targeted.
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