Worms Weekly
“A Girl’s Best Friend” photo series by Margot Quan Knight (2002)
Arcadia Molinas
New Perspectives with Philippa Snow - Francis Bacon and Two Figures in a Room
In this podcast Philippa Snow discuss the relationship between sadomasochistic sex and the act of painting.
“The human nervous system was a fervent and perennial obsession for Bacon.”
“The painting’s rumoured source material makes it doubly piquant [...] academics have suggested that the artists drew his inspiration for the shapes of the two bodies in the image from a contemporary press photograph of a man being mauled and eaten by a lion.”
Philippa Snow x Dirt: On Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl: Psycho Killer
What if I told you that the author of the acclaimed novel turned TV show Gossip Girl reimagined her world of the teenage New York elite to include murder in a quasi-American Pyscho way? At the very least, I wouldn’t be lying when I said she did, and published it.
Caitlin McLoughlin
I really enjoyed this extract from Life Without Air, a collection of poetry by Daisy Lafarge, which has been on my TBR foreverrr. In this interview she explains how the book came out of her PhD research into pathogens. I love the way she conceives of her poetry in relation to her academic research: ’Writing poems has always been a side pursuit to what I am supposed to be doing academically, and so I think at times it has acted as a kind of slough or marginalia, a place for the unprocessed language and imagery that isn’t finished with me yet, or that I feel wants to ‘play’ in some way that it can’t in its original context.’
Arcadia Molinas
Which as you Know Means Violence: On Self-Injury as Art and Entertainment by Philippa Snow
October Worms Bookclub pick.
Reading this is so much fun because I’m putting the book down every other page and googling all these fabulous artists, sketches, youtube clips and my jaw is dropping to the floor all the time. I love a book that makes you stop reading all the time… so that you can do some independent research (enter Olivia Laing’s Funny Weather). Her writing is hilarious too:
“One might argue - if one happened to be open to wild leaps of critical logic, favouring spirited interpretations over sane ones - that the scene [in reference to a Jackass sketch] not only challenges masculinity, but feminises him [Johnny Knoxville], his passivity and nudity and coy deportment all reminding us that usually, it is women who are naked, coy and passive in TV shows and the movies.”
Pierce
Pierce
I’m Open to Anything by William E. Jones
A very *explicit* coming of age story, yet still as gentle as any other I’ve ever read. Moving from the ‘wasteland’ of the midwest by tracing a large 500mile circle around the centre point of his hometown, William E. Jones decides anything within this radius is alienating. So, he moves to Los Angeles and along the journey meets friends and sexual counterparts that reveal a world of intense festishes that he soon comes to enjoy. Building intimate relationships with favoured partners, fisting them and then afterward getting tackout tacos and talking about life and death, Jones’ story is set to a pace of ‘wandering’, slowly striding thoughtfully through questions of his religious upbringing, the role of technology in pornographic cinema, and immigration by his partners experiences; set to the backdrop of a homophoic, racisit and stigmatsing America.
Arcadia Molinas
Cerdita (Piggy) by Carlota Martínez-Pereda
This film rocked Sitges, everyone was talking about it and I just had to see it. (Enter Sean Baker tweet)
In preparation for it I saw the short film the director would later turn into a film, you can watch it here.
BUT… I didn’t really like the feature film as much as the short. The revenge trope didn’t live up to its potential and a lot of the climactic scenes felt awkward to watch. The titillating possibilities opened up by the short were quite shallow when explored in depth in the film and save for a few good performances (imo not the main character’s) the premise promised a lot but failed to deliver on a lot of fronts. Still well worth a watch.
British Lads Hit Each Other with Chair
(As seen in ‘Which as you Know Means Violence’)
Hear me out. This is high art. This video is literally what it says (but so much more too) so watch at your own discretion.
Beauty (Ft. Simone Weil) by Johanna Hedva
This is wonderfully absurd, profound and groovy.
Harmony Korine on the David Letterman Show
(As seen in ‘Which as you Know Means Violence’)
Starring, “bacon is my aesthetic”,
“yeah I like the phone book, it’s good” and “I wanted to write a great American novel, or just a novel, well I just wanted it to be American”.
Pierce
A story of adolescent love, I wasn’t immediately convinced of how powerful the relationship was between our two protagonists, but soon – somewhere during the old cottage out of Paris time – came to believe how ‘real’ it was for Camille than Sullivan. I mean, they’re both beautiful and when the roles are flipped later in the movie, when *spoiler ahead* Sullivan is deeply attached to Camille (who he previously left) and still chooses to leave again, I was satisfied. The portrait of Camille becoming more sympathetic was generous considering she was wise for her age in previous years, however her portrait unfortunately became more apathetic toward the end. She doesn’t tell her current husband of the affairs she attends to with Sullivan when he returns on the scene, and after being heartbroken again she remains in the relationship with no showing sign of attending to this deceit. Instead, in the final scenes, she drifts down a lake as if wanting to be forgotten completely.
A mysterious and twisted love story, I thought I was walking into a thriller murder mystery but was happily rewired to think on the turmoil of unrequited love. The aesthetic created by Park Chan-wook is elegant, and as the narrative treachery and betrayal continued to form I became more fascinated in the transpiring connection between the main protagonists. *Gentle spoiler ahead* Although a love story, they never share speak that sentiment with one another, there is no sex scenes, and they only have one kiss on the edge of a cliff (more anxiety endusing than relaxing).
Caitlin McLoughlin
A kind of coming-of-age horror by director Julia Ducournau about a vegetarian who turns cannibal, her urges for human flesh inextricably intertwined with her newly forming sexuality. It's super disturbing but honestly amazing. Julia Ducournau is so good. I watched her second film Titaine in the cinema earlier this year, equally fucked up and mesmerising. She is incredible at characters that do terrible things, yet are still empathetic.
