The funeral menu in R.I.P. Rest in Pieces, the portrayal of US artist Joe Coleman: Tete de souris crue - or mice with their own mouthes. Jrn Rossing Jensen reports
At his mother's funeral in 1989, US artist Joe Coleman took the attendants to a local cinema, where he screened 50s hardcore movies on a paper screen, only to burst through it, upside down, hanging in a harness from a rope in the ceiling.
Swinging over the audience, he lit some explosives placed on his body, setting off fires in the theatre - and when finally cut loose, he bit the heads off two mice, spitting out one among the audience and swallowing the other.
"Then the Boston Police burst in with the bomb squad, and I was charged with being in possession of an infernal machine," recalled Coleman (41), in Rotterdam as the subject of Robert-Adrian Pejo's documentary, R.I.P. Rest in Pieces.
"My performances are generally in two parts: what I want to express, and what the world makes out of it. The mice were my parents. I ate my mother's flesh and drank her blood as another J.C. had suggested."
In the 100th year of Count Dracula (still going strong with his own teeth), Pejo - the 33-year old Transsylvanian director, whose documentary, Road to Eden, won most audience votes at last year's Rotterdam Fest - has portrayed the controversial artist.
"I have always been attracted by extremes, and everything I heard about Coleman fit the definition. The way he paints gave the structure of the film - very intricate, utterly detailed, but without any predetermined composition," he explained.
Scripted by Walt Michelson and in close collaboration with the artist, the film was shot on New York locations and in Budapest on a US$600,000 budget, provided by the Austrian Film Commission and Austrian Television (ORF).
With a soundtrack by Hasil Adkins, Coleman's favourite composer, the film includes appearances by Jim Jarmusch (comparing him to William Blake), Junior - his adoptive son, an embryo kept in a non-returnable bottle - psychiatrist Martin Wilner and literature professor Harold Schechter, as well as ex-wives and ex-girlfriends.
Primarily a painter - in his own words "sort of medieval, definitely pre-industrialist - the only new invention I have real affection for is dynamite" - he is also a productive author of "illuminated manuscripts", an occasional performer and a collector of oddities.
Although a documentary with old footage sequences, R.I.P. Rest in Pieces, per Pejo, is close to a feature film, with "lots of little pieces completing the puzzle" of Coleman, concluding by the artist performing his own autopsy.
[Home ] [Content ] [The Sponsors ] [The Team ] [Comments ] [Help ]
