You Killed Me First: The Cinema of Transgression (2012) [English/German]

“Basically, in one sentence, give us the definition of the ‘Cinema of Transgression’.” Nick Zedd: “Fuck you.”

Nightmarish scenarios of violence, dramatic states of mind, and perverse sexual abysses – the films of the Cinema of Transgression that were consciously aimed at shock, provocation, and confrontation, bear witness to an extraordinary radicality. In the 1980s a group of filmmakers from the Lower East Side in New York went on a collision course with the conventions of American society. Transcending all moral or aesthetic boundaries, the low budget films reveal social hardship met with sociopolitical indifference. Sometimes shot with stolen camera equipment, the films contain strident analyses of life in the Lower East Side defined by criminality, brutality, drugs, AIDS, sex, and excess. The catalogue is published on the occasion of the worldwide first exhibition on the Cinema of Transgression, You Killed Me First at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin.

The catalogue includes contributions by Sylvère Lotringer, Carlo McCormick, Jonas Mekas, Susanne Pfeffer, Jack Sargeant, Nick Zedd and collages by Leonard Neumann LSD.

Edited by Susanne Pfeffer
Publisher KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin, and Walther Koenig, Cologne, 2012
ISBN 3863351576
176 pages

Video from exhibition (3 min)

Exhibition
Publisher

PDF (110 MB, no OCR, updated on 2016-12-23)

Georges Bataille: Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1957–) [FR, ES, EN, IT, PT]

Taboo and sacrifice, transgression and language, death and sensuality—Georges Bataille pursues these themes with an original, often startling perspective. He challenges any single discourse on the erotic. The scope of his inquiry ranges from Emily Bronte to Sade, from St. Therese to Claude Levi-Strauss and Dr. Kinsey; and the subjects he covers include prostitution, mythical ecstasy, cruelty, and organized war. Investigating desire prior to and extending beyond the realm of sexuality, he argues that eroticism is “a psychological quest not alien to death.”

First published in French as L’Érotisme, Éditions de Minuit, 1957.
This edition published within Oeuvres complètes. Tome 10 (pp 1-270), together with Le procès de Gilles de Rais and Les larmes d’Éros.
Publisher Gallimard, 1987
734 pages

English edition
Translated by Mary Dalwood
The first edition in English was published as Death and Sensuality: a Study of Eroticism and the Taboo, Walker and Company, NY, 1962.
Publisher City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1986
ISBN 0872861902, 9780872861909
280 pages

Review (Mark Price, Philosophy Now)

L’Érotisme (French, 1957/1987). Alt link.
El erotismo (Spanish, transcript, trans. María Luisa Bastos, 1960)
Erotism: Death & Sensuality (English, trans. Mary Dalwood, 1962/1986)
L’erotismo (Italian, transcript, trans. Adriana dell’Orto, 1962)
O erotismo (Portuguese, trans. Antonio Carlos Viana, 1987)

Sergey Merkurov: Soviet Erotic Alphabet (1931)

The so-called Sovetskaya eroticheskaya azbuka [Soviet Erotic Alphabet] by the monumentalist sculptor Sergei Dmitrievich Merkurov (1881-1952), the author of numerous monuments to Stalin (including the three largest in the USSR) and Lenin.

Так называемая «Советская эротическая азбука» скульптора-монументалиста Сергея Дмитриевича Меркурова (1881—1952) — автора многочисленных монументов И. В. Сталину (в том числе трех самых крупных на территории СССР) и В. И. Ленину. Знаменитая и крылатая фраза: “В СССР секса нет” имела скорее всего политическую подоплёку. Если самого Лаврентия Берию можно назвать продолжателем дела “секс-машины” Григория Распутина, то, напротив, добропорядочного советского гражданина Сергея Дмитриевича Меркурова, лауреата нескольких сталинских премий, – «строго засекреченным русским Байросом». Данную папку он подписал на обложке: акварельные рисунки И.И. Иванова (1886-1924) и даже указал годы его жизни. Как будто, это имело какое-то значение для работников “карающего меча революции”. Чувствуется сильное влияние французской и южно-немецкой школ живописи.

Commentary: Ross Wolfe (2013)
Erotic Alphabets: A Bibliography (Josh Honn)

Published in 1931
36 pages
via raruss.ru

PDF