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“William Golding has taught us a devastating lesson: to NEVER leave prepubescent boys alone in a make-believe paradise without any kind of adult supervision. But in Michael’s fairy tale, all the heroes are young boys. Grown ups and little girls are totally excluded. The plains and ruins of Oklahoma are swarming with emaciated, half-naked ghost soldiers, all lined up, awaiting another spin in the meatgrinder. Their paper features are burnt, scribbled and crossed out; the tissues ripped apart, corroded and faded; eyes gouged and hollow; torsos disemboweled from the pelvic regions up to the undeveloped adam’s apples. They sometimes comes off as mere victims, unlucky toddlers trapped within a nightmarish limbo, but there are also signs of cockiness and infantile cruelty; they are all potential predators preying on each other in a dog- eat-dog world.
It’s tempting to assume that Michael’s creation is a means to deal with an outer threat, a world he can’t connect to and must reinvent according to his own will and desires. Like another phantasmagoric mind, that of American outsider artist Henry Darger, Michael is the judge, jury and executioner of his puppetry. He can change his allegiance from good to evil, playing the grim oppressor and then willingly reverse the roles and side with his sacrificial victim.”
- Martin Bladh, from his foreword to “Childhood”
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Info:
Published by Infinity Land Press
Release date: September 21st 2015
180 Page Book
Limited edition
Soft cover
Size: 210mm x 297mm
ISBN: 978-0-9927366-3-7
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About the book:
"Childhood" is the first comprehensive monograph of artist and filmmaker Michael Salerno's photographic works. Featuring work spanning almost a decade - many never before published, as well as new works created especially for this book - "Childhood" also features an in-depth interview with the artist and a foreword by Martin Bladh.
Available as a Standard Limited Edition or Collector's Edition (signed, numbered and featuring a DVD which contains a new video work created especially for this book).
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Book trailer:
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Images of the book:
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An extract from Martin Bladh’s interview with Michael Salerno:
Martin Bladh: You are a multimedia artist and have expressed yourself through photography, collage, music and film. Could you tell me a bit about your artistic background and why you chose the mediums that you did?
Michael Salerno: My artistic background, if you could call it that, stems from me being alone in my bedroom as a child, making things. I never went to art school or anything like that. I didn’t even finish high school. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve been making things: films and videos, sound recordings, making artwork for records that either did or didn’t exist, etc. When I was about eight years old, my family got a video camera and I started filming what was outside my bedroom window, from inside. I’ve been doing this pretty much constantly ever since. Filming the sky, the weather, whatever’s happening out there that’s interesting to me. I probably have about a hundred hours of footage accumulated over the years. I like windows. Well, not really windows, although I’m very happy they exist or I wouldn’t be able to see outside, but I like filming things through windows. I like rain and fog on a window. I like to see images of people looking out windows.
Martin Bladh: Your work seems to be steeped in nostalgia, maybe a mourning over a lost world of wonders, a Never-never land of childhood? I also detect an aversion towards growing up, there is something innocent, Peter Pan-like about you.
Michael Salerno: I don’t actually see nostalgia as being a component in my work at all. My work feels very present and immediate to me. I’m expressing things that are happening now, not really in the past. And I’m very happy to be a grown up, even though I am a bit like a big kid sometimes. Haha! People always say that childhood is the happiest time of your life, like it automatically implies a time of being innocent, carefree and joyful, which I don’t necessarily agree with. I think childhood is kind of suffocating, confusing and frustrating in many ways. You have no power when your a child, you’re not in control of practically anything in regards to your external life, so you’re essentially a prisoner in a lot of ways. When I was a child, I found everything extremely overwhelming, just simple things like having to get up and go to school, normal stuff like that. I struggled to do the things that were expected of me and I struggled to fit in with other kids. Don’t get me wrong, I still struggle with these things, but it’s a bit easier now that I’m older. So, I’m not one of those people who yearn to return to their childhood at all. If there is a bit of mourning or nostalgia for childhood that I experience in my personal life, it’s more the mourning for a kind of “fake” childhood that doesn’t really exist, the kind of childhood that only exists in movies and TV shows. But I don’t really see that figuring into my work at all.
Martin Bladh: I believe that many people find the eroticism in your art deeply problematic, as it is entirely centered on children. Would you like to comment on that? What kind of reactions do you get?
Michael Salerno: People like to think of childhood as a time devoid of sexuality, for some reason, but that was never my experience and it didn’t seem to be the experience of other kids as I was growing up either. I mean, of course children don’t have an adult sexuality, they have a child’s sexuality, and there is a big distinction between the two, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. I think the inner life of a child is no less multifaceted and complicated than that of an adult, so that’s the way children are depicted in my work. I just allow all of these complexities to be there. Childhood is a period of abstraction and deep mystery. You don’t comprehend things in quite the
same way as you do when you’re an adult, so your understanding of things is more purely felt. The way you process experiences, emotions and feelings is extremely visceral. Information doesn’t pass through the intellect the way it does in an adult, as you’re still developing and don’t have a large memory bank of experience. Kids are kind of psychic too, I think. Information is received as energy. So, I find it ridiculous the way children are generally depicted as little more than one-dimensional and emotionally retarded. You see it in films all the time, as well as in culture in general. They’re like cute little props, only representative of innocence. It’s like you can only depict a child as being depthless, like a happy retard, otherwise it becomes problematic for people. I don’t remember feeling any different as a child than I do now as an adult. In fact, sometimes I think I felt things a lot deeper then than I do now. The older you get, the more disconnected you get in a lot of ways. It becomes easier to function, some of the mystery dissipates.
To get back to your question, I’m happy that my work creates a response. I want people to feel something when they see it. I understand that there’s a fusion of sexuality and violence that some people find problematic in my work, but these people just seem to be reading it in a very superficial way to me, just reacting to their first impressions and not being willing to dig a little deeper. I mean, I understand why. There’s trouble under the surface. And it’s a trouble that’s present in all of us. Let’s face it, it’s going to end badly for everyone. People don’t want to think about these things. But what they can miss sometimes, and this is pretty key to understanding my work, is that these works are all expressions of an internal space, they are representative of an inner landscape. I’m not so interested in the outside world. And these are very personal works. They’re about me. I’m not interested in making statements or stuff like that. I’m interested in what goes on inside.
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Collector’s edition DVD Preview:
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Links:
- Infinity Land Press
- The book's Official Facebook Page
- Michael Salerno Website
- Essay/review of “Childhood” on American Suburb X
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p.s. Hey. I'm very, very happy today to let the blog help usher maestro Michael Salerno's (aka Kiddiepunk's) stunning and brand spanking new book 'Childhood' into the whole world. I've got my copy, and it's way beautiful and mind-blowing in the way only Michael's work can be, as you surely can already tell from the tasters up above. Needless to say, getting yourself a copy is imperative if the means to do so are yours at all, so feast on the post and get on that. Yes. ** Douglas Payne, Hi, man. The Reddonet might have your name on it. It just might. So you did get drenched. Me too, on the rain vs. scorching. I hate summer. Nice in theory, but in practice, nope. Lit mags? I'll send a shout out. I pretty much only read online lit mags these days, partly because I'm over here where physical lit mags aren't easy to score but mostly because that's where most of the writers I'm interested in put their stuff. And there are a bunch, although I don't know how their submission policies work: Entropy, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Fanzine, Real Pants, Enclave, dark fucking wizard, Shabby Doll House, ... Everyone, If you have any thoughts, tips, and ideas about lit magazines where you would recommend that Douglas Payne submit his writings, it would be awesome if you could mention them in the comments today. Thanks a lot! ** Étienne, Hey! It was really, really great getting to meet you and talk and everything else the other day! Ah, the great Donald Judd, yes. Have you been to Marfa? I haven't, but it's a longtime dream/plan, obviously. Heather Lewis, yeah. She was a very interesting writer. I did a reading with her once. My favorite of hers is 'Notice', the novel that was published posthumously. 'House Rules', her first, is quite good too. That piece you linked to on Heather by Dale Peck is very, very good. Her knew her well, and he has a very sharp read on her work and life. ** H, Hi. Yes, and of course I wanted to know what the Unknown Museum was about, and course there was nothing online to tell me, so it was kind of a perfect construction or something. Unless I'm forgetting, I don't believe I know that Maurice Scève book, no. I will search for what I can find about it. Thank you for the alert. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Yes, very sad about Jack Larson. I think I must have already told you that I knew him a bit for a while in the '80s. A relative of mine was one of the stars of James Bridges' films 'Urban Cowboy' and 'Mike's Murder', and whenever she came to town, I usually had dinner with her, Larson, Bridges, and others. He was just an absolutely lovely, warm, terrific guy. ** James, Hi. Yeah, I think the Burt Reynolds ex-Museum won the saddest looking prize at the very least. Well, in Wayne's defense, I get emails from young writers asking for advice at least three, sometimes more times a week. They're usually great, thoughtful, very sympathetic emails that deserve attentive, thoughtful replies. But I almost never have time on the spur of the moment to write back in the way they want, and I tell myself that I'll do that shortly, and the emails pile up, and I end up rarely ever answering them. I feel bad about it, but I'm just not the kind of person who's going to jot off some quickie email telling them thanks for writing and good luck, which is all I really have time to do. I either want to respond to them with care and with actual help, or I can't do it. We all have ways whereby we try to help newer writers and artists. Wayne does it through teaching, and probably in other ways. I suppose I have the blog where I think one of its purposes is to be supportive to the writers and artists who hang out here. I'm just saying that if Wayne not having written back to you makes him an asshole, then I'm easily as big of an asshole as he is. Yes, I knew Don and Christopher a little. Don drew my portrait back in the '80s, but he must not have liked it because I never saw it anywhere after that. Yes, we're on for this weekend. Everything's set up and ready to go. ** Tosh, Hi, T. Hope you're settling back in LA comfortably. Paris has a lot of small, odd, and wonderful museums, as I'm sure you know. I forget, have you been to the Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature here? It's easily one of my favorite museums in the world, and you should visit next time you're here, if you haven't already. ** Bill, Ooh, that sounds great. The gig. I really love that recent album by Lee that Stephen O. put out on his label Ideologic Organ. I heard about that Corsano album w/ Sakata, O'Rourke, et. al. The biggish experimental music superstar combo, usually with O'Rourke somewhere in the line-up, seems to really be a thing of late. ** Kyler, Hi. I would suspect that Kane in French given my shitty French would be pretty tough. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I read just a little about the Cameron/pig thing. I don't know. I despise Cameron and everything he stands for, but if it's just about him being one of a group of rich college kids putting their dicks in a dead pig's mouth, I sort feel like, So what? At least half of the slaves in the monthly posts either do or want to do much odder things than that. But if it's to do with some larger thing, as you said, and I don't know anything about that, I guess that's something else. Thanks for the link. I did miss it for some reason. Everyone, d.l. and artist _Black_Acrylic has a thing he recommends to you. Please follow his lead. Here he is: 'my London-based anarchist punk friend Chris Low posted this delightful clip to Facebook of the Shoreditch Experimental Music School 1969.' ** Thomas Moronic, Yeah, right? That's why I tried in almost every case to just put photos of the dead museum's exteriors to hide and spook-up whatever was in them. Nice weekend, yeah. Sweet. ** Steevee, Hi. No, I've never found Lana Del Ray's stuff very interesting at all. Just a taste thing, obviously. If I decide to revisit her stuff seriously, I think I'll concentrate on an earlier album, from what you said. ** Keaton, Ouch. Big ouch. Sure, the Republique statue is pretty tall, and the ground is pretty hard. Especially if he fell on his head, which I guess he did. ** Statictick, Yeah, that's what I was thinking: drunks not thinking right. Cool about the still-impending post. Thank you muchly. And a Scrappy and friends one sounds good too, natch. ** Derek McCormack, Hi, Derek! I"m so happy that you liked it! I was thinking of you when I was making it, in fact, no joke. Love, me. ** Misanthrope, Good question. I guess if you eat a ton, it has to go somewhere, and so the 'roids are like the fat's traffic cops? ** Okay. Imbibe, gawk, gobble, comment upon, and so forth re: Michael Salerno's mastery until further notice, please. See you tomorrow.