Bubble Entrendre
MARK WAUGH (2009)
Bubble Entendre* as a novel operates as a satellite capturing data from the cultural landscapes in which as a curator and artist Mark Waugh has located a range of artworks, from performance to film and installation. It is the most complete archive of these activities and yet immerses this history in the fragmentation of a corpus.
Whilst many of the artworks he has made are ephemeral, the book remains and is therefore a particular trope of place in which the body works and continues to produce a catalogue of involuntary spasms like a hanged man or sashimi octopus.
1. A siege at Claridge’s in 2012 replaces the Olympics as end of the world TV spectacle.
2. Hard-boiled noir meets classic French theory as a zombie author transgresses the outer limits of postmodern fiction. The warped narrative plunges from art house to grindhouse and back again.
3. An insanely unofficial fictional updating of Derrida’s Of Grammatology. Think 24 Hour Party People as directed by Kenneth Anger after he’d croaked and crawled on all fours through the furthest recesses of hell.
Brazen sadists, high-flying hopheads, invisible strippers and the destiny of objects are just some of the themes tackled by Mark Waugh in Bubble Entendre, a tripartite, literary bender. Dirty, dingy, Wilhelm Reich might have penned this book.
Bubble Entendre is published as part of Book Works’ Semina series (No.3). Edited by Stewart Home.