Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has spent much of his career creating “one-minute sculptures,” in which people hold awkward positions with random objects. Many involve people sticking their head through pieces of furniture–couches, TV stands, chairs, mini-refrigerators. Others require holding an unwieldy coffee table, crouching under a large cabinet, standing in garbage cans, leaning against a toilet plunger, or wearing a bucket on their head. One is called “Stand Quiet and Look Out Over the Mediterranean Sea,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Wurm’s work is absurd, hilarious, provocative, and invites people to think about their relationships to objects and what it means to, well, look absolutely ridiculous. It’s easy to roll your eyes and think of Wurm as a modern art hack and troll, but if you take just a second longer to think about it, you can appreciate his genius. This is also the way we appreciate low-budget trash genre films that are well beneath people who think they have taste. Anyone can love North by Northwest, but it takes a true intellectual to appreciate Fuck the Devil 2: Return of the Fucker.
Vernon Chatman, co-creator of Wonder Showzen and producer of South Park and Trigger Warning with Killer Mike, among others, did what us mere mortals have only dreamed to do: he wrote four scripts and sent each to a DIY porno production company to produce them. There was only one instruction: Stick to the script. Everything else, do whatever. The result, Final Flesh, is essentially an Erwin Wurm sculpture, only it’s 70 minutes long. It’s an exercise in Dada-level nonsense and absurdity, only with more nudity. It’s clever, hilarious, and at times, oddly poignant. This film is basically a raging drunk uncle who accidentally says something meaningful in between belches and hitting awkwardly on the Applebee’s waitress. Final Flesh is a psycho-sexual family pastiche with flashes of peen, armpit sniffing, cantaloupes that are pulled out of panties, a steak named Mr. Peterson (which is breast-fed), oral sex, flashes of peen, a literal weiner (aka a hot dog), a plot point where the entire universe is killed in a Spanish boating accident, a woman who wears eight pairs of underwear, and a mason jar filled with the tears of neglected children, which is next to the mason jar filled with angel blood, which is next to the one filled with the tears of corrupt politicians. Each line of dialogue seems culled from various sources: news articles, philosophy textbooks, fundamental religious pamphlets, melodramatic soap operas, and conversations with people on acid, including several four-year-olds. I know what you’re thinking: don’t all four-year-olds seem like they’re on acid? You’re not wrong.
“What’s the opposite of a mirror?”
“We’re trapped in nature’s infinite expanse.”
“In a nutshell, I’m claustrophobic.”
“I want a separate tombstone for my nuts.”
At one point, someone reads a palm and says, “You’re in trouble.” Then there’s a shot of the palm, which has the word “DIE” scribbled in Sharpie.
Final Flesh is complete mayhem, from start to finish. Each story was produced by a different DIY porno producion company (unfortunately none of them were W.A.V.E.) and each had their own interpretation of the script. Every actor was a consummate professional and took their roles seriously even though they sure as hell had no idea what the fuck was going on. If there is one scene that sums up Final Flesh, perhaps it’s the one where a guy sits on the toilet and repeats “I am blonde” into a phone. He is not blonde. But he is wearing whitey tighties and talking to a woman who has the word “wisdom” written across her forehead in lipstick. I don’t know what this means, but I know I like it. So yeah, it’s art.
