Headless, Inc.
"Man has escaped from his head just as the condemned man has escaped from his prison, he has found beyond himself not God, who is prohibition against crime, but a being who is unaware of prohibition. Beyond what I am, I meet a being who makes me laugh because he is headless; this fills me with dread because he is made of innocence and crime; he holds a steel dagger in his left hand, in his right hand a severed heart, aflame like the Sacred Heart. He is not a man. He is not a God either. He is not me but he is more than me: his stomach is the labyrinth in which he has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words as a monster."-Georges Bataille, The Sacred Conspiracy
Novelist John Barlow is in the Bahamas investigating a secretive company called "Headless Ltd." on behalf of Goldin + Senneby, two Scandanavian artists who claim to be interested in this:
“Goldin+Senneby are interested in how the juridical construction of offshore financial centres can be seen as performative acts of fictionalizing place and staging realms of invisibility. Using the company Headless Ltd and Bataille’s ideas around the act of withdrawal as points of departure, the artists have begun a staged enquiry into the undisclosable. Goldin+Senneby’s investigation takes the shape of an ongoing performance where subject, method and artistic narrative cannot be separated from each other. Their work is carried out through entering the world of offshore business and appropriating its methods, language and strategies, while continuously displacing their own subject position.” (from the Goldin + Selby website)
As Barlow himself puts it,
"Some time ago, I was contacted out of the blue by the Swedish artists goldin+senneby. They asked me if I wanted to participate in an exploration of how the secret world of offshore companies might somehow be linked to Acéphale (‘Headless’ in Greek), a secret society established in the 1930s but now presumed defunct (wiki). It seems that there is a company registered on the Bahamas called Headless, and my job is to investigate possible connections between Acéphale (the secret society) and Headless (the secret company)."
Is Headless real? Is this, as the if:book article suggests, an "alternate reality game," or what? I've been reading Barlow's blog, and I don't know. Part of the addiction of his blog is not knowing whether he is in the middle of two Scandanavian artists construction, on a wild-goose chase, or on a legitimate and possibly dangerous mission. Whatever it is, it is easy to feel like you're standing right next to Barlow as he stalks government buildings, gets paranoid when he is followed down the street by security officers, reflects on the aesthetics of George Bataille, and generally wanders around Nassau looking for clues. Whether this is experimental fiction, reality-novel, art-blogging, I have no idea. Its impossible to know what is real, what is a product of Barlow's imagination, what is a product of G+S's imaginations, etc. I've never read anything quite like this, and yet it holds the fascination of a good hardboiled novel.
John Barlow's Blog
Article in if:book
“Goldin+Senneby are interested in how the juridical construction of offshore financial centres can be seen as performative acts of fictionalizing place and staging realms of invisibility. Using the company Headless Ltd and Bataille’s ideas around the act of withdrawal as points of departure, the artists have begun a staged enquiry into the undisclosable. Goldin+Senneby’s investigation takes the shape of an ongoing performance where subject, method and artistic narrative cannot be separated from each other. Their work is carried out through entering the world of offshore business and appropriating its methods, language and strategies, while continuously displacing their own subject position.” (from the Goldin + Selby website)
As Barlow himself puts it,
"Some time ago, I was contacted out of the blue by the Swedish artists goldin+senneby. They asked me if I wanted to participate in an exploration of how the secret world of offshore companies might somehow be linked to Acéphale (‘Headless’ in Greek), a secret society established in the 1930s but now presumed defunct (wiki). It seems that there is a company registered on the Bahamas called Headless, and my job is to investigate possible connections between Acéphale (the secret society) and Headless (the secret company)."
Is Headless real? Is this, as the if:book article suggests, an "alternate reality game," or what? I've been reading Barlow's blog, and I don't know. Part of the addiction of his blog is not knowing whether he is in the middle of two Scandanavian artists construction, on a wild-goose chase, or on a legitimate and possibly dangerous mission. Whatever it is, it is easy to feel like you're standing right next to Barlow as he stalks government buildings, gets paranoid when he is followed down the street by security officers, reflects on the aesthetics of George Bataille, and generally wanders around Nassau looking for clues. Whether this is experimental fiction, reality-novel, art-blogging, I have no idea. Its impossible to know what is real, what is a product of Barlow's imagination, what is a product of G+S's imaginations, etc. I've never read anything quite like this, and yet it holds the fascination of a good hardboiled novel.
John Barlow's Blog
Article in if:book
posted by Nick Gardner at 7:59 PM
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