In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Hotdogs and Festooned with Sausages, Hung like a Garland
  • Emmett Ramstad

Click for larger view
View full resolution

THIS IMAGE AND PAGE 46, EMMETT RAMSTAD, FESTOONED WITH SAUSAGES, HUNG LIKE A GARLAND, 2009 INTESTINES, LACE, PEARLS

[End Page 43]

I like sausages.

My favorite butcher shop employs young men, eager bristled faces, white aprons. Rows of flesh shiny and partitioned, sold by the pound with printed stickers. Everything is bright.

Part of the art is the trip to the shop.

I bring back white bundles of sausage casings, hotdogs, chicken skin. Labeled. They sit in the fridge, they are opened, crinkly. The hotdogs are sewn with lace, canned, filmed. I stuff the casings with lace and pearls and dry them as a link, hung high like flower garlands.

It wasn’t always about meat. I have made translucent flax paper that looks like skin, or thick sheets of handmade paper that looks like leather. But it has always been about bodies: my body, queer bodies. The way bodies are lovely and repulsive. How bodies change through time or defy classification.

Then there is reading. Queer theory, feminist theory, science theory. The dirty bodies of Jean Genet. The brevity of Eileen Myles. [End Page 44]


Click for larger view
View full resolution

EMMETT RAMSTAD, HOTDOGS, 2009 HOTDOGS, LACE, PEARLS

[End Page 45]


Click for larger view
View full resolution

[End Page 46]

...

pdf

Share