April 30, 2013

1974

A 747 crashes due to rough weather conditions northwest of Washington, D.C., killing all 92 people on board.

A bomb in the cargo hold of a TWA flight leaving Athens explodes 18 minutes after takeoff and sends the plane crashing into the Ionian Sea; 88 people die.

All 346 people aboard a DC-10 bound for London perish when the flight crash-lands in a woods north of Paris. The destruction is so severe that only 40 of the bodies are identifiable. Turkish families on vacation, English rugby players, British fashion models, Japanese management trainees, and passengers from a dozen other counties are scattered throughout the Ermenonville Forest in pieces.

Wild Thing

Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

 

 

  1. A 747 crashes due to rough weather conditions northwest of Washington, D.C., killing all 92 people on board.

  2. A bomb in the cargo hold of a TWA flight leaving Athens explodes 18 minutes after takeoff and sends the plane crashing into the Ionian Sea; 88 people die.

  3. All 346 people aboard a DC-10 bound for London perish when the flight crash-lands in a woods north of Paris. The destruction is so severe that only 40 of the bodies are identifiable. Turkish families on vacation, English rugby players, British fashion models, Japanese management trainees, and passengers from a dozen other counties are scattered throughout the Ermenonville Forest in pieces.

  4. There’s an iatric glow that erases buildings from my peripheral vision, coupled with a sense that I’m immortal, but not in the good way. Was it in fact a dream? Or, was I really on that plane that crash-landed 12 miles off the coast two years ago?

    Metal twisted and water pounded in through cracks in the plumbing, flooded up through the toilet and filled the cabin in less than five minutes, which is actually a long time when they are the last five minutes of your life and tainted with the stink of shit and chemicals.

    Rescuers smashed the thick plane windows, but it was too late.

    The plane sank. Fish and crab ate my 7-year-old body, and other fish have since eaten those fish.

  5. The images here by Jan-Holger Mauss are from a publication of his work released in 2011. A PDF of that publication can be seen via his Berlin gallery, Laura Mars Group. His medium consists of a preexisting skin magazine and erasure of that magazine. Meticulously he goes through page by page, clearing out all but a few words and rendering various models invisible, leaving only what he wants us to see: the art of editing, the art of saying goodbye.

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

  6. I don’t remember any of this. I don’t even know I’m dead. My soul is lankier than my body was, and the afterlife is about the same color as the life before had been. Consequently, I’m going on, assuming that I’m full of operative organs, assuming that I have to still die someday and worried about jeans and algebra: crap that has no meaning in purgatory.

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing_ (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter (click to enlarge)

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Wild Thing

    Jan-Holger Mauss, Wild Thing (catalogue detail), 2011; erasure on printed matter

Comments (2)

  • D-L Alvarez says:

    Thank you, Kara. It’s been fun putting it together, in part for the step of contacting the artists for permission to post their work. After contacting Mauss (whose work is in this post) I found out he is based in Berlin, so I’ll be meeting him on my next visit there. I’m excited to see his new projects.

  • Kara Smith says:

    I’m loving this series, D-L. Such a work of art.

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