Earlier this month Erin Krause spent a week catching up on the latest in contemporary art at the 40th annual Art Basel art fair. Here's what she saw

Click here for a slideshow

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Meredith Danluck's latest obsession fits nicely along her trajectory of investigation on various American icons. She's wrangled the world of Professional Bull Riders (which we'll refer to, appropriately, as PBR, the official acronym) with a fascinating, cowboy-filled documentary titled The Ride. After happening upon the PBR during a separate project for the pursuit of all things American at the Indy 500, she became intensely inspired. "I've always been interested in Americana," says Danluck. The Ride is as American as it gets. Danluck depicts a world of showy but sincere cowboys in the grips of competition and camraderie. There is so much tenderness in each cowboy's story that you fall in love with them instantly.

At a PBR event, you're going to get your money's worth. It's a spectacle and a half. This is something Danluck was not intending to focus on, but found it impossible to avoid. "The most American thing I can think of is the collision of the spectacle and these bull riders. Also, it's really American to want to be entertained." The entertainment and collective energy is apparent in the footage Danluck and her crew shot at the PBR World Finals in Las Vegas. There are showgirls with massive headdresses, awe-inspiring pyrotechnics, and an abundance of corporate American branding—Jack Daniels, Airforce.com, Ford, and Wrangler logos plastered seemingly everywhere.

The world of the PBR is a far cry from the accepted image of the cowboy. These guys aren't off on their own, wandering around the prairie, rounding up cattle, and and later plucking their guitars under a million stars. These guys are raking in millions of dollars while being bucked around on half ton bulls.  But watching these guys talk about what they do and how they do it, you become aware that this is an art form too.

The show of photographs and arrangements of bonafide fool's gold up now at Renwick Gallery is a document of her travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico during the filming of The Ride. The show is called Drinkability, and the images of the big blue open skies of the American West totally live up to the title. Danluck actually titled it after the new Bud Light ad campaign slogan. "It kinda sums up the ethos of American tastes." Which brings us to the fool's gold, which is an appropriate touch. Danluck calls it "worthless, but gorgeous." Which kinda sums up the ethos of the American dream. Johnny Misheff

Stills from Meredith Danluck's "The Ride," 2009
Artwork Meredith Danluck

Meredith Danluck's "Drinkability" runs through July 25, 2009 at Renwick Gallery, NYC.

www.renwickgallery.com

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Above: Artwork Bruce LaBruce

The sweaty-palmed lads who grinned in Grindhouse theaters while monsters and murderers mowed down scared, scantily clad sluts never doubted that porn and horror films had a blood brother-like bond. But few directors have so gallantly brought the cum- and blood-soaked genres together like Bruce LaBruce.

Bruce LaBruce is a legend in the satellite genres of gay porn, art, gonzo journalism, independent cinema, punk, and academia. Born Bryan Bruce in Ontario, he studied film theory at Toronto's York University and earned his stripes writing punk zines, starring in underground porn, and filming witty hardcore satire on Super 8. His 1999 film Skin Flick/Skin Gang was hardcore gay skinhead porn, and his 2004 Raspberry Reich combined "terrorist chic" with "a porno-political-palooza."

Here we have coffee a few blocks from the Berlin branch of Peres Projects to discuss the untitled zombie hardcore porn flick that BLaB will screen at Peres Projects L.A. this month. After his first zombie film, Otto; or Up With Dead People, received raves, BLaB decided to riff on the theme of political zombie porn. The current film does not have a direct meta-link to Otto, which was a Donnie Darko–like coming of age story about a zombie teenager, but BLaB offers insights into the relevance of hot young zombies and reminisces about the glories of Grindhouse. Ana Finel Honigman

AFH I keep hearing that vampires are the supernatural monster of the moment. Why do a zombie picture now?
BLaB There have always been vampires, but now they are back bigger than ever. But vampires interest me less than zombies. They are suave and sexy, but they are traditionally loners and misfits. Zombies are more modern because they are viral. They are conformists. They all act the same and they are not a fringe minority. They are everybody. And their whole raison d'être is just to consume. So they are a great allegory for our modern capitalism and consumerist society.
AFH They might represent society, but they are certainly into anti-social behavior.
BLaB One of my motivations was that I tired of seeing zombie flicks where they were just like these gross homeless people. I was just bored of seeing zombies who were decapitated or burnt or just dirty and out of it. I wanted to make a movie where zombies mattered. I want to evoke their conformity but invert it and transpose onto the zombie some of the myth of the vampire.

Below: photography Maxime Ballesteros, styling Jordan Nassar, hair and makeup Stephen Riolo

AFH  There have countless sub-genres of zombie depictions. What were your main inspirations?
BLaB I was inspired by this French movie called Les Revenants, from 2004. In that everyone who died over the past forty years in a small French town comes back to life. But they are not really presented as zombies. They are almost just shadows of their former selves. They are not rotting or anything. They are just dumped down. If they used to be professionals, if they were a lawyer or a doctor, then now they just do menial work. No one knows exactly what they are up to but they revolt at the end.
AFH Before the revolt, they sound like a great immigrant workforce.
BLaB Some people say that it is an allegory for people who returned from the second World War and were shellshocked. Of course many of them who came back are older, because more older people die. But there is one hot young doctor who comes back after dying in a car accident. He was a hot French actor with a killer body. He and his wife had split up before he died. But he and his wife kind of get back together. There is a hot necrophilia scene. Though he is dead, their sex life is better than ever.
AFH I'm sure he's more pleasant to live with.
BLaB Absolutely, everything becomes simplified.
AFH Well, wasn't Dahmer into that—transforming lovers into zombies, just willing bodies to fuck?
BLaB He was. And Denise Nelson did that too.
AFH Do you think Dahmer's work was like an homage?
BLaB I think there were just spontaneous outbreaks. And they were both lonely. They were killing for company. Nelson liked to pick up tricks, kill them, and then set them up at the dinner-table.
AFH Do you now see Otto as a pre-recession commentary?
BLaB Yes. Though George Romero has said it all before in Dawn of the Dead, which was set in a shopping mall. That was a critique of America that has come true now. America is a third-world country now. However, I am working on a real zombie porn movie now. There is a scene where one zombie gut fucks another. It's explicit in the film but shot in black-and-white, so it's sort of arty looking.

AFH That's great. Torture porn needs more porn.
BLaB Well, the problem is that the usual porn distribution company that I work with are like "oh, this isn't porn. It's art." And they don't want to touch it.
AFH That's hilarious since usually people are upset when art is too much like porn and then they don't want to touch it.
BLaB They are just concerned that it won't sell. But I think it could. I'm not saying it's the wave of the future, but it definitely could have a following. Zombie porn has a future.
AFH Of course it does! There is pirate porn and . . .
BLaB Clown porn and dragon porn.
AFH Are these future inspirations?
BLaB Unlikely. Though porn will always be there in my work. One of the reasons that I do a lot of explicit sex in my movies is because it's like low-budget special effects. It's easy to do but it's spectacular. It's like fireworks. It's an event.
AFH Are you a fan of mainstream torture porn movies, like Hostel?
BLaB Not at all! I am actually really against that genre.
AFH Why?
BLaB I feel that it makes no sense to be making huge, corporate, big-budget versions of B-films from the '70s, like The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left. They were done super-low budget and meant for a very limited audience. I feel the same way about porn and its real function. Porn is a forum where you can work out politically incorrect and problematic fantasies in a healthy way. Though for some people it's not that healthy. That is at the core of B horror movies. But now that they are popular corporate movies, I feel they are more exploitative than they were when they were actually exploitation movies. Now, they just play on people's fears of war, torture, and terrorism but I don't think they help people work them out. I think they just add to the level of fear.

AFH By representing a broader set of mass neurosis, don't they become demonstrations of our collective fears, rather than subculture ones?
BLaB But they are mostly just misogynistic and homophobic and not in an interesting way. They are just not as artful as they were in the '70s. Then the whole fun of it was to use these cheesy, cheap, effects creatively. Now the movies are very slick and there is no mediation between watching real atrocities and seeing carnage in the cinema. Part of why the originals were low-budget was because their subject matter was taboo. But now the way it is all marketed makes one forget that there is anything really troubling about it. The sex and violence is taken as a given. Anyway, I have a theory that all horror movies are about homosexual panic.
AFH What about the wave of recent movies, mostly remakes of Japanese horror, dealing with maternity and fears of motherhood?
BLaB Or Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child, when Freddy comes back as a fetus.
AFH I always interpret that series as a riff on the increased acceptance and almost fetish for therapy among the masses in the '80s. After all, what is more Freudian than Freddy?
BLaB It is very Freudian. But still I believe virtually all horror movies are about homosexual panic. Speaking of Freud and Freddy, what is that fear about if not castration?

Bruce LaBruce's "Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project" runs through June 27, 2009, at Peres Projects, Los Angeles.

Shoes courtesy Darklands Berlin

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V's art editor Simon Castets spent three weeks in Europe catching up on the latest in contemporary art at the 53rd Venice Biennale and the 40th Art Basel art fair. Here's who and what he saw

Click here for a slideshow from the 53rd Venice Biennale

Click here for a slideshow from the 40th Art Basel art fair

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The irrepressible pop sensation Lady Gaga is making quite a name for herself this year. Coming off a string of hit records and an eye-popping Rolling Stone cover, she makes her first fashion appearance inside V60, photographed by Sebastian Faena and styled by Nicola Formichetti. Gaga tries on the season's foremost flashiest threads (Balmain, Givenchy), experiments with outrageous headgear (the now-infamous Nasir Mazhar gold orb piece), and talks Mugler and makeovers with writer Mark Jacobs.

Video shot and edited by Evan Savitt

V60 is on newsstands everywhere July 7th

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Yes, the Salem everyone's been talking about‹the band just arrived in New York for the weekend, and on Saturday is playing a late-night, semi-secret show at an undisclosed downtown location. The night has been organized by Sean Hanratty of Evident Records; he says to get there at 10pm, but other than that details are sparse.  Send an email to s4lem666@gmail.com to get on the list and receive venue info.

Salem will be featured in V60, on newsstands July 6th. Click here to read the story and check out our exclusive photos by Terence Koh.

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In his latest stunt of organized art crime, collector Dakis Joannou makes no play at innocence. Tuesday at six a.m., a dead shark, the victim of "Blood of Two," the first collaboration between Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton, was solemnly carried above a glass case along a curved road on Hydra, in front of a mesmerized crowd. Commissioned by Joannou for the opening of the Deste Foundation's new exhibition space (the Slaughterhouse, named after its former use), Barney and Peyton's works consists of a series of drawings, several paintings, and a sculpture. The main event, though, was the "unveiling" of the key work, with a group of muscle-bound Greek fishermen pulling out of the sea an iconic Barney case in which Peyton's drawings had been kept for three months. The display of strength and resolve (the case shouldn't have been filled with water, but it only added to the drama) kept the art world A-list attendance fairly quiet until the dead shark was thrown onto the case and the men began marching toward the venue. Quasi-hysteria took over the happy bunch, in which those who had had only a few hours of sleep before the two-hour performance could hardly be distinguished from those who had stayed up all night. "Dakis of death" and "Sushi anyone?" were the tasteful jokes one could hear spreading across the still-inebriated crowd. Little did they know that the shark would be served for dinner. Simon Castets

www.deste.gr

Photography Cyril Duval 

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