Bruce LaBruce

Death Book is dedicated to Bruce LaBruce’s archive of rarely published or previously unpublished work characterized by morbid fascinations. Here photographs challenge the viewer to explore what lies beneath the veneer of Western society.

The book brings this body of work together for the first time, combining LaBruce’s performances, actions, film production stills and photography that explicitly outline his obsessions, with never-before exhibited archival works from projects including Hustler White, Otto; or Up with Dead People, and L.A. Zombie.

The book is edited as loosely connected vignettes, characterised by horror, the carnage accelerated rather than overcome, questioning existing values, hierarchies, and perceptions of good and evil. A variety of faces and body parts appear, including those of actors Francois Sagat and Tiger Tyson, model/actor Tony Ward, artists Kembra Pfahler and Slava Mogutin, and cameos by legendary figures such as performance artist Ron Athey, musician/artists Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye, artist Dash Snow, actor Brad Renfro, Asia Argento and Bruce LaBruce himself.

The Death Book also introduces the art director Max Siedentopf, who has designed the book as a paraphrase of the Bible, punctured with three bullet holes, piercing the book from front to back. The book contains an introduction by artist, photographer and writer Slava Mogutin.

Interviews with Claudia Rankine, Vigdis Hjorth, Tama Janowitz, and Walter K. Scott. Essays on Blaxploitation, the Brontë sisters, and Kevin Killian's Amazon reviews. Plus comics, poetry, and The Whitney Review's signature chorus of short-format reviews. 

Contributors include A. S. Hamrah, E. Jane, Bruce LaBruce, Oscar yi Hou, Alex Auder, Olivia Kan-Sperling, Tao Lin, Amber Later, Brad Phillips, Brandon Harris, Nicolaia Rips, Julien Ceccaldi, Linda Simpson, Michael Bullock, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Geoffrey Mak, Joseph Akel, Candystore, Taylor Lewandowski, Max Battle, and many more. 

Abolish Rent, fag/hag, Dear Dickhead, Tweakerworld, and Napalm in the Heart are among the books reviewed. Steven Phillips-Horst skewers c* ns* r*d instagram captions. Max Steele asks can masochism be gentrified? Published biannually, The Whitney Review of New Writing is a bold expansion of literary criticism. The fourth issue is about clowns, sell-outs, loneliness, and fancy.

Including essays about Madeline Anderson, Lorenza Mazzetti, Laure Prouvost, Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong, Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor, Susan Sontag’s filmmaking career, Storm De Hirsch, Zia Anger, Ashley Connor, Bruce LaBruce, Pina Bausch/Chantal Akerman, Magdalena Montezuma, Rebecca Horn, Anne Charlotte Robertson, Zhu Shengze, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Maya Da-Rin, Camila Freitas, Gong Li

An in-depth Afro-Brazilian roundtable with Tatiana Carvalho Costa, Janaina Oliveira, Everlane Moraes and Kênia Freitas; sections on Kira Muratova and Anne Charlotte Robertson; essays on subtitles, diffractive cinemas, ecocriticism/the anthropocene, literary adaptations, intimacy coordinators, strike on film, representing the internet,

Interviews with Betzy Bromberg, Zia Anger & Ashley Connor, Brett Story, Amandine Gay, Andrea Luka Zimmerman & Therese Henningsen

Experimental criticism from Kathryn Scanlan, Jen Calleja and Elissa Suh.