Prompt 4: Destroy Love Sabotage Understand Forget Surprise Change Limit Endure

Destroy All Monsters, 1968

Destroy All Monsters is a 1968 Japanese Scientific Kaiju film featuring 11 well known monsters (including Godzilla) set in a confined area known as Monsterland. In it a newscaster reports:

"The major cities of the world are being destroyed, one-by-one by the monsters: Moscow by Rodan, Peking by Mothra, London by Manda, Paris by Baragon. And, here's a special news bulletin. Godzilla is now in New York City. The city is being invaded by Godzilla!"

Destroy All Monsters

Destroy All Monsters was a highly influential punk band comprised of artists Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Niagara and Cary Loren founded in Detroit, MI. 

Object to be Destroyed, Man Ray, 1923

Object to Be Destroyed is an artwork by Man Ray from 1923. Of it he wrote:

"Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow."

In Fragments Jean Baudrillard wrote, “Everyone hides some measure of cruelty towards their object. There is no point in imputing this cruelty to unconscious motivations or some trite psychology: it is a symbolic rule. Analysis is part of the theatre of cruelty. Destruction is part of the (loving) understanding of the object.”

Charline von Heyl

Sabotage is an artists book by painter Charline von Heyl. Of the project she writes:

“Sabotage provides a weird satisfaction of creation, because you’re not going through it looking for something—you actually create something and then you destroy it. You don’t destroy it by changing it, though; you destroy it by forgetting it. It works through repetition and surprise.”

Sabotage is a 1994 song by the Beastie Boys.  

Michael Berryhill

This week in Red Hook we visit the studio of Michael Berryhill. 

Prompt 4 urges us to make something new by changing, destroying, sabotaging, fragmenting, collaging, altering, cutting up or swinging a hammer in a single blow. 

Own Monsterland: make an image, or an object, or a performance, or a video, or a text, or a song, that reflects your own version of a monster.