BLIND DATE

1980

"... I wanted to punish myself as thoroughly as I could. I'd decided to have a vasectomy, but that wasn't enough: I wanted my last potent seed to be spent in a dead body. I made arrangements to have sex with a cadaver. I was bodily thrown out of several sex shops before meeting a man who set me up with a mortician's assistant in a Mexican border town..."
--Introduction to BLIND DATE included in the cassette-book PLEASURE-ESCAPE

BLIND DATE was performed in order to torture myself, physically and psychically. The sound recording of the session in Mexico was made public to respond to what I saw as a general situation created by social conditions, and to render any further self-torture of this kind, especially psychic self-torture, unnecessary for anyone to perform as a creative act.

These experiences -- the acts themselves, the shame that inspired them, isolation in Japan soon afterward, suddenly in a completely alien culture unable to read, understand or communicate with anyone -- all taught me far more than I could possibly have anticipated. As a result, my perception of all existence, including my own, has permanently and fundamentally changed.

These experiences have shown life in all forms to be an incredibly rich, timeless, continuous cycle, with death and corporeal existence interwoven as part of the process. I've come to see myself as a microscopic and insignificant part of that process, while at the same time the very embodiment and center of it. I've come to understand the act and experience of learning as sensual, as a form of beauty.

Since BLIND DATE, all forms of my work are created to raise questions, to find out everything I can about who I am without fear or judgement, and to encourage you to do the same.

Think of me as you will.

John Duncan 1997