MUTILATION THEATRE

Goredrome is something new and special in the horror community, created by fans, for fans: is an webstore specialized in horror genre products and also is a retailer of movies, books, comics, music and themed merchandise… but also is a label that release Untraceable, extreme, hard-to-place films.

In the ABOMINATION COLLECTION boxset we find precisely the most representatives of these categories, and surely the top title is MUTILATION THEATRE by White Gardenia, the definitive collection with new exclusive never-seen before footage by Daniel Valient, the director of the segments “Allison’s Mouth fills up with Blood and Semen” and “Yummy Fur” featured, respectively, in XXX Dark Web and Vore Gore, the two extreme horror anthology films distributed by TetroVideo.

White Gardenia is an extreme film collective from the western United States. Starting out as a a Straight Edge musical project, they began making extreme self mutilation films to accompany their music. Some of their obsessions include Surrealism, blood, religion, flowers, perfume, Glade Plug in Air Fresheners, blood drinking, the sublimation of pain, quantum physics and extropic theory. “Mutilation Theatre” represents the most definitive collection of their works: 37 Short Films… including critically acclaimed films like “Akasha’s First Time” and “A Perfume Made From Blood and Tears” (which features an audio collaboration between White Gardenia and Oval/ Markus Popp).

A new, much more direct artistic tool has emerged: the human body. For both artist and self, cutting takes on the significance of crossing a line.

The Performance Art of the 1970s had as its focus of inquiry the search for the self, a search that used pain as its main tool. In fact, the body, characterized by materiality, the ability to feel pain and pleasure, and the ability to express meanings, was the best medium through which to push the public to reflect and question their own person and the culture in which they lived. In order to regain their presence in the world, and consequently their physicality, artists injured themselves, thus showing the vulnerability of their bodies.

Looking at these works of WHITE GARDENIA, one might think that the work of such artists was limited to actions performed exclusively on the self Harm but “one part can act in relation to the tendencies of the other.” It is precisely by looking within oneself that the bond that unites the self with the Other is created. The artist would enter the self and then investigate the other.
A conception, this one, that prompted many artists to use their bodies and thus their physical pain to break down the limiting barriers of the psyche and society and, almost by osmosis, to bring the viewer to reflect on them and consequently on themselves.

Valient declare to be influenced by Dali, Pier Pasolini, Jesus Christ, Warner Sallman….as well as the Italian Futurists and early twentieth century Surrealists like Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, Max Ernst, Jean Carrive, Tristan Tzara, René Crevel etc etc…

According to Freud, the skin can be configured as a surface of sense inscription and is expressed as follows in his 1923 text “The Ego and the Inner Self”: “The ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, especially from sensations from the surface of the body. It may therefore be regarded as a psychic projection of the surface of the body…” and WHITE GARDENIA seems to be able to reflect and include (and spread) all those information at once.

As Amber T. at Ghouls Magazine notes-  White Gardenia “will surely make even the most hardened gore hound flinch”.