Matthew Barney Floats Norman Mailer's House Down The East River

The Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy article about the filming of Matthew Barney's River of Fundament. The film is the latest installment in Barney's Ancient Evenings series, based on a book Norman Mailer about the Egyptian afterlife. Barney began working on the sculptural components for River of Fundament last August in his Long Island City, Queens studio and has been filming in New York City. Perhaps the most remarkable element is a life-sized floating replica of Mailer's four-story Brooklyn brownstone. The house has been filled with items borrowed from Mailer's actual home. A tugboat towed the building down the East River from Barney's studio to the Brooklyn Bridge for a film shoot, where an actress playing Norman Mailer's widow sang Walt Whitman's poetry to the bridge.

The cast of River of Fundament includes well-known actors Paul Giamatti and Maggie Gyllenhaal, as well as paralympic athlete Aimee Mullins (who appeared as the Entered Novitiate in Barney's Cremaster 3) and avant-garde vocalist Joan La Barbara. In addition, Norman Mailer's son John Buffalo Mailer (pictured above) will appear in the film, playing a reincarnation of his father. The younger Mailer told the WSJ, "I've been lucky enough to know two geniuses in my life. My father is one and Matthew Barney is the other. I think my dad is up there dancing a jig he's so happy about how Matthew has taken the ball and run with this." In addition to Mailer's floating home, props for the film have included a cow carcass containing a surprise fetus, rotting pigs, two 12,000-pound blocks of salt and a gold 1979 Trans Am that was plunged into Newtown Creek (a polluted industrial waterway separating Brooklyn and Queens). Shooting will pause for the winter, but a large-scale performance in New York is planned for next spring.

Matthew Barney at Benefit to Purchase Norman Mailer Home

Zimbio has published an album of photos of a hirsute Matthew Barney at benefit to raise funds to purchase the historic Norman Mailer home in Provincetown, MA. The event was sponsored by the Norman Mailer Center and Van Cleef & Arpels and held in honor of auctioneer Simon de Pury (pictured with Barney above). Norman Mailer appeared as Harry Houdini in Barney's Cremaster 2 and his book Ancient Evenings inspired Barney's latest series of works, including Khu, Ren, and Djed.

Matthew Barney "Khu" Film Shoot in Detroit October 2

The Detroit Free Press writes that Matthew Barney will be filming a live performance "reportedly" involving a barge on the Detroit and Rouge rivers. The performance will take place in front of, "a couple of hundred people handpicked by Barney ... on an afternoon and evening outing," on the rivers. Although he has been secretive about the performance, Barney "offered some hints when he spoke before a capacity crowd at the Detroit Film Theatre in January. He compared Detroit to an archaeological dig site where, courtesy of years of devastation and neglect, all the layers of the city's history are laid bare. Barney also acknowledged that Ancient Evenings is a sequel of sorts to the Cremaster films. The new film calls for the 1967 Chrysler Imperial in Cremaster 3 to evolve into a 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and plunge off the Belle Isle Bridge and into the Detroit River. The stunt, reportedly already staged by Barney, is possibly a reference to Houdini's career-defining leaps from that same bridge in the early 1900s." The Free Press also reports that Barney's adaptation of Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings came at the novelist's request (Mailer starred as Harry Houdini in Cremaster 2) shortly before his death in 2007.

Matthew Barney Filming "Khu" In Detroit

Detroit-based Cremaster Fanatic Amy informed us that Matthew Barney has been working on a new project in Detroit. A bit of digging on the internet reveals that Barney is currently filming a project called Khu, a prologue to his seven-part opera Ancient Evenings [Ren, filmed in Los Angeles in 2007, is another part of the series], which is based on a novel by Norman Mailer about the stages of death according to ancient Egyptian beliefs. In Barney’s interpretation of Mailer's book, the body of a man is replaced with the remains of the Chrysler Imperial featured in Cremaster 3. Beyond the obvious connection between Detroit and Chrysler, Khu apparently includes references to the work of James Lee Byars, a Detroit-based installation/performance artist, and Harry Houdini, who's first jump was off a bridge in Detroit.
The New York Times and this web site hint that there will be a live performance related to Khu held in Detroit this fall.

Ancient Evenings: Libretto Exhibition Photos

Gladstone Gallery has published some images from Matthew Barney's Ancient Evenings: Libretto exhibition, which recently closed at their Brussels gallery. The exhibition included drawings and photographs related to the first two acts (titled "Ren" and "Sekhem") of Barney's Ancient Evenings - a seven act opera loosely based on Norman Mailer's 1983 Egyptian-set novel of the same name - and seven copies of Mailer's novel, each altered by Barney and sealed inside a vitrine. You can see more images HERE

Ren Collages

As promised, here are some photos of collages and other source materials related to Matthew Barney's Ren, as published in Tar Magazine. Dung Beetles, Norman Mailer, Chrysler Imperials, ancient Egypt -- we love it!