M HKA Ensembles

Book, 21.3 x 13.5 cm, 182 p, language: English, publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, ISBN: 1-84195-182-X.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2024/850).

Literary synopsis 

Anna Noon is a twenty-year-old student with a taste for perverse sex involving an enigmatic older man and a ventriloquist's dummy. Anna lives in Aberdeen, and her sex life revolves around the ancient stone circles in this region. The sublime grandeur of the stones provides a backdrop against which Anna is able to act out her provocative psychodramas. This is a book about the body in which the carnal is a manifestation of consciousness: a book in which it is impossible to distinguish the ancient from the post-modern. Drawing on literary modernism and recent continental philosophy, as well as pulp appropriations, *69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess* illustrates that schizophrenia may well be the only sane response to capitalism. 

Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice 

“As I've got older I've found my thoughts fixed increasingly firmly on the big issues that fascinate anyone whose mind has a philosophical bent, that is to say sex and death. Since I wished to address the relationship between these two issues, I decided to issue donor cards enabling those who carried them to leave their body for sexual experimentation. Getting the art work together wasn't a problem, I simply copied the design of NHS donor cards but changed the wording. My necrocards carried the legends 'I support sexual liberation' and 'I want to help others experiment sexually after my death'. A girl I handed a card at an art opening told me I was sick and that I shouldn't make jokes about necrophilia. Of course the cards are humorous and while they aren't legally binding, they do make a serious point. As far as I can see, if sex is consensual then there is no reason for there being legal sanctions against it.” 

- Stewart Home 

Novel website