M HKA Ensembles

Book, 19.7 x 12.7 cm, 217 p, language: English, publisher: Serpent’s Tail, London, ISBN: 185242575X.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2024/855).

Literary synopsis The book is perhaps hard to categorise as there is no distinction made between a fictionalised reality and a fictionalised fantasy. Thus it could all be the fantasy of a mental patient who falls in love with his psychiatrist's 'real' or 'imaginary' daughter, and sets out to save her from ritual murder by the 'mad' psychiatrist. However other themes are interwoven with this; mind control, magic, occult groups and the machinations of the secret services. Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice The video *Come Before Christ and Murder Love* (by Nick Abrahams and Mikey Tompkins, 1997, 6 min 50 seconds) was originally produced as a promo-video for the book of the same name by Stewart Home. The book contains many scenes of graphic sex and violence, and it is one of these which was selected as the ur-text for the Abrahams/Tompkins collaboration. Stewart Home has distanced himself from the video suggesting that it has nothing to do with him.