A BOOK by Shane Levene (text) & Karolina Urbaniak (photography). Foreword by Martin Bladh.
The Void Ratio is now released. Please buy a copy if you are able. I've given years and books of free writing here and on various other sites, will continue to do so, and would appreciate enormously your support with this printed book.
The Void Ratio is now released. Please buy a copy if you are able. I've given years and books of free writing here and on various other sites, will continue to do so, and would appreciate enormously your support with this printed book.
THE VOID RATIO is the amount of black space in the psyche, the unresolved conflict arising from the trauma of dying and the consequence of living.
Through a series of photographs (Artefacts of Self-destruction) Urbaniak isolates and records the forensics of a ‘lifescene’ (here being the author’s own drug paraphernalia) at times discovering a breathtaking beauty emitted by the objects. Urbaniak’s lens turns the otherwise inanimate objects into landscapes, monuments, horizons, revealing the universal blackness of history and corporeal qualities of the user in the traces of blood and carbon left behind.
For his part, Levene focuses on the physical body and the abstract mind, the struggle to come to terms with and accept time, existence and mortality. It’s quickly understood that 15 years of hardcore heroin addiction, over 60‚000 intravenous injections, have been administered in an attempt to fill this volume of void. Far more than the stereotypical writing so often found in drug literature Levene’s texts employ heroin use and addiction as a means to explore far grander themes of history, nostalgia, consequence and trauma.
For his part, Levene focuses on the physical body and the abstract mind, the struggle to come to terms with and accept time, existence and mortality. It’s quickly understood that 15 years of hardcore heroin addiction, over 60‚000 intravenous injections, have been administered in an attempt to fill this volume of void. Far more than the stereotypical writing so often found in drug literature Levene’s texts employ heroin use and addiction as a means to explore far grander themes of history, nostalgia, consequence and trauma.
* * *
“Levene’s words are something like when you find a long lost old faithful, a throbber on the shin, aaaaah.....''
‘The Void Ratio’ left me dreaming again of the fucking nightmare...'
PETER DOHERTY
“...far from serving solely as a portrait of a mutual friend, Urbaniak’s work in the Void Ratio captures the debris left behind in the wake of the virulent drug epidemic sweeping Britain today. Stark, powerful, poetic... The Artefacts of Self-destruction is the perfect companion to this small collection of Levene’s words.
Shane’s writing is by turns beautiful, scabrous, funny, heartbreaking and dangerous. In my opinion, Shane is one of the few, actual honest-to-God Poets we still have writing today. “
TONY O'NEILL – author.
Black Neon, Digging the vein, Down & out on Murder Mile
Black Neon, Digging the vein, Down & out on Murder Mile
64 Pages
Soft Cover bound
Size 18x22cm
Soft Cover bound
Size 18x22cm
Standard Edition £20
Collector's Edition £40*
Collector's Edition £40*
To order a book please contact http://infinitylandpress.com/contact
Collector's edition artwork
(Click on image to enlarge)
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Collector's edition photographiuc prints 18 x 22cm
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| My fathder during his 15 minutes of fame |
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| Levene injection collage |
EXTRACTS...
I am on all fours, in the bathroom, over a plain white towel. There is a spoon (handle end) and a screwdriver shoved up into my arse and stale stodgy shit all over my fingers. The towel beneath me is covered with dark drops of blood and small currents of excrement. A sharp pain arrives and cuts my guts in two. I am convinced I am dying. It's nineteen days since I last passed a bowel movement and I have resorted to self-surgery. I summon up my strength, brace myself against the pain, and strain once more. Trapped wind immediately forces its way through my buttocks and up my lower back. I freeze, awaiting the agony to pass. Thoughts of almost three weeks of food inside me, turned to waste and going nowhere, are scaring the hell out of me. I am thinking internal poisoning, septicaemia, a ruptured colon, burst blood vessels in my head and brain haemorrhage. I am soaked in perspiration. For a few moments the trapped wind subsides. My stomach muscles ache so much that it hurts just to strain. This is not constipation. Constipation is what I had suffered the previous nineteen days. What I have now is fecal impaction (a blocked rectum) caused by the initial week-sized boulder of shit which was too large to excrete. That's what is so terrifying: when I strain, I am shitting. But with the anal passage blocked the shit has nowhere to go and so backs-up, fills out my rectum, which in turn expands and pushes inside my buttocks. My arse is literally full of shit...
--The Forgetful Arsehole
* * *
Fuck. That hurt. Sometimes it hurts so little and other times it hurts so much. And you know, I've known every type of pain there is. No pain is serious. It's just, well, painful. Death doesn't hurt. Dying is easy. It's holding onto life which hurts. People don't realize that. Junkies don't realise that. Numbing the pain is holding onto life, not chucking it away. Don't be fooled by peoples' make-up or myths. What I'm doing isn't self-destructive; it's quite the opposite. The Médecins sans Frontieres are self-destructive. Applaud them. Hero-worship them. Walk about pretending to be them. I'm not willing to die. I'm doing everything and more to stay alive...
--Deathly Hallows
* * *
As we speak all the ghosts of my life are within me: all my mothers, all my lovers, my entire childhood and youth and my now. Tomorrow is a day away. Tonight I am home and I have bed and heroin and company. If I am to die, at least it is in this place where I killed myself.
When I arrive back in Hackney off the night bus I am alone for the first time since arriving. I want to break down, just for a moment, surrender myself to the streets, have as much of my body as possible touch against it; have my city enter me and cleanse me and then filthy me and poison me. I have not eaten all day and I'm hungry. I buy some fried chicken and chips. If this is to be my last night then this is my last supper too...
--Will He Murder Myself Tonight
PHOTOGRAPHIC EXTRACTS
