THIS LONG CENTURY

— The Monster Masher trading cards are an unbound art catalog produced for the Destroy All Monsters archive exhibition Hungry for Death, first shown at the Printed Matter gallery in New York over the summer of 2009. Each card is blended from a variety of sources that contain works or references to the works on display.

The cards can function as a single photo, images that can form a story, a commentary and index from the exhibition or as a chronological diary/journal entry. The card set is also the archive exhibition, and (playing off of Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise) can be rearranged as a portable gallery or ‘traveling museum’.

The deck was inspired by classic horror trading cards from late 1950s and early 60s––Mars Attacks, The Addams Family, Outer Limits, Creature Features, Horror Monsters, The Munsters, and The Twilight Zone––many old-time trading cards became subjects themselves. The deck also surveys my personal journey with Destroy All Monsters and touches on intersections of family history, popular culture, music adventures and my own art practice.

There were a total of 250 hand-numbered sets produced, each containing 40 cards, double sided for a total of 80 images in each deck. They were printed on glossy UV coated card stock and measure 3×4”––a slightly larger format then the standard trading card. The card sets also contained buttons, a small monster toy and an 80 card checklist on two postcards with identification titles and a one line description.

Click on these cards to read some commentary, and glean a glimpse into the Destroy All Monsters way of life.

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Cary Loren is a filmmaker, musician, photographer and founding member of the Destroy All Monsters collective. He lives in Detroit and is the proprietor of The Book Beat, a visual arts bookstore.

www.thebookbeat.com

FROM THE ARCHIVE [For Willoughby]

Box from Liza Béar archive in Highbridge, the Bronx, inventoried this summer.
Archived images are linked below.

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Unless otherwise indicated all archival rephotography is by Liza Béar, from her archive.
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Liza Béar is a writer/filmmaker and the author of Beyond The Frame: Dialogues With Filmmakers. She met Willoughby Sharp when she moved to New York in 1968. They founded Avalanche (1970-1976) almost immediately. A facsimile edition of the complete set of Avalanche is being reprinted by Primary Information. www.avalanchemagazine.org

Liza’s reminiscence of Willoughby can be found here

July 2009. Hollywood, California.
—

Evan Holloway is an American artist. Born 1967 in La Miranda,
California. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

www.theapproach.co.uk
www.marcfoxx.com

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Susan Hiller is a visual artist born in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1940. She has been living and working in London since the early 1970’s. Using sound, text, video, drawing or photography, her work has been been recognized for its excavation of everyday phenomena that lie within blind spots of our cultural surround. Her work can be found in the public collections of Center Georges Pompidou Paris and V&A Museum London amongst others.

www.susanhiller.org

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Jonathan Meese was born 1970 in Tokyo, Japan.
He lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg.

www.cfa-berlin.de
www.diktatur-der-kunst.org

And as to being in a fright,
Allow me to remark
That Ghosts have just as good a right
In every way, to fear the light,
As Men to fear the dark.

“Phantasmagoria,” Lewis Carrol

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Hellen van Meene was born in Alkmaar, The Netherlands, in 1972. Her recent solo shows include Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany, 2007; C/O Berlin, The Cultural Forum of Photography, Berlin, Germany, 2007; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, Holland, 2006; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, 2006; and a touring show which was first exhibited at Pump House Gallery, London, and travelled across the United Kingdom, also in 2006. She has taken part in various group shows, including ME, OPHELIA, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2008 and FAMILY PICTURES, Guggenheim, New York, 2007. Her fourth monograph, TOUT VA DISPARAITRE, will be released soon by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag GmbH.