# SCIENCE FICTION /// The Brutal Art of Enki Bilal

Published


Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.
– And that, what is it? What are we walking on?
– Canvas. White canvas… The walls and the ceiling are covered with it
– It’s very nice
– Nike, I would like to introduce you to my friend Milorad Zivokovic

The Beast Trilogy (The Dormant Beast, December 32nd & Rendezvous in Paris), graphic novels written and drawn by Enki Bilal introduce a charismatic character in the person of Optus Warhole who claims to be the inventor of the Art Brutal. This terminology resonates with the notion of Art Brut in French (Outsider Art in English but obviously the resonance is lost here) invented by Jean Dubuffet in 1945. The three pieces presented in this trilogy by the Andy Warhol’s quasi-homonym, are indeed brutal as they celebrate the creativity of destruction. Such artistic paradox reminds us of the book On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts written by Thomas de Quincey in 1827 or more recently of the remarkable character of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight in 2008 (see previous article).
The three pieces I was evoking above can be described as followed. The first one consists in an entire apartment covered with white canvas and in which few dozen of people dressed all in white wildly massacre each others thus providing the paint of the piece by the red of the blood spurting all around. The second one materializes in the form of a sort of acid rain cloud, drifting with the wind, and whose drops pierce any matter encountered . Eventually, the third one consists in another cloud composed by millions of red flies which dissolve the building that they originates from. The implosion of the latter is said to have provoked a brutal sound rupture, a sort of anti-vibration that absorb all sounds and creates multiple auditory injuries. ‘You are mad‘ says Nike Hatzfeld to Optus Warhole in December 32nd. ‘No, I am an artist‘ he answers.

Rather than clumsily describing the graphic novels’ scenes I extracted some of them here and translated their original content from French.

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

– For now, I mostly need to talk to a lawyer. I just committed an assassination, don’t you understand?
– Precisely, the first paintbrush strike on an immaculate canvas is always determining, that’s the meaning of this murder, do you understand?
Here comes the second one, look!
– As a matter of fact, paintbrush strikes were starting to multiply everywhere

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

The white canvas of the Very Great Artist named Holeraw was being covered rapidly of blood. Blood spurts, here from a slit throat, there from some cut veins (there are suicides then !), and somewhere else from some other lethal wounds. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it ?!” screams Pamela with a bloody knife in her hand, on her knees in front of a young woman wildly knocked off. “A former rival” she says.
I am curiously balanced between the desire to throw up and the one of bursting laughing.

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

Holographic unfolding of the three rooms All White Happening by Optus Warhole (Holeraw). 87 participants, 61 deaths. One can notice that the victims’ blood marks compose the artist’s signature.
(Click on the blood stains to see the murders)

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

First, there was a loud roar, not the thunder, nothing really identifiable. Then, a pestilential smell spread out in the cold air, exhaled from the sepulchral mouth.
Black drops fell on faces.

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

Then it came out.

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

– According to the scream you just did, you must have seen the thing and  felt the smell. It is a shame that my own perception has been that mediocre. I must be able to improve the system
– What was this horror?
Compression of Eructed Death. My very last piece. You don’t like it?
It will propagate in the form of a compact cloud following the winds or my own will. Before desegregating itself, it will give weep rains coming from the decomposition of two millions of soldiers and civilians dead on the field of bullshit…
It’s an universal piece against war and men’s blindness. Nevertheless, it will be destructive. The boomerang effect I suppose.
It is not Art Brut (Outsider Art), it is Art Brutal.

Dozen of bodies were shaken by pain. The critiques’ delegation seems to be the most touched. The black rain’s drops were piercing everything they were touching, and I strongly believe that some people died.

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. 32 Décembre. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

Death Cloud
Active cloud above Kuala Lumpur
International institutions’ scientists and military, in charge to contain the Compression of Eructed Death, phenomenon/art piece claimed by Optus Warhole, have difficulties to find a collective strategy. The last time it was seen, the death cloud was more than two kilometers long and the pestilential rains’ rate was increasing. Let’s remind everybody that standard umbrellas are in no way useful. There are hundreds of victims. It recently rained on a Japanese neo-nuclear plant.

Gangrenous Art
Joao Mendez-Coe, Independent Art Critique, assisted to Optus Warhole’s murdering happening (Compression of Erupted Death); twelve casualties amongst the spectators and seven amongst art critiques. Herself was injured on her face, on her right collarbone and on her two hands. She gives us here a pertinent and evolutive analysis of Warhole’s work that she claims to be part of now as a gangrenous element according to her own terminology.

Excerpt from Bilal, Enki. Rendezvous in Paris. Paris: Les Humanoïdes Associés, 2002.

Optus Warhole. Art Work Suicide
Holeraw posing in front of the dissolution of his own building during the Brutal Silence Phenomenon. Red (Red Der Decompression) penetrates into the Black (Compression of Eructed Death).

Red Der Decompression in Bangkok
This happening has been followed by dozen of thousand people on site, by hundred of millions of other in front of their television, and by a selection of ninety nine international art critiques from the top of the Oriental Peninsula hotel with the artist himself.