The Horror Autotoxicus is an ongoing interdisciplinary series by AM Hoch including paintings on canvas, original text and horror ballads, which will ultimately be combined in installations and film.
The Horror Autotoxicus was the name first given to autoimmune disease by the German scientist Paul Ehrlich in the 19th century. In my view, autoimmune disease is a “ready-made” artifact of post-colonial, post-industrial society—the most apt embodiment of our culture’s pathologies, as hysteria was for Victorian culture. For me, this disease is not only the perfect metaphor for talking about the ills of our society—and myself—but also offers a key to understanding what is still working at the heart of us.
oil on canvas, 78.7 x 70.9 inches, 200cm x 180cm, 2021
oil on canvas, 70.9 x 78.7 inches, 180cm x 200cm, 2021/2022
For now, two of the three triptychs envisioned have been completed, and one ballad, entitled “Punishment of the Fathers,” has been recorded in collaboration with composer Joshua Haugen, with voice direction and audio editing by Irene Ruscelli.
Recording of “Punishment of the Fathers”
Punishment of the Fathers
I see my father as a child,
somewhere around four or five,
fat-faced, greasy and already mean,
all alone on an empty boat,
white sun bearing down
on a deck as wide
as a five-lane highway.
It’s no place to leave a kid.
This kid is done for.
Now his father appears on deck,
like he owns the boat and sky,
You can smell the whiskey on his breath,
gangster-dapper, big wide tie,
fedora hat cocked to the side.
He walks a pit-bull, on a leash,
taut and vicious,
taught to kill.
This kid is done for.
Now someone’s grandpa
Lumbers off the boat,
waddling like a water rat,
dark clothes, dirty,
hunched-over back;
the fat kid watches
from above the deck,
playing with something
hard in his hands.
This kid is done for.
Suddenly grandpa clutches his eye,
blood is gushing through his fingers,
something hard has hit his eye.
Strangers help him off the boat,
trailing blood where he goes.
The kid’s father looks up and sees
his little piggy son
giggling, giggling,
girlish laughter
trickling like urine
from his little throat.
His father’s gonna kill him.
This kid is done for.
The father points a finger at his son,
Says one word to the bulldog,
and the deed is done:
Torn limb from limb, in a moment,
you can’t see it, but you hear it:
childish shrieks,
short,
then broken.
The kid is done for.
Now just his face is all you see:
one eye gone and his grin twisted.
A wider shot shows both his legs
in plaster casts,
and one arm in a sling.
He says:
“I just want to know
one thing,”
– pull back wider and you see
his other shoulder
has no arm,
just a stump of sausage –
“Just one thing I want to know,”
he taunts and sneers,
“Why the only part that hurts me
is the part that isn’t there?”
The kid is done for.
The sky’s too blue, the boat’s too vast,
for the twisted question he just asked,
all alone on that highway-deck,
little boy a mangled mess,
a question raging in the whiteness,
blind pain searing emptiness.
Eye for eye, and so much worse,
this part is the final curse:
Of what’s butchered by the fathers,
the worst part is what doesn’t hurt.