Paul Chan: The Essential and Incomplete Sade for Sade's Sake

by Paul Chan (Artist)

Paul Chan's monumental projection Sade for Sade's Sake takes the work of the notorious pornographer and philosopher, the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), as a departure point for a nearly six-hour-long rhythmic study of bodily ecstasy and bodily repetition. Chan brilliantly renders the foremost quality of Sade's pornography--its fanatical appetite not just for the identifying of sexual possibilities, but for their enumeration and classification--as a rhythmic play of silhouetted bodies that fragment into parts, recombine and atomize, in a mechanized copulation poised between manic repetition and wild abandon. This artist's book brings together for the first time the drawings, writings, notes and fonts created during the production of Sade for Sade's Sake . It elaborates the full scope and thoughtfulness of the projection as a fascinating treatment of sex and eroticism, compulsion and joy, the social body and the sexual body.

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2010

About the author

Paul Chan is an artist who lives in New York. A survey entitled Selected Works was mounted by Schaulager in Basel, Switzerland (April 11-October 19, 2014). His work has been exhibited widely in many international shows including: Documenta 13, Kassel, 2012; Before The Law, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2011-12; Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2009; Medium Religion, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2008; Traces du sacrê, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008; 16th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2008; 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2007; and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 2006. Solo exhibitions include: My Laws are My Whores, The Renaissance Society and the University of Chicago, Chicago, 2009; Paul Chan: Three Easy Pieces, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2008; Paul Chan: The 7 Lights, Serpentine Gallery, London and New Museum, New 2007–2008; Paul Chan, Para/Site art space, Hong Kong, 2006.

In 2002, Chan was a part of Voices in the Wilderness, an American aid group that broke U.S. sanctions and federal law by working in Baghdad before the U.S. invasion and occupation. In 2004 he garnered police attention for The People’s Guide to the Republican National Convention, a free map distributed throughout New York to help protesters to get in or out of the way of the RNC. In 2007, Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Creative Time to produce a site-specific outdoor presentation of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot in New Orleans. Chan’s essays and interviews have appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, October, Tate etc, Parkett, Texte Zur Kunst, Bomb, and other magazines and journals. Chan founded Badlands Unlimited in 2010.