I once read Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation To A Beheading. For the entire duration of the novel, I was held in suspense, waiting for the critical moment of climax. All the extraneous detail seemed so trivial at the time, so consuming of my attention and energy. I was impatient to cut to the chase, per se. It was not until the bitter end, when my emotional endurance was utterly spent, that I realised the entire text itself was, in fact, the climax. Every. Word. It did not hit in one foul swoop. It was not a sudden revelation, or exclamation. My engagement in the narrative and, perhaps most critically when it comes to literature, the lingering complexity of its aftertaste was hung on the prolonged anticipation it managed to grasp me in. Though I was cynical at first, the beauty of this lengthy build-up was in its ability to make me feel. To make me desire so much for that supposed “end” to occur. I was not disappointed. More, effected. More, reflective. Left in a kind of existential lethargy brought about by the inconspicuous occurrence of something you hadn’t realised was occurring until you are totally, fully submerged. It was in such a way that Steve Carr’s Watermelon unfolded for me. Like a Vladimir Nabokov-execution.
Two pairs of dismembered arms synchronously appear from the periphery of the image, each time adding an additional rubber band to the rounded belly of a centrally balanced watermelon. Their amaranth fingernails are a fleeting, yet constant allusion to the subjects’ juicy innards. At first, their routine appears casual, delicate, and somewhat sensual (pulling rubber over an engorged, upright fruit: everything is a phallic symbol these days). However, as their incessant snapping draws on, and the visceral memories from one’s childhood, of twisting a rubber band around a finger too many times and eventually cutting off the circulation so that the fingertip turns an alarming shade of purple, start to cause one’s extremities to throb, we can not help but notice a slight urgency, a slight menacing insistence in the relentless burning pinch of rubber bands. The painted talons now become less playful in their reference to what’s inside, and more insistent in their inevitable reunion with the fleshy inner shade.
As time draws on, and the end result become more and more imminent, ones engagement becomes more intense. I hate Thrillers. Not because they are usually tacky as hell, but because I dislike suspense immensely. I become overwhelmed by the feeling of my heart pulsating at a faster-than-normal rate, and develop an acute awareness of the rapidly increasing temperature of my body (usually accompanied by a nauseous desire to eat my own fingernails, and to pay attention to every superfluous detail of the world around me that is not in viewing-direction of said suspense-inducer). Well, heaven knows how thrilled I was to see that the gallery was dog-friendly, when a rascalish little fellow pranced in to take a turn about the room. Despite the initial reflex to jump on the dog in desperation, however, my mind and body had succumbed to the hypnosis that is anticipation. Alas, I could not avert my gaze from the screen for more that ten seconds (max).
At some point in time (when exactly, I’m not sure), what began as a playful exercise becomes a scene of malicious torture. The once perky melon now quivers in discomfort as strangulating band after strangulating band insists on creating a waist where one should not exist. The atmosphere becomes oddly clinical, like some kind of psychopathic science experiment on an unwilling patient. If the melon had eyes (god forbid), they would be bulging, pleading, crying in silent desperation. As an early sign of the unnatural pressure being placed on this bulbous boy, a lone fissure begins to bubble in an attempt to release mounting pressure. Like the frothing saliva of a rabid dog, the white foam drips down the melon’s emerald chin. The signal is premature, however, as it comes long before the expected outcome. This only adds to the manic suspense now devouring my viewer’s-mind.
Thwack! Like a rubber band flicking against a watermelon’s skin. Thwack! Like an axe cracking into the hard wood trunk of a doomed marked tree. Thwack! Like the snapping tibia of a contorted, flailing limb. Thwack! One band closer to whatever comes next. The mental images flood my brain in the ample space provided for thinking during the work’s duration… A gigantic swollen pimple, on the very cusp of erupting with curdled yellow puss – The docked tail of an infant lam – Castration – Salvador Dali (a natural progression from the former) – Swollen green varicose veins on a senior’s enflamed appendage.
A severed head, rolling limply on the ashen ground, tendrils of ruby flesh ripped and dripping from the truncated stump of a neck, twitching slightly as spurts of blood pump in humorous arches out of severed arteries and veins.
The mind becomes frenzied, waiting for the fatal moment. Reality, surely, cannot be as brutal as the imagination. Seconds pass as minutes. Minutes as hours. To deepen the air of anxious suspense, the occasional knocking of hollow pipes can be herd in menacing torment, like gasping, mangled organs burgeoning on explosion under the suffocating bind.
The last seconds of the video are graphic, more disturbingly gory than I could have anticipated … or perhaps exactly as I had anticipated. Though, like Nabokov’s book, the beauty was in the build-up.
Plate 1: Steve Carr, Watermelon (still), 2015, Sony HD Xcam, duration 33 mins 9 secs, from The Science of Ecstasy and Immortality at Michael Lett Gallery (http://www.michaellett.com/artist/?artist=Steve+Carr&info=work&show=The+Science+of+Ecstasy+and+Immortality#The+Science+of+Ecstasy+and+Immortality)
Plate 2: Penguin Modern Classic book cover, Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation To A Beheading, 1935-36 (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/376561.Invitation_to_a_Beheading)
Plate 3: Alfred Hitchcock (“The Master of Suspense”) with his dog Yankee, 1956 (http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Hitchcock_Gallery:_image_6527)
Plate 4: Tim Curry as Dr. Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 (http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/rockyhorror/images/8/8b/Frankie.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100417191821)
Plate 5: Salvador Dali, The Great Masturbator, 1929, oil on canvas, 1100 x 1500 mm, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/visage-du-grand-masturbateur-face-great-masturbator)
Plate 6: Watermelon watercolour from Tumblr
bencodydoyle 
