Dark Stars Rising: Conversations from the Outer Realms

To open Shade Rupe’s Dark Stars Rising: Conversations from the Outer Realms at random is to drop into a vortex. It’s 500 pages of double-columned interviews, conducted over a 20-year period, with artists in some way “trangressive”, pioneering or peculiar.

These include filmmakers such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, who discusses his Paris happenings with the Panic group and his fateful encounter with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Other directors include William Lustig (Maniac), Gaspar Noé (Irreversible), Jim Vanbebber (The Manson Family), and Buddy Giovanazzo (Combat Shock). There are also performers (Udo Kier, Divine, the recently deceased Tura Satana) as well as various writers, illustrators, musicians and performance artists.

Check out Zamora the Torture King, who says “You’ve got your body and then this mysterious area inside, and these sensations that can happen that you’re not normally coming in contact with.” Indeed, this is a book that’s littered with not-safe-for-work photos.