Jerk // À travers leurs larmes

In 2005, as part of the ACR, Frank Smith asked Dennis Cooper to think about a radio project.

The result of this commission was a collaboration with Gisèle Vienne on a radio performance of Jerk, based on a short story by Dennis unpublished in French, with the impressive performance of Jonathan Capdevielle.

This work, broadcast in the ACR in June 2007, has now been turned into a stage show: created at Le Quartz in Brest on 5 March 2008, then revived in Paris, as part of the “Etrange Cargo” Festival at the Ménagerie de Verre.

This satisfaction at seeing the lives of radio multiply – after radio…

… has now given rise to a book/disc published by éditions Dis Voir entitled JERK// A travers leurs larmes, conceived as an imaginary, humorous and dark reconstruction of the teenage crimes perpetrated by the American serial killer Dean Corll, with the help of his young accomplices David Brooks and Wayne Henley, in Texas in the mid-1970s. David Brooks is serving a life sentence in prison, where he presents a puppet show that reconstructs his murders.

In the space of the book, Dennis Cooper and Gisèle Vienne put this sound piece under tension by making it resonate with an unpublished photographic sequence, À travers leurs larmes, which they created from photographs and dolls made by Gisèle Vienne.

Jerk / À travers leurs larmes is a plural exploration of these artists’ shared preoccupations in the representation of confused adolescents in search of thrills, prone to self-destruction, and of adults who romanticise their dark side, stylise their sadness and malaise, and bring about their own annihilation.

The sound piece JERK(42’28”), a free audio CD included in this book, is a commission from the Atelier de Création Radiophonique (ACR) of France Culture. It was broadcast on 17 June 2001.