Genre: Art-Literary Masterpiece, 8x8", the Cover is Mirror-Reflective, inside--204 pages of Full-Color Photographic imagery & Genius Writing.
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Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
Book synopsis:
She goes to the(Whitch) doctor to fix the Crack-in-her-Ass©2OOO & he sends her to Ass-Synonymous™ (it’s like AA™ only Ass'Synonymous').
Reviews state, "La Ruocco's obsessed w/ her rear end," ref. previous: document Zippø © 1998; in attempt to: make the media beƒore the media makes You, instead of competing, she finalized the 'Ad(Ass) replacement strategy' & fulfills Spiritual & Linguistic transcendence. . . . . . Melding American Capitalism -&- the CAPITALIZATION of G O D.
About the Author
Author bio: Laruoccan Art-Literary Masterpiece is an amalgam of Graphic Prose/Dialectic/Photography.
With the photographic expertise primarily of Dean Heady, his Behind as well as infront of the Lens; other collaborators in Xerø, turn-of-the-millenia ©1999-2003 include the work of Michael Portnoy (Calvin Klein Ad-Ass Replacement Switcharoo), John S. Hall(dialogue on intellectual property), Maurice Narcis photography (Butt & kNOwSe Curiosity Remover Cream™ - No's if's &'s OR's But's about it,-- Break your chains of thought), Jared Collins, Dr. Korn, Noe Kidder, Rena Schwartz, Clay Patrick McBride, Michael Lattis, & Don Eng (takes Tutu Tango Theory).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Viva La Ruocco!,
By E. E. Kuersten "Psychedelic Surgeon" (East Village, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Xero: Turn-of-the-Millenia (Zero) (Paperback)
Somewhere in the realm of creative and conceptual freedom initiated by both post-structuralist semiotics and Calvin Klein underwear ads comes this second book by performance artist/writer L.A. Ruocco. Her previous work, DOCUMENT ZIPPO (Soft Skull) combined whacked-out illustrations, brilliant paintings and no-holds-barred autobiographical (emphasis on the "graphic") essays for a neo-Burroughs effect, making it ideal tattoo-parlor reading. For this latest opus, XERO, Ms. Ruocco leaves any semblance of such narrative structures far, far behind. And baby, in this book, the behind is a good thing. Better than narrative, here she has focus, and the focus is squarely on her ass, a topic that was, sadly, only touched on in her previous effort. With XERO, Laruocco "cracks it wide open," so to speak. It's like FINNEGANS WAKE if James Joyce dared tread closer the line twixt brilliance and insanity (and if he was also a totally hot chick). With XERO, Laruocco plunges head-first into the crack of language, zipping merrily and cleverly between font shapes and sizes as she puts the pose back in post-modern. Meanwhile, crazy color photographs (by Dean Heady) of the artist in various states of undress and exaltation comment on, translate, and transcend the psychotic semiotic escapades. Highlights include some crazy riffing on Jewish Mysticism, Alcoholics Anonymous, artificial sweeteners, the hole in the donut, and of course, Sex, God, and the Dictionary. If you don't think the author of this inspired tome can find the thousand and one post-structuralist links running through all these words and their meanings and whip them together, use them to tie Derrida to a tree and then shake her derrier in his face before dancing on down the street in spring-coiled platform shoes and a tutu, then you obviously need some learning. A glossy, ultra-slick text packed with great pics and illustrations, XERO is the sort of book you don't need to start at the beginning, or finish at the end. Just pick it up for a few minutes, get your head reeling, and then run for your brand new life.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Creme de Laruocco,
By
This review is from: Xero: Turn-of-the-Millenia (Zero) (Paperback)
The writings of Laruocco are endemic of an information age, her analogs I find to represent a hyper-linked culture, one where concepts unfold towards chapters gone and to come, where each individual letter she uses seems to have independant signifigance of the words, and comes with the feeling that the floor has dropped from beneath you with no end in sight. Her self-referentiality will leave you spiraling and lost, yet with a sublime understanding of just what she's trying to get at, she's a mystery religion unto herself. This book defies generalities, contained within are philosophies, spiritualities, dualities, astrologies, analogies; politics, drugs, coffee, insanity, family, the occult, the forbidden, and the mystic, all with brilliant color photographs and collections of drawings.This book is easy to gloss through, it's filled with outright wit and humor, and reads on a semi-linear basis, but fellow literary geniuses and artists, as well as the general sport-readers will find this book worthy of much time and devotion to decrypt the immense depth to the work so as not to miss one shining moment of it all.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Singularity,
By
This review is from: Xero: Turn-of-the-Millenia (Zero) (Paperback)
To enter the world of author/artist La Ruocco is to enter the carnivalesque: there is ritual, grotesquerie, a humor of the digestive system (one end to the other), a reversal of ordinary values and mores, bizarre costuming, extravagant sexual exhibitionism, and a corporeal philosophy that both celebrates and ridicules all things transcendent, taboo and spiritual- whether they be death, God, nation, faith and identity. With a labor or love four years in the making, her second publication and magnum opus, Xerø, marks a major event in the avant-garde literature and art world.With a background in particle physics, painting, writing and performance art, 30 year old Ruocco brings her seemingly incompatible passions to bear upon her brilliant new book, synthesizing scientific disciplines and art forms with the sophistication and madcap humor of a giddy genius. For a book largely about her ass, she explores the topic with tireless (and oddly, never tiring) fascination, imagination, variety, and a heartening blend of seriousness, wit, play and silliness. An experiment in some 204 pages, Xerø is properly considered an "artist's book," one that explores and expands on the properties of book-making, and that innovates in printing, typography, form and presentation. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, artworks by the author, notebook doodles, diagrams, constantly shifting and playful type, and handwritten sections, the book is one of those rare literary/graphic marvels in which each page is a work of art. With little in the way of traditional narrative, Xerø operates by way of poetic linking of associated (and sometimes jarringly unexpected) images, text and ideas. The encyclopedic range of references is like that found in a routine by Eddie Izzard or the Théatre de Complicité's play, Mnemonic, in which all the disparate strands and elements of the proceedings are eventually woven into a larger whole that unifies them, or at least holds them in magical synergy. The first main chapter, entitled "Whitch doctor?" manages to touch on gematria, phonemes, intellectual property rights, teachings of the Koran and Talmud, pornography, death, psychoanalysis, gene mapping, the science of vision and taste, Zen, and quantum physics, among other things. Interspersed every two or so pages are photographs and drawings that further widen the lens to include fake menus (fish with feet), pseudo-scientific diagrams, vowel charts with letters superimposed on the author's mouth forming those sounds, and hilarious send-ups of Calvin Klein ads. The scope is dizzying, alarming, often extremely funny on numerous levels, but there is also method to the madness. The "Whitch doctor?" episode takes on psychoanalysis and medicine, with the overall rubric, "She goes to the doctor to fix the crack in her Ass." Here (as elsewhere), the text reads like journal entries. Going to the doctor to fix the crack in her ass is, among other things, a metaphor for the protagonist (doppelganger Ruocco) going to a psychiatrist to be made "whole" again." The patient disarms the doctor (who in some passages resembles her literary editor) at every twist and turn. She says things like, "it's not the voices in MY head that scare me, it's the voices in yours" and "i think in font; & i speak in words. but my ass is the only thing that means anything." The failed exchange with her psychiatrist is mirrored by a set of photographs, at once erotic and absurd, of the author, stark nude on a table being rectally examined by a surgeon (actually Dean Heady, the main photographer for Xerø). These sidelong portraits show the patient prostrate with the surgeon carefully doing something between her buttocks with a butter knife. The implication, in both the photo set and "Whitch doctor" episode, is that there is nothing really to be "fixed" here, or at any rate, that the medical establishment is filled with quacks who smugly diagnose and pigeon-hole free-spirits like the superhero, Ruocco. Rare is the book in which all formal, narrative and graphic elements are not only original and innovative unto themselves, but are of a piece with one another. Xerø is such a work. The more I take time with it, the more I discover just how systematic and brilliant the overall conception is. The rampant punning and play with font, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization appear more than arbitrary or haphazard. If grammatical perfection equals a mythical state of total sanity, Laruocco's breakdown of language, deconstruction of meaning and multi-layering of text and font mirror the patient/author's supposed insanity. But like a good Foucauldian or deconstructionist, Ruocco situates herself and her text outside the ordinary paradigms of institutional rigor. Ruocco is a phenomenally gifted painter and artist, and one of the great pleasures of Xerø is seeing a number of her paintings, drawings and sculptures lavishly and beautifully reproduced. Roughly half of the pages are in full color, allowing the vibrant photographs and artistic reproductions to shine on their high quality, glossy pages. Stylistically, Laruocco's self-referential and ludic text bears kinships with works of the OuLiPo authors such as Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, Marcel Bénabou and Harry Mathews, as well as with the stream of consciousness style of William Burroughs in Naked Lunch. Her paintings and drawings resemble diverse traditions (or anti-traditions) including the rough-hewn Art Brut style of artists like Jean Dubuffet or the cartoonist Saul Steinberg, as well as the more polished and provocative self-portraiture of Frida Kahlo. The playfulness and overt sexuality of her imagery also bring to mind the sculptures and paintings of Niki de Saint-Phalle and Marcel Duchamp. There is also the gonzo performance artist in her blood: in one hilarious caper, she and artist Michael Portnoy created enormous posters of themselves posing in mock Calvin Klein ads and affixed them overnight to buses carrying the authentic ads. The episode is described in the book ("Project: Switcharoo Ad-Replacement Strategy"). In La Ruocco, then, we have a singularity among singularities, a by-product of glorious fusion and atom-smashing, a massively talented artist, author, scientist, philosopher and provocateur brimming with derrierudition. Xerø is a masterpiece.
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