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Xero: Turn-of-the-Millenia (Zero)

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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.

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.

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.

here is my homemade attempt at reviewing what is above reVIEWs/like a shirt for madonna concert in puff paint/ if you are looking at this before the new year begins, then reading this book would be a way to save yourself from another year in the dark. if it is after the new year, then don't wait any longer to read it. PreSUMing you are reading this, you like books, so you've got a chance. But all your life, you have probably been using words with some thought, but xero awareness of their vitality, ASSuming them to be iron little SOLDiers/soldEARS without souls or feathers or intentions of their own. LA Ruocco has somehow birthed what can only be described as a tremendously disorganized frenzy of thought/ picture a sky ravaged by comets/ basically, an exquisite wreckage of language, and on each page there are multiple moments when: when hunter s. thompson (may his gonzo genious requies in pacem /or Vegas) shot out the phrase "Buy the ticket, Take the Ride" he was talking about this.

do not read this book, it's Too Good.
i professed to a bookshop, "most people buy it because it's shiny, but it's actually a Great work of Genius," that was just a common marketing ploy used in media & politics, propaganda or more aptly, less-than-half truths used to mass-hysterically sway popular opinion. No one is buying Xerø.
the silver reflective cover designed to snaz-up the flashiness instead of causing the Art-Literary-Masterpiece to stand-out on the shelf actually only reflects the books beside it, making it essentially invisible.
the Work is such a complete Representation of Life you can't even see it. hence: "is what it ism" the religion.
also see ref. Xerø: "nutella & fluff on the common denominator of slice," Laruocco wants to be the dichotomy of eastern & western culture, spreadable, drinkable, freezable; the Lowest Common Denominator Of Language.

illustrated vibrantly with vivid photographs mixed with drawings, chapter titles include:
the Melding American Capitalism -&- the CAPITALIZATION of G O D.
the shapes the Vowels take on your face A e i o & u, & the double You. [---what part of "NO" don't you understand? ---the K & the W ]
"is what it ism" -- the religion. 'mASS':: word is a diction, words are a diction!
the 12-steps of Ass Synonymous, an in-depth synthesis application of a spiritual discipline.
the 'Ad(Ass) replacement strategy' an attempt to conform to language through trash chic advertisement.
products like: Butt & kNOwSe Curiosity Remover Cream™ - No's if's &'s OR's But's about it,-- Break your chains of thought!
'A Parody Keeps the Doctor Away.' etc.
Laruocco invented the mixed metaphor before they were called mixed metaphors, before it was looked down upon, that 'she mixes metaphors'. She'd patented her Laruoccan®™© technique before copyrights became fashionable & Genericide became poetic. her words make ¢. clairvoyant kleptomania when i stole your ideas before you have them.

Xerø is like a children's book for adults who liked the straightforwardness of the 3 bears but refined & tainted their intellect beyond years of mass media. The story begins: "She goes to the doctor to fix the crack in her ass." & it continues to conclusion.

i have schizophrenic sub-divisiaries hence the "La Ruoc & co." publisher who Represent you... so you can BLAME them when people look at your book & Gasp "WHO Published this!" i say... "the other girl." (im thinking the other girl too) but she's the same girl under the same wig at the same time.
Xerø sites references to: "the diamond sutra," the Buddhist bible; "I & Thou," Martin Buber; & "Magick, book 4 liber ABA" Aleister Crowley.

If you haven't read Laruocco's Document Zippo, you have missed one of the more significant events in literary history.
Any fear that she was a one-shot author is delightfully vanquished by the publication of Xero. In an age when economy determines the list of authors released by major publishers, L.A. Ruocco is fiercely unique and independant. Xero bridges the gap between western and eastern civilization and bi-polar thinking in the lowest common denominator of a language which, although appearing to approach neology at times, is in fact precise and deep. Her work will be current and flourishing long after her detractors have learned to cohabit with the dust.

This here shiny book is just bursting with some of the most interesting pieces of artwork I've been privy to sift through in a great long while. If you're interested in playing it safe, and not expanding those brains of yours, then go and commit suicide... otherwise, go ahead and give a gander at this crazy masterpiece, known only as Xero!

-Blister Herzog

La Ruocco's Xero is epistemological profanity at its cleverest. A chaotic but perfect world to explore. For the lover of art that makes you think and laugh, Xero is, as Robert Bork once said, an 'intellectual feast.'

Xero mixes free-associative, recursive, pun-filled, and at times startlingly clear prose on topics from religion to La Ruocco's ass. To itemize the topics, to give away too much detail, would be to ruin part of the fun, which is discovery. The book unfolds, the ideas link and fertilize each other.

Interspersed throughout is copious color photography, much of it including said ass and the rest of Laruocco's stunning beauty.

Collaborative portions include a conversation about intellectual property and pornography with John S. Hall, and documentation of a scheme with Michael Portnoy to replace Calvin Klein ads with their own ass-based versions.

Xero is less a book than a journey and a performance piece. But that's wrong. That's because we have preconceptions of what a book should look like, be like, act like. When you spend time with Xero you are provoked, stimulated, tickled. You don't just read about experiencing; you experience. You'll be enlightened, exhilarated and entertained by the journey.

--- (...)

I will also use the term Psychedelic to describe "Xero", it definitely applies here, in both a creepy Brian De Palma "Sisters" kind of way, and also in a manner that evokes the graphic and flying-high humour of R. Crumb/Frank Zappa/Jefferson Airplane. This Coffee-Table Book with fantastic shiny silver cover amounts to a vomiting of Self-Expression, unexpurgated, not necessarily trying to make Sense as it grapples with profound issues either seriously or ridiculously. "Xero" can be funny, innocent, silly, disturbing and theoretically advanced in its exploration of the dual-edged nature of reality .......... The Good, The Ugly, The Bad and the Beautiful. How does one successfully cage the Child Beast that rages within the Adult? Maybe by writing "Xero" and letting those stream-of-consciousness impressions flow out literally and surrealistically (pillow) without over thinking them.

I will also apply the moniker of Performance Art; "Xero" is Performance Art, in its most Elevated yet Debased rendering, in that the artist uses herself as the Object. L. A. Ruocco describes and comments on the works of art she has made, while Being/Becoming those works of art herself. Case in point: (1) the author becomes "Plastic Laruocco", a Glam Rock "Action Figure-Doll"; (2) she observes her Painting of Her-Self while being Her-Self as a Person Who has been Painted. One page of the book (Cafe Ejaculate, page 130) simply states ".......... it's like going to the supermarket for a carton of Jumbo eggs & checking if they're okay .........." in the poison-pen letter fonts that are utilized generously in this work. In essence, "Xero" battles between Chaos and Clarity, by means of mathematically formulated Beatnik musings a la Jean Michel Basquiat, that dissect various concepts of God and Faith (to quote L. A. Ruocco on page 19, "if there is a God, I want to buy Low and sell [H]igh"). All the while being interspersed with L. A. Ruocco showing off her Ass, while making jokes about Her Objectified Ass and The Objectified Ass (Self vs. Other) and being Sexy/Grotesque Her-Self. This book redefines Unique and it's unfortunate that there aren't more books of this kind, especially in the USA, but then the rarity of "Xero" is what makes it special.

Stephen C. Bird, author of "Hideous Exuberance: A Satire"