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Arc de Triomphe
Pissing into your own mouth is a common motif in the film Whatever Happened to Gelitin (2016). The movie is a career spanning documentary covering the art collective Gelitin, so it would be equally true to say that pissing into your own mouth is a common motif in the work of Gelitin. Over the course of eighty-two movie minutes, the members of Gelitin piss into their own mouths, have audience members at performances piss into their own mouths, and then build a large sculpture that, if you’d believe it, pisses into its own mouth. This probably takes up less than 5% of the film’s total screen time, but it is definitely the part of the movie I think about the most.
In the film, there is something ritualistic about pissing into your own mouth. To start with, everyone pissing into their own mouths is doing it the exact same way. They lay down on their back, bring their heels towards their butt so that their knees are pointed to the ceiling, and then lift their hips. In yoga, this is called bridge pose. In crossfit gyms, it is called a hip extension. Most people doing these exercises at studios and gyms, though, prudishly go through the entire exercise without pissing at all.
Part of what makes this position so amenable to pissing into your own mouth is that it elevates your hips a foot or two above your head. From a physics perspective, this added elevation reduces the amount of force needed for the projectile to hit its intended target. But from a ritualistic perspective, it is a blatant and brazen position to take. It is not a tepid or exploratory position. It is confident, almost impatient. And so when you watch footage of an audience member at a performance art piece lifting their hips, you can imagine the sort of doubt and worry that they are experiencing. But they look pretty eager to piss into their own mouth.
From a practical perspective, the greatest benefit of this pose is that it leaves your hands free. Your weight rests on your heels and shoulders, allowing anyone with a penis to use their hands when aiming. The only exception in the film is the statue Gelitin created (Arc de Triomphe, 2003) which rested its weight on its hands and heels, closer to the wheel pose. The plastic arts have a long history of sculptors taking on the responsibility for aiming the faux urine of their sculptures; though usually in the context of cherubs refilling public fountains. But while the form is frequently repeated, the impact here is unique. With its mouth open, the subject of the piece is self aware of his constant urination in a way that most fountain fillers aren’t. Ironically, the article I found covering the controversy surrounding the statue’s unveiling on the eve of a royal visit from Charles III doesn’t even mention the fact that the sculpture is pissing into its own mouth. They are too distracted by the two foot tall erection.
Now, I did move past something rather quickly in the last paragraph that I would like to return to. This entire practice is pretty directly geared towards those with penises. It is possible, though more difficult, for those with vulvas to piss into their own mouth. Documentary proof is available online. But, doing so requires a different pose entirely. I’m sure that there are fans of Gelitin with vulvas who were inspired by the group to piss into their own mouth, but there is still an extent to which these people are excluded from the core aesthetic and semiotic thrust of this practice. It’s like the difference between baseball and softball. Both may have the same bases, but pissing overhand is still a different skillset.
At some point in the movie, a gallerist talking head says something along the lines of, “I realize that some people might think that this is weird. I was a little skeptical before I tried it. But I bet that every man who went to one of those shows went home and tried it that night. That might be true of this movie, too.”
I did not go home that night and piss into my own mouth. I waited seven years.
For a long time, I thought that I was never going to piss into my own mouth. On the rare occasion that I would talk about this movie with people in my life, this gallerist was the punchline of the story. I still think that it is pretty funny that he thinks that most people who watch Gelitin piss into their own mouths are thinking, “God, I gotta try that.” When I told my partner about this gallerist, though, they didn’t laugh. They looked me in the eyes and said, “Oh, I think that you should definitely piss into your own mouth.”
Still, I didn’t piss into my mouth that night. To be frank, when that gallerist says that he thinks most men go home and try pissing into their own mouth that night, I think that he is severely overestimating the executive functioning of the average performance art attendee. We are a neurodivergent crew of easily distracted and unconsciously avoidant weirdos. If Gelitin could have convinced a quarter of their audience to do anything that night, it would have been a miracle.
Instead, I waited until my partner was out of town at a wedding. I hadn’t intentionally chosen to wait for my partner to leave. It was more that my partner leaving was the first time since our conversation about this that I had been so bored I thought, “Do you know what might make tonight more fun…?”
Even alone in my apartment, I felt a little bashful about the whole thing. I wasn’t worried about being judged. It was more that I knew what I was doing was a little silly; made all the sillier by the fact that I was urged on not by sexual desire, but by continued curiosity over a documentary I saw once seven years ago. But, silly as I felt, I also felt excited. The world is filled with piss freaks. Who is to say I couldn’t be one? Maybe I was about to walk away with an exciting new hobby!
I put some music on, stripped down, and hopped in the tub. My hips raised high, I felt my body hesitate. Without the ritualistic process of using the toilet, I wasn’t quite sure how to start. It’s not something that I am used to thinking about. (If you think it sounds easy, I welcome you to try pissing your pants right now.) Absent those private permissions, it suddenly became both a puzzle and an act of will. I’m still not quite sure what I did. But slowly, somehow, the message traveled. And then we were off.
Before I had figured out how to aim, when I was just in a bathtub pissing on myself like any old Joe Schmoe, I was having an okay time. But as soon as it went in my mouth, my brain shouted, “You should not do this!” I was shocked. I am not used to my body communicating with me this directly. Usually, our conversations look more like me feeling grumpy and suicidal for an afternoon and then eventually realizing that that means I’m thirsty.
Before I knew it, my body decided we were done. It wasn’t really a decision. It was more like an alarm went off. And with that alarm blaring and my internal health and safety crew running to their stations, suddenly drinking my own urine didn’t seem so fun anymore.
I can forget that I have inherited generations of safety lessons through my genetic code. In my modern life, some of those lessons don’t even make sense anymore. I am sure that for thousands of years, it was a good idea to stay away from cliffs whenever possible. But my fear of heights mostly just means that I freeze up on bridges. When the urine hit my tongue and the alarm bells started to go off, I realized that I was committing a classic caveman blunder. Civilizations have spent thousands of years developing sewer systems trying to reduce the chances of accidentally ingesting waste water and here I was mainlining it.
The biggest problem with realizing that you don’t like pissing into your mouth is that, by the time you find that out about yourself, you are somewhat whole hog committed. I was cut by the double edged sword of Gelitin’s charismatic confidence. Their triumphant pose is a public relations coup for auto-urinators everywhere, but it made it pretty hard to walk away. By the time I decided to stop, I was covered in piss, squeezed into the empty bathtub in my apartment, and starting to go into fight or flight. Oh yeah, and I was still fucking pissing.
I stopped pissing, got up, finished pissing, cleaned the tub, took a shower, and then got dressed. It took about fifteen minutes to finish with my chores and move on with my evening. I’m not going to pretend like I was having a zen time cleaning the tub with piss rinsed hair, but I’ve made messes that were harder to clean up. When I was twenty-three, for example, I agreed to be covered in pancake syrup for a comedy show. Afterwards, I threw my clothes on over the syrup. By the time I got home, the syrup had dried like glue. Making matters worse, our hot water heater had stopped working the day before. So, on this cold February day, I took turns holding each limb in the ice cold shower until it loosened the syrup enough for me to slide out of my clothes.
All this is to say that, compared to syrup, piss is a holiday.
As I get to the end of this essay, I find myself wondering whether it will inspire anyone to piss into their own mouth. I saw a few people try it in a documentary and decided to give it a go. And if you are still reading this, you are either somewhat curious about the process or you’re in the coolest English Language Arts class ever. Either way, it is possible. On the other hand, I don’t think that I have made the process sound all that appealing. To some extent, I can’t help it. I didn’t have a good time and I refuse to pretend I did just to help you broaden your horizons. But I do find myself wanting to remind you that that gallerist in the movie pissed into his own mouth and he fucking loved it. So there are people on both sides of this issue.
People say that you only regret the things that you didn’t do, which I think is crazy. I definitely regret covering myself in syrup; if for no other reason than it would have looked better onstage if we had used something less opaque, like pancake batter. But I don’t regret pissing into my own mouth. In fact, I’m grateful for Gelitin encouraging me to do something I normally wouldn’t. At other times in my life, my willingness to try something like eating sushi or putting a highlighter up my ass helped me learn something new about myself. Even the best baseball players only hit the ball a third of the time. But you still gotta get out there and swing.
Gelitin has continued performing and creating art since the release of Whatever Happened to Gelitin in 2016. To spoil the film, nothing ever happened to Gelitin. The movie pretends that they have disappeared, but it is just a framing device. Gelitin is still out there sculpting statues of giant turds and painting portraits with brushes inserted into their anuses. The world keeps turning. The sun keeps shining. Every day is a new opportunity to paint with your butt.
So, even if you don’t piss into your own mouth, I hope this will encourage you to do something far beyond what you’re used to. My best case scenario is that you also have some weird thing you saw in a documentary that you’ve been thinking about for seven years. But even if you don’t have something like that, you can still go out there and cover yourself head to toe in mud or try caviar. There’s no rush. You can wait until the next time your partner is out of town. And who knows? Maybe it turns out you’re a fucking freak.
In the film, there is something ritualistic about pissing into your own mouth. To start with, everyone pissing into their own mouths is doing it the exact same way. They lay down on their back, bring their heels towards their butt so that their knees are pointed to the ceiling, and then lift their hips. In yoga, this is called bridge pose. In crossfit gyms, it is called a hip extension. Most people doing these exercises at studios and gyms, though, prudishly go through the entire exercise without pissing at all.
Part of what makes this position so amenable to pissing into your own mouth is that it elevates your hips a foot or two above your head. From a physics perspective, this added elevation reduces the amount of force needed for the projectile to hit its intended target. But from a ritualistic perspective, it is a blatant and brazen position to take. It is not a tepid or exploratory position. It is confident, almost impatient. And so when you watch footage of an audience member at a performance art piece lifting their hips, you can imagine the sort of doubt and worry that they are experiencing. But they look pretty eager to piss into their own mouth.
From a practical perspective, the greatest benefit of this pose is that it leaves your hands free. Your weight rests on your heels and shoulders, allowing anyone with a penis to use their hands when aiming. The only exception in the film is the statue Gelitin created (Arc de Triomphe, 2003) which rested its weight on its hands and heels, closer to the wheel pose. The plastic arts have a long history of sculptors taking on the responsibility for aiming the faux urine of their sculptures; though usually in the context of cherubs refilling public fountains. But while the form is frequently repeated, the impact here is unique. With its mouth open, the subject of the piece is self aware of his constant urination in a way that most fountain fillers aren’t. Ironically, the article I found covering the controversy surrounding the statue’s unveiling on the eve of a royal visit from Charles III doesn’t even mention the fact that the sculpture is pissing into its own mouth. They are too distracted by the two foot tall erection.
Now, I did move past something rather quickly in the last paragraph that I would like to return to. This entire practice is pretty directly geared towards those with penises. It is possible, though more difficult, for those with vulvas to piss into their own mouth. Documentary proof is available online. But, doing so requires a different pose entirely. I’m sure that there are fans of Gelitin with vulvas who were inspired by the group to piss into their own mouth, but there is still an extent to which these people are excluded from the core aesthetic and semiotic thrust of this practice. It’s like the difference between baseball and softball. Both may have the same bases, but pissing overhand is still a different skillset.
At some point in the movie, a gallerist talking head says something along the lines of, “I realize that some people might think that this is weird. I was a little skeptical before I tried it. But I bet that every man who went to one of those shows went home and tried it that night. That might be true of this movie, too.”
I did not go home that night and piss into my own mouth. I waited seven years.
For a long time, I thought that I was never going to piss into my own mouth. On the rare occasion that I would talk about this movie with people in my life, this gallerist was the punchline of the story. I still think that it is pretty funny that he thinks that most people who watch Gelitin piss into their own mouths are thinking, “God, I gotta try that.” When I told my partner about this gallerist, though, they didn’t laugh. They looked me in the eyes and said, “Oh, I think that you should definitely piss into your own mouth.”
Still, I didn’t piss into my mouth that night. To be frank, when that gallerist says that he thinks most men go home and try pissing into their own mouth that night, I think that he is severely overestimating the executive functioning of the average performance art attendee. We are a neurodivergent crew of easily distracted and unconsciously avoidant weirdos. If Gelitin could have convinced a quarter of their audience to do anything that night, it would have been a miracle.
Instead, I waited until my partner was out of town at a wedding. I hadn’t intentionally chosen to wait for my partner to leave. It was more that my partner leaving was the first time since our conversation about this that I had been so bored I thought, “Do you know what might make tonight more fun…?”
Even alone in my apartment, I felt a little bashful about the whole thing. I wasn’t worried about being judged. It was more that I knew what I was doing was a little silly; made all the sillier by the fact that I was urged on not by sexual desire, but by continued curiosity over a documentary I saw once seven years ago. But, silly as I felt, I also felt excited. The world is filled with piss freaks. Who is to say I couldn’t be one? Maybe I was about to walk away with an exciting new hobby!
I put some music on, stripped down, and hopped in the tub. My hips raised high, I felt my body hesitate. Without the ritualistic process of using the toilet, I wasn’t quite sure how to start. It’s not something that I am used to thinking about. (If you think it sounds easy, I welcome you to try pissing your pants right now.) Absent those private permissions, it suddenly became both a puzzle and an act of will. I’m still not quite sure what I did. But slowly, somehow, the message traveled. And then we were off.
Before I had figured out how to aim, when I was just in a bathtub pissing on myself like any old Joe Schmoe, I was having an okay time. But as soon as it went in my mouth, my brain shouted, “You should not do this!” I was shocked. I am not used to my body communicating with me this directly. Usually, our conversations look more like me feeling grumpy and suicidal for an afternoon and then eventually realizing that that means I’m thirsty.
Before I knew it, my body decided we were done. It wasn’t really a decision. It was more like an alarm went off. And with that alarm blaring and my internal health and safety crew running to their stations, suddenly drinking my own urine didn’t seem so fun anymore.
I can forget that I have inherited generations of safety lessons through my genetic code. In my modern life, some of those lessons don’t even make sense anymore. I am sure that for thousands of years, it was a good idea to stay away from cliffs whenever possible. But my fear of heights mostly just means that I freeze up on bridges. When the urine hit my tongue and the alarm bells started to go off, I realized that I was committing a classic caveman blunder. Civilizations have spent thousands of years developing sewer systems trying to reduce the chances of accidentally ingesting waste water and here I was mainlining it.
The biggest problem with realizing that you don’t like pissing into your mouth is that, by the time you find that out about yourself, you are somewhat whole hog committed. I was cut by the double edged sword of Gelitin’s charismatic confidence. Their triumphant pose is a public relations coup for auto-urinators everywhere, but it made it pretty hard to walk away. By the time I decided to stop, I was covered in piss, squeezed into the empty bathtub in my apartment, and starting to go into fight or flight. Oh yeah, and I was still fucking pissing.
I stopped pissing, got up, finished pissing, cleaned the tub, took a shower, and then got dressed. It took about fifteen minutes to finish with my chores and move on with my evening. I’m not going to pretend like I was having a zen time cleaning the tub with piss rinsed hair, but I’ve made messes that were harder to clean up. When I was twenty-three, for example, I agreed to be covered in pancake syrup for a comedy show. Afterwards, I threw my clothes on over the syrup. By the time I got home, the syrup had dried like glue. Making matters worse, our hot water heater had stopped working the day before. So, on this cold February day, I took turns holding each limb in the ice cold shower until it loosened the syrup enough for me to slide out of my clothes.
All this is to say that, compared to syrup, piss is a holiday.
As I get to the end of this essay, I find myself wondering whether it will inspire anyone to piss into their own mouth. I saw a few people try it in a documentary and decided to give it a go. And if you are still reading this, you are either somewhat curious about the process or you’re in the coolest English Language Arts class ever. Either way, it is possible. On the other hand, I don’t think that I have made the process sound all that appealing. To some extent, I can’t help it. I didn’t have a good time and I refuse to pretend I did just to help you broaden your horizons. But I do find myself wanting to remind you that that gallerist in the movie pissed into his own mouth and he fucking loved it. So there are people on both sides of this issue.
People say that you only regret the things that you didn’t do, which I think is crazy. I definitely regret covering myself in syrup; if for no other reason than it would have looked better onstage if we had used something less opaque, like pancake batter. But I don’t regret pissing into my own mouth. In fact, I’m grateful for Gelitin encouraging me to do something I normally wouldn’t. At other times in my life, my willingness to try something like eating sushi or putting a highlighter up my ass helped me learn something new about myself. Even the best baseball players only hit the ball a third of the time. But you still gotta get out there and swing.
Gelitin has continued performing and creating art since the release of Whatever Happened to Gelitin in 2016. To spoil the film, nothing ever happened to Gelitin. The movie pretends that they have disappeared, but it is just a framing device. Gelitin is still out there sculpting statues of giant turds and painting portraits with brushes inserted into their anuses. The world keeps turning. The sun keeps shining. Every day is a new opportunity to paint with your butt.
So, even if you don’t piss into your own mouth, I hope this will encourage you to do something far beyond what you’re used to. My best case scenario is that you also have some weird thing you saw in a documentary that you’ve been thinking about for seven years. But even if you don’t have something like that, you can still go out there and cover yourself head to toe in mud or try caviar. There’s no rush. You can wait until the next time your partner is out of town. And who knows? Maybe it turns out you’re a fucking freak.
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