Manatee Idol

Last night i went to the Dalston studio of the amazingly inspired and inspiring photographer Amy Gwatkin (here's the card she gave me on arrival). it was blissfully low key - a red wine and gossip affair that was distinctly unlike the bizarre inferno of idiosyncratic creativity that took place last time i visited her there. on a FREEZING saturday in early january seven girls had been ceremoniously summoned for the filmed sacrifice of a giant sponge manatee. the creature had, for eons, been the studio's resident male presence-cum-prop-cum-bed but, sadly for the poor sea cow, it was an eon too long and along with much of the rest of the country its services had been rendered redundant. but unlike many a superfluous employee, this was no put-your-things-in-a-cardboard-box stealth exit. hell no. dressed in stilettos, suspenders and generally saucy underwear we coven of vixens ripped the fucker to pieces with our bare hands, lit solely by flickering flashlights, only stopping, eventually, breathless and spent, to writhe around pitilessly and ecstatically in the spongy entrails. conceived and captured on film by Amy, the event was an extraordinarily cathartic expression of alternately feminist and carnally erotic physicality. and good god it was fun. the film is in production, but here's a trailer, called, rather appropriately, Manatee Idol. the girl is a star. watch her space.