Meat Joy

*Meat Joy* is an erotic rite—excessive and indulgent, celebrating flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, and paper scraps. Its propulsion is toward the ecstatic, shifting and turning among tenderness, wildness, precision, and abandon; qualities that could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, or repellent. Physical equivalences are enacted as a psychic imagistic stream, in which the layered elements mesh and gain intensity through the energy complement of the audience. The original performances became notorious and introduced a vision of the "sacred erotic." This video was converted from original film footage of three 1964 performances of *Meat Joy* at its first staged performance at the Festival de la Libre Expression in Paris, Dennison Hall in London, and Judson Church in New York City.