Catherine Holly / The Academy of Realness — After the Pressure the Cock

Artist publication / photocopied zine
The Academy of Realness, New York, 2014
15.5 × 12.5 cm
Staple-bound paperback
[38] pages
Black-and-white photocopy process
Edition of 150

Condition: very good; light handling wear and minor softening to edges consistent with age.

Published under The Academy of Realness, a pseudonymous structure later folded into the wider trajectory of The New Rare Editions. Produced during an earlier phase of dispersed identities and shifting authorial positions, After the Pressure the Cock operates between artist publication, image archive, and provisional narrative sequence.

The publication assembles appropriated images, handwritten interventions, film references, and fragmented visual material into a low-resolution photocopied structure resistant to stable reading. Marilyn Monroe appears alongside scratched gestures, interrupted captions, and displaced text fragments. Piero Gherardi’s costume design for Giulietta degli Spiriti enters less as citation than as material passing through another image economy.

The title itself functions almost like a cut-up proposition: pressure, sexuality, absurdity, and image culture collapsing into a phrase that feels both declarative and unresolved. Produced through staple binding and photocopy processes, the publication retains the logic of an object intended for circulation rather than permanence while surviving as a retained record of an earlier authorial fiction.

Original period item.