HR Giger: Bathroom traumas and Ernst Fuch's demons

leading from

H R Giger's Art

a) In Giger's Necronomicon, Giger has talked about a dream that he had about a bath, and there was a little boy about five years old who was completely violet blue with little horns. 

b) He acknowledge that the demons from his dreams are more related to the bible and they look a little bit like like the demons that Ernst Fuchs claims that he can see rather than anything typical of his own paintings. And Giger's view about how this was so, is because they must share, as Gustave Jung theorised, a common archetype

Ernst Fuchs

1. HR Giger: I was lying on my bed watching Li dancing in a yellow dress, which sprayed sparks of yellow light across the room. The space was interwoven with red geometric shapes and the pictures on the wall were coming away in layers. The walls pulsated in step with my heartbeat. The first sign of anxiety came when I suddenly had to piss and went to the lavatory. The edge of the bowl grew slowly toward my penis like a wide-open vagina as if to castrate me. At first, the idea amused me. But suddenly the whole room began to grow narrower and narrower, the walls and pipes took on the aspect of loose skin with festering wounds, and small, repellent creatures glared out at me from the dark corners and cracks. 
    
   

   

   
   I turned and hurried toward the exit, but the door was infinitely far away and very narrow and tall. The walls hemmed me like two paunchy lumps of flesh. I leapt or the door, drew the bolt, and rushed into the corridor, gasping for breath. Rid of the specter, I went to Li’s room and lay down. Little Boris (son of Li’s friend Evelyn) was also in the room and wanted to play with me. He began to trample on the bed beside me, kicking me. I was as helpless as a small child and could not defend myself. Li finally rescued me from my diminutive tormentor, who had by now turned into a little violet-green devil with an offensively mean and aggressive expression. Li took Boris to his mother, who was hanging around in the kitchen.
   

   But the couple of kicks in the stomach had been enough. I felt sick. The air in the room was stifling. My only thought was to throw open the window and escape to the garden, for the room was at ground level. But at the last minute, I noticed a woman looking at me strangely. The vomit already in my mouth, I turned round, rushed into the corridor and suddenly stopped dead – I was afraid to go into the narrow lavatory again. In the kitchen, I noticed Evelyn with her son, both staring at me. The only sanctuary was the small bathroom and the rusty blue bathtub with its flaking enamel. So I grabbed Li by the hand and dragged her into the bathroom, where I vomited into the bathtub. The vomit spewed endlessly from my mouth in the form of a thick, gray, leathery worm turning into a kind of primeval slime, and once into the living intestines of a slaughtered pig. 
   
   

   

   
   

   During this whole performance, I had held Li firmly by the left wrist. She had been struggling to free the clogged waste pipe by poking at it with a ballpoint pen. Finally, she could no longer stand the repulsive garlic-impregnated smell, and we both vomited together into the bathtub, hand in hand, while the gas water heater glared at us malevolently, Now  I was afraid of being aloen,  and Li had to keep holding me by the hand, like a small child, I wanted to leave the house and get out into the fresh air. She put on my coat and shoes and we went into the street, but I was overcome with panic again. We had to make wide detours round harmless passers-by whom my brain had turned into crazed murderers. Everything seemed hostile towards me - houses, trees, cars - only water could calm me down. A trench by the roadside threatened to swallow me up. Despite Li's assurances that it was not so, the pavement seemed to slant violently, so that I kept sliding sideways into the trench. I clung to Li with tear filled eyes, for I seemed to be lost without her. Li had to suddenly get some chewing gum, to get rid of the sour taste in her mouth. She went to the kiosk, and I had to stand alone and helpless a couple of minutes on the corner. When she finally came back I was frozen and shivering, and wanted to return to my little room in Feldeggstrasse. This was a mistake, however, for hardly had we entered the room when the warmth and confined space brought back my nausea. I vomit into a basin and ordered Li to turn all the pictures face to the wall. All of them frightened me and I grew more and more panic stricken. Li had to carry out my orders with lightning succession. The fear of losing control of my senses made me more and more confused in my actions. Suddenly I felt I could not stand the torment any more! I had to kill myself. Now the loaded revolver became highly dangerous. I asked Li to empty it and throw the ammunition away. But as she did not know how, I had to take hold of the revolver to do it myself and, in doing so, suddenly became aware of the ridiculousness of my fear. My horror vanished and – thanks God – I awoke. (Giger's Necronomicon, p14)
   
   

   

    
    
2. Fear: Have you ever met a demon in your dreams?
   Giger: Hmm. In Necronomicon, I had this dream about the bath. A little boy about five years old was completely blue-violet and he had little horns. 
   Fear: Your demons are not "Gigeresque" then? Are they more biblical?
   Giger: In the way they look?
   Fear: Yes.
   Giger: That's strange. They look a little bit like Ernst Fuch's demons. He told me he can see demons like that. [Pause] I think there are people, as Gustave Jung theorised, who share a common archetype (Fear magazine, December 1990, p22)