All i can say now is ... WOW!

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COSTES IS GUNNA GIT HIS FRENCH UPPER MIDDLE CLASS
COMMUNIST ASS HANDED TO HIM IF HE KEEPS DOING GIGS IN THE U.S.

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I would love to see this, if for no other reason than to watch the audience get enraged.

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Degenerate leftist pseudo artists know no boundaries when goal is to piss on western civilization.
fuck france.com

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That shit was awesome. I've been thinking about it all day, and i feel totally liberated. They just threw everything out of the window. Hell yeah !

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That's not art. It's just shock for shock's sake.

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It's only called "art" because the no-talents don't fit into any other category.

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One man's art is another man's evil incarnation.

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http://www.5-yearslater.com
COSTES SEME LA ZIZANIE AUX USA

Jean-Louis Costes était l'invité d'un évènement artistique organisé à Rapid City, South Dakota. Il est monté sur scène en compagnie d'une jeune femme agée d'une vingtaine d'années pour se livrer à une performance artistique qui, à juste titre, a glacé le sang d'une audience évidemment très pieuse. Le clou du "spectacle": une relation sexuelle live on stage avec une carotte. Quelle élégance ! Quelle beauté ! Et surtout quel raffinement !
Ce clown nihiliste fait jaser toute la blogosphère conservatrice. De No Pasaran à Michelle Malkin ! Rien que ça ! L’image de la France ne va pas en sortir grandie.

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Holy shit ! Costes was amazing. I've never seen anything like that before, and probably never will again. Sex, violence, dead babies, love, death, poop, singing and dancing. I was highly entertained.

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They wouldn't have the nerve to play in Texas. Guns are legal there and someone just might take offense at a prissy frencie poking fun at us. Ahem...and they would accidentely... well you get the point.

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I think the kids would benefit from Costes. In fact I wish my tax dollars went towards stuff like this.

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Beware of French "performance artists".
Michelle Malkin

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Awesome show ! Costes was everything i'd hope for and more poop.

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Too bad they weren't booked for intermission at a rodeo in Amarillo Texas for a better test of community outreach. Rapid City was far too easy for them.

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I am so revolted at the indecency, that I'm going to Mexico to take in a donkey show to cleanse my palate of this filth.

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Costes is just carrying on the traditional love affair the French have with ca-ca and pee-pee.

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Nudity, simulated sex shocks Rapid City arts patrons
Performance at Dahl Arts Center is stopped
By Associated Press
Published: March 9, 2007

RAPID CITY – Ben Lemay says a French performance artists’ show that the promoter stopped before it was over at the Dahl Arts Center was jaw-dropping.
“It was pretty much a show centered on shock value,” audience member Lemay said of the performance, which included nudity, simulated violence and sex acts and various “props.”
Lisou Prout and Jean-Louis Costes stripped off clothing, spit potato chips on the crowd, vomited into a commode and threw fake feces and urine before being shut down about 15 minutes before their 45-minute act was to have ended on Wednesday.
Their act contained dancing, singing, spoken word and acting set to a loud soundtrack. Audience members said the act was a depiction of American life from birth to death.
“For me, I think they got their point across, but I think for most people, they were either completely shocked or disgusted,” Lemay said. “You didn’t have to search that hard for what they were trying to get across. But a lot of people were just too shocked to even go into that.”
Those at the performance said the apparent last straw was a simulated sex act involving a carrot.
The promoter, Kevin Dorsman, had rented the art center for the performance and said he knew little about the group before the show.
Dorsman was apologetic. “I was told they were performance artists from France and were highly recommended; I think I was told wrong,” he said. “I was a bit taken aback and blindsided.”
Dorsman was the one who told the sound man to stop the music. “I’m still kind of in shock, so to speak,” he said. “It was hands down, the craziest, most insane thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I have to applaud them. But at the same time, I’m very upset that I was not informed about the nature of it. ”It was much too extreme for Rapid City but well done as performance art, Dorsman said.
“My understanding is nobody had any idea and these two performers just decided to drop their drawers or whatever,” said Barb Evenson, who handles rentals for the Dahl Arts Center. “They (the promoters) weren’t hoping to have this happen, they were completely blindsided. As far as I know, everyone involved was just blindsided by it. ”It was not a Rapid City Arts Council event, art center officials said.Dorsman stressed that the art center had nothing to do with bringing in the group and should not be criticized. “I did not expect this. I did not want this,” he said.

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I've seen some extreme stuff but this pretty much took the cake.

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I'm afraid we must bow to the superior French artform of vomiting and throwing feces like a monkey while the Frog sticks a carrot up it's highly evolved anus.

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It was the kind of thing one can't really forget even if they try.

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I want my money back. And I want to have my dry cleaning bills paid, too.

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LOS ANGELES WEEKLY - february 29, 2007
A MAGICAL MISERY TOUR - David Cotner
As much a danger to traditional values as fluoride in the water or pee-pee in the Coke, legendary composer and absurdist Jean-Louis Costes appears in a Gallic show, stripping, rubbing semi-solid foods, all over himself and playing cracked electronics. His "opera porno-social " Little birds shit is a S&M voyage from youth to bourgeoisie finishing in hell.

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I missed the show in Chicago - sort of intentionnaly -  because the last Holy Virgin Cult tour was one of the best things i have ever seen in my life. If this one didn't meet those brillant standards, i didn't want my idea of Costes as God-Like genius to be tarnished. Plus - i am still reeling, what-two, three years later, from the performance. It's sorta like watching Emir Kusturica's Underground... so goddamn mindblowing that i need a ten years lapse to watch it again.

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OK, I only live once. Next time you are going to witness debauchery on this scale, I will go along for the ride.

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If you are going to go to one show this year.  This is the one.  Like if you're a little tired or don't know if you feel like going out or something, too bad, FUCK YOU !

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Only men can see the humor and fun in watching this stuff. My ex would of loved it. And then copied it at HOME.. Glad he would NEVER have gotten the chance.

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THE STRANGER, Seattle newspaper - february 27, 2007

Touring the U.S. with his "opera porno-social" Les Petits Oiseaux Chient ("Little Birds Shit"), this French performance artist fuses vocal acrobatics, coprophilia, lo-fi '80s industrial songs, noise, and nudity into a cabaret spectacle. Definitely not all-ages and definitely not for the squeamish.

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I saw COSTES play a few years ago on his last tour and I couldn't even think about anything else for fucking months. The COSTES set totally blew my mind, like I've seen a lot of fucking shows and a lot of amazing shit, but that night the bar got fucking raised cause it was one of the best and most memorable things I've ever seen.  A total assault on the senses!  DON'T MISS IT !

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It's postmodern, nihilistic, formless trash. Nothing more.

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I think Costes is one of the greatest minds in music and performance out there today. I saw him perform and I was absolutely amazed, not to mention left in stitches from laughter. He is doing everything right. He is tackling important social issues with a riotous sense of humor for his approach, while pushing the envelope of performance art and challenging the uptight status quo's ideas of what is art and what is obscenity. The man is a hero, as far as I'm concerned.
Bravo, Costes !

Scram magazine - february 2007
Costes tours the US with new opera

Jean-Louis Costes is among the most uncompromising musical and performance artists to come out of the '90s DIY scene, as remarkable for his legendarily tours as for his surprisingly poignant self-released music.

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I was captivated by this ordeal. It scared me, made me mad, made me sick, made me look at my own demons… IT MADE ME THINK.

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I suppose if I sit on the pot and make poop figures while I defecate, I could be considered an "Artist" in Costes' world.

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MIAMI PAPER - february 2007
Walking into Churchill's Pub in the heart of Little Haiti during this year's International Noise Conference (INC) is guaranteed to be a soul-jarring experience.
(...)In line with the ever-increasing international roster, Costes from France will play one of the messiest sets to grace the stage of Churchill's in some time. He is an iconoclastic, intentionally shocking artist with G.G. Allinesque sensibilities who says he promises to, at the minimum, shove a raw carrot up his ass on stage. Several of his albums are banned in France due to obscenity, and his sets are known to periodically feature live sex as well as scatological expulsions. (...)"Costes will take us so far in insanity, we will all become born-again Christians and buy prosperity clothes." says promotor Rat Bastard.
Whether you're kinky or square, the INC is a rarity in the world of music that's not to be missed.

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People can say what they want about shock performance art, but "Little birds shit" is a great show.

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Jean-Louis Costes’ nihilistic opera was a work of art, perhaps not the most beautiful but thought provoking and powerful.

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FOLIO WEEKLY - Florida - march 13, 2007

"I have a fresh beer but I can't drink it," laments French performance artist Costes. Arms extended on a cardboard crucifix, canned brew in one hand, he is sobbing as he pleads for a straw to reach it. He's also totally naked, and covered in fake piss, blood and shit.
Costes and his partner, fellow French performance artist Lisou Prout, are midway through their short noise-oriented play "Little Birds Shit," a vulgar diatribe against middle-class values, organized religion, geopolitical inequality and the American dream.
After five hours of noise acts, the Costes show seems an anomaly, a full-scale abstract musical amid a roster of abbreviated live noise experiments.
The story follows an ordinary couple as they fall in love, get married, have a child and fall apart — sort of like a Neil Simon play with a few small exceptions. "Little Birds Shit" involves simulated coprophagia, real vomiting, simulated and real masturbation, simulated and real sex, simulated and real violence, and simulated and possibly real seizures : She pees into a glass, and he drinks it. He inserts a carrot into his ass, she inserts a tampon into her vagina. He inserts a tampon into his ass. She gives him a hand job and ridicules him for his tiny pecker. He smashes her pregnant belly with a baseball bat and delivers a black baby, which they tear apart and eat. By the end of the 45-minute production, they are both completely nude, and Costes has a helium-filled Valentine's Day balloon tied to his penis.
That the performance made it to a  Jacksonville stage is remarkable. The fact that it took place in the homey community of Avondale is downright astonishing.
The Valentine's Day Costes show may have been a comprehensive primer on experimental music, but it had disastrous potential. Lia Gilles, who bartends at Yesterday's, understands the significance o the event, but worries it could have inspired a backlash. "It was just one of those gambles that was kind of worth it," she says. "I mean I like Yesterday's. It's a mom-and-pop business. I don't want to put them into [jeopardy]. But I still think it was worth it."
But the black humor of the Costes performance was too much for even some noise fans. Landscaper/noise artist Ramsis left before the show ended, even though he was scheduled to perform later in the evening. Others saw it as a porno-circus, shouting crudities at Lissou as if she were a
But shock artists know what they're getting themselves into when they take the stage.

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Typical negative, snooty attitude most French take towards the USA ! Would these folks be able to "voice" these opinions in any other country ? Gee whiz, where is INS when visas need to be checked for validity ?

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Expression alone is not art. Sufficient shock-value is a woefully inadequate criterion for great art.

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I can't say why I loved it, but it probably has something to do with articulating struggle and not suffering in silence. The not going quietly.

I loved the show. A friend of mine was the one who joined in and pissed on stage. I hope he didn't offend or obstruct. I hope you felt he contributed in some way.

It was much too extreme for Rapid City, South Dakota.

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Rapid City Journal - march 8, 2007

Grotesque art-punk performance
Two French performance artists’ nudity, simulated violence and sex acts, and use of faux-urine and feces, shocked the crowd and even the promoter at Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City.
After stripping off their grubby clothes, the pair gobbled potato chips and spit them on the crowd, vomited into a filthy commode and threw around fake feces and urine before being shut down.
The act consisted of choreography, singing, spoken word and acting set to a prerecorded soundtrack of loud music, noise and discordant sounds. It was basically a depiction of American life from birth to death, portrayed in the most extreme way possible.
The last straw, apparently, was a simulated sex act involving a carrot.

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If I paid to see a performer famous for throwing shit around and shoving things in his bodily orifices, then I would be angry if he did not throw shit around and stick things up his orifices. If I got some shit in my eye, well, shit happens...

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People are making this out to be the second coming of GG Allin.

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If you like seeing people poop on each other, you would have loved it !

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I watched the entire thing from start to finish and quite honestly I was not that shocked or horrified. The performance was intense, mainly because of the lighting, the backing music and the lyrics basically being screamed over the top. If these were scenes from a movie most people wouldn't say a word. Did they have sex... no. Simulated sex ? Yes. How many popular movies have simulated sex ? How many popular movies contain scenes of violence, drug use, urination, vomiting, or defecation (either shown or implied on any of the aforementioned items) ? How many contain all of them ? The only difference between the two is one was done live.

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It's gross ! This is not art, anywhere in the world

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BRIGHTEST YOUNG THINGS magazine – Los Angeles – february 25, 2007

This week, the nudity event of the week will take place this Friday at the Velvet Lounge where those (not too faint of heart) will be able to witness a LEGENDARY (and legendarily shocking) show that has in fact been shut out in many other city for acts of scaring audiences away with a barrage of flung feces, urine, tortured screaming, public sex and religious flagellation (intrigued ? we thought so). So, who is the man behind this show ?
Who is this man who at this point has been peeing, pooping and worse on his audiences for 20 odd years, and shows no signs of stopping ?
Jean Louis Costes, a pioneer noise musician, who started the Suckdog circus with his ex-wife Lisa Crystal Carver, now in his 50s, is joined by Lisou Prout for his new tour "Little Birds Shit".
On the (extreme) art scene since the 80s, Costes is a man who doesn’t like taking detours, and even less, making concessions.
His plentiful oeuvre - comprised of CDs (such as “Lung Farts” or “Hung by the Dick” released by Nihilist records), performances, videos and most recently a novel entitled Viva la Merda ! (Long Live the Shit !), aims at putting under the spotlights the false taboos and uneasiness that exist throughout our society in order to better destroy them in public.
His work rarely leaves the viewer indifferent and often initiates controversy - as we can see by the numerous court proceedings and violent columns, to which he is victim.
After more than twenty albums and hundreds of hardcore (and by hardcore we mean HARD(to the core) performances, Jean-Louis Costes - a performer to the bitter end - is still going strong shocking unrelentingly wherever he goes. Which if you think about is, what art is all about : causing a reaction to an action.
Catch him if you can this week at Velvet Lounge. Chances are, if you survive it, you will NEVER forget it.

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It was not gross. It was all in good taste.

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Who was it that said art imitates life?

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I live in Seattle where there is no limit to perversion called art. My hats off to the Rapid City folks who stood up to these artists and shut them down. I think a community that retains its values is very refreshing. Don't ever travel down that slippery slope and lose your values and thinks its progress!

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As a West River cowboy looking for new entertainment, this was much better than cable ! I rate it up with one of my favorite movies: "Brokeback Mountain". It was darn good art if I ever seen it !

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christianworldviewnetwork.com
Darwin-Inspired Performance Art Hits Rapid City !

When the hardy citizens of Rapid City, South Dakota showed up in pick-up trucks for a show at their community art center the other day, it is unlikely that they anticipated the art experience they received for their money. I'm not sure what they're teaching in the art department at the Sorbonne these days, but Jean-Louis Costes apparently represents something that Europeans consider to be artistic. That would include talents such as potato-chip spitting, stripping, and simulating sex acts with vegetables. Oh, I left out the part where they hurled fake excrement at each other and vomited. One only hopes that some of the ticket-holders returned the favor on the stage before leaving. Apparently, the social behavior of the clinically insane is viewed as an exciting art form in more sophisticated regions of the world. Playing with excrement and barfing--how cosmopolitan ! This is what happens when Darwin's theory of origins comes into full flower in Western culture. When humans are viewed as nothing but primates, it is little wonder that scatological themes prevail in the art galleries. When mankind is viewed as a cosmic accident, his art will start looking like it.

Any town that wouldn't arrest the French artistes for public indecency on the spot deserves what it gets. Mentally and spiritually sick individuals are now our cultural icons. Inspiration for art no longer comes from above, it is found in the base and the vulgar—from the dirt below. God has been thrown out of our Western world and the result is nothing but despair and absurdity which echoes through the art galleries and the music halls and the movie theaters of our land. When man is seen as nothing but a cog in a machine, a cosmic accident with nothing but his own lusts for his guide, civilization crumbles. There is moral anarchy in the air and the rise in violent crime in America, reported this week, only confirms the violence already expressed in the art world against all that is true and meaningful and lasting. Art is a mirror and that mirror presents a horrific picture of what has become of our country. The lesson in all of this ? First off, avoid art shows by Jean-Louis Costes.

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The symbolism was blatant and not difficult to miss as Costes and Lisou tackled subjects such as drug addiction, sex, abortion, war and suicide -- essentially, the darker side of life. Most people were either completely shocked or disgusted. I can safely say i have never seen anything like it.

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I was really surprised the cops didn’t show up.

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Why didn't anyone tell me this was going to happen ? I would've taken the night off and gone to watch !

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Why did you not leave after the first taboo was crucified on its performance artist cross ?

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I thought it was funny how everyone got upset.

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I am familiar with some of the ideas portrayed. The whole having sex and not being ready for the mental and physical consequences. The only reason I am not a dad today is because she had an abortion. Escaping from reality by shoveling as many drugs up my nose as possible. Sleeping around because my partner didn't love me anymore. Wanting to die, even trying to kill myself. Walking on a daily basis into the gapping jaws of hell. It is a classic story of the edge. I think Hunter S. Thompson would have liked Costes' opera. "The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over." - Hunter S Thompson

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SCREAMINGSUDDENNUDITYAAAAAHH YELLINGBEATINGPOOPABORTION

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People, it is called art. If art had to exist only in the most conservative of definitions we would live in a ugly and boring world.

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How many performance artists does it take to screw a light bulb ?

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LA RECORD - Los Angeles newspaper - february 28, 2007

Puking and pissing all over ideals of modern love, French performance artist Jean Louis Costes, with partner Lisou Prout, shocked all with their manic, grotesque, and jaw-dropping musical “Little Birds Shit.” An arsenal of odd objects—including a mangy taxidermied raven and a dildo on a power drill—supported their opera about the rise and fall of the love affair between two sexed-up, infantile masochists. The steady onslaught of puking, fondling, and oral and anal simulation occasionally gave way to moments of musical brilliance like drug lovers’ anthem “Happy Grass” and the title track, which mostly consisted of alternating giggles and screams of “little birds sing, la-la-la, little birds shit, ca-ca-ca!” Baseck played a hyper-super set that compressed GameBoy beats, gangster rap and speed metal into fifteen flailing minutes of dance party breaks. Captain Ahab and his sweaty-as-ever dancer Jim brought their usual blinged-up body-rocking mob that raved to classics like “Old Like You” and personal anthem “Party Baby.” The joy of watching the amped-up Ahab crowd try to continue raving as the confusion of Costes set in was unparalleled, and although they lost a third of the audience when Jean Louis drank a cup of Lisou’s fresh piss and spat it all over the faces of those in the front, the watchers who maintained til the flashlit end were enthralled by the don’t-give-a-fuck conceptualism of this one-of-a-kind production. (MW)

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I did get to see it (peeping between burly North Carolina hardcore punks). It is fantastic... Just the right amount of grossness, very fast-paced, and the music is great. I think you will like it a lot.

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YES I AM ANGRY.. ANGRY THAT MY DIGNITY AND RESPECT WHERE ROBBED FROM ME BY MY EX. LIKE I SAID, HE WOULD HAVE FORCED THIS VERY CRAP UPON ME !

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It was a night to remember.

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PITTSBURG CITY PAPER - march 8, 2007
Scatological noise artist Jean-Louis Costes and pals hit the Smiling Moose.
by Manny Theiner

No doubt, the punk-rock drinking denizens of the Smiling Moose regard themselves as edgy outlaws in the South Side's sea of frat-boy conformity. And to some extent, that's true. But no amount of Misfits or Crass in the jukebox can adequately brace them for this Wednesday's double whammy.
Pierced mouths will fall open and weak ears will run for the hills when Costes takes the stage. Even a card-carrying member of the Thurston Moore Fan Club will be ill prepared for the infamous French experimental/performance-art legend Jean-Louis Costes, who has been plying his trade since the cassette underground of the mid-'80s.
A cross between the scatology of G.G. Allin, the depravity of Whitehouse and the transgressivism of Karen Finley, Costes created a mayhem of sound and splatter with Lisa Suckdog in his previous visit to the now-defunct Turmoil Room gallery in Wilkinsburg, back in 1990.
And things won't be much calmer now. Costes and pal Lisou Prout have a three-act "opera pornosocial" in store, called Les Petits Oiseaux Chient ("Little Birds Shit"). The piece is described as "the story of an ordinary couple ... they meet, they flirt ... they fall into the normal trappings of family existence ... they find solace in acts of bizarre S&M sex ... the logical conclusion of this journey: finishing in Hell."
It'll be very interesting to see how Costes' naked, screaming fuckfest will be received in a punk bar. But in some sense, I'm disappointed this isn't at The Warhol, where director Tom Sokolowski is often heard boasting about shocking mainstream sensibilities. Oh, well -- he can redeem his soul (or damn it) along with the rest of the unsuspecting victims at the Moose.

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Well, I suppose art these days is defined as 'expressing yourself'. And if in the deepest recesses of your soul there is that kind of ugliness and filth, then I guess it lives up to the name. It's so sad.

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I really enjoyed Costes performance. It was a wonderful experience. I was left with a lot of joy. And the music was great !

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 Leave it to the Frogs to throw poop and call it art.

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WHY WEREN'T THESE PEOPLE ARRESTED FOR DISORDERLY CONDUCT ? ACTUALLY, THEIR ACT WAS INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS.

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Thank you for coming to Rapid City. Your show will be talked about for ages. You traveled to the heart of evangelic christian America and shoved a metaphorical carrot up the ass of this loathsome country. It was a wonderful and beautiful performance.

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BOSTON PHOENIX - march 16, 2007

French noise musician performance artist Costes brings his blood-sex-and-shit saturated show to the U.S.
If the photos on Costes website are any indication, the bizarre S&M sex plays a big role in the show.
This is not for the squeamish.

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Proof that France has descended into pointless childishness, leaving places like South Dakota to carry the torch of Western Civilization.

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If these people chewed up potato chips and spit them in the crowd, who knows what kind of crud they could have been spreading around ? Gross.

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I was there and have to question those who can laugh and point at a graphic rape scene two feet away from them and cheer Rapid for bringing it AS ENTERTAINMENT.

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At least I finally saw a performance well worth the wait (weight !)

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Sue Costes ad recover your lost innocence...

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I don't think it takes much "talent" or "artistry" for this sort of performance.

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http://thedaydreamnation.blogspot.com
... Jean-Louis Costes and Lisou Prout came on. I kind of knew what was going to happen...

They played to backing tapes of that kind of hipster new-wave 1980's nonesense, and they were either singing all in French or had such thick accents or it was so chaotic that I couldn't understand much they sang except for some basic anti-consumer slogans. There was a toilet onstage. Lisou drank a lot of beer as fast as she could. Costes fucked a toy bird while Lisou fucked a stuffed animal. For the most part I have no idea what was going on.
There were some problems with the electrical system so every once in a while the lights would totally black out and the PA would cut out until somebody flipped the circuit breaker. There were strobes going off and the crazy French people onstage wiggling out of their clothes and chanting pornographic nursery rhymes and pretty much total confusion. Soon Costes and Lisou were naked except for strap on dildos and other devices they attached to themselves.

The toilet was put to good use. They shit and pissed and vomited in it onstage in time to the music, and at one point Lisou peed in a glass and Costes drank it and shook the glass so piss sprayed into the crowd. Various stage props were dunked in the toilet and came out all covered in shit, and the props then got smeared all over Costes. Lisou did things that involved a carrot and Costes' rectum. They faked having sex and getting pregnant and giving birth onstage to a black baby with a hot dog penis that they cut up with scissors and ate.

Some people were getting all revived-up and rowdy. A guy and a girl behind me in a couch were making out and crawling all over each other dryhumping, and some girl was crowd surfing and the crowd surged and pushed me backwards but my feet were up against the sexcouple's feet so a bunch of people fell like dominos and I fell right on top of the sexcouple so as we were sprawled out on top of each other and untangling our limbs we were laughing and I was wearing my glasses and they went flying but I found them really quickly.

Towards the end of the show Lisou ran out into the audience and I was watching Costes when she came from behind me and it was really packed tightly and she squeezed past me naked and body slickslippery from all sorts of fluids and I didn't even notice it until I realized I was crushed up against a sweaty naked writhing girl ! The oddest thing was that on the way out I could (to put it very bluntly) smell girlsex, and I realized on my way home that the girlsex smell was on me and that it must have come from when Lisou ran through the crowd and we got smooshed together. I took a shower as soon as I got home, but couldn't fall asleep for hours.

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I went full well knowing what was going to happen and a lot of others did as well. But i didn't know it was going to be as intense as it was and probably wouldn't have gone had I known. Its life, its art. It's got people talking... it did exactly what it was supposed to.

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Hey cut them some slack ! They ARE French !

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EYE WEEKLY - Toronto (Canada) april 5, 2007

Noise musician and performance artiste Jean-Louis Costes attempts to shred the last vestiges of his dignity. Living up to a rep as "the French GG Allin" is tough : expect nudity, tortured screaming and bodily fluids.

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The show in Houston was incredible ! Costes has raised the bar for those of us doing our own performances.

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The show was one big series of cheap shocks. Shocking people does not require intelligence nor purpose, just a willingness to break taboos. That takes very little courage or thought, especially when you know you’ll be lauded for it and everyone will want to seem like they “get it,” whether they even liked it, or were comfortable or uncomfortable in their gut about it.

The imagery was far, far too violent for me, message or no. I can go look at pictures of the war if I need to be shocked. I don’t need to see hipsters pooping on each other and humping each other and burning themselves with cigarettes in order to leave my comfort zone or think about the world. It’s cheap. It is violence for the sake of violence, poop for the sake of poop, sex for the sake of sex, and then a shoddy explanation that it’s art and it’s a metaphor and it’s whatever, thrown in at the end so you can thumb your nose at people who don’t like it because they obviously “don’t get it.” Bad. I could sit down and make a list of taboos in two seconds and go act them out in front of my trailer without needing any talent, intellect, or purpose.

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The Telegraph - Calcutta - India - march 11, 2007

Two French performance artists’ nudity, simulated violence and sex acts, and use of faux-urine and feces, shocked the crowd and even the promoter at Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA.

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The performance was mental overload from the beginning for me. Well, I thought I knew what “too far” looked like, and then they went further, and I kept wondering how much longer it could last, what other things people were capable of, and then they showed me, and then I wondered if people were capable of anything more extreme or depraved, and then they showed me, and the cycle continued.
I don’t know if it was offensive just for the sake of offending people; it may have been offensive to challenge people. It was a show nobody will ever forget. And that may have been the point. This show will be legendary. It make me think, and it did horrify me – and challenge me.

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If you don’t like Costes, don’t watch it, get up, shout at the stage, visit upon the performance artists a performance of rejection, throw tomatoes, go up on stage, grab the skinny little carrot and break it in two, do what you will but let art, even obviously really bad faux art, ravel and unravel itself as it will.

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CHICAGO READER - march 18, 2007 - Liz Armstrong

The last time French performance artist Costes came through town, a large hesitantly curious audience dwindled steadily during his 45 minutes noise opera till it was to a couple dozen iron-stomach folks who could handle the sex, violence, piss, vomit blood and feces – its not everyday you see a guy stick a needle up his uretra or set his pubic hair on fire.
His current piece "Little birds shit" is less a horror show than a filthy comedy acted out to his spastic boing flickering tracks, which not even the outrageousness onstage can overshadow. Sometimes deliberately facile, sometimes totally inexplicable, Costes and stagemate Lisou Prout play a grotesque parody of a protypical couple, tearing apart an enormous array of props ( a rel toilet, several dildos, their own bodies ) to hammer home a caveman's message : the world is shit – so just chug another beer like a frat boy/noise/nerd/miserable alcoholic with sad fantasies of escape.
Their infantile simplicity undercuts conventional notions of love fulfillment, boiling them down to mindless consumption and expulsion, screwing and shitting : shit out, shit out babies, get shit on and shit out by corporations. The show eventually devolves into surrealistic miasma, cartoonish and disgusting, a rabbit hole swimming with a mismash of iconic imagery that gets you so lost that nothing has meaning anymore
And then Costes seems to say, you are free !

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JUMP OFF A BRIDGE, SMOKE CIGARETTES, DRINK ALCOHOL, DO DRUGS, HAVE CASUAL RANDON SEX : WHAT DO THESE THINGS HAVE IN COMMON ? THEY ARE A CHOICE, JUST LIKE WATCHING THE COSTES SHOW. THE ONLY PEOPLE TO BLAME ARE THOSE THAT CHOSE TO WATCH BUT DIDN'T LIKE EITHER THE SHOW OR THEMSELVES FOR HAVING WATCHED IT. NOBODY PUT A GUN TO ANYONE'S HEAD TO MAKE THEM WATCH THE COSTES SHOW.

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The Costes show proves that French superiority is a myth.

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AP wire - aberdeennews.com - march 9, 2007
ART CENTER STOPS ART-PUNK PERFORMANCE

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Last night was a show that will go down in history.

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I don't care how much meth or other drugs you pump in your body, poop and art don't mix.

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With all due respect, and this is from a right-leaning Christian. Costes was not bagging on the US, although their statement could and should be a wake-up call for our society. If you read what else he has done, you'll see some real elegance, even if it is severe, in this man's work. Costes sought to present a relevant topic.

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WAS THE NAKED WOMAN NICE LOOKING ?

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I personally didn't appreciate Costes, but that's not to say he doesn't have a place in art.

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I actually enjoyed the art associated with these Frenchies. It reminded me of my time at Band camp.

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“C’est la vie” - Sounds like just another Diana Shore concert to me.

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FREE REPUBLIC - freerepublic.com - march 10, 2007
SOUTH DAKOTA ART CENTER STOPS FRENCH PERFORMANCE
INVOLVING VOMIT, SIMULATED SEX

A show where French performance artists vomited, simulated sex and threw fake feces was stopped by the promoter, who quickly apologized.
Lisou Prout and Jean-Louis Costes also stripped and spit potato chips on the crowd at a local arts center.
Audience members said the act depicted American life from birth to death. The show was stopped shortly after a simulated sex act involving a carrot.
"I was told they were performance artists from France and were highly recommended. I think I was told wrong," said promoter Kevin Dorsman, who stopped the show.
It was much too extreme for Rapid City, population 60,000 or so, but well done as performance art, Dorsman added.
"My understanding is nobody had any idea, and these two performers just decided to drop their drawers or whatever," said Barb Evenson, who handles rentals for the Dahl Arts Center.
Dorsman stressed that the art center had nothing to do with bringing in the group.

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See Hieronymus Bosch, Peiter Bruegel, Carravagio, Picasso, etc... In other words, in art, here is quite frequently a very fine line between the ridiculous and the sublime.

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If the Frenchies targeted RC for an “over the top” performance because of political viewpoints… well… they got the desired result.

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Art is always about challenging perceptions, stimulating emotions, and introspection. That is what Costes does.

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It might be OK in France, but South Dakota isn’t France, thank goodness !

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YAHOO.DE - march 10, 2007

Rapid City (AP) Ein Auftritt der französischen Aktionskünstler Lisou Prout und Jean-Louis Costes hat das Publikum in Rapid City im US-Staat South Dakota nachhaltig verstört. Der Veranstalter brach die Show ab, bei der sich die Künstler übergeben, entkleiden, die Zuschauer mit Fäkaliennachbildungen bewerfen und mit Kartoffelchips bespucken sowie einen Sexualakt mit einer Möhre andeuten.
«Mir wurde gesagt, dass sie Performance-Künstler aus Frankreich seien und wärmstens empfohlen wurden», sagte der Veranstalter Kevin Dorsman. «Ich glaube, dass mir etwas Falsches berichtet wurde.» Besucher erklärten, die Vorstellung sollte das amerikanische Leben von der Geburt bis zum Tod darstellen.
«Meiner Ansicht nach hatte keiner irgendeine Idee und die beiden Performer haben einfach beschlossen, ihre Unterhosen runterzulassen oder was auch immer», meinte aber die Zuschauerin Barb Evenso. Augenzeuge Ben Lemay gab sich nachsichtiger: «Ich denke, dass sie ihr Ding rübergebracht haben, aber die meisten Leute waren entweder geschockt oder angewidert.»
http://costes.org/

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Had I known about this performance beforehand, I would have been the first one in line. Not sure it was art, but it got people talking. And isn’t that what art is all about ?

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What's the big deal ? The boarding house where i stayed in college but on impromptu events like this all the time. We just didn’t have the marketing savvy to charge admission, or pretend to be french. What a career I might have had.

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Sometimes art is meant to anger and offend. Art is not all happy oil paintings of pheasants.

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http://www.israellycool.com/blog
Spitting and throwing excrement at people. Sounds to me like they were (acting) being French.

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How charming. So glad they came here to enlighten us to the sophisticated French ways... SICK !

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The real obscenity I have noticed in the last few days is that a manufacturer of cookies has decided to add yellow dye to them as apparently a substitute for actual baking. It gives the cookies a puke yellow color instead of a brown baked appearance.

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If these French performing artists recited verses from the bible and sang Gregorian Chants wearing saris I wouldn’t be offended in the slightest.

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NETTRIBUNE.DE - march 11, 2007
Event-Kunst einmal anders : Kotzende Franzosen schockieren Amerikaner.

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Fox and AP now turning their attention to the current Costes tour, that's maybe hotter that Lazarus deal of the Police ! And the real police are involved to boot.

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That was hands down one of the most intense things I’ve ever seen. I’m a huge fan of art and theatre in every way shape and form. Did it go over board… yes. Could it have been amazing had it been properly executed… yes.
What it really lacked was a story tying the entire thing together. It may have been the language barrier as 95% of it was in french. Making parts hard to understand and making one rely on the imagery only. It was obviously about drug use and the violence involved in that world. I think with translation and a bit more direction it could have been a very beautiful experience but the shock value was too high.

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I can deal with nudity, but when you start sticking carrots places they don’t belong is where I draw the line.

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FOX NEWS - march 10, 2007
Art center stops French performance with vomiting, simulated sex

RAPID CITY, South Dakota : A show where French performance artists vomited, simulated sex and threw fake feces was stopped by the promoter, who quickly apologized.
Lisou Prout and Jean-Louis Costes also stripped and spit potato chips on the crowd at a local arts center.
Audience members said the act depicted American life from birth to death. The show was stopped shortly after a simulated sex act involving a carrot.
"I was told they were performance artists from France and were highly recommended. I think I was told wrong," said promoter Kevin Dorsman, who stopped the show.
It was much too extreme for Rapid City, population 60,000 or so, but well done as performance art, Dorsman added.
"My understanding is nobody had any idea, and these two performers just decided to drop their drawers or whatever," said Barb Evenson, who handles rentals for the Dahl Arts Center.
Dorsman stressed that the art center had nothing to do with bringing in the group.
"For me, I think they got their point across, but I think for most people, they were either completely shocked or disgusted," audience member Ben Lemay said.

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Hey cut them some slack ! They ARE French !

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The only people that could ever understand this are thoughs of us that have been to the edge, to everyone else it will remain a “big series of cheap shocks”.

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HEUTE ( Switzerland ) http://www.heute-online.ch
Ein Auftritt der französische Aktionskünstler Jean-Louis Costes hat das Publikum in Rapid City im US-Staat South Dakota nachhaltig verstört.

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This guy is mentally disturbed and he is just like the little kid who always acts up in class just to get attention. And for those out there who really think this is worth while art I have a stool sample I just created and would be glad to sell it to you as a limited edition. Give me a break !

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Ok so it was a lil over the top  and they probably didn't need to be nude, but i guess it helped get the message across. And it was kinda funny.

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WASHINGTON CITY PAPER - march 23, 2007
Shitstorm to Descend on Velvet Lounge

We here at City Paper can never pass up a good bodily-fluid story, so we figured we’d give you advance warning on tonight’s Velvet Lounge show by controversial French performance artist Jean-Louis Costes.
Here’s how Costes describes his new act :
“Little Birds Shit” is the story of an ordinary couple. They meet…They Flirt…They Fuck…They make a baby… They fall into the normal trappings of family existence, working to make money.
– As they grow weary from the struggles of life, they find solace in acts of bizarre s&m sex.
However, this description of the act from North Dakota’s Rapid City Journal might give you a better idea of what you’re in for:
After stripping off their grubby clothes, the pair gobbled potato chips and spit them on the crowd, vomited into a filthy commode and threw around fake feces and urine before being shut down about a half hour into what was to be a 45-minute performance.
The last straw, apparently, was a simulated sex act involving a carrot.
At any rate, if your idea of a chill Friday night is a cold can of Schlitz and a randy Frenchman performing vegetable-driven-buttsex on somebody, you know where to find it.

I thought Costes was great. it was shocking, as a lot of great art is. i don’t think that language was a factor. i understood 95% of what was said/sung during the performance, and i don’t know any french. i think more of a factor is the conservative mindset of rapid city, and the narrow definition of art. i was disappointed, but not surprised when they got shut down. i too was surprised that the cops weren’t called - not because i think they should have been, but because that is so many people’s reaction to what they deem “obscene.” the show last night was far less “obscene” than the war in iraq, celebrating mt. rushmore, or bus drivers raping children - all of which are daily topics of discussion. perhaps it should have been announced that there would be nudity. that is entirely the promoters responsibility. expecting Costes to “tone it down” is absurd. that’s like telling a painter that to display her work she would have to leave out all of the red and blue. art is expression, and when the subject matter is intense, you can expect the expression to be intense.

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If this is the face of art to come, they can stay in France.

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RAPID CITY JOURNAL – march 18, 2007
Costes: Nude flap spurring animosity
By Kevin Woster, Journal staff

Jean-Louis Costes, the French performer who was shut down partway through a March 7 Dahl Arts Center act that included nudity, simulated sex and vomiting, says he has been troubled by hate mail and a death threat since media coverage of the event led some to believe that it was anti-American and anti-Christian.

Costes said by e-mail last week that Rapid City Journal reporting -- which was picked up by an international wire service and highlighted on conservative Web sites -- focused on the most provocative moments in a performance that was “a carefully written, composed, practiced and passionately performed opera.” Costes said that as a result, he received sometimes-threatening criticism that neither he nor his “opera” truly deserved. “I love USA, and I am a practicing Catholic,” Costes said.
Costes and co-performer were shut down a little more than 30 minutes into the performance by promoter Kevin Dorsman, who later described Costes as a “great guy, very intense, very dedicated to his art” who had crossed the line of impropriety for a city-owned theater this community. Costes said he was surprised when the music was shut off and hadn’t noticed any hostile attitude from the audience leading up to that moment. “There was no insults, threats of violence of any kind,” Costes said. But a Journal staffer attending the event said that more than half of the audience had left by that point and most waited outside the performing theater in the Dahl for Costes to conclude and the next scheduled act to begin.
The jarring performance and the uproar that followed will likely lead to more stringent screening standards for performers at the Dahl. Mayor Jim Shaw said he would like to see the Rapid City Arts Council develop a system to assure that performances conform to accepted community standards. David Cameron, president of the arts council board of directors, said the new screening provisions would “address the issue of lewd behavior,” as well as community standards. Cameron also said he believed that the Costes act qualified as art, although not the kind Cameron could appreciate. He and Shaw agreed that nudity, exposing genitals, simulating sex, vomiting on stage and using fake feces and fake urine crossed the line of acceptable community standards in Rapid City -- particularly in a public-owned facility such as the Dahl.
Costes said, however, that he believes the Dahl is “the perfect place to perform a modern opera,” even if the act happens to include some sights and sounds that some might find disturbing and objectionable. He rejected the notion that his show was obscene, however. He calls his act a “universal story” that follows a man and woman through their life together as they face depression, drugs, “weird sex,” despair, prayer to their “long-forgotten God” and eventually, because of their failures, a descent into hell. “It is a universal drama of human condition, seen from a classic moral Christian point of view: Sin leads to hell,” Costes said. It is told in a way that some might consider cutting edge and others -- almost certainly the majority in Rapid City -- would find objectionable and obscene.
Costes is currently on a U.S. tour and scheduled to perform in Providence, R.I., today and Philadelphia later this week. He performed the same act March 8 in Sioux Falls, the day after Rapid City, with “success, no problems,” and followed that with a packed-house performance in Minneapolis and a good show in Chicago. And he had a “cheerful audience” in Pittsburgh, except for one person who, despite additional security, threw a beer bottle and hit Costes in the face. Costes said he was only mildly injured and quickly continued his act. In one e-mail exchange, he connected the bottle incident with the media coverage and death threats. But later, he said, it have simply been “a drunk guy wanting to participate” in the show. “I do not know if the bottle was thrown by someone motivated by the controversy in Rapid City, but I read (on a conservative Web site) that they want to punish the ‘frog.’” That disparaging term sometimes applied to the French isn’t the worst of the criticism Costes has received. He said he added extra security in Pittsburgh in part because he was uncomfortable with the threatening comments he had received because of the coverage in Rapid City.
Costes said that he has received positive comments about his show to balance the negative ones. When asked for people in or from Rapid City who might compliment the production, Costes suggested Jason Wade, a Rapid City native now living in Minneapolis. Wade, who recommended Costes to Dorsman, didn’t respond to e-mails asking for comment.
Costes, who records his current U.S. tour -- complete with graphic photography and videos of his act -- on his own Web site, said he hopes future coverage on his work doesn’t stop at references to nudity and spitting chewed-up potato chips on the audience, which was part of the Dahl performance. “To reduce a show as complex as mine to spitting chips is not fair. It is forgetting the romantic and mystical, and funny parts, to keep only what could be a matter for scandal,” he said.

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Hate mail and other feedback is the price of his performance rubbish "art". Poo-flinging euro-trash of the world take note, and kindly take RCSD off your tour list.

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Then Costes ended the night with his masterpiece "Little birds shit" which is the greatest show i've ever seen i think since the time i saw the Impotent Sea Snakes.
COSTES REALLY IS A GENIUS.

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It's CHAOS!

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