Mouchette is a really successful online persona: a sad, creepy little girl based on the 1967 film by Robert Bresson. The website has been around for years and years and as far as I can tell the identity of the people behind the persona is still unknown. My favourite thing about Mouchette is the email. There's lots of places to make comments on the site, and having done this I periodically receive email such as the one below:
Dear Sally McKay,
Last time we met in private, on a page that I made for you alone. We shared that brief moment just once in our lives, never again will you see that page. But now I made a new private page for you only:
http://mouchette.org/to/you?Sally_McKay,4e45bf9966bd2cc144256fd0e74f33b9
Look everywhere, the page has some secrets inside
I can't wait to have you click on me again,
*bisou*
Mouchette


The page I was taken to was incredibly disconcerting. Too-close-up pink skin, panting little girl breath, and a bar you could pull that showed an image of raw muscle tissue underneath. When I tried to go back a second time I got the message:
the page you are looking for is not here
you won't ever see it again
I'm not comfortable with the child suicide, sexuality and violence. But being comfortable is not what Mouchette is about, she's provocative and she knows it. There's a forum for sending Mouchette hate mail that is also unnerving in it's brutality. But panning through the random painful angry posts, made me think about the genuine challenges of free communication in public space. People ain't always pretty.

- sally mckay 11-25-2003 5:14 am

That's interesting. William Gibson wrote a piece that only came on disk and it erased itself as you read it: Agrippa. I like that idea. Easy to do with webpages if you were ever interested in experimenting.
- jim 11-25-2003 8:11 pm


I'm pretty sure there's also an artist who did a video tape that self destructs when you watch it. (and then the phone rings and...) no really.
- sally mckay 11-26-2003 7:45 am


When I took grade 10 Health (grooming, first aid, and sex), and we were studying the human male reproductive organs, the poor woman who taught it would write the names of things on the blackboard, with her chalk in one hand and the blackboard brush in the other. For "penis," for instance, she'd have the p erased by the time she got to writing the e. We had to grab them letter by letter, like hot rivets, and build the words in our notebooks. She said she didn't want to embarrass the janitors, who might happen to look in the window of the classroom door, by causing them to see "dirty" words.
- Jean (guest) 11-27-2003 3:02 am


Aha, so I missed the "pantin- little-girl-sound"! My sound does not work. Something was frightening about it. Even without the sound. Makes one invent stories. But then Mouchette portrays her dad as meat, that's not really conventional. Although one could consider it realistic from an extreme perspective. Anyway: I wonder how it can be done, technically, that you can't go back again? Somehow makes you feel your computer is traced. And that adds to the frightening potential. Set's one's mind definitely adrift. In a way the sweet flowers are just the extreme opposition of the larger suicide, blood, skin, flesh, death and killing issues. But then: isn't this something many authors are very interested in? A thought that has not left me since: for every suicidal and depressed kid - young or old - there would probably be a killer out there. They just need to get connected - problem is would I enjoy a Hannibal Lector? http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=%22Hannibal+Lector%22&btnG=Google-Suche&meta= Google lists 43.100 a second ago.
- LeaNder 3-30-2005 7:56 pm


I was sent an email from mouchette.org (Bisou) today and it said she had made a website for me and there is a link to click on. I click on the link and there is a fullpage photo of a young girl's genitals. A box appeared saying thanks for coming and when I clicked ok another box appeared saying I may never see that picture again. I clicked on ok and the photo vanished. My computer was set to capture all images and it captured the image of the girl's vagina. I sent the image to bisou at mouchette.org to show her that she had not screwed me and I still have the photo of the girl's genitals, and the photos of the boxes that popup on the photo thanking me for coming and saying I might not see the photo again.

Considering the site that sent the photo is for 13 yr olds who are thinking about committing suicide I think it's very sick of Bisou to be sending pictures of young people's genitals to children.

I think Bisou is a sick person and not just an artist.




- anonymous (guest) 12-01-2005 3:10 am