Ear nibbling

Stephen J. Shanabrook is an artist originally from Ohio who was traipsing around the globe for years before he decided to set up shop in New York. He makes chocolates using molds he’s made from the corpses of human bodies he somehow got his hands on in a Russian morgue, and we were so excited/grossed-out about it that we called him up for a chat.

Vice: Hi Stephen. So let’s just cut to the chase. When you were making your morgue chocolates, did you have to, like, touch the corpses?
Stephen Shanabrook: Um, yeah. It was weird after it was over but I mean at the time, it’s like when you’re focused on doing something and you have a reason for it, you just do it. And it didn’t really hit me until later.

But you were sticking your fingers in someone’s mortal wounds.
I was as delicate as possible. I mean, I did what I needed to do. It wasn’t really invasive. Even though it kind of looks like it from the chocolates. I actually just made an impression on the body, and then I took those home and from those impressions I made plaster positives… from the plasters I made special silicone.

How did you end up in Moscow pressing corpse chocolates anyway?
I was living in Holland at the time and a curator asked me to go to Russia with a group of Dutch artists. And I had just made an addition of chocolate teeth called I Eat People They Eat Me with teeth I collected from dentists in Holland. We were talking about Moscow and they said there was a huge chocolate factory in the centre of Moscow, a very famous old factory. So I just got to thinking.

You must have a fascination with corpses or death.
No. I mean, I wouldn’t say I do. My father was a doctor. And I worked in a chocolate factory when I was little.

Has anybody ever eaten them? The chocolates?
Yeah, I mean, people do, let’s see… mostly kids eat them at exhibitions because they’re not scared of it. They just want the chocolate.

Kids, man! Not scared of anything. What about commercially? Could you see the chocolates doing well?
There’s a new contemporary art museum opening in – of all places – Tasmania, and they bought one of the chocolate suicide bombers for the museum. But I also made them special molds for chocolates for the cafe.

What kinds?
From the Morgue Chocolates, but I made really small ones, just because basically they don’t want to give out… you know, when you get a cup of coffee?

Yeah, you get a little chocolate on the side.
Yeah, they put a little chocolate.

Is it gonna be the stitches and the eyeballs?
The ones that I used was the eyeballs because, at that size, it’s the most recognisable.

What about the bullet wounds?
They’re too massive for a little dainty chocolate.

Do you exclusively deal with mangled stiffs?
I’m working on a show for September. It’s gonna use chocolate and plastic. I’m collecting pharmaceutical bottles, they call ’em stock bottles, and I’m gonna press those into molds and heat them. I’m using traditional chocolate bunny molds, but instead of putting chocolate in them I’m gonna be pressing these bottles in them… so you end up with a chocolate bunny made out of melted prescription bottles.

That’s not so sociopathic. Phew. I don’t feel as scared of you now.