Each saw himself as fundamentally at odds with the cultural norms of his respective country: Miller the countercultural sexual iconoclast, experimenting with language and narrative structure to produce novels and pamphlets that demanded a re-evaluation of how the individual lived within capitalism; Thorsen the product of hippy communes and art collectives, determined to expose the sexual hypocrisy of Danish society. By the time they met each other in the late sixties, Miller had long established his counter cultural credentials through works like Tropic of Cancer , Tropic of Capricorn , The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and Quiet Days in Clichy He wrote about his own life as he saw it and the lives of those around him, often the destitute, sex workers, criminals and fellow artists down on their luck.
His novels deal with complex philosophical and psychological issues, specifically through utilizing the theories of Henri Bergson and Otto Rank ii. Miller plays with concepts of time and time interpenetration, the nature of memory and reality and the role of the artist.
Born in Copenhagen in , Thorsen had clear memories of the Nazi occupation and unsurprisingly developed a hatred of authority and state control. Thorsen studied architecture and art history after high school leading to jobs as varied as brick layer, jazz musician and museum assistant. By the time the more culturally liberal climate of the s and 70s came around, Thorsen was already an established member of the Danish avant-garde. He was close friends with both Asger Jorn and his brother Jorn Nash.
By the early s Jorn and Nash were, openly for the latter and clandestinely for the former, in revolt against the restrictions they saw within the Situationist International SI and were busy creating their own faction named CO-RITUS in The SI provided Thorsen with a philosophical foundation in which to experiment with both his filmmaking and how he conceived of everyday life around him.
The misery of material poverty may have diminished, but life in capitalist society was still made miserable by the extension of alienated social relations from the workplace to every area of lived experience.
