Although I am not a writter, I have written various text and text-based art, as part of my artmaking process.

Offical Unicorn Turds 2004 >

A FEAST UNKNOWN! program text 2004 >

Invisible Donkey Removal Service 2003 >

The Philosopherking 2003 >

The Staff Page 2003 >

Fruition Proposals 2002 >

Trashsures 2001>

Idea Map from 2000>

My System Diagram 1999 >

The Notes Project 1997-8 >

Caveman Robot Essay 1997>

The Lucifer Manifesto 1996>

Home>

Artwork>

Resume>

Exhibits>

This text was originally presented as part of a sculpture in 1996, and a fun artifact of my angry youth!

my friend Dan Bigelow invited me to exhibit artwork in the first of his Soapbox Political Art Shows, which took place in Chicago about once a year. I was interested in the idea of the manifesto as an art object, so sat down one day and tried to write one. At first I was joking around, but as I wrote the thing took on a life of its own. The below images are: the centerfold that was included in the booklets and a image of the booklets as they were displayed in the Soapbox show. The overall artifact is a earnst crackpot manifesto, from reading way too much Harold Bloom and Elaine Pagels.

History is not the past; history is a subjective "take" on the past. Someone writes history. This text evokes the name of Lucifer the Lightbringer, because that figure in mythology was the first acting force that challenged the order of things and gave the world meaning and purpose. Purpose is the want for power, power being more life. Life is power, power being energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form and location. If there is total order then life is static; nature is a chaotic force that can not be put to order. Only with the enlightenment of rebellion can Human Nature be freed from an unnatural world of ignorance and dogma. It is not natural for humans to do evil things; it is not natural for humans to be ignorant; we are at our lowest level curious, questioning, and sympathetic. To rebel is to be human, not a rebellion for the sake of disorder, but actual rebellion that comes from questioning the order of things and attempts to look beyond order to see what the mechanics of order are. Someone makes the rules, someone writes history: what are the motives of that someone.

This text has absolutely nothing to do with the belief in, or worship of, supernatural beings. Nevertheless, you can learn a lot about a people and their history by the gods that they have created. We created our gods and they in turn have allowed us to re-create ourselves. This act of retroactive genesis is the cornerstone of humankind's relationship with the external world. The development of a group mythology is the first real action humankind takes that goes beyond the self and deals with an external world. This allows this external world to be codified, and understood and not feared. Humans acting/reacting to the world, making the internal into the external, is the beginning of Art. Without a group system of mythology, there can be no Art. Art builds upon the foundation of myth, Myth being a system of external human collaborative thought. Without a cycle of order and chaos that erects gods and beliefs and then destroys them to create them anew, without myth, there can be no Art. Without common phases of human cultural development, there can be no art. The external world was the world outside of self, and then the external world became the world outside of the group; now that has shifted back to an internal self. We are (for better or worse) no longer members of society, or of any group; we are only ourselves. Everyone is an island; when the bell tolls, it is not for you. We live in a fractured society with thousands of sub-cultures, divergent creeds, and splinter groups. People are much too happy to stay within the confines of some like-minded alcove, than to venture out into a world were they might meet someone who sees the world differently from them. This almost paranoid reaction to the differences of others has caused many people to take an overriding "Us and Them" attitude concerning others. The persons we conscribe to "Them" are always casts in the satanic darkness of fear.

The original meaning of the word Satan is to "...block the path". The angels of the Old Testament would block the path of human kind to keep them from going the wrong way. Satan was an idea that developed over thousand of years of political-religious conflicts and often was solely used as a means to identify the enemy of a people. There are so many groups and people walking down different paths and trying to lay down roads over each other's paths that we are all each other's Satans, but only in the sense that we are blocking each other from the other's goals. Thus everyone becomes the "Them" to someone else; we are all the great Satan....

There have always been groups that were outside of the larger society and groups that worked silently from within the larger culture, but this fragmentation of culture has become quantitative. We are becoming cultures of one. Gone are the true group efforts, movements, great societies, etc. All that remains are special interest groups and crackpots. The only culture that we share is a culture that mocks these relics of the past, and labels them fanatics. We cannot deal with the idea that someone else has developed a system of belief that allows them to take action, without the fear of rebuttal or criticism. We hate them and relegate them to cult status. Were not most founders of society fanatics? Samuel Adams comes to mind. Is not that what we all want to live free of fear. With the ability to act without submitting to ironic mocking and ridicule. Is that not the dream of every human being, the knowledge that you are doing your best and that what you are doing matters and means something?

People so often escape to the safe walls of ironic cynicism. What they cannot take apart or see the value in they must mock and belittle; there is no intelligent response to ridicule. Irony is an effective weapon, but it has become the only weapon. No longer can someone raise their conceptual dukes, as it were, and punch back. Irony is the last battlefield of dogma. In a world perceived as meaningless, those who have strong convictions are considered crackpots. They themselves are unable to channel their actions through avenues of authentic expression. Without meaning those who feel passionately about something become ineffectual zealots who often resort to the most base forms of expression: violence.

However, the very fiber of our being is rooted in the Art of the past, mythology, history, language, and culture. Without a collaborative external world to share with our friends and foes, life loses meaning.

We see the world in the forms of myth. Everything you have been told is a subjective statement; the world as you know it is a complete construction of your progenitors. You are not an animal; you have the body of an animal but your mind has been hardwired by enculturalization to think and feel within a certain spectrum of responses and interactions. We do not create our world; all we can do is alter it. Yes and no, good and bad, right and wrong, male and female, yin and yang. These concepts all have a history and a belief system that surrounds them. Regardless of the true nature of the world we live in, we exist in a projected world of history that was constructed by our forbears.

Everyone is an Adam or Eve, awaking to a pre-made world that was not of their making, and did anyone ever ask to be born? All preconception and ideologies, all languages and systems of knowledge have been formed, adopted, revised, clarified, and rearranged by the history of the human race. True, every generation plays a part in the never-ending re-making of the world, but the total subjective, the internal procession of humankind, does not build in any one direction: it forms a web or maze of history that has dead-ends and snares of dogma that very few can navigate through. Every interaction that takes place from The time of your birth is a compromise with an external pre-existing system that can chew you up and spit you out if you fail to compromise within the system. Speaking, walking, eating, the most ruminating actions are the result of instruction within a culture. History is in no way universal, as it has often been claimed to be. We each live in a slightly different world based upon what historic "take" we have been taught, or choose, to believe. Our heroes are just as easily cast as villains in another history.

Since this text is written in relation to the Arts, Art being what man creates, Art is that which is not nature. Western humankind has always purposely caused a divorce between human and nature. The composite beasts that dwell in so many myths, centaurs, griffins, sphinxes, etc, are humankindÍs attempts at conceptually manipulating our need to alter nature. We think that we could have done a better job than nature did. If we can alter it, at least mentally or artistically, then we some have control over it. One of the first things primitive humans did was domesticate and breed dogs. Humans hate nature in a way; that hate is because nature still keeps its secrets from us. That is Art, humans' reaction to and statement of their relationship with the external world. Art is the way humans do battle with nature. When someone says that something is "just a painting," or "just a movie," what are they really saying? They are saying that the Artwork's meaning or intent was not in any way political. Every action is in some way political, not political in the sense of Govemment, but in the sense of an action of conflict and/or compromise. Art is always saying something.

People often say that they want to ", just go home and watch one of those turn-your-brain-off movies," or ". I like this painting, it is just pure visual sensation, none of the conceptual bullshit." It would seem that a work of Art that turns your brain off or is simply visual sensation must have been relying upon a very complex structure of pre-programming. People have been told what is non-political and what they do not have to think about. The only reason someone would see a work of Art as a pure formal exercise or as something that would turn off one's brain is because the signals of the non-political have been used. There are attitudes or appearances that are used in Art that lie to the viewer and give the false impression that there are no politics involved. This is not a reality, it is merely preaching to the converted. Many times the lack of a political message is the true message.

"... Don't worry be happy", "...Turn your brain off and consume our products". All people have the possibility to be artistic, since all action with the external world is some form of art. But that is not the case, most people are not artistic; the act of making fine art is a very limited definition of art, and the true definition of art is an interaction between a person and the external world that has meaning.

The meaning of an act makes it art. Most people feel that we live in a meaninglessness world, religion and science have failed to externally explain the "riddle of humanity." The riddle of humanity is one that we all know and have all asked: What does it all mean? Where do we come from? Why are we here? The road of life often leads to a dead-end that falsely answers the riddle, with the "meaningless world." Meaninglessness allows people to not care about anything but their own base desires. Meaninglessness allows people to turn their brains off and see the world only as visual sensation. The false freedom of meaninglessness gives many people an out to the horror of evil in the world. Not evil in the sense of a satanic force, but in the cruel actions of humankind upon one another. In a meaningless world, it is all right to kill, and rape, and destroy, and if you yourself do not do these evil acts, you can still dismiss the evil of others by resigning the world to meaninglessness. The same can be true if dogma is allowed to taint meaningfulness. The status quo of Meaninglessness permits only dogma to survive as meaning.

Whenever true pain and suffering are exposed people can not deal with the brutality of their evil needs or lack of action against evil. So a healing device, dogma or temporary mythology is used to gloss over and rationalize the lack of good that happens. We ascribe war, famine, pain and inhumanity to myth. So much history that is taught in school is the history of warfare; we are taught that can thank our lucky stars the great warriors of our past were around to defeat evil and make this the best of all possible worlds. The foundation of society is mythologised into the defeat of evil; evil is the bedrock upon which the mythic humankind stands. Often in creation stories a god of civilization defeats a great naturalistic evil. In Babylonian myth Marduk, the justice bringer, the god of the city and storms, defeats Tiamat, a multi-headed female dragon beast. In early Vedic traditions from Indian Indra, the storm god slew a great demon. The reason for projecting evil in this light is simple: evil is a manifest power of nature that is not human and often female; it is the Great Bitch Beast out of control, and thankfully defeated long ago by the founders of the world. Nature as a subordinate to humans is supported in many genesis stories, that the whole of the bounty of the world is here to the needs of humankind to do with as it sees fit. We are the ones who make our gods; gods are mirrors into the desires of the people. To victory goes the spoils; the history of the human race could very well be called the war against truth and intelligence. The great battle between good and evil is a misnomer; the real battle has always been between intelligence and ignorance. The reason a work of Art is allowed to be "just a movie" is due to the fact that it is preaching to the converted. There is no statement made in the "just" Artwork that has not been stated before. There is no justice in the "just".

All Art is Humankind's attempt to interact with the external world, all actions have meaning. The reason someone says that something is "just" art is because the meaning of that kind of art has been accepted by the status quo as being free of meaning, it's safe, the questions that were asked by that work have been answered and the only thing left to look at in the work is how well it goes through the motions of formalism or accepted norms. Formal qualities are to Art as spelling and grammar is to writing: it helps but the meaning is the meaning, it transcends the medium and the mode of expression. Wisdom is an elemental thing; it can not be defeated, you can not kill wisdom by destroying its body. Many people live their whole lives by a personal system of wisdom that they maybe could not even put into words. That wisdom is the meaning of human life. Regardless of your abilities to verbalize the meaning in your actions, there is always meaning. Wisdom is the one system of knowledge that can be born of one person. Wisdom is able to step outside the opposed systems of society, that true rebellious act of removing ones self from the folly of societyÍs created conflicts. An Artist must make this meaningless world have meaning. Choose whose side are you on, a world of meaning or a world that means nothing. There can be no Art in a world of meaninglessness. You can not have both; once you taste the fruit of the tree of life, you are forever changed. This Lucifer principle allows the artists to rebel against the prefabricated world in which we live.

Writers of history will not tell you the truth about the losers. Who are the creators of our world? For all you know the bad guys won, and we live in an evil empire that wars with other evil empires. Evil in the true sense of the word, not the lack of good or not opposition to someone's goals, but the true evil of meaninglessness. Apathy grinds down the best we have to offer, and churns out digestible nothingness that allows people to live in a world where evil is supreme and never challenged. Meaninglessness makes us a world of walking dead finks with money to spend and a top 40 song in our long dead hearts.

Lucifer, Loki, Pan, and the Coyote: the tricksters are the gods of arts, crafts, the bringers of light; they manipulate the system to their own ends. They fuck things up. The trickster aspect asks questions, it probes, pulls at the curtains of deceit and reveals the truth. In most myths the tricksters do not lie to get their way, they simply rephrase or reconfigure the present truth to reveal it for the lie it is. Good Art breaks down the status quo. Good Art becomes the only Art, because the purveyors of dogma and ignorance have given up the rest to the realm of meaninglessness.

So much of human endeavor has had the Artfulness removed from it because of an amazing fear of excellence. When someone is truly good at something, it often repulses others. Why? Because others pale in comparison to these Artist, or is it because it would demand more from others? The truly good are just as despised as the truly evil. They fold upon themselves and become one and the same.

Sometimes you must adopt the way of a Devil to defeat evil at its own game. Instead of action with the world being Humankind's Art, it instead becomes "just getting by." If you want to live in a world where style and appearance outweighs truth and Knowledge then your actions lose all importance. If someone can not-invest the world with meaning then why should

A world without meaning is a world that has no need for Art. Yes, Art is the interaction of humankind with the external world, but without the transcendent force, that humankind can put in those actions there is no meaning. In other words the "just do it" attitude that so many people have drains and destroys all transcendence from human life. We become automatons; we become a collective biological thing. This does not need to be the case. In an ideal world, the Artists give meaning to the world through their Art. Mythmaking must bring light, bring new awareness to the world, not cover up or deny the harsh realities of the world. An ideal world would use myth to refine the truth and allow humans to see a greater degree of the truth, and live meaningful lives. Good mythology allows people to see the once invisible mechanics of the way people think and act. Look at a society's Heroes, Villains, Gods, and Fools; that is where you will find out the true nature of the people you are looking at. The Artist never "just gets by." To be an Artist you must transcend consumerism; it is the prerogative of the artist to create what he or she desires. If you want something, make it happen. Adam and Eve were without knowledge; they existed in a world without meaning. Lucifer destroyed that world with the bringing of free will. Art cannot change the world, but it can change people, and people remake the world. If this world is meaningless then what better reason could you, have to try to give life meaning? Rebel against this meaningless world. If the world has meaning, then what better reason could you have to preserve that meaning? Rebel against those who would cheapen our lives. Meaning is not an end in itself; "what does it mean?" is still a valid question, but it should never imply that the Art in question has no meaning. The most abstract and non-representational Art can still have meaning. That meaning must go beyond the pure formal agenda that is often placed upon Art now. Form, function, fashion, style and pretense do not equate the death of meaning. All action has meaning. All acts are political. Art can be for Art's sake, but would it not be better if it were for the sake of something else.