Friday, July 25, 2008

The Networking Fallacy



Some of you may wonder why I'm not at Comic Con. Well yes, part of it is because it is #*$&*@#*-ing expensive, at least if you intend on having a good time. It is a roving mob of walking advertisements. It is... well, to be honest, none of those are the primary reason.

The primary reason is that I've been doing conventions for a couple years now, and I've learned that I really enjoy - no, love - networking at these things. I love moving from artist to artist and sharing tales of victory and woe, (and some scotch to boot.)

Here's the problem: I have met many thousands of people at these conventions. Thousands of people who are eager to hear back from me, who want to keep in touch, who want to pitch something to me, who want to hear my pitch, who give me the "please don't stop talking to me, I might have to talk to the crazed guy standing behind you in the wolverine costume" look, who exchange business cards with a grin.

Now, I am disturbingly scrupulous about writing every single one of them back. Seriously, I have an unholy ability to look through a pile of business cards as thick as my thumb and recall the conversations I had with each person- often while drunk, no less. However, no one else seems to share my unholy power. Which isn't to say that they don't necessarily remember who I am, the fact is that the vast majority of them never write back. And by vast majority, I mean pretty much none of them.

So, unless if I am there with a paid-for booth, or I am looking at it as purely recreational, though it might still be a tax write-off, I can't personally write it off as a legitimate investment. I'd love to be convinced otherwise, but it seems to me that these conventions are primarily a scam on the part of the big companies who place their promo ads and trailers, and of course those people selling you your overpriced soft-drinks. How many other events do you pay top dollar for, so that you can be advertised to. What a brilliant racket. Networking? If only.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Light to Darkness / Darkness to Light at Terra Extremitas

This is a sneak peek at the soundtrack that will be used in a performance at Terra Extremitas, put on by the Foolish People. The script and soundtrack are based on some of the eschatological themes in Fallen Nation, and will serve as a bridge between that and a future project with the Foolish People, and many other creatives you may or may not have heard of...

The voices you will hear in this soundtrack will be the voices inside the actor's head. The rest you will just have to imagine- or better yet, get your ass to the event.

Also, after the Terra Extremitas event in Amsterdam, we will be providing you with a version of this soundtrack with the actors lines added- which may or may not have video, depending on how the filming at the event goes. Enjoy!

Soundtrack Credits:

Writing: James Curcio, Jason Stackhouse.

Production & Art Direction: James Curcio.

Music: P. Emerson Williams (Choronzon, Veil of Thorns), James Curcio, Scott Landes (Collide, Mankind is Obsolete), Jon Siren (Mankind is Obsolete, Hate Dept).

http://www.mythosmedia.net/blog/post/45-light-to-darkness-darkness-to-light-at-terra-extremitas
(Built in player should stream the mp3, it is also available for download on this page.)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

My "bucket list"

OK, for starters, yes I saw the movie. No, I am not especially proud of this fact. To say that it could have been worse also rightly implies it could have been better, though to have been better it would of course have to be something that it was not. Categorically.

That's not what this post is about, so I'm not going to belabor that.

No, this post is about being so bored - existentially, even - that I'm considering staying up all night. Which doesn't even make sense, I realize, unless if you too can hit that point where suddenly you're so bored - uninspired would be an even better word - that you couldn't possibly sleep no matter how hard you tried. And my schedule is so fucked at this point, I figure why not?

Actually, this post isn't about that either. But it's closer to my point by a number of degrees.

To pass a little bit of the time, I've decided that I will share with you some of the things that I want to do before I die. There, that was the thesis.

Most people have these Hallmark hopes and dreams for this list. I don't know, something-something World Series (is that something you Win? I haven't watched a full game of a sport on TV since I was just post-gestation), see the (insert expected landmark here), etc. None of that for me. I could care less if I see Mount Rushmore before I die. If I won a trophy for a sport, the only thing I could think to do with the cup is drink out of it. ("Just pour the mocha in here, that's fine.")

No, the things I would like to experience before the "oh shit, I'm about to die" realization followed by an eternity of being the rest of the universe (and not me), are much more random. You may call them impractical. Most of them certainly not good ideas, and some of them may very well kill me or get me a disease in the process.

But who wants to be a healthy corpse?

This is in no particular order.

1. Have something that I create reviewed (ideally favorably though I'll take what I can get) in a location with massive distribution that does not have the words "occult" "conspiracy" or "counterculture" anywhere within the entirety of the publication / show.

2. Fear And Loathing, International. I would like to do this after I've knocked off a couple of the others, as it would most likely either end a) with my death or b) with a prison sentence that I'd want to kill myself to get out of. This mission unpossible: get together my most bizarre and unusual friends. If this means traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to gather them up, so be it. Acquire a copious amount of hallucinogens, and a veritable bevy of prostitutes, none of whom speak the same language as us or each other. Replacing sleep with chemicals, document the almost certain straight arrow shot to hell that ensues on the Internet. If necessary, add to this cocktail those drugs which provoke increased sexual urges, gambling, and sleep walking / driving / etc. Remove the word "no" and the thought "this is probably not a good idea" from our collective physical and mental vocabulary. Demand chaos, and expect nothing less.

3. This is an old one, and one of the less probable ones. (I'm not even sure if it's possible.) I have always- since I was a child- wanted a silverback gorilla in a pin-striped suit that I could train to teach solitaire and refer to as "my bouncer." Though back then he was my bodyguard. But I think bouncer is better. Seriously, you will never need violence when you have the threat of a grouchy silverback gorilla just a room away. (A grouchy silverback that almost certainly sucks at playing solitaire.) I'll grant this is something one "has" rather than "does"- just don't say that to the gorilla. He is no one's bitch.

4. Create something that I feel truly happy with- at least for a week- without that itching, burning, gnawing that I can do better. (Or was that caused by #2?) This feeling is probably to be enjoyed with a full-bodied wine or beer. Maybe some lambic. And a friend or two who can sit there quietly and bask in contentedness with you without asking you what you're going to do next.

5. Milk yaks with Jillian somewhere in Tibet, churn butter from the milk, and demonstrate that google was right, and it is both nutritious and delicious.

Actually, this one isn't very important. A better one might be: kidnap Jillian. Avoid the authorities.

6. Spend an entire week with at least two people that I find incredibly sexually appealing doing nothing but having sex, eating, massaging, imbibing uh... those things which may enhance or intensify the experience... and very occasionally, sleeping. Granted, I've done it before but it was definitely worth repeating. Activities such as swimming are also allowed, but anything not immediately related to the potentially gratifying experience of being physically present in a body (e.g. anything that glows on a screen) is right out. We simply don't enjoy the possibilities nearly enough.

7. Writing, co-producing, soundtrack production, etc for a feature length film or similarly "immersive" project. Though nice it's not the credits that I care about, it's the experience. I want to do something that intense with a team of people that are every bit as dedicated (obsessed) with the production as I am, and with the funds to actually fucking do it right.

8. Get to watch Christie come into her own and get healthy along the way.

9. Finally, possibly most important and least likely. Spend a month in a beautiful location with the people I care most about without any of us once thinking about a project, work, financial stress, or any element of success or failure- just living. This is obviously only truly possible after some of the others have already been fulfilled.

Do you see the common theme here? Most require an inordinate amount of money. I need to get on that. (But the last one doesn't, you say. Bullshit. Not having to think of such things is the most expensive of them all.)

One final thing, I'm not entirely kidding. This is probably why the Universe doesn't want me to get famously wealthy. Because I would do these things. And if I don't get the opportunity to check at least some of them off the list I will return to this Earth a vengeful ghost.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

America, what will you do when you go to Walmart and the doors are closed?

walmart.jpg
Let us start this piece of wild conjecture with a supposition: you, like myself and many of those I know, have been aware for some time now that some kind of storm has been brewing in America. There is no arguing that the past eight years have sped up this process, but this pattern is not one that is unique to one administration. It is a pattern woven within the very fabric of Western civilization.

Let's be blunt, the mantle once held by Rome has simply passed on to a variety of Empires, from the Catholics to the the British, and most recently, to the United States. And like every other nation that has carried this banner, one must fall so that another might rise. (By the way, don't believe that the Empire lives on here in the States? Take a look at the architecture of our capital buildings. Why, what culture was it that the Romans so often aped?)

It is not entirely fair to call this martial spirit “Roman,” for as I said it has manifested across cultural and temporal boundaries with such regularity that it seems that what is present here is not only an archetype, but a biological imperative that operates in our neurology and endocrine systems every bit as much as in the memetic structure of the culture. This is not to say that it is an imperative that is universal, nor is it one that must be expressed in this form, but nevertheless it does, as this cultural program or complex would otherwise have ceased to express itself long ago.

Without undue elaboration, there are certain traits which embody this cultural program: patriarchy, commerce and industry as goods unto themselves, martial might and vigor used to spread the cultural myth far and wide through conquests, at the same time adopting harmonious forms, self assurance to the point of hubris, and most notably: the myth of the individual, which is a myth that never developed in the East except as an import from the West. None of this is to say that because of this common form these various civilizations are not different in equal ways, each with many other unique nuances, as there are countless ways which the United States is unlike Rome, and it is in fact only in the what I would call the underlying galvanizing myth of the society that this similarity resides. Additionally, it is obvious that cultures can exhibit some of these traits without embodying this “Roman” archetype. It is a character which, much like any of us, is constructed of generally the same parts, but when put together, has a unique, distinct and undeniable presence.

It would be sheer speculation to predict what the future holds for the U.S., but let's consider some of the basic facts available at this moment: the U.S. economy and value of the dollar is on very unstable ground, in part due to the idiocy of rolling thousands of default prone subprime mortgages into the investment packages and rating them AAA. But with all the hysterical news this has gathered, equally pressing are the results of climate change, which in ecological span of time is banging on our doorstep as we speak. Though argument can continue seemingly indefinitely about whether there is “climate change,” it is fact that at an alarming rate national disasters are sparking up in one location and then another, crippling the already taxed production capabilities of this country in virtually every industry. This is moving hand-in-hand with the effects of pollutants and untested chemicals will almost assuredly have effects on the safety of our future food and drinking water, effects which in the decades to come we can only speculate at. Tied into all of this, we are locked into a full-blown addiction to fossil fuels for the production of energy which, at this point, provides the entire backbone of our infrastructure, even our daily survival. Attempts to replace the heroin of oil with the methadone of other energy sources have been, thusfar, fairly superficial, and in some cases (as with ethanol), detrimental as a result of the other factors at play. We increasingly outsource to other countries, and the “giant sucking sound,” that Ross Perot suggested was heard as a result of NAFTA. (Who knew that someone so funny looking could be right? Certainly not America.)

This is only an incredibly cursory, even provisional, list of the factors at play, the singular point is to demonstrate some of the trends leading towards future realities which will have an effect on each and every one of our lives if they play out synergistically.

In the life-span of human civilization, it has been the East that has led the West, not the other way around. (Side-line note: Who owns an increasing minority share of our countries debt? China.) The only members of our waning empire who may reap true benefit in this brave new world are the outsourced international companies, many of whom are raking in billions in profits from the conflict in Iraq which was arguably manufactured for that very purpose.

In recognition of the facts precipitating this storm, apocalyptic mythology is bound to take hold, and surely it is a virtual pandemic. I am fascinated by elements of apocalyptic mythology, as is readily apparent in my creative work, but rather than proselytizing for the end-times, instead let's consider a very stern question: what the fuck are we doing?

By we, I mean you, me. Such global concerns as national or international market crashes and ecological disaster may seem out of our grasp, but all I see in the people around me is a business-as-usual sleepwalking state, where we follow the established patterns, many of us struggling harder and harder simply to make ends meet. At what point will we all wake up? At what point should we have a plan that involves something more than duct tape, some bottled water, and a couple cans of Campbell's Soup?

Cultural trends such as the “green movement” never seem to evolve further than the cult of the brand these days, casual and cursory lifestyle changes offered for the honor of claiming membership, usually resulting in minimal change of the status quo. The little changes make us feel better about ourselves, but though a good habit recycling plastic bottles does not change the situation.

Let's suppose, just for a minute, that all of this doomsaying is actually true: we actually do have to change the way we live our lives, and fast, if we want to weather this storm. We have to build communities, work locally and through the net, buy up land, and utilize it to the best of our abilities- at least until the possible eventuality that “buying” land no longer becomes necessary. Establish trade relationships with individuals who you can share with, as if the network you are building was a medieval village. (At least have the benefit of penicillin and the Internet. But do you know how to manufacture penicillin?) Learn what needs to be learned to maintain the quality of life that we have grown accustomed to, and at the same time come to realize which of those was never actually all that important.

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard the sustainability talk before. I've been a part of several experiments of this nature, and I have witnessed what I'm sure you expect: excessive concern regarding petty drama, an inability to maximize personal strengths and minimize weaknesses through self-knowledge or management, even though it should be common sense that if Fred is an excellent cook and can't build things to save his life, don't give him a hammer. Hierarchical politics, reaching the absurd point where individuals will viciously fight over who has the “majority share” of something that isn't even worth anything yet. If every member of a would-be community or network is unable to get out from under the heel of the grinding financial realities of living hand to mouth, it is virtually impossible for them to plan ahead, form a group and establish an operational plan that attempts to deal with the hurdles we expect to face, and grow their plan into physical reality.

Aside from these complications, it is surprisingly difficult to transition from our capitalistic upbringing to a community-reliant mentality. The day-to-day constantly sucks up all the energy and resources that were supposed to go towards building and sustaining a more conscious, conscientious way of life. We've been taught not to trust our neighbors. We live in an alienated, fractioned culture which can no longer even conceive of “community” without a sneer, or without the urge to try to sell someone something they don't need. There can be no community when there can be no trust between its members, and we are a decidedly untrusting and untrustworthy society.

America, what will you do when you go to Walmart and the doors are closed?
(And yes, I realize that they are probably one of the international corporations that is positions to weather this storm thanks to their judicious application of pure evil. You get my point.)

It seems to me that this storm is brewing relatively quickly, and yet all of us are moving in slow motion. Let us hope that this is just misinformed fear-mongering, but supposing it isn't: we all need to pick up the pace, or, in the words of James Maynard Keenan, “learn to swim.”

Fragment from an email yesterday

"The myth of linear progress (tied to the Enlightenment myth, in the European sense) is one that I often try to... Well not undermine, but show that it is not without its dark side. In a way this is why I take issue with the "singularity" myth- perhaps it is more Utopian than many of the others, less universalist and thus less potentially tyrannical- but it nevertheless has its underpinnings that we started at point A and at each epoch move to the next letter in the alphabet. What people seem to miss is that for every "advance" you also sacrifice something."

I think that last part is worth taking note of. This is relevant in the history of the civilizations, sure, but it is also relevant in our own personal histories. For every thing invoked, another thing banished. For every road taken, another that was not.

This came about in a free-flowing conversation that I've had by email with Rudy Rauben recently. (Really, it's been ongoing for months. It just flares up and then goes away. Not unlike a hemorrhoid, I'm told, but this is much more pleasant. The conversation begins with the "interview" linked above, and continued from there.) This has mostly been some early brainstorming for what might become a new comic series or graphic novel- though I wouldn't look for it in finished form anytime soon. The soil needs some tilling yet.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Tonights additions to "myth is alive in business"

(first draft)
Despite the exciting creative possibilities posed by new media in regard to myth, they do not come without a price. The danger presented by the presence of myth in modern media is paramount. Though the propaganda of Fascist mythologies such as those of Nazis or the U.S.S.R. serve as the clearest example of these dangers, they exist in more subtle forms in the media produced by modern Capitalist states. Though media is ostensibly the watchdog of the government, both the government and media agencies of the Capitalist state are behooven to international corporations and their interests. As we already explored, the contextual nature of truth makes myth in media a potential form of national or even international coercion. The story of American politics and News media between the 1960's and the present serves as a cautionary tale of such possibilities.

There is no ensuring that mythological images, and the powerful psychological forces that they represent aren't being used by corporations for benevolent purposes, though they invariably present themselves in such a light. This myth of benevolence presents itself on a National level as well. American culture in particular has a need to present itself as a benevolent superpower, leading the rest of the world into an Enlightened era of growth and commerce. This is not unlike Britain's Empire, upon which the sun never set. In both cases the hubris exhibited was not merely of capacity, but more importantly, more catastrophically, it represents the rigid and wholesale self-congratulation of a myth that has so overshadowed reality that the two share nothing in common.

However, many countries integrate elements of America's capitalism without bringing its culture along with it. Samuel P. Huntington explores this fact in great detail in his book The Clash of Civilizations, in which he provides both the myth of the New American Century, where we are approaching integration and the ascension of the American nation, contrasted with the myth held by most of the rest of the world, that America is in fact in decline and its contribution to the ascension of other nations and state unions will take the form of the co-opted systems of commerce and government we developed. These systems will nevertheless grow in truly unprecedented ways within non-Western cultural soil.

This amalgam presents some very interesting possibilities for the future of Asian capitalism, though at the same time we mustn't forget that in times past, Asian nations seem to have no cultural fear of appearing tyrannical, though no more or less so in reality. Thus, we will likely see the myths of the brand developing in unexpected ways as the various elements of these cultures blend and come into conflict with one another, and it is unlikely that these forms will be clear of malevolence and oppression.

Early Announcement: Lives of Ilya Release Parties in NYC & LA

Los Angeles, August 16: Ilya Faire. Release party for Lives of Ilya.
Tara Vanflower (Lycia), Jarboe, Eva O (Christian Death), and many more!


----

New York, August 22: Lives of Ilya release party. Rosetta, Balboa, North, Inswarm.




Order the full color illustrated novella on Amazon.com. (Note: the author bio information in the Amazon listing is incorrect on their webpage. We are working on having this corrected.)

Mythos Media

Friday, July 11, 2008

For Better or Worse:

Myth is Alive and Well in Business.
By James Curcio.



A quick look at the marketing for films, books and music shows the profound value that mythology has within the modern marketplace. This role is made more pervasive – and potentially beneficial or dangerous – as a result of the proliferation of instantaneous and virtually limitless communication mediums. Myth is so entrenched in the nature of business that it is often overlooked within the advertising rhetoric, however, the building of a mythology is the centerpiece of all effective branding.

Demonstration of this fact clearly requires an understanding both of the function of myth and the function of a brand. Prevalent misconceptions in both of these cases has clouded what should otherwise be a self-evident thesis, so the purpose of this brief white paper is to identify these misconceptions and clarify the position.

Myth is difficult to explain in a top down manner: it is not merely a story, for some stories are myths while others are not; it is not merely the beliefs of a people retold in stories or other media, because here again retold beliefs can be devoid of mythic resonance. Because of this complexity, for the time being let us define a few of these basic qualities through a quick backward glance at the function of myths past, before turning to ways that these qualities may or may not be applied within the modern business world.

The myths of the past, it is commonly held, were erroneous explanations for the way that the world is; fanciful stories, which, though colorful and interesting curiosities, surely bear no particular use to our “modern” lives. This interpretation mistakes the thing (fanciful stories and the accompanying art, etc.) for their function. As was later re-discovered by an expansive list of preeminent scholars and authors, including Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and the like, these myths do not explain the world, rather, they explain our place within it. Thus, it is not a universal static truth that myths represent, but instead a personal, cultural one. It is commonly accepted that mythology served a central role in the lives of humans up until a time when science and industry somehow stole away our myths. Though patently untrue, this belief itself serves as a myth which allows us to establish a place within history for ourselves. It is an internal narrative that defines us in Enlightenment terms. This is another role which myth serves: it defines who we are, and defines where we are in time; what role we serve, and what the nature of that role is. To the actor, the central question is often “what is my motivation?” The myth is our motive, or at least, it gives it voice. It may be encoded in any medium, but its defining characteristic is its psychological function.

When looking at stories, movies, or any other form of media, we may then ask- what qualifies as a myth? Perhaps first we should look at how we define anything. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein explained the nature of meaning in language as a case of “family resemblance.” For example, sisters and brothers, mothers and daughters, and so on, can all share certain traits, not others, and yet be considered part of the same family. This, he proposed, was the nature of linguistic definition. Without this concept, we cannot properly define a game, for by any static qualifier certain activities which all of us consider games would be ruled out.

This concept of definition contradicts the Aristotelean concepts of categories which most of us are still used to, where a thing is either A or B, and cannot exist as an amalgam of many different potentially contradictory components, often occupying a space somewhere between these various “pure” concepts. However, without a recognition of this fact, it is impossible to properly identify the various elements of myth at work within the diverse industries of the world today. We then lose site of how these elements can function in a piecemeal configuration, for example with elements of mythological thinking occurring within a seemingly unrelated milieu.

Granting these complexities, we may be led to wonder how myth functions in the world of business and industry. The function of a brand is to bring the story of a company to its market. When you look at a logo, read the copy on the back of a label, or watch an advertisement on television, it is commonly believed that the intent is to sell the product to you. Of course, in a sense, this is true. But what is actually being sold is the myth of the company- what that product or brand represents. The myth of Lexus doesn't sell you cars, it sells you luxury. Thus, it is of utmost importance for advertisers to understand the function of myth every bit as much as script writers. Like all other forms of myth, when accomplished successfully, the myth of a brand also brings with it a form of community. For example, witness the success of Apple's branding: those who identify as “Mac users” do so with an odd sense of pride, as if they are bucking the system by sharing in the aura of coolness that radiates from their stylish gear. Every element of this is mythological, including the system that they are bucking, represented by the doltish PC anthropomorphisized by John Hodgman in their recent advertising campaigns. (This general concept is explored at length in James B. Twitchell's book Ad Cult, containing many worthwhile thoughts on the mythological machinery of corporate advertising.)

As the business guru Peter Drucker demonstrates in his book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, the marketing of a product is not a function of selling it, it is instead the means of fulfilling a need. In other words, the function of business itself is the fulfillment of human needs; the more ubiquitous the need, the more easy the marketing of that product will be if handled properly. The reason Lexus sells you luxury, rather than a car, is that, within the social apparatus of most industrialized nations, everyone needs a car. Lexus is identifying the niche of people with that need who they wish to call their own, and they are doing it through people who self identify with, or idolize, the myth of their brand.

As we have already explored, myths also fulfill a human need, experienced around the globe and throughout the history of our species: the need for meaning. The cultish following associated with certain properties is the result of this “mythic demand,” provided through characters and often fictional worlds which represent aspects of our inner psychology. To the fans, these worlds are often every bit as real as the phenomenal world of the everyday. Series such as Vertigo’s Sandman comics, or Serenity, which appeared first as a Fox television series, then a graphic novel and movie when the series was canceled, are examples of how the development of a general world and context in the mind of an audience can provide endless storytelling possibilities. They also demonstrate that the success of these stories are not based on the medium. This is of course quite apparent to anyone who considers the recent success of various comics franchises' almost overwhelming storming of Hollywood. Without which, surely Marvel wouldn't be able to afford to have their own film production studio, nor would San Diego's massively popular Comic Con be showing such a wholesale recognition of the mythic power of their media franchises, regardless of the medium that it is presented in.

The success of any media brand demands that it serve as an effective myth: whether Star Trek, Doctor Who, or Lost, to the true fans, these shows represent a pantheon with psychological, even ethical or cultural, significance. Further, one cannot overlook the Star Wars franchise; what began as a low-budget movie specifically steeped in mythic archetypes, has spawned a multimedia empire that today encompasses novels, comic books, television shows, video games, and a dizzying array of toys and ancillary products. In the case of the first three movies, the connection with myth was more than implicit: George Lucas was a friend of Joseph Campbell, and based the cosmology of the Star Wars world on the heroic cycle outlined in his books. These ancient traditions were simply made relevant to the concerns and aesthetic tastes of the modern age.

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About the author:
James Curcio has been consciously dedicated to the production and analysis of modern myths since the age of sixteen, and subconsciously arguably since birth. This exploration has taken the form of collaborative novels (Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning in 2007, Join My Cult! in 2004), essays on myth and culture (The Immanence of Myth, presently in development, "Living The Myth," Generation Hex 2004, "Hillbilly Tantra" in Magic On The Edge in 2005, and "Dying Gods" in Lemon Puppy, in 2003), Internet "round-table" musical albums and podcasts,(subQtaneous: Some Still Despair In A Prozac Nation in 2005, Babalon's Descent in 2001 and posthumous Dreams And Reflections in 2005, Bedtime Stories With The Antichrist in 2004-2005 and The G-Spot in 2005-2006), and various art and media collectives. Most recently, he is co-founder of Mythos Media.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Auguring The Technocalypse

FP announced my upcoming participation in their Terra:Extremitas event in Amsterdam in August. Guess I'd better get to work on that script...


About 'Terra:Extremitas':
"In many ways the United States are inhospitable to artists. This isn't to say that the case is otherwise elsewhere, but most of my life experience comes from living here. At the extreme, I think there is an underlying, subconscious belief in many people that true commitment to art and creativity is a cultural crime. In my opinion, 'Terra: Extremitas' brings that belief to the forefront, it embodies it as a form of revolt on our part, and mixes it with the now ubiquitous myth of the apocalypse. In a fit of incoherent caffeination I said that my last novel (Fallen Nation) was a cultural apocalypse. Now I know what the hell I was talking about- and can thank the FoolishPeople for it."

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

shaitan

tv_tall

The symbolism should be self-apparent, though it began essentially as an elaborate doodle.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008







Reality is being devoured by a surreal nightmare.

The Fiction has arrived.

Immerse yourself in the immense, interconnected story manifested by FoolishPeople and over 30 visionaries and artists working together
from across the world within the unique landscape of Amsterdam's NDSM-werf.

Follow living characters, absorb live transmissions from the other side of the planet, and discover the secrets, which each hold a fragment of the Terra: Extremitas myth.

The surreal and beautiful experience of exploring humanity’s last day on earth.


TERRA EXTREMITAS.
---------------------------------
My Bio: (to go up w/ TE event.)

Ever since an acid trip in 1995 that James Curcio arguably never quite returned from, he has been dedicated (some might say obsessed) with the production of modern myths. These have taken the form of collaborative novels (Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning in 2007, Join My Cult! in 2004), essays on myth and culture (The Immanence of Myth, presently in development, “Living The Myth,” Generation Hex 2004, “Hillbilly Tantra” in Magic On The Edge in 2005, and “Dying Gods” in Lemon Puppy, in 2003), Internet "round-table" musical albums,(subQtaneous: Some Still Despair In A Prozac Nation in 2005, Babalon's Descent in 2001 and posthumous Dreams And Reflections in 2005), and various unorthodox podcast and audiobook series. He has co-founded quite a few independent artist groups and recording studios, and is presently a co-founder of Mythos Media, and editor of Alterati.com. Curcio will present an unwholesome multi-media mindfuck at Terra Extremitas which will leave his audience forever changed- or dizzy, nauseous and psychologically broken, if the “Program” does not take.

About what he does:

“I really don't know how to provide a top-down or general summary of 'what I do.' It isn't simple evasiveness, but rather because it is a relative unknown. All I know is that when you begin practicing an instrument, or painting, or doing virtually anything, you are conscious of every action, of every misstep. As you continue to work, and the years pass, you become less and less conscious of each of those discrete actions. This is why so many teachers stress the fundamentals, because those building blocks, or personal cliches, slip out of your conscious sphere and become increasingly difficult to re-configure. By the time you reach the point that the work becomes what you are, and you serve as a conduit for it, you are completely in the dark about the truly relevant actions you take to bring it about. What is my process? Do what you do, and put everything you possibly can into it. Sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed, and don't hesitate to cannibalize your most private experiences in the process. Cast it into the world as if you were throwing it into the trash can. And start over again, because chances are, you can do better.”

About Terra Extremitas:

“In many ways the United States are inhospitable to artists. This isn't to say that the case is otherwise elsewhere, but most of my life experience comes from living here. At the extreme, I think there is an underlying, subconscious belief in many people that true commitment to art and creativity is a cultural crime. In my opinion, Terra Extremitas brings that belief to the forefront, it embodies it as a form of revolt on our part, and mixes it with the now ubiquitous myth of the apocalypse. In a fit of incoherent caffeination I said that my last novel (Fallen Nation) was a cultural apocalypse. Now I know what the hell I was talking about- and can thank the Foolish People for it.”

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