Project update: Words of Traitors

Collage in progress. Myself and Alexey Andreev. 

I haven't had time to focus on modern mythology pieces this summer as much, as I have focused my creative energies almost exclusively into The Words of Traitors, an illustrated book - mixed media, which ties into many other past, and I imagine future, modern myths. They at the same time stand on their own, and have plenty of sex and blood to keep things spicy.

Like Bill Hicks used to say, "don't worry. There will be dick jokes in a minute, folks."

It has been an open project to an extent - open to contribution from those who show up, or who chance brings to it as it came into being.

Where is this project at? We are now less than 2 days from the conclusion of the fundraiser. We could still really use your donations, and you could get some limited edition or even unique art as a result. I will work with whatever we raise to cover those limited print runs, and hopefully have a little bit left to put into the next phase of that project which leads to a public release, either through Mythos Media or in partnership with another publisher. I am hoping to organize a gallery show, as there are a ton of images- many of which I have created myself, or collaged from the my own work and the work of others in some cases.

I initially imaged a mostly textual book with 7 images. It has since grown into a true fusion, with over 50 images, and pretty involved page backgrounds.


As of this posting we've raised $1600 (of a hoped $8000, but like I said we will work with whatever I can), and there are 32 hours remaining. Donate.

This book is a ritual. If you don't know what that means I can't speak to it in any way that isn't long-winded. This is no purely intellectual exercise. It is a book, and to literalize that, some of the art is literally made of flesh. The flesh of animals, the flesh and pulp of plants. It has been good to work with my hands again, with material, three dimensional objects that are then digitized, re-contextualized.

I will write a follow up "5 general rules of indie production" or somesuch if there is a demand for it here as a way to return to this site. If it would be helpful to some of you. Respond. Engage. This medium (the net) often seems to risk divorcing us from discourse.

We can speak, but can we listen? 

Do we pay attention, or merely browse through in a half-dream?

It needn't be passive, but it does demand a certain space and respect to accomplish the goal of truly listening, to ourselves, to one another. The creative process simply can't exist without that space, especially the one that we make within ourselves, like a womb that these (bodies) gestate within. I often say that in a way I already am a parent.

I'm not sure if my children are monsters are not, of course.

There is a lot I could say about this project, but I'd much rather you draw your own conclusions. For that, you have to meet it halfway. I'm looking forward to hearing how the limited editions are received.

Be talking to you...

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Modern Mythology and the Transmedia Revolution

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In Search of Myth and Meaning...

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"The point of mythology or myth is to point to the horizon and to point back to ourselves: This is who we are; this is where we came from; and this is where we're going. And a lot of Western society over the last hundred years - the last 50 years really - has lost that. We have become rather aimless and wandering."

J. Michael Straczynski

The Power of Myth was one of the most popular TV series in the history of public television.  In a series of six hour-long episodes, American mythologist Joseph Campbell peeled back the layers of mystery that had once shrouded our species ancient storytelling traditions.

Campbell blew away the accumulated funk of centuries of traditional academic inquiry, and connected the dots between mythic traditions that had once been separated by hundreds of miles, and thousands of years.  He postulated that there was a single mythic narrative, a monomyth that had been translated into many different languages, and disguised in the symbols of many different cultures--but one that essentially shared the same structure and sequence of events.

The Monomyth or "Hero's Journey" (Infographic Via The Royal Society of Account Planning)

Finding Joe

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“Nothing will see us through the age we're entering but high consciousness, and that comes hard. We don't have a good, modern myth yet, and we need one.”

Robert Johnson

 

Follow Your Bliss - Joseph Campbell from Christoph on Vimeo.

Mr. M

In the beginning, there was a sound, no, a voice, summoning him from the darkness. In between bouts of darkness, there was nothing but pain. 10,000 times he saw himself die in fire, with poison, being devoured, and always, always falling.

Heart Art and Meat Ethics

Please support indie art and independent artists. It's how these projects get made. Just 15 days left!

As I mentioned in several of the videos a few posts back on Words of Traitors, one of the primary dioramas that I'm using to stage the art in WoT was based on a hypnogagic state, a half-dream image of a pulsating heart with wires linking to various images and fragments of written text that represent the emotions binding us to the past -- but which also fixate us in time at all. It got me thinking, or feeling, really, a sense of the Bardo. I came out of the state crying, and cried for quite some time before I determined that I should attempt to build something like what I had seen.

It wasn't ever meant to be a statement about food. As a meat eater, I don't see any sense in the ritual and artistic use of organs to be any more wasteful than eating it. But we'll get to that in a minute, because that isn't why I made this thing. It isn't, in other words, what the heart is meant to evoke.

The heart generally symbolizes emotion for some reason or other, though it is especially funny to me when people eat hamburgers but get freaked out by organs. I simply wanted to approach the dream image as directly as I could.

Heart Art - Indie Production 101

Lilith sketch by ... me.

Hard at work on Word of Traitors, as are many of the artists.

Please help support us in getting this material produced. We have a way to go the next 20 days but it can be done if you get active along with us! 

Here's two videos about some of the dioramas I've just started building - which will be integrated digitally with mixed media pieces.


Video 1.



Video 2.

Here I am, babbling more about found art, working with what you have. Again, I had a lot I wanted to say about serendipity but talking to a camera you're holding it awkward. Feel free to ask me directly if you have questions about process, especially if you're an artist yourself.

No Gods, No Masters: Anarchy In Theory and Practice

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Photos by Marjorie Hoover

"Even if the world was to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today." -anon

A timeline of my involvement with OPDX movement.

A Dream for the Blind: A Meditation on Tiresias

What power has "the light of truth" over blind Tiresias? 

Light divides; truth becomes double. A rift is thereby opened, separating truth disclosed by the light of 

reason from sacred, secret truths. What reality does this abyss have for Tiresias?

Tiresias experienced the truth of "the other side of existence" to which rationality, enlightenment, remains 

forever blind. The price paid for this sacred truth was the sacrifice of sight.

The offense commited by Tiresias was not against Hera: it was the decision itself, by which he betrayed his 

privileged knowledge of the fundamental non-duality of existence. Blindness was both his punishment and his 

recompense.

Blindness bestows the gift of prophecy. The blind visionary cannot but fail to enlighten those blinded by 

sight and light: sacred truth remains ineffable, incomprehensible according to reason and speach. 

Tiresias: the prophetic midwife present at the birth of the traged

What power has "the light of truth" over blind Tiresias? 

Light divides; truth becomes double. A rift is thereby opened, separating truth disclosed by the light of reason from sacred, secret truths. What reality does this abyss have for Tiresias?

Tiresias experienced the truth of "the other side of existence" to which rationality, enlightenment, remains forever blind. The price paid for this sacred truth was the sacrifice of sight.

The offense commited by Tiresias was not against Hera: it was the decision itself, by which he betrayed his privileged knowledge of the fundamental non-duality of existence. Blindness was both his punishment and his recompense.

Blindness bestows the gift of prophecy. The blind visionary cannot but fail to enlighten those blinded by sight and light: sacred truth remains ineffable, incomprehensible according to reason and speech. 

Tiresias: the prophetic midwife present at the birth of the tragedy named Reason.

"Man's destiny is to try to avoid the unavoidable. 

His eyes, although eager for light, 

persistently avoid the sun..."

(G. Bataille, Inner Experience)