Human Demonology: Your Creative Impulse

Life emerges from arrangements of matter and chemistry through a process that can't be traced from the properties of the physical component parts it inhabits. A similar phenomenon is the kind of artist who changes culture and how a society sees itself. This artist emerges from a complex of education, organization, rule enforcement and millions of points of sensory input. What is thrown at an individual for the sake of socialization is a set of base materials that may to some extent be woven into the body of this artist's work, but the living quality of expression arises as a new state that could not be calculated or predicted as a combination of this input. This impulse for creation and mutating the consciousness of humanity is like another layer of the chaos that expresses itself in the property that animates and mutates matter. This is a force so unstoppable that every jurisdictional, organizational and mode of indoctrination and application of force is ultimately put in place to keep it at bay. Alpha humans of every age in positions that can decide the fate of nations, whether they got there through action or accident, have a compulsive need to have things arranged as they want them and to envelop humanity in cryogenic deep freeze when they succeed in imposing their ideal.

With a certain density of human population on a planet, only so much freedom is possible. In fact, most people in recorded history have lived under terrible oppression. It is a part of modern western mythology that growing freedom is destiny, but it is taken  or scammed away so easily, that one might wonder if human tendency is in the opposite direction. Most things can be controlled in society and in a majority of individuals with little directive energy once set in motion, but the creative impulse can't ever be completely eradicated, and it doesn't take a huge endeavour to upset the whole arrangement. If this impulse is channelled less through culture and custom it comes out in twisted forms, commonly the SNAFU principle.

The Art of Steven Leyba

In his words: 

To me the most personal creation is the most universal. Simply writing words is not enough. Books are a way culture preserves it's history but often times books are used to control the ideas and politics of society to restrict information. I seek to make books to liberate that defy control, censorship and simple definition and depict life in its totality. I see my hand made books as political reclamation of the natural world in its fecundity. I paint oil over acrylic over collage over anything I can find. I embellish the paintings with glass beads and organic material from the world around me literally putting the landscape and my DNA into the books. I have used dirt, coffee, hair, leafs, molasses, blood, urine, insects and anything I feel can give the book life from life. We are so used to having the synthetic and technological global culture define how we perceive ourselves, our bodies, our biology, and who we are, that when someone has a different point of view of the human experience and makes the commitment to put it in a book forever, it can be frightening and challenging yet very alive.
I embrace the reverence of the natural world that my Apache ancestors celebrated, one that focuses on the micro and macrocosms, nature, the reclaiming of forgotten and challenging symbols and all aspects of a life put into a book the moment it is happening.

Genesis P Orridge writes on SoLiteral,

...In spiritually volatile times such as this we, as a species, need to ask ourselves some searching and uncomfortable, even disturbing questions. The miraculous unfolding and ongoing survival of humanity against incredible environmental and climatic odds throughout the ages has been preserved, catalyzed, directed, inspired, mirrored and sanctified on our species’ behalf by the shamans, soothsayers, storytellers, sorcerers, wise ones, alchemical healers and (once upon a time) by the Artists of each age. These oracular beings fearlessly explore additional dimensions to those of mundane nonsensus everyday “reality”. They push the boundary of established social protocols, using the discipline of brutal self questioning to carry out an independent cultural autopsy on the often putrefying body of humanity during any given age. These courageous and often vilified individuals are essential to the psychic hygiene and mental health of the social order or civilization of their time.
As our ways of life have separated further and further from a balance with Nature, the role and prestige of these visionary gestalt therapists working on behalf of their community after an, often involuntary, initiation by near death experience, has been in decline. For around 2000 years these “creators” evolved from obsessed, possessed, magical shamans chosen by circumstance (not by self will) to artists still serving the Divine and the transcendental through the Church in the West and bureaucratic religions in general...

Look for a possible joint show between Leyba, James Curcio and the other Gonzomentary crew in Philadelphia in Spring or Summer 2013. Details here forthcoming as we find the right venue for what we are planning. If you are a venue holder in Philadelphia, feel free to get in touch. And also look for many more artist profiles here on Modern Mythology in coming months.

Meanwhile: What do you see as the role of artist, shaman or story-teller in the 'modern' age? Are they the same? 

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]