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Emer Roberts Child and Rat (2010)
‘There could perhaps be no better (or worse, depending on your religious inclination) day to open a blasphemous art exhibition than Good Friday. As many Irish Catholics were dutifully attending church, a group of young, well-dressed Dubliners gathered in the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art to view an exhibition inspired by the country’s new — and much loathed — antiblasphemy law. The first artwork to greet the visitors to “Blasphemous” is a grotesque variation on Michelangelo’s Pieta, with the Virgin Mary transformed into a malicious giant rat.
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Derek Murphy Various (2010)
‘There are many people who think I’m the slime of the earth, a hack, a blasphemer, and that I’ll burn in Hell for my iniquity (seriously, they’ve told me so). The truth is that, since studying theology and comparative religion, and then getting my MA and PHD in Literature and Art History, I’m profoundly interested in the delineation and boundaries of belief systems, and how they interact with contemporary, technologically advanced culture.’
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Artem Loskutov Icons (2012)
‘The prosecutor’s office of Novosibirsk has officially opened up a criminal case against street artist and activist Artem Loskutov for blasphemy and hate speech offenses after Artem illegally swapped out some street advertisements with his mock icons of Pussy Riot. He was nabbed for leaving his fingerprints on the Pussy Riot icons. When asked how his fingerprints got on the unauthorized street art, Artem replied: “It was a miracle of God.”’
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Arahmaia-ni Feisal Lingga-Yoni (1994)
‘When Indonesian artist Arahmaia-ni Feisal first exhibited Lingga-Yoni, she received death threats. Against scrawled Arabic script, the 1994 artwork showed a vermillion red phallus and forest green vulva. They were the ‘lingam’ and ‘yoni’ of the title: representations of gods in pre-Islamic Java. Feisal was condemned as blasphemous by Islamic hardliners. Afraid for her life, she fled to Perth. For years, Feisal believed her most seminal work lost or destroyed. It had, in fact, been moved abroad. Now, for the first time, Lingga-Yoni is back in Indonesia. Not only that. Today it hangs on the walls of the newly-opened Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara or Museum MACAN.’
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Adel Abdessemed Décor (2012)
‘For Décor, Abdessemed borrowed the image of Christ crucified from Mattias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, a devotional work created for a monastic hospital of the Order of Saint Anthony. In its original context this image of Christ served to both comfort and humble patients by reminding them of Christ’s suffering. Abdessemed draws upon this theme with his use of industrial grade razor wire, which imbues the work with a visceral prompt for searing pain. As a sculptural group of four identical figures, the artist denies us a focal point, and furthermore emphasizes his objectification of the image through his use of the title Décor. In so doing Abdessemed has reduced one of the most sacred of holy representations in the life of Christ to serialized ornamentation.’
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SimulaM I Am Jesus Christ (2019)
‘The description reads: “I Am Jesus Christ is a realistic simulator game inspired by the stories from the New Testament of the Bible. Get into old times and follow the same path of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. The game is covering the period from the Baptizing of Jesus Christ and to the Resurrection. Have you ever wondered [what it would be like] to be like Him – one of the most powerful and privileged people in the world. Are you ready to fight with Satan in the desert, exorcising demons and curing sick people, or calm the storm in the sea.”‘
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Manish Harijan The Rise of Collateral (2012)
‘The acclaimed Nepali painter Manish Harijan’s exhitbition titled The Rise of Collateral in Siddhartha Art Gallery (Patan, Nepal) was charged with blasphemy by the group of World Hindu Federation activists. The author and gallerist were even threatened with death. The police, instead of providing protection, padlocked the gallery. More to that, there is actual legal action against the artist and curator on charges of blasphemy.’
Real Buddha
108 Gods
Laying with Bhairav
Super Nataraj
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Hogre ECCE HOMO ERECTUS (2019)
‘A vile poster depicting Jesus as a sodomite and pedophile has appeared outside Rome’s Museum of Modern Art. Titled “ECCE HOMO ERECTUS,” the poster leaves little to the imagination. It shows a depiction of Jesus stands before a boy kneeling in prayer, with a hand on the boy’s head. An erection protrudes from beneath the depiction’s garment, right in front of the young boy’s face.
‘Pontius Pilate uttered the words “Ecce homo,” “Behold the man” (John 19:5), when he presented Jesus to the jeering crowd after Jesus had been flogged and given a crown of thorns. The poster artist, who signs his name “Hogre,” has taken Pilate’s poignant proclamation and added erectus in order to present Christ not as the one who suffered for our sins and carried them to the Cross, but as a sexual being who preys upon boys.
‘When the same poster was first displayed at bus stops around Rome in June 2017, the artist was arrested and charged with blasphemy and faced a fine of up to 5,000 euros or a prison sentence of up to two years.’
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Robert Gober Untitled (1995–1997)
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Enrique Chagoya The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals (2010)
‘In 2010 a crowbar-wielding Christian woman destroyed a lithograph titled “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals.” Critics of the piece saw a buxom Jesus receiving oral sex from a man. The artist Enrique Chagoya said the piece was meant to “critique corruption of the sacred by religious institutions” and to comment on the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal. The attacker, who was charged with criminal mischief, allegedly screamed, “How can you desecrate my Lord?” before tearing the print at a Colorado art museum.’
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Soasig Chamaillard Various (2015 – 2018)
Jeans Marie
Holy Water
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Wim Delvoye Various (2007 – 2013)
Tractor, 2008
Twisted Dump Truck, 2013
Concrete Mixer, 2007
Dump Truck, 2013
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Sebastian Errazuriz Christian Popsicles (2012)
‘Chilean-born Errazuriz created 100 popsicles made of frozen holy wine, which served both as artwork and as cocktail refreshment during the 2012 show the exhibition Love It or Leave It at Gallery R’Pure. Once consumed, the Popsicle revealed a wooden stick shaped like a cross with a Christ positioned on it.For added holiness, the popsicles were brought into a church in a cooler and blessed inadvertently by the priest during the Eucharist. The work, meant to address religious fanaticism, went on to be heavily criticized by the Catholic League, which called Errazuriz “a bigot, a hypocrite, and a rip-off artist.”’
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Dorota Nieznalska Pasja (2002)
‘The controversial part of ‘Pasja’ is a cross with a photograph of male genitals on it. After the piece had been shown in Gdansk in 2002, the TVN channel broadcast an extensive material on it. Few days after the exhibition ended, the gallery was visited by a group of MPs from the League of Polish Families (an ultra right-wing political party). Under threat of using physical force, the MPs demanded that the work be shown to them, later on, they reported to the public prosecutor’s office in Gdansk that a crime had been committed. Nieznalska was accused of ‘offending religious beliefs of other people, that is Catholics, by publicly insulting […] the object of worship through placing a photograph of female genitals on a Christian symbol – the cross[…]’.
On an Internet portal ‘trojmiasto.pl’, some anonymous members of Mlodziez Wszechpolska (nationalist youth group) threatened that they would ‘hang such artists’ and ‘shave their heads, like the Home Army did with women who were in close relationships with Germans’.
‘Polish government sentenced Dorota Nieznalska because her work “offends religious beliefs”. The artist has been forbidden to leave the country and sentenced to six months of penal labor. How can any artist possibly be sentenced for his or her work?! We live in a country of Inquisition and repression, where ideas and artistic visions of individuals are being persecuted! How should we protest against such Inquisition of the government? Are we to organize a protest march? Or perhaps some more exhibitions, this time deliberately offensive and controversial? How can we speak out about our disagreement with the Dark Ages-verdict of the judges?!’
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Juan Davila Holy Family (1985)
‘A Queensland university art gallery says it will not remove an obscene painting of Mary, the mother of Jesus, despite any outcry from church groups. Holy Family by Melbourne artist Juan Davila depicts Mary cradling a giant penis, in the style of the famous Michelangelo sculpture The Pieta.’
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Bargain Bin Blasphemy Various (2008 – 2013)
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Lakhveer Azad Teresa (2015)
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Emiliano Paolini & Rita Marianela Perelli Cake (2018)
‘From May 24 to 28, 2018, the Contemporary Art Festival of Argentina (Feria de Arte Contemporanea de Argentina – FACA) took place in Buenos Aires. Two Argentinian “artists” – Emiliano Paolini and Rita Marianela Perelli – made a cake in the shape of Our Lord Jesus Christ as part of their exhibition.
‘When the Minister of Culture of Buenos Aires, Enrique Avogrado, passed by his exhibition, Paolini, first row below at left, made a mockery of the Holy Eucharist, inviting the Minister, second from the left, and the President of the Festival, third, to come and eat the body of Christ. The blasphemous mockery was received with smiles and both accepted slices of the cake to eat, above and below second row.
‘Catholics from Argentina became indignant – we compliment them for this good reaction – and are promoting a petition asking for the resignation of Avogrado. At this moment the petition counts 28,000 signatures. You may add your protest by signing the petition here.
‘The two “artists” have a long list of blasphemies in their repertoire, as you can witness from the sixth to the tenth rows below. Among many others is their representation of Our Lady of Lujan, Patroness of Argentina, as a Barbie doll. Given this continuous agenda of blasphemies, we wonder whether they are Satanists.’
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Andrea Saltini INRI (2024)
‘A painting that appears to show an act of oral sex being performed on the lifeless figure of Christ prompted fierce controversy when it was unveiled earlier this month as part of an exhibition in a deconsecrated church near Modena, Italy. Outraged worshippers described the work by artist Andrea Saltini as “blasphemous” and more than 30,000 signed a petition calling for the show to be closed.
‘The dispute reached a dramatic conclusion on Thursday (28 March), when a masked individual entered the Museo Diocesano—the museum in the former Church of Sant’Ignazio in Carpi where the exhibition is taking place—and slashed the painting, as well as covering it with black spray paint. Saltini, who was present at the time, approached the unidentified vandal and tried to stop him. The artist was struck on his neck with the blade before the aggressor fled the scene, according to Italian media reports.’
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Chainsaw Filthy Blasphemy (2017)
‘Unusual, but great vocals drenched in hatred. Goddamn, the guitarist shakes some seriously evil sounding riffs out of his sleeve which even reinforces the impression that there is no time to lose, not even to take a breath. There is just a driving force that’ll push you to listen to the whole record in one go while leaving you with wanting more. “Filthy Blasphemy” is a furious anti-God blast massacre.’
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Leon Ferrari Various (2000 – 2007)
‘The Argentine artist Leon Ferrari was perhaps best known for his seemingly blasphemous works. The Virgin Mary in a blender? Check. Saints in a frying pan? He did that too. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a man we now know as Pope Francis, demanded that a 2004 retrospective in Buenos Aires featuring Ferrari’s work be closed immediately, saying it represented a “blasphemous affront.” A judge agreed, but not before a group of Christians could destroy several works.’
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Martin Kippenberger Zuerst die Füße (Feet First) (1991)
‘In 2008, during an exhibition at the Museion in Bozen, Italy,[36] a sculpture by Martin Kippenberger depicting a toad being crucified called Zuerst die Füsse (“First the Feet”) was condemned by Pope Benedict as blasphemous.’
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Avdey Ter-Oganyan Young Atheist (1998)
‘Ter-Oganyan’s performance in a public Russian square consisted of hacking a series of mass-produced Orthodox icons with an axe. In a surprising turn of events, Ter-Oganyan was stopped while performing and punched by fellow artists, who saw his work as offensive. He subsequently emigrated from Russia under the threat of a criminal case for “igniting religious hatred.”’
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Dionysis Kavalieratos Various (2013)
‘On March 14th, 2013, Greek artist Dionysis Kavalieratos was tried in court on blasphemy charges brought on him by members of the ultra-conservative “Genuine Orthodox Christians” Church (the Greek Old Calendarists, that also starred in the “Corpus Christi” charade). The charges were due to the following three sketches exhibited by the artist in a private art gallery. After the artist was acquitted, the plaintiffs and their supporters were up in arms, screaming at the defendant and his lawyer loving christian wishes, such as “cancer on your children”, “you’ll be tortured by demons in hell” and “how much did the arch-rabbi pay you?”. The trial was interrupted and the judges and the defendant were besieged by the crowd and they managed to leave with a police escort.’
Happy Easter
Hidden in Napoleon’s Boudoir
Seven Dicks Jesus
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Chelsea Knight Fall to Earth (Blasphemy) (2015)
‘A cycle of short videos inspired by Salman Rushdie’s magical realist novel The Satanic Verses. Each chapter is staged as a live event produced for video and takes as its point of departure themes related to socially condemned speech and other forms of silencing or restraint. “What is at the core of blasphemy? How can a socially condemned or condemnable speech act be engaged in a way that gives it voice and also expresses its danger? As we have seen with the events of Charlie Hebdo and the recent Copenhagen shooting, this is a crucial moment for what blasphemy means in the world and how it is defined, received, and pushed back against.” — Chelsea Knight’
Excerpts
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Manuel Ocampo Various (2000 – 2016)
‘Ocampo’s provocative works, which are associated with a grunge counter-culture movement, have been decried as controversial, blasphemous, and lewd. He explains: “The strong symbolism in my paintings is presented as empty signs. I want to push the conventions of painting to the point of ridicule…to go beyond thought.” Ocampo’s style is characterized by his use of coarse brushwork and use of vivid colors, in addition to his dark humor and often macabre subject matter.’
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Cosimo Cavallaro My Sweet Lord (2003)
‘Dubbed by the Catholic League “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever”, Cosimo Cavallaro’s My Sweet Lord gained the artist a few death threats, charges of hate speech, protests, and boycotts. His sculpture of a “anatomically-correct” Jesus, with arms stretched out on an invisible cross, was made from more than 200 pounds of milk chocolate and was shown in 2007 at Lab Gallery in midtown Manhattan. The fact that the statue was completely naked and that the show took place during the 2007 Holy Week caused violent complains of the Catholic League, which succeeded in shutting down the show and having the gallery’s creative director to submit his resignation.’
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David Mach Jesus Christ (2011)
‘In 2011, David Mach created a head sculpture of Christ with matches. The sculpture’s ashen remains were displayed in an exhibition at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre, staged to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. While Mach had also included a head of the devil, which he planned to burn in an egalitarian gesture, the Scottish Christian Institute called the stunt “appalling.”’
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Mark Ryden Rosie’s Tea Party (2005)
‘The outrage is inspired by Rosie’s Tea Party, a 2003 painting by the self-professed “pop surrealist” artist Mark Ryden, included in a show opening Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach. Benito Loyola, CEO of local IT company Loyola Enterprises, is a member of the Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commission, and he isn’t happy. Loyola has even threatened to slash the museum’s funding for promoting “anti-Christian bigotry.”
‘“Look at this—she’s got a saw in her hand cutting off a piece of ham with the words on the ham ‘Corpus Christ,’” Loyola told local news station WAVY, unpacking just what it was about the painting’s colorful iconography that so enraged him. “That is Latin for ‘body of Christ,’ and the ham is dropping down and eaten by rats.”’
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KWAZULU-NATAL, South Africa, November 13, 2019 – ‘Grantleigh Curro School is a small South African school that bills itself as dedicated to “uphold(ing) Christian values and encourag(ing) principled, caring and responsible behaviour at all times,” but currently finds itself mired in controversy over a student art display featuring demonic and anti-Christian imagery.
‘A video by a concerned father went viral last month of paintings, illustrations, and sculptures that included fast food mascot Ronald McDonald replacing Jesus Christ in the Last Supper and God in Michelangelo’s famous painting The Creation of Adam, a depiction of a Jesus figure grotesquely opening his own chest, recurring images of demons and skull-headed figures, and busts of horned figures composed partly of torn-up Bible pages, with more tatters strewn about the table.
‘The display “broke my heart” and “felt like we were crucifying Jesus all over again,” the father said. “My God is not a clown!”’
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Ronald Harrison The Black Christ (1962)
‘Inspired by the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, and challenging both the apartheid system and the ingrained notion that Christ was white, the South African painter Ronald Harrison created a very particular Crucifixion scene. He cast Albert Luthuli (president of the illegal African National Congress and 1960 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize) as Christ, and the former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd (considered as “the architect of apartheid”) and the former Minister of Justice John Vorster as Roman soldiers. After the painting was unveiled in 1962 at St. Luke’s Church in suburban Cape Town, Harrison was arrested and tortured by security police. The painting was banned in South Africa, smuggled into the UK, and returned back to its home in 1997. It is currently held in storage, with a replica on display at the offices of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. A 2007 proposal to permanently exhibit the painting produced public outcry.’
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The Bells Angels Black Light Agony (2016)
‘Format : 62 pages, A4, photocopies NB, impression braille, sérigraphie. 30 ex.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** jay, I think if anything it’s rising in popularity of late. The world at large is pretty literal these days. Like you, perhaps, I’m just an observer. Thanks so much for the link to the chapter. I’ll go hit that up in a minute or rather quite a number of minutes. Thanks, Jay. Stay inspiring. ** Dominik, Hi!!! This blog’s technical disorder is very odd. Whoa, thank you, diligent love. I will of course hit that link and get all beady eyed. You know how almost everyone who gets cosmetic surgery looks like they’re all members of some specific alien from outer space species? I’m guessing becoming a mannequin would do the same thing? Haha, love should put that observation into a short story or something, or else I might swipe it. Love unsuccessfully trying to imagine an act of blasphemy that doesn’t just look like some dumb meme, G. ** Adem Berbic, I don’t believe in magic, but I do sort of almost believe in karma. Yeah, see, without the Mallarme thing, opening a Hegel tome sounds like making a dentist appointment. I read lots of writers who are presumably Hegel filters to some degree, and I suspect that’s plenty. Interesting point but I can’t connect it to Faulkner, although I’m not the most widely read Faulkner guy. Yeah, but is it nasty smelling goop, or is it a whiff of the sublime? Only a tiny fraction of the world’s population knows for sure. Haha, when Martin interviewed me for that ‘Gone’ book and I told him I wasn’t interested in serial killers anymore, he was completely mind boggled. He couldn’t understand how that could be humanly possible. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ah, yes, James’s book. He hasn’t been around here in ages. He would have had something and probably plenty to say about yesterday’s post. ** Charalampos, Mm, no, I don’t remember, but a google search would probably tell you. There must be people who collect them. I’m sure there are images and pages from those magazine in the ‘Gone’ collages, yes. I would have to go look at my research, but I remember the model was blond and kind of fleshy. ** julian, I’ve never really been into the occult except chaos magick when I was writing my novel ‘Guide’ which deals with it and is built to be a sigil. The writing in those books is so unsavoury, to me anyway. I did a post about Austin Osman Spare a long time ago. I should restore it maybe. The Russian twink porn boys were pretty meatless, but I think the ‘edible’ one strangely wasn’t, which I guess explains why he made guys hungry? Okay, I think, but don’t hold me to it, that his porn name was Chris. The thing with the Russian porn was it was shot in these really scuzzy rooms with hideous wallpaper and thrift store furniture that I guess was where the porn makers lived. And the boys tended to look very depressed and stoned and like they hadn’t eaten in days. And, yes, the cameras were primitive, and they only used natural light, which was inevitably drab. That kind of porn would never fly these days. I’ll go find Lydia’s show with Jamie Stewart and start there. That’s a curious duo. Thanks! ** Carsten, Glad you’re lined up with a specialist. I don’t know why they gave me steroids. I don’t know anything about them other than they build muscles for muscle guys and supposedly shrink guys’ dicks. But they made me feel better, and my muscles are just as flimsy as they ever were. Thanks for the insight on Jesse’s array. I don’t know anything or hardly about that stuff, so it’s all valuable input to me. ** Marbella Photographer, Hello there. Interesting question. I wish Jesse was around to make an educated guess. ** Gustavo, I can’t remember for sure, but I think ‘Resident Evil 4’ was my favorite? I should finish the hopefully final draft of the script before I say too much about it because it’s still filling in, but I will when it’s concrete. Thank you for asking. Me too on the occult ignorance. I like the paranormal but only because it’s kind of wacky and fun. ** HaRpEr //, Oh, really? Does it look as much like a flat frying pan in person? I find reading about Artaud more interesting than actually reading him. But don’t tell Infinity Land Press. Rechy is very old fashioned. He lived down the street from me in LA for years. He was very ‘gay boys today have no idea what being gay is really like’, etc. I could tell you endless Rechy diva, etc. stories, but I shouldn’t and I won’t. ** Steve, Hi. None of those books or people. Just chaos magick books and related things, mostly by this writer Peter Carroll who was a chaos magick top dog at least at the time. Obvious luck with solving your vision. Cool find! Everyone, Steve has found a treasure trove and passed the location along. Steve: ‘Here’s another YouTube find, Fruitier Than Thou. They’ve posted 5,000 music sessions and concerts recorded by the BBC, going beyond John Peel’s death and up to the near present.’ Thanks! ** kenley, I sometimes wish I could get all occult with the real world, but I just can’t buy it. I have this weird logical streak that has its plusses and minuses. I wrote ‘Jerk’ while I was writing the Cycle, so the research blended together. Maybe it’s that logical streak I mentioned, but I don’t have a problem imagining cannibalism as a desire. It’s like if you really want to kill someone, why not go all the way and bury them in your body? I hope that escape does the trick. What’s Montreal like? I was there only once for a film festival screening, and I couldn’t figure the city out at all. ** Hugo, Feel better, man. I have, like, zero interest in Michael Jackson, so … I don’t know. I guess I think Quincy Jones was the artist, and MJ was the enactor. The weird enactor, sure. ** rewritedept, Hey. I think maybe Grove returned ‘God Jr.’ to print because there’s a ‘God Jr.’ graphic novel in the works so they want to be ready. Thingy’s good, yeah, agreed. I’ve been very into the My New Band Believe album. It’s the band of the guy who was the bass player of black midi. It’s pretty impressive. ** Okay. Today’s post stretches out the blog’s brief spiritual stint for another day. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis! Haha, including the Bargain Bin Blasphemy series on here was a good choice. That Andrea Saltini is pretty good too. I think, outside of Christianity, the crucifixion was something I used to be obsessed with as a child, there was a huge mural in the church I sung at growing up that I remember being sort of hypnotised by. I know Francis Bacon had a similar thing, which is interesting.
Haha, no, you’re not wrong to say I’m more literal than some people, I think I’m sometimes too concrete in my thinking. I used to be really emotionally driven and disorganised, so I’m probably just overcorrecting. If you read a bit of that manga – no pressure to read it, it’s more just an interesting curiosity. I finished it yesterday, and it has a really incredible ending. I’m not normally a story person, but the last third of the manga really gripped me. It has a sort of horrible Inland Empire-ish feel, where the scenes of sexual violence from the first third are compulsively re-read and re-litigated in a weird distant way. Anyway, hope you’re well, adios!
Agreed on magic versus karma – anything too sincerely into ‘magick’ and ritual and so on is actually a bit of a cultural turn-off for me, so I have to jump through some extreme mental hoops to pretend that Coil et. al. were just into that as a kind of tongue-in-cheek performance art thing. Call me closed-minded, maybe.
On the cannibals and Martin’s muses, I have a weirdly inflexible belief that, at least in terms of individual experience, sublimity and transcendence are strictly impossible. Maybe partly as a result of all the drug stuff and self-destructive stuff in my adolescence and feeling that, even though I was in some very extreme states, those states still existed on a continuum of experience – i.e., any possible state I was in was only ever different in degree, never in kind (so even if the goop is sublime, it’s only sublime relative to other things, and more importantly, the desire to extract the goop exists on a continuum with the desire to do whatever else they or we get up to).
So I feel suspicious of any kind of claim that a certain action yields any kind of ‘breaking through’ or departure and am very interested in scenarios where someone might attempt to reach that but end up confronted with the reality of where they started and/or the reality of their motivation – certainly I think the two stories in the pamphlet fuck around with this, but I want to continue fucking around with it in writing in hopefully clearer and more affecting ways.
I’ll think on what I was trying to articulate about Faulkner, but I have very big feelings about him and they probably don’t lend themselves very well to articulation. But in the meantime, my favourite ever sentence is the first line of the fourth chapter of TS&TF, and I might as well paste it in wholesale:
“The day dawned bleak and chill, a moving wall of grey light out of the northeast which, instead of dissolving into moisture, seemed to disintegrate into minute and venomous particles, like dust that, when Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into her flesh, precipitating not so much a moisture as a substance partaking of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil.”
In very close contention are the last line of I Wished and this specific sentence from the start of Frisk, which made me go 😮 when I first read it: “The genitals look like a weirdly shaped stone.”
Not to barge in uninvited, but based on both my research & some rudimentary personal experience, spirit possession & trance in traditional societies is a truly ego-breaking form of transcendence. Western medicine would deem a lot of this a psychotic break, but to me that’s just the mundane mind expressing its fear of the sublime, which ain’t always pretty. Just my two cents.
ha! aaand we crossed each other again, just about.
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@Jesse in restored form, cool. ♥ as per one of my fav definitions of magic, stuff’s basically reality bending to desire. reckon the desire part is doing a lot of work there, bc as we all know, desire can be p helpless.
def think the Islamic occult arts, which we call 3ulum al-ghariba (the weird sciences lol) aren’t well known enough outside of muslim/adjacent contexts, which meh. like Islam is a contact religion, sort of this bridge between east and west, so both religion and culture help better place the constructs of east and west in the continuum.
obvi as per my Andalusi background i’d recommend The Picatrix which in Arabic is Ghayat Al-7kim (the aim of the wise) and doesn’t sound like a saturday morning kids’ show lol. p cool bc it’s basically this as per the course mix of Byzantine Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, Sassanid, Sabian and Indian astrology and their talismanic tradition etc. actually a core book to understand the later European Renaissance.
ofc most of the Islamic occult is haram as per the legalists, but it’s been greatly enjoyed by normal people since forever lol, even as a sort of ultraprayer. and then there are obvi all of the folk islams. these days i’d say magic in particular freaks out a bunch of folks but we’re all into astrology to some extent or other. there’s this guy on X Twitter, Ali A Olomi, who is a Muslim historian amongst other stuff, v into cosmology/astrology and i totally recommend following.
@DC man, go w the girls! =D you def have lovely eyes, she knew what she was saying and your bros at the table were just being too broey that day i think.
just now realised you’ve never seen my eyes, there go the windows of the soul… but do you wanna see? lol
Russian police is super corrupt as far as i know, like i’ve tipped the case of my little muse off to basically every law enforcement agency i can think of, but not the Russian police. obvi they don’t even make a huge deal about people eaters =:/
(i’ve got not one but two types of cannibal in my novel btw, and one is way sadder than the other)
now, visa for you on the 7th or i might have to become a weird scientist and see if it helps, astaghfirullah =D
♥
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Blasphemy!
idk, i tend to find most of it edgelordesque and ill-informed and way too smug, but i def loved a few things on here… like the many Jesuses as ‘Decor’ are indicting and moving, the Homo Erectus is funny and ultimately in good faith imo (isn’t the Church supposed to be the bride of Christ etc). the guy giving head to the Ecce Homo is super beautiful to me, like, ok, Prophet Issa here is mine too so i can weigh in, he seemed v into the comfort of being drunk from and eaten (so many cannibals, gosh) so whether he did die or Allah beamed him up in the 11th hour, i totally like this for him. probably twice as interesting if Mary Magdalene had joined St John here (?) or whatever, those three will always be vibey.
now, the cockroach stuff etc, fuuuuck all of that lol. basically rude children stomping their feet at the cereal aisle. let them get their least fav flavour forever, the fuckers.
imo the better blasphemy is usually stuff that is probably true… basically whatever pisses ppl off bc it makes the consensual, esblished take blasphemous in spite of all of the pomp and consent around it.
like… let’s ignore Sunni iconoclasm or just work w the written word lol, and enjoy the fact that Muhammad’s wife Khadija was not just the first Muslim but a prophet ahead of her husband… so Muhammad pbuh got his revelation, right, and his first impulse was a suicidal urge bc he’d clearly gone crazy. but instead he staggered home and asked his wife to wrap him up in her veil and it turned out the revelation had been for her all along. uh, she unlike him could make sense of stuff and was like ‘you’re not nuts lol, i just had the revelation to make you a prophet.’ which he then became obvi, out of love for a woman he trusted and before he could believe in God (which is never emphasised remotely enough bc true stuff is blasphemous)
or like yea… give moribund Mohammed pbuh being rotated from wife to wife like a cock on delirious legs, asking ‘where am i’ like a child while these women won’t stop descending upon him to consume whatever is left of him. what’s sent ahead in the prophetic continuum is always sent behind and ppl just can’t stop eating ppl lol.
most controversial of all, give us Muhammad indulging in his baby Aisha playing w her dolls— this is the can of all worms bc some ppl really want her to have been 9 years old at the time in spite of the claim’s ahistoricity, while others take exception to idk, an older teen not having put away her childish things or whatever, in which case, how normal was she? either way, people will fight.
and obvi, duh, let’s have that representation of Jannah were believers are absolutely smothered in hot celestial lovers both male and female. this bisexual afterworld ruffles so many feathers even tho it’s totally canon, idk why. it’s v beautiful, whatever it might mean.
and like i don’t think much of this stuff would have horrified the early muslims at all, it was them who recorded the stuff for future generations. but we’re going through a slowly lifting dork age, so, sigh.
apropos of i saw a parade by this feminist group a while ago in which they’d swapped a statue of Mary for a v baroque giant vulva… i thought it was fun. someone got mad like ‘how would you feel if they were parading about a huge cunt in lieu of Muhammad?’ and i was like i’d feel fine? he wasn’t shy about how much he loved a pussy and he gave so many lectures on feminist sexual etiquette lol.
anyway, maybe depending on intent, isn’t blasphemy just another way to believe…? i’ll sometimes tell God ‘you don’t exist’, like you know, ‘je t’aime moi non plus’ lol, and it’s one of the most intimate things we do.
well. now let’s see if i don’t get fatwa’d ^_^
man, looking at your comments and i used to hate Mallarmé until Blanchot changed my mind p wholesale… it had been hard to associate so much poetic verbiage w any sort of emptiness before, but i’m appreciating his apocalyptic poetry thing these days. not yet sure if he’s after an apocalypse or just the end, tho. probably the end, which might not even matter if you’re into substance through absence of whatever.
where Hegel and i don’t agree bc i think he does too much, is the whole philosophy>art beef. Mallarmé had the much better take imo. like, sensuous vs rational is a bit of a basic bitch take… and then there’s always, always a point in the thought process where philosophy no longer cuts it and mfs must start singing dithyrambs or whatever. at which point we’ve left all dichotomies waay behind.
also and fully back to blasphemy lol, as fun as it is to have at divinity through the resonance of its lost objectified heft or whatever… how can ‘classical art’ really kill the divine object unless you think classical art is just mimesis? that’s so dumb. and the real, the ideal… uh i just like Schelling more at the end of the day lol. fr the object does as much work on you as you do on it as you try to destroy it to understand yourself.
recommend some stuff that works w Hegel w/o being Hegel tho? i want to keep thinking about this a bit ♥
oof, what a spiritual two days huh =D
you know Dennis, i feel you’ve got a rationalistic streak but it’s besieged from all sides and that makes you write v well. and i like it when you hold the line but all the other stuff penetrates anyway. do you even agree or like that that happens?
love!
The vulva has indeed become quite a popular symbol (rightly so if you ask me). I like to think it has at least a little to do with the discovery of the Sumerian “Vulva Song of Inanna”
Back in my 2004 art school days I produced a bunch of artworks similar to the Bargain Bin Blasphemy output titled Suicide Girls. Maybe I thought I was being clever or something? here is an example of one. I recall there was a high number of Christian students at Dundee art school which shocked me at the time.
Saw the specialist today, who took the swab, which is now in the lab & with some luck I’ll have results before the weekend. Two more swab-tests tomorrow, which they couldn’t do today (one for Covid).
His take is that I simply had bad luck. A bacterial infection caused the sinusitis & the antibiotics killed that, but then, with a weakened immune system, some viral shit got in & laid me out again. He gave me some gut-healing meds but is sure the viral thing will resolve itself in a matter of days, barring some revelations from the swabs.
Blasphemous art, including a lot of death metal, always makes me roll my eyes a little. For one it’s usually quite childish & its critique rarely inspired. But what’s worse, & I’m always shocked death metalheads or Crowleyish occultists don’t get this: whether you turn around a crucifix, make Satan or Lucifer into your savior, or wipe your ass with the bible, you’re just as hung up on Christian myth & iconography as a believer is. If organized religion offends you this much (& it does me), just turn away from it completely & go either full atheist or full pagan. That was Crowley’s limitation, which Kenneth Anger (for all his cinematic genius) inherited. His icons, like Lucifer & Lilith, are Judeo-Christian icons. He turns them around, but remains as tied to them as an evangelical.
I like how pagan cultures handle this. They’re ongoing & open-ended, so new verses are constantly added to the oral corpus, like these praises of the god Shango, who’s known for going after liars & fools:
“he rebaptizes a muslim
makes him dip down in a puddle of rainwater
haunts the christians with his cry of power”
& so on.
To me proportionality is key. A quick jab is best, like a prison shanking. Implies zero respect & murderous indifference. Once your satire gets bogged down in the finer points of your target, you’re fighting on their turf. That’s the mistake a lot of the surrealists made. Péret & Buñuel are great, but it’s in the blasphemous parts that they actually lose their edge, because the revolutionary pursuit of truth gets side-tracked battling dishonest institutions. Same with Sade, who for all his hatred of the church spends an awful lot of time talking about it.
I usually find blasphemy relatively boring, as an art subject. I have a fondness for some of it that emphasizes homoeroticism, but that’s more just because I like men (and approach this with something of a religious fervor at times) rather than it actually feeling super interesting to transgress Christianity. I was not raised religious, which might be part of it—there was a period of time when I was younger that I tried and sort of succeeded at believing in some various religions, but I got over it pretty fast, and symbols of religion don’t hold a lot of sway for me. It would be nice to have some rituals to abide by, I guess, but I just don’t think any of that stuff is real and it would feel meaningless to participate in them otherwise.
I wonder why a chocolate Jesus is so particularly offensive to Catholics. It’s not like they don’t depict him as naked all the time anyways. This post immediately made me think of the lost 70’s gay porn movie about Jesus called “Him”, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. For a while I’ve thought about making my own “remake” of it based on the limited information available about the film. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet met anyone who would be willing to act in something like that. Interesting that Guide was meant to be a sigil. Does that mean there was a specific intention that you were trying to manifest by writing it? I’ll try to find this “Chris” guy, though I know these actors can be kind of hard to find nowadays. I remember when we were talking about Dima from one of your older posts I tried to go looking for him and could only find one possible video of him, but not the one that your screenshot was from.
I would be willing to play Judas
Hey Dennis,
Finished with my colonoscopy which was different to what I expected; was sedated but completely lucid and aware. Ultimately nothing wrong which is good — even the minor issues I had once had seem to be completely healed. I was given fentanyl and midazolam which was pretty relaxing in a way I didn’t expect: my nervous system seems to be given a bit of a reset in a way that has me hoping I can find some sort of medication like this that I could use long term without addictive or dangerous side effects (prescribed, I’m not a fan of self medicating personally). I had to wake up at 6am today to have my second dose of laxatives, and at some point I fell down an intense OCD-tinged anxiety spiral — it made me realize it’s the same experience I used to have when I was a teen and suicidal over being gay; like there’s no hope for my future. I guess I’ve always been such a high strung anxious mess, who wants to be perfect and ‘pure’ and a ‘good person’, and the thought that I could be a bad person or have hurt someone without even realizing it sends me down terrible spirals. I’m working on that, and I think being stuck in the same city for the past 23 years, with more and more people who know me and many opportunities to have messed up and embarrassed myself or made people dislike me hangs above me. It’s all a bit of a vicious cycle: trying to be perfect, messing up, hating myself, trying to be even more “perfect”, slipping up in a smaller way, beating myself up harder. There’s days where I genuinely feel like I’m so broken as a person, that I’m just far behind what a normal person can achieve or experience or think, like I can barely handle what most people can and I somehow act in a way antithetical to normal people that I’m destined to be a monster or a headcase. And then I lift my head from my pillow and escape that self-pity!
Blasphemy! I think we talked about her when I was with you in La Favorite, but one thing I do love about Madonna is the fact that her birth name truly is Madonna, and she did not ignore the chance to be *the* blasphemous popstar. Whether it’s the burning crosses and Black Jesus in Like A Prayer (and the whole concept of that song and album), the discoball crucifixion in the Confessions Tour, or just everything about Erotica. Even the fact she was a popstar with a Biblical name singing about teen pregnancies, dry humping the floor in a wedding dress singing about losing her virginity, making a coffee table book full of gay sex and her masturbating… if a bit on the nose, I don’t care as it was interesting, and really provocative here in Ireland from what my mom tells me. Even the album titles like “Like a Virgin, Like a Prayer, The Immaculate Collection, Ray of Light, Confessions on a Dance Floor”… she loved to play into that Catholic imagery and as a Catholic boy (I labelled myself as that when being admitted into the hospital) I will always have a love for crossing the faggy and profane with the Catholic. She definitely lost her way sometime in the 00s-10s (most would say American Life, I would say Hard Candy which is when she really started to chase trends), but I’m cautiously optimistic about this new album, Confessions II. The intro song, has some Arca production, and I’m predicting she’ll be working with Twigs and a few other artists, plus it’s been 7 years since her last project, so perhaps she took the time to reflect on what made her early stuff good. (Whilst writing this whole Madonna bit, made me think of Jack Skelley mentioning her in Fear of Kathy Acker, and how interesting I found it that he wrote about her as a current popstar in the 80s; to me and like anyone 30 and under really sees her as a legacy artist, even when she was having hits in the 00s).
I let that get really overtaken by Madonna, but I do like blasphemy and art, though sometimes I think it can veer into an easy way to shock and offend the easiest of targets (religious people). When it comes to Christ, maybe I do get offended, but I think that’s due to my separation of the figure or idea of Jesus as a pure man who cared for the freaks, from the religion that demonized those same freaks. In essence I like the blasphemy that offends the Church and simultaneously affirms the shit that Jesus would have done. I’m really not Catholic and I usen’t think I was shaped by it, but as an adult I do recognize that my world view, my neuroses, my personality, my life (especially in terms of family history — tangent but a couple generations back a rich Protestant knocked up a Catholic maid and he had to convert and basically leave the rich life, so I could have been living a VERY different lifestyle had that not happened) have all been shaped by the cultural aspects of Catholicism, and some of the religious.
Part of me thinks I should become religious, but I’m aware that that feeling is linked to my need for certainty that I get from OCD, so I’d probably just end up feeding those compulsions and ruminations. Maybe not though?
I saw you mention being prescribed steroids and being confused by their use — from my gym knowledge and my own experience with medical steroids, they’re two different things: corticosteroids which reduce inflammation and swelling in the body by overriding the immune system, anabolic steroids meanwhile are synthetic testosterone; overuse will basically make you infertile, shrink your balls, and make you have wild emotions.
Feel like I had a lot more to say but I’ve already said enough for a whole week haha
Interesting that a lot of people here seem to think blasphemy is passé. It seems that Christianity and Atheism weigh the same on the scale of uncoolness.
There’s definitely some very serious Artaud worshipers but I’m not that deep in. I’ve read none of his fiction currently, only essays and poetry and letters. I was honestly pretty impressed by the forms of some of his poems. I was definitely invigorated by them.
I’m certainly always a little sceptical when a specific writer has a band of followers who won’t hear anything bad said about them, but I’m probably part of the cult for certain writers myself.
For a long time I was wary of the hoards of people writing about Kathy Acker, and then I re-read her and read deeper into her works and felt like an idiot, so I try not to enter anything with scepticism.
You like My New Band Believe too? Awesome to hear that! I actually got the record in the mail today which comes with a ten inch of two great songs which didn’t make the album. I’m listening to it non stop. It’s very pretty and baroque in a quite sophisticated way, and there are these interesting moments of glitchiness. I love how low the vocals are mixed. I love Cameron Picton’s voice and how fuzzy it is and sometimes his words just sort of disappear. Anyway, I’m crazy about it, which you can tell since I’m not very good at describing it.
The funny thing is that I was never overly into black midi but respected them. I had friends who were totally obsessed, and they don’t even like MNBB. I think a lot of the music nerd bros are not digging it. If you haven’t listened to the band Caroline who were collaborators on the album, I recommend them too.
Wow Dennis, I can’t believe that post is over 10 years old. Gosh it’s actually a lot older than 10 years old! Thanks for keeping the post alive all this time.
There’s a lot I’d add to it now and good gods the world is so much more interested in the occult than it was back in the day… For better and worse.
For the person asking about weddings, the chemical wedding is deep in the alchemical symbolism, and alchemy really grooves on the sex dichotomy… it’s also really plugged into Christian iconography, so the idea of a wedding is really all about the conjoining of opposites as a vehicle to access the divine. The ‘wedding’ in the text doesn’t really have anything to do with what we think of when people think of weddings today, that’s for sure!
Dennis, I don’t think we ever talked about this, but one of the reasons I got pointed to the occult was because of Guide. Not so much that I didn’t know about the occult as a concept and hadn’t read things, but the way you used the systems of the occult as a structural model for the novel, it just really blew my mind and made me wanna know more about the structures… And here we are!
I’m always creeping around this site, I just never feel like I have anything interesting to add!
Cheers.
A lot of these works feel really juvenile, like the artists aren’t trying anything more ambitious than pissing off conservative Christians. Despite that, the responses reveal how much Christianity demonizes the body.
I listened to a podcast by an anarchist group, the Global Order of Satan, and wondered why they call themselves Satanists if they’re atheists who value rationality and science. I guess they’re using the concept of Satan to make a point in a culture where Christianity in the norm – or they just like pentagrams and Baphomet as an aesthetic.
My vision’s no worse today, so that’s something.
I’m planning to approach a community radio station in Brooklyn about airing “Radio Not Radio.”
Camron Picton has said your work influenced MNBB’s “One Night.”
hello!!
i think this is my fave blog post of yours!!! so much fun stuff!! religious iconography is such a crowd pleaser by design (i think all of my catholic friends whose sexual awakenings were naked crucified jesus’s rippling abs, lol)…such that its perversion is so often ripe and captivating. the ronald harrison and the first derek murphy pieces took my breath away
actually, kind of bridges in to the topic of logic. idk, my dad is suuuuuper evangelical…i stopped believing in god around age 11 and spent most of my adolescence being an edgy little reddit atheist. but then as ive gotten older, ive come to sort of appreciate why people cleave so hard to religion? like…trying to approach the world logically is taxing, and makes me feel stupid and small and confused every day, and i guess there’s a comfort to just surrendering. or at least, giving your mind a framework that defies logic, sometimes condemns logic, really operates in a realm external to logic. “mysterious ways” and such. also like, belonging and community and prefabbed values amid capitalist alienation, etc etc. idk, im a little jealous of people who can get there? esp like, people who can take it to a place of margery kempe-y revelations
anyway, speaking of blasphemy, one of my all-time fave musicians ever (matt stephens) put out this like gloriously deranged microtonal black metal album last year whose thesis is that jesus was a pedophile. link here, you might like it? https://putrefactiverecordings.bandcamp.com/album/the-pederast
and yeah, i hear you. might as well commit to the bit. give em the old cannibal razzle dazzle. idk lol
montreal is fun! people here seem kind of unfriendly tho. like theres francophones who seem to hate my anglo guts, but even the anglos seem too cool for school. idk. loads of cool stuff for me to do on my lonesome tho…i went to a weeknight techno thing last night and danced for an hour, im currently running out the hotel to hit some latin american film festival, tomorrow theres a harsh noise show in someone’s backyard so…im entertained at least! hope youre entertained too 🙂
Hey Dennis.
I was gonna comment this morning, but then I sneezed blood, so I took my time…god struck me down. I remember the first time I got in trouble in school, to the point that psychiatrists were called to examine me, was when I drew biblical stories as crude, violent stick figures endlessly torturing each other, with blood and dismemberment and abuse. I thought it was an accurate summation of what those stories were about. The teacher thought otherwise. Eventually, another teacher (who I also had problems with) told the psychiatrist, “he just has an odd imagination that picks up on these things.” – I think he was the only one who got it slightly right. To me, the Bible is the oldest story of an abusive relationship, so it features in my imagination a lot.
RE: MJ- I guess I’m interested in Michael Jackson because I feel like he was someone who seemed completely unaware of the power dynamic he shared with children. I do think the relationship was perverse and sexual on some level. I also find it interesting how people really made him out to be a messiah figure after he died, where everyone against him was a vulture. The whole phenomenon of MJ is sincerely held yet completely plastic and fake, contrasting with abuse and self-hatred so deep it seeped into the body. And I guess it’s that tension that interests me.
Hey Dennis, sorry for the absence it’s a busy denouement to my time at college and I’m losing bits of my interior life. I picked a very non-Uday day because I think in order to find art interesting either positively or negatively because it is blasphemous you have to buy into religion a bit and I suppose I just don’t, but a lot of the exhibits here are interesting for non-blasphemy reasons, so I suppose it was a good day after all. Writing here mostly because re-entry is always a tough barrier and just having something here makes me feel like maybe it’ll poke me into coming back full-time.
Much love,
Uday
d-
a god jr graphic novel? super cool! who’s the illustrator, or is that a secret still?
i’ll check that my new band believe stuff out, i quite liked the first two blackmidi albums especially. i listened mostly to versus and the lawrence arms and unwound today and also lots of fela again because that shit makes me dance and i love to dance even though i’m terrible at it. also some les rallizes desnudes. i’m done working nights finally, will be at work until 6 or 7 tomorrow night, but then monday i go back to my early morning schedule, which i so enjoy.
finished reading guide again and also , said the shotgun to the head by saul williams. probably gonna read flunker on my breaks tomorrow. i have two copies of that book, because i didn’t know the UK got a hardcover e edition until after i had bought the US edition, but i have two copies now of several of yr books (closer, TMS, i wished, and gone), and most of the rest are first edition/first print hardcovers (except period, which is a grove ARC) and ugly man, TMS, smothered in hugs, and horror hospital unplugged because hardcover editions don’t exist of them. would love to get a void edition of the sluts, all i have is the carroll & graf printing.
watching get out, about which i’ve heard good things. i did like nope, so i’m gonna give it a chance.
good blasphemies today. even as a kid, i had a hard time with the god thing, so i’ve always been comfy with blasphemy.
i’ll be more tapestries tomorrow when i’m not so tired. hope yr friday is wondrous and beautiful. talk soon. love.
-me.
ohemgee, i meant to say i will be more talkative tomorrow, but my phone’s swipe to type is super stupid.
oh gross, the guy who played shelley and bobby’s son-in-law in twin peaks the return is in this movie. i hate that guy so much, he just skeeves me out.
i guess i’m so ok with blasphemy because even as a kid, i had it twigged that religion was just a method of control and coercion, and even as a wee one, i had major issues with top-down organizations and hierarchical power structures like that. i just didn’t have the words for it until i got older and knew more about the world and the push for a classless, stateless society based around rhisomatic networks of communities helping each other out. what can i say, i’m some sort of utopian i guess.
also, someone was talking abut A24 movies here the other day, and they did everything everywhere all at once, and midsommar, and hereditary, all of which i LOVED. EEAAO, especially, was such a great movie. did you see that one? super funny movie that also made me cry like a little baby.