Mass Culture Vol. 3 - International Shipping

For those outside the US who would like to order a copy of Mass Culture Vol. 3, shipping is $6. Vol. 1 is sold out, but I do have a limited quantity of Vol. 2 ("the cannibalism issue") left, in case you'd like to purchase both Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 ("the heterosexual issue"). UPDATE 16 June '12: Vol. 2 is now sold out.

$10 each plus $5 shipping. Paypal lcvonhessen [at] gmail [dot] com.

Mass Culture Vol. 3

Mass Culture Vol. 3 is now available for purchase. 28 pages, edition of 100.

Vol. 3 is the "heterosexual issue"--and naturally, Mass Culture being what it is, my depiction of the subject of heterosexual relations is far from Valentine's Day candy hearts and bathtubs strewn with rose petals.

Featuring:

-Guest contributions by Martin Bladh, Paul Kerin, and Ric Royer

-Stories about dead people (including some brutal stuff in the vein of "Dumbslut" from Vol. 1 in addition to more poetic bits closer to "Erotopsy" or "Grey-Scaled Icthyoid")

Here is a drawing of a heterosexual man.

-Interdisciplinary pieces about Gilles de Rais and the Moors Murderers

-A number of rather disquieting drawings

-Pictures of dead young men (and also dead women and children--but dead young men are pretty much a given where Mass Culture is concerned)

-More vaginas than there were in Vol. 2

Note that I'm not fucking around about it being "not for children" (as it clearly reads on the cover). There are a number of morgue photos, porn stills, and so forth (although I doubt anyone is going to be aroused by whatever genitals are on display unless one has rather specialized tastes). Just a warning . . .

Copies are $10 + $3 US shipping (international: $5; see following post). Vol. 1 is sold out, but I do have a limited quantity of Vol. 2 ("the cannibalism issue") left: if you'd like to purchase one of each, it's $10 + shipping. UPDATE 16 June '12: Vol. 2 is now sold out.

Paypal lcvonhessen [at] gmail [dot] com.

Purgatory Noir

Stills from Purgatory, a film I made in autumn/winter '07, modified in Dec '11. Appears on p. 19 of Mass Culture Vol. 3.

That is, in fact, a self-portrait, and I was actually quite hungover at the time it was shot. In case you might like to know . . .

Castration Anxiety

Collage assembled for p. 1 of Mass Culture Vol. 3. Top: "Shock-Headed Peter," Sept. '06. Bottom left and right: details from '04 and '07, respectively. All other images: found material.

Secret Santa

Merry XXXmas from Secret Santa (Feb '07). If you follow him into that public restroom I doubt it will be a "secret" any more.

Mass Culture Vol. 3 - Covers

Front and back covers of Mass Culture Vol. 3.
Front cover: "The Bound Man," June '07.

Bound

"Bound," June '03.

Were-house

"Were-house," April '06.

This piece won first prize in the 2006 Violence Against Women Artist Showcase at the college I was then attending.

Mass Culture - Updates

Vol. 1 (edition of 50) - SOLD OUT

Vol. 2 (edition of 75) - Still available

Vol. 3 - Currently seeking submissions.

Send text or images on the subject of sex and/or death to lcvonhessen@gmail.com (text: TXT or DOC format; images: JPEG). All images will be reproduced in b&w/greyscale. I request that text pieces be relatively short due to limited space: the first two issues have been 28 pages, though Vol. 3 may go up to 32.

Vol. 3 is unofficially the "heterosexual issue," essentially in the same sense that Doom Generation was Gregg Araki's "heterosexual movie": meaning it really isn't, at all, but there are more women in it. Interpret that however you see fit.

Vol. 3 is due to come out in mid-to-late December (depending upon when I can afford to print it).

Offal

Offal by Madame Deficit

A bit delayed, yes, but here's a new noise/industrial track made to accompany Vol. 2 of Mass Culture. The intersection between cold meat and the living body. A boy and his guts.

Mass Culture Vol. 1 - Editor's Statement

Editor's Statement from Vol. 1:

Mass Culture originated at the suggestion of a friend, since I had no fucking clue what kind of publisher would give the time of day to something like “Dumbslut” (p. 18) from an unknown.

America’s attitudes toward sex and death are profoundly unhealthy. Media depictions of violent and sexual imagery are omnipresent, though generally sanitized, artificial, and bloodless—and yet more realistic depictions of such subjects lead to whining and pearl-clutching in the name of illusory abstracts like “human decency” and deeply-instilled myths about children’s innate “goodness.” Thus, the darker thoughts and desires endemic to human nature are camouflaged behind polite and euphemistic talk, the most unavoidably public instances subject to sensationalist distancing or reductive moral example, on top of the additional tendency to polarize complex individuals into simplistic archetypes of “monsters” and “saints.”

Mass Culture, then, serves to emphasize what is beautiful about grotesquery and perversion and what is revolting and horrible about the kind of standard lifestyle, beliefs, and media concoctions that we are “supposed” to find appealing, without resorting to reactionary adolescent contrarianism: any puerile armchair provocateur can make a Xerox collage of spread-beaver porn shots juxtaposed with Dachau inmates.

If you find it in poor taste that I would make irreverent reference to subjects like necrophilia and lust-murder, 1) I frankly don’t give a shit, and 2) you probably shouldn’t be reading this: go pick up a copy of Cosmo and learn how to use a scrunchie as a cock ring.

As a final note: there is power in limited quantities. Any asshole can make a blog. If I wanted it on the internet, I’d put it on the internet.*

—LC von Hessen, March 2011

*And now, some months on, I've decided I want this particular piece on the internet. Vol. 1 is soon-to-be sold out, after all.

Illustration for "Kindly Carcass"

Illustration for "Kindly Carcass." On p. 20 of Mass Culture Vol. 2.

A collage I assembled to accompany a short story. The line drawing is by Dennis Nilsen, reproduced from Brian Masters' Killing for Company. Used without permission: though considering Nilsen's continued struggles to publish his memoirs, he might well be quite pleased to see something of his newly in print.

Aftermath

"Aftermath" #1 and 2, spring '04 (combined in September '10). On p. 13 of Mass Culture Vol. 2.

No relation to the 1994 short film of the same title . . .

Illustration for "Grey-Scaled Icthyoid"

Untitled illustration for "Grey-Scaled Icthyoid." On p. 5 of Mass Culture Vol. 2.

This accompanied a piece about Albert Fish that was written on various substances over a couple of months. The little lass in the bottom right corner is, of course, Grace Budd.

Mass Culture Vol. 2 - Back Cover

Back cover of Mass Culture Vol. 2. Image cropped from a found photo and slightly tinkered with in Photoshop.

Mass Culture Contributor: Eric Rodriguez

Mass Culture Vol. 2 includes drawings from guest contributor Eric Rodriguez. More of his work can be found on his tumblr, "Unseen Orifice."

His work tends toward homoerotic and occult themes that would give Rick Santorum disquieting dreams. He is also quite fond of Spinoza.

The Talking Cure

"The Talking Cure," a sketch from 19 Apr '07.

The Unheimlich, the Thanatos urge, the importance of dreams and the subconscious: these are all quite solid, in my opinion. But I find that much of Freud is frankly a lot of blather about cocks and mothers.

Mass Culture Vol. 2

Mass Culture Vol. 2 is AVAILABLE NOW in a limited edition of 75 copies.

Vol. 2 is unofficially the "cannibalism and dismemberment" issue.

Compared to Vol. 1, Vol. 2 includes:
-Improved graphic design
-Writings about real, fictitious, and metaphorical anthropophagy
-Drawings by someone other than me
-Vapid celebrities appearing to give Nazi salutes
-More pictures of dead people
-More dicks (and taints)

I'll add a necessary reminder that the content is most decidedly not for the squeamish or for children. I won't be held accountable if someone's three-year-old nephew happens to get ahold of a copy and is subsequently traumatized by a morgue photo.

Copies are $5 each + $2 US shipping (email me at lcvonhessen@gmail.com for international rates). Or those in the NYC area can attempt to find me in person and not have to pay for shipping. UPDATE 16 June 2012: Vol. 2 is now sold-out.

The Flooding of Nordstrand

As I live in Brooklyn, I was not unaffected by Hurricane Irene, though my preparations amounted to collecting tap water in jars and taping cardboard over my bedroom windows. My neighborhood didn't happen to lie in any of the three "danger zones," and the hurricane only appeared last night as a rather windy rainstorm sans thunder and lightning. No damage to my apartment, no power outages, etc., though other parts of the city experienced flooding and loss of electricity. I tend to be rather stoical in such situations, as I was with that brief earthquake aftershock I also experienced a few days ago: "Well, it didn't harm me or any of my belongings, nor did it disrupt my schedule. Right, then, I have other things to do."

I'm reminded, though, of the Burchardi flood in October of 1634 that enveloped and basically destroyed the island of Nordstrand, off the Jutland peninsula. One of the oldest branches of my family that I can definitively trace came from that island, a fact I discovered while doing genealogical research a year or two ago.

The area itself was already going through a fairly shitty time, recovering from a plague epidemic that had occurred some three decades before and getting their asses handed to them by Frederick III in the Thirty Years' War. This was also not the first flood to hit the area during that timespan: only the most destructive. All in all, not the best time to be a Nordstrander.

After the dikes burst on the night of 11 October: "The sea swallowed more than half of the island. A total of 6,123 people drowned, and 1,339 farms and houses were washed away, as were 28 windmills and 6 clock towers."

The flooding was so great that it permanently altered the entire geographical makeup of Nordstrand Island, creating a cluster of smaller islands in its wake, one of which was also called "Nordstrand." This being Europe in the 1600s, it was naturally perceived as evidence of God's wrath. (Perhaps some influential 17th-century Dutch pastor blamed it on all the sodomy.)

On a more personal level, my ancestor Volkje Jurians was a native of Nordstrand. Evacuated to the nearby mainland town of Husum in Schleswig-Holstein, she met a young sailor called Jan Fransse; the two ended up marrying about four and a half years later. (It would be nice to think they were a love match, though considering marriage at the time was largely a business transaction, it may well have been an arranged act of charity since Volkje had been orphaned by the flood and presumably whatever dowry she'd accumulated had sunk to the bottom of the sea. They did have nine kids over two decades, though, which might speak for itself.)

A short time later, they emigrated to a settlement that would later become Albany, NY, and went on to produce the family line that led to my dubious existence. So, you see, I'm not being facetious when I describe myself as "the residual byproduct of a 17th-century mass drowning"!

It's rather striking to think that, if this island had not been destroyed and thousands of people killed, I wouldn't be alive today.

Double D. Variation #2

"Double D. Variation #2," Mar '11. On p. 10 of Mass Culture Vol. 1.

Made to accompany "Patient X," a rather hallucinogenic piece loosely inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer.

Bonded

"Bonded," Feb '08. On p. 6 of Mass Culture Vol. 1.

Mass Culture Vol. 2 - Front Cover

Front cover of soon-to-be-released Mass Culture Vol. 2.

Image: "The Brightest of Futures for Our Promising Youth," May '08.

Bieber Rape Phenomenon

Bieber Rape Phenomenon by Madame Deficit

The second of two tracks I made to tie in with Mass Culture Vol. 1, which included a brief satirical piece called "Bieber Rape Story." You may recall, last February, Bieber made an incredibly ignorant comment about rape and abortion during a Rolling Stone interview . . . which wouldn't have been anywhere near as offensive if not for the fact that real adult politicians with actual legislative power held those very same views, and were exceptionally active during that month in attempting to pass US laws based on those views.

"Bieber Rape Phenomenon" is composed entirely of actual Justin Bieber samples that have been re-arranged, layered, and manipulated with various effects, in order to sound like the interior monologue of a deranged sexual predator.

NOW ALL I SEE IS YOU. I'M COMING FOR YOU.

Artist Bio

LC von Hessen is a multi-disciplinary artist, author, and critic. She grew up in the Midwestern suburbs on a steady diet of horror movies, Nickelodeon, and escapist reading materials. As a wee toddler, she “wrote” and illustrated her first story, “Ghosty and Me [sic] Go to the Store.” She did not play well with others.

Von Hessen went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts at SUNY Purchase, shooting and editing a narrative video as her senior thesis project (which was later shown at NY Eye & Ear Fest '09). Her comic strip, Scene Kids, appeared in the Purchase Independent from ‘04 to ‘06; she later wrote film reviews for the Independent in 2007. She also served as unofficial photographer for the Cheese Club.

Among von Hessen’s awards and accomplishments through the years: Fiction Prize Winner in Italics Mine literary journal, 1st Prize in the Violence Against Women Artist Showcase, 3rd Prize in the Experimental category of the PTV Video Awards, two Gold Keys in the Scholastic Art Awards (with one piece sent on to the national competition), two consecutive first-prize wins in an Optimist Club-sponsored annual high school poetry contest, several medals won in the Academic Decathlon from ’02 to ‘03, 1st Prize in an all-school spelling bee, and “Most Bizarre” in an elementary school pumpkin decorating contest. She has had work exhibited at the Arts Incubator in Kansas City and in the Family Picnic Show at SUNY Purchase’s Triangle Gallery.

After a decade of experience in spoken-word performance, von Hessen began performing as Madame Deficit in 2009, an experimental music and sound-art project which encompasses various industrial subgenres. She founded Propagandist Productions the following year, through which she released Sans, her first CD, and has since branched out to print as editor and primary contributor of Mass Culture, an arts-and-literature zine devoted to the broad subjects of “sex and death.”

LC von Hessen currently lives in the south of Brooklyn, writing film criticism for a startup under her legal name and unsuccessfully seeking steady employment.

Hysteria...?

He, Too, Was Learning to Hunt

He, Too, Was Learning to Hunt by Madame Deficit

A dark ambient track I made to accompany Mass Culture Vol. 1. The title is a line from a piece called "Patient X" inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer.

Fun fact: this track began life as a Justin Bieber sample.

Mass Culture Vol. 1 - Covers

Front and back covers of Mass Culture, Vol. 1. All art by LC von Hessen.

Front cover drawing: "Modern Romance," Jan '04.