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
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.
