Written under the influence of a certain pharmaceutical at the time and date in question. A bit "softer" in content than much of what I've posted here, but my work isn't all perversion and murder.
17 July 2012
02 June 2012
Seeking submissions for Mass Culture Vol. 5
I am currently seeking submissions for the next issue of Mass Culture, due out sometime in mid-late July.
Any quality visual art or writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc.) on the general subject of sex and/or death is welcome. The specific theme of Vol. 5 will be Middle America, which I'm defining here as the bland majority of the US that excludes liberal coastal cities, hip college towns, and the like, with an emphasis on suburbia and/or the Midwest. Note that this region has spawned any number of dreadful things, e.g. notorious serial killers, child abduction, school shootings, and so forth. Think along the lines of middle-aged married men seeking furtive blowjobs in cruising parks and truckstop restrooms, stalkers peeping on elderly widows in the bushes at night prior to their home invasion, bored and sexually-frustrated teenagers chugging Robitussin and plotting firearm mayhem, etc.
You need not have lived in or traveled through that region in order to contribute--for instance, in Vol. 4 I included a story set in Weimar Berlin despite the fact that I have never (yet) left the continental US or time-traveled--but seeing as I'm the editor and I did grow up in the Midwest, I'll be able to tell if you're just completely bullshitting. (Note that the photo above was taken circa 2001 on the corner where I used to wait for the schoolbus.)
Further guidelines:
-Writing: Try to keep it at 1,000 words or less due to spacing issues. DOC, TXT, or RTF format (or just copy and paste into the body of an email).
-Art: Mass Culture is designed at 7.5" x 5" with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch, so do keep that in mind if you're thinking of submitting a full-page spread (or more). B&W, greyscale, and color are all welcome. Format: JPEG or PSD.
Submit to lcvonhessen@gmail.com. The deadline is the 8th of July.
21 May 2012
Baptism of Wisdom feat. Madame Deficit
15 May 2012
Mass Culture Vol. 4 Reading / Release Party
On Friday the 13th of last month, I gave a reading at Gebo House in Brooklyn for the release of Vol. 4. (It also served as a party for my birthday, which happened earlier that week.)
By the time I arrived, I was already running late. I'd gotten about three hours of sleep the night before, having spent the past couple of days printing and assembling copies. (Yes, I edit and manufacture Mass Culture entirely by myself. As I lack steady employment, it's less expensive in the short term, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't trust someplace like Staples with some of my content.)
My voice is a little dry and hoarse in much of this footage thanks to dehydration and sleep deprivation: in order to combat both, I can be seen sipping from a shiny green tall-boy of Four Loko throughout the reading. That would be an original pre-ban Four Loko, which I'd saved in my fridge for a special occasion: I'd originally planned on drinking a nice bottle of Scottish seaweed ale as I read, but that evening I decided to fuck being classy because I badly needed the caffeine.
It's safe to say I was a bit wired during the proceedings. I didn't even realize the mic wasn't working, hence why the sound is somewhat muffled on video.
The projection of M in the background was someone else's impromptu idea, though it works well enough considering Vol. 4's theme of historical lustmord.
The first piece I read was "Hideous Things: An Act of Love," from Vol. 4, which was accidentally not recorded. After that came an excerpt from "Kindly Carcass":
"Kindly Carcass" appeared in Vol. 2, "the cannibalism issue." It was largely inspired by the case of Armin Meiwes, in which he solicited a man on the internet to take part in consensual cannibalism. Other influences include Krafft-Ebing-documented "necrosadist" Sergeant François Bertrand and my perennial favorite serial killers, Dahmer and Nilsen. The narrative alternates between the protagonist's recollection of a night with one of his victims and his rather dull daily life in an institution for the criminally insane.
"Dumbslut (Look How Pathetic)" appeared in Vol. 1. As I somewhat drunkenly attempt to explain in this video, a major catalyst for my writing this piece (performed here in a truncated version) was having recently read a biography of John Wayne Gacy, much of which was written in Gacy's vernacular (e.g., redundantly calling people "dumb and stupid"). That book, Buried Dreams, also demonstrates how Gacy would project his own deep-seated insecurity and self-loathing about his sexuality onto his preferred victims: all-American teenage twinks.
I also wanted to write a story in which the subject's background and experiences, which are seen as so normal, typical, and desirable as to never warrant any real questioning, are interrogated and exposed on the most absolutely base, disgusting, abject terms. It also serves as a polar inversion of the surrealist-poetic psychosexual romances I've written between, say, a serial killer and his prostitute victim (as in "Hideous Things"), or a lonely morgue worker and a beautiful corpse ("Erotopsy," below).
"Erotopsy (Tanzler's Revenge)" was also in Vol. 1, very loosely (I would even say subconsciously) inspired by the case of necrophilic German radiologist Carl Tanzler (as detailed in the video). It was written on an acid trip with only very minor subsequent edits. I've previously performed this with sound accompaniment as Madame Deficit. Audience responses to this piece typically range from nausea to arousal.
The necrophile in this piece is described as resembling Alfred Kubin, an Austrian artist of perverse imaginations whose work Der Todessprung was reproduced in the credits of Vol. 3.
"Bieber Rape Story," from Vol. 1, is probably one of my more infamous bits of writing. It was sparked by a particularly ignorant quote about rape and abortion that teen popstar Justin Bieber had recently given in a Rolling Stone interview. It could have been written off as an isolated case of celebrity idiocy but for the fact that, around the same time, adult politicians with real legislative power started working en masse to put those views into law (. . . which is still happening in America: in the video I mention that, if written a year later, it would have been called "Santorum Rape Campaign"). I actually could have taken this piece a lot further and gone into a lot more detail, but I kept it short at the time due to spacing limitations.
I reference St. Lidwina of Schiedam towards the end: curious parties are advised to seek out Catholic-convert JK Huysmans's book on the subject, wherein he describes her many grotesque afflictions in such lovingly-graphic detail that the work was almost considered sacrilege.
"Asking For It," from Vol. 3, was a sort of encore. You'll notice that my audience has gotten increasingly drunk and rowdy by that time, and I myself am shown here drunkenly telling them I don't care if they masturbate while I read and giving instructions on how to purchase amyl nitrate ("go to an adult bookstore and ask for 'head cleaner'!"). Apparently one satirical piece about rape wasn't enough for these fucking perverts, so I read this story, inspired by media coverage of the Cleveland, TX gang-rape of an anonymous 11-year-old girl around March of last year. Alert readers and viewers will note that the victim here is depicted as belonging to the demographic most likely to read Mass Culture: a young, white, vaguely-misanthropic city-dwelling man who favors "dark," "extreme" musical genres like metal and noise. Unfortunately the last few lines of this piece have been cut off due to the camera running out of memory.
After the reading came a fair amount of intoxication and debauchery, but no cameras were out for that as far as I know.
By the time I arrived, I was already running late. I'd gotten about three hours of sleep the night before, having spent the past couple of days printing and assembling copies. (Yes, I edit and manufacture Mass Culture entirely by myself. As I lack steady employment, it's less expensive in the short term, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't trust someplace like Staples with some of my content.)
My voice is a little dry and hoarse in much of this footage thanks to dehydration and sleep deprivation: in order to combat both, I can be seen sipping from a shiny green tall-boy of Four Loko throughout the reading. That would be an original pre-ban Four Loko, which I'd saved in my fridge for a special occasion: I'd originally planned on drinking a nice bottle of Scottish seaweed ale as I read, but that evening I decided to fuck being classy because I badly needed the caffeine.
It's safe to say I was a bit wired during the proceedings. I didn't even realize the mic wasn't working, hence why the sound is somewhat muffled on video.
The projection of M in the background was someone else's impromptu idea, though it works well enough considering Vol. 4's theme of historical lustmord.
The first piece I read was "Hideous Things: An Act of Love," from Vol. 4, which was accidentally not recorded. After that came an excerpt from "Kindly Carcass":
"Kindly Carcass" appeared in Vol. 2, "the cannibalism issue." It was largely inspired by the case of Armin Meiwes, in which he solicited a man on the internet to take part in consensual cannibalism. Other influences include Krafft-Ebing-documented "necrosadist" Sergeant François Bertrand and my perennial favorite serial killers, Dahmer and Nilsen. The narrative alternates between the protagonist's recollection of a night with one of his victims and his rather dull daily life in an institution for the criminally insane.
"Dumbslut (Look How Pathetic)" appeared in Vol. 1. As I somewhat drunkenly attempt to explain in this video, a major catalyst for my writing this piece (performed here in a truncated version) was having recently read a biography of John Wayne Gacy, much of which was written in Gacy's vernacular (e.g., redundantly calling people "dumb and stupid"). That book, Buried Dreams, also demonstrates how Gacy would project his own deep-seated insecurity and self-loathing about his sexuality onto his preferred victims: all-American teenage twinks.
I also wanted to write a story in which the subject's background and experiences, which are seen as so normal, typical, and desirable as to never warrant any real questioning, are interrogated and exposed on the most absolutely base, disgusting, abject terms. It also serves as a polar inversion of the surrealist-poetic psychosexual romances I've written between, say, a serial killer and his prostitute victim (as in "Hideous Things"), or a lonely morgue worker and a beautiful corpse ("Erotopsy," below).
"Erotopsy (Tanzler's Revenge)" was also in Vol. 1, very loosely (I would even say subconsciously) inspired by the case of necrophilic German radiologist Carl Tanzler (as detailed in the video). It was written on an acid trip with only very minor subsequent edits. I've previously performed this with sound accompaniment as Madame Deficit. Audience responses to this piece typically range from nausea to arousal.
The necrophile in this piece is described as resembling Alfred Kubin, an Austrian artist of perverse imaginations whose work Der Todessprung was reproduced in the credits of Vol. 3.
"Bieber Rape Story," from Vol. 1, is probably one of my more infamous bits of writing. It was sparked by a particularly ignorant quote about rape and abortion that teen popstar Justin Bieber had recently given in a Rolling Stone interview. It could have been written off as an isolated case of celebrity idiocy but for the fact that, around the same time, adult politicians with real legislative power started working en masse to put those views into law (. . . which is still happening in America: in the video I mention that, if written a year later, it would have been called "Santorum Rape Campaign"). I actually could have taken this piece a lot further and gone into a lot more detail, but I kept it short at the time due to spacing limitations.
I reference St. Lidwina of Schiedam towards the end: curious parties are advised to seek out Catholic-convert JK Huysmans's book on the subject, wherein he describes her many grotesque afflictions in such lovingly-graphic detail that the work was almost considered sacrilege.
"Asking For It," from Vol. 3, was a sort of encore. You'll notice that my audience has gotten increasingly drunk and rowdy by that time, and I myself am shown here drunkenly telling them I don't care if they masturbate while I read and giving instructions on how to purchase amyl nitrate ("go to an adult bookstore and ask for 'head cleaner'!"). Apparently one satirical piece about rape wasn't enough for these fucking perverts, so I read this story, inspired by media coverage of the Cleveland, TX gang-rape of an anonymous 11-year-old girl around March of last year. Alert readers and viewers will note that the victim here is depicted as belonging to the demographic most likely to read Mass Culture: a young, white, vaguely-misanthropic city-dwelling man who favors "dark," "extreme" musical genres like metal and noise. Unfortunately the last few lines of this piece have been cut off due to the camera running out of memory.
After the reading came a fair amount of intoxication and debauchery, but no cameras were out for that as far as I know.
12 May 2012
Merrily Gone Hunting, part 4
From p. 13 of Mass Culture Vol. 4.
16 April 2012
Mass Culture Vol. 4
 |
| From Automord: Mieze, Mar '12 |
This issue has the theme of "lust-murder in history," with an emphasis on Jack the Ripper and various incidents of Weimar lustmord (and sexual repression leading to such).
It is also the first issue of Mass Culture to be printed in color.
Guest contributors: Martin Bladh, Paul Kerin, A. Koroleva, and Eric Rodriguez-Docé.
Also featuring several self-portraits in which I portray both killer and victim (see above) and a great deal of original collage work and photography on my part, which entailed a certain amount of stabbing, burning, slicing, and bleeding. If you like that sort of thing. Again: decidedly not for children and do take care when reading at church functions or on public transit.
As far as back issues: Vol. 1 has been sold out since November, but I have
$10 each plus $3 shipping (US) or $5 shipping (International). Paypal lcvonhessen [at] gmail [dot] com.
Mass Culture Vol. 4 - Back Cover
04 April 2012
28 February 2012
Seeking submissions for Mass Culture Vol. 4
-Any quality visual art or writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc.) on the subject of sex and/or death is welcome. The specific theme of Vol. 4 is "torture and lustmord in history," e.g. anything from the Circus Maximus and early Christian martyrdom to Inquisitional zeal and Sadeian decadence to the exploits of Jack the Ripper, H.H. Holmes, and Fritz Haarmann. (I'll probably save Nazisploitation for a future issue.)
-Writing: Try to keep it at 1,000 words or less due to spacing issues. DOC, TXT, or RTF format (or just copy and paste into the body of an email).
-Art: Mass Culture is designed at 7.5" x 5" with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch, so do keep that in mind if you're thinking of submitting a full-page spread (or more). Previous issues have been entirely in b&w and greyscale, though I'm planning on introducing minimal amounts of color in this one. Format: JPEG or PSD.
Send to lcvonhessen@gmail.com. Repeat offenders . . . er, contributors are welcome.
02 February 2012
Heathen Harvest on Mass Culture Vol. 2
"I find that I am continuously seduced by the writing, it isn’t blunt shock fact, it pulls you in. . . . Overall this zine is a work of art in itself, an incredible combination of text and artwork and the excellent soundcloud link functions as an added dimension too. But what I keep going back for is the continuous seduction that is performed by art and text, this zine leaves me delirious."--ZRG in Heathen Harvest
Full review here.
Full review here.
Mass Culture Contributor: Paul Kerin
Upstate New York-based collage artist, printmaker, and graphic designer Paul Kerin has two pieces in Vol. 3. He has plans to start his own publication this year.
More of his work can be found here.
22 January 2012
Mass Culture Contributor: Martin Bladh
The other night I dreamt that Martin Bladh and I were siblings. We were forced to labor under my mother, portrayed as a petty bureaucratic tyrant; we were outfitted in the white-collared, buttoned-down uniform of teenage missionaries and marched through a placid American suburb. I was tasked with pushing a shopping cart full of evidence while Martin had the worse burden, slung over his shoulder: he had to carry a pine bookshelf with the approximate dimensions of a pauper's coffin.
Martin Bladh has a piece in Mass Culture Vol. 3. More of his work is available here.
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