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"I believe in death. I believe in disease. I believe in injustice and inhumanity, and torture, and anger, and hate. I believe in murder. I believe in pain. I believe in cruelty and infidelity. I believe in slime and stink, and every crawling, putrid thing, every possible ugliness and corruption. You son of a Bitch!" - George C. Scott, The Exorcist III |
| The world we live in is a very ugly place. We are constantly bombarded with the sheer atrocity of human nature, and our infinite capacity to destroy everything we come in contact with. Images of greasy, overweight pedophiles with puffy red faces, crack whores unabashedly soliciting to feed their habit, children mutilated by hunger and famine, animals grossly over-fattened to yield more meat. These are just a few of the horrors of the world that we have created for ourselves. And yet most people live their daily lives with a set of blinders on that allow them to avoid seeing past the suburban utopia that they have fabricated for themselves. It's like The Matrix, but people have imposed in on themselves. And like in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, anyone who seeks to pull the wool away from the eyes of those living in the simulacra are attacked as heretics or radicals. |
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This is where the artists come in. It is the responsibility of artists of every media to make waves. To rock the boat of complacency and make people think. To tear a small hole in the fabric of mendacity that hides the real world from the eyes of those who would rather see everything in a sugary candy coating. Often artists are attacked for their works. H.R. Giger, Damien Hirst, Andres Serrano, and Robert Mapplethorpe are only a few of the contemporary artists who have had their works attacked because they offended the delicate sensibilities of the good moral folks who viewed them. Fuck that. If a work of art offends you, GOOD! It has made you think, or at least react.
Vargr, 2001 |