Save the planet, Kill yourself ! Chris Korda
THE CHURCH OF EUTHANASIA Archives from Goswell Road
Chris Korda (b.1962, New York City) is a transgender multimedia artist, activist, musician, software developer and the leader of The Church of Euthanasia (est. 1992). He lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
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thank you Chris for this time is this thank you to my pleasure you but this place looks about you can we talk about this place what is going on with you and it’s a sure sign of old age and but it’s also a positive sign it’s a sign of a complete body of work and I think this is the right way to view it so the Church of euthanasia is now a mature body of work meaning it’s really it’s no longer and its infancy it’s not even do you know a young thing it’s it’s an adult that has now been in existence for 25 years and so it’s a it’s a good time to step back and assess and show the ground that we’ve covered a lot of ground we’ve done a lot and we’re not done but it’s
of course overtime so this is more reflecting where we’ve been but also a little bit reflecting where we’re going to the middle
The Narrative of the scheme yes and that’s important I think it’s important to contrast the the old and the new church of euthanasia so I like to put it this way the Church of euthanasia original form was very misanthropic another visit with the key was anti-humanism I like to say that we put anti-humanism on the map in the 1990s and humanism was still very new very little has been written about it it was a new word often people wouldn’t understand it when you set it to them and so I’d like to feel that we contributed to starting a real conversation about ending humanism that Save the Planet. Self was kind of the shot that was heard around the world in the sense that it was a very catchy witty slogan that everyone could understand and assimilate and yet that even though they might not understand it explicitly it it made Eddie humanism somehow a thing for them they could see the larger true that humans Were Somehow against life that humans were against life and so I think that was the beginning of the Church of euthanasia and save the planet kill yourself is really the beginning but from that time it’s progressed over such an enormous territory and so now at 25 years later we already arrived at whole new stage of the Church of euthanasia the post anti-human Church of euthanasia is Abreva on this one and this is something that was also happening in the beginning of the twentieth century was it supposed to Mystic atmosphere where it all started really for most people who are in tune with environmentalism it all started at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 when Jeremy Rifkin and so many other people valid that Humanity will change its course and that we would if we acted in time that we would prevent the worst excesses of climate change and that we would begin to direct ourselves towards a global civilization based on the notion of harmony with our ecosystem of course as you and I know well nothing of this sort occurred in fact since 1992 humanity is accelerated as fast as you can in the wrong direction and so increasingly it’s no longer a question of the Titanic hitting the iceberg rather we are hitting the iceberg it’s merely that there such a delay from the ice with the ship is big and the upper class in the aristocracy and the inteligencia around the top of Jackson so they’re very far from the iceberg and so meanwhile whole sections of the ship already demolished and people are falling into the water and screaming for lifeboats where there was none while the UPS upstairs on the top deck we’re still sipping champagne and wondering when what what night what club we should go to and so on and so there’s a delay Factor but in fact we’re not hitting the iceberg and have been for some time until increasing me the question is not like will we hit it the question is how much damage will there be and where we slow down at all or we continue to accelerate into the catastrophe and so of course the Church of euthanasia predicted 20 years ago that we would accelerate into the catastrophe and I feel some Vindication though it’s not much comfort but I feel correct and having predicted that we are now accelerating into the catastrophe and so increasingly the post and human Church of euthanasia is less about blaming humans and more about actually expressing empathy for them and grasping that ultimately the worst pain and suffering will be inflicted upon us
let’s do you believe in superheroes and we can transcend our self and find this to be a mensch as is when I hear of a mensch I think of something much less less much less Pleasant I don’t think so I think we’re going to arrive they would have arrived by now and so it’s a very late stage now increasingly we are into a positive feedbacks and it reversible things melting the ice and so on and it doesn’t come back on any kind of time scale that’s of Interest human beings and so my point is that in the beginning of the Church of euthanasia it was X about expressing hatred for humans for their foolishness and foot and for the assault that they had at least on all other living thing but the thing that many people didn’t get about the Church of euthanasia is it say the plan of care sup is also dadaism
it’s a it’s not a joke but it’s not it isn’t it absurd ISM and so the point is actually that the planet will be fine it’s not the plan if it’s in danger if humans weren’t even set off all their weapons are still the planet with survive in sex would survive bacteria would definitely survive and so the point is that it’s humans and especially human civilization that are endangered the question is how do humans want to survive do we want to survive only biologically likely in the Neolithic cowering in caves with nothing left of our civilization or do we want to survive with our civilization and our values in chat with all this all the wonderous things that we struggled for over centuries Millennia we struggled to lift ourselves out of the muck and build something that had some some value of some long-term lasting value and this is what is it is threatening now America is
keeping them on being so toxic you think why is this continent because America is the center of the liberalism the idea that reduce tattoo simple Expressions one is straight from out of Ian Rend one is that there is no such thing as the common good and the other of course is selfishness as virtue that selfishness is virtue and with these two ideas you have the entire edifice of neoliberalism its are essentially new liberalism is short-termism that each person should maximize their self interest in the short-term and it’s so effectively wouldn’t you liberalism on a geological time scale emerges as is war on the future and this is a central idea in the post ending him in church of euthanasia that Humanity has declared war not on the plan but on their own future and paradoxically we are winning and soul winning of course means that we have no future and this is the idea if we continue to wage this war and when we will the future Wilson
not include us
so I know which way your your heart is is there is a cure
no I don’t think it’s yours anything right I think that I think that the Church of euthanasia is Mission has not been to prevent the population explosion because by that metric obviously we failed six billion humans can’t be wrong is now a queen slogan we’ve already at 7 and 1/2 in climbing and so by any reasonable measurement the Church of euthanasia if the church for the Nations mission was to arrest human population growth repair but that was never the mission the mission was to create a kind of space for anti Human sentiment and also to create a space for people who feel the absurdity and ugliness of what humans have done and are doing now so that they don’t feel completely alone with their feelings so that they may have some, ratterree some solidarity with other people who grasp the futility of this project that we’ve embarked on this project to exterminate our own future
but we can also say that everything is is it okay if I need to wait to see the world also said that the mass media is is a focusing on telling us a scary sings with sting if you stop to watch the news and you just do your life having fun enjoying building clever sinks with your community suddenly sing stop to go well and everything is fine no I couldn’t agree with this no this is this is First World by us this is easy to say when you live in one of the great Cosmopolitan capitals of the world and have grown up with all the benefits that industrial civilization has to offer so you are one of the winners you won the super sperm and egg Lottery and so your view is distorted by this as is mine of course but it’s important to recognize that stood all throughout the world the situation is quite different and so fully half of the world’s population lives on $10 a day or less as much as as much as a third of humanity goes to bed hungry every night every night without exception and so forth
Humanity civilization is actually been a disaster and this is the real problem at hand is that it’s not so much that we’ve already destroyed much of our ecosystem and they were using one and a half planet in the 10 every year when we could only actually have one but the point is that we’re borrowing from the future to pay for the present and many people are ready now have nothing they’re starving to have nothing to lose and so we shouldn’t be surprised that we see neo-fascism creeping up again we shouldn’t be surprised that people are willing to fight in armies and carry guns because anytime people are hungry in poor countries always you will find people willing to carry a gun and fight against their own countrymen we seen it time and time again and Civil Wars throughout Central America throughout southeast Asia throughout the whole world people will people will arm themselves against their own countrymen if they’re hungry enough
Jennifer made it out of Korea you you gets because you’re you you’re born on the right side of the barrier and you and you where you grew up in in America maybe we should ask Spotify on Earth that’s what this is the Paradox of the Church of euthanasia is that it started and florist in America the richest country on Earth where most of the people we had contact with actually we’re beneficiaries of industrial civilization much as beneficiaries but grew up in the lap of luxury wherever they had every possible Advantage every entitlement bestowed on them and so in fact this is the whole point is that it was exactly these people that we tried to persuade never and have children this is what is paradoxical and autistic about the Church of euthanasia we didn’t go to Haiti or to West Africa it to persuade a person in Ethiopia turn on have children American just a stop at two children would be like this waiting and Ethiopian to stop at 40 children something like this
directions for sure it was in the America and Europe that most of the consuming is a crank but even this is not the point the real point is that it’s in America and Europe that the world of you that is destroying our future emerged in the end it won’t be up to Ethiopia to decide whether we continue to go down the road of destroying our own future it will be up to the deciders in the governments of the of the allegedly civilized world are the four pillars suicide abortion cannibalism sodomy all optional I have to be clear about this the only thing that members of the Church of euthanasia universally agreed-upon is not appropriation and so I understand we are Natty humanist movement but we are fundamentally committed to antinatalism and so it’s the reason we could we ask people to take a lifetime valve non-appropriation
I swear it’s symbolic value not because of its practical value is not that we hope to reverse the population growth Trends we’ve had no success at that it quite the contrary we ask people to take an on an on procreation valve because by doing so they are essentially voting with the only thing that they really have any power over everything else you do will only affect your own consumption so if you recycle your bottles if you are vegan if you wear hemp clothing and you never take an airplane and so on what all This only affects your consumption and so it has linear effect directly proportional to the length of your life but but but you’re not on your procreation or reproductive decisions are exponential because you don’t know how many children your children will have there’s every reason to believe that the more you propagandize your children to have a small family the more likely they’ll turn out to be Catholics and have a big family and so in the end you could be responsible for some branching tree of that of hundreds of thousands of people out into the future but you have no control over you don’t control their consumption
they could all go out and buy a Mercedes how do you control your already be in your grave I saw the point is that by asking people to not procreate we’re asking them to effect their their reproductive future effectively were asking them to disavow their reproductive future and say whatever happens in the future however many people will there will be it wasn’t because of me I didn’t contribute to it and that I think has symbolic value and that’s why the Church of euthanasia has been such an enduring presence is because it’s a really deep thing to ask if somebody it’s much bit much more important than asking them to recycle their bottles not use plastic and so on it goes against the most fundamental animalistic drive all human beings have a strong urge to procreate and we’re asking them to repudiate that as a symbolic value how do you feel being an adult now when when did you start to be another well I mean I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager almost done and I had the first idea
in this exhibition if you don’t mind can you
do the measure for many people the Church of euthanasia was primarily known for its merchandise which was standing right behind us over here we have
sampling of the church merchandise many people appreciated this this is how we how we managed to reach so many people across the world is because of the zine movement so it’s not obvious to people who are younger but the Church of euthanasia flourished in the beginning at a time when the internet was still very much not a thing it was still only text and just only emerging it’s almost alternative culture occurred by mail the classical title was high weirdness by mail and so they were many many zeins not only the Church of euthanasia is of course but it was a it was a. That grew out of punk when you could send somebody a couple of stamps in an envelope and they send you back who knows what really crazy stuff stuff that was just really interesting and entertaining and so we were able to Surf that of course the Church of euthanasia is always been the kind of culture jamming and Susan culture is an example of the kind of culture we Jam so we took advantage of seeing culture and we grew a huge merchandising business by the end we had made more than a hundred thousand bumper stickers to save the planet. So it wasn’t a huge hit
it wasn’t only sold by us it was it was taken up by malls there was at the peak of Spencer Gifts with selling it in 500 miles across the United States and that was just in America we had European distribution as well and so we reach many many people just threw this who did some of them knew nothing about the church they all they knew was the merchandise but that was quite okay and in fact even that wasn’t a problem for the the tax services the Internal Revenue Service we ask them is it okay like I wear nonprofit is it okay for us to do this is it okay for us to sell merchandise and they said of course so long as the merchandise propagandize is your message you can sell whatever you want you can put it on beer holders if that’s what you want and so all of our merchandise is consistent in the sense that it all has the similar look it’s all this very stark white on black design and it all propaganda Isis in one way or another the message of the church so this was a big part of our effort it’s a kind of commercial art or something I don’t know I don’t know what to call it but it’s a type of culture jamming
another thing that we were known for in that many people interacted with where’s the public actions the so-called Dada actions and Ike we call them Donna actions not for no reason weird neo-dada is too many of the strategies were deliberately knowingly borrowed from the original artists in the nineteen nineteen twenties and early shortly after the first World War I saw this it all this is the kind of dadaism this on the street you have immediately created some kind of data space you’ve created a provocation and for sure people are going to stop and ask what it what is going on or not going to understand what you’re saying there’s going to be maybe a riot even many of the church actions caused riots I’ve been chased I’ve been had bottles thrown at me it’s come to blows people have been punched all of that has happened and so it’s a dangerous thing to do this it’s a dangerous thing to provoke people especially to confront people with things that they don’t understand
because many of the things that we wanted to do wouldn’t have been possible in Europe
yeah for example organizing an action and action in the in the street we tried to do this in Germany in the people said to us well we need the permission of the police give permission and so this is a big difference United States has many flaws and faults but this is not one of them and United States even today to do something in public on the sidewalk you don’t need the permission of the police they may show up and they may harass you and they may ask you to keep moving and then walk in circles but you said you have the freedom to to occupy public space up to a point so long as you’re not creating a so-called public nuisance so long as you’re not blocking traffic you have the right to occupy public space and that’s a big difference I think that’s something I would say it’s worth fighting for that would be the wrong sensibility but it’s it’s something that’s valuable despite the many criticisms in the valley prisons of America I think this is a real strength of it and so I I feel strongly that we watch it what the church did much of what you’ll see in this
that Shone over here would have been impossible in Europe it would have been inconceivable starting in all the way back in 1994 and ending in the puppy 1999 or so it includes things like that the fetus barbecue or the so-called fetus barbecue which was carried out during a pro-life rally in Boston that includes the naval assault on Earth Day and the attack on the sperm bank where we demanded that the sperm bank release the sperm these were all kind of Neo. Has two actions and they were very carefully planned and prepared for and in many cases they exhibited complicated stealthy strategy so an example would be where we attach ourselves to someone else’s event someone else’s public manifestation and then pretend to be part of it and blend in and create signs that are actually fakes that are with whatever the
what station is supposed to be saying and so we’re undercover and then at a certain signal everybody pulls the fake signs off of their real signs and suddenly we’re actually the Church of euthanasia and we’re counter-demonstrators but by then it’s too late to stop us because we’re already set up in the Press is already there and it’s too late to stop at so this is a type of Neo. Is tactic we often used situation is tactic so the ideas you identify you identify a situation in which a small force will become much more powerful and their fetus barbecue was a perfect example so we could have barbecued some fetuses on the Boston Common which is a huge Park in Boston on any other day of the year and I doubt the police would have even come by they would have seen some people barbecuing maybe they have some signs who cares it’s the kind of thing that’s allowed especially in a park no one cares but if you do that on the day when the largest pro-life March in New England is being held that’s completely different thing because now Cardinal law of the Cardinal of the Archdiocese of New England is standing right there and he’s shouting
the chief of police like why are you letting that happen like why does that say you look for a few days but Jesus and why aren’t you doing something about this and so for sure that there’s going to be a confrontation between the pro-lifers and the police and the Church of euthanasia and all things going to blow up so that’s an example of situationism you have to pick your moment it’s like surfing you need to write wave
yes you have to accept it so are we spend a lot of our energy actually identifying cultural occurrence if your culture Jammer it is a lot like being a surfer you have to get a good eye for what will work and what is a good situation and what will actually not be as good and what will be relatively weak and so if you get your timing right and if you have if you’re good at sort of like surreptitious activity where you can send out your full signal then you can bring people into the movie it’s like reading a kind of theater it’s up to it instead of having all the parts play by your own actors many of the parts are played by people unwittingly and so you pull them in you give them false information you this is also a famous. Is tactic you tell certain people that a certain famous person is going to be in this place and they all show up expecting maybe it was Charlie Chaplin in the 1920s for us maybe it’s Courtney Love and they all show up expecting to see Courtney Love but the point is they’re there and now you have you have troops to have people there and so then you do your thing this is typical of our tactics
someone is a question
no question question question I’m sorry
I’m sorry I don’t know what to say okay I mean we can talk about I like to watch if you want but I I have to say this is do I have witnesses he is so okay the problem with I like to watch right is that it’s completely unacceptable and it was many people interpreted it as a comment on the voice of the inherent voyeurism of mass media but this was not the intention at all so my view was the stockhausen only was half right so you might know that stockhausen the famous composer said after the Twin Tower attacks he said that it was the greatest work of art ever very famous and he got in a lot of trouble to and he basically almost lost his career over that he was almost deplatformed as we say now but my crew was at that didn’t go far enough and it and it wasn’t just that it was great art
what’s that it was a kind of cycle of psychodrama I like to say that it was forced to transsexual surgery and it essentially America’s greatest phallic symbols were feminized forcibly feminized by the Taliban they weren’t they had if you look at the footage closely you can clearly see the towers with these enormous gashes in them that look on the steak at least until then of course the towers fall down these kind of Wilt like they become flaccid and so to me it was unmistakably sexual and I saw I felt completely missed the sexual nature of this this terrorist crime that it had us a kind of psychosexual implication of feminizing America where America has stood for this kind of patriarchal Macho imperialist fantasy that this was the reality that the chickens finally came home to roost and it was America would never be the same again what’s the point we would never really we could build something in its place but it would never be the same in Bossier la
you also was going down a similar path saying that the the the terrorists would always win in the arena spectacular death because because they were willing infecting to Z Astic to die this week and never we can never approach because we weren’t willing to die for our cause that’s how I feel all of this came together for me but that’s only the political dimension for me what the the real Duty the primary Duty what artist is to express their feelings honestly and their work what else does it mean to be an artist that’s up to to to try and make your private internal state public in an honest transparent way and so I feel that I did this ultimately my my primary reaction to the footage was that it was 60 it was it was it had it had a feeling of pornography to it the way it was shown the way it was framed the way they would they would repeat the shots over and over again and then show it in reverse and so on to anyone who has seen hardcore pornography was unmistakable to me it looked like pornography and I wasn’t the only one
by the way but I was probably the only one who who turned it into art in such a direct way and so soon within three months after the attacks and so I feel it in my own to feel that this is my strongest work in some ways and I I feel that many people were horrified by it and refused to admit he’s most film festivals refused to show it and it was a huge controversy but I don’t think this is the point I think that it’s a very honest work and that’s why I stand behind it
it shows the ugliness and just craziness of industrial civilization
Cinema movie The Rapper GF
oh and there is some there’s there’s the the graphic for thin layer of oily Rock so that’s that’s the new church of euthanasia the new post and even Church of the Nations primarily of course concerned with climate change and would sea level rise and so there it is sea level rise made incarnate so the
the new church of euthanasia is about grasping the absolute indifference of the universe to Our Fate this is a key theme that what happens to us is the purpose of consequence only to us that if we last another hundred thousand years or we last only another hundred years its of no consequence to anything on earth except us and I feel this is a point that doesn’t get made enough that it’s actually the the new post that human Church of euthanasia is not only about having empathy for people who will after all be the greatest victims of our own foolishness but more deeply it’s about expressing the sheer scale of space of all of The Emptiness of space and how fortunate we are to have been here at all how the odds were completely against intelligent life evolving here and that the odds of getting through another hundred thousand years are actually very small and so it’s could say maybe that Humanity has made mistakes mistakes have been made but they’re also mistakes that any intelligent life form would have met
in our place this is something new this is different from the original Church the regional church was much harder on people but maybe it’s just that I’m getting old maybe I maybe I had maybe I’m getting soft in my old age on all I could also be just getting soft but I have more empathy for the sheer hardness of the odds that were stacked against us on this planet it wasn’t an easy situation any any species in our situation would have been tempted to have a really epic party and have as much fun as possible and burn all the resources and once this is very natural and so this is not that different than the Calhoun experiments I was just looking them up again today John B Calhoun famous behavioral sink feeding all the rats and as much as they want letting the appropriate as much as they want until they go crazy they do they go absolutely crazy and in the end by the end they eat each other in the population collapses well so something has happened to us we went crazy we had a fit of irrational exuberance and it’s all around us I mean look around your city irrational exuberance is everywhere and my point is only that it’s not
it’s not so much to blame people for this it’s more how far do you want it to go and where what where will it stop and what and who will it matter to accept us this I think it’s the new post and humor Church of the nation is grasping our role which really only exists for us that it’s only it’s only a matter for us whether we have a future that if we decide that we don’t have a future
in the future just doesn’t include us and some other apex predator will inherit the earth
who’s Jesus movie
so this is this is actually a music video that doesn’t exist yet it’s there’s a song you can hear it in the headphones and it’s about all of these ideas and it grew out of a slideshow that I gave it a gallery gallery Spectrum in Berlin and the name of the presentation is a thin layer of Wylie Rock and it’s not that’s what kind of an abstract idea but these the thin layer of only rockets in reference to a geology of course in paleontology if the thin layer of oily rock is the what all that’s left of the permian-triassic extinction okay and so
there’s a break if you like in life during the permian-triassic the earth almost became a dead Planet as close as I can come like 90% little bit more of life was destroyed almost all life in the ocean died most life on land as well and so there’s a break in the record of life and that break today when you go look at Cliff’s and so on the right places it shows up as a little thin layer of greasy rock pretty big few inches at most and that’s what our whole civilization would look like if we don’t get our act together is a thin layer with a rock you’re welcome
let the games begin
thank you very much
