Daily Archives: April 23, 2021

They keep you on the hook the whole way through, theyre your best friend and then you get a standardised Dear applicants email, she says. Wed been texting each other sparkle hearts all through the process.

Reality TV is the contemporary Colosseum, she says. Its where we go to watch people suffer, with no level of social consequence.

That show was at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in 2020, exploring the arduous audition process and exposing as much of it as she could legally get away with.

A scene from Remains to be Seen.Credit:Georgia Banks / David Meagher

After that, Banks was thinking about what drives people including herself to seek immortality on reality TV, on social media or, indeed, in art.

And somebody said to me, I guess your funeral is the reality TV show, she says.

Banks says her work has been about finding the edges of the possibility of the lived experience. To go hard, in other words.

So she has created an elaborate framework where her own real-life funeral is the prize. Anyone can enter, through the website remainstobeseen.info, and will go through an audition process that parallels and parodies the TV versions: invasive, personal questions that would usually be about life and loves but will now be about death and dying.

A scene from Remains to be Seen.Credit:Georgia Banks / David Meagher

They include, for example, how they think they will feel when one of their exes dies.

Applications are open from now and, says Banks, the winner will be announced on the day that I die, and they will get absolute, total, 100 per cent control over everything to do with the disposal of my body and my funeral.

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Absolutely everything. The budget is Banks estate.

I could be liquefied or cremated or turned into a diamond or shot into outer space, says Banks. They might only want to invite millionaires, or the directors of all the national [art] galleries.

It will be up to them. Banks doesnt even want to know, and wont ask.

But she gets something in return: the right to their answers to the application questions. And the funeral and its byproducts are a work of art that must carry Banks name.

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Ive decided to take my own death and turn it into a way to never die, she says. The goal is immortality, right? Isnt that what we all want, to not be forgotten?

And the all-important question, how will she pick the winner?

Naturally, the same way reality TV does.

Whoever I think will cause the most drama, she laughs. Whoevers not here to make friends.

See more here:

Dying for immortality, this artist wants you to dispose of her body - Sydney Morning Herald

Satyricon just finally put their first two albums back out on vinyl (grab exclusive variants of each in our shop), but today Joe takes a look back at their third, which turns a quarter of a century old this week.

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Black metal existed before the Norwegian scene began, and it certainly has flourished internationally since the heyday of infamy in Norway in ways that many never expected. Yet, what can never be denied is the deep impact the Norwegian scene had on black metal and occasionally still does through its old guard and younger inheritors. As has been documented in countless places, Mayhems mastermind Euronymous, real name ystein Aarseth, helped nurture the Norwegian black metal scene, being sometimes highly open to creative experimentation and at others close-fisted in control. After his death in the late summer of 1993, it was an open question as to how the scene locally, and in part globally, would proceed. Would the next few years see the bands energized by his vision and influence drift away, or would the genre continue on to reach heights Euronymous could have only dreamed ofor even feared?

The two decades and more since that time has proven the latter, in hindsight, as Norwegian black metal (and the global scene as well) only exploded into larger and more dynamic approaches. One band that played a pivotal part was Satyricon, forged by the combined talents of songwriter/frontman Sigurd "Satyr" Wongraven and lauded drummer Kjetil-Vidar "Frost" Haraldstad. Neither were original members of the band, but they soon found themselves the only ones left after multiple departures. Subsequently, they would form the core duo propelling the band to this daynot too different than fellow countrymen Darkthrone, save for having a far more gusto approach to live performances than the latter. 1994 saw Satyricon deliver a pair of medieval (in atmosphere) Norwegian folk music-influenced black metal albums, with Dark Medieval Times and The Shadowthrone. These two records made waves right alongside, if perhaps a bit out of focus, the many legendary albums released from the scene that year from the likes of Mayhem, Emperor, and Enslaved. Two years later, and just yesterday celebrating its 25th anniversary, Satyricon released their third album Nemesis Divina, a nearly instant classic that threw the band into the lead pack of the scene. It was also an album that would serve as an era-ending marker, as the band would in no short time further expand its horizons and self limitations.

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Before diving into the music of Nemesis Divina, it would be remiss to not mention how bold and forward-thinking the album's artwork proved to be. At that point, most prototypical black metal album covers, especially in the Norwegian scene, were rough DIY black and white photographs, similarly stark sketch drawings, or shadowed images with dark toned color: something exemplified not only broadly across the genre but clearly enough in Satyricons own first two albums. Nemesis Divinas cover, designed by Halvor Bodin and Stein Lken, is a well-lit wooden shadow box with a pinned bird of prey atop an inverted and rusted crucifix. Outward from the center image are trinkets like bones, keys, and other pieces partially engulfed in flames billowing out from the wood with the same golden flames illuminating the bands logo.

In an interview, Frost recalled the artists behind the cover design creating an art installation based on themes Satyr conveyed from the album which they then set on fire and photographed. "I think it was a brilliant solution of (sic) the task, which was to create an idiosyncratic piece of artwork with references to the album and with very particular aesthetic qualities," said Frost in the interview. "It truly gave the album a visual identity." This quality can be seen in the aesthetics of later black metal, whether consciously or not, with yellow/orange hues like Dawns Slaughtersun (Crown of the Triarchy) or Mayhems own image of avian sacrifice on Grand Declaration of War.

Upon listening to the album, one would certainly agree with Frosts assessment of a successful visualization, as Satyricons previously established identity is blown up into higher-fidelity recording and a real streak of fiery aggression burning throughout the instrumentation. The previous albums lone acoustic guitar passages are abandoned, while the keyboards are arranged very much in accompaniment to the guitar riffs rather than taking sole focus. A Norwegian folk music influence can still be felt, a trait that regardless of other changes has been a constant throughout the bands career. In particular, it's used as thematic breaks from the aggressive fury. This can be heard most prominently on the two main riffs in the second half of "Forhekset" and the keyboard passage playing over the hypnotic tremolo riff at the end of "Du som hater Gud." The aforementioned higher definition in recording allows the instruments to all be heard in exquisite clarity rather than cacophony, permitting listeners to readily appreciate the talents behind the compositions. This particularly benefits Frost: drumming isnt always intuitively appreciated in black metal, but here the listener can follow every blast, crash, and kick he delivers at varied paces in wonderful detail.

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The album's aggression is present right at the beginning in what might be one of the most powerful black metal album openers: "The Dawn of a New Age." After a brief clanging of chords and a spooky keyboard passage, Satyr shouts from the depth of hell, "This is Armageddon!" Seriously, how much more metal can you get? Well, the song steamrolls forward as Satyr lyrically reinterprets passages from the Book of Revelations detailing the arrival of the final horseman of the apocalypse, Death. The pace keeps up until a mid-tempo riff seemingly slows down time, leading into a break for a clean electric guitar passage that rings out like the still air after a battle; it's then violated by a new assault of infernal forces accompanied by spectral narration thanks to the guest work of former bandmate Samoth's ex-wife Nebelhex (Andrea Meyer Haugen). Yeah, pretty damn metal.

Speaking of collaborators and guests, during the recording and subsequent touring for Nemesis Divina none other than Ted "Nocturno Culto" Skjellum of the mighty Darkthrone joined on rhythm guitar, under the (uniquely devised for the group) pseudonym of Kveldulv. In Decibel Magazines Hall of Fame feature for Nemesis Divina Skjellum himself describes a perfect set of temporary circumstances where visiting his girlfriend at the time in Oslo became a good excuse to work with Satyricon. In his words, "I missed playing guitar and having the band feeling," which makes sense given Darkthrone had recently given up on playing live around then, and further: Fenriz had taken all the guitar duties on the previous two Darkthrone albums at that point. Fenriz also collaborated on Satyricons developing masterpiece, lending his lyrical penship to the track "Du som hater Gud."

At one point, Ihsahn of Emperor contributed some keyboard playing for the early rehearsals of Nemesis Divina, though Emperor reforming called his attention away and eventually the keyboard role fell on the shoulders of Geir Bratland, a member of EBMelectric body musicgroup Apoptygma Berzerk who has subsequently played in groups like Dimmu Borgir, The Kovenant, God Seed, and even live for Emperor in 2018. In an interview for Metal Hammer/Louder Frost noted the collaboration in the black metal scene back then made sense, saying, "It was a pretty small environment that we existed in back then. We all felt like competitors, but in other ways like colleagues and friends people with a common interest in something that was very marginal and particular."

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Regardless of the collaboration or the many highlights of composition found throughout the album, the near indisputable crown jewel is "Mother North," a track that has lived on to perhaps be the most recognizable song in Satyricons entire career. A mini-epic of a track at six-and-a-half minutes with varied paces, brooding atmospheres, and infectious melodies that would prove to elicit crowd chanting at live venues across the world. Its interesting to note that in many outlets both Satyr and Frost have commented that the latters desire to pummel his kit had to be toned down to allow breathing room for the rest of the pieces of the composition. This annoyed Frost at the time, but hes since admitted it was the right move for the song. It can be seen as a positive for Satyricon's career that Satyr stuck to his vision for the song, as its become one of the earliest cases of a black metal "hit single": its been a highlight for most Satyricon concerts, where during one of the most melodic and slow to mid paced riffs of the song the crowd often begins chanting along. Even if one has never had the pleasure to participate in that moment live themselves, scenes like Satyricon playing live at Wacken or having a full choir accompanying them during the Live at the Opera recording instantly raise goosebumps in those moments. In the aforementioned piece published by Metal Hammer, Satyr comments, "[W]e play 'Mother North' as much as any other song, but although I dont always enjoy rehearsing it, when we play live I feel like I can perceive it through the eyes and the ears of members of the crowd and it makes me think of things and feelings that I would never otherwise be able to access. Not every band has a song that defines an era, but 'Mother North' certainly does that."

One thing that helped "Mother North" become such a hit was its music video, perhaps one of the first, or at least certainly earliest, examples of a black metal music video. It's more of an atmospheric dream than a linear story, but it does a fine job of not only exhibiting the themes Satyr had in mind for the song, mainly a romanticism for Norway itself, but a full in-the-flesh exhibit of many key elements of the whole Norwegian black metal scene. A swung axe crashing down on a cross coincides with the opening of the song followed by images of the band in full corpse paint, studs and spikes, fire breathing, rituals performed in a flamed circle, thick fog, a full moon, deep forests, overflowing blood often in vampiric scenes, and model Monica Brtens (at times fully nude) trance like stare straight into the camera. In an interview, Frost recounted the making of the video that, "I remember that many of the scenes were incredibly hard to do, as they were shot outdoors in the winter, and that bringing all the gear and doing takes over and over again until they were right meant that we would be out in the cold for an entire night. I also did a fire breathing scene in the beginning of the session, and as it was windy, I got totally soaked in gasoline before I was done doing that countless number of takes. Eventually I became so cold that I vomited on the way back from the location. I didnt care much about that, thoughmy only concern was whether we would manage to make the video visually striking enough."

Satyricon would change rather quickly after the Nemesis Divina era. Feeling that others were starting to copy what theyd already accomplished, they released 1999s Rebel Extravaganza which abandoned a great deal of their previous imagery and tone for more industrial and urban atmospheres. They then followed in 2002 with Volcano, an album that helped form the foundation for a great deal of the black n' roll subgenre, which theyve in various ways continued and expanded upon since then. Throughout their career, the legacy and success of Nemesis Divina has continued to help propel them forward: in 2016 the band, often seen as hesitant to feel nostalgic about their past, toured the whole album front to back, a lovely tribute to newer fans who werent there two decades prior and the old ones who stuck with them through their evolution. Five years since then, the album is now a quarter-century old and it continues to be regarded as a well-aged classic album still delighting fans the world over. In the words of its highlight song: 'Mother North -- united we stand, together we walk."

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Nemesis Divina released April 22nd, 1996 via Moonfog Productions.

You can pick up exclusive variants of The Shadowthrone and Dark Medieval Times in our webshop.

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Opening the Gate to Immortality: 25 years of Satyricon's Nemesis Divina - Invisible Oranges

Sophie Lipset

The year: probably somewhere around 560 BCE. The place: Mount Etna. The star of this story: Empedocles, Greek philosopher and self-proclaimed god.

Now, just for a little background on the god situation, this kind of claim was not new for Empedocles. He was a guy fond of your normal, everyday proclamations of immortality. He is quoted as having said, on at least one occasion:

Hail to ye,

I, an immortal God, no longer mortal,

Now live among you

He must have been a lot of fun at parties.

Interestingly, he apparently had a collection of followers who believed in his godliness.

Most of this admiration stemmed from his successes as a physician and the allegation that he had brought a woman back from the dead during his lifetime.

On the fateful day on which our story begins, Empedocles decided that just claiming he was immortal was no longer enough. He had to prove it. And, of course, the only logical thing to do in this circumstance was to organize a group meeting atop the local volcano and let his followers witness his ascension via some extreme cliff diving. In an act illustrating the ultimate god complex, he jumped straight into the crater of an active volcano, leaving nothing behind but a single shoe like some kind of Cinderella story gone wildly wrong.

Unfortunately for Empedocles, he was not, in fact a god, nor was he immortal (he was also not Cinderella, but that is somewhat irrelevant to the point). In light of this, jumping into a volcano was probably not the best idea. But what can you do when you have a god complex more powerful than even that kid with the power of god and anime on his side?

And this story is 100 percent trueaccording to Heraclides, that is. According to modern scholars, not so much. A number of alternative, less fantastical stories of Empedocles demise exist. The most likely seems to be that he died far from home in the Peloponnese, which unfortunately lacks the dramatic flair of Heraclides take on the situation. It is unlikely we will ever know for sure what happened to this enigmatic figure, but the wild speculation present in the stories that remain is nothing if not entertaining.

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How (not) to be a god The Bowdoin Orient - The Bowdoin Orient

Nightcrawler looks upon the garden of Eden, and sees only weeds among its flowers.Image: Bob Quinn and Java Tartaglia/Marvel Comics

Mutantkind has changed. No longer societal outcasts but a global, independent power of their own, the Dawn of X at Marvel Comics has seen the X-Men and other mutants rise as a new kind of societybut one among them is starting to wonder what the spiritual cost of their collective rebirth really is: Nightcrawler.

The bold re-alignment of mutantkinds place in the Marvel Comics oeuvre underneath the guidance of Jonathan Hickman since House of X and Powers of X has dramatically flipped the lid on what it means to be a mutant. Since the arrival of Krakoa as a sovereign nation, the mutant peoples of Earth have come together in a form of unity unseen in eons. Its more than just a new home, a new government, a new approach to the outside world both amicable yet isolationist in equal measure. Krakoa has brought with it the seeming antidote to decades of persecution and decimation that has driven X-books for years: Mutants have defeated death itself, and through the powers of Krakoan resurrection, they are ascendant.

In the years since HoXPoX, there have been series across the X-catalog that touch on the fact that the X-Men and their fellow mutants ability to just cheat death is pushing their new society down dark, disturbing paths. But this week, the first issue of Way of Xby Si Spurrier, Bob Quinn, Java Tartaglia, Clayton Cowles, and X-Team designer Tom Mulleris the first time one of these books of this hopeful new era has really taken a step back and to question if there is something deeply rotten in the state of Krakoa.

Deep down, it comes to a singular question: what is faith when you live in Edens garden?

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Way of X centers this question on perhaps the most spiritual of the X-Men, Kurt Wagner, the Nightcrawler. On Krakoa, Kurt has been an important figurenot just an operative on the X-Team but one of its leading council. Hes the one who helped establish Krakoan societys core tenants, forged the founding of it as a nation with one simple rule: Make More Mutants. But he is also naturally the perfect lens to frame the concept of mutant spirituality through; a former man of the cloth and a devout Catholic, faith has been at the core of who Kurt is as a person for much of his Marvel comics lifea life that has seen him face cosmic gods, confront his hellish upbringing, and face death and rebirth even before Krakoa made that a mundanity of a new, blessed kind of life. His faith has never left him, a choice to believe in a life of the unbelievable.

But Krakoa has begun to test it.

Way of X sees Kurt more isolated from his fellow mutants than seemingly ever, as questions claw at his consciousness, questions whose voices grow only louder when he begins to see cracks in his society that we as readers have been speculating about ever since the early days of House and Powers. Even having experienced it himself, Kurt has become fascinated and haunted by mutants new approach to resurrectionand what the belief that death is just a momentary status, an annoyance rather than the ultimate arbiter of a persons being, has done to every single mutant who calls Krakoa home.

Surrounded by young people who see death not as something to be feared, but to be chased and experiencedtheir lives thrown away with a casualness that, to them, reads as confidence but to Kurt reads as something chillingthe X-Mens usually chipper teleporting trapeze artist finds himself in a crisis of faith hes not seen in years. Krakoan Resurrection, Kurt believes, has already fundamentally changed mutants as we know it, and not entirely for the better. Death by death, rebirth by rebirth, the very soul of Mutantkind is being chipped away to leave something much darker in its stead.

Whether its watching fellow teammate Pixie gleefully embrace a shotgun-blast to the face from an anti-mutant terrorist to the cheers and glee of her allies, or even pondering the role his own faitha human faithhas in a distinctly mutant society, Kurt finds himself seeing a coolness behind his companions seeming joy at making death an impossibility. Without death as a factor, he sees a society that is more than just alien from a biological standpoint, but almost alien from a spiritual, moralistic standpoint. What does it mean to sacrifice, if you know it is only for a moment? What does judgment mean when taking a life is not the ultimate act, but a crucible for rebirth? Can mutants be, as people say of Kurt throughout Way of X #1, the kindly ones, when immortality has slowly begun to rob them of a moral core?

These questions dont just plague Kurt on a personal level as he contrasts his faith with his new life on Krakoa, they also allow Way of X to begin answering another question readers have been dying to see answered since House and Powers of X founded this nation in the first place. Watching nation-making happening is fascinating, sure enough, but whats its actually like to live in the nation you have made for yourself?

Part of life in any society is some kind of belief system. Connecting an entirely new society of the size of Krakoa bleeds into theoretical concepts like Dunbars numberthe belief that after a certain limit, the number of cognitive connections an individual can make with other people can only increase on abstract rather than personal levels, through ideas like law, faith, and mythologies. Its a concept namechecked in the issue itself, when an angst-ridden Kurt crosses paths with kooky mutant scientist/occasional megalomaniac Doctor Nemesis (whos taken to growing Krakoan fungi out of his own head as an experiment).

As it turns out, Krakoa isnt exactly lacking in those ideas, even as were repeatedly reminded in this issue by those around him that Kurt has been trying, and mostly failing, to create some kind of new mutant-based faith system. While Kurt has not managed to do so yet, certain kinds of rituals and mythologies have already begun to crop up in paradise... and theyre not exactly quite so comforting as whatever system he had hoped to conceive.

When Kurt first crosses paths with Nemesis, for example, hes watching over a campfire gathering of young children, being told tales of the Great Pretender, a boogeyman-like term adopted for Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, after her decimation of Mutantkind in House of M. The children in turn counter with another dark myth of their own, a thread interwoven throughout the background of Way of X: the Patchwork Man, a shadowy figure that apparently stalks Krakoa psychically suggesting dark acts or mutilating people. Then theres the ritual Kurt seemingly hates most of all in paradise: the Crucible, a trial-by-combat that allows Mutants depowered by Wandas chaos magic to be reborn with their abilities restored.

We get to see a particularly horrifying example of it in action, in fact. A mutant wed seen earlier begging Kurt for help, as one of those aforementioned kindly ones (he brushed them off thinking they simply needed directions) ends up facing the Crucibles most ardent defender, Magneto. The mutant, named only as Lost, was instead begging for Kurt to be her Crucible opponent, it turns out. It also turns out opponent is not exactly the right word. Crucible participants are choosing an executioner, as crowds whoop and wail that their brutal death at a fellow mutants hands is actually joyous, the indicator that one of their kind once taken from them is about to return to the fold.

Kurt is horrified, as likewise we are intended to be, but it all comes back to that central question: what do faith and morality look like in a world of abundance, what are ethics in a world where death is no longer one of lifes constants? They look like this: cold, cruel, calculated, and distant. They look wrong. And maybe it is, as an unseen narrator opens the issue (one heavily suggested to be Kurt, writing the beginning of what could become his Krakoan faith), an anxiety arisen from outdated modes of thought rooted in the outside world. We are, after all, aliens looking into the window of this new society and what it is meant to bebut the factthat Kurt feels as we as an audience are meant to shows just where cracks are starting to appear in Krakoas bountiful paradise.

Nightcrawler doesnt have all the answers just yet but hes trying to find some semblance of them. With the Dawn of X having laid the foundations of this new mutant world, watching one of their own wrestle with the heady idea of how to live in its imperfect perfection is already proving to be one of the most fascinating X-series on shelves.

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The X-Men Are Losing Their Soul, and Nightcrawler Wants to Find It - Gizmodo