Disinformation: The Interviews – Richard Metzger
Disinformation: The Interviews – Richard Metzger – The Disinformation Company, Ltd.
“The idea is that you will be different after you’ve read this book. Changed permanently,” says author Richard Metzger in his introduction, adding, “This book intends to fuck your head up, real good.”
This may not be true for readers of “Clamor”, who probably have already been inoculated by ideas outside of the mainstream. But the interviews in this book, taken from episodes of a television series that ran for two seasons on Britain’s Channel 4 network, should point you to different ways of thinking about your existence.
Metzger wants to take us outside the narrow range of what we are indoctrinated to accept. UFOs, other dimensions, and magick are all discussed by various individuals in an attempt to find new ways to view reality.
Metzger, who is also the creative director of the excellent www.disinfo.com web site, quotes a wide variety of influences in his search for alternative ideas. The eleven interviewees also differ, from the mainstream futurist Douglas Rushkoff to the dedicated outsider Genesis P-Orridge, leader of the rock band Throbbing Gristle.
The outsiders look better in this book. Rushkoff’s ideas, for example, seem conventional enough to be delivered in expensive seminars (“Corporations aren’t really alive. They are a set of instructions for making money.”). But you can pretty much count on people like Robert Anton Wilson (the “Illuminatus Trilogy” of speculative fiction) to offer intriguing comments about subjects such as conspiracy theories.
There are also beautiful pictures of art included. Paul Laffoley (the only interviewee that gets two separate chapters) produces work that mixes Kabbala-like maps with diagrams that look like cross sections of unknown machines which might be spaceships.
The second chapter devoted to him covers just one painting, “Thanaton III”, which Laffoley calls “participatory”, meaning that one can view other dimensions by placing one’s hands on the painting while gazing at it.
The artwork of Norbert H. Kox is also presented. Kox’s work is considered blasphemous, not surprisingly since various paintings show Christ posing as the Statue of Liberty or smoking a pipe. The point of Kox’s work is to fight hypocrisy, though. For example, “Dis’guised” (the Christ with a pipe) is a satire of a very popular picture that shows the Son of Man as an Aryan with blue eyes and blond hair. The real Jesus was, after all, a Jew from the Middle East.
Other interviewees include Grant Morrison (who has done graphic novels of Batman and worked on X-Men comics), Duncan Laurie, who talks about subtle energy machines that can produce magickal effects, and Kembra Pfahler, whose performance art includes shock pieces like sewing up her vagina.
By the time this is published the U.S. will probably be at war with Iraq. No better example can be given of the bankruptcy of “conventional wisdom”. And although some of the things presented in this book are strange, you can be sure that none of them are as stupid or noxious as this glorious conflict will be.
- Dave Howell
(This article first appeared in Clamor Magazine.
“The idea is that you will be different after you’ve read this book. Changed permanently,” says author Richard Metzger in his introduction, adding, “This book intends to fuck your head up, real good.”
This may not be true for readers of “Clamor”, who probably have already been inoculated by ideas outside of the mainstream. But the interviews in this book, taken from episodes of a television series that ran for two seasons on Britain’s Channel 4 network, should point you to different ways of thinking about your existence.
Metzger wants to take us outside the narrow range of what we are indoctrinated to accept. UFOs, other dimensions, and magick are all discussed by various individuals in an attempt to find new ways to view reality.
Metzger, who is also the creative director of the excellent www.disinfo.com web site, quotes a wide variety of influences in his search for alternative ideas. The eleven interviewees also differ, from the mainstream futurist Douglas Rushkoff to the dedicated outsider Genesis P-Orridge, leader of the rock band Throbbing Gristle.
The outsiders look better in this book. Rushkoff’s ideas, for example, seem conventional enough to be delivered in expensive seminars (“Corporations aren’t really alive. They are a set of instructions for making money.”). But you can pretty much count on people like Robert Anton Wilson (the “Illuminatus Trilogy” of speculative fiction) to offer intriguing comments about subjects such as conspiracy theories.
There are also beautiful pictures of art included. Paul Laffoley (the only interviewee that gets two separate chapters) produces work that mixes Kabbala-like maps with diagrams that look like cross sections of unknown machines which might be spaceships.
The second chapter devoted to him covers just one painting, “Thanaton III”, which Laffoley calls “participatory”, meaning that one can view other dimensions by placing one’s hands on the painting while gazing at it.
The artwork of Norbert H. Kox is also presented. Kox’s work is considered blasphemous, not surprisingly since various paintings show Christ posing as the Statue of Liberty or smoking a pipe. The point of Kox’s work is to fight hypocrisy, though. For example, “Dis’guised” (the Christ with a pipe) is a satire of a very popular picture that shows the Son of Man as an Aryan with blue eyes and blond hair. The real Jesus was, after all, a Jew from the Middle East.
Other interviewees include Grant Morrison (who has done graphic novels of Batman and worked on X-Men comics), Duncan Laurie, who talks about subtle energy machines that can produce magickal effects, and Kembra Pfahler, whose performance art includes shock pieces like sewing up her vagina.
By the time this is published the U.S. will probably be at war with Iraq. No better example can be given of the bankruptcy of “conventional wisdom”. And although some of the things presented in this book are strange, you can be sure that none of them are as stupid or noxious as this glorious conflict will be.
- Dave Howell
(This article first appeared in Clamor Magazine.