Aesthetics
Upcoming CREATION documentary
A heads-up that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s documentary about CREATION, the queer insurrectionary science fiction climate change religion developed by artist Deborah Kelly and her collaborators, will soon be available. It’s scheduled for 6.30pm eastern standard time this coming Sunday across Australia and will also be available internationally through the ABC’s youtube channel from Sunday morning (roughly … Read moreUpcoming CREATION documentary
The Church of Burn
Introducing the Church of Burn: Art-Magic Cult? New Age Religion? Ritualists? Gnostics? Chaos Mages? When the Fitzwilliam Museum described Church of Burn as “organisers of special events that resemble religious ceremonies,” it felt like we were being observed through the lens of a Victorian anthropologist — as if our rituals needed some kind of official … Read moreThe Church of Burn
The Temple of Poetic Faiths
Here is the notional Temple of Poetic Faiths (ignore most of the text, it’s AI gibberish). Here is a place – perhaps an installation in a modern art gallery, perhaps a civic center in a nation that truly values things like art and imagination and religious pluralism – wherein are found the altars and shrines … Read moreThe Temple of Poetic Faiths
A future of religion (and religion of the future)
Must it be taken for granted that “religion” is superstitious, authoritarian and fixed in time? Cultpunks imagine and enact alternatives, working towards a time we may never live to see.
Te Ātea and the Potentials of Civic Mythopoetics in New Zealand
Recently returned from a trip to New Zealand, where I was heartened and intrigued to note that traditional Māori cultural/spiritual symbolism is increasingly being incorporated into public space design. The photo above is of Te Ātea (“the Space”) on the Lake Taupo foreshore: There are a number of different elements that come together to form … Read moreTe Ātea and the Potentials of Civic Mythopoetics in New Zealand
Possession Ritual
Polish/West German DJ and conceptual performance artist Jemek Jemowit is possessed by American Satanist Jex Blackmore in this 2022 ritual piece.
The Atomic Priesthood Project
The Atomic Priesthood Project was initiated in the early 1980s as a collaboration between semiotician Thomas Sebeok and nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg. The Project is: (…) an ongoing multidisciplinary project illustrating the relationship(s) between humans and deep time through the culture of nuclear waste stewardship. The Atomic Priesthood was a proposed system of communicating the … Read moreThe Atomic Priesthood Project
“This is not black magic”: the Voodoo renaissance in New Orleans
Voodoo priestess Manbo Jessyka and high priestess Eshé introduce the practice as a way of life and as a means of connecting to ancestors through everyday rituals and spiritual reflection.
ManWoman and Church Punk
As niche and subversive a notion as CultPunk may be, it has some fairly recent cultural progenitors, if you look hard enough. One was the “Church Punk” aesthetic of the Canadian visionary artist and poet ManWoman, who sought to reclaim the ancient emblem of the sun wheel/swastika from association with Nazi atrocity and who wrote, … Read moreManWoman and Church Punk