Sept 22, 2008 |
On Insects, live at Divus Gallery, London 09-08
(photo by M. Trzcinska)
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Artist Feature by Todd Brooks / Pendu Magazine and Gallery
Raymond Salvatore Harmon is a prolific filmmaker, musician, writer, and artist from Chicago, IL currently based in London, UK. He takes a moment with Pendu in an email interview to discuss Aleister Crowley, Chaos Magic, the Dreammachine, Wolf Eyes, as well as giving a bit of history and insight into the last 10 years of his work. |
Pendu: You just finished your collaborative live performance "On Insects" on September 12 with Dave Phillips. Mark Durgan, Lee Gamble and Mlehst all played that night as well; how was the show?
RSH: This was the first time Dave and I had ever collaborated on a project together. We have been talking about it on and off for over a year and things just came together. The show went very well, the set came together very nicely, and the other performers were astounding. All in all a great night to be in London.
My next show in London, on September 27th, will be the public premiere of a work titled Sigils of the Heptameron . Sigils was commissioned several years ago for a private occult film performance. This presentation will be in support of a new theatrical performance of Orryelle Defenestrate-BasculeÕs new Metamorphic Ritual Theatre Production âOedipus Tyranos. In the meantime I am going to Ciechocinek, Poland to perform at the Depresja Festival on Sept 19th and 20th.
Pendu: You've been making artwork for over 10 years now in the public sphere, how did you get started? Is there a particular artist or group of artists that really sparked your interest in making art?
RSH: I grew up in an artistically inclined family in small town America. In the late 1980s while in high school I had the good fortune to become involved with a class called 'commercial art', taught by Dennis Turner. Turner saw the future of art. In 1989 we had more sophisticated digital technology in our classroom than any major university's art dept. Commodore Amigas, Lightwave 3D modelling, a Newtech Video Toaster editing setup, an Avid linear multi deck tape editing room, plus a full painting studio. In 1990 I used ASCII schematics from the preweb internet to modify a nintendo 'powerglove' into a dataglove-like VR interface that could manipulate a 3D object on the screen. We were even beta testing software for Disney and other animation and 3d development companies.
It was an amazing place and time to be. We went to lectures by Steve Aukstakalnis (author of Silicon Mirage, the first book on virtual reality), toured the R&D labs of Ford motor company and saw how 3D car modeling was done. Our class was even on the promo list of record labels like 4AD and Waxtrax. We listened to Bauhaus and Ministry all day making art, I was only 16 when I started.
Pendu: You started out in art primarily painting and making objects, what shaped your move into film and more specifically into abstract film?
RSH: Even though I had been doing all of the 3D stuff and working with computers I was much more interested in my teens in Pollock and de Kooning. Tech was great, but paint has a romanticism that captures the mind of a 16 year old. We spent whole days just painting and listening to music when I was young.
Sometime in college, I lived in one of those houses that exist in college-town America. The kind with no one on a lease but 10 bedrooms and people come and go regularly, everyone splitting the rent by how many people were living there that month. In the basement someone had left a 16mm projector. I dug it out and fixed it up and a friend brought over a little red wagon full of educational films (plus a complete print of the Lon Chaney, Hunchback of Notre Dame) and we started showing them in my backyard out of my rear bedroom window. I had been a projectionist in a movie theater in my late teens. Soon I was projecting 'visuals' over my friends bands.
Over the years I never thought of what I was doing as film though, just 'messing around.' In 1999 a few years after moving to Chicago I showed one of my film experiments to a friend, Amy Beste, and she told me I should screen it. We were both on the screening committee for the Chicago Underground Film Fest so I approached the director Jay Bliznick and they screened it. That was my first film ever shown in public.
The shift from film to video came on a tour in 2003. I was lugging along around 200lbs of 16mm and 8mm projectors and film. It would take me 2 hours to setup every show, then and hour to pack up at the end of the night. The guy I was touring with would just take out his laptop and a small device and plug it into the video projector and be ready.
Well, I thought, I have to make this easier to do. It happened gradually. I was setting up shows and doing the film bit on a banquet table and projecting on a small screen at the other end of the table. Down in front of the crowd instead of in the booth. I would have a dv camera on the table capturing what I was creating and send the svideo cable up to the video projector to be screened above my head on the big screen in the theater. At some point I started messing with and circuit bending the signal to the projector. Eventually the film equipment became dvd players and then finally I moved to pure video feedback (unless a subliminal source is required). I still never use laptops in my process, unless maybe as a straight dvd player. Hand modified cheap electronics all the way.
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Rites of Eleusis, live at Horse Hospital, London 03-08
(photo by M.Trzcinska) |
Pendu: I know you are always being asked about Aleister Crowley since you've drawn direct inspiration from his writings, specifically for the film 'Rites of Eleusis', but could you talk about your personal connection to the writings of Aleister Crowley? When did you discover his work and how did it affect you?
RSH: I got into the occult at a pretty young age. By 11 my taste for classic mythology had lead me to Joseph Campbell and from there I started looking for more obscure texts. Once I figured out the interloan system of the public library I was reading Crowley and Levi, Agrippa, Vaughan, Francis Barrett, A.E. Waite. This was around age 13. I think my first Crowley text was Magick in Theory and Practice probably around 1989. It would be years before I really understood any of it.
What I think interested me in ceremonial magick and the western occult revival of the late 19th early 20th centuries was the convergence of so many influences and ideas within these systems. From Egyptian mythology, Hebrew Kabbalah, and 15th century alchemy to Sufi and Hindi eastern influences. So much cultural influx and cross referencing.
The thing that strikes me the most about Crowley is this "Great Beast" persona he had. Okay, he did drugs, was bisexual and had a taste for the lurid. But what he is talking about is yoga and meditation. All the dark trappings of Crowley were either invented by the press or eventually by himself in order to draw attention to his work. In many ways the scope of his influence over the world today is unbelievable.
Pendu: I've never read any of your thoughts on Austin Osman Spare, is he someone you've also spent much time reading?
RSH: I didn't discover Spare until college. A friend had a collection of his drawings and told me he had been a friend of Crowleys. I read The Book of Pleasure and Anathema of Zos straight after that. Amazing stuff. Very much the occultist Blake should have been.
Pendu: Do you have any interest in the relatively new writings coming out of Chaos Magic?
RSH: Funny enough I came to Chaos magick through the comics of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore. I was an addictive comic book reader when I was young. I have collaborated with artists who self describe as Chaos magickians and its a great system.
After I did the Rites piece in March in London I got a little withdrawn and thinking about the reaction the piece got from some of the older occult crowd who were frankly put off by the whole thing. Just then I got the nicest letter from Joel Biroco, the editor of the phenomenally influential occult magazine Kaos - published in the 1980s with an eventual run of 14 editions. He said basically that too many people slavishly follow the past and that its down to a few to follow their vision. It cheered me up considerably. |
Tactic (film still) |
Pendu: You see your work as the interweaving of occultism with art and life, do you find resistance to your work by those who don't take occult themes seriously?
RSH: So far the real resistance to my work has come from within the occult community. Some of the older, more traditional, established occultists are very resistive to change. Everybody wants to keep their black candles, hooded robes and secret handshakes. That kind of thing is great as a setting for the theater of the mind but I dont think it is necessary.
There are much more direct approaches to transcendental awareness, if one looks for them. Besides, I have never really been a team player and though many of my good friends are associated with, or members of, occult orders its not my thing really. Its great for them, just not for me. I like one to one personal collaboration but cant take the kind inter-organizational politics that a group brings to the table - this applies to film fests and non profit organizations as well as occult orders.
Pendu: The words subliminal and transcendental are used often in your writings; how would you define those words in relation to your work?
RSH: All of my occult films and much of my other work utilize multiple layers of subliminal content. Photic and auditory driving (using flashes at specific frequencies to entrain the mind's waveform output), sub-visual text in the visual field, binary beats and isotonic sound forms. All of these tools are used in order to seek out an ecstatic or trancelike state in the viewer.
I use this term "transcendental cinema" to define a very specific thing, that is a film or cinematic experience that is actively capable of, and attempting to be, the trigger for an expanded state of mental awareness. I am attempting with my occult works to explore the neurological mechanisms and psychological implications of transcendental states of the human mind.
Pendu: What part does eroticism play in your work?
RSH: Its a funny thing eroticism. In Les Fantomes de Lumiere I use the negative of a 1950's stag film (early porn). Its not one of those "panties and bras" spanking films. Its a full contact sex film that would have landed you in jail for distribution when the print was originally struck. By the time I am done with it its pretty abstract but you can still see the sex. I have made other films that use source material with sexual content. Tactic, whose original form came from internet porn, but is so corrupted by the 'editing' process you can no longer see anything that resembles a body at all. Traces started as a Tracy Lords porn clip. I composited it so deeply its just color now. There are others. I am always surprised when someone reports seeing something sexual in these films. Its as if somehow the movement contains a hidden message of sexuality without the film having any visual sexual imagery.
Pendu: Some of your work reminds me of filmic versions of Brion Gysin's Dreammachine; did the Dreammachine ever play an inspirational role for you?
RSH: I got into Burroughs in my teens. He is, to me, one of the most importantly American literary figures. He really understood the nature of the word, of language and its paradigm as a form of human expression. I built a few dreammachines as a kid, but never really got the effect of a trance state. I didnt know I was supposed to use a 78rpm player then.
Certainly Gysin's Dreammachine is using the effect of photic driving, a repeated flicker of light that causes a trance state. This is exactly what I am working on in my work. How the development of a strobing colorform can control the neural mechanics of the mind and induce the same trancelike states as the Dreammachine, though with a much higher resolution of visual control and development. |
Cloud of Unknowing, live at Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, NYC 03-03
(photo by A. Personette)
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Pendu: Intuitive improvisation is a major component of your work, do you have to restrain from being analytical during the creative process in order to maintain that spontaneity?
RSH: All the analytical work gets done quietly in the studio. I spend a lot of time in the editing process, often working on something for hours before scrapping the whole thing and going back to the source material to start over. I edited over 6 hours of source material in YHVH down to the 22 minutes of the film. Probably 600 or more edits. Not including adding the subliminals.
Once I have that done I can think about the improvised side. If its a film with this kind of content then that remains the underlying content for the whole performance - it is the source. I then develop and push the variables of that source through my live setup. Circuit bending the shapes, changing the dynamic of the piece to fit the mood of the crowd.
Of course, more than half my performance pieces are purely improvised. I have worked with an amazing group of composers and musicians over the years whose work I really respect and am inspired by. Living in Chicago for the past ten years really helped to push that bond between my visual work and the role that sound and music take in my work. I learned everything about improvisation living in Chicago.
It helped that I found myself employed more often than not by Bob Koester's Delmark Records. Getting a chance to produce records for a label whose records I had been listening to for years was a dream come true to me. Delmark has put out some of the most important records in the history of music. Anthony Braxton's Four Alto, Roscoe Mitchell's Sound, Chicago Underground Trio's Possible Cube, Ken VendermarkÕs Sound in Action Trio. Bob has been doing it longer than almost anyone and I have an amazing amount of respect for him.
But when I am performing a video piece I am not aware or anything but the sound and the light. I don't think, I am in a kind of zen state, being the form I am seeing and controlling. It is the same whether I am improvising music, painting, any active process of creation.
Pendu: You've worked with some great artists in the noise scene such as Wolf Eyes and Magik Markers. I feel there is a shared aesthetic in what you do and what they do. The common ground to me is in adhocism or what I call 'junk-jamming'; literally making improvised music from junky equipment and hand-made or circuit-bent components. Do you agree and could you describe a few of your experiences in working with them?
RSH: Yeah, we're all just from Michigan. The thing I think gets overlooked too often in the weird music press is that Michigan is for some reason a hotbed of activity in terms of experimental and avant garde music and art. I grew up there and it seemed like the most boring place on earth. Once I was outside of it I realized that because it's so damn isolated from the world people there have to do what they can with what they have. Namely be creative regardless of the situation.
It applies to other isolated realms of the world as well. If you are given everything you get bored. When you have to make do you push harder to get what you want out of it and it becomes something real. The basement I found my first projector in saw John Olson play drums in Universal Indians and Pete Nolan play guitar in Priceless Red Skeleton at house parties and band practice. |
The Philosopher's Stone (film still) |
Pendu: You also are a musician who plays guitar, banjo, and electronics in several jazz and noise groups; where do you find the common thread between your work as filmmaker, musician, and writer?
RSH: I had the good fortune to be surround by people, even in my youth, who were looking for something new from music. Sometimes that meant look back at older music, like jazz, other times that meant seeking out an obscure show at a tiny venue.
Once I moved to Chicago in my mid 20s I found a huge community of people who were coming from all walks of life and every part of the globe to live there and make music. It is a great town for a musician. So much cross fertilization occurring between communities, noise meets improv meets electronics. Anything can happen and often does.
My work - film, paint, sound, words, whatever comes out of an endless need to explore. The biggest motivator for my creative output is exploration. I am constantly looking for new forms of interaction with the world around me, be that world my immediate physical surroundings or the data/content that flows in and out of my life as art, entertainment and social interaction. So I take from the world around me the things that hold my interest and explore new ways of experiencing them.
Pendu: You've recently launched your film company Subliminal Films on Blip.TV, what can a viewer expect who is just finding out about it and what can be expected in the future?
RSH: Subliminal Films is the bit I fill in where it says "company" on the festival form. I make stuf, people often help me, the domain was available. I suppose in the end Subliminal Films will be the body of work I do that is more commercial. The live music documentaries, festival trailers, music videos, things of that nature. On the plate currently are the Wolf Eyes film Hypnotic Brutality, a Spires That in the Sunset Rise live performance called Hecate's Moon, a secret project with the Magik Markers. Long term I am working on a documentary version of the Eddie Prevost book No Sound Is Innocent, a Lionel Ziprin doc, plus a dozen other things I will get to eventually. |
Transcendental Landscapes (film still) |
Pendu: Who is your favorite young author writing currently?
RSH: I have been getting into Banana Yoshimoto's works recently. Really insightful look into the mind of young people in modern Japan. I like her themes with ghosts/spirits and how places and people can blur together. When I read her work its like a dream blog. Not a record of her dreams but the blog she would write when she is the person in her own dreams.
Pendu: What have you had on repeated play in your tape deck or on your record player lately?
RSH: I often find myself listening to things that people give me at shows, friends unfinished records, demos, etc. I have probably listened to the upcoming Rob Mazurek Quintet record I am producing more than 500 times in the past few months - its fantastic. I have been constantly listening to a soon to be released record by Kinit Her (coming out on Hinterzimmer) that has inspired me to shoot a feature film around the entire record. It has to be the most amazingly bizarre record I have ever heard. Just incredible.
Back at the studio in Chicago there is a James Brown lp on the turntable along with a stack of JB's records I got during my last trip back, mixed in with the last few American Tapes lp releases.
Pendu: Any cryptic messages that you would like to send out to the readers?
RSH: In the past year I have moved from Chicago to London. Living here has given me both new insight into my work and reinforced some ideas I have had stirring about since I was young.
We are approaching the 100 year anniversary of the birth of the Dadaist movement. From its inception dada attempted to deconstruct the established artworld and to force an evolutionary model on that art world. It gave birth to 20th century art in all of it forms and informs the entire process of creating art today because dada itself was appropriated as the language of the art world.
We live with an art world model that is based simply on the glorification, if not deification, of objects and there creators for commercial reasons. By making someone famous we make their objects worth more, thus they become collectable commercially and an investment to those who 'collect' art, be they institutions like the Tate and MOMA or collectors like Saatchi.
This model is a dead end. The experience of art is an important commodity, not the art itself. Being able to interact with, see/touch/feel a piece of art is far more important than ownership of the object. But those that own the object control access to art, charge admission, etc.
We need to create a new artworld model, something that deconstructs the established commerciality of art in exchange for the ability for anyone to experience the art itself firsthand. As the world has evolved around the exchange of information so must art evolve to become a cross platform experience, not just object deification. Artists must stop making things and start making experiences. Only then will art truly become free.
Obviam lux Lucis
http://www.raymondharmon.com
http://vimeo.com/raymondharmon
http://www.myspace.com/raymondsalvatoreharmon
http://www.subliminalfilms.blip.tv
Raymond Salvatore Harmon,
September 15th 2008 |
Three Stigmata of Marshall McLuhan, live at ATA, San Francisco 10-03
(photo by R. Sutherland) |
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Help Promote Pendu Org... tag our pages!
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Artists and Cats, 2008
A gathering of photos dedicated to artists with their cats on view now! Still accepting submissions.
If you'd like to participate send a jpg or gif to info(at)pendu.org. Be sure to include your name as well as your cat's and a link to your website. |
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JUL 27, 2008
Molly Jane Hammond
New works by Molly Jane Hammond on view now!
Read the Interview!
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JUL 5, 2008
Anthony Carriere
New works by Anthony Carriere on view now!
Read the Interview!
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JUN 1, 2008
Travis Johnson
New works by Travis Johnson on view now!
Read the Interview!
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NOV 23, 2007
http://www.merdre.pendugallery.com
Featuring the art of: Michael Alan, Nadja Arast, April Behnke, Samuel Bonnet, _Cane, John Casey, Comoseta, Conteleta, Dwarfa, Eel Eye, Laure Forêt, Jesse Gelaznik, Rebecca Gould, Max Gudmunson, Dav Guedin, Karin Hagen, H.O.P.E., Andrew James Jones, Troy June, Cassie Rose Kobeski, Ward Kuypers, Eleonore Lebidois, Matthieu Levet, Lisa Lipton, Matthew Lock, Kristie Louderbough, Gaëlle Maas, John Maters, Alex McLeod, Monica de Miguel Rubio, Pedro Mota, Mymo, Bruce New, Jeremy Nuske, Stavroula Papadaki, Chris Pottinger, Julien Quentel, Johnny Rogers, Susanne Schmidt, Shunzan, Snot, Bosse Sudenberg, Nini Sum, James Ulmer, Simon Woolham, and Yeulmaus. [on view now>>]
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| Upcoming Group Exhibitions... |
Stitched
An exhibition consisting of 30 artists who each create one holistic collage consisting of a 1 minute sound piece, a collaged image, and collaged piece of writing. |
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Hand: The Homemade Aesthetics of Cassette Labels
Interviews and images from artists who run record labels producing short-run Cassettes and CDrs and Lathes.
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Erotic Actions
Pendu Org is seeking adventurous performance artists who are interested in blurring the distinctions between art and porn... we are looking to create video documents of spontaneous sexual happenings in a "fine-art" context, creating temporary erotic zones for erotic actions.
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| Out Now on Pendu Sound Recs... |
Kristin Calvarese - Vampyre Hulk Dreamz (c-30)
Talibam! - The Excusable Earthling LP
Rippers and Creepers Vol. 1 c-69 with contributions from HeteroSkeleton, Blastocyst, Pukers, Oubliette, Ghost Moth, Vestigial Limb, Kristin Calvarese, Buffle, Pink Canoes, Usurper, Harshcore, Fully Dilated, Wasteland Jazz Unit, Fish & Sheep, Valerio Cosi, Howlin' Magic, Pet Coffins, Family Battle Snake, Pax Titania, Skozey Fetisch, Arachnid Arcade, Josh Lay, Mike Shiflet, Craniopagus, Sons of Bronson, Demonologists, Women in Tragedy, Sorc'henn, Eastern Seaboard, VxPxC, Saints, Lanterns, Nonhorse, Gullwing, and Panicsville.
Getting Rid of the Glue LP featuring Dirty Churches, Spin-17, K.P., BIG A little a, Fessenden, Eager Meek, Mialessot w/ Daniel Carter & Old Ghost, Maria Chavez, Talibam!, and Excepter
Coming Soon!
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Gang Wizard - Everyone Turned into a Baby LP
Atelecine - aVigillant Carpark 7''
Boy + Girl - Spiral Mirror CD
Brown Bird/ Pink Canoes split cs
Waves of Depression - s/t (cs)
Pendu Sound Recordings >>
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| Presented by Pendu Org... |
Pendu Org books shows for bands and curates projects for artists locally in NYC / Brooklyn.
For booking contact: info(at)pendu.org.
Our Live Actions Calendar page also includes video clips of past Actions by Pendu Org. Go to the Actions Calendar >> |
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Send letters/packages to:
Pendu Org c/o Todd Brooks
281 S. 5th St. #4
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Email: info(at)pendu.org
Phone: 347-683-7363 |
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