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BAD TO THE BONE
Truly wicked pissah at MIT
BY MIKE MILIARD

It’s Dr. Evil. I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called "mister," thank you very much.

Dr. Evil, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

At 11 a.m. last Sunday, as millions entered churches to pray for the soul of Pope John Paul II, I ventured instead to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to spend six hours studying the ways of evil. A symposium moderated by artist, writer, and MIT alum Ross Cisneros, "Regarding Evil" gathered scholars, theorists, musicians, and a satanic priest to confront the "elusive and immeasurable subject of evil, its transpolitical behaviors, charismatic aesthetic, and viral dispersement in the vast enterprise of simulation, symbolic power, and catastrophe." It sounded like tons of fun.

For the record, Cisneros told the almost-full auditorium, "I am not in praise of evil." His audience didn’t look particularly iniquitous, either. In addition to the gathered academics, however, Cisneros had invited Charles Manson to participate. Alas, Manson was indisposed. But in response to Cisneros’s letter requesting his thoughts on evil, Manson sent a missive of his own. "You’re no faker," Cisneros read from the scrawled note. "A cat, a rat, big brain, little brain. It was a big ship. And, if your friend sank the Titanic, well, let’s see. They will shut you out if you get close, but you don’t want to play dumb. Ching a ling a bling blong." The students took notes.

The more coherent presenters approached the pervasive problem of evil in unorthodox and illuminating ways. Artist Julian Laverdiere, who helped conceive the World Trade Center "Towers of Light" tribute, described seeing his studio on the 91st floor of Tower One obliterated, and, later, watching his commemorative project being co-opted as political propaganda (appearing on right-wing pamphlets and collectible hunting knives). In a talk called "Evil’s Political Habitats," Hobart-William Smith poli-sci professor Jodi Dean dissected evil’s presence in presidential speeches, noting that in the speeches of George W. Bush, evil flourishes as an abstract force that must be opposed in concrete terms. Ronald Jones, a professor at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts, and Design, in Stockholm, talked about the intersection of art and evil — like the Nazi crematoriums that were surrounded by peaceful gardens so as to avoid causing "unnecessary alarm" in the victims for whom they provided a last earthly glimpse. Or the "psychotechnic torture" employed by anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, where prison cells were spangled with wild colors, strange shapes, and shifting light in order to make their inhabitants confused and distressed.

The star of this show, though, was Boyd Rice, industrial-music maven, media provocateur, and dabbler in fascism and satanism. He entered to a cacophonous soundtrack: loud, thrumming, sulphurous drones evocative of subterranean insect swarms or menacing drums rumbling in the distance. This is what hell sounds like, I thought. Standing in a severe black shirt, eyes hidden behind obsidian shades, he gripped the podium and screamed over the din: "Do you want total war? Turn man into beast once more? Do you want to rise and kill? To show the world an iron will? Do you want total war? Yes you want total war!" The audience sat in stunned silence.

Sitting down afterward, indulging in a nostril of snuff, Rice discussed his attraction to Anton LaVey, the late high priest of the Church of Satan (satanism is a remedy to a "world corrupted by Judeo-Christian values," of course); the skinned sheep’s head he presented to then–first lady Betty Ford (the Secret Service was not amused); and his buddy Charlie Manson’s wicked sense of humor ("If he ever got out, he could do stand-up"). After he was joined by the rest of the panel, a discussion ensued about Abraxas, the gnostic deity who incorporated good and evil. About the weird propensity for failed artists — Manson, Hitler — to become bloodthirsty monsters. About whether the fireballs of 9/11 could be viewed as performance art. (Answer: definitely not. But if the planes had flown between the towers, that would’ve been art.)

The day, which by now was severely behind schedule, closed with a screening of Matthew Barney’s De Lama Lamina, whose precise relation to evil I could not immediately discern. At any rate, I had to leave halfway through, since I was having friends over to watch the Red Sox take on the Yankees. To stare evil in the face, in other words. Evil won, 9-2.


Issue Date: April 8 - 14, 2005
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