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??: What is Snake Beings? What was it from the very start and what is it now? Why Snake Beings? Acitvities?
Snake-Beings: Emit Snake-Beings, like Human-Beings, was a mythical creature that existed only in the imagination. Finally it came to life and became the legal identity of one of the humans who helped summon its existence into being. The name came from Hackney E8 a large inner city area of London forgotten and left to rot until its recent discovery and connection to the metro system by the authorities. There were many empty houses which were squatted and within these grew a culture comprised of many diverse strands. Some of these inhabitants had dogs and other animals which had been given human names. I found that this struck a peculiar chord within me and so in honor of this phenomena chose an animal name. Emit spells time backwards and also ‘Ant’ or ‘tourist’ in Cornish, Cheryl Benson gave me that name because of a film I had made which had a sped up clock rotating backwards with time-lapse maggots crawling on its face. Activities include Sound and Film, WebArt, OVNI-CODE, coin operated electrical shrines, Super 8 film, word, and experimentation with media/ medium.
??: What inspires you? I’ve noticed esoteric and dada themes. What is your both physical and non-physical world outlook?
Snake-Beings: Peculiarities in everyday life inspire me. I am constantly amazed at the strangeness which passes as science, technology or social normality. Almost unquestionable in their authority, the gatekeepers of this strangeness seem to have free rein. For example statistics have shown that modern medicine has a 40-50% chance of improving a persons health over psychosomatic treatment or no treatment at all, Andy Warhol was killed by a negligent nurse during a routine stay in hospital. Have you ever wondered what happens when a doctor takes a blood or urine sample, shifting the sample bottle quickly out of the door, out of your sight, those body fluids which contain an essence of you. Take a look in a medical school library, the Welcome Institute in London has one of the largest collections of Alchemical texts, Voodoo, witchcraft and alternative religions. The doctor has reached a stage where he/ she can be trusted not to tell, not to confuse the public over the fine line between technology and magic. This may be the subject of my next film called ‘Death of an Orchestra’ (subtitled ‘Death of the Audience’ relating to the mass media driven narrowing of visual language) perhaps the link between seemingly disparate subjects are very clear to you, you who have seen the soul catcher which dwells behind the television tube and is energised by the constant trance state of the viewer. The soul catcher is a great trophy to be collected after the delicious implosion of the vacuum and the spirits of the Cathode Ray Tube are released into the air. In the process of making ‘The Shrine’ film I caught glimpses of something way beyond the ‘high art’ forms which are the traditional aims for people following this path.
??: What about the reality you create? Yes we can understand/ get it partly watching your videos or listening to your music, but i’m interested in your feeling of reality, “here and now”, can you describe it?
Snake-Beings: Reality is a large subject to describe, perhaps taking an infinite lifetimes of sketches, failures and redraws. Keep making, keep doing , hear the synthetic clock chimes masquerading as ‘authentic’ and use creativity to dispel the poison of social control which limit our horizons. Reality is a process of seeing and not a thing in its self.
??: Such slogans as “kill for your government kill” talks about your political awareness. Dont you think that there’s no point to dive into such things, but better to keep on personal topics or something.
Snake-Beings: The politics of creation, need you really be a doctor of Art or Music before you are allowed to create.... No. Nor Hollywood to make film, CNN to have an opinion, what ever happened to the Manifesto? A declaration of war against the mundane. Resisting the present trend of ‘Conceptual Minimalism’ and revealing it for what it is- a lack of ideas or the fear of expression. Con-Temporary (a non-permanent trick or con, this too will pass) art reflects a society based on the vacuum behind the screen. The general brainwashing of the population through exposure to an increasingly narrow field of viewpoints, is for me great subject matter for music, art, or film. Whether it really is ‘political’ or not why limit yourself to subject matter which is designed for maximum slickness, abrasion is a beautiful sound too.
??: How would you explain big interest of esoterics that we face nowadays?
Snake-Beings: In a cynical frame of mind some would see the escalation of magic as a byproduct of political powerlessness, magic creates the impression that we have some form of power over the dolls house which we command, distracting from the realisation that we are the dolls in someone else’s little wooden house. But there are other reasons for the escalation of the esoteric, which are the result of the information age, people can find out these things and apply the principles. I find the mainstream use of magic a very interesting subject, look at advertising and street posters, television and the media, the psychic medium which channels the desires of the few and makes it the goal of the many. People can see this, perversely, by ignoring the mass media and sharpening the senses through the creation of self-media, even borrowing some of the same techniques the root of which is technological magic.
??: What is modern magic for you? What is modern shaman then?
Snake-Beings: Modern magic is everywhere, by using techniques of the traditional Shaman, retreat, trance or abstraction, anybody can find the tools for decoding the mass media blanket trance and seeing the use of magic which flows beneath. The modern medical doctor is a great example of someone who borrows from the ancient Shaman, mixing technology and the technological names of power which control the subject, e.g. ZombieChrome, addictive pacifiers who’s name magically jumps from the pen to headed note paper, diagnosed and diseased in one swoop. To see the world through primitive eyes which cut beneath the oil-slick surface of the product, into the meaning which lies obscured enabling any person to create their own archetypes and transmit them through the wires.
??: There’s a strong attention to electricity in your activities, why? Is it a key to something?
Snake-Beings: Electricity and magnetism are still unknown forces, even scientists still don’t understand magnetism, the thrust of science is to develop uses for these mysterious forces, not to explain them. In the two years in which I studied electrical engineering, no explanation was ever given, however numerous uses of this power were examined. Look at the electricity grid system, a mysterious force which connects cities and towns, this mysterious force enters the home and scatters into a million fragments, fine wires within the filament of the lightbulb, and brain-like computer circuits, fibrous and organic structures which serve us. These phenomena are a modern mystery, I’m surprised daily by its continued usefulness.
??: Snake Beings music is simple, hypnotic rhythms, psychedelic vocals and quite minimalistic composition. Actually it doesn’t seem that you create just for the sake of creation, but to get into the other state of ind, just the way a primal shaman does in his ritual. So does your musical expression appeal to that phenomena (of primal shamanism)?
Snake-Beings: The modern Shaman is essentially the same as the ancient variety, one eye inwards and the other on the outside world, as the OKOK society would say (the Shaman) ‘operates better in the shadows’. This position provides the most ‘stability’ from which the shaman can set forth. Each Shaman finds their own way but for me creativity is a great tool, the voice of the pragmatist may say ‘that is not true’ but for me truth is in the making, and if someone decides to make something true and works towards that aim, given time and consistency, reality will mold itself around those thoughts. Art can be a convincing alibi in which Shamanistic states of mind can be dissipated, however, not forgetting that the product is at best a signpost and the smallest hint of the process. Look at the painter, watch them work, then take away the final product, destroy it, what is left? A performance, a delving, and a trance like state. The artifact of Art can sometimes obscure the real substance of the act. Read Music instead of Art, if you are that way inclined. But try it for yourself… channeled in it’s dead like trance state, dragged screaming from the Cathode Ray.
??: What are your main esoteric inspirators? Why? Do you have any esoteric system(s) that you follow? Or maybe just some principles? What are they?
Snake-Beings: Professor Branestawm written by Norman Hunter or Catweazle by Richard Carpenter are two characters in which I have found much inspiration. Professor Branestawm for his crazed inventions which defy common acceptable usage of technology. I spent a while researching the Patents office in Holborn London, in which the descriptions of various inventions were recorded. Look under the subject of Religion technology (code A47 the origins of circuit47 (http://www.circuit47.com/)) and you will find many examples of the perceived connections between Art, Technology, Magic and Religion which runs beneath the surface of so-called-civilised modern society. Catweazle is an 11th century sorcerer transported to the modern world. His concept of ‘Electrickery’ and way of seeing all technology as sorcerery greatly influenced me as a child. The life and work of Brion Gysin, Ian Sommerville, William Burroughs and other modern day ‘hackers’ of reality who have felt free to alter or adapt constructs around themselves and anyone who decides to transmit their own archetypes are a great source of inspiration. As is the film and sculpture of Jan Svankmajer, in particular his use of background sound in connection with image. Uncle Aleister, Rene Magritte, Herman Hesse, this could end up being a very long list.
??: What are the main ideas expressed in your video material “Nana Shaemanic”?
Snake-Beings: The film Nana Shaemanic (‘see review in this issue’ I write optimistically) combines several characters into the main character of the Oracle, one of which, Silvia Von Mattlocke, I invented to personify Suburban Shamanism, an outwardly mundane person who ‘accidentally’ stumbles upon a form of magic hidden within everyday acts. In the case of Silvia Von Mattlocke, the esoteric occurs in the supermarket, between daily products of various magical significance, between symbolic meaning, a state of being outside of the excessively verbal human mind. I chose Film as the medium of transmission, though Music can be used as well which is a present time project with Martin Webclaw called “FET MUSIC” or ‘FIT MUSIC’ which attempts to recreate the ideas of Nana Shamanic, who creates meaning by channeling the convulsive body movements during a voodoo trance state through the predictive text mechanism of a mobile phone, allowing technicians to interpret the trance state in the same way that a Tibetian Oracle would be utilised. (read ‘Seven years in Tibet’ for a good description of an oracle) The film Nana Shaemanic also contains a section on ‘Remote Viewing’ a form of Astral travel put to use during the cold war to psychically spy on enemy positions but adapted within the film to suggest the imaginative viewing of distant objects and a form of ‘cultural yearning’ which takes place in countries as isolated as New Zealand, where I am currently based, and where ‘Remote projection’ via internet, imagination, astral travel or DIY media is also a common phenomena.
SNAKE BEINGS:
http://www.snakebeings.co.nz/
