Chris Korda: Thank You For Not Breeding

IN THE EYES AND EARS OF MANY CONTEMPORARIES, THE DEMANDS POSTED BY CHRIS KORDA AND HIS ORGANISATION "CHURCH OF EUTHANASIA" ARE NOT JUST BOLD, BUT MORE OUTRAGEOUS: AN ATTACK ON REASON, SPIRIT, SOUL, MORALITY, HAPPINESS AND FREEDOM - IN SHORT, ON EVERYTHING THAT IS LOVED AND PRECIOUS TO US. BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT'S ABOUT IN THE END: PEOPLE CAN'T BUY AFFECTION!

Since 1995, Reverend Chris Korda has been leading his strange association with the strange name and is always willing to put himself in the crossfire of criticism with stickers, street actions, demonstrations, the newspaper "Snuff It" and, not least, his music - in other words, with communication experiments on all possible and some impossible Dada levels. And behind this superficial madness -- when you look deeper -- there is an almost ingenious method of cognitive manipulation. As far as I can now judge the Church of Euthanasia phenomenon, which was first made known to a wider public in this country with his 1998 12"ers "Save The Planet Kill Yourself" and "Sex Is Good", Dr. Timothy Leary's basic rule No. 1 applies once again: Think for yourself!

It is obvious that this is often easier said than done. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I will attempt to explain at least part of Chris Korda's philosophy. After all, I should know: Nothing is easy, but it is easy for someone. Quod erat demonstrandum...DaDaDa. Bing-Bong.

MOMMY, WHAT WERE TREES LIKE?

Hand on heart! Nobody can deny today that it is actually conceivable that children will ask their parents this question in the not too distant future. Just consider that many humanoids already know most animal and plant species only from television, books or, at best, a visit to the zoo some time ago. Of course, the environmental movement from WWF to organizations such as Greenpeace or Robin Wood and the political Green Party, which is active at least in Europe, have tried over the last 30 years (by the way, that's a whole generation!) to raise collective awareness and do good with donations, but what has it actually achieved so far? Not much, has it? In fact, someone told the driver that we were heading for a slope and after a short minute's silence both the driver and the passenger simply shouted: "So what? Step on the gas, I want fun!" And there you go, we should have fun. In Vietnam, 100,000 people have fallen into a tree for freedom. And if that's the case, then two or three animal and plant species are dying out every day: dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers and yetis are also extinct and that hasn't bothered us humans, the crown of creation: on the contrary. We feel stronger the more we think we have nature firmly under control. Avalanches? Floods? Soil erosion? Greenhouse effect? Melting polar ice caps? Acid rain? Famines? Earthquakes? -- So what? As long as I have my job, my condo, spouse and many, many children, everything is fine!

Chris Korda starts right there: just ask a question, play the good old 'what if' game through to the last consequence: hardcore Dada in the spirit of Hugo Ball and the like. After all, the paradoxes are not his own, he just manages to show in a few words the damn complicated connections that determine our everyday lives:

The American film industry is one of the main reasons why America is a rather crazy reality. But the fact that real life in the United States is dominated by various, often even more extreme Christian sects, which leave the Roman Catholic Church far behind in terms of radicalness, never really comes across in the cinema. Attentive television viewers in this country will also have seen occasional reports about the way in which the abortion debate is conducted and how homosexuals are treated on the other side of the pond: the faction that drives around in our part of the world with Yes to Life stickers and occasionally shakes its head when it is said that gays and lesbians are (almost) allowed to marry in Hamburg, attacks same-sex couples in the States with clubs and beats up both gynecologists who perform abortions and women who have abortions. Christianity that converts with sword and flame is actually a dark chapter from the Dark Ages, isn't it? Well, not necessarily. Chris Korda is declaring war on this inherently anti-life religion that wants to explain to people the vale of tears of earthly existence with the prospect of a paradisiacal 'life after death' by formally reducing its structure to absurdity by founding his own church and using as similar visual and communicative methods as possible. The newspaper "Snuff It" is in this respect nothing more than the good old parish newsletter, and the numerous stickers, a small but specific selection of which are used as subtitles in this text, try to cynically, and then somehow humorously, maneuver the car stickers of the opposing side into intellectual oblivion. The blatant contradiction between homophobia and the protection of unborn life is brutally summed up: What value -- dear Pilgrims, Puritans, Mormons, Baptists, Methodists or, for that matter, Catholics -- has an unborn child that later becomes gay or lesbian? A damn good question. It's hard to put it any better.

REAL MEN WEAR SKIRTS

Chris Korda's Church of Euthanasia has set itself the goal of supporting the balance between the still existing forms of life and the undoubtedly omni-destructive human race, or at least not to reinforce the fatal, long-established imbalance. Chris Korda makes no secret of the fact that he has a weakness for women's clothing: he is an avowed cross-dresser, and why not? Nobody cares that women walk around in trousers -- formerly symbols of male legwear. Even abortionists go out in jeans; but as soon as men act out their inherent female fantasies in order to walk through life more comfortably, at peace with themselves, it immediately becomes a drama. That is perverse.

When is a man a man? Good question, often asked, answered here for the first time, briefly and succinctly. Because only in this way can the emancipation that women rightly demand become a tangible reality: only when men are allowed to wear skirts will women really be able to occupy executive positions (are you positively sure about this, Venus -- Red). Then quota regulations will no longer be necessary, because the social balance that will then emerge will allow the social distribution of roles between the sexes to glide as if by magic into a state that will satisfy everyone, to a degree that is tolerable for both groups.

SMOKERS DO IT UNTIL THEY'RE DEAD

Although the Church of Euthanasia may seem at first glance to be a damned anti-life issue, the exact opposite is the case: Chris Korda asks people to live healthily, eat sensibly and enjoy life from start to finish. But he doesn't make any precise rules: he himself is a vegetarian, non-smoker and only uses animal-friendly make-up, but as far as the Church of Euthanasia is concerned, there is actually only one condition: don't reproduce! If you still want to have children, you can adopt. Sex is fun, but you can also say no to that and enter into a self-imposed celibacy in which only strict ritual masturbation provides occasional release. Whatever...

Do watcha like but: Don't procreate (maybe I'm wrong, but it almost sounds like you take this nonsense seriously -- Red)!

SAVE THE PLANET KILL YOURSELF!

Once again for those at risk of suicide: No one is being asked by the CoE to take their own life (thank you, great -- Red). On the contrary: Chris Korda, because of his own zest for life, does not want to stop anyone from doing the same. Only: He had this dream in which aliens appeared to him and whispered the lyrics for the techno-electro-junk-funk track, which was initially self-published, found by DJ Hell in a small American record store and prompted the aforementioned Hellmut Geier to make initial contact with the Church Of Euthanasia, initially for the purpose of mundane licensing. After all, Hell knows a thing or two about good music and recognizes it straight away when he hears it. And the multi-instrumentalist Chris Korda knows a lot about music. And since Korda, a trained programmer, developed his own sequencer software, he can finally put aside the headaches that CuBase and Logic caused him and, almost as if he were dreaming, record the album in record time that for me is already the album of the year 1999: "Six Billion Humans Can't Be Wrong". Incidentally, this is the first full-time album on the International Deejay Gigolo outlet from Munich, which has so far been famous and notorious for kicking disco maxis.

It's Music For The Headstrong. Don't be afraid...

Venus23.

The preceding is a translation. The original language is here.