July 16, 2002, 8:52 PM

Lowlands removes suicide preacher

Henk Willem Smits

Groningen - Mojo, the organizer of the Lowlands festival, has definitively canceled the planned performance of American house musician and suicide consultant Chris Korda. This is in response to an article in the Dagblad van het Noorden about Korda as, among other things, a pastor of the Church of Euthanasia, which wants to combat overpopulation by encouraging suicide.

The website of the Church of Euthanasia explains how to commit suicide. Korda also made a video clip in which images of the September 11 attacks are mixed with hard porn. Korda planned to show the clip at Lowlands. "We were not familiar with Korda's ideology," says Lowlands festival director Erik van Eerenburg. Yesterday, he and his staff did delve into Korda. "I find it very distasteful, it made me feel sick," Van Eerenburg says now. "It was annoying that the newspaper said he would be at Lowlands."

The Lowlands programmers were offered Korda in a 'package' with house artists. "We listened to a CD and thought it was good music, but we didn't know anything else about him". Hans van Rompaey of the Lowlands promotion team: "We often have a band or artist at our festival with strange lyrics, but then there is a certain show element. With Korda, such a relativism is missing, he seems to be serious. We have had a suicide at Lowlands in the past. We didn't think it was appropriate to put someone on stage who shouts: 'save the planet, kill yourself'."

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