Chris Korda and his songs in favor of euthanasia

Is electronic music dead?

North American trans producer Chris Korda says she makes electronics only to continue with her Church's plan of euthanasia. Their motto: "Save the planet, kill yourself"

By Aldo F. M. Benítez

"Save the planet, kill yourself," reads one of the posters of the Church of Euthanasia headed by Chris Korda.

Dubbed the "Bob Dylan of climate change" by the prestigious German magazine Groove, it is enough to read some of the lyrics from her latest album Apologize to the Future (something like: "Apologize to the future") to realize the reason for the alias. "Your life is built on convenient lies / And the time has come to apologize / Corporations lie; that's what they do / But you lie to yourself at your own peril / Climate disasters on your TV / It just couldn't happen to you to your family / Drowning cities are so disconcerting / But the victims must be less deserving than you and yours, because you are the best / Working hard to enslave the rest / Of course it had nothing to do with luck / Or a lottery of sperm and eggs won for a fuck.", he says among other things in carefully rhymed, pessimistic and monotonous English in the title track of the album. Cultivator of a style that always flirts with an exact polyrhythm of ultra-plastic and opaque sounds, she almost always aligns herself with the funky-house electronic music genre. Having published three other albums in that line in 2019 and 2020: purely instrumental (Akoko Ajeji, Polymeter and Magic Cookie EP), in these he seemed to be elaborating in his mind the need to use his highly processed voice and on the verge of rap in the future. nearby. Almost a rapping robot. In his musical procedure there seems to reside a clear intention to distance himself from his own human condition. On their instrumental albums, the hilariously named track "Fleshdance" (something like "Baile de la carne") works as an exception. It plays with cut-out words: "Eat / Flesh / Cow / Chicken / Pig / Human / What's the difference?" The entire work of this tireless and elegant self-constructed female musician seems to dedicate her reason for being to proclaiming the extreme principles of her religious organization that, although it seems straight out of a John Waters movie, belongs to the world we call real. "Church of Euthanasia" (Yes, "Church of Euthanasia") is based on four fundamental pillars: suicide, abortion, cannibalism and sodomy. According to the organization's official site, it all began with a dream that Chris herself had in her capacity as Reverend of her own creed. In that dream she communicated with an artificial intelligence called "The Being", which told her that our leaders will always deny that our ecosystem is failing. Foreboding, pessimistic, extreme, fanciful and concrete in equal parts, with you: Reverend Chris Korda.

Current portrait of Korda for his Bandcamp site, where you can also listen to and buy all his albums.

DOSMILERA NIGHT ARGENTINA

20 years and coins ago, on Thursday, March 8, 2001 to be more precise, Chris Korda played at the famous Morocco basement nightclub in Buenos Aires. With an entrance fee of 3 pesos and accompanied in the programming by local DJ Romina Cohn. We were in the final stage of our one-on-one and in the run-up to our historic December, the electronic genre known as electroclash was also all the rage: a mix of 80s electro along with new wave and synth pop, almost always with women at the forefront, its greatest exponent being the duo made up of Miss Kittin and The Hacker, with their unforgettable hit "1982". Despite being a fairly small event, a weekday in the hectic agenda of downtown Buenos Aires in those years, it had quite a bit of media coverage. So much so that the now famous Mariana Enríquez even wrote a note about Korda in RADAR, in a section that at that time was called "Oddities." According to Enríquez's sharp view: "At the Buenos Aires disco, Chris Korda limited herself to standing behind her machines, mumbling some slogans into the microphone, and moving around in a minimalist black strapless dress. For a woman who advocates such an extreme discourse, his look and attitude are of astonishing conservatism." However, late in the note we find a statement by Korda, regarding his own church, that could not be more topical: "To have that vision, something had to be taken away from me, a blockage. And that blockage is patriarchy, so to speak. In simple terms, let's think that sexuality has been terribly distorted by authoritarian society: men continue to be obsessed with harshness, machismo and punishment, and women with submission and being punished. We have evolved in a sadomasochistic model of sexuality. Cross-dressing is a deliberate attempt to obstruct that, to say: I refuse to have the generic role that has been assigned to me, I refuse to be the rapist. If necessary, I will be raped, but I will not be in the place of power."

Supplement Soy communicated a few weeks ago with Korda by e-mail, with the pessimism that characterizes her she refused an interview. However, we extract a part of his statement: "If Taylor Swift made the first album about climate change, it would be news, right? Part of the reason humanity is not responding to climate change quickly enough is that Most people have not been persuaded that it threatens their own lives and families. They are not likely to be persuaded by more quotes from scientists, but they may be persuaded by music. people much more quickly and decisively than journalism or scientific research. This is particularly true for younger generations, which is relevant because my album addresses their concerns and is told from their point of view. "It's a powerful meme for the 21st century, and I hope you can help me spread this cultural message, so I can do some good." In 2019, after a publication signed by Chris herself, it became clear that the entire Church of Euthanasia project was a mix between fiction and reality, an invented credo-performance. We weren't that far from John Waters at the end. Thank you Reverend for existing.

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