Chris Korda - Apologize to The Future

Last June, an exhibition was held at the Confort Moderne in Poitiers dedicated to Chris Korda, an environmentalist and transgender activist, entitled “The (Wo)man of the Future. Chris Korda, a retrospective” [1]. She mixed different artistic practices with her political activism inspired by the anarchist and Luddite theses of Unabomber (Theodore Kaczynski): demonstration banners, music, pamphlets, painting, and computer coding. We are publishing here a text by Marie Canet who, by retracing the route of the exhibition, offers us a portrait of the political and artistic work of Chris Korda.

Last Tuesday, July 13, it was so hot that the grass in the Confort Moderne gardens in Potiers could have caught fire under our soles. The techno musician, activist and software developer Chris Korda (1962, New York) gave a concert there in parallel with her monographic exhibition entitled The (Wo)man of the Future, a variation of The Man Of The Future, a techno-musical piece house produced in 2003. With this piece, Korda already made bodies dance to relentless protest prose.

I belong to the master race
Of genetically superior beings
Who engineer themselves
For technical perfection
I choose to engineer myself
I’m a work in progress
Please pardon my appearance
It’s only information

We conform
To the needs of technology
All phenomena
Will be explained
We don’t need bodies
Only information
The man of the future
Is an engineered product

Work
Hygiene
Nutrition
Exercise
Those who cannot adapt
Must be destroyed
It’s regrettable
It’s a technical necessity

In a recent interview, the artist criticizes entertainment industries and techniques (including drugs, certain music, fictions such as consumption) which, according to her, only serve to distract us from reality: the announced destruction of human life on our planet. Companies as well as certain mystical conceptions also have powerful and numerous derivatives available to deactivate egalitarian and ecological demands. Korda explains:

We therefore focus our attention on partying, on consumption, on competition, on anything other than this arid desert that constitutes reality. The sleeping must not wake up, because otherwise they will demand the one thing that corporations cannot provide: a livable future (…) Hell has always been there, in the present, made manifest by cruelty and indifference. The path that leads to our survival is collective, and we can only make a place for ourselves on it by being sober, by narrowing our eyes under the harsh glare of the truth. Otherwise, it won't be possible. [2]

Korda's cold, ostentatious tone has not changed since the founding of the Church of Euthanasia, founded in Boston in 1992 with Robert Kimberk. Even today, she prefers pessimistic clarity rather than positivist and ambiguous vocabulary promoting respectful and eco-responsible alternatives. In her texts, as in her public speaking engagements, she opts for the manifest radicality of negative emotions enlightened by reason.

Chris Korda describes meeting, during a dream, an extraterrestrial entity who came to warn him that the Earth's ecosystem was threatened and that political leaders were denying this reality. She would have woken up whispering “save the planet - kill yourself”. In April 1994, she produced a techno track with the eponymous title to reflect this exchange. In 2019, she performed it in a club in Ibiza.

Greetings.
We are not of this planet.
We do not understand
Your strange customs.
Your planet’s ecosystem
Is failing.
Your leaders deny this.
Explain.

Your leaders deny this.
Your leaders deny this.
Your leaders deny this.
Your leaders deny this.

Why
Do your leaders lie to you ?
Why
Do so many of you believe these lies ?
Explain
Your strange customs.
Why
Believe these lies ?

Save the planet.
Kill yourself.
Save the planet !
Kill yourself.

The Church of Euthanasia is a non-profit organization that uses this slogan during its public interventions. The Church campaigns against human procreation since the constant increase in the human population is responsible for global warming and the destruction of ecosystems. Anti-humanist, its doctrine is based on four capital principles that its members must respect: suicide (because it is better to kill oneself than to kill life if one cannot become anything other than what one already is); abortion (the only alternative to excommunion in the event of fertilization - on this subject, Chris Korda's site refers to a link deactivated today for emergency contraception [3]); cannibalism (in the sense that members of the Church agree to adhere to a strict vegetarian or vegan diet that respects the lives of non-human beings); and finally sodomy (in fact any non-procreative sexual activity).

The Church of Euthanasia, today mainly active online, campaigned in the streets in the form of and agitprop to promote these principles. In 1993, the members of the group hacked a road billboard which they covered with a black banner measuring three by ten meters with the words painted in white “Save the Planet—Kill Yourself”. At the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York, Korda distributed stickers of the slogan to guests and later placed them on police vehicles. Video archives from 1996 show another sensational action in the form of an urban happening carried out by members of the Church: a man covered in red is skewered while a member offers passers-by the opportunity to taste human flesh planted on sticks. In 1997, she appeared with Pastor Kim and Vermin X on the popular and racy television show The Jerry Springer Show for a special entitled “I want to join a suicide cult”. During the show, Jerry Springer is overwhelmed by the trio's activism. He seeks to prove that members of the Church are “cannibals” who promote suicide. He goes through a CoE brochure in which instructions are given to learn “step by step” how to cut a human body into “perfect pieces of meat”. In an emergency to publicly get their message across to the usual 5 million viewers, Pastor Kim pulls out a photograph of a calf, denounces animal exploitation before Reverend Chris (Korda) explodes:

For what ? Wait. Wait a minute. Why was the calf shown? Because humans are cruel to animals? No. Because humans are animals. This is what it is about. If they put you at the table, blindfold you and place human flesh and pig flesh in front of you, you will not be able to tell them apart, because flesh remains flesh. Think about that the next time you eat a cheeseburger. What this is about is systemic cruelty on a massive scale.

Korda campaigns, as here, for the abolition of hierarchies between species, and goes so far as to wish in “Prayer for a Good Death” the extinction of humans so that other animals can survive on Earth. And since the end is programmed, the question remains, according to her, of knowing in what way humans will humanly “manage” this end [5]. In this sense, it calls for viable and non-separatist alternatives such as mutual aid within collaborative organizations.

Korda herself collaborates with the algorithms, programs and machines she designs. All of its programs are available for free on its website [6]. The Polymeter is thus a queer MIDI sequencer which allows you to play and interact different loops or non-repetitive sound patterns according to the variations specific to each one. Thanks to the algorithm, they adapt and modify their internal structures in real time to respond to the variations of others. The algorithm maintains a balance between the pulsed parts and the leads. On this subject, the artist speaks of “kinetic sculptures”, that is to say objects in perpetual movement, not fixed. His polyrhythmic techno music works on the simultaneous and random exchange between different rhythmic structures in order to constitute a harmony not previously decided. These mobile and temporary organizations are anarchist. Korda explains:

(…) instead of using machines as servants, I invite them on an equal footing to share the creative space. They have abilities that I don't have, so we complement each other. They provide speed and precision, while I provide desire and intuition. What comes out is greater than the sum of the parts. I find it surprising how resistant people are to co-creating with machines. They are not simple tools or extensions of ourselves, their strengths do not necessarily overlap with ours. They can surprise us, make interesting mistakes, and reveal hidden realms, but only if we are prepared to become fluent in their language.

In the Jerry Springer Show, previously mentioned, Grace is invited to come and testify because she wants to join The Church of Euthanasia and her ex-boyfriend, Chuck, scared, wants to do everything to dissuade her - that is to say to say that he is even ready to initiate this major event of public pressure during which, paradoxically, the members of the Church will be able to defend their anti-natalist doctrine. Chuck asks Korda, “So what are you?” »

Reverend Korda: (…) I am a man who wears a dress and I will tell you what to do. Springer: Are you a man? Rev Korda: Of course. And how! I am transgender. Exactly. Exactly. Chuck: Oh damn. Rev Korda: Oh, you don’t like that? Well, I'm transgender because being transgender means contributing to balance, and that's why we're here, to restore balance between humans and other species on the planet. And it’s (censored) feminist power, OK?! Because this woman (Grace) is a goddess and what does it mean to be a goddess? It means having the power of life or death within one's own body. It is the ability to create life and should have the power to destroy it too.

In 1999, Korda released the hard core techno track Six Billion Humans Can't Be Wrong.

The world revolves around me.
What I want.
I want...
A cigarette.
A beer.
A baby.
A new car.
Throw it away.
Where’s my lunch ?
The world revolves around me.
Me me me me me.
Everyone agrees with me.

We’ll never stop living this way.
Six billion humans can’t be wrong.
We’ll never stop living this way.
Six billion humans can’t be wrong.
We’ll never stop living this way.
Six billion humans can’t be wrong.
We’ll never stop living this way.
Six billion humans can’t be wrong.
One world, one shit.

In the exhibition, a Population Counter, 2019, is installed above the entrance door. He announces the passage of 6 to 8 billion individuals on earth scheduled for November 15. And it’s still just as hot in Poitiers. The smell of burning Gironde pines reaches here. The Church's anti-natalist slogans fill the exhibition space in capital letters on a black background.

EAT PEOPLE NOT ANIMALS
EAT A QUEER FETUS FOR JESUS
DEPRESSED ? COMMIT SPERMICIDE
MAKE LOVE NOT BABIES
SAVE THE PLANET KILL YOURSELF

Marie Canet
Marie Canet is an art critic and curator.

[1] "The (Wo)man of the Future. Chris Korda, a retrospective" - Exhibition at Confort Moderne.

[2] Cf. Quentin Grosset, "Techno, apocalypse and euthanasia: Chris Korda announces the ecological game over", published on 06/16/2022, https://www.traxmag.com/techno-apocalypse-et-euthanasie-chris-korda-annonce-le-game-over-ecologique/

[3] A mention on Chris Korda's homepage states: "Did sperm wind up somewhere it shouldn't? Call 1-800-584-9911 right now for emergency contraception. Hurry! You've got 72 hours!" The link to Princeton University is invalid.

[4] A full transcript of the show is included in the booklet that accompanies the exhibition The (wo)man of the future curated by Goswell Road and Confort Moderne.

[5] See on this subject, the opening speech of the exhibition The (Wo)man of the Future on June 10, 202 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrjj1hIeTQ&t=22s&ab_channel=ChrisKorda

[6] https://www.chriskorda.com/software.html

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