The whole thing started autumn 2019 with a vague amalgam of thoughts. How I was once baptized as Catholic, my personal christening candle, my first communion. I remember vividly how I got a special kind of eat cutlery as present. The schools, the nuns the Catholic holiday camps. Also the stunning baroque grandeur with the solemn silence inside these impressive churches. And later the Vatican with it's papal rituals, the smoke from the chimney and patronizing claptrap from the pulpit. How my world view more and more started to deviate from religious doctrines, especially the ease with which they claim universal validity. How I finally decided to leave the Catholic church to word it in a dramatic way. This mixture of sweet memories and endearments combined with new insight into the Catholic colonial enterprise. Also the way pedophilia almost seemed institutionalized and covered up by the church, it all morphed into a strong resentment towards the ultimate symbol: the Pope in Rome and the shady handlers in the shadows, the Jesuits.
Do not ask me how this Pope theme crystallized and formed my current subject matter. The struggle with form and matter, the positives/negatives, black/white, the Jesuits and finally the idea for my Vatican Machine. Somehow these things grow silently in the subconscious before they form a strong internal image. This happens mostly in the early morning on the edge of dream and awaking, all I have to do thereafter is realize the idea, bring it into the world. What happens later is hard to explain because it seems as if reality itself sort of bend around my work, or rather streams along with it. A chain of coincidental events take place like a clear path in the chaos. Today for example I hit upon the following article by Callum Hoare in the Express:
I referred to the Pope's wording earlier in this blog but that is not the point here. I asked myself why does Callum Hoare brings this seven year old speech in the center of the unfolding crisis, why now? Interestingly a guy named Zachary Hubbard looked more closely at the date than I did: January 13 also notated as 1/13. Zachary is an alert guy and he focuses on the importance of Kabbalistic principles, therefore he reads the publication date as 113. Now something remarkable happens! When you add up the individual letter positions of the word apocalypse, you oddly find the exact number 113 (A=1 P=16 O=15 C=3 etc.). Suddenly this Callum article reaches a whole new level. As if the publication projects coded information to a gullible reader who does't notice timing and deeper emphasis, as if a hidden message is written all over it.
The grim word 'apocalypse' carries the meaning of a very serious event resulting in great destruction and change. Coppola's epic film 'Apocalypse Now' depicting the madness of the Vietnam war, and here Callum Hoare's article placing the word literally next to the end of the earth. We know the Four Horseman of the apocalypse described in the book of Revelation and we might have seen the four couches with Britons stranded in Wuhan, supposedly on route to medical facilities to be tested on the virus. All very impressive if you can organize a theatrical gesture like this, shaping the narrative so profoundly. It's obvious that my personal artistic practice, if we can describe it in such a manner, lacks platform and reach, like that.
Do I mind? Not in the least. I am happily playing with letters. Callum is a Scottish Gaelic name that commemorates the Latin name Columba, meaning 'Dove'. Callum was popular among early Christians because the dove was a symbol of purity, peace and the Holy Spirit. What a nice job if we kick out the A and introduce a W... let us now shuffle the name Hoare a bit more: The Dove and the Whore! What a sweet dichotomy! We can sit back and swap the Popes in the machine, everything is well.