#steven johnson leyba

[leyba]

IM MAKING MY 3RD DOCUMENTARY!

[inter-sekt-blog]

Click the link to join us for our July #ThirdFriday, featuring music by Earth, SHOGGOTH AMENTA , the premiere of "The Books of Leyba: Fire", also featuring The Art Of Dave MacDowell , RF Pangborn,Folkicide and many more! Exclusively at #RogueGallery Only at www.intersektart.com/rogue-gallery #MindOverMedia #InterSekt #Artists #Art #DigitalArtDistrict #InterSektArt #NWC #Subversive #Cerebral #Ubiquity#TheBooksOfLeyba #Fire #ArtRevolution #ArtEvolution #DigitalExhibit#Cinema #UndergroundFilm #Painting #EarthSeattle#FullUponHerBurningLips #Music #July2019 #Art2019#NewWorldCreative #AvantGarde #FavoriteWeekendHangouts

[carlabrahamsson]

Happy Birthday to Genesis P-Orridge 2/22/22. What an amazing & trippy tribute comp this is:

https://contemporaryartists.bandcamp.com/album/not-in-my-future-a-tribute-to-genesis-breyer-p-orridge-compilation

Acid Mothers Temple, Alice Genese & Jeff Berner & John Washington, Bill Loner, CM von Hausswolff, Caleigh Fisher, Carl Abrahamsson & Vanessa Sinclair, Genesis P-Orridge, David J, Elisa Faires & The Kazoomy Love Guns, Firth, German Autumn, Gates Ov Fire, In2aO, The Great Masturbator, Lux Vibratus, Marc Hurtado & Mark Cunningham, MEE, Michael Cashmore, Nanavesh, Nico Guerrero, post doom romance, Sigillum S, Irrawaddy River of Spirits, Steven Johnson LEYBA, Surrealist Temple Band, Tom Banger, Tricksters Treat, Val Denham, We Be Echo, Xambuca & Ego Death, Susan Atkins

[alfielaneart]

A feature on the InterSekt website.

InterSekt is an art creative with, comprised of lesser known ‘underdog’ artists and creatives. This article is from their 2018 December Spotlight, which I read through and found some interesting artists to inform my practise:

​Steven Johnson Leyba:

This artist is a shamanistic painter who creates both very personal but also political and radical artworks. He takes a mixed media approach, using paint, collage, beadwork and DNA to communicate statements about our current world. The work above explores the reclamation of the swastika, as well as implementing hints Buddhist motifs and eye and hand symbols.

He creates a number of handmade books. One of these was ‘Monsanto (2010-2011). It was produced through a series of rituals and blood rites and a live piece performing death curse against the corporation. He recently performed a death curse against Nestle, responding to the corporations attempts to bottle water from California. He, alongside a number of other artists, created a church of art, the  Coyotel Church. According to this Vice article, the work

“takes a legacy of occult and magical influences, and retranslates it through an open hostility to brands and corporate entities.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gvw87b/meet-the-artistsoccultists-channeling-the-death-of-monsanto

The article comments further on the intended meaning of the work:

“lurching beyond the overly ritualized text of social media posts are actual rituals, far less common in this day and age. Whether because of our increased existence in virtual space, or a cultural over-reliance on the written word, we seem to have stepped away from the act itself. The pics, as it were, are more important than the happening.”

The ideas being communicated in this artist is similar to mine. I want to attempt to develop my mixed-media and paint application further to create a more textured, worn-down look to my work, with the aim of opposing corporate entities. Using printed images alongside thick layers of paint could be a good method to try out for this. I also want to look into how I can be more ambitious with my work and the themes, looking into occult rituals and potential spells or passages/diagrams from religious texts to use as visual inspiration. I could also make this easier by choosing a number of topics to focus on solely for each artwork, being more specific about the issues I tackle rather than broader and consequently less effective communication to my audience.

[churchofsatannews]

VALENTIN SCHWARZ AT THE DIRTY SHOW IN ZURICH / CH CONTINUES 

The Museum of Porn in Art presents:

"Dirty Show® Zurich II" - Prolongation!!!

The Dirty Show® originates (www.dirtydetroit.com) from Detroit where it takes place annually at the Valentines weekend. The mission of the founders of this event was always to promote, publish and propagate erotic art in all forms. This was done by means of art exhibition, which has made it to become one of the largest erotic happening in the world.

The first „Dirty Show® Zurich“ took place in Febuary 2009 at the cinema Roland in Zurich. This exhibition was part of a satellite show, held for the 10th anniversary of the Dirty Show® Detroit.

The „Dirty Show® Zurich“ was then organized by the Museum of Porn in Art (MoPiA). Since MoPiA has already been promoting erotic art over two decades it was only natural that that they would reapeat such an event.

Artists:

Anomalique, Bacter, Can Sezer, Carl Abrahamsson, Chris Low, Dan Ouellette, Dominik Burkart, Elle Lui Art, Eric Débris, Eva Kurz, Fyz, Florian Leibetseder, gea*, Grieni-B, Guillaume Soulatges, Ilaria Novelli, Jean-Kristau, Jenzzz, Karola Altona, Léo Quievreux, Melanie Derron, Mike Spike Froidl, Norman J. Olson, REED-013, Roland Iselin, Saniblel Page, Serhiy Kolyada, Steven Johnson Leyba, Superdaimos, Sus Grubenmann, Titus Meier, Valentin Schwarz, Valérie Reding, Van Rijn, Véro Pilté, Wolfson, X.L.Vilar, Zoë Corleone

Opening: Thursday the 12th of January 2017 at 8 p.m. in Edi's Weinstube, Stüssihofstatt 14 in Zurich.

Exhibition: 13.1.-01.03.2017, Mon.-Thu. from 11.00-24.00 hours, Fri. and Sat. from 12.00-02.00 hours and Sun. from 14.00-22.00 hours.

[curtismith]

Live in Everett profiled me in their latest edition🥰 check it out: @liveineverett https://www.liveineverett.com/blog//artist-profile-jamie-curtismith?fbclid=PAAaa7Mz8BtUvdsFcm5D79U3DMEzeYaIiKg_vxZbtS0kjTruBK3fl-xwse9zM Also featuring collaborative artist: @cura235 Alice Curtis @natashanelson_art Natasha Rene Grim @its._.noah__ Jordan Smith #duanekirbyjensen # @duanekirbyjensen Duane Kirby Jensen @zamarama_gallery Bill Zama @cafe_zippy Cafe Zippy LLC @jagartsupply Jason Grim @stevenleyba Steven Johnson Leyba Genevieve Heuer @artbymichaelbell Michael Bell Photo by @davidagould2021 (at Everett, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQNLih3rBSU/?utm_medium=tumblr

[edwardeveryman]

Tweeted

Looks like you'll be able to read about some of Edward's adventures with Steven Johnson Leyba during a productive and fun Death Curse in Le…

— K5 Edward Everyman (@EdwardEveryman) July 12, 2017

[drylandlit-blog]

FEATURED INTERVIEW:

WHO IS LUKA FISHER?

A CURATED CONVERSATION WITH THE LA BASED ARTIST

Photo Credit: Art Tavana

BY ANNA UREÑA

Luka Fisher has been an unofficial patron of the arts for DRYLAND since its inception in 2015. I don’t know how she heard about us back then but I liked the work she sent us and published her short films and multimedia pieces. After that, we were showcasing photographers, filmmakers, performance artists, and poets like Genevieve Canavan,  Kayla Tange, Matthew Kaundart, Chelsea Bayouth, Leila Jarma, and Mike Leisz—artists who were all tracing back to Luka Fisher. After a non-investigation into who she was (I don’t lurk, I’m oldschool like that), it was clear that this would one day require a meet up.

In 2016, we made plans to meet at an MRK show at Honey Trap, a DIY art/music space in DTLA…and we kind of almost did meet. I showed up and looked around for Luka but she was nowhere to be seen. I texted her “I’m here. Where are you?” to which I received no reply. After the bands played, they rolled out a body on a table completely wound in plastic wrap like a cocoon. I didn’t know this was in store for the night since I never saw the event flyer but I was curious. Throughout the performance I wasn’t sure whose body I was watching being put under torturous circumstances (but I did keep suspecting it was Luka’s). The face was distorted by how tight the plastic was gripped around the head and the head had bright red lipstick and silver eye shadow, shimmering like a koi fish with a gaping mouth under the track lights. And then when the pale-skinned body was freed from the plastic encasing, and emerged, bloody and lightheaded, everyone involved quietly went on to a back room. It was then when I came to my fine (inebriated) conclusion that it indeed was Luka Fisher who was tied up (and thus could not text back). Some friends were waiting to leave so I came up to her, quickly introduced myself and then shook her hand all professional-like and left the show.

When we actually actually met a few weeks ago, it was way less dramatic. She scooped me up from my house and we kicked it as her DTLA studio. We hung out a few times and had conversations about art, our origins, politics (Fuck Trump). This “interview” is a compact version of those conversations. Who’s Luka Fisher? Peel back slowly… and see.

Much of your art is collaborative. You’ve worked with other local artists like Peter Kalisch, Christopher Zeischegg, Leila Jarman, Matthew Kaundart, Kayla Tange, Daniel Crook,Tristene Roman and others. How does a collaboration start with you?

Friendship.

Photographer Jacquie Ray (High Creatives) & Luka Fisher collaboration

Performance Artist Kayla Tange & Luka Fisher collaboration

Video Artist Peter Kalisch & Luka Fisher collaboration

Painter, Musician Daniel Leland Crook & Luka Fisher collaboration

Painter, Musician Daniel Leland Crook & Luka Fisher collaboration

  What has been your favorite art performance or collaboration? I can name the time I almost met you at the Honey Trap warehouse…that was pretty memorable.

My collaborations are usually just the physical manifestation of an ongoing dialogue with the other artist about our lives and aspirations. Collaboration then is a kind of cultural exchange where we learn each other’s languages and explore new territories together. In this regard I think “Danny Wylde”  was one of my most interesting collaborations because it combined literature, pornography, performance and visual art, with film and advertising. It was the kind of work that could have never been made without contributions and exchanges from Chris Zeischegg, Sheree Rose, Matthew Kaundart, and countless others. And the same could be said about some of the zines/actions that I curated like The Golden Fool , The Holy Automatic or my foray into  hot sauce with Royce Burke and co.

Daniel Leland Crook & Chris Zeischegg (Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher)

Luka Fisher Performance at Honey Trap 2016/Photo Credit: Genevieve Munroe

Jacquie Ray & Luka Fisher collaboration/ Photo Credit: JC Ghouls

How do you decide if a piece is any good? Do you feel it out or just say fuck it or…?

I think that it’s hard to answer this question without sounding like a mystical douchebag. But fuck it here I go: I keep working until the piece tells me that it is done. When the work has taken on a life of its own and can exist without me then I send it off into the world.

Luka Fisher collection

Luka Fisher collection

Luka Fisher collection

Luka Fisher collection

Luka Fisher collection

Speaking of style…you currently dress in a style you call “Art Mom”. What inspires your looks?

I’ve always wanted to look like a Congressman’s eccentric wife or a ex-punk PTA mom that takes care of her art kids. So, my style then is really just a compromise between  how I, in the abstract, imagine such people would dress and what I can find on sale at Goodwill.

Luka Fisher & Reverend Steven Johnson Leyba/ Photo Credit: Hannah Haddix

Luka Fisher & Tristene Roman (The Golden Fool)/ Photo Credit: Gina Marie Canavan

Photo Credit: Rio Warner

Photo Credit: Sean East

Photo Credit: Gina Marie Caravan

Kayla Tange & Luka Fisher/ Photo Credit: Gina Marie Caravan

How do you feel about getting negative reviews?

I figure any review is a positive review because someone was triggered enough by the work to either spend their unpaid time singing it’s praises or hurling shit at it.

Most of your work isn’t exactly politically inclined. Has the fact that the USA is now running under the Trump administration changed your feelings about what to create? Or about the duty or responsibility of an artist to speak out? What are your thoughts on how artists play a part in resisting the new regime?

It is true that much of my work is not overtly political within the context of contemporary American art, but I began making art and contemplating its function while I was studying in various parts of Russia. There, I watched the government crackdown on queer art and underground cultures under the pretext that these groups were creating dangerous and immoral “propaganda”. I watched with horror as a country and culture that I deeply love descended again into authoritarianism and spectacle. There the government used prejudice, god and patriotism to consolidate its power.

Russia’s crackdown on LGBTQ rights and civil society more broadly has been extremely disheartening to me because I had  finally found a place I felt comfortable and they weren’t comfortable with me. And it’s awful to watch a culture that you love try and kill itself.

Photo Credit: Daniel Leland Crook

Gianna Geller (Luka Fisher)

Jacquie Ray & Luka Fisher collaboration/ Photo Credit: JC Ghouls

Terminal A (Luka Fisher)

Neil Malick (Luka Fisher)

As I began making art in Russia, I was forced to contemplate what was at stake in my work. Ultimately, I decided that I had to risk being myself regardless of the consequences.

But there I was a foreigner and a student and so I was never fully affected by these policies because I could always leave and return to the United States where we didn’t have these problems.

And so I did some translation work and tried to promote mutual understanding between our countries trusting that in time cooler heads would prevail.

Now, I realize that Russia was a time machine for what America is about to become under Donald Trump.

So, I have always seen my work as political in the sense that the personal is political and I am interested in both creating and promoting work that provides an alternative to our fear driven culture. And I am doing this because I believe that artists are cultural translators that can build bridges between disparate communities. By couching ideas in “spectacle,” “entertainment,” artists can create spaces for understanding and facilitate cooperation between communities in ways that can never be fully achieved through coercion. Art, broadly defined, can also create a safe space for communities that feel threatened by dominant cultures.

I hate that we as Americans live in a heteronormative hyper masculine culture that fears vulnerability, hates creative self-expression and tries to imprison us with fear and hatred and that our only acceptable outlets for our angst are based on consumption and conquest.

And I have been trying to counter these tendencies by creating and promoting alternative cultures. We cannot succeed with hate; we must present alternatives.

The political nature of my work has become more overt in the past year or so as I began to see free speech and creative self- expression come under attack by Facebook and Google. First, I witnessed Facebook increasingly crackdown on artists and activists with their prejudicial “community standards” which are based on mid-west, middlebrow values of what’s acceptable.

The effects of these standards are chilling and affect everything from how artists create and distribute work to who gets to speak and how. For example, people have had their images banned from Facebook for being “too fat,” for their disabilities,  for remembering historic war crimes, or for just documenting indigenous cultures whose very existence seems to upset Facebook’s colonial values and targeted queer protestors. Yet, much of this behavior is ok if you are Kim Kardashian or some other pop celebrity. Like much of America, there are two sets of rules. One for those in power and another for those on the fringe.

And if this isn’t enough to make you think that Facebook and its rules are serious then consider that the police officers that murdered Philando Castile are on trial for manslaughter because their actions were streamed on Facebook Live. Unfortunately, such videos are rarely seen by mass audiences because Facebook almost always collaborates with the police to suppress such footage.

Facebook has also been caught experimenting on it’s users.

Facebook and its ilk have become our town squares and we cannot allow them to radically curtail our right to a free and open discourse with those that we choose to associate with just because they are supposedly private entities.

(Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher)

Because only the government is legally obligated to protect our civil liberties, those that seek to repress and control us have been using corporations to wage a stealth culture war. This is why banks and money transfer services like Paypal often working in tandem with the Treasury Department  have enacted policies that target “pornographers” and shut down their bank accounts, even when they are operating in full compliance with Federal and State laws.

And because these actions have been taken by “private entities”, even when they are in all actuality collaborating with the Government, Civil Libertarians have largely kept their mouths shut.

I fear that this private war on our freedoms will only escalate.  Now, back to Facebook and its repressive rules.

Facebook’s “community standards” infantilizes its users and helps maintain a culture of sexual repression, fear and violence.

Facebook asserts that paintings of nudity are acceptable but nude photos cannot be tolerated. Rules like these become even more absurd when you consider that any painting that you see on Facebook is really just a photograph; or that artists like Andy Warhol, Carollee Scheneman, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, Steven Johnson Leyba, and countless others integrated photography and living bodies so thoroughly into their art that these distinctions are largely meaningless.

This is why much of my art explores nudity and other “taboo” topics in a mixed-media fashion. I am trying to start fights with Facebook over their understanding of what Art is, knowing that they will violate their own rules and ignore the last hundred years of developments within fine art which has blurred the lines between photography and painting; Art and Life.

(Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher)

I then document their punishments in the hopes of starting a larger conversation about how these social networks are affecting our cultural and political lives and what we must do to counter them.

I became further convinced that these organizations needed to be challenged after Google deleted fourteen years of novelist Dennis Cooper’s work and refused for months to do anything to address this matter. If Google was willing to erase the artistic contributions of one of the most controversial and critically acclaimed writers alive today without any due process, then how can we trust them with our lives or our work?

Now in the aftermath of Trump’s election it appears that Facebook and other sources of “big data” may have swung the election for Trump.

This why we need to take these platforms and the data that they are collecting on us seriously.

The artist Joseph Beuys talked about “Social Sculpture” and how every citizen is an artist that participates in the construction in the Total Artwork of their society, but this idea was always vague in part because it was hard to see all the invisible connections that tie us together.  However, social networks make some of these connections visible. We can track, respond and coordinate actions in real time. Which is why I believe that we need to think about Social Network Sculpture and what that might look like in practice. In other words how can we be better, more engaged citizens on and offline? How can we use these tools to create a better world? Do we need to create better tools? Do we need to radically rethink the social contract we’ve struck with social networks?

Perhaps, we’ve gotten into this whole mess by accepting that the internet rendered everything free and that all this data that we were handing over wasn’t all that big of a deal because these companies were “progressive” and “cool” and anyway, society had moved past the culture wars.  Except of course that was all bullshit.

These are questions that I am now grappling with and that I would like to help work on with folks much smarter than me. I have been particularly interested by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s initiative to document and fight censorship on Social Media. If you have ever been the victim of Facebook’s repressive policies you can submit a report here: https://onlinecensorship.org

I believe that we have a responsibility to speak out and to resist the unconstitutional and immoral policies of the current administration. Not just as artists or citizens, but as human beings.  We need to peacefully put an end to this national nightmare as soon as possible. This is not a right or left wing issue. This is an existential issue. We cannot tolerate an administration that mistakes dick waving tough guy shenanigans for good governance.

However, I don’t think that resistance is enough. We need to imagine the worlds that we want to live in and actively work to make them a reality. We need to imagine our way out of this mess. And this again is where artists can help, because art is creative manifestation.

I also believe that artists can use their shows to help activists organize and to raise money for charities and that we can donate our time and expertise to causes that need help. Daniel Crook and I are going to start giving away our art at concerts to those who donate to a list of charities we are currently drawing up.

If you (the reader) have any ideas about how I can help or what we can do collectively as artists and citizens please let me know. I am ready to get my hands dirty.

Photo Credit: Tristene Roman

Dan West (Luka Fisher, Manuel Vee)

Neil Malick (Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher)

(Luka Fisher, lighting by Gina Marie Caravan

Luka Fisher’s art is featured on the cover of Issue 6:

Anna Ureña is based in South Central L.A. and is founder and editor-in-chief of DRYLAND. She has worked for numerous organizations and has been published numerous times, but mainly she sits somewhere in space.

A CURATED CONVERSATION WITH THE LA BASED ARTIST FEATURED INTERVIEW: WHO IS LUKA FISHER? A CURATED CONVERSATION WITH THE LA BASED ARTIST BY ANNA UREÑA…

[adamcooperteran]

Acclaimed artist, writer, and educator Maceo Montoya meets Steven Johnson Leyba and his work. Spring 2016

[leyba]

My first art book featuring a compilation of my first 5 hand made books as well as political performances is about to go out of print. Get your copy today!!! # art book, #artnow #radicalart #mixedmediaartwork #realart #performancearts #eroticart #satanicart #contemporarypainting #experimentalpainting #bloodpainting #indianart #spiritualart #ritualart #artmagic #artwar #spells #usaf #unitedsatanicapachefront #political #politicalart #beadwork #feminism #occultbooks #burroughs #poppyzbrite #lavey #billysozawarsoldier #davidaaronclark #hrgiger https://humanfuturerecordings.bigcartel.com/product/coyote-satan-america-the-unspeakable-art-performance-of-reverend-steven-johnson-leyba-hfr-csa1 https://www.instagram.com/p/CRpn0pZHt8h/?utm_medium=tumblr

[inter-sekt-blog]

We proudly present the unspeakable artistry of a true artist, subversive, and living legend, our October Spotlight: Steven Johnson Leyba!

[hellhoundmusic]

The first new track from Chiildren's upcoming EP, The Circle Narrows.

[deathbyboredumb]

Prologue to WE ARE ALL INDIANS NOW by Rev. Steven Johnson Leyba

You Have Had too Much To Drink and You are Polluting Our Lands

“I was born in Vodka”

                      - James Baldwin

“ Water Treason

Global plastic meaning

Flow diversion-perverted

Trapped inside corporate bottles

Crime against humanity

        Our nature's majesties

Streams, rivers,

Lakes and oceans

Foreclosed and

Stolen from the source

        Stolen water

Forced compliance       

        MONSTROUS BLUE GOLD OWNERSHIP!

High Water

Low water

No water power

No water RIGHTS!”

          - Project #9

Water.  Seven years of dreams and thoughts of water. Seven years of tsunami dreams, even before I knew what one was.  Clearly the forces were telling me I needed to stop ignoring something we all take for granted and would actually die without.  The voice said, “I will piss on you!”  I remember thinking, “who hasn't?” both literally and metaphorically.  Out of nowhere my dead father in my mind yelled out,

“Better to be pissed on than pissed off!”  

What was this lesson to be learned?  I was still afraid of being washed away.  This female narrator of my dreams was kind of sexy -- but I had no intention of returning to any womb, or swallow it all, or get on my bended knees for any oppressor; even one in my head.  

The image was a sepia tone still-photo-like image of an old time radio, and on the bottom of it read: “Getty Images Copyright”.  A distorted female voice in pure hate and disdain exclaimed,  

“WE ARE ALL BORN IN WATER AND IN WATER WE WILL BE ABSORBED, EVAPORATED, OR DUMPED; BUT YOU WILL BE FLUSHED LIKE THE HUMAN WASTE AND SHIT THAT YOU ARE!  YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN ANYTHING, AND YOU WILL NEVER BE SOMETHING.  YOU SHALL PERISH LIKE YOUR BUFFALO AND ALL YOUR INDIAN ANCESTORS.  YOU WILL LOSE YOUR WATER RIGHTS, JUST AS YOUR FOREFATHERS LOST THEIR LAND.  WATERS WILL FLOW, AND YOU WILL DROWN IN THE LAND OF PLENTY, WHERE THERE WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH.  GO ON, KEEP GOING WITH THE FLOW, BUT YOU ARE A WEED TAKING UP TOO MUCH TIME, SPACE, AND WATER.  YOU DESERVE NOTHING.  YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS.  YOU HAVE HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK AND YOU ARE POLLUTING OUR LANDS.  YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR USAGE.”

It woke me up, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both.  The crackled old-record voice sounded very Twilight Zone, or Outer Limits, but it also seemed like an ancient, General Electric malicious force that needed me more than I needed it.  It reminded me of some drunken observations my ex, Monique, would pontificate.  She was always creeping in my dreams.  I always enjoyed that, but this was something I couldn't enjoy, and it wasn't Monique.

Was I going to get an e-bill for “my usage”?  My electric bill was paid up, and there was food in fridge.  Things were great, and I was getting laid, so I could not understand the night sweats and all sorts of people yelling at me in my dreams.

These past seven years, I’ve lost some credibility with some of my friends.  Many have wondered if I was loosing it when I would tell them about how the pacific coast was going to flood from earthquakes; how we are next in line in the “ring of fire” after the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, the earthquake in Australia.  

Oregon and California are gonna get hit hard soon, like they have in my dreams.  I would tell friends to put boats on their roofs.  Pretend your house or apartment is a ship, and a small boat on top would be the life boat.  

What, you don't believe in life?  Or dreams?  Look at it as magic and good preventive Eco-measure.  You're into green speak, right?  A great, eccentric story that could start a trend -- and San Francisco would get credit as being ahead of culture, something it hasn't been since the 60's.  

I kept moving away from San Francisco, calling it “San-Fran-sink-hole”, a vortex where creative people go to end their creativity.  The Beatles did their last concert there, the Sex Pistols, and until recently, Throbbing Gristle. A real “San-Fran-Shit-Hole”, full of half ass “artists” and creative dabblers.  I already saw these dream-visions as both literally and metaphorically, a drain.  Was San Francisco going to become an actual drain?  I wouldn't be the first to call it the toilet of the nation.  Who would throw the tsunami sex orgies, and what company would privatize such things after the trade-marked disaster?  Freedman economic BDSM gear?  Oh, to see Naomi Kline in black leather gear, ranting about the Shock Doctrine and the Disaster Capitalism.  Politically valid, sexually aware and angry as fuck!  This is what we need.

I had these dreams and observations long before seeing many documentaries on our dwindling water rights and corporate ownerships of water.  I was relentless with my rants.  Many friends thought I was just going from one extreme political topic to obsess over to another; politicizing my personal phobias, or some shit some psychiatrist told them.  First it was food with GMO “Genetically Modified Organisms”; now it was water rights and ownership.  

Our view is dated and taken advantage of, just as the early American Indians incomprehension of ownership of land was.  The CEO of Nestle, Peter Brabeck, was caught on video saying he believes water should not be a public right; instead it should be something only the wealthy have access to.  I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP!  

My last finished hand made book was called MONSANTO, after the world's most hated transnational corporation.  I will never give up that battle; water to me was just as important as food, if not more.  We will die without either, which means there are really, actually people that want us dead.  Clearly, we were stupid, backwards primitives, not understanding we have no right to life for free, or to be free.  How long until we have to pay for air, or pay to take a shit?

I don't know why I kept moving back to the juvenile city by the bitchy bay.  I often times would move to the desert, then end up moving close to the ocean again.  Eventually I would go back to the desert for introspection, insight, and to paint what I saw.  I knew I was officially done with San Francisco, and the pretentious view that somehow it was the freest place on earth.  All I could see was nice weather, rule abiding rebels, and too many pretenses, garnished with ineffectual protests.  Too much fashionable, hipster Eco-sexual fascism for my smart ass.

Over a decade into the 21st Century, and fascism of all sorts has reached global proportion everywhere.  You might say control has a new style, and it’s hip and cool and self- policing.  The American Century is gone, and the only thing left to replace it is the tyranny of transnational corporations.  They have more civil rights than actual people, and are above and beyond any rules or laws of nature or man.  They are obsessed with owning patents on all living beings.  They are obsessed with controlling food and seizing water legally, physically, spiritually and emotionally.  

Never before have so few been so obsessed and controlled by control.  No dogmas, monarchies or armies of wealth needed; just the simple act of gathering the water.  Like Nestle did with city water in Michigan, they stuck that corporate flag in the pool.  Meanwhile, in the United States, the pez dispensers of world freedom and its government's Homeland Security propaganda is so ripe and abundant with paranoia, if you speak of such things you are “left wing”, or “right wing”, or the worst thing possible of all, a “conspiracy theorist”.  For some reason, it’s right up there with being a child molester.  Questioning authority is ONLY something that can be done within the boxes of the occupied movement in free speech zones, contained and corralled by the corporate babysitters.  Childish debates about gun bans and gun control are more important than government spending and the wars we wage in other countries; all the dead men, women and children dismembered by weapons we as citizens cannot own.  

Do we, the American people, believe that if guns are banned, we will somehow realize bombing and shooting civilians in other countries might also be wrong?  What's with police in the U.S.A. and all their literal back shooting of unarmed citizens?  What's the metaphor there?  Are we no longer of any importance, of any relevance?  It's not wrong; it's profitable.  The United States is not a country; it's a business.  

It is the age of the killer drone (sounds too much like Killer Clowns from Outer Space) machines, which are controlled from a computer, and can kill someone anywhere in the world.  President Obama has already killed several U.S. citizens.  Drone ban, anyone?  No trials, no expensive judges, juries, lawyers.  No apprehension, just instant death; no questions asked.  How very American.  

But this isn't an American story; it is a story of my life in this global, technologically-debased world.  It is the sad state of affairs in the world, post 2012.  Utopia never came, and dystopia is getting far worse than any could imagine -- not that anyone is imagining much of anything.  It’s just business as usual; going along with the program, sitting on the fences.  Whatever program that may be; any fence the media loops us 24-7 will do.  

Most activists are simply ignored, or labeled left or right wing, or have disappeared, or been marginalized, or attacked.  Many bitch and moan about world leaders, yet still see them as their leaders, even after calling them corporate puppets and liars.  Most “famous” artists (all four of them: Koons, Hurst, Banksy and Shepard Fairey), have slipped into the star system.  The amount of money they’re making is almost always more important than what they are saying.  Is money the “art” of our time?  

When an unknown artist’s work hits a nerve and is “controversial”, people have all sorts of nasty things to say about them; how “inappropriate” they are, how they will do anything to get attention.  What about those that do exactly what the art system tells them to?  When did art-fashion-slavery become the new liberty occupation?  

Most artists fear criticism, so they avoid the real subjects of sex and politics, food and water.  They leave that to the less creative clip-board toting, liberal “Green Speak” in-activists.  Artists, historically, have been the eyes and ears of the so- called “Western Civilization”, but would we know a Picasso or Goya of our time now?  Or would the rich and righteous of our time think them too unkempt, too radical, too uncontrollable?  

Now in New York City, starving, genius artists can baby-sit the rich kid “Sitters Studios”.  The opulent get to bring the slums of the creative into their homes, so maybe their “genius” children can absorb the creativity. The creativity of being an artist without all the ugly things, like poverty, that go along with it.  SO many so-called artists of our time are terrified.  They illustrate the add copy and symbols, the semantics of controlled possibility.  Fuck individuality; where is the personal Liberty?  Where is the art created that an artist would die for?  Or live for?  Would Goya and Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Pollock cower down in these most undignified of times?

Many so-called artists, activists and normal folk have said to me, “You can't say that”.  I say, “I have already said it.  What are you going to do about it?”  They usually walk off at that point.   Why is that?  Why so much fear, people?  Shouldn't artists and activists be forging new territory, creating the new language for the new symbolism?  Or should they be marketing-rebel artists, playing a part in a known script?  Or, as art critic Robert Hughes said in Shock of the New 2004:

“... little or nothing  of this kind happened with Warhol, or Gilbert and George, or any other image scavengers and recyclers who infest the stylish worlds of an already decayed and popped-out Postmodernism...”   

Everyone seems to believe the whole shit house is coming down, but they are okay with the same assholes “leading us” into this valley of many deaths in life.  Once, it was talk of chem trails and concentration camps, FEMA camps, or, as the government's Homeland Security calls them, “Fusion Centers”.  The United States of America is a land of many conspiracies in practice, not in theory, and I am trying to awaken people to it.  

Many so-called conspiracy theories are now a fact, talked about by the current selected president.  Still, you are a crazy person if you bring up what happened in Germany and Russia in WWII, or how the U.S. Government rounded up Apaches, put them on trains, and sent them to Florida before 1890.  Ask no questions about these “Fusion Centers”, which just a few years ago were temporary camps for survivors of natural disasters.  Perhaps you will never see the insides of these for-profit prisons.  They were once called “dislocated casualties of war”, not “prisoners of war”, when Japanese U. S. citizens were “detained” for their “protection”.  

Call it what you want, but many people in the western world are seen as taking up space and using way too many natural resources; not unlike many of my ancestors, the Indians of North America, were accused of.  The Department of Homeland Security's FEMA (Federal Emergency Military Army) website now speaks of holding facilities of U.S. Citizens (and world citizens), who have committed crimes, real or imagined.  

The plans of the corporate masters may very well fail.  However, many have moved their minds into these various prisons and have accepted defeat long before any physical battles.  Is this puritan American guilt, head-in-the-sand syndrome?  Is global corporate expansion the final frontier?  Why are the worlds’ artists sitting on their asses or drunk on endless funds, yet ignoring not only an obvious global fascism, but denying their own voice?  A rich coward is still a coward.  

Bankruptcy of the imagination seems to be the order of our time.  There is no imagination, unless propped up by millions.  No one believes a single individual could give meaning to life (our lives?), much less his/her own, unless we know someone believed in it enough to shell out millions; to banish the collective “suspension of disbelief”.  What of the shared visual landscape?  Aren't these image and symbol-making moguls just polluting the collective visual world with bad ideas, just as they are polluting the water they will soon own?  Why must the symbol manufacturers bomb everyone, everything, everywhere, 24 -7?  Is the tyrannical global corporate machine that insecure?  That paranoid?  

This is a time where protesters are mostly calling for the rule of law, not all the pie in the sky things wanted by protesters from the 60's.  I call for more authentic voices.  Where are the painters?  Those first-attack, avant-garde, sole creators on the front line, creating their ways out of the pathology of so called civilization, making a new path, or at least another option?  Robert Hughes also said,

 “Painting is, you might say, exactly what mass media is not.  A way of seizing engagement, not of general seduction.  That is its contemporary relevance to us.”

Painting has always been relevant to me.  It has given me purpose.  I have painted my way out of many troubles in my life and created many new options.  It's my life and it's my wife and it's my way to paint a way out of world global fascism; corporate totalitarianism and the authoritarianism of the famous, beautiful and so called important.  Painting may have suffered the conclusion that it cannot save the world, but it sure as fuck has effected, influenced and sparked it.  Can it do this in our time of constant media saturation?  It can for the creator and those that care enough for the stories it tells.  For me it has.  

Limiting options doesn't give the corporate masters more power, just less data.  Will painting save us from relocation, being dislocated, and disillusioned?  Will it prevent the 3 o'clock-knock?  Will it keep, or cause our doors from being kicked in by the NSA, or whatever obnoxious acronym-of -the-fascist of the moment?  Well, the outside world of manufacture, military and control doesn't seem to have any believable answers.

It is time to return to painting and its joy and beauty; its grotesque terror, emotional upheaval, revelations, introspection and the actual manifestation of a creator’s will, rather than the “laws” of the corporate masters.  WE ARE ALL INDIANS NOW, not seeing how water ownership is not unlike how American Indians felt about land ownership: INCOMPREHENSIBLE.  

We may think losing our rights to water is not possible, and quite unlike American Indians losing their land. They say ignorance of the law is no excuse.  Who makes the laws, and who is changing them, so winner takes all?  Well, they are telling us here, and there, what they are going to do.  There are billions of people wasting land, water and all natural resources that can be better “maximized” by the invading 1%.  They work for the 86 billionaires who are superior to any and all things, and really do see us as the parasites when in fact they are the parasites on this earth.  They see us as savages; well, more like angry self-entitled children making demands on them.

John Wayne once said,

“I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them.  There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

His statement now reads:

“I don't feel it's wrong for transnational corporations to take this great land back from people.  There are a few global corporations that could put the land to actual use, instead of useless shopping plazas, fast food joints and all sorts of idiotic reasons for asphalt and concrete.  Lazy people that pollute are selfishly holding on to something they can no longer afford.  They had their chance with the American Dream and they wasted it.  I prefer trees to people, concrete and asphalt.  Relocate these useless weeds and plant some fucking trees.”

-John Wayne Stain

More genocides have been done by the state of government than all the individual murderers of all time combined.  Yet we still believe in their “-isms”. Painting is one of many ways to tell a story.  Most of us only hear the official stories.  Not everyone is an artist, but everyone is a creator.  Why must we buy our creativity from the latest exploiter?  Once, culture was created by persons; now, it is manufactured by committees and C.E.O.'s.  Those that can't or don't paint, may ask the painters of our time why they’re slaves to the fashion-fascism of the corporate state, the art system, and the money system.  

Maybe if painters believed in painting, others will believe in painting again, and create new possible options.  Until then, keep worshiping your cartoon painters, your conceptual, deceptual and minimal panderers to markets that cannot survive in the wild without their institutions.  Keep on trusting that voting for the “brand new”, same old tired liar will change things.  Isn't that the definition of insanity?  

Keep telling yourself that renegade artists are stupid, weird or ineffectual, and painting is dead and your gods and symbols are dead; all you need are celebrity place holders.  May your celebrities capture your bankruptcy of the imagination, and lead you to that promised land you may or may not one day afford to purchase.  Let your precious multinational corporations lead you down the same ole' death paths of so-called progress and evolution.  They demand your allegiance and have none for you or your country.  

I am only one artist, and I do not demand your money or even attention.  I'll take it, but I am going to invest in dissent and engagement and aesthetic armies of revolt.  I am going to do that with or without your permission, money or attention.  

If you read this book, that would be nice, but I am not writing it for allegiance, market or audience.  I am not any kind of authority, nor do I seek validity.  I am writing this because it is my story and I feel I need to state the obvious, as well as the extraordinary, in this global dark-age.  Also, as a warrior, knowing full well art can be used as a weapon, I hope this book can kill some global fascists.  

It doesn't matter what race or gender, WE ARE ALL INDIANS NOW, taking up the space of the top 86 billionaires who rule the world, and soon all its resources.  Already many minds have been re-branded, relocated, re-purposed, and maybe replaced.  These 86 billionaires need to be 86'd.  They have all the media, all the time, but we have our monkey paws and paint and shit and vitality as living beings.  It is time to start using art as a weapon!  To get Black Magic-symbol literate, and create the new visual language.  Take it out of the hands of the image and media scavengers, recyclers, investment banker-bums, lawyers, corporations, and any other shock and awe monkeys who want me to comply and follow.  I do not confuse their authority for power, and as my good friend, composer Marly Preston, says, “Laws?  Those are not laws; those are rules of man.  Gravity is a law.”

WE ARE ALL INDIANS NOW, and we know what happened the last time.  We won't let it happen again.  May the days of “artist statements” end, and to the artists’ MANIFESTO return.  It is the age of Horus, the god of war.  The world seems all wars, all the time.  So why let the art system control the language of art, artists and art itself?  This is our story to tell, not theirs to sell back to us.  

There may not be an avant-garde, but there sure as hell could be some artists on the front line of ART WAR -- with and without SHOCK & AWE, winning the hearts and minds of the people, or at least going on a few dates and fucking them, in more sincere ways.  We don't need million dollar budgets to do this; to make a mark all you need is something to make the mark with, and something to make the mark on.  We need to, at the very least, let all know that we, the creators, will no longer be silenced by the profiteers of death and destruction!  I am still Apache and Apache still means ENEMY!!

Last day of January, 2014

In the Great Pacific Northwest

COYOTEL SEATTLE

TOTOL COYOTOL -Rev. Steven Johnson Leyba

[categorized-art-collection]

Steven Johnson Leyba, Alchemical Portraits series (2007-13): "Michelle" (top), "David Wright" (middle), "Crazy Bennie" (bottom): Ordained reverend of LaVeyan Satanism who prides himself in his Mescalero Apache heritage, dubbed the father of "Sexpressionism" by art critic Carlo McCormick, founder of the United Satanic Apache Front (U.S.A.F.)—the Albuquerque-based musician and artist Steven Johnson Leyba clearly boasts an eclectic background of eccentricity that sets him apart from the crowd. Leyba often deploys explicit erotic and thanatotic imagery in his live performances and mixed media projects to evoke a sense of Dionysian rapture unfettered by the regulative current of commercialism and normative society. His "alchemical portrait" series combines his interest in occult ritual practices with smut and debauchery to trigger visceral reactions towards the profane body. With all their campy ostentatiousness these portraits also convey a sense of celebrity Pop art kitsch dressed in a surreal cyborgian aesthetic, like something out of a David Cronenberg film. In fact his website bio lists Cronenberg as one among many of his notable art collectors, including: H.R. Giger, William S. Burroughs, Vincent Price, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Cornell University, the American Indian Movement, Genesis P'Orridge, Lydia Lunch, and the Black Panther Party. The images online look like ordinary digital montages one would find on some site like deviantart, but Leyba worked with his own blood into these mixed media projects to imbue them with ritual significance. Elsewhere Leyba has asserted his bloodletting as a challenging proclamation: "How many politicians do you think would give their blood for their beliefs? How many christians, for that matter? Native Americans have used blood ritual for thousands of years. What I have done…is to bring to life my own valid rituals. I have drawn from many of my own 'mixed blood traditions' to create personal modern religious rituals with political intent. I am not a traditionalist, but a traditional ritual has power that has be in lost in our so called modern 'civilization.'" (link) Throughout his artistic career, Leyba has been using bodily fluids such as blood, semen, excrement, as well as other organic materials such as human hair, tree moss, feathers, mosquito, dragon fly, etc. In this case, the bodily materials hearken back to the transmuting of substances in the hermetic tradition of alchemy. Often only a fine line separates genuine political provocation from cheap shock tactics. Unfortunately for cynics such as myself, the use of bodily fluids in art more often than not appears suspect of hokey gimmicks. Leyba's sensationalized portraits and performances are certainly no exception. I'm especially doubtful after witnessing so many artists' failed attempts to access the sacred by extending private worship to the masses, especially through some esoteric subculture such as Satanic occultism. But maybe I'm being a bit unfair. The line between "high" art and entertainment is also virtually invisible, so why not be entertained by the campy, sexy, naughty parody of traditional religious practices? Such rituals function more like a game, or a "magic circle," in which the players must all buy into the world of the game and mutually consent to the rules in order to participate and achieve any desirable effect.  

[leyba]

http://www.intersektart.com/rogue-gallery/october-spotlight-steven-johnson-leyba

[leyba]

Epic new interview and spotlight