During the summer, we were invited to take part of Kendell Geers’s beautiful exhibition at Dublin’s Rua Red art center. In part, Kendell’s exhibition was about the infamous Hellfire Club (the Dublin one, specifically), so that of course triggered me quite easily!
I wrote an inspired text about the illusion of space-time, and about how the Hellfire antics live on in us all, as necessary symbols and matrices for cathartic psychodrama.
Towards the end of the exhibition, we were invited to create a performance/ritual in the gallery space. As we had just finished our audiovisual spell “Mementeros,” we decided to use that film as a framework for the performance.
The film was projected on the gallery wall already filled with Kendell’s exciting glyphs. The music consisted of instrumental versions of the soundtrack structures. We then performed a ritual play which consisted of an expansion/elaboration of the text I had written for the catalog (presented here below). I read that text while Vanessa intersected and read her cut-ups of relevant source material. A heavy and heady kind of ping pong!
What started out as a fairly mental exercise turned out to be a proper evocation of forces contained for several hundred years!
While in Dublin, we also went to visit the remains of the beautiful country house where the local Hellfire clubbers hung out. It is of course always easy to project one’s own fantasies upon any fascinating historical structure or site, but this one certainly felt imbued with vibrations from many a revel and ritual throughout the centuries.
All in all, these experiences (Kendell’s exhibition, the intellectual approach to the Hellfire Club, seeing the old site, and performing our psychosexual evocation) were phenomenally enriching and inspiring for future similar excursions and projects. We are very grateful to Kendell Geers and Rua Red for letting us display our work in this way. Art needs to be thought- and emotion-provoking to have basic value, and this visit to the magical isle of Ireland turned out to be an invaluable expansion in which vision merged with wonder, and arousal with satisfaction.
Fire & Brimstone In the Year of Our Ladies and Lords 2019
Enter not here, vile hypocrites and bigots,
Pious old apes, and puffed-up snivellers…
Woebegone scoundrels, mock-godly sandal-wearers,
Beggars in blankets, flagellating canters…
We are walking on hallowed ground today. Breathing in the air of creative tradition. Smelling the fire and brimstone of those daredevils who lay the foundations for our impervious prometheanism. Reflecting rigid and reactionary patterns back at the dusty, moldy Brit rump huggers; provoking the pious by an exaggeration of themselves. Flaunting terrifying mirror images of their unconscious righteous chaos. But right here and right now spewed out in blissful and health-inducing orgies of both body and soul.
There have been many precursors. They are now active cursors, setting the stage for a future that discards whatever is not life-enhancing. Nature rules supreme! That French guy: ”Nature’s single precept is to enjoy oneself, at the expense of no matter whom.” And we’re all crying out in the night: ”Babalon is a fucking formula, goddamit!” Have another swig of Scaltheen, our sacred Infernal Punch, and mock the irreverent reverent and all those dumbed-down fundamentalist occultniks. Our Pope (the real one: Alexander) cries out louder than any of them:
All Nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of pride, In erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
So come join our nocturnal revels at the secret Devil’s Tavern, somewhere in-between the Eagle Tower at Cork Hill and Daly’s on College Green. (Myself, I found my thrill on Strawberry Hill.) We never went away, we’re always right here, and here we’ll remain, pissing on the pious pontiffs and penitents. By the way and when in Rome… Darling Dashwood, beloved, actually flogged the penitents. When they realized the mockery was for real they cried out in Angst: ”Il Diavolo!” Francis laughed so loudly we could hear it all the way to Ireland, inspiring us before, during and after any facts or petit-bourgeois timelines. Then we all laughed together when solid spaces were constructed for all our actions and pleasures. ”Faye ce que voudras, motherfuckers!” engraved forever in the stained glass windows of our minds.
Whispering ”Carymary, carymara…” Our Lady burns, so let’s piss on the smoky rubble. Are you surprised? Blame any technical or human error as much as you want or need to be able to function… This is magic at work. No more, no less. Magic in revenge of our brothers who burned; in revenge of our many sisters who burned. We’re not in any rush though, because we know that mock rituals are rituals too, and amorality is certainly a morality too. Blessed Margaret, Holy Mary… Diligently fucked on Montpellier Hill; orchestrated by Lady Gomorrah and Lord Sodom: the literal party poopers in the dark night of the Irish Soul. Tom Jones and Fanny Hill are for the others, secretly reading and nervously masturbating under covers. But not us. We celebrate life because we can. The privileges of privilege are a sacred duty! We will never uphold any sanctimonious structures for the sake of someone else’s moribound morals.
Although our Scaltheen tastes revolting in its fad buttery sting, we swig it passionately to celebrate life. If brimstone is feared by the monotheistic mongrels, let’s gulp it down to the very last drop and carouse with the ladies and gentlemen of the night until we can make out no difference between the falling stars of the night sky and our ejaculations of deep-rooted resistance. It is our gods-given right. Even Saint Fornicating Augustine: ”Love, and do what you will.”
Our Eternal Castle of Iniquity is an Invisible Hexagonal Space. No matter what you do or where you are, you are always right in the middle of it. Therefore, back to the proverbial roots, ladies and gentlemen: Rabble Eh spells it out… Gargan Tu As Una Bazzio die TELE MA. Formulas and spells are created in the spur of the moment; ingenious constructions of universes, ass-ociations linked in sticky resi-dew, teaching and touching holy ground in the Dublin of Re Joyce and other luminaries of the letters; the first of which in this context is not the Alpha but the Omega. Spin the wheel of reverted chance; give chance a chance, and do it in the spirit of PENI TENTO NON PENITENTI.
Our Brother Ben Franklin now spins in the reverted chance of his tomb. Peter Lens, are you listening? And our beloved Hogarth’s dog was named Trump. Irony of ironies, hundreds of years later!
Cheers to the defiant, Cheers to the living spirit of this sacred Hellfire Club, and, most importantly, Cheers to us!
Carl ”Friar Beefsteak” Abrahamsson, 1739 AD
