NEXT-NEW-WAY-ON
"Your 15 Minutes Just Became Eternity"
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE SPEAKS ABOUT THIS SITE
Welcome! Thank you for visiting this website. As you will soon discover I.T. is still under construction. In fact I am hoping that I.T. always will be, for that would mean that we are not only documenting and preserving the past in our Museums, but also that we are also alive and kicking and very, very well as we move happily into the future or three. I thought long and hard about even having a website. In fact, when I left California in 1995 I threw my modem into the garbage and was proud, even elitist about NOT being online for a few y-eras. Why? Well the long versions of my thought processes regarding the possible nature of the internet/world wide web/ cyberspace ( what I prefer to call the PSYCHOSPHERE) will be uploaded at a later date in the writings zone of The Next New Way On. Suffice I.T. to say that I would consider it foolhardy to open a mysterious door to an unknown multi dimensional environment and immerse my SELF in I.T. without first designing and assembling a survival kit; getting the necessary vaccinations; stocking up on supplies; aquiring the most recent maps; the latest intelligence about potential hostiles; maintaining communication with my home base and shielding my SELF in the latest in protective and danger-resistant clothing.
MAGICK DEFENDS ITS SELF.
When I arrived in the U.S.A. in February 1991 I was surprised, and glad, to be located and welcomed by the alternative cyber-community in California and by the embryonic Rave scene. In particular R.U.Sirius, Queen Mu and Jas Morgan of MONDO 2000; John Perry Barlow, Michael Horowitz, Terence McKenna, Jaron Lanier and Dr. Timothy Leary introduced me to what was then (yes I.T. really was not so long ago!) the cutting edge ideas and excitements of the web, computer networks, "The Well" and free-flowing, radical, visionary and subversive-for-the-joy-of-I.T. post-psychedelic artists. People with passion who didn't fit in to, or didn't want to fit in to consensus reality networks and who had therefore constructed an alternative "virtual" reality where they could play and interact by themselves, for themselves, and this is the important part, without obligation to others, without censorship imposed by vested interests from above, and by and large, without any high commercial necessities. Those were heady days of speculation, of imagining the final dissolution of all boundaries, mental and physical, neurological and political, corporal and spiritual, carnal and intellectual. I.T. enthralled me and, yet, at the same T.I.M.E., some undercurrent about I.T. concerned me.
Having lived through the 60's as a teenager, and felt these same adventurous and heady optimisms; then lived through the 70's co-conceiving and directing "Industrial Culture" with an outlaw community of transmedia activators surrounded by the co-conspirators of "London punk"; continuing on in the 80's mutating into an experimental, and experiential occultural catalytic community with Psychic TV and Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth; I had seen each wave of idealism break upon the beach of cynicism, co-option, commodification, and repression in a repeating process.
THE PROCESS IS THE PRODUCT.
NOW! Please don't think I am discouraged (which, it's worth remembering, does mean lacking or diminishing in courage) because I most certainly am not. Nor have I become jaded. Nor am I tempering my Utopianism with too high a dose of realism. I remain today as dedicated to the cause of positive and insistent behavioural change of this peculiar L-if-E/form we call humanity as I was in 1965-ish when I began actively following my path and became known as "GENESIS". In a nutt shell my obsessively central motivation is, was, and WILLS TO BE, assisting in the chivalrous task of helping the human species to become a HumanE Species!
Sometimes helping can be as simple as being aware of one's own need to consciously make choices, momeant to momeant, day to day, L-if-E/T.I.M.E. to L-if-E/T.I.M.E., that contribute towards the inevitable truth that "WE ARE ALL PERFECTING". In my case, for whatever reason, being bullied at school, being a sickly child, chemical imbalances in my brain that made me THINK TOO MUCH! For whatever reason, I discovered my SELF compelled from an early age (about 5 or 6) to experiment with THINKING. To speculate endlessly day and night upon the possibilities and impossibilities of existence, L-if-E, God, mortality, behaviour, sensuality, "magick", feelings, emotions, art, work, play, sleep and in a sense, encapsulating ALL those and more, DREAMS. Weighty stuff for a skinny little guy with asthma!
As a result of all this, and an odd (still puzzling) compulsion to attempt to manifest, and make part of my L-if-E, any and all dreams that fascinated and intrigued me, I became an artist. More importantly, for you to get a feel for and understanding of the raison díetre of this site (and it's structure as expressed via design so fluidly by Eric Swenson) I, Genesis P-Orridge, hereby declare that I hyper-consciously made a decision in 1965 that L-if-E and Art in their highest and most divine expression were absolutely and incontrovertibly one and the same medium. Further, I made a pact with my SELF (that which I still truly consider to be my HIGHER SELF) that I would live my entire L-if-E, second to second, emotion to emotion, event to event, both through the creative filtering of and the awareness of being an Artist. with a capital "A"!
THE PRODUCT IS THE PROCESS.
Today, as I type on my Mac Performa 6400/200 Power PC, I.T. is 34 yeras later! Looking back, with kindness to my SELF, and with subjectively reasonable hindsight, I believe that I can say, or at least suggest, that I DID I.T! That I lived what I intended. Intention IS the key. Herein, on this site as I.T. grows, you will find a great many doorways, enigmas, and places of chaotic information. Even playgrounds and challenges. Our challenge wills to be, and from my position as an Artist dedicated to a L-if-E/long and Individual sense of purpose, has to be to eventually build a website that mirrors, as exactly as technology allows, the way that Genesis P-Orridge thinks, creates, and speculates and how that has manifested in the public domain of Popular Culture, occulture, performance, and fine art since his active acceptance of the ìmysteryî of searching for the ìgrailî that is secreted within every thing, every action, and every momeant.
NOTHING SHORT OF A TOTAL WAR.
But back to 1991. Why was I worried? I.T. all seemed too good to be true. Scary to think that huh? I.T. seemed so frail, all this idealism, this "finally liberating the brain and spirit, perhaps even the soul", this annihilation of nationalism and corporate dominance, this cheap phone line FREEDOM and connection.
We enjoyed such a marvellous T.I.M.E. of uninhibited community and outrageous optimism regarding the implications of building an all-seeing, all-pervading, all-powerful rendering of proxy-divinity and even immortality.
(At this juncture I must confess, of course, that I my SELF had been a vocal proselytiser of freedom of ALL information for ALL for as long as I could, literally, remember! For all these opening ups of synapses and scenarios I must say a huge thank you to all those already mentioned, and the hundreds of others I met along my way).
However, an early key text of mine that is still sometimes reprinted, or uploaded, was titled "NOTHING SHORT OF A TOTAL WAR-THE ONLY REAL WAR IS INFORMATION WAR". Today, even more literally, this remains true. As each new territory is opened up and colonised by waves of the courageous, and adventurous, the reckless and the mystical whose motives are inately, even naively, selfless, I.T. draws the attention of a second wave of those whose vested interests are more or less genetically co-dependent with "CONTROL" and, of course, whose motives are inately selfish exploitation keyed to the lowest common creative denominator for maximum influence and returns. What makes this remain so exciting and hopeful is, regardless of agendas, strategies, and moralities, we are all soaking into the same beach.
THE FUTURE LEAKS THROUGH.
(I wonder if, by NOW!, you are wondering, what the hell has this to do with a web site? Web sites are meant to be at the service of the visitor, to pander to their tastes, reinforce their extra-curricular, or intra-curricular interests, facilitate consuming, or to solidify already sacred beliefs or philosophies.
Well, that is exactly why I am here, asking your patience as we grow. Explaining well in advance our INTENTIONS, as much as we can today, for we hope, in the end, that this site, with your active/passive participation over yeras and even hopefully beyond our L-if-E/T.I.M.E.s, will become a shining, shockwaved, freeflowing, speculative, encyclopaedic repository of ALTERNATIVE ways of thinking, being and seeing. More importantly, I.T. should be a metaphor that is also an exact description of a way of L-if-E and the very structure of the site, and how I.T. works as you navigate I.T. should, as far as possible, reflect our ideas as much as the content.
The Next New Way On hopes and intends that through the retrospective foundation of zones within I.T. like The Final Academy; Thee Museum Ov Magick; Allies/Godstars/Avatars; Meta=Physics; Breaking Sex; Libraries; Art Galleries; Links and Spillages; Journals and Speculations, and on and on an attitude towards L-if-E and creativity will be illustrated and evolved by implication, by interaction and by positive examples. An organic process of discovery not a singular and fundamentalist blueprint trapped by linearity, but, quite literally, a NEXT-NEW-WAY-ON!
(p.s. By the way, I apologise for my long sentences, but it's just the way I think and I trained my SELF to try and type as nearly as possible precisely what I am thinking at any given momeant in the hopes THE FUTURE LEAKS THROUGH.)
PULLING A MIRACLE OUT OF A HAT!
I was at Dr. Timothy Leary's home one day in 1993 and was surprised to meet a "think tank" of what, at that T.I.M.E., were considered the greatest experts on the evolution and nature of the internet and the world wide web. They had, they told us, been given the profits of one days trading on Bill Gates shares as a research grant. Supposedly this turned out to be about 10 million US. dollars! Their brief was to travel around having discussions with the "brightest and most creative" conceptualists involved in cyberspace in order to develop templates that would enable corporations, goevernments, and interested parties to "privatise police and make profitable" this new territory.
Please be clear, I am neither criticising nor judging this phenomenon, nor those involved, who were all incredibly fascinating and fascinated. But the process of co-option had begun, had surfaced, become visible and active. Since then, quite amazingly, their suggestions and prophecies have exploded into our lives, politics, warfare, eroticism, communication and economy. Yet, that was only 6 yeras ago! Nobody around that table that day, sipping coffee, speculating, parlaying structures, or advising caution as I inevitably did, could, I truly believe, have guessed how rapidly all this would grow. Or how quickly the "citizens of the technologically advanced world" would embrace the web and internet so completely that already almost everybody takes I.T. for granted as if I.T. had all ways been there, like wheels, cars, telephones and television. An unquestioning acceptance of this blanket of unknown potential in every possible interpretation and application has taken place that in and of itself is unfalteringly uncritical and complacent.
CONSCIOUS SELF CONSCIOUSNESS.
As I.T. happens I was born in 1950, in Manchester, England. There were few televisions. I remember there being only one, ours, in my street, in 1952, and neighbours coming round to our house to watch Queen Elisabeth 2nd's coronation. Records were still 78's and shattered like glass if you dropped them; tube wireless' were our main source of entertainment; some post-war rationing prevailed; newspapers still supplied news; telephones were a luxury; cinema matinees a marvel. Whilst I was a teenager in the 60's there were no cassette players, no CD's, hardly even pocket calculators. But at least now if you dropped a record it didn't shatter!
Perhaps this chance positioning of my birthdate at the half-way mark of the century's progress has given me a fortunate vantage point of cultural observation. I have witnessed the ever accelerating information and disinformation technologies and their embracing by a less and less critical or questioning general population. In fact, I.T. seems we have reached a point where technology is considered inately benign and in our best interests, or irrevocably omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. As if, in the tradition of the great pyramids, we have built our own representation of "God". In fact, I.T. might be useful to consider the "psychosphere" as just that. The 20th Century's rendering of "GOD". Our very own equivalent of Stone Henge, and a new "wonder of the world" to be visited in awe and bewilderment by beings thousands of y-eras from NOW!.
All this is fantastic. Nevertheless, the levels of instant gratification, and passive acceptance that our species is being trained to accept unthinkingly continues to concern me. When every being is connected to every other being and all experience is a recordable and public phenomenon will privacy become THE FINAL TABOO? Yet here, ironically, I am. Here we are. Communicating (I hope) together to some degree. Even more ironically, here is a website, being built by us, for you, despite my/our reservations about the medium. Why?
SEE A CLIFF, JUMP OFF.
Firstly; the Next New Way On website is intended to maintain a domain where those initial excited speculations and debates of the early 90's might be preserved, even expand and continue to the mutli-functional benefit of us all. The Next New Way On aims to initiate, create and facilitate a quaquaveral cultural and behavioural dialogue. Not just by chat-rooms or e-mails, but by structure, implication and perceptual example. Choice of content is a language just as much as the written or spoken word. Editing is the "invisible" language of cracks, joins, fades, and point of observation. By a knowing use of these new, hidden, but immensely power-full languages and of playful, digitised interaction with information in and of its SELF, for its own sake the Next New Way On wills to trigger an higher expectation and cognisance of the infinitely exploding galaxy an Individual enters each T.I.M.E. they log-on. Our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep. If the Next New Way On can pass on to you an appreciation of how significant and potentially hazardess immersion in worlds programmed and limited by the motives and/or imaginations of unknown others, some with hidden, covert or even unconsciously driven agendas, then we shall have succeeded. Know thine enemy and assume that if something seems puzzling or malignant the answer is always held in the hands and forces of those with a vested interest in its manifestation.
Secondly; the Next New Way On intends in every possible and impossible technique to serve the established and spontaneous appetite for information and documentation about the L-if-E, projects, thoughts and times of Genesis P-Orridge. There are so many misconceptions, eroneous pieces of "faction" and incomplete biographies jumbled up and scattered without form or overview out there. Yet there is obviously a genuine and ongoing curiousity. The Next New Way On have discovered more than a hundred sites devoted to or including data on Genesis P-Orridge and/or some of the more visible cultural engineering projects that he has initiated, founded, co-founded or actively participated in.
The Next-New-Way-On regards all these websites as allies, regardless of their editorial position. Everyone is telling the truth all the T.I.M.E. There is obviously an enthusiastic and intelligent interest out there in this weird and wonder-full ether. As often as possible the Next-New-Way-On wishes to build two-way links between as many sites as possible; eventually not limited just to Genesis P-Orridge, but to any topic, thought, or area that seems significant or stimulating and pointing, no matter how obliquely to a NEW WAY ON. With the arrival of Simon Ford's definitive and lengthy book "THE WRECKERS OF CIVILISATION" describing the origins and story of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle an entire reappraisal and vindication of Genesis P-Orridge's ideas and actions seen, with hindsight, to stand appropriately in the current of contemporary art history and popular culture has obviously begun.
Rather than ignore this interest it seems to be a duty of the Next New Way On to share as much as possible of the voluminous and far-reaching TRANSMEDIA archives of the L-if-E and T.I.M.E.s of Genesis P-Orridge, cultural engineer. I.T. will take quite some T.I.M.E. to catalogue, scan, transcribe, and digitise this huge body of works. But that is a primary aim of this site. I.T. is a formidable task. There are direct links with fluxus artists and renegades like MONTE CAZAZZA in the 70's; the beatniks Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs; the Islamic Brotherhood of The Master Musicians Of Jajouka; Agori Baba's in Nepal and Santeria Baba's in New York; psychedlic pioneers like Dr. Timothy Leary and rhythm and blues pioneers like Brian Jones. And on, and on, and I.T. hasn't stopped because Genesis P-Orridge remains prolific and active in every medium as he scries the "culturally inevitable for the culturally ineffable".
The Next New Way On has no funding right NOW!. Which means I.T. is editorially fully independent, obligated to nobody, under no economic restraints except those of the basic expenses of hardware, labour, and duplication. To facilitate and maintain our autonomy and clarity of intent Genesis P-Orridge has agreed to gradually sell off memorabilia, artworks, documents and recordings from the past in order to finance and manifest a future and a new exploration through the medium of this website. That is why the Next New Way On shop is in place. Hence the legend, "SELLING THE PAST TO BUILD A FUTURE". Any support you can give by buying items directly from this site will be greatly appreciated and accelerate the density and depth of how the site operates and entertains and how comprehensive the museums are. As soon as there is a surplus of income the team of Individuals at the Next New Way On can be increased which in turn will accelerate and improve all aspects and services of this site.
NECROENEMATICA
Thirdly: Apart from my conceptual and speculative concerns about the uncharted and potentially hostile environments of a psychosphere in progress that is being uncritically constructed regardless of inter-dimensional, moral, and political hazards leading me to throw away my first modem. I had another reservation about all this. The way I.T. looked and worked. The depth of the experience in a sense. Here were all these fabulous minds, incredible technologies and visions but when I.T. all boiled down to I.T. what was being accessed remained flat, archival and sluggish.
THE UNIVERSE IS KIND.
There I am, walking along Avenue A in the East Village of New York, minding my own minding, when I hear a voice speak my name, as one does. I looked up. BLAM! Epiphany...
Eric Swenson! He promised to send me copies of his CD-ROMs, which he did. I popped the CD ROM into my computer and was assaulted with a huge, obnoxious noise that I could not turn down. BLAM! He had my attention. I was blown away, and I.T. had nothing to do with expectation, or even content, or style. All of which we all know are arbitrary, contrary and subjective no matter how one camouflages I.T. and don't kid your SELF. No, what had happened was that someone had put onto a CD-ROM disc exactly the kind of instantaneous, provocative, NEW, power-full experience that affected eyes, ears and brain similtaneously that I had dreamed would be possible from the first momeant I was confronted with computer possibilities in California back in 1991.
(By the way, I absolutely recommend that any and all visitors
purchase BLAM! #'s 1,2,and 3 as soon as possible.)
NOW! There was a chance to make the computer, and more importantly, the users of computers, sing for their data. NOW! I.T. was exciting again. Yippee! Needless to say, Eric Swenson was contacted and the "inevitable", that quality of popular culture that screams unnoticed to the commercial mainstream desparate for a novel voice, was exposed and initiated. Swensonia agreed to design and push to the limits the parameters, navigation and eventual interaction of the Next New Way On.
Please be patient, therefore. I.T. is intended that, as T.I.M.E. and income permit, this site will raise the ante on what any website can be in every possible and impossible sense. There will be linear areas, zones and rooms. Plenty of low band width to ensure maximum salacious reward for the greatest number.
However, as work progresses, and your support grows, new areas and zones will be opened up that operate under totally new agendas. The choices you make as to what you wish to view will affect the resulting status of your interaction. You might be ìforcedî to deal with future plans, although you are obsessed with a past project, or vice versa. You might discover an animated section once, that you can never go back to again. There will be wormholes, and mirrors, tricks and treats. Imagine, if you will, a digital snakes and ladders.
Not so long ago I was asked in an interview what point I felt popular culture was up to? After some thought I replied that how I.T. feltto my SELF was as though previously we had all been in the same theme park, or funfair, but we had all been trying out different rides, at different T.I.M.E.s, of varying extremity and effect. NOW! I.T. feels as though, finally, and fortunately, we all find ourselves strapped into cars on the same ride at the same T.I.M.E. and this newly designed mystery ride is just about to begin. None of us knows what the ride is, only that I.T. is a totally new adventure. But for the first T.I.M.E. ever, we will all encounter the thrills and fears in unison.
The Next New Way On seeks to reflect this observation. By making a metaphor real one becomes a Cultural Engineer. If you think I.T. wills to happen, I.T. is your responsibility to manifest.
YOUR NEW WAY ON NEEDS YOU.
As we mentioned before. The Next New Way On is being deconstructed by a loose knit, but motivated group of cultural "outlaws". The greater the number of vistors, and the more finance that is generated by selling the past to build a future, the more rapidly deeper and more challenging zones of the site can be generated. Please be aware that I.T. will take some T.I.M.E. to realise this particular dream.
You, the visitor can help NOW! You can make links from your sites to the Next- New-Way-On immediately. You can track back at regular intervals to mark our progress. You can favour our online store when you purchase limited editions, records, multiples, and unique expressions of our other projects.
Later on you can offer labour, software or hardware to accelerate uploading and expansion of zones of particular interest and/or access points to new transmedia environments. The best dream is a dream without limits, one that responds and mutates according to the needs of its peoples and the chaotic currents of an occultural society. So here I.T. is. The B-Earth of a New Way On. Not the only way on. But the Next New Way On that reflects and is inclusive of, our particular community of dissident watchers, commentators, visionaries, and alienated allegiances.
Welcome! To www. next-new-way-on.com
YOUR FIFTEEN MINUTES JUST BECAME ETERNITY!
Genesis P-Orridge - 13 June 1999.
