Douglas Rushkoff - Testament
Douglas Rushkoff is a young writer who explores questions of technology, religion, drugs, marketing, pop culture, and magick. Recently he has created a comic called Testament, published by Vertigo. I had previous experience with his work, enjoying his articles, his work with Disinformation, his blog, and his novel Ecstasy Club. E.C. in particular was interesting, as it explored both the negative and positive sides of 90s drug culture, but also involved a wild, almost Pynchonian conspiracy, which involved such things as Ericksonian hypnosis and neuro-hacking.
Anyways, on to Testament. The book, so far (it's only on its sixth or so issue), is brilliant, with great art. Here are some excerpts from an article in which Rushkoff describes his goals for the comic.
***
“The premise of Testament and the premise for Testament are two very different things,” Rushkoff said. “The premise of Testament—at least as much of it as I’m willing to give away at this point—is that we’re moving into a new kind of fascism that it has its roots in some very old patterns of thought and behavior.
“Testament takes place in a world that looks very much like ours — except for the fact that corporate interests run the government, the draft is being reinstated, terrorism is being used as a pretext for population control, the medias has become a highly controlled propaganda space, all university research is funded in one way or another by military interests, citizens are being tracked by RFID implants, money has become a kind of thought virus that people actually believe in and...wait a minute, that is pretty close to the way things really are!
“Our main story follows a group of renegades who refuse to submit to the cultural program. They use alchemy, computer networking, media hacking, and a bit of sex magick to see behind the illusions and fight against the powers that mean to eliminate novelty and free will from the human equation.
“What they slowly come to realize, however, is that these battles have been fought before. Each of their trials has a corollary in the narratives described in the Bible. Does this mean the Bible really happened? Or what?
"I’m really sick and tired of the Bible being used by fundamentalists as a way to shut down thinking and inquiry. It just stinks, and it goes against the very premise of the Bible—which is about weird revolutionaries who fight for autonomy against all sorts of oppression. I can’t help but think if any of these people actually read the Bible, they’d rise up against their ministers and smite them on the spot.
“So my big slap in the face to these fundies is to say ‘hey, the Bible isn’t so important because it happened at some moment in history. The Bible is a big deal because it’s happening now. In every moment.’ Every day, I am Cain, discouraged by the way someone else—some Abel—gets credit and attention for doing the same thing I did. We are still living in a world where the monetary system invented by Joseph and Pharaoh enslaves us in lifetimes of debt, where we lose track of our most core desires and disconnect from our compassion.
“For continuity, there are the characters of the gods, who live outside the frames of the main stories. In fact, they can’t go inside the frames—the frames are occurring in linear time, and the gods live outside it. But the gods will be outside frames from both eras, and will provide a bit of context for the relationship between Bible time and our own.
“And there’s tons of sex magick in there, too, that no one likes to talk about but is completely apparent to anyone who bothers to read the words on the page. Abraham’s wife is a Temple Prostitute. Lot has sex with his daughters—and every messianic character comes from the offspring of that union. Moses has man-to-man sex up on Mount Sinai. God has fights with other Gods. There are monsters and giants praying to Astarte (basically Kali). There’s aliens having sex with the human women. I mean, you actually read the stuff and your jaw just drops. Abraham did what? And he’s a hero?!”
“The underlying message and concern in all my work is that people come to recognize that we are creating reality, together. The world we live in is not a creation of some God—some pre-existing condition. It is a living thing. Meaning emerges through our interactions.
“So it’s basic ‘reality hacking,’ with a bias towards empowering people to take up their pens or brushes or computers and begin co-authoring our world.
***
The book is going to be extremely long, and will be published monthly for over five years. So anyone who is interested should hop on as soon as possible, they won't be dissapointed.
The whole text of the article I quoted from is here.
Anyways, on to Testament. The book, so far (it's only on its sixth or so issue), is brilliant, with great art. Here are some excerpts from an article in which Rushkoff describes his goals for the comic.
***
“The premise of Testament and the premise for Testament are two very different things,” Rushkoff said. “The premise of Testament—at least as much of it as I’m willing to give away at this point—is that we’re moving into a new kind of fascism that it has its roots in some very old patterns of thought and behavior.
“Testament takes place in a world that looks very much like ours — except for the fact that corporate interests run the government, the draft is being reinstated, terrorism is being used as a pretext for population control, the medias has become a highly controlled propaganda space, all university research is funded in one way or another by military interests, citizens are being tracked by RFID implants, money has become a kind of thought virus that people actually believe in and...wait a minute, that is pretty close to the way things really are!
“Our main story follows a group of renegades who refuse to submit to the cultural program. They use alchemy, computer networking, media hacking, and a bit of sex magick to see behind the illusions and fight against the powers that mean to eliminate novelty and free will from the human equation.
“What they slowly come to realize, however, is that these battles have been fought before. Each of their trials has a corollary in the narratives described in the Bible. Does this mean the Bible really happened? Or what?
"I’m really sick and tired of the Bible being used by fundamentalists as a way to shut down thinking and inquiry. It just stinks, and it goes against the very premise of the Bible—which is about weird revolutionaries who fight for autonomy against all sorts of oppression. I can’t help but think if any of these people actually read the Bible, they’d rise up against their ministers and smite them on the spot.
“So my big slap in the face to these fundies is to say ‘hey, the Bible isn’t so important because it happened at some moment in history. The Bible is a big deal because it’s happening now. In every moment.’ Every day, I am Cain, discouraged by the way someone else—some Abel—gets credit and attention for doing the same thing I did. We are still living in a world where the monetary system invented by Joseph and Pharaoh enslaves us in lifetimes of debt, where we lose track of our most core desires and disconnect from our compassion.
“For continuity, there are the characters of the gods, who live outside the frames of the main stories. In fact, they can’t go inside the frames—the frames are occurring in linear time, and the gods live outside it. But the gods will be outside frames from both eras, and will provide a bit of context for the relationship between Bible time and our own.
“And there’s tons of sex magick in there, too, that no one likes to talk about but is completely apparent to anyone who bothers to read the words on the page. Abraham’s wife is a Temple Prostitute. Lot has sex with his daughters—and every messianic character comes from the offspring of that union. Moses has man-to-man sex up on Mount Sinai. God has fights with other Gods. There are monsters and giants praying to Astarte (basically Kali). There’s aliens having sex with the human women. I mean, you actually read the stuff and your jaw just drops. Abraham did what? And he’s a hero?!”
“The underlying message and concern in all my work is that people come to recognize that we are creating reality, together. The world we live in is not a creation of some God—some pre-existing condition. It is a living thing. Meaning emerges through our interactions.
“So it’s basic ‘reality hacking,’ with a bias towards empowering people to take up their pens or brushes or computers and begin co-authoring our world.
***
The book is going to be extremely long, and will be published monthly for over five years. So anyone who is interested should hop on as soon as possible, they won't be dissapointed.
The whole text of the article I quoted from is here.
posted by David at 5:21 PM
2 Comments:
holy crap, that's awesome. I really like his view of the Bible as an eternally present-based document. Kind of like how some Christians view it as the "living bible", but this takes it to what i believe to be it's logical conclusion.
Yeah, defintely. He also did some really cool stuff involving "open-source Judaism," that got him black-balled from conservative Jewish schools, due to the fact that he was doing an open reading of Torah.
The dude also wrote (and got rich from ) one of the fist books on viral marketing.
He also has done work with Terrence McKenna, Genesis P-Orridge, and Grant Morrison.
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