KDViationS Spring 2008

In Davis, there is a local freeform radio station called KDVS. It's widely considered to be one of the better freeform stations in the world, boasting the second largest music library in California. The first of which, being the library of Doctor Demento. Of course, I have a bit of a bias on this subject, since I myself am a dj and have a punk show (entitled Trotsky and the Crimson Airwaves) at KDVS, which can be heard every Saturday night from 9-11 if you are in the greater Sacramento area and can be streamed online if you are not.
Alright, enough of this shameless self promotion. KDVS puts out a quarterly publication entitled KDViationS which features a programming guide, music reviews, interviews with bands and so on and so forth. This quarter (spring 2008) I did the cover art for it, which is the above image. However this image is only a rough draft of sorts, there are two more, neater versions of it, which I will post later along with a pdf of the KDViation (many of which can be view or downloaded from the KDVS website). One being this same collage with the title painted across the top and the other being the version with all of the headlines (my hand painted title may be in it or they may have put in their own title on Photoshop) on it and the image neatened up in Photoshop (I had the liberty of not needing to be too cautious with this one, knowing that they were going to clean it up anyway. For example that smiley face in the background won't be on the final copy). I'd like to note that this image is actually a scanned copy of the collage, as opposed to the others, which are all digital photos. Also, in this upcoming KDViationS, which I believe may actually be leaving the presses later today, I have dope article on the theory and practice of mixtaping. Check it out.

EXTERMINATIONTHRUPROCREATION

This is not one of my best in my opinion, but maybe I am my own worst critic. I'll also say that the title for this one is pretty cheesy as well. Get over it. Unfortunately it is not made better by the blurry photo. The monolith at the center is dividing the utopia from the dystopia or maybe it is segueing the utopia into the dystopia. I don't know. It's up to you. By the time I was nearly finished with it I realized that the monolith was way too one dimensional in contrast with the rest of the image, so to help it blend or at least look less out of place, I once again too my friend's roommate's nail polish and used it to outline the monolith.

The Future is a Machine...

This one is a homage to one of my favorite bands, Filth. Filth was a hardcore punk band from the East Bay in late eighties and early nineties, initially featuring members of Crimpshrine, Isocracy and the Vagrants. They were highly influencial in many subgenres of punk such as crust, thrash and streetpunk. Filth put out three records in their career, the Live the Chaos 7 inch, the Shit Split LP with Blatz and the This is Why We Drink split 7 inch with Submachine. Life is Abuse Records has reissued both the Shit Split and Live the Chaos.
The title of this collage and the message on it make up the chorus their song "You Are Shit" from the Shit Split, which goes: The future is a machine... You are shit!
I hope you enjoy the chaotic images of destruction along with the bodies, used condoms and needles spread across the ground. Eventually, I plan on making another which I will call "You Are Shit". I hope you can guess what it will say on the collage.

Here's a sample of Filth's brilliance. This song is called Today's Lesson (not You Are Shit) and is off of their split with Blatz, which was originally released on Lookout Records and has since been reissued by Life is Abuse.

Filth-Today's Lesson

UC Daeefus

This is one of the few collages that I have been unable to think up a name for. I'll come up with something someday, but as of now it is only an image with no title to define it. It is hard to tell in this picture of it, but the image at the center is an eye with somesort of peppermint laser/path (I call it the "candycane railroad") and a stoked kid running away from it (possibly some sort of representation of myself. I don't know.). In the lower right hand corner there is an image of a boy spacing out at a computer, but it got cut off in this picture of it, so you'll just have to use your imagination. Around the eye is the motto of the University of California, Davis. The main reason I put that there, is because it is supposedly illegal to use the UC Davis logo in such a manner. I'm sure they'll get over it.

CEREBRALCIRCUMCISIONINCISION

As I make each collage, I feel the need to give it a name. In the case of this one, I named it "Cerebralcircumcisionincision". The name has nothing to do with the collage itself, I just find alliteration funny. While making this one, I was faced with a problem similar to the one I dealt with when making the camo in "Infanticide". I had plenty of black and white pictures of water to make up the stagnant ocean in the forground, however they were all too small. If I just glued them all together, it would look too inconsistent and the outlines would be too clear. To solve this, I cut up all the pictures of water and, once again, mixed them up and glued them together in a consistent manner. That is about all there is to be said about this one.

Brutal Death

This one is supposed to be the insert/fold out poster for the upcoming LP by Brutal Death, a grind band from Concord, Ca, whose guitarist frequently crashes on the couch of my apartment. Unfortunately, the album won't be coming out for a while, since they haven't even started recording it yet, but it could be out by the time you read this. Brutal Death is a key part of the Bay Area hardcore scene and features members of Warkrime, Migraine, Short Circuit and more. They do not have a website or Myspace, however I think you may be able to find footage of them on Youtube. They have so far put out one 7 inch and have been featured on the Short Fast & Loud #17: Teen Beat Comp and the California Thrash Demolition Comp.
As for the collage itself, on the left side you can disgruntled workers sorting through piles bodies and garbage, which one assumes is somehow connected to the conveyer belt dispensing hotdogs and the enthusiastic kid enjoying one of the hotdogs. In the background there is mess of intimidating industrial machinery. Most of the images were taken out of a Child Craft book from the 1970's, except for a few, which I think I got out of a book on the Holocaust. Since almost the entire image is black and white, it was initially hard to tell the background from the forground. To solve this problem, I took some of my friend's nail polish and painted it around the edges of the forground.
Friends have compared my collage style to the album artwork of bands such as Napalm Death, Dystopia, Discharge and Crass. I think those influences are most apparent in this collage.

Infanticide

This one I call "Infanticide" for reasons that I hope are quite clear. I pretty much thought of the slogan first and then made a collage to go along with the message. The words are, once again, done in whiteout. The background and children were taken from a book on Latin American indigenous culture. The bodies on the ground I found in a first aid book and the rest are from various magazines and childrens books. The military guy on the left was a challenge. I wasn't able to find a large enough picture of a soldier or even a camo outfit, so I cut out an image of a guy that was about the size I want and I found various pictures of people wearing camo and cut them up, mixed them up and glued them over his clothes to create a uniform. By the way, I don't know if you can tell, but the girl in the front is wearing a suicide bomber vest. Sweet! As for the canvas, when I started making this one, I was unable to find a sheet of paper big enough for this one, so I dug through my friend's recycling (I almost never collage in my own home.) and found a Cheerios box, which I cut up and used. Since then I have only used the cardboard containers of various food stuffs and other thick, flat, paper based surfaces for my collages.
Like the two critiques on religion, this one has a fairly clear message behind it. Most of my other collages do not have much of an actual message behind them. I often start making a collage with a particular message in mind, but as I progress the message gets more and more abstract and convoluted. However, I do often intentionally use loaded imagery, so whether or not there is an intended message behind the collage, people will try to find one. Whatever you think the collage means is what it means. Now that I have bestowed this secret upon you, don't let it prevent you from trying to interpret any of my collages.

Black Construction Paper Critiques on Religion

These are two collages that I made a while ago. The top one is called "Blackconstructionpapercritiqueonreligion" and the second one is titled "Blackconstructionpapercritiqueonreligiononion". These are both made on black construction paper and, unlike most of my collages, use images printed off of the internet (this is a technique I tend to look down on, since part of the challenge of making collages is digging through books and magazines to find the images you need). All of the writing on them is done in whiteout.
Before I started taking collaging a little more seriously I would never use glue and would strictly use scotch tape to hold everything down. I enjoyed the fact that when I made copies the flyers I made, people could still see the outlines of the tape. In the case of this first collage (I don't feel like retyping the title) I chose to go overboard with the tape even going so far to layer tape over all of the words. I found that the tape gives the image a rad glow effect and makes the words appear to radiate out of it. The hand is a printed off copy of the Our Father and Hail Mary cut out in the shape of a hand. The rosary is made of green thread that I stole from my roommate adn images of pennies, quarters, nickels and dimes.
By the time I got around to the second one, which I made after finally learning of the miracles one can accomplish with rubber cement, is not entirely reliant on scotch tape. However, I still use it some tape, which I covered the dollar with to once again give it a janky glow effect.
I got the ideas for these two collages when I was reading an article by Naomi Klein Harper's entitled "Disaster Capitalism". In the article, Naomi Klein discussed the outsourcing of government functions to independen, profit interested companies (the most clear example of this would be the use of Blackwater mercenaries in place of the police in New Orleans) and how these companies are taking advantage of disasters, natural and man made, as business opportunities. I'm not going to go into much more detail on the article, however she has put out a book on it called "The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism". After reading that article I thought about how much of the religious right seems to believe that all these disasters in the world are "God's will" or even the rapture and that all they need to do to gain salvation and avoid these disasters themselves is get rich at other people's expense and have a quick getaway and that is where I got the idea to make these collages.
One of the key concepts of Christianity is that Christ "died to save us from our sins" or "debts" (I have heard it said both ways). In the second collage I use that concept, except play with the word "debt" by applying it the modern idea of monetary debt and show the dollar as being representative of Christ, who one hand is "sacrificing" to the other.