Tuesday, March 19, 2013

PERSONAL STATEMENT

Sadly, there's someone unknown out there using anonymous scare tactics to try and get my shows cancelled, typically with threats made to arts venues that attempts will be made to cut off their funding, which seems to me especially cowardly. They are also trolling YouTube, Wikipedia, Fact Magazine and other sites posting nasty comments. This is all done under the accusation that I have been a covert 'nazi/fascist' for the last 30 years and that Cut Hands etc is some kind of elaborate cover for that.

I am not, never have been, nor ever will be, a nazi/fascist/racist.
I think and hope that would be without question obvious to most people that know me even just a little bit.

The evidence for the accusation seems to be based on an entirely satirical text I wrote around 1982 for an art magazine, Force Mental. It was written deliberately in a particular linguistic style because their requested theme of that particular issue of the art magazine was 'the New Right'. I had an interest at the time in the stylistic idiom of different political persuasions. It was not supposed to be taken seriously and, looking back, it was stupid of me to think that it wouldn't when taken out of context. My bad.

Likewise, the very name of the music group, Whitehouse, was not coined out of any admiration or respect to nasty moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse, it was also ironic and satirical, as was a hell of a lot of my musical output in the early 80s, in addition to the content in the label fanzine Kata. Like many other industrial and experimental projects of the time, a lot of wildly varying areas of human transgression were explored, there was much artistic immersion in taboo areas of human expression.

Not that I wish to emphasise great weight to my personal beliefs any more than the next person's, but just to clarify matters these are a few examples of where I've stood and continue to stand since very young, even when they caused me trouble.

I am entirely non-religious.
I am anti-war, anti-military.
I am anti-capital punishment.
I am anti-corporal punishment.
I am anti-racism/xenophobia.
I am anti-nationalist/anti-colonialist.
I am pro-internationalist.
I am pro-animal rights/welfare.
I am pro-gay/lesbian.
I am pro-choice (re. abortion).
I am anti-censorship, pro-freedom of artistic expression.

If you feel you can help in any way, even by just showing support, it'll really mean a lot. Feel free to also ask me any question on anything mentioned, I'll do my best to answer. Huge thanks for reading this.

Warm regards, William

Friday, March 08, 2013

ACQUISITIONS 24

reading
Reaching Out With No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono - Lisa Carver
Mercury And Me - Jim Hutton
On The Art Of The Noh Drama - Rimer and Yamazaki

listening
The Conet Project - Various (4CD)

viewing
The Pierced Heart & The Machete (Olivia Wyatt) 
The Divine River (Hisham Mayet)
UFC 157

ACQUISITIONS 23
ACQUISITIONS 22
ACQUISITIONS 21