Whenever I meet punks who are begging for scraps, I tend to see them as the modern day mendicant monks, beger monks living on alms – maybe we should ask them to pray for us after we have given them some coins. They know what it is to endure hardship, to suffer. I think it is about time we start to acknowledge that they are our modern day saints, our martyrs, our very own holy men and women. I think it would be fitting.
They desperately try to find a place outside of the grandeur the western world has to offer, and they try to create their own refuge with their own rules. And not always by begging for scraps either.
Too bad this life of experimentation -‘Aussteiger’ as the Germans call it- is not seen as a live of devotion, what it is in my eyes. At most it will be accepted as a right of passage from youth to adulthood, but as you grow older you are expected to grow out of it. True it can be worse and it has been way worse in the past.
In my opinion these people should be rewarded for their experiment, their efforts to find a different way of life. However, in our society we refuse to honor our outcasts as the saints they are. Being an outcast is merely seen as a live-style that is at its best an inspiration for our latest fashion choices.
My works are in part dedicated to the people who dare to think ahead. The reason why I decided to use a religious theme for that is that most slogans coming from previous generations trying to make the world a better place, have been turned into marking slogans (‘Be yourself today, buy brand X’). Everything marketing touches, is transformed into something meaningless. See Bill Hicks on Marketing for the way that works.
The religious sphere is is probably the only aspect of our lives that has not been tainted by marketing. Therefor I create religious themed art. There is nothing else left to do but that. But don’t be fooled: I have never prayed in real live, and when I visit a church it is to admire the beauty of it.
I tried believing in a god –I truly did – but unfortunately I always forget about it after a while.