HIDEOUS GNOSIS Black Metal Theory Symposium December 12, 2009 The Public Assembly 70 North 6th St Brooklyn, NY 1:00-7:00 p.m. $10 cover
A gathering dedicated to the mutual blackening of metal and theory.
I: 1:00-2:15 The Light that Illuminates Itself, the Dark that Soils itself: Blackened Notes from Schelling’s Underground Steven Shakespeare The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances Erik Butler BAsileus philosoPHOrum METaloricum Scott Wilson (moderator: Niall Scott)
II: 2:20-3:30 Transcendental Black Metal Hunter Hunt-Hendrix Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya Nicola Masciandaro Perpetual Rot: Obsessive Cycles of Deterioration Joseph Russo (moderator: Steven Shakespeare)
Interlude: 3:30-4:30 Nader Sadek, Baptism in Black (Phase II) Sym-posium (together-drinking)
III: 4:30-5:45 ‘Remain true to the earth!’: Remarks on the Politics of Black Metal Benjamin Noys (in absentia) The Headless Horsemen of the Apocalypse Evan Calder Williams Black Confessions and Absu-lution Niall Scott Meaningful Leaning Mess Brandon Stosuy (moderator: Scott Wilson)
IV: 5:50-7:00 Black Metal and Evil Aspasia Stephanou Red in a World of Black: A Discussion of Blood in Black Metal Murray Resinski ‘Goatsteps behind my steps’: Black Metal and Ritual Renewal Anthony Sciscione (moderator: Erik Butler)
Why do you compel me to divulge things that would better remain unknown to you?--Silenus
What coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulosity as the specter of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against nature? Molded by the dead brain of a hybrid nightmare, would not such a vaporous terror constitute in all loathsome truth the exquisitely, the shriekingly unnamable?—H.P. Lovecraft, The Unnamable
He is not a return to the past; he has undergone the corruption of the “present-day man” and nothing has more place within him than the devastation which it leaves . . . the memory of Plato, of Christianity and above all—the most hideous—the memory of modern ideas, extend behind him like fields of ashes. But between the unknown and him has been silenced the chirping of ideas, and it is through this that he is similar to “ancient man”: of the universe he is no longer the rational (alleged) master, but the dream.—Georges Bataille, Inner Experience
But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness.—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The black tablet of vision, I hold dear for the sake
That to the soul, it is a book of the picture of the dark mole of Thine. —Hafiz
† “I’ve seen demons / And I’ve been shown things that no-one should see / And I know why birds alight from cables with no-one beneath / Who’s on the side of the angels / Who’s on the side of Satan / God’s not there anymore / I know why birds fly / No-one’s there anymore” (Caïna, “Hideous Gnosis,” Mourner [Profound Lore Records, 2007]). Painting by E.S.S.E. (Eternal Secret Society of Entities).
