We’ve had the pleasure of engaging in a series of back-and-forth inquiries with Elytron Frass, multi-media artist, author of Liber Exuvia, and scriptwriter of Vitiators alongside illustrator Charles N.
I.
D.A.R.G: When I first learned your second book was going to be a graphic novel, I couldn’t understand why. Once I got my hands on it and scanned the first few pages, it became obvious. The image does say a lot more than the word. But there is also the fact that we cannot process all of the information at once. So that we filter for what we can recognize, what is familiar to us. We synch into what we have trained to look for. How do you as an author, direct the attention of the reader, or the flow of information that you wish to have imprinted on the reader’s mind?
Elytron Frass: As a sort of preamble to your question, I should note: what motivated me to reach out to Charles N. and proposition him that we collaborate on VITIATORS was his ability as an illustrator to convey an overabundance of distinct and varied ugly feelings and loathsome displays within a single frame or picture. Being an enthusiast of Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch, I wanted to write for that type of hyperinformative apocalypse specifically, to get into that mindset of overloading the image with as much storytelling capacity (both technical and emotional; both obvious and hidden) as possible without breaking its potential as an intelligible interface between the reader, its own world, its illustrator, and myself, its author. Fortunately, Charles N. had no trouble parsing my script whenever it asked for that, and I’d adapt my script or do more radical rewrites when he’d go off on his own and throw me something completely improvised. My word and his image, thus, interacted in a sort of competitive cohabitation where we’d deepen, expand, mutilate and even sacrifice each other’s efforts for the greater outcome of the work. Between us there was a functional mix of tension, fragility, dedication, and magnetism that placed the project’s importance above that of our own egos. That said, I’m also a visual artist, so authorial scene-staging comes to me with a very tactile understanding for composition as well. As to how I do it…I kinda just stop sleeping for a period of time until I’ve entered the correct fugue state needed to see all the layers I want to speak through and work within that.
II.
D.A.R.G: VITIATORS begins outside the world in which the story develops and then takes a dive into a kind of meta-plane, a world of our own creation even as we are the creations of a larger system. Would it be correct to say that the world of VITIATORS is both the inner and the outer worlds? That it is also the higher and the lower worlds?
Elytron Frass: VITIATORS offers much of itself merely to distract you from its most important themes. Thinking of it as a symbol for the cosmic egg is quite an interesting way of interacting with it, and there was a good deal of occult research that’d gone into it. Straight off the Emerald Tablet, the alchemists’ maxim “as above, so below,” is likely applicable here. With this in mind, the theme that I was most interested in exploring was the question: “are worlds within worlds infinitely scalable?” If you’ve interfaced with VITIATORS (as with anything I’ll ever make) you’re still scrying in its mirror; you’re still inside its matryoshka. I’ve satisfied my question; I’ve absolved from its venoms; I’m not responsible for what can happen next; But nonetheless, I warmly welcome anyone’s take on it.
III.
D.A.R.G: VITIATORS situates a group of humans intruding into someone else’s creation and giving it new life, a more intense life. To what extent are we as individuals the creators of the world we ALONE live in? To what extent are we responsible for it? To what extent are we entitled to ask others to give us the world we desire? What does this say about the nature of reality beyond the short-sighted political or even the metaphorical?
Elytron Frass: I think the archetype of the insurgent continues to captivate my interests. An insurgent force could be a disgruntled fan meddling in or “fan-editing” the work of his former idol, a curse set loose into a comic strip, into its readership, etc. Because we too are worlds within our own world situated within the greater cosmos, this type of insurgency isn’t unidirectional, meaning, this particular archetypal force can exploit all and any players within the medium as well as those who’ve created it and the readers who’ll interface with it. We’re all vulnerable open systems that not only inhabit and make suggestions which shape our habitat but are shaped by the suggestions of those myriad insurgencies inhabiting us!
As for the realm of the political: I loathe it with all my heart…it’s erasing the arts in my view and, moreover, subsuming all politicized art into its own artless propaganda. VITIATORS isn’t merely apolitical as a response to this; it’s vehemently anti-political under the auspices of satire.
IV.
D.A.R.G: We can correspond to this apolitical or even anti-political attitude you describe. We want direct, person-to-person interaction, and we want engaging art, first and foremost. Would you say that art, like anything else, is about the individual, and an artist-to-reader connection, even as the artist spreads his tendrils through copies of his artwork? Is that meaningful in a concrete way, or is it just an ideal?
Elytron Frass: Individuality is certainly an ideal, and ideals easily collapse into the political. To even go so far as to lash out and say, ‘invalidate the individual and its identity’ encroaches on the political. I think the most you can do is maintain a militant apathy for politics, and if the opportunity arises and these ever-fracturing politicized trends are somehow exhausted, with discipline, with distance, and with detachment, simply observe as their cannibal corpses incarnate wage anarchy on anarchy itself. However, the artist-to-reader connection itself is best appreciated when left unfixed, ambiguous, as all most sacred links are best maintained.
V.
D.A.R.G: The insurgent figure, which we could call a Satanic archetype, is essential to all young and vibrant movements. Do you see a correspondence between mainstream acceptance of the more wild subgenres of metal and punk as debilitating that spirit? How can individual artists keep the flame when their art is no longer rejected or feared by default?
Elytron Frass: I very much admire Satanic archetypes and traditions, but I pride myself on being an outlier in every sense of that word. I’ve long since structured my own religion from non-initiatory practices I’ve learned throughout my years, the details of which I keep very private. I don’t see why artists and their audiences should seek common ground on anything other than aesthetics because all other forms of contemporary commonality are just as delusional as pure individualism. I don’t have to align with Varg Vikernes’ outlook to appreciate Burzum. And I don’t align with him whatsoever. There’s something at once neither interconnected nor isolated, neither right nor left of us, neither higher nor lower, neither rising from the abyss nor freefalling through heaven’s trapdoors, which is completely ineffable and best invoked by not giving one fuck about these or any similar issues. Let all who enter the pit be shattered by its indifferent and guttural sigh.
VI.
D.A.R.G: I have heard an argument regarding the nature of the work in relation to that of the author. One side says the work is an extension and expression of the nature or being of the author themselves. The other says that the work attains a life of its own. I am inclined to think there is truth to both of these and that the argument is an illusion. Beyond them, however, would you say there is a way in which the artwork is a PORTAL to the artist? That a channel is built whereby both information and energy are conducted one way or the other? Can the artist in control of the tides feed off the readers? Do attentive readers become more like the artist? Can the artist transmit anything that isn’t contained within him? Or is the artist always a conduit, so that adept artistry is more likely the ability to become a more receptive and flexible tool for the passage and expression of certain energies, of certain symbols, of certain ways of being?
Elytron Frass: Again I see this multidirectionality where those two aforementioned factors are at play yet another, a third, also comes to power: that of the beholder’s eye, that of the reader. The reader is the wildcard and therefore until proven otherwise, the reader is my enemy. We keep our enemies close. And, so, what better means do I have of closing the gap between me and my enemies other than through writing a story capable of drawing them into it? And, then, what better means of leveling the playing field do I have to offer other than through making an inhumane subject of myself for the reader to diminish into a caricature, a myth and a quote, not so much of a person as a curious thing to critique? I bare my neck to such vivisectors; I encourage revenge.
VII.
D.A.R.G: As a beholder, the reader can only process what you give them by making sense of it in terms of their past experience. As you say, the reader is the wild card. Do you care about the result? Do you even care to observe as a detached scientist would?
Elytron Frass: I do care that there’s a result; the particularities are what I detach from. With that, the reader remains the wild card, and I never run the risk of warming or softening in response to any latent desired effect. This then enables me to move onto whatever new project with the same level of vitriol I had when making the previous.
VIII.
D.A.R.G: You talk about being aware of your work’s interaction with the reader. And you remain aware of it during your creative process. Would it be possible for you to describe a practical heuristics for an artist creating visual, text or sound art to incorporate that awareness into their purpose? It also seems to imply that a sense of purpose is necessary for the deeper work of art, correct?
Elytron Frass: Working backwards through your questions, I feel a sense of purpose whenever I’m defying what I accept as ultimately purposeless, a dark vitality in the face of what is infinitely dead, a faith rekindled in spite of faithlessness. My hypothetical workshop on personal heuristics would treat any work-in-progress as if it were a sort of poppet or voodoo doll representing the manifestation of viewer and artist combined – surely imbuing this effigy with symbolic links that might provoke both parties’ emotional and psychopathological undercurrents would be essential.
IX.
D.A.R.G: The “work in progress as a voodoo doll” gives the attentive reader of this interview an amazing method with which to work. Especially as you talk about the doll representing “both viewer and artist”. Further, there is a connection that exists between conscious entities that touch upon each others’ emanations. The work of an artist is one such emanation. Would it be accurate to say that you’re pushing the connection between conscious entities onto this “voodoo” object before you, so as to not be blindsided by connection, and instead you become the spider that weaves and pulls the strings?
Elytron Frass: Artists can be black magicians, magi of manipulation. Most will not be so forthcoming about it, but they all want you to believe in what’s beyond some fucking window they’ve revealed to you. Some merely want you to swoon and nod as you peer out to the limits of its depth of field, while others will want you to want to hurl yourself straight through that pane of glass and fall forever or, at least, until you’ve kissed corrosion on the charnel grounds below.
X.
D.A.R.G: What happens to the artist who is unconscious of the two-way connection between themselves and the audience? Does he place himself at the mercy of an external operator?
Elytron Frass: I’d imagine even that sort of one-sided martyrdom hits best when it’s deliberate. Being aware of that mirroring effect which you’re touching on and making your audience aware of it too opens the consensual lines to a mutual psychosadomasochistic performance between those two parties regardless of their separations in space, distance, and time.
XI.
D.A.R.G: Since you consider both individuality and seeking common grounds to be illusions, what are the powers and advantages given by the forging of one’s own personal religion? For the benefit of the possibly confused reader, would you give further explanation of “a personal religion” as opposed to “established religions”? Does the use of such a personal religion mean we can sidestep the illusions of narcissism and the need to identify with what is around us?
Elytron Frass: I mean the whole purpose is confusion of terms and dissociations from the boundaries and delineations which occur therein. Absolute truth isn’t organismically comprehensible, so we’re forced to merely make better illusions than the consensus ones we’ve been dealt in order to gain mastery at the very least over our inner worlds and experiences. Should the imagination extend beyond the body, as I believe it does, then such systems can be adapted to suggest desired alterations unto our environment and its denizens.
XII.
D.A.R.G: Once we are halfway through VITIATORS, we see no sign of the extremity of the scenes letting up one bit. If anything, they might just offer some variety. The gruesomeness may attract lovers of sadism itself. But there is also the matter of variation and artistic expression that is cathartic in and of itself. More to the point does the constant barrage of images and the word puzzles only a symbolically adept mind can grasp have more than one function? Are those who cannot recognize what is going on only subjected to a post-traumatic hypnotic induction? Are those of us who presume to understand it, in fact, above such induction? After all, negation is an illusion is an affirmation in disguise.
Elytron Frass: From my perspective the works that linger most of all, the works with that certain aftertaste, are the ones that either feel so forbidden that they manage to push you over your limit in some transformative way or works that require multiple readings/viewings in order to fully grasp, and, so, I go into the planning stages with those considerations in mind. What I write is maybe a bit quaint in that there was certainly more media akin to VITIATORS and in larger quantities at one time, but the sex and death on display is merely a backdrop and not to be dwelt on (although I wouldn’t admonish doing so). What’s much more insidious are the metafictional underlayers and their liminal implications that you touch on. And of course, those who cannot identify these occulted factors, will likely be disgusted, confused, or left pretty empty handed otherwise.
XIII.
D.A.R.G.: Is there any work of sound, metal or otherwise, that leaves you with that certain aftertaste you described earlier? The one that comes from sudden transgression or from the unfoldment of the sentiment through repeated visitations.
Elytron Frass: Burzum (Filosofem), Cannibal Corpse (Kill), Black Cilice (Transfixion of Spirits), Taake (Nattestid Ser Porten Vid), Mayhem (Deathcrush), Abandon (The Dead End), Pig Destroyer (Terrifyer), Christian Death (Only Theater of Pain), Basket Of Death (Suitcase Of Mutilated Entrapment), Graveland (Thousand Swords), Swans (Cop, Public Castration is a Good Idea), Brainbombs (Obey; Urge to Kill), Diamonda Galas (The Singer), and, last but not least, Stalaggh (Projekt Misanthropia).
XIV.
D.A.R.G: Do you see an intersection between underground metal, modern independent fiction, and transgressive visual art? How could we bring them together to create a vortex far more powerful than the sum of its parts?
Elytron Frass: I’m certain that there’s a crossroads to be tapped into and embellished, but insecurities, narcissism, lack of networking, and, again, politics have prematurely castrated such movements from coconspiring into much greater multidisciplinary/multimedia projects.
XV.
D.A.R.G: You point out that underground movements that could bridge the gap between disciplines are held back by narcissism, insecurities, lack of networking, and politics. Surely there must be something else that holds the common view together. We talk about upholding underground metal, as well as other disciplines, as art. But we still ask ourselves, would that be enough? Would the “personal religion” that could push us through constitute a constant daring? A focus on the moving present? A never-ending curiosity and eagerness to learn more from other PEOPLE and their creations?
Elytron Frass: No, no, with all due respect. A successful movement is a frozen instance in time; it’s lightning in a bottle, and therefore it knows of its own temporality and plans accordingly. Such a movement adopts a belief system wherein the belief lies solely in the internal logics and architectures of the endeavor itself, i.e.the artistic work at hand. Whether this figurative artists’ collective is working together on a book, a film, or an album–the belief system develops as a revelation from within the work, outwards, and not the other way around. If artists can check their own ideologies at the door, become completely entranced, devout, and servile to their arts-in-process, then such arts-in-process should develop the agency needed, complete with its own oracular and rapturous vision for the end result, to direct and instruct this collective to fully develop it into our so-called reality.
XVI.
D.A.R.G: Would you ever consider creating art for underground metal bands? What prerequisites would you have for them before they should even consider contacting you?
Elytron Frass: If there’s a worthwhile opportunity I’m ever-game to strike such dark alliances. I should note that I have done album cover commissions in the past, and that digital and analog collage art is my expertise; you can best reach me by following and DM’ing my Twitter handle @Elytron_Frass. However, if those reading this are seeking illustrations similar to what VITIATORS has to offer then contact Charles N. via @stretchedskin on either Twitter or Instagram.
XVII.
D.A.R.G: Any last words or messages you’d like to send out for those in our ever-growing community of underground aficionados and decadents?
Elytron Frass: There’s never any reason to let yourself be held accountable for anything you’ve done artistically. An artist of transgression must not only remain unfiltered throughout such acts of creation but irredeemably irresponsible and dismissive of the consequences of showing such creations to the public. Withholding any part of your dark light from branding into what you’re making will result in mollycoddle sacrifices to the monoculture’s god.
More of certain ways of thinking explored during this interview can be found here:
