Despite the praising banter – the numerous suggestions that Genesis P. Orridge exists as some form of art-deity - that generally plagues biographies of this manner, the discussion concerning Orridge’s work is actually quite fruitful. At this particular junction, I am most interested in the more general discourse relating to the use of the sigil as communicative medium. Though, as is asserted in Painful but Fabulous, the sigil actually functions to distort that which is communicated. It seems simplistic, and yet necessary to acknowledge that it is the very elements of the sigil, as with any artistic medium, that contribute to its significance. The most significant element of the form is the means by which it presents explicit mythological and historical elements, in image or pictoral form, in conjunction with more contemporary visuals. Here, as the contributor proclaims, the sigil disrupts spatial and temporal modes of being. The sigil operates by a logic that creates an important dislocation in time. This temporal dislocation alllows for the merging of the artist and art, providing the opportunity for distinctions between artist and artwork to dissolve. Moreover, and much more significantly, by disrupting the very spatial and temporal modes by which we generally function, the sigil provides the opportunity for an important mythologization to occur. This is the mythologization of the contemporary images.
“…images created during the process of ritual are frequently incorporated into the work, a strategy which mythologizes location and space.”
In consideration, it seems quite befitting to this discourse to argue that the sigil allows the contemporary to become mythic. Perhaps, it is in the very melding of past and present, of a recognizable history with a yet un-cannonized present, that the present is attributed a certain interesting historical significance. If the boundary between past and present is distorted, dissolves, or becomes entirely unrecognizable, than the sigil begins to serve a more significant function.
Take, for instance, the sigils that I am designing for this project. They incorporate contemporary feelings, those of the author, into a historical discourse. They do more than that, for these feelings conveyed as distorted images become as much a part of the past. They are interwoven and inseperable. I might include something of the recognizable Egyptian hieroglyphic in a sigil pertaining to the much more contemporary act of writing with permanant marker upon the body. Here, the present and past are not as oil and water. Rather, a more appropriate analogy might be the adding of vodka to water. Despite the different components that compose each element, the solution is visibly inseperable. As the designer of the sigil, I lose the distinctions myself. For the viewer of the sigil this serves a significant aesthetic (sorry Foucault) import. It means that the contemporary becomes mythological. The present is embedded in the discourse of the past, and vis versa.
Such, it might also be argued, is one of the more important functions of Burroughs cut-up texts. Burroughs selects fragments from a literature in order to accomplish certain, more contemporary, goals. Though, the difference is that with Burroughs’ texts the past is distorted. The fragments are often unrecognizable. With the sigil, on the otherhand, the past seems to overwhelm, to subsume the present. But then, what could be the importance of lodging contemporary images in the throat of a past body; of distorting distinctions? To this effect, the answers hardly obviate themselves. Perhaps, the import of this form is that by making the present part of a more general mythology, one distorts the ever-present emphasis on a different now. Here, the function of the sigil is to argue, in form, against a seperationist discourse. Such is the form of virtual discourse that forgets or refuses to acknowledge the existence of the prior. Rotman’s text on the three stages of the virtual is so entirely provocative for it refutes this seperation; a distinction. Similarly, Foucault describes the carceral in an important historical context; that of the scaffolding; of early torture. In both cases, the historical contributes significantly to present discourse. If anything, the sigil provides a more extreme amalgamation of present and past. Another significant function of the distortion might be that the sigil attributes the present more significance (here, the present is not devoid of the past). The contemporary is attributed a significance by association.
