November started with the release of Red Unseen, a 3 song EP recorded one evening.
The month continued with an abundance of collage work. I've slowly adding them to my Gallery page and DeviantArt and anything that moves to YouTube and Giphy, while adding older works too.
My erotic works had to take a backseat this month. I've spent almost the whole month dealing with a serious health issue. My body needed time to heal and the medication made me feel extremely fatigued and dizzy. I expect to be feeling better soon. Filming new works pretty much came to a halt, but it gave me a chance to finally slow down and get the Surrealist Erotica and The Blue Period films up on Vimeo. I plan on adding more to the Surrealist series, but they take longer to produce. I think my best works are the themed videos. I'm open to suggestions for a secondary theme to work on while I slowly chip away at the Surrealist videos.
I just want to say that my erotic works are meant to be arousing, but they are also meant to invoke something deeper. Sometimes my energy is weaker, and I think when that happens, it shows. When my energy is stronger, it feels sexual and sacred at once and that's the point. Sex is the ultimate act of creation, the highest and lowest form of art.
Surrealist Erotica // from Joan Pope on Vimeo.
Ritual invocations of Surrealist artists and literary figures:
Erotique Voilée // inspired by Man Ray
Dream of Venus // inspired by Salvador Dali
The Doll // inspired by Hans Bellmer
Imagine a Bullfight for You Alone // inspired by Laure
The Story of Death and Sensuality // inspired by Georges Bataille
...more to come...
The Blue Period from Joan Pope on Vimeo.
Erotica in Blue Light: a 5-part series
The month closes out with the release of my latest full length album Death is Coming. The album is a companion to my poetry book published earlier this year.
The album features collaborations with a variety of artists that I really enjoyed working with. The day it was released was one of the most traumatic days of my life. This album was supposed to be released on tape, but it couldn't wait. I needed it to be out there, to be shared. The book and the album are a good starting place to start understanding the philosophy behind SexDeathRebirth. So much of my philosophy is communicated through the universal language of symbols. Here, some of it is translated into words, into sounds. Sometimes people ask what has inspired my words.... my main inspirations are comparative myths and religions, gnosticism, alchemy, tantra, catholic saints, Georges Bataille, Laure, Carl Jung, sex, marriage, birth, death... Musically, I draw upon the punk and trip hop influences of my youth, and my obsession with Ravel. It doesn't sound like a punk record, or a trip hop record, or a classical record but all those elements are there. Sometimes it sounds soft and gentle, sometimes the sounds are so piercing they hurt. A union of opposites.