The Last Attempt At Paradise

NOTE : text and photos from the cassette card

    The history of SPK begins in an Industrial Therapy Unit in Australia, where
Oblivon (actually the name of a small black pill) worked as a psyciatric nurse.
"Every day, every morning for three hours with all the old guys from the War; they
were all alcoholics, not really shell-shock victims. We had to train them to thread
paperclips through cardboard or to rip the center out of big blocks of hair curlers,
hot-pink fiber-glass things. They had to thread the plastic through the hole, clip it
down, and put them into packets as well. And these guys had memory spans of no more
than five minutes. We had to keep retraining them for three months, three hours a
day, and it just drove you insane."

    Here was a first glimpse into the bedlam that inspired the System Planning
Korporation a/k/a Surgical Penis Klinik. It is found in the back wards,
populated with many of us, the average depressants, the statistical phenomena.
SPK is attempting to end or overthrow this stagnant state. "The mind is the
center of revolutionary activity. Ultimately, that's where it comes down to.
You're not really repressed by the state apparatus. You are oppressed by
yourself; by your own inability or your own desire to consent to be normal, your
own inhibition. What we're trying to do is a shock thing. To shock you out of
this complacency."

    Just such a procedure was undertaken in Lawrence, Kansas on 4/28/82,
beginning with a ritualist film sequence from the forthcoming "L'Etat
Haemophiliaque" ("Internal Bleeding"), depicting the debraining of Twentieth-
century man or an anti-lobo tech. This sacrifice of an unknown human vehicle
was the removal of restriction, an awakening of imaginative portions of the
brain. "We don't make any distinction between information and imagination,
because we don't agree that anything need be empirically verified to be true,
and that's the problem with science. Unless it can be shown to be true
scientifically, we won't believe, which is crazy."

    Basically a two-piece band with visual accompaniment, SPK and their interests
are extremely unorthodox, "even to the point of cutting our own throats." Science,
art and culture are things that they constantly research. SPK is a catalyst in the
approaching mental revolution. The new Dark Age is upon us, for the opposite reasons
of the first one. There is too much information available, yet nothing can be found
out, due to excessive specialization. Hampered by incompatible technologies, SPK is
striving to make the move from vinyl to video. In their film "L'Etat Haemo-
philiaque," the god-myth of science is exposed. "The whole idea, is that we have
this thing called science. We believe everything it says. We'd kill for it. In
fact, we do kill for it. And we laugh at magic, shamanism and so-called primitive
cultures. What we're trying to show is that science is just as ritualistic."

    By incorporating audio-visual stimuli and their vast knowledge of infra- and
ultra-sound frequencies, SPK bring to mind magikal rituals that summon from within
the dormant primtive instinct in us. Something beyond language, that is felt or
communicated automatically. "Most of what's valuable actually happens in the
screaming range of about 500 Hz. The things that distress humans are in this range.
Infant screams and things like that. A signal generator going at 10 Hz. at constant
sine will or is supposed to affect your chest and heart over a period of time. They
won't unless you have a massive volume level, like 137 dB's, which is roughly the
equivalent of standing behind the engines of a jumbo jet. It's much more effective
at lower volume levels to play something between 500 and 100 Hz. o the frequency;
the only dangerous ones are in the megaHertz range and they are very specialized."
[For more on this subject consult Dokument 2.]

    Taped Gregorian chants become primeval screams, the screams of the corpse. Huge
shock-absorber springs were beaten with hammers and chisels unceasingly and merci-
lessly, like the implements of exorcism. Sparks and a hot, oily metal smell flew
from them. A casting out of demons. Sensory flagellation reaching into the minds of
some in the audience : those who were willing to leave the protective, often
deceiving ring of normality. Many became participants in the phenomenon generated.
SPK possesses the vision of sci-fy technos, looking into the near future and applying
information gathered from their intensive researches. They have located a problem
and are attempting to solve it. "The problem is we have primitive sensory systems.
Probably the greatest invention of all, is the direct-screening scan of the brain image.
Imagine when we can actually project what we are thinking onto a screen, and go the
other way as well."

    For those who believe drugs are the key to opening the mind, SPK's reply is
insightful and analytical. "All drugs are free-flow mechanisms. You might break
down a few barriers, or potentiate a few flows into linkages where they wouldn't nor-
mally be in a rationalistic structure. But they can only do so much with what's in
your brain anyway. Unless you actually know something."

    The only alternative choice open to SPK since its inception was to become
terrorists. They are torn between the idea that art is impotent, and the idea that
art can do something -- or that with the state mechanism, as it exists, "you can't do
much else but art, unless you want to be a terrorist, or kill yourself." One member
did.
[Marc Burch, Schloss Tegel patient #117]