MANIFESTO
“Give sanity a longer leash, but
Some of us have sharper teeth”
I’m Annie Thesia. This is a manifesto of sorts. Perhaps an artist’s statement. Do with this what thou wilt…
Built on various suburbs of the PNW, a backwoods hick town outside of Canada’s capital city, and for a short time, the urban concrete of Los Angeles, I came into my own with the experiences of both hard-liberal and hard-conservative towns that led me to a complicated relationship with my own identity. This had me reckoning with my own feelings of who and what I was, and through the growing pains of self-discovery, I learned that my love for horror and my understanding of my own identity came together into one festering, vomitous need to create filth that would (probably not) make John Waters recoil. Hopefully. Damn, I wish I could.
I am a believer in anti-censorship and am thoroughly disgusted by the cleansing of queer sexuality and identity in contemporary media; when queer identity becomes PG-13 we become removed of our personhood and our identities are reduced to nothing but fodder for polite society. Queer identity should continue to actively dismantle media tropes built by the straight and cisgender, which means queer stories should not cave or conform to a Friends episode or a Disney movie. At its very historical basis, being queer is about being outcast, being filthy, and going against the grain. If I don’t make a conservative gag, then I’m not doing my identity right.
Anti-censorship as a belief does not stop at the right-wing refusal of traditional queer identity alone. It also applies to anyone stupid enough to silence their own communities and the experiences held within said communities. There is no one universal way to be queer, or of any other identity for that matter. With that in mind, I also am disgusted by witch hunts within our own “progressive” spaces. It is a basic human right for freedom of expression. That right applies to any and all expression. The fear of the other, the fear of something that challenges, that haunted right-wing spaces now applies to the left, too. Christian morality has seeped into the cops in our minds.
That being said, there should also be active spaces for healthy debate and defense of one’s artistic practice. As an artist, I am incredibly willing to go to bat for why I do what I do. Though, there is no need or reason or want to require response to bad faith criticism. If you’re being crucified, you don’t politely ask the Romans to please stop.
The only artists who’ve stood the true test of time are the ones who pushed the boundaries of what is and isn’t comfortable. Inflammatory assholes, proto-edgelords, occultists, unabashed homofuckers, performers dripping in their own blood, disgusting perverts, drug-addled freaks, hysteric women, those who cockteased the thin line between slightly unnerving and tempestuous filth… they’re the only artists we remember, and the most real artists too. The shocking ones.
Shock value shouldn’t be a bad word. Shock for shock’s sake is different. Shock value is derisive, it scoffs and mocks what civil society deems clean. It serves purpose in challenging status quos.
“These people are the wreckers of Western civilization,”
Cultural canon only lingers when it is a work that has changed the game irrevocably, and as time goes on what changes the game shifts and boils and walks backwards and leaps forwards. Political climates change what does and doesn’t offend. Yes, even Caravaggio scared the public. My grandmother recalls not showering for weeks after seeing Psycho in cinemas, and my mother not going to the beach after viewing Jaws. Our entire cultural lexicon has only ever come from societal transgression and the common man’s fear. One of the most possibly transgressive and combative things you could do in this Western world is to be openly filthy, openly transgender, or both.
I love furry porn. I love smut and gore and kink and all at once. I love perverts. I love drug users and I love iconoclasts and I love those who love all this. And they all make great fucking art.
At the end of the day, go read disgusting comics. Watch a tasteless movie. Listen to abrasive, horrible music. Read a transgressive novel. Everyone I admire did as such, and I hope to someday be half as talented, too.
Check out the Gutterotica Manifesto. They worded this kind of artistic practice better than I could ever and I use their manifesto to label my work. Very cool person.