1. We still remember the first time we met Christoffer and Kaisa. This was in 2012 – or perhaps even earlier. We were staying in New York City for some project or commission (it might have been the graphic identity for the Whitney), and each night we went to a different vegetarian restaurant. This is fairly normal for vegans such as ourselves, when traveling abroad – guided by specific apps and websites (HappyCow, etc.), you will just do the rounds, ending up at unexpected places every night.
One of these nights, we were sitting in a particular vegetarian restaurant, when a couple entered the space. We couldn’t help but stare as they moved (floated, rather than walked) into the place: they looked radiant, otherworldly – angelic and angular at the same time. They seemed to have been beamed into the restaurant straight from another galaxy, visiting planet earth from another dimension. We didn’t talk to them (we didn’t dare to make eye contact) – and silently continued our meal.
The next night, we were sitting in yet another vegetarian nyc restaurant – when, much to our surprise, the same couple walked in. They were seated next to our table, and we looked at each other with a sense of recognition. One of them started to talk to us: “Say, didn’t we see you earlier, at…” …Before he finished his sentence, we enthusiastically interrupted him: “Yes, that’s right! We saw you yesterday, at this other restaurant”. To which he responded: “No, that’s not what I meant… Didn’t we see you in the Helvetica documentary, back in 2007?”… That’s when we realized the couple were actually graphic designers as well. More precisely, they turned out to be Christoffer and Kaisa, who happened to be in New York for a comic convention.
We kept in touch after that – although in a very unfair, asymmetric way. While they keep sending us beautiful books and zines, we respond by sending them some lousy postcards (mostly invitations for exhibitions and book launches) once in a while. We know, it’s not very nice of us – but hey, they are the angelic ones, not us.
2. Through Christoffer and Kaisa’s publications, we certainly recognize the circles they are coming from. The hardcore punk scene of the ’80s and ’90s – a subculture we belonged to as well. In particular, Christoffer and Kaisa seem to be rooted in the Hare Krishna branch of the straight edge movement – a scene we experienced from nearby.
For the uninitiated – straight edge was a splinter movement that came into existence in the early ’80s, as a reaction against the death drive of punk rock. Coined by seminal Washington DC-based teenage hardcore band Minor Threat (who later critically distanced themselves from the term straight edge, and eventually transformed into Fugazi), the straight edge movement promoted a disciplined, healthy lifestyle – a life free of drugs, free of alcohol, and free of one-night stands. This message spread like wildfire through the hardcore punk scene – and created many other variations and sub-sub-genres.
With each subsequent wave, new rules and perspectives were added. Right after the original ‘three-rule’ (‘don’t drink / don’t smoke / don’t fuck’) model of the early bands (Minor Threat, ssd, etc.), there was a whole wave of straight edge bands that added vegetarianism to the mix (‘youth crew’ bands like Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, Bold, etc.). After that, Hare Krishna appeared on the scene, through bands like Shelter and 108 (and labels like Equal Vision). Then came radical veganism (bands like Vegan Reich), deep ecology (Earth Crisis), anarchist straight edge, pacifist straight edge, christian straight edge, satanic straight edge, pagan straight edge, and even islamist straight edge (Vegan Jihad). And sure enough, there was a strong atheist straight edge tendency as well (we’re thinking here of the band Seven Generations, who started their live sets with a Christopher Hitchens sample). There were parody straight edge bands (Crucial Youth, Grudge, etc.), post-straight edge bands (Quicksand, Texas is the Reason, etc.), revival straight edge bands – the list goes on and on. These scenes were sometimes quite regional – for example, in The Netherlands, there was a substantial communist straight edge community (with bands like Seein’ Red, Manlifting Banner, Colt Turkey, etc.).
In other words, straight edge was an explosive cocktail of militant ideas, occupying the whole political range (from one extreme to another), as well as the spiritual spectrum (from agnostic to fundamentalist) – and as such, the perfect spot for a curious Gen-X teenager.
For people outside the hardcore punk scene, this emphasis on rigid rules might be hard to understand. “Isn’t punk, like, all about freedom and individuality?”. Well, no – it’s not. The point of hardcore punk is exactly the overlap between uniformity and individuality – a balancing act on the fine line between standardization and self-expression (in that sense, it’s actually very similar to the notion of graphic design).
Hardcore punk is about finding freedom within self-chosen rules – and that’s also how we read the first sentence of Christoffer and Kaisa’s manuscript: “Joining a cult was the best thing I ever did”. Indeed – joining a cult (and thus choosing to subject yourself to certain rules) might be the ultimate expression of freedom.
3. Our own origin story is somewhat different. Punk didn’t deliver us to Hare Krishna (as it did with Christoffer and Kaisa) – it actually brought us to a very different ‘belief’ system, (if you can call it a belief, or even a system). In short, our general outlook is shaped by modernism, materialism and marxism – the three golden M’s, so to speak.
o briefly explain our whole shtick – the way we see it, humans are shaped by their material surroundings. So the only way to bring about change, to cause progress, is to shape these material surroundings ourselves. To speak with good old Marx – “If humans are made by their environment, this environment has to be made human”. This is where modernism, materialism and marxism overlap – or so we like to belief.
o, from our perspective – culture (and thus language, knowledge, meaning, etc.) is created through this ongoing dialogue between humans and their material environment. It’s a model that doesn’t allow for supreme beings, or all-knowing spirits, or almighty gods. The idea that these immaterial (and thus untouchable) forces could somehow govern (or overrule) this ongoing (and ever-changing) dialectic between humans and their material environment would be unbearable for us. It would mean that there is no hope for progress, for change. To us, things have to be material, in order to be touchable, and thus changeable. After all, we based our whole graphic design practice on that principle.
At the same time, we fully grasp that our stubborn rejection of spirituality/religion creates a certain form of personal dread as well. When faced with great losses, with sickness, with death, there is simply no comfort or relief for us. There’s no hope for an afterlife, no reincarnation, no sense of belonging to a higher order. We just have to swallow our misfortune, and carry it with some sort of Sartrean existentialist chic. In fact, you could say that we added, to our three M’s (modernism, materialism and marxism), a fourth M: miserablism. But hey – c’est la vie.
4. So how do we (as self-confessed materialists) read Christoffer and Kaisa’s defense of spirituality? Well, first of all – we think they make a very logical argument. From the first sentence (“Joining a cult was the best thing I ever did”) to the last one (“Thank you!”), it’s a train-of-thought that almost reads like Wittgenstein’s famous Tractatus. We are being taken on a well-reasoned, well-informed, well-articulated journey – we travel from one philosopher to another, and from one refutation to another, until we eventually arrive at a point of no return. It’s impossible to argue with this duck – he outsmarts us all.
And yet, and yet – being confronted with this intellectual tour-de-force, we suddenly realize the sheer paradoxicality of it all.
On the one side, there’s us – people who experience our own ‘atheism’ in an intuitive, almost irrational way. We have no scientific foundation, no rational argument to support our lack of faith – ultimately, it’s just something that we feel (rather than know). We just stumble through life, like the schlemiels that we are, not expecting any redemption, and without any light at the end of the tunnel.
On the other side, there’s the almost scientific defense of spirituality, as put forward by Christoffer and Kaisa – eloquently expressed in an 800-page philosophical treatise. A logical case for the illogical.
Our positions are thus almost mirror-images of each other – irrational rationalism versus rational irrationalism. It’s an interesting contradiction – or better said, a whole cluster of contradictions. And yet, these are exactly the sort of contradictions and paradoxes that make culture (and life in general) so interesting, we guess.
5. Let’s move on, and add one final note. Reading the book (and considering Christoffer and Kaisa’s earlier output), we might also add two other M’s to this (admittedly rather patchy) essay: Mickey Mouse.
And while we’re at it, let’s throw in two D’s as well: Donald Duck.
One of the things that makes Christoffer and Kaisa’s publications (zines, comics, books) so interesting is the way in which they refer to certain archetypical comic characters. In particular, their alter-egos seem to be modelled after Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse – quite possibly the most famous anti-heroes in comic history.
Obviously, the use of animals as protagonists goes back a long, long way – think of fairy tales, folk stories, fables, myths, and (indeed) religious tracts. At the same time, the use of Mickey Mouse and
Donald Duck as archetypes is a well-known motif in modernism, in art, and in pop-culture as well (wasn’t Roy Lichtenstein’s first Pop-Art painting a panel depicting both Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck?).
Somehow, Christoffer’s duck and Kaisa’s mouse are part of this ongoing tradition – using these well-known tropes to inject their specific mixture of Nordic Krishna spirituality into pop-culture. It’s a unique, ongoing project – and for this, we applaud them.
But no, the duck sadly did not convert us. We didn’t take the route to Damascus, and we certainly didn’t switch from Saul to Paul – we are sorry about that.
We guess religion is like water. Some ducks swim in it, and let themselves surround by it. Other ducks just shake it off their feathers (as the saying goes: “like water off a ducks’ back”). But one thing we can all agree on: the duck should never be boiled in the water (because eating an animal is always wrong, no matter what side of the fence you are standing on).
Experimental Jetset
Amsterdam