“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” REM
I am not what one would call a fan of the band quoted above. And I’m not sure if Brad Feuerhelm, whose work I’m talking about today, is either. But that’s a phrase that popped into my head when I started to think about how to approach “Mondo Decay” (Witty Books, 2021), a book and cassette (yes!) that was released this year into what sometimes feels like a crumbling world. (Full disclosure, I’ve been a reader for many years of ASX, where Feuerhelm is also an editor.)
I may have some extenuating circumstances that exacerbate the feelings that entered my head while looking at “Mondo Decay” and listening to the accompanying cassette by the band Nun Gun (which includes not only Feuerhelm but also two members of the band Algiers, a group from Atlanta whose band camp profile describes as “a band of musicians born in Atlanta, Georgia, the rotten hub of the Ol’ American South, where W.E.B. Dubois once saw a riot goin’ on, and where the hell and high water swirls ‘round to the knees.”).
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At the beginning of March, I was diagnosed with something called CTEPH. It’s basically a condition caused by chronic pulmonary embolisms that then cause pulmonary hypertension. If you’re lucky, and I am apparently lucky, this can be treated through a very invasive surgery called PTE surgery. If you are not lucky, and many aren’t, then the final statement is one of premature death. I had the surgery in April; I’m still here.
So, yes, some things have been on my mind. And they were most certainly running through my head as I paged through “Mondo Decay” and listened to Nun Gun. My impression then, and still is, that, taken together, they are a work about a time and period of life, society, whatever you want to call it, in peril and decline.
It’s not a very profound thought, really, Feuerhelm’s book is jammed with page after page of dilapidated and deteriorating structures, some with a whiff that they used to be haughty structures of power. That power now looks corrupt and maybe flimsily constructed in the first place. The photos themselves are presented raw, with imperfections like dust spots, fully intact. This, Feuerhelm tells me, was intentional.
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Nun Gun’s accompanying music is made up of the mutated soundtracks of Italian Mondo Cannibal Films of the 1970s and ’80s. The mutations are various, but one of the most notable things is the slowing down of the narration and music. Listening to it sounds, at times, somewhat like a halting, droning garbage disposal dying as it tries to eviscerate whatever detritus you put in there, trying to flush away. It sounds like melting objects, warped records, oozing trash, or maybe the sound your brain makes while malfunctioning. I love it.
Share this articleShareThis project strikes me as being very appropriate for our times. Whichever side of the fence you may be on, it’s easy to see that we’re so polarized. People on both sides seem to be unhappy with how our institutions are functioning. Sometimes, everything seems just to be hanging on by a thread — like a derelict building with rooms that are intact enough they can still be used — or like a body giving you SOS messages that it needs to be revitalized. If it can.
You can find out more about “Mondo Decay" here.
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