CHRIS KORDA
Chris Korda is an internationally renowned multimedia artist, whose work spans nearly thirty years and includes electronic music, digital and video art, performance and conceptual art, and culture jamming. Dubbed “The Bob Dylan of Climate Change” by Groove Magazine, Korda has released music on labels such as Perlon, Mental Groove, and International DJ Gigolo, in a wide range of styles including electro, house, techno, ambient, jazz, and neo-classical.
Born and raised in the canyons of midtown Manhattan, Korda witnessed overpopulation and environmental collapse from an early age. In 1992, Korda founded the Church of Euthanasia, an anti-natalist religion that obliges its members to take a lifetime vow of non-procreation. The Church’s enigmatic slogan “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself” became ubiquitous on bumper stickers and T-shirts, spawning countless knock-offs. Korda expanded “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself” into a techno hit that was backed by DJ Hell, and was subsequently remixed by Danny Tenaglia and played worldwide by Carl Cox. In 1997, Korda and other Church members appeared on an episode of the Jerry Springer show titled “I Want to Join a Suicide Cult.” In 2001, Korda released an infamous music video titled “I Like to Watch” that mixed news footage of the 9/11 attacks with sports and pornography. By 2003, a mix of outrageous provocation and official censorship had propelled Korda to “enfant terrible” status in the art world.
Korda’s relevance has increased steadily over decades, as environmental crises that seemed far-fetched in the 1990s have become front-page news. In 2019, after Paris gallery Goswell Road held a Church of Euthanasia retrospective, Korda’s “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself” T-shirt design was licensed by Supreme and sold 10,000 units. In 2020, Korda appeared on Arte TV’s “Tracks” and was featured on the cover of the international art magazine l’Officiel. Korda was one of the first transgender electronic music artists and is revered as an LGBTQ icon.
Korda’s latest release “Apologize to the Future” is the first album entirely devoted to the pivotal issues of the 21st century: climate change, economic inequality, intergenerational injustice, anti-natalism, the singularity, and human extinction. The album is electro-rap with techno and jazz influences, and packed with heartfelt, grief-stricken rhymes sung by a robotic choir. The central theme is that future generations—should they exist—will bitterly resent us for leaving them a wrecked planet. Korda excoriates the selfishness and solipsism of present generations, and describes the album’s “militant existentialism” as an urgent antidote to the post-truth era’s “alternative facts.”
According to Korda, “Mass extinction is underway, so it’s time to get past denial and move on to acceptance. People need to grow up and face reality, or we simply won’t be around.” A takeover of earth by sentient machines is also conceivable, and in Korda’s vision “they couldn’t do much worse.” Our only hope of a habitable planet is to swiftly rein in our exploding population and consumption, by embracing non-procreation and limits to growth. Otherwise we’ll be reduced to “a thin layer of oily rock,” a bleak reference to the earth’s most severe extinction event, the Permian-Triassic.
Like Korda’s previous release on Perlon, “Apologize to the Future” is entirely in complex polymeter, meaning many different odd time signatures are used simultaneously. Korda pioneered the use of complex polymeter in techno in the mid-1990s, and has developed custom music composition software in order to explore this frontier. Rather than composing in the usual sense, Korda creates virtual machines that output music, through successive refinements more akin to sculpting. Loops of different lengths are juxtaposed so that their shifting relationships generate not only rhythm but also harmony. Inspired by inventor and light artist Thomas Wilfred, Korda continues to develop new techniques for rules-based generative music.