The big promotional interview (and photo shoot) for my ‘PVRTD’ project will be posted starting later today, but here are a few sneak peeks from that pre-project promo effort, and a very disconcerting quote that reminds us of how humanity once failed us. It’s also a chilling warning at how distant or close we might be to a similar situation today. The cautionary signs are here. It begins in small ways, little increments of deteriorating freedoms, a chip here and there that we all let slide. ‘PVRTD’ is a reminder and a warning, a comment on the past and a concern for the future. It’s my own take on the current state of the world.
“One is tempted to say that the twentieth century has mistreated minorities in a more brutal fashion than many preceding periods. And it is precisely technological progress that has made possible ever more refined techniques of brutalization, torture, and obliteration.
Thus the fate of the gays under the Third Reich may serve as a touchstone for all those victims swept away by the hurricane of hatred. To this day, the extent and impact of this catastrophe has not been fully understood… In many ways, the specters of the Third Reich still haunt us – not because a few elderly Nazis may be hiding in South America and not because groups of younger neo-Nazis demand attention with recycled swastika ideologies and emblems. The specters begin to come to life whenever fanatical fundamentalists of any sect – religious or secular – take over a nation and call for a holy war against its most vulnerable and vilified minorities.†~ Richard Plant, “The Pink Triangleâ€
Do not be fooled by the photos leading into this project. They represent a decadent world already gone by, a realm of fantasy and play where escapism is the only way to survival. There are hints of foreboding treachery to come, but we will ignore that for as long as we can. Ignorance. Apathy. A blind eye. This is how some of us cope. This is how some of us endure. Slippery as quicksilver, evolving at lightning speed, and transforming at the drop of a hat to secure our safety with disguise or pretend or make-believe. Sometimes the only freedom to be found is inside your mind. If you’re lucky to be so vacant, so unfeeling, so unattached…
Vapid beauty.
Empty elegance.
Hollow hearts.
~ P V R T D ~
…The New Project…
—November 2018—
///ALANILAGAN.com\\\
[Follow Alan on Twitter & Instagram @alanilagan.]
