Meet Chris Korda, the Thanos of the counterculture and the angel of euthanasia

by Noel Ceballos
May 8, 2018

Obsessed with 'Wild Wild Country'? Well, get ready to discover the most disconcerting sect of the 20th century. Or maybe it was all a big joke. One in which people died.

It must have been in the small town of Somerville, probably after a night of electronic beats and pagan chemistry, when Chris Korda dreamed of the alien. His message, precise yet urgent, sounded to this techno programmer and composer like a call to arms, or validation of an uncomfortable feeling that had been terrifying her all her life. The terrestrial ecosystem, that dream entity assured, was not going to endure many more years of negligence and irresponsibility on the part of human beings. Their words inspired Korda so much that, in 1992, he decided to found the Church of Euthanasia, a Boston-based religious organization that advocated ending the impact of overpopulation on Earth through individual ethical responsibility. "Thou shalt not procreate" was his only commandment. Their motto: "Save the planet, kill yourself."

The Church of Euthanasia has been described as a cult, a social awareness movement and a big ecologically minded Situationist joke. Maybe it was all of those things at the same time. It's also possible that the elaborate list of suicide tips it made available to its 200 members in the Massachusetts area—the number numbered more than a thousand online—was responsible for at least one person's death. The planet only had one real problem for Korda: us. Specifically, the obscene number of us that populate it. Watching 'Avengers: Infinity War', a blockbuster that puts a creed very similar to that of euthanasia in the mouth of its villain, this editor couldn't stop thinking about her. "It's a simple matter of calculation," says Thanos' character in the film. "This universe has exhausted its resources. If life remains unrestricted, it will cease to exist. A correction is needed."

Let us examine, then, the controversial legacy of Chris Korda, angel of euthanasia and the most extreme incarnation of the culture jamming actions that characterized the last years of the 20th century. Someone who met his own Thanos in a dream, or who made hundreds of people believe him while they filled the cities with banners in favor of suicide, abortion or assisted dying. The Church of Euthanasia welcomes you, reader. Proceed with caution.

There is no planet B

Since she was little, Korda preferred the company of a piano or a book on music theory over that of any other human being, which did not exactly make it easy for her in the collection of New York fee-paying schools to which her parents enrolled her. Money was never a problem in the family: his father, Michael, was already a successful novelist and editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster at the age of 33, so he and his wife Cassie moved to the United States to have to the baby. At birth, Chris was identified as male, using the male pronoun throughout her childhood and adolescence. She began referring to herself as feminine when she turned twenty, although she would oscillate between one pronoun and another throughout different stages of her life. Since in her latest interviews she identifies as a woman, and for the sake of clarity, we will do so in this article as well.

The five-bedroom apartment in Manhattan that the combined fortunes of her father and grandfather (Sir Alexander Korda, a very important mogul of British cinema) were able to buy did not serve to separate her from the existential problem that, according to an interview granted in 2013, assaulted Chris Korda when had just turned ten: the irreversible effect of climate change on life on Earth, which came to her in the form of a New York Times headline. It was, to a certain extent, inevitable, given that the 1970s saw a real boom in the movement for environmental preservation: protests against pollution, the destruction of natural habitat or the proliferation of nuclear weapons resulted in a series of milestones in North American federal legislation, such as the Clean Air Act of 1970 or the Superfund program of 1980.

This process of social awareness was fueled by a series of articles on the greenhouse effect, massive pollution and other causes of concern for the scientific community, so it is not unreasonable to assess the influence that all that weather could have had on the development of a phobia. childishness that, if we are to believe Korda literally, accompanied her for the rest of her days, preventing her (for example) from riding the subway without imagining the rest of the passengers in the car as animal species on the way to the slaughterhouse.

Between the late 70s and early 80s, Korda attended several institutes and faculties, until she ended up leaving school to start working as a freelance computer programmer. She dedicates all her free time to music and begins to identify as a woman, performing in some drag-themed shows and diving deep into the LGBTI scene in the Massachusetts area. It is at this time that he renounces his family fortune, as a gesture against a mainstream society on which he had already declared war: in his eyes, the Korda were part of the problem, or another example of assimilation within a social superstructure that rejects all forms of diversity, both biological and cultural. In his process of rebellion, Chris Korda takes refuge in the past, with the teachings of Native American tribes and the artistic avant-garde of the early 20th century as his main references.

Specifically, she is fascinated by the Dada movement, whose extreme actions to draw attention to a cause would be a great source of inspiration for the Church of Euthanasia. Around 1991, Korda also came into contact with electronic music, a genre that he considered "apolitical by nature" (and which, therefore, seemed like a perfect vehicle for the transmission of countercultural ideas). Already in Somerville, during her stay in an apartment shared with four other people, she is chosen in her dreams by someone she could only later refer to as The Entity. As soon as he woke up, Korda wrote down the message he transmitted to him during that hot June night:

"Greetings. We are not from this planet. We do not understand your strange customs. The Earth's ecosystem is failing. Your leaders deny it. Explain. Why do your leaders lie to you? Why do so many of you believe these lies? Explain your strange customs. Why believe these lies? Save the planet.

The only anti-human religion

Korda decided to use the end of the supposed alien message as the basis for what, at least initially, he defined as an ambitious activist project. Indeed, the first members of the Church of Euthanasia were familiar faces from the New England arts and counterculture scene, people whom the founder knew personally. At what point it went from being pure environmental agit-prop to a religious congregation is a matter of debate, just as its own sect status continues to divide experts on the matter even today.

If we accept Chris Korda as the leader of a cult strictu sensu, we will have to conclude that euthanasia have more to do with the Church of the Sub-Genius or Discordianism than with, say, that Rajnishe movement that is back in fashion. now thanks to the documentary series 'Wild Wild Country'. Neither Korda nor any other of the church's reverends ever forced anyone to drink the Kool-Aid, but the detailed manuals they offered to anyone interested through their pamphlets and their website (still active) could put them in a league of their own. very similar to that of Jim Jones, since no other satire of organized religion has been able, as far as we know, to cost someone their life. Philosophy of the absurd, weapon of social agitation, branch of organized activism against the radicalism of the Pro-Life movement, pure Neo-Dada in action or dangerous sect of extraterrestrial origin: the Church of Euthanasia remains a complex (and potentially dangerous) test by Rorscharch open to interpretations.

Let's focus, then, on the facts. Summer 1992: The first official event organized by the Church was a counter-protest to a skinhead demonstration called in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Korda takes advantage of the occasion to present his creature to society, defining it as a practical application of the principles of anti-humanism. As she saw it, humans were not playing fair in natural selection, so any species that systematically dedicates itself to eliminating the competition must be fought by any means necessary. The Church of Euthanasia viewed the human condition as an obstacle to the future of the Earth: the only morally responsible option left to us—since sustainable industrialization, respect for nature, and other dreams of environmentalism had proven incompatible with our nature—was to disappear. Later, the Church would develop this ethos into four basic pillars that, of course, could hide a considerable load of sardonic humor: suicide, abortion, cannibalism (as a means to make those who opt for the first option disappear cleanly) and sodomy (thus like any other form of sexual pleasure that does not entail any reproductive danger).

As the Church gained new followers through its rudimentary website and the first AOL forums, as well as through its association with the legendary (and highly controversial) portal paranoia.com, Korda and his closest collaborators began to being unable to know for sure if everyone came with a certain cultural, ecological and/or activist backpack on their backs... or if they were simply attracting a bunch of suicides without much interest in the basic principles of anti-humanism or neo-Dadaist actions of social agitation. Perhaps for this reason, the Church needed to specify that it did not in any way support murder or involuntary sterilization, but rather that all measures that its faithful took to address the problem in question should fall within their individual responsibility. In the same way, his public manifestations made Korda's debt to the Cabaret Voltaire increasingly evident, underlining their status as publicity stunts and formulating themselves as hyperbolic performances. The only way to respond to a progressively more absurd world is through absurdity, a fundamental idea that guided his next step in the Situationist scene.

We didn't serve

Unabomber for President was the name of the political action committee that Boston artist Lydia Eccles and Korda founded ahead of the 1996 presidential election. Their objective was obvious: to propose Theodore John Kaczynski, better known by his pseudonym "Unabomber", as independent candidate for the White House, under the slogan "If we elect him, it won't work." Of course, the subversive move of placing a neo-Luddite terrorist in the elections (as an aggressive amendment to the whole) immediately attracted the attention of anarchists, eco-socialists and punks, in addition to rhyming with the actions of the Church of Euthanasia .

The media attention that Korda and Eccles got with this anti-campaign aimed at accumulating votes for punishment against the System multiplied when the euthanasia made their way to Jerry Springer's program. In a segment titled "I want to join a suicide sect," members of the Church share their worldview, trying to place as much emphasis as possible on the problem of overpopulation and the natural balance with other species. The result was, of course, a ceremony of confusion to the greater glory of television sensationalism. Between this and the Unabomber, Chris Korda had finally become a figure to be taken into account within the countercultural scene in the United States, an opportunity that he took advantage of to publish his first EPs and albums through the German record label International DeeJay Gigolo Records.

The first serious setback for the Church took place after 9/11, when Korda released a video clip, 'I Like to Watch' (2002), which combined images of the attacks with scenes from pornographic videos. The artist stated that it was a protest against the ugliness and totalitarian tendencies of modern capitalism, very much in the vein of Unabomber for President, but the consensus among locals and strangers was that, on this occasion, the high priestess and her church had gone too far. The real tragedy took place just a year after 'I Like to Watch', when a 53-year-old woman was found dead after having asphyxiated by helium. His family found detailed instructions on how to do it near his body, instructions that the Church website made available to absolutely anyone who entered it.

The matter was about to go to court, but the Church of Euthanasia undertook to remove any manual from its website, thereby committing a paradoxical hara-kiri for practical purposes: after the video of the Twin Towers and this, many Activists who were with Chris Korda in his neo-Dadaist adventure stopped seeing the fun in a project that, in any case, had long ago exhausted its years of natural life. The Church is still technically active today, but more as a countercultural relic from the turn of the century than as a movement to be reckoned with.

In his post-Euthanasia life, Chris Korda focused on his two passions beyond activism: music and software. After working on the first color 3D printer in the mid-2000s, the former psychedelic teen developed Whorld, an open source program that allows you to create highly synesthetic images through mathematics. Korda is also responsible for several audio editing programs, including WaveShop and ChordEase, whose objective is to bring musical composition closer to people who, perhaps like her in her New York childhood, need a shortcut to apply their theoretical knowledge. and their creativity into practice. From time to time he returns to give interviews about the Church, with two recent cultural milestones like 'Infinity War' and 'Wild Wild Country' as possible catalysts for many more. While we wait for them, let's stay with one of his most popular statements, made in the golden age of his movement (mid-90s). They may not be the best way to close an article as dense as this one, but maybe, just maybe, they can contain the secret key to everything.

"I think the step beyond comedy is understanding the truth, so I would put some of my energy into people like that. I'd laugh with them for a while, and then I'd hit them really hard in the face with a big fish."

The preceding is a translation. The original language is here.