Istvan Bio 12
Let's workshop this bio of an artist who wars against the anti-art excesses of cancel culture that manifest on both sides of the political aisle
M. A. Istvan Jr., whose artworks have recently resulted in his due-process-less and unappealable termination from his professorship, does not write academic articles or poetry or satirical textbooks or comic routines or so on in ignorance of the burgeoning threat to artistic freedom. Dr. Istvan is aware that, worldwide (and especially in the US), artists are censored and intimidated—and more and more under the feel-good banners of “protecting the youth from corruption” and “nurturing diverse spaces.” In fact, one of the larger motivations behind his iconoclastic and provocative art is to keep the circumference of what can be expressed wide enough that we can continue to expose our Jungian shadows to the light (instead of letting them fester in the dark where they more easily puppeteer us), wide enough that we can continue to exhibit our humanity without fear losing our livelihoods. Far from corrupting the youth or shutting down diversity, Dr. Istvan works, in effect, to ensure that the youth grow in a world of voices that are not just diverse on surface-levels or in the “right way.” He vows, here and now, never to stop sallying against the anti-diversity groundswell of cancellation, however much bloodthirsty retribution it provokes!
As an important element in his battle to engender a world in which termination is not a necessary consequence of heterodoxy, his webpage—www.michaelistvan.com—has a weekly-updated list of art-censors throughout the country (students and administrators, right and left, young and old alike). Here is an excerpt from the relevant section.
Even when they understand that exposure or presentation of the unsettling parts of reality does not mean endorsement or glorification (something many unfortunately do not understand), these cancelers still seem to find it crucial to keep unsettling truths hidden, so crucial that the very artist himself must be muzzled and punished. They will often say that their efforts are to protect “vulnerable populations” (children and whites are popular on the right, and black and trans are popular on the left). Almost always this is just a cover. The true reason, at least in most cases, is that censoring and tormenting enlivens them with a rush of power (perhaps helping them to deny, at least for some period before the next fix, that they too—among all of us treading on the rocky sea—will drown one day like the rest before them).
Below you will find a detailed inventory on tattletale cancelers throughout the country, along with their addresses and phone numbers, logs of their daily routines, what they like to do and eat, the workplaces and schools of their family—whatever information might be pertinent in the defense of artistic freedom against the disturbing trend of censorship and intimidation. The list is bipartisan, covering all those authoritarians—left or right—who try to destroy the lives of “offensive artists.” It extends from those who see to it that artists are fired from their day jobs for having painted the Virgin Mary in blasphemous light or for having written a children’s book where Heather has two mommies, to those who see to it that artists are fired for having raised the “transphobic and therefore violent” question of whether trans women are real women or for having written a book highlighting the virtues of colonialism.
Keep in mind that the personal information on this page is not intended to be used for physical harm. It is absolutely not recommended, for example, to enter the BDSM bar—Manhandlers—that the university dean likes to go to, wearing nothing but a leather bulldog harness and a leather collar and a leather jock strap and a leather mouth muzzle just like him, all to stick him with a cyanide needle in the sweaty confusion of hairy bodies on the oontz-oontz dance floor. It is absolutely never applause-worthy to night-raid the DEI officer’s apartment with other like-minded warriors (warriors, by the way, you can get into contact with on this site) and rape her kid in front of her (videotaping it, Tweed-Stangler style) before having a body-part removing gasoline-dashing session with her tied up to a chair (Reservoir-Dog style).
This piece is unpublished
Photo: me on a beach in Miami
No doubt