About Supervert
Supervert: "What an author can be when amplified by technology..."
If he were alive today, would the Marquis de Sade have a web site? (120 Days of Sodom, ancestor of the sex blog.) Would Charles Baudelaire employ venture capital for a sinister new internet startup, Fleurs du Mal Inc? Would Arthur Rimbaud use information technology to disorder the senses? Would any of them, were they alive today, find some way to advance literature by means of artificial intelligence?
Supervert is what an author can be when amplified by technology. Creator of books, web sites, and CD-ROMs, Supervert stands at the intersection of literature, technology, and perhaps also abnormal psychology — for in all its endeavors, Supervert utilizes the techniques of vanguard aesthetics to research the pathology of novel perversions. A sort of deviant Bauhaus, Supervert strives to create new experiences through the synthesis of art, technology, pornography, and philosophy.
Supervert: A Brief Chronology
1992
Utilizing the motto "There are no strong words, only weak ears," Supervert joins into partnership with Swensonia! to form Necro Enema Amalgamated, a Devil's Advocacy group and entrepreneurial innovator of manipulative software, coercive advertising, and subliminal semiotics.
"By night they are Necro Enema Amalgamated, the creators of BLAM!, a new CD-ROM magazine. The pair want to do for the Age of Information what the Marquis de Sade did for ideals of the Enlightenment — parody them by pushing them to extremes." — New York Magazine, June 1994
1992-1996
Supervert learns about art the hard way — by writing copious amounts of unappreciated art criticism.
"As soon as the floor was opened to questions, people pounced on [Supervert], blaming him for the world's surfeit of artbabble. A questioner who seemed to express a certain shared rage against critics and their obfuscating critical language led the attack, whining that a visual medium ought not to require mediation with words... The assault didn't seem to bother the cool Mr. [Supervert], who was dressed in mismatched formality, presenting what was surely a deliberate visual parody of the respectable homme de lettres..." — Southampton Press, August 1992
1993
Necro Enema Amalgamated releases BLAM! 1, the notorious CD-ROM hailed as "Punk Rock Porn for Kids!"
"BLAM! attaches itself to you in the guise of a CD-ROM magazine, but once purchased devolves into an assault on the consumer. Fuck with me, BLAM! threatens, and I'll kill you." — Wired, May 1994
"You could pillage a heap of broken images from anywhere — like the makers of BLAM! did, and still make meaning. Because what creates 'meaning' is not the images, nor the sounds, nor the user-friendly interface, but the relations in-between." — World Art, Winter 1995
1994-1995
Supervert prepares its first major research document, titled Kreepy.
"This is KREEPY. It's not fiction. It's an amalgam of bad porn, history of philosophy, self-aggrandizement, specious logic, Reichian psychology, Vaudeville slapstick, and the Weekly World News. It's a portrait of a man named Kreepy Sewer — sort of a Jekyll and Hyde story, but with no Dr. Jekyll. Kreepy sees himself as a revolutionary, a guerrilla tossing Molotov cocktails at the provincial towns of conventional sex moralities. He wants to start a sexual revolution — the cum shot heard round the world — but he thinks the only way to be revolutionary, today, is to be revolting."
1995
Necro Enema Amalgamated releases BLAM! 2.
"BLAM!2 — a CD-ROM that's a cross between a guerrilla art project and an online zine — is so seductive, colorful, and goddamned loud it all but obliterates the original BLAM!. It is a torture garden of earthly delights". — Wired, June 1996
"Basically, this is an art fag interactive magazine from New York. I really don't have to tell you anymore, but it gets worse. This is for assholes that are too scared to buy real porn." — Dirty, August 1996
1997
Necro Enema Amalgamated releases BLAM! 3, which also includes the full text of Kreepy. BLAM! 3 wins design awards from ID Magazine and the Berlin Videofest.
"BLAM!3, subtitled 'the final fucking one,' is the latest and most ambitious in a series that goes so far beyond the pale, it's transparent: shock value may be the currency, but the real issue is not what you're looking at — it's how. With all the obscenities and wildly disorienting navigation, it can be hard to tell that Blam!3 may actually point to the future (gulp) of interface design. As industry standards simplify and homogenize our computers, BLAM!3 confronts us with the variety of alternatives we're ignoring. For its two provocateurs, this home-brew monstrosity is the execution of an emerging philosophy: user hostility." — Village Voice, February 1998
1999
Supervert is officially incorporated in the state of New York.
2001
Supervert publishes Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish: Materials for the Case History of an ET S&M Freak.
"What intrigued me about the book was Supervert's seductively nasty way of showing the dark side of hopeful Carl Sagan-ite speculations about our celestial cohorts... The overarching parable of the book has to do with one of my favorite subjects: fucking. But this isn't the happy outer space fucking of Barbarella and John Varley novels. Mercury de Sade's sexual fetish for aliens finally comes down to something far more basic than sex. What he wants to do with aliens is fuck them over, hurt them, use them... Mercury de Sade isn't hoping that enlightened beings from the Crab Nebula will teach humans to live in peace. He'd rather see outer space as a version of earth: packed with abused children, desperate prostitutes, subjugated peoples, and dupes of ill-concealed manipulation." — San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 2002
2003
Supervert launches PervScan.
"You may be taken aback to learn that one of my favorite blogs, one I check nearly every day, is called, of all things, PervScan. But it's more complex and intellectually satisfying than you might think. PervScan is basically a compilation of bizarre sex stories drawn from the capillaries of the news-wires and gathered together, which the author, behind the nom de perversité Supervert, gives his surprisingly intelligent, perspicacious, sex-positive, slice-through-the-bullshit ideas full rein to rub casually, but with a rhythmic insistence, on, in, and around. I'm guessing Supervert is a man, not only because if it were my site I'd be calling myself Pervella, Pervasia, or Pervatrix, not Supervert, but also because the image on his banner is of a guy with a totally bald head, who, frankly, looks like a perv, well... scanning." — Mikarrhea.com, May 2005
2004
Supervert launches two new web sites: FleursDuMal.org, the definitive online presentation of Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, and RealityStudio.org, a William S. Burroughs community.
2005
Supervert publishes Necrophilia Variations, a literary monograph about death, desire, and deviance.
"This beautifully-designed black-minimalist paperback collection of chapters by Supervert 32C Inc. is, upon a second and much more thorough reading, now definitely recommended by us. How could we have missed the abundance of Black Humor in this imaginative outpouring of pure bile? We laughed dozens of times, at least. A book to fend off the darkest, dourest, most insomniac Night Thoughts..." — V. Vale, Re/Search
2008
Savoy Books publishes a limited edition hardcover featuring Supervert's essay, "Horror Panegyric."
Supervert's "essay alone makes great, thoughtful lunchtime reading, especially if you like your scifi on the transgressive side." — Annalee Newitz, io9.com
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