I BURN, I BLAZE, WRETCH THAT I AM, I AM CONSUMED BY FIRE

For those of us working in the cultural industries, and in particular for those involved with fine art, death is about the smartest career move we can make. For an artist with a good reputation, prices will treble the minute they do the decent thing and die. This is because creative types are prone to making pronouncements that embarrass those investing in them when they're alive. For example, they might contradict the views of a critic or insult collectors by deciding that a certain part of their output suffers from some ontological defect. It isn't until an artist is dead that their oeuvre can be fully shaped and interpreted by the bureaucrats running the institution of art, because a living artist is a loose cannon who might blow up in their faces at any moment.

Therefore, it is all the more surprising that so many artists leave no proper instructions for their funerals. This is not a fault I wish to be accused of, so here's what I'd like to happen when I'm incinerated. That said, I'm not particularly bothered about where I'm cremated, if I happen to die New York or LA, then there doesn't seem that much point flying my body back to London. However, I would like my ashes scattered on the Thames from Waterloo Bridge. Sweet Thames run swiftly long after I end my song.

As mourners enter the chapel the music they hear should be Sing For The Future Variations by Cornelius Cardew as played by Andrew Bottrill. Once everyone is seated, a coffin is to be carried into the chapel. An actress dressed as a vampire will emerge from the coffin and make her way over to a video suite, which she'll turn on (exactly what this means is down to the interpretation of the actress, but she'll get fresh with the TV before discreetly punching the play button). My face will be seen on the TV screen and I'll give the following short speech:

"You thought yo'’d got rid of me, but you haven't. For most of my life, whenever I had an amusing idea I'd be told by those in positions of authority or responsibility: 'it’s your funeral'. Well today it is my funeral, and having had the foresight to plan it in advance, I'd be enjoying it if only I was still alive. While I've anticipated these last delicious moments for much of my life, I should apologise for not being able to enjoy them with you. As you already know, I've been unfortunately indisposed. However, video conferencing has enabled me to come back from the dead. So it's goodbye from me to the institution of art. Death is a numinous object, and so I offer you my spirit in a spirit of generosity and I hope that it is in this spirit that other spirits will receive it. The life I lived on this planet was almost grand. Unlike many others I didn't starve, although I did have to struggle against the fetters of the commodity form. I wasn't born, I came from Saturn, and now I'm heading back through the space ways. Death is not true, and that's why capitalism tries to murder the dead. I still exist in the living memory of those who have yet to join me as members of the alien undead. It's after the end of the world and we are the zombies who will come back to bury our dead, so that the living may blaze trails to new modes of being. I remain a spectre bent on sabotaging the spectacle of my own death, such is the fate of those who take on the destiny of objects. Already there have been several premature notices of my death. So death, where is thy sting?

"Who I am cannot be satisfactorily summed up in words. I am nothing, therefore I must become everything. If I am dead, then yet I live. White on white translucent light. Max Schreck was my father. Cleopatra my mother. The pyramids are falling now, the pyramids will fall forever. The stars are my grandparents. Dismember me this way. I left my body for sexual experimentation after my spirit eloped along the spaceways, and I can tell you now that I preferred having sex while I was still alive. However, I did give several necrophiles a thrill and a half. I know this already because I am adept at time travel. Rub out the word, now there's the rub. Rosebud, Rosebud, where art thou? I am weary. I cannot rest. Please mother let me in. I speak the words of a dead man. I am reanimated. I'm coming at you live from the last cardboard cemetery in Hollywood. I didn't want to die in the TV, celluloid was my fetish. Video becomes reality and reality becomes video. I am not a media prophet. One can make use of technology without making a fetish of it. UFOs are massing in the skies of the Earth.

"Let me leave this world behind. I am happy because I shall never be at rest. You don't need rocket science to get where I've gone. You follow the astral pathways, travelling along beams of light. When you lie down at night, you may feel you body tilting first this way and then that. Don't attempt to arrest this movement. Allow your mind to spring upwards and then look back at yourself. Leave your body behind. There is a silver chord and there is a black cloud. You must command the black cloud to break the silver chord, only then will you be free. There is nothing here for me any longer. I love you all, which is why I must leave you behind. Don't let my pyrotechnics blind you to the material basis of avant-bard techno-paganism. The truth is socially constructed and constantly shape shifts; it changes us as we change it. Having said that, I must say farewell and wish you good luck. Eventually, you will follow me. Sing, sing of the space ways! Dust I am not, to dust I will not be returning, all that’s left is the burning. LOVE! DEATH! SEX! EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING! Please don't feel sorrow in anticipation of the death that awaits you, it is one of the few natural phenomena left in this world. When you go home cover your eyes with a blindfold, then get someone to remove it to let in the light. I burn, I blaze, wretch that I am, I am consumed by fire..."

While the video is playing my body should be brought in to the chapel and as the coffin moves forward into the flames, the video monitor will cut to images of a burning Wicker Man. The chapel fills with music, the classic sixties soul cut Burn, Baby, Burn by Mel Williams plays as the incineration begins. This tune will be followed by Sun Ra's Space Is The Place and the mourners can exit while that spins. Each mourner is to be handed a pine cone and a blindfold as they leave.

NO FLOWERS. CHARITABLE DONATIONS INSTEAD TO HELP THOSE FROM OUTSIDE THE OVERDEVELOPED WORLD.

Art Strike

Curation and Violence at the ICA

London Art Tripping (psychogeography of 50 years of bohemianism)

Andre Stitt (live art and shamanism)

On The Necrocard

Eleven Theses On Alchemy

The Holborn Working

The Empty Grave of Kurt Schwitters

Art/Anti-Art

Occulture

Light Journalism & Humour