Dark Light: A double suicide takes the lives of two bright
Oct 17, 2019 18:19:33 GMT
CrepedCrusader likes this
Post by hi224 on Oct 17, 2019 18:19:33 GMT
"In July 2007, the artists Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan ended their own lives. Both had grown erratic and paranoid in the preceding months, and on the 10th, Blake found his longtime romantic partner dead in their East Village apartment, overdosed on a lethal cocktail of whiskey and Tylenol PM. One week later, he drowned himself in the Atlantic Ocean at Rockaway Beach.
The official story, forwarded in a flurry of media coverage of the so-called "golden suicides," tells of folie à deux—a shared delusion, brought on perhaps by career-related stress and a lot of bourbon and champagne, and manifested in abruptly burned bridges with formerly close friends, bizarre "loyalty oaths," and an increasingly monomaniacal preoccupation with conspiracies, especially those related to the Church of Scientology.
But alongside this, there exists a second vague narrative: that the shadowy forces that so captured the imaginations of Duncan and Blake in their final years were not merely a troubling obsession, but an active player in their deaths.
This conspiracy theory, put forth mostly by an army of amateur bloggers, points to an array of organizations, but mostly to Scientology, and specifically Blake's very real working relationship with one of its most visible members: Beck, whose 2002 album Sea Change was adorned with cover art by Blake." ---gawker
"Perhaps because Duncan died first, she received more media attention than Blake, who, to some extent, was cast as a victim of his girlfriend's presumed downward spiral: Though the term folie à deux, meaning "madness shared by two," has been frequently evoked, the madness the lovers were believed to have shared was presented more accurately as a folie imposée, with Duncan impressing on Blake her far-fetched beliefs. The most consuming among them was the insistence they were being followed and harassed by members of the Church of Scientology who were intent on stifling Duncan's career." --ibtimes.com
See one of Jeremy's video's here
"Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan first met in 1994. They were both part of the activist, “positive force” punk-rock scene in Washington (think Fugazi, Bikini Kill). He hung around with the band Nation of Ulysses, believed in punk as a philosophy. It was a macho, hipster scene. The women tended to stay in the background, dressed frumpy. Theresa called them “the hausfraus 2000.” She went to parties wearing sequined hot pants. Her boyfriend was Mitch Parker, former bassist of Government Issue. They had a song called “Asshole.” Sometimes she would take out her compact and apply lipstick when someone was boring her.
Mr. Blake began to make a name for himself in the late 1990’s with digital projections that combined colorful abstract geometric forms with photographic images — poolside cabanas, Modernist interiors, patio lights, skylines — that suggested scenes from movies.
Some art critics described the work as Color Field paintings set in motion. He called much of his work “time-based paintings,” and wrote that he drew his subject matter from a fascination with “half-remembered and imaginary architecture” and images borrowed from “Hollywood’s psychic dustbin.”
"In 2002, the year she [Theresa Duncan] and Jeremy Blake moved to Los Angeles (they had been living in New York since 1995), Duncan was riding the crest of a seven-year wave of success. Stories about “Silicon Alley’s dream girl” had appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, along with dozens of photographs of her looking glamorous.
She had been to “new media” what Jane Pratt was to magazines or Tabitha Soren to MTV—the pretty girl, the chosen one. Her CD-roms, Chop Suey, Smarty, and Zero Zero, had been hailed as breakthrough games for girls. Chop Suey was named *Entertainment Weekly’*s “CD-rom of the Year” in 1995.
Read more about those CD Rom Games here
Read Theresa's Blog "The Wit of the Staircase" here
When she moved to Los Angeles, Duncan had a two-picture deal with Fox Searchlight and had written and directed a pilot for Oxygen Media.
She had “my boyfriend Jeremy Blake”—she was always bringing him up—literally the poster boy of the 2001 “BitStreams” exhibition of digital art at the Whitney Museum. That same year, Blake had been tapped by director Paul Thomas Anderson to create a hallucinogenic dream sequence for Punch Drunk Love, and singer-songwriter Beck had asked him to do a series of covers and a video for his album Sea Change (both released in 2002)." ---the Golden Suicides, Nancy Jo Sales
It's important to note that Beck and his wife, Marissa Ribissi (sister of actor Giovanni Ribissi) are all Scientologists, and they were friendly with and spent quite a bit of time with Jeremy and Theresa.
When Beck declined to be part of a project Theresa was putting together, Theresa started to feel that Scientology was to blame.
"At some point, Beck made it clear that he wouldn't be acting in Duncan's film—he told Vanity Fair that he'd never agreed to do it in the first place—and Duncan, Sales writes, "blamed the Church of Scientology." Without a real-life rock star attached, Alice Underground languished at Fox and eventually made its way to Paramount, where it fared no better."--gawker
"And then, something began to go very wrong.
“Yes, it looks like New York is a good idea for a few,” Blake wrote breezily in an e-mail to a friend on December 22, 2006, announcing that he and Duncan were moving back. They had evacuated their Venice bungalow two weeks after receiving their landlord’s August letter, cramming themselves into the small office space near the beach Blake had been using as a studio. They were low on funds.
Blake wrote of how he and Duncan had been “harassed here to the point of absurdity” by people who were so “paranoid” that it made him “laugh.” He said that they had been “defamed by crazy Scientologists,” threatened and followed by “their thugs.” (The Church of Scientology has denied any knowledge of the couple.) He wrote of how New York was starting to seem like the place for them to be, a place where they could speak “freely” to “exceptional people” and get their projects started.
Meanwhile, Hollywood, Blake said, was “under a pathetic right-wing invasion” by the Bush administration and “extremist religious groups.” He mentioned a couple of media companies with obvious Republican leanings. And then he said, “They are even running ads on the Cartoon Network recruiting people to be in the CIA!”
He spoke of how he was beginning to realize that his work had the “power to influence” a global audience without the need for “corporate backing.” “I am starting to see this as a very powerful thing,” he said. “Almost miraculous. Best, J.B.”
In the meantime, the couple found themselves evicted from their property and facing increasingly hurtful and stressful legal actions and deteriorating personal relationships. They moved to the rectory of St. Mark's Church in NYC and appear to fallen under the sway of a charismatic and overly-friendly priest, Frank Morales. His role in their deaths, if any, is not clear.
"On July 17, the day before he was set to drive to Detroit with three friends—Fellows, Doherty, and Morales—for her funeral, Blake went to work, insisting he felt O.K.
He never came home. After leaving the Rockstar offices, on lower Broadway, he took the A train all the way out to Rockaway Beach. Coincidentally, it was the birthplace of his mother.
Around eight P.M., an unidentified woman called 911 saying she had seen a man of Blake’s description walking naked into the water." --from The Golden Suicides by Nancy Jo Sales.
"But as puzzling as all of this is, one thing is certain: No matter how well the pieces are put together, the story of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake will never have a happy ending. Indeed, despite their accomplishments and their potential -- and despite the fact that, for a growing cadre of aspiring young artists, they are heroes -- the uncertainties, suspicions, allegations and motivations of the people around the couple at the end have combined to add a sinister tinge to the their memory, which even those involved in this unusual affair regret.
"I wish we could move past all the conspiracy theories," Sales wrote in an email. "This was, and remains, an incredibly sad story." Nancy Jo Sales, interview with ibtimes
A multi-layered tragedy in many respects. The art world lost two talented and vibrant creatives, and friends and family lost their loved one. But did they feed into each other's paranoia and delusions and wind up in a deadly illusion that ended in death? Or were they bullied to the point of madness by an organization that has become known for its frightening methods of remote "punishment" and control? Or somewhere in the middle---they were targeted when they were already fragile and pushed to the edge?
Interestingly, the Law and Order "Mothership" episode "Bogeyman" appears to have been "ripped from this headline" and is clearly based on this story! This case is a pretty deep rabbit hole, involving Alex Jones, Tom Cruise, a lawsuit, a meddlesome priest (literally), accusations of plagiarism, accusations flying back and forth between the couple and the church and more. There's a ton of material to check out and dig into here.
Read more about the amateur and professional coverage of the suicides and events that lead up to them here
.....
"Accompanied by individual soundtracks, the 21-minute loop of the Winchester trilogy [Jeremy's last work] slowly unfolds on three large screens in front of the audience.
A slightly blurred image of the Winchester Mystery House appears furthest to the left. The Winchester Rifle heiress, Sarah Winchester, built the 160-room Victorian mansion in San Jose. From 1884 and 38 years onwards she kept 22 carpenters at work 24 hours a day, following the instructions given to her by a spiritualist medium she had visited after the death of her daughter and husband.
The medium explained that spirits of the thousands of persons, who had died because of the Winchester riffle, were now seeking vengeance and would ultimately kill her too.
To save herself she had to build, and continue to build, a house for herself and the spirits. If she stopped she would die.
Thus Sarah spent her inherited fortune adding room upon room, creating an architectural marvel with staircases leading nowhere, trap doors, chimneys serving no purpose and double-back hallways until she died in her sleep in 1922." --artifical magazine online
The official story, forwarded in a flurry of media coverage of the so-called "golden suicides," tells of folie à deux—a shared delusion, brought on perhaps by career-related stress and a lot of bourbon and champagne, and manifested in abruptly burned bridges with formerly close friends, bizarre "loyalty oaths," and an increasingly monomaniacal preoccupation with conspiracies, especially those related to the Church of Scientology.
But alongside this, there exists a second vague narrative: that the shadowy forces that so captured the imaginations of Duncan and Blake in their final years were not merely a troubling obsession, but an active player in their deaths.
This conspiracy theory, put forth mostly by an army of amateur bloggers, points to an array of organizations, but mostly to Scientology, and specifically Blake's very real working relationship with one of its most visible members: Beck, whose 2002 album Sea Change was adorned with cover art by Blake." ---gawker
"Perhaps because Duncan died first, she received more media attention than Blake, who, to some extent, was cast as a victim of his girlfriend's presumed downward spiral: Though the term folie à deux, meaning "madness shared by two," has been frequently evoked, the madness the lovers were believed to have shared was presented more accurately as a folie imposée, with Duncan impressing on Blake her far-fetched beliefs. The most consuming among them was the insistence they were being followed and harassed by members of the Church of Scientology who were intent on stifling Duncan's career." --ibtimes.com
See one of Jeremy's video's here
"Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan first met in 1994. They were both part of the activist, “positive force” punk-rock scene in Washington (think Fugazi, Bikini Kill). He hung around with the band Nation of Ulysses, believed in punk as a philosophy. It was a macho, hipster scene. The women tended to stay in the background, dressed frumpy. Theresa called them “the hausfraus 2000.” She went to parties wearing sequined hot pants. Her boyfriend was Mitch Parker, former bassist of Government Issue. They had a song called “Asshole.” Sometimes she would take out her compact and apply lipstick when someone was boring her.
Mr. Blake began to make a name for himself in the late 1990’s with digital projections that combined colorful abstract geometric forms with photographic images — poolside cabanas, Modernist interiors, patio lights, skylines — that suggested scenes from movies.
Some art critics described the work as Color Field paintings set in motion. He called much of his work “time-based paintings,” and wrote that he drew his subject matter from a fascination with “half-remembered and imaginary architecture” and images borrowed from “Hollywood’s psychic dustbin.”
"In 2002, the year she [Theresa Duncan] and Jeremy Blake moved to Los Angeles (they had been living in New York since 1995), Duncan was riding the crest of a seven-year wave of success. Stories about “Silicon Alley’s dream girl” had appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, along with dozens of photographs of her looking glamorous.
She had been to “new media” what Jane Pratt was to magazines or Tabitha Soren to MTV—the pretty girl, the chosen one. Her CD-roms, Chop Suey, Smarty, and Zero Zero, had been hailed as breakthrough games for girls. Chop Suey was named *Entertainment Weekly’*s “CD-rom of the Year” in 1995.
Read more about those CD Rom Games here
Read Theresa's Blog "The Wit of the Staircase" here
When she moved to Los Angeles, Duncan had a two-picture deal with Fox Searchlight and had written and directed a pilot for Oxygen Media.
She had “my boyfriend Jeremy Blake”—she was always bringing him up—literally the poster boy of the 2001 “BitStreams” exhibition of digital art at the Whitney Museum. That same year, Blake had been tapped by director Paul Thomas Anderson to create a hallucinogenic dream sequence for Punch Drunk Love, and singer-songwriter Beck had asked him to do a series of covers and a video for his album Sea Change (both released in 2002)." ---the Golden Suicides, Nancy Jo Sales
It's important to note that Beck and his wife, Marissa Ribissi (sister of actor Giovanni Ribissi) are all Scientologists, and they were friendly with and spent quite a bit of time with Jeremy and Theresa.
When Beck declined to be part of a project Theresa was putting together, Theresa started to feel that Scientology was to blame.
"At some point, Beck made it clear that he wouldn't be acting in Duncan's film—he told Vanity Fair that he'd never agreed to do it in the first place—and Duncan, Sales writes, "blamed the Church of Scientology." Without a real-life rock star attached, Alice Underground languished at Fox and eventually made its way to Paramount, where it fared no better."--gawker
"And then, something began to go very wrong.
“Yes, it looks like New York is a good idea for a few,” Blake wrote breezily in an e-mail to a friend on December 22, 2006, announcing that he and Duncan were moving back. They had evacuated their Venice bungalow two weeks after receiving their landlord’s August letter, cramming themselves into the small office space near the beach Blake had been using as a studio. They were low on funds.
Blake wrote of how he and Duncan had been “harassed here to the point of absurdity” by people who were so “paranoid” that it made him “laugh.” He said that they had been “defamed by crazy Scientologists,” threatened and followed by “their thugs.” (The Church of Scientology has denied any knowledge of the couple.) He wrote of how New York was starting to seem like the place for them to be, a place where they could speak “freely” to “exceptional people” and get their projects started.
Meanwhile, Hollywood, Blake said, was “under a pathetic right-wing invasion” by the Bush administration and “extremist religious groups.” He mentioned a couple of media companies with obvious Republican leanings. And then he said, “They are even running ads on the Cartoon Network recruiting people to be in the CIA!”
He spoke of how he was beginning to realize that his work had the “power to influence” a global audience without the need for “corporate backing.” “I am starting to see this as a very powerful thing,” he said. “Almost miraculous. Best, J.B.”
In the meantime, the couple found themselves evicted from their property and facing increasingly hurtful and stressful legal actions and deteriorating personal relationships. They moved to the rectory of St. Mark's Church in NYC and appear to fallen under the sway of a charismatic and overly-friendly priest, Frank Morales. His role in their deaths, if any, is not clear.
"On July 17, the day before he was set to drive to Detroit with three friends—Fellows, Doherty, and Morales—for her funeral, Blake went to work, insisting he felt O.K.
He never came home. After leaving the Rockstar offices, on lower Broadway, he took the A train all the way out to Rockaway Beach. Coincidentally, it was the birthplace of his mother.
Around eight P.M., an unidentified woman called 911 saying she had seen a man of Blake’s description walking naked into the water." --from The Golden Suicides by Nancy Jo Sales.
"But as puzzling as all of this is, one thing is certain: No matter how well the pieces are put together, the story of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake will never have a happy ending. Indeed, despite their accomplishments and their potential -- and despite the fact that, for a growing cadre of aspiring young artists, they are heroes -- the uncertainties, suspicions, allegations and motivations of the people around the couple at the end have combined to add a sinister tinge to the their memory, which even those involved in this unusual affair regret.
"I wish we could move past all the conspiracy theories," Sales wrote in an email. "This was, and remains, an incredibly sad story." Nancy Jo Sales, interview with ibtimes
A multi-layered tragedy in many respects. The art world lost two talented and vibrant creatives, and friends and family lost their loved one. But did they feed into each other's paranoia and delusions and wind up in a deadly illusion that ended in death? Or were they bullied to the point of madness by an organization that has become known for its frightening methods of remote "punishment" and control? Or somewhere in the middle---they were targeted when they were already fragile and pushed to the edge?
Interestingly, the Law and Order "Mothership" episode "Bogeyman" appears to have been "ripped from this headline" and is clearly based on this story! This case is a pretty deep rabbit hole, involving Alex Jones, Tom Cruise, a lawsuit, a meddlesome priest (literally), accusations of plagiarism, accusations flying back and forth between the couple and the church and more. There's a ton of material to check out and dig into here.
Read more about the amateur and professional coverage of the suicides and events that lead up to them here
.....
"Accompanied by individual soundtracks, the 21-minute loop of the Winchester trilogy [Jeremy's last work] slowly unfolds on three large screens in front of the audience.
A slightly blurred image of the Winchester Mystery House appears furthest to the left. The Winchester Rifle heiress, Sarah Winchester, built the 160-room Victorian mansion in San Jose. From 1884 and 38 years onwards she kept 22 carpenters at work 24 hours a day, following the instructions given to her by a spiritualist medium she had visited after the death of her daughter and husband.
The medium explained that spirits of the thousands of persons, who had died because of the Winchester riffle, were now seeking vengeance and would ultimately kill her too.
To save herself she had to build, and continue to build, a house for herself and the spirits. If she stopped she would die.
Thus Sarah spent her inherited fortune adding room upon room, creating an architectural marvel with staircases leading nowhere, trap doors, chimneys serving no purpose and double-back hallways until she died in her sleep in 1922." --artifical magazine online