My exhibition MIRACLE NOW is opening at Kunsthal Nikolaj in Copenhagen on the 24th in a museum that was a former church. As well as sculptures, paintings, photographs and archives, I am premiering a 9 channel sound and video installation.
Does nature evolve, or does she just change? So much information can now be stored in a tiny space. Scientists have said recently that ancestral trauma changes our genome in detectable ways. I imagine that in the future we shall put a drop of water into a machine and it will reveal to us every moment that its atoms have ever experienced, and every living and inanimate body that it has ever been a part of. When I first staged the play "Miracle Now" in 1995, my dream was that Nature would remember every one of her vanished faces, and that this knowledge would somehow inform her next iteration. This was a hopeful idea to me, in the face of eco-collapse. – ANOHNI.

“Nothing goes unrecorded. Every word of leaf and snowflake and particle of dew, as well as earthquake and avalanche, is written down in Nature’s book.”
-John Muir, 1872
ANOHNI: “Where do we go when we die?”
Nola Taylor: “Back to country.”
- conversation with Nola Taylor, Martu elder, Western Australian desert, 2015.

on HOPELESSNESS

It’s like trying to keep the ocean at bay with a broomstick. You sweep out one wave and all the others pour in around you. That’s really what we’re dealing with: an ocean of dysfunction, with a powerful set of conditions that bind all these issues together. That’s what I wanted to address [with HOPELESSNESS]. Some have criticized the project by saying that by addressing so many different issues on a record, there’s not much room for depth in these investigations. But they’re missing the point that I wanted to address – the constellation of crises as a single system.

That income disparity, nuclear power, global warming, corporate sovereignty and exploitation, capital punishment, patriarchy, mineral and fossil fuel extraction, the subjugation of women, surveillance, racism, unregulated end-game capitalism, colonialism and the assault of indigenous communities, the destruction of biodiversity, the collapse of forest and ocean systems, drone warfare, consumerism, addiction and the weapons industry make up a bouquet of issues forms. It is a unique syndrome: a system, a new disease.

With AIDS, they were first like, “What, you’re dying of pneumonia? Oh wait, he’s dying of kaposi sarcoma, oh wait you’re dying of toxoplasmosis,” and then one day they said, “Oh wait this is a system, a syndrome of symptoms that could be identified as a single disease. A single disease called AIDS. And that’s what we’re dealing with.” The insidious collaboration of a thousand faces, of our brokenness that climax in ecocide. Ecocide is the final result of these systems of brokenness. It seems to be what you’re talking about, and what Suzuki said.

I remember when my father would say, “When I was a kid in London, the air was so choking. Now, the Thames is relatively clean. There are even fish in there.” So if he’s to trust the evidence of his own senses, and he sees that a local issue has been addressed, he deduces that things are getting better - all is well.

Future Feminism

"I've been thinking all day about the moon. Like, is it an accident that women menstruate once a month and that the moon comes once a month? Are other animals synchronized in this way with the moon? You know, my brother works in mental health and he says that there's a lot more hospitalizations and periods of activity during the full moon. It's a known fact in mental health that people are more excitable around the full moon.
"And then, what about the fact that we're made of 70% water? And then the whole ocean reacts to the full moon, right? In a serious way. Everything's ticking around that moon and if we're 70% water I must be having some — at least homeopathic — relationship with the changing cycles of the moon.
"I can't escape my obsession with the idea that I'm made out of this place, because I was raised to believe that I fundamentally was constituted of spiritual matter that was from somewhere else like Heaven or from a Sky God. Like Gore Vidal talks about Sky Gods and I really picked up that language because in patriarchal monotheisms we all worship a God elsewhere who has a plan for us in a paradise elsewhere: After we die there will be a paradise waiting for us and this place is like a work station where we sort of get all our 'T's crossed and our 'I's dotted before we go off to a real spiritual dimension.
"But I'm a witch. I actually de-baptised myself. And what's great about being transgender is you're born with a natural religion. It applies almost across the board no matter what culture or economic group or nation that you're from — you're almost automatically a witch. None of the patriarchal monotheisms will have you. It's very clear that in most of those religions you'd be put to death. In many parts of the world you still are put to death.
"Did you hear what the Pope said a couple years ago on Christmas? He said that the marriage of gays and lesbians was as much a threat to the future of our world as the collapse of the rain forests. [audience laughter] So, that gives you a sense — just an inkling to his approach to the homosexual question. [laughs] And that's just the homosexual question. He didn't even address the transgender question. [sarcastically] God knows what we've caused. All sorts of wars and strife — all manner of hurt.
"I'm worried that the ecology of the world is collapsing and that I won't have anywhere to be reborn because I actually believe, like, where is any of us going? Where have any of us ever gone? We've come back here in some form. Did you know that whales were once land roaming mammals? And then they crawled back into the ocean trying to find something to eat? And then eventually they got rid of their hands and legs.
"I've been searching and searching for that little bit of my constitution that isn't of this place and I still haven't found it. Every atom of me, every element of me seems to resonate, seems to reflect the great world around me. So, I've come to the conclusion that this is God's best idea — that this manifest world is the frontier of his dream, or her dream in my opinion. So, that's just my point of view from where I can start to establish a new way to value the world that I'm a part of. Cause if I'm not heading off to paradise elsewhere when I die then I have more of a vested interest in observing a sustainable relationship with this place.
"It's a very indigenous idea that the Earth is a female, that the Earth menstruates, that the water of the world is the blood of a woman's body and that's what we crawled out of just in the same way that we crawled out of our mother's wombs. It's the most basic idea; any child could come up with it and it's so obvious. And yet we've been straining for these Sky Gods for a couple thousand years now. And I remember praying to God when I was like six years old. I was raised Catholic and I prayed really hard, and I waited and waited to hear that summons. I think in a funny way, a lot of my music I'm listening for that response still.
"I've heard two rumors about the Dalai Lama. One is that he said he wasn't going to be reincarnating because the world was going to be too dangerous and that's probably just a rumor. But then I heard a far more interesting new rumor, which is that the Dalai Lama said the next time he incarnates it will be as a girl, which will be the first in the history of Buddhism. But I think that that is the most revolutionary thing he could possibly do and the most helpful spiritual gesture that he could make. And I'm very interested in the feminization of the deities. I'm very interested in Jesus as a girl. I'm extremely interested in Allah as a woman. And contrary to popular opinion, it's not bad to say that — you can say it. I mean you might get a little letter in the mail but I'm probably due a hundred letters in the mail already, so... [laughs]. It's a wonderful day to die.
"But nonetheless, Allah as a woman is a critical threshold and Buddha as a mother is another one because I truly believe that unless we move into feminine systems of governance we don't have a chance on this planet [applause]. And there's no one else that can lead the masses to do that except for, like, the major religious institutions. And I'm someone who's looking for a reason to hope, and for me hope looks like feminine systems of governance being instated in, like, the major religious institutions and throughout corporate and civil life. And it might sound far-fetched, but if you look at your own beliefs, just imagine how quickly you accepted the idea that the ocean is rising and the ecology of our world is collapsing. We can actually imagine that more readily than we can imagine a switch from patriarchal to matriarchal systems of governance — a subtle shift in the way our society works.
"It's obviously a very broad statement — and of course Sarah Palin exists so don't bother me with that. But, Sarah Palin is working very much within patriarchal systems. I just love that moment when Benazir Bhutto was being interviewed and she just talked about motherhood and daughters and how she wished she'd had done more for the girls of her country. For as problematic as she was, she was an exciting forerunner."

Video

Dutch broadcast organization VPRO January 3 2011
Antony Hegarty

Wintergasten is an interview/conversation between Antony and Leon Verdonschot. Wintergasten are serious conversations with serious people. Each guest is asked to select a few TV/film segments to be viewed and talked about during the evening.



Download the full video HERE


Spying On Kate Moss


Fashion Photographers Inez and Vinoodh Stake Out the Balmain Supermodel

When Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin signed on to shoot the fall/winter 2010/11 Balmain campaign starring Kate Moss, they did so as double agents. Without anyone knowing, the renowned fashion photographers set up four surveillance-style cameras to capture Moss’s unbridled performance on set. The short film, titled Everglade, takes its name from the haunting Antony and the Johnsons song that serves as its soundtrack, and premieres on NOWNESS today. It marks the latest instance of the Dutch duo's intentionally blurring the boundaries of reality. “Surrealism is always there in our work, whether it’s in camera or through computer manipulation,” says Van Lamsweerde. “We’ve had the idea for this video for some time. We are fascinated with the different realities going on in one shoot and so the music, the animation, Kate's movements and the camera angle represent these layers of perception.” With animated illustrations by artist Jo Ratcliffe (in collaboration with Bouwine Pool for Sherbet), the film not only captures Moss in action, but also aims to represent a fantasy inner world. “We talked to [Ratcliffe] about it being half horror and half Disney,” Van Lamsweerde says, and what evolved is an idiosyncratic take on the behind-the-scenes genre. “It ranges from a sinewy heavy metal feel to a much cuter place,” she sums up.




Concert Nantes (fr) le Lieu Unique 17.11.2004
I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy

Everglade

Antony Hegarty on his fave song “Everglade”:

“They’re actually entwined, those two ideas – being born into the transgender community, my experience of being in my body has been quite alienated. I felt I was stuck inside this thing. I have been searching my whole life for a place where I belonged, and ‘Everglade’ is about my realisation that I do belong. I am at home. I am a part of the sunlight and the water and the trees. My body stopped crying for home, I stopped feeling alienated. I stopped having such cruel thoughts in my head, that I was alone and would always be alone. [from an interview in Plan B Mag. Dec. 2008]

“A few years ago I was lying in a canoe at a friend’s house in upstate New York, flat out on the water, and looking up at the trees above me, and suddenly was struck by imagining that each of the leaves was an eye. ‘Everglade’ is addressing that alienation, seeking to re-connect with that perpetually watching world.”
[from an interview in Plan B Mag. Dec. 2008]

Songs A-Z

4 Degrees
A Dream
Aeon
Afraid
Alienated Soul
A Little Bit Of Time
All Is Loneliness
All There Is To Tell
A Man Needs A Maid
Angel
Another Day In America
Another World
As Tears Go By
Atrocities
Barnacle Bill The Sailor
Beautiful Boyz
Beautiful Dancing Dust
Beauty
Be Good To The Earth This Season
Be My Husband
Bird Gerhl
Blood On The Door
Blue Angel
Brazillian Sunrise
Candy Says
Can't Help Falling In Love
Caroline Says II
Catacombs Song
Child Of God
Christina's Farm
Crackagen
Crazy In Love
Cripple And The Starfish
Crisis
Cruel Mother
Cut The World
D.B.S.K.J.R.A.
Deeper Than Love
Daylight And The Sun
Del Suo Veloce Volo
Divine
Don't Fall
Doomsday
Dream About Who You Are
Drone Bomb Me
Dust And Water
Easy
Epilepsy Is Dancing
Everglade
Everything Is New
Execution
Family Affair
Find The Rhythm Of Your Love
Fisherman (w/ 3 Teens Kill 4)(live)
Fistful Of Love
Flétta (with Björk)
Forest Of Love
Forgiveness
For All We Know
For Today I Am A Bouy
Frankenstein
Free At Last
Future Feminism
Ghost
Go Leave
God With No tear
Golden Tears
Happy Christmas (War Is Over)
He Got What He Wanted
Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground
Hitler In My Heart
Hole In My Soul
Hope Mountain
Hope There's Someone
Hopelessness
How God Moved At Twilight
I Am Your Daughter
I Cried For Us
I Don't Love You Anymore
I'm Easy (Antony singing as Thom)
I'm In Love
Idumea
I Defy
I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy
If It Be Your Will
Imagine
Indian Girls
Indian Steps In Your Teeth Are Diamonds
In My Dreams
I Don't Love You Anymore
I Wanna Dance With Somebody
I Was Young When I Left Home
I Will Survive
Jesus Will Kill You
Just One Star
Keep In Touch
Killingly Hard
Kiss My Name
Kissing Noone
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
Landslide
Love Letters
Love Will Come To Be
Lowlands Low
Man Is The Baby
Marrow
My Father Is My Baby
My Juvenile
My Lady Story
My Lord My Love
Mysteries Of Love
My Secret Life
Nessun Dorma
Nighttime And Morning
Obama
Old Whore's Diet
One Dove
One More Try
Ooh, Baby, Baby
O Superman (remix)
Paddy's Gone
Paradise
Paris
Perfect Day
Pictures and Things
Poison
Poorest Ear
Pressing On
Raise Me Up
Rapture
Returnal
Ricochet
River Of Milk
River Of Sorrow
Roar
Runaway From The Sun
Salt, Silver, Oxygen
Semen Song For James Bidgod
Shake That Devil
Silent Rooms
Sing For Me
Snowy Angel
So Young
Soft Black Stars
Someday Someway
(Sometimes I Feel Like) A Motherless Child
Spiralling
Stand By Me (with Joanna Constantine)
Strange Fruit
Strange Perfumes
Such A Good Person
Swanlights
Tears For Animals
Tearz For Animals
Tears Tears Tears
Teenage Cancer Trust
Thank You For Your Love
The Ballad Of All The Sad Young Men
The Crying Light
The Dull Flame of Desire
The Great White Ocean
The Guests
The Horror Has Gone
The Lake
The Snow Abides
The Spirit Was Gone
Time Will
Toy Boat
Trust Your Mother
Twilight
Violent Men
Violetta
Virgin Mary
Volcano of Snow
Vurulduk Ey Halkim
Watch Me
What Can I Do
Where Is My Power
White Cliffs Of Dover
Who Am I (to feel so free)
Who By Fire
Whose Are These
Why Am I Still Sucking On Your Dick
Why Did You Separate Me From The Earth
Will I Ever Learn
You Are My Sister
You Are The Treasure
You Belong
You Know Who I Am 
You Stand Above Me
Your Eyes Close
Your precious love
Your Story, My Way

Photos