Discipline & ANARCHY: ADAM LEHRER
Photo by Samantha Sutcliffe
Adam Lehrer is a writer, artist, musician and the creator of Safety Propaganda. Lehrer writes about contemporary art, horror fiction, experimental music, extreme sports, cult cinema, and political theory. He’s been published by Autre Magazine, American Greatness, Caesura, Gruppe, Numéro Berlin, The Quietus, Filthy Dreams, SSENSE, i-D, and more. He is the lead singer of Botched Chadification. His fiction has been published by Hyperidean Press, The Quietus and more.
WHY DO YOU DO IT? WHAT DRIVES YOU?
I excel at a few different things. As an American, it is my right to dominate the fields that I am dominant in. I still have difficulty defining to others what I do. I suppose it’s an artist more broadly, a writer less broadly, a conceptual artist working in various forms of text, media and performance more specifically. The only things I’ve ever had going for me are that I think rather deeply about the world, can consume a nearly endless amount of media without fatiguing, and I’m athletic. Unfortunately, I am not athletic enough to make a living from it. I am absolutely useless in a traditional work scenario. What drives me? Well, I have no other choice. I have to make this work. I have to dominate the world and take destiny into my own hands. Can you feel it? The intrigue? The will to power? I feel it coursing through my veins on a day by day basis. I feel like two people at once. One is a fairly average man with a cute family. The other is a monomaniacal aesthetic sociopath who simply refuses to quit.WHAT IS ONE THING YOU DO FOR SANITY MAINTENANCE?
I train. I cum. I occasionally take a Xanax or eat Indica strain edibles to sleep.WHAT IS THE SCRAPPIEST THING YOU’VE DONE TO MAKE OR SAVE $$?
I wrote essays for fellow students in college. I’ve been paid to teach people how to bodybuild (reach out for coaching, $150 a week). I’d start an OnlyFans if I knew it would guarantee returns.YOUR TASK IS TO PRESCRIBE ONE BOOK OR FILM TO THE COLLECTIVE FOR MANDATORY CONSUMPTION. WHAT IS IT?
Dorian Yates' BLOOD AND GUTScurrent obsession?
Off the top of my head, former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland’s no holds barred American man can’t keep his mouth shut persona is deeply inspiring to me. Him losing his belt to Dricus du Plessi cut me to the bone. Also, Iranian bodybuilder Hadi Choopan’s recent outings at the Arnold Classic Ohio and Arnold Classic UK were mind-blowing. Google him if you don’t know what I’m talking about. His muscular detail is super human. He has muscles that I didn’t even know existed. On a more artistic level, the late Belgian artist Stéphane Mandelbaum, who recently had an exhibition at The Drawing Center, made very simple but brutal and concise drawings. I envy something like that, to convey so much with so little. Finally, I have gotten a bit bored of white boy extreme music after spending the last year consuming so much of it while perfecting my shouting range for Botched Chadification. I am absolutely blown away by VULTURES and consider it to be Ye’s finest work in a decade, since YEEZUS anyways. I also adore what Westside Gunn does with his Griselda crew. It’s the best rap music around right now, between him and the other guys (Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher), but it’s more the multimedia, conceptually-driven marketing that he does that really blows my mind. A mix of trad hip-hop gangbang bullshit, high fashion, old master painting, and professional wrestling. Westside did a youtube docuseries in the lead up to his last record release and I swear that all independent artists could learn from this man when it comes to building a recognizable brand and product. I’m still a rock n’ roll guy at heart, I’m just feeling deeply Hotep at the moment.MOST USEFUL FAILURE?
There are a few. The first one was getting cut from my high school baseball team. It was a psychological devastation at the time. I had played ball my whole life and was always among the All-Stars or the kids picked to play in the summer leagues. But my body changed when I was 15. I lost 20 pounds of baby weight and simply completely lost my baseball mechanics and was playing like ass. I deserved to get cut. It was horrendous. That said, it was also the thing that got me to different kinds of sports, namely track running and wrestling, that allowed me to really understand my strength.Secondly, getting addicted to opiates. Actually I don’t know how useful that was. It sucked and pretty much permanently altered my brain.Third, well getting fired from all my gigs for my politics in 2019. That’s what freed me. That was the genesis of all that defines me as an artist. That’s why you care what I say.SELECTED Q FROM THE PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE: WHo are your heroes in real life?
I tend to look up to men who dream big, achieve even bigger, and turn their triumphs into massive spectacles of glory. So, for modern men, that would be people like Trump, Arnold, Kanye, Matthew Barney, and Conor McGregor. Dudes like that. Historical figures include Spartacus, Jesus, Marcus Crassus, da Vinci. I have artistic heroes of course, but these types are more “heroic” to me, if that makes sense.WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
Many things. My band’s CD is out. PUMP METAL. Buy it. I finished a novel a year ago, but have fallen out with the publisher. So, that was rough. Hopefully that’ll come out soon with a different publisher because I worked for two years on it and I simply need the exorcism of releasing it. It haunts me and is stunting my work progress because it is all pent up, stuck in a liminal space. Furthermore, I’m working on something of a true crime novel, which I’ve always wanted to do. My deadline is May 15 but with the irresolution of the aforementioned novel repressing me, fat chance of that happening. I’m working on a three part play sequence that I’d like to perform in the late summer. All other projects are a go. Ultimately, I am interested in the idea that perhaps what I do conceptually can transcend the limitations of head scratchy art and attain the pure energy and vibrational orgasm that one experiences when they see a Caspar Friedrich David landscape (or an actual landscape) or when singing along to Four Tops’ “Bernadette” or hooligan head banging at a Peste Noire concert. I want the audience to experience something physical and jarring. This is why I’ve made my own physique such a central aspect of the concept itself. I’ve been reading lots of R.D. Laing and he says the way we experience everything is primarily bodily, so why is so much art centered around the mind? I want pain, tension, sexual explosion and release.DISCIPLINE OR ANARCHY?
I despise anarchists. They are pampered bums who believe in nonsense. So, I prefer discipline, but discipline is only important because as humans we tend to be anarchic. Personally, I am very chaotic. I struggle with god knows how many issues, but I conquer my angst through discipline. Repetition. Rigor.
