Michael Andros

Layout made by Serial KillaMICHAEL ANDROS: “Might makes right. That applies to male versus female, magic versus science, predator versus prey. Since rape was made illegal, pussy has ruled the world. In my own way, I’m trying to change that. My art contributes to that struggle, illuminating the path back to power.”GEORGE PETROS: Were you into pornography? ANDROS:“I was interested in pornography from a very young age, beginning with my best friend’s father’s Playboys from age 5 to 11 or so, and then beginning around age 12, popular men’s magazines such as Male, Man’s World et cetera. Of particular interest to me were the lurid covers of almost-naked females in the evil clutches of Nazi or Japanese military sadists, in dungeons, with glowing irons or whips or other instruments of torture. I would masturbate to the stories of sadomasochism that were rampant in those publications, forming early predilections for the sexual mores I became quite comfortable with by my late teens. As time passed, I became involved in the S&M sex world in real life, and began collecting hard-core sado-masochistic pornography, beginning with magazines and paperback books and, later, videos. The more intense and sadistic, the more I was enamored of it. My art reflects that.” GP: What’s your take on religion and the occult? ANDROS: “I believe in lust. I believe in power. I believe in the philosophy that in a natural environment, only the strong survive. Unfortunately, in today’s world, the weak not only survive, but thrive in many instances. I fear this is polluting the gene pool in a disastrous way and of course I am not the only person who believes this. If humanity survives, I hope that I, and those others—past and present—who hold this to be true, am merely the tip of the iceberg, as that ideology grows within future generations. So I would have to say that my ideas regarding religion and the occult lean toward the feral, the natural order of things. I believe in ghosts, in magic, and in power, both physical and spiritual. “The closest philosophy I’ve encountered to my own beliefs, I would have to say, is Satanism. I find some tenets of it to be slightly in conflict with what I hold to be true, but, more importantly, we have lots of common ground. The thing I think we share most strongly is belief in the natural, feral, real world, unblemished by social strictures.” GP: Did making your art excite you sexually? ANDROS: “When I was doing collages for EXIT, many times I achieved an erection for hours at a time. The sexual content was mostly responsible for this; however, some of my politically-based graphics also brought out the beast in my penis, as it were, being that politics is all about power and we all know how power is very evident in sexuality—at least in mine it is. GP: Is your work intended to cause harm or hurt people? ANDROS: “My work is tailored to incite certain archetypes in people’s minds, and to make them reflect on some of their more retarded or culturally-ingrown ideas. If such reflection by the viewer hurts, emotionally, intellectually or otherwise, then yes, my intention is very much to hurt.” --------------------------------- “She was loud and aggressive, prancing around with a crop in her hand, teasing people, telling them they were bad boys and girls. She walked up to me and started to say something, stopped dead in her tracks, looked down at the floor, turned and slowly melted back into the crowd. I said to the person I was with, “I hate bitches who play at sadism. I’d hang her up like a side of beef and beat her fucking senseless.” M. Andros, while taking in Church of the Little Green Man, NYC, circa 1988 ____________________________________________________________ ______ The above interview appears in the book "Art That Kills: A Panoramic Portrait of Aesthetic Terrorism 1984–2001", by George Petros, Copyright 2007.