The swastika on the sun di Roberto Biadi
Description
CHAPTERS: The Island / Politics and Society / Hitler rise to power / God Hitler / Divination / The legend of the Oni scissors / The Society of Image / Army and Police / The Sex Mask / In Sanitas / Rehabilitation Facilities and Concentration Camps / The Labyrinth
ILLUSTRATIONS partial index: Toilette and autoeroticism tool, courtesan getting ready for sex, board game “The sea”, finger-cutting toy, sodiers’ ex-voto, the origin of the world, Sigil of the dragon God, Wet Hitler, Young Hitler looking in the mirror, Unmasked errant monk, Anatomy plate, Life of hideous men, Puerpera propaganda, Genesis of the mask …
Cargo Cults, Sex Masks, mysterious relics and the God Hitler leading a twisted society are some of the ingredients inhabiting the work of the elusive Robert J Fodder, amateur anthropologist who stumbled upon The Nameless Island while travelling the Pacific, bringing back a vivid account of the weird society he encountered by the account of writing, photography and illustration and real object.
The Island once was an asylum, to keep mental illness away from the eyes of law abiding Mainlanders; who have long forgotten the existence of the Island just as the Islanders have lost forgotten the outside world. The Island and its strange rituals are the only thing that exist. If everybody is crazy than nobody is. When Adolf Hitler crashed his plane on the Island at the end of WWII, the ruling class immediately recognized him as a God, embodying most of their society values and depravities.
Robert J Fodder account is a fascinating insight into a deviant society and a ferocious critic against how the West approach and try to understand different cultures.
Shunga-inspired erotic illustration, anatomical plates and strange ritual objects go along the imperfect narration of a strange society, so different and so similar to ours.
“Like scientists, the Island's ruling class practise, through sex, their gradual disengagement from humanity, analyzing sweat and flesh as in a laboratory.”
