In nature there is no real violence, found there is only brutal growth of quantities and apathetic destruction. Nature adheres only to one principle and that is survival by any means possible – economic efficiency and accumulation of sexual capital. The sole creature of violence is man, created as we were in the image of gods and like theirs our violence knows no bounds. Ours is the reflected violence of divinities. It is the violence of Saturn as he is devouring his sons, that of the Semitic desert-god as he floods the earth or of Shiva the dancer, shining like a thousand suns. Real violence is what nature is not. It is that which has no necessity – the act of doing something purposeless as if it had a purpose. Its principle is concerned with the things that never can emerge from words alone – the rushing of blood and sweat or cries of joy and pain. Animals too, of course, writhes in pain from time to time and some of them even sweat, but unable to affirm these sensations, their violence is but a vulgar shadow. In nature nothing would consume all of its fuel just to watch the fires rise. In nature nothing even fails to reach the perfected, for only man would ever try to venture there. All of our attempts to do so is are abundant luxuries and grandiose sacrifices of all means consumed. In violence we pay tribute to our humanity and we do it by denouncing what is always given – growth and apathy. There is nothing natural in Bomans and Michaneks works, what they do is adding to the friction that is culture. Though not complete apocalypses of their own, they are at least in unprecedented opposition to the natural world. Just as Oppenheimer did when he witnessed the first atomic explosion, they all seem to quote the Bhagavad-Gita “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” They are part of that vast, rolling machine that we constitute as a collective, as a species. It is a machine we should care for most tenderly, keep it muscular, sweaty and beautiful, no matter the costs.
Jonatan Ahlm Brenander, 2011