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The Worm
"From The Flowers, corpses grow."
Built by Albert Speer in Berlin to test the possibility of constructing large buildings on Berlin's marshy ground, this megalith of concrete - that lazy, slovenly, sluttish material - the Schwerbelastungkörper, stands as the antithesis of New Juche's The Worm. Where concrete spreads dull and ponderously in thrall to gravity, The Worm is a Gesamtkunstwerk of polyphony, stagecraft and levitation, with its ludic prose vision of Hitler's visage, the schizo-analysis of photography, the language of labyrinths, and the semiotics of structures both social and National Socialist. Possessed by a spurious European homesickness, and a strange ethnographic anomaly from Europe's polar opposite, New Juche examines the inner voice of cultural transmission in the incubating mechanisms of art and architecture, detritus, and the culpable, omnivorous maw of fascination. The Worm also burrows into ineffably personal territory, as the author spends his final days in The Flowers, the nightmarish abandoned housing complex he has occupied in one sense or another for the last decade.
Built by Albert Speer in Berlin to test the possibility of constructing large buildings on Berlin's marshy ground, this megalith of concrete - that lazy, slovenly, sluttish material - the Schwerbelastungkörper, stands as the antithesis of New Juche's The Worm. Where concrete spreads dull and ponderously in thrall to gravity, The Worm is a Gesamtkunstwerk of polyphony, stagecraft and levitation, with its ludic prose vision of Hitler's visage, the schizo-analysis of photography, the language of labyrinths, and the semiotics of structures both social and National Socialist. Possessed by a spurious European homesickness, and a strange ethnographic anomaly from Europe's polar opposite, New Juche examines the inner voice of cultural transmission in the incubating mechanisms of art and architecture, detritus, and the culpable, omnivorous maw of fascination. The Worm also burrows into ineffably personal territory, as the author spends his final days in The Flowers, the nightmarish abandoned housing complex he has occupied in one sense or another for the last decade.
259 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2021
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182 people want to read
About the author
New Juche
12 books82 followersNew Juche is the nom de guerre of a writer and photographer who lives and works in Southeast Asia. He is also the author of Wasteland, The Mollusc and Gymnasium.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 11, 2021
An immersive, exhausting project. I'm familiar with New Juche's rich and subversive prose. It's interspersed with gorgeously textured photos of ruin and decay, posters (?) with provocative text and images mounted on crumbling walls. I don't think I've seen the conventionally ugly and banal look so beautiful. Which I suppose is a common theme in New Juche's work.
October 15, 2021
Vital Soil
New Juche is a hermaphrodite writer, someone who exists beyond the strictures of gender or identity; a conscious, palpitating conduit who is as essential to artistic progress as any traditional narrative extraction the individual could come up with. Juche might be a composite of every pansophic artist who came before – strobilising myriad thoughts into a nest-like vision of degradation and supra-sensory art – but Juche might also simply be a man. Even so, the writer remains a mystery genius; a silent intellect in a world of ego-cluttered inanities. We know he must keep his skin moist with surrounding soil and can become paralysed by overexposure to light. But that is about all we know about the artist in question. And that, like myself, he might have been patched-together somewhere in the cleft bowels of Scotland. Yet this is only part of the reason why his work is vital.
The Worm is my first taste of Juche and a book of recondite information; the residue of an immersive intellectual nightmare. As an introduction, Juche’s opening gambit converges on the curious fetishisation of Nazi memorabilia and how it wearily echoes British societies own self-hatred and desire to touch oblivion. Each of Juche’s articulate reflections are accompanied by a stunning complimentary image which successfully intensifies the overall sensorial experience of the book. This alcove-reflection soon morphs into a broader analysis – namely our veneration of a face as iconic as Hitler’s (the most photographed man in the world). And even here, Juche delights in language as he expresses different interpretations of Hitler’s visage through varied lens, with each facet of his physiognomy given careful scrutiny and newly ascribed meaning. Even Hitler’s soul, birthed from the spirit of Wagner, represents something the crumbling morals of Germany’s paranoiac collective could revive and make martyr. It’s heady stuff, and par for the course.
Juche goes on to identify the Schwer-bela-stungs-körper as a cultural touchstone – an immense concrete cylinder built on an expanse of marshland located in the borough of Tempelhof in Berlin. This megalith is considered a vestige of National Socialist urban planning, protected as historically significant. The Schwer-bela-stungs-körper roughly translated means ‘heavy load-bearing body’ and was constructed by Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer between 1941 and 1942. And this hideous megastructure was designed with the sole purpose of testing the surface in preparation for a massive triumphal arch, intended to stand three times taller than the Arc de Triomphe.
In contrast to this is The Worm’s lair, improbably dubbed ‘The Flowers’ - a fifty-four-storey prefab apartment block. The book is actually at its strongest when Juche discusses his private obelisk. It feels cohesive and the writing is simply sumptuous and nakedly personal. Like nothing I’ve read before by a modern writer –
‘Because of the proximity of The Flowers to my house (it can call to me as I lie in my bedroom) and the command it exercises over my imagination and private time, the fear has given rise to an omnipresent cloud of anxiety, a butterfly caged in my chest, a cold worm wriggling in my bowels, a permanently open challenge to my ego, to my ownership and my sense of entitlement, to the health of the qualities that I possess which enable me to step whether others dare not and remain, because that is still how I measure and imagine my prowess.’
When funding ran out the building fell into disrepair and soon grew overrun with vegetation. The Flowers becomes a ruined skull in Juche’s hands. He observes the ghosts of its memory and the fresh parasites of its decay. He is drawn to it. The Flowers represents the curse and blessing of a morbid imagination propelled forward by dark curiosity.
It’s easy to see how the grey edifice of The Flowers might mirror that of the Schwerbelastungskörper; after all, it was Hitler’s central thesis to redesign the centre of Berlin as an intimidating flagship which adequately reflected the spirit of the Nazi Germany. The Flowers was almost willed manifest by Juche. A similar monolith to a fractured ideology. However, while the two buildings share structural similarities, they represent inherently different ideals. Hitler’s edifice was a cold and barren monster built from hatred, insecurity and fear. The Flowers has been given new meaning by Juche who has utilised its dark, neglected energy and immortalised it as a monster of inspiration.
The book design is also something to behold and the imagery is as arresting as the text. Juche’s photography is all part of his performative dance. And like all good shamans, Juche is a committed mediator of his culture. It’s no exaggeration to say that the cumulative impact has integrative effect on our communal cognition – Juche’s ritual of images and text could be designed to locate the cause of our community's suffering. Shamanistic performances like sakaniq and tuurnginiq involve the shaman stabbing himself to emulate that of the wounded, thereby drawing them closer. Every image, like every sentence, is designed to provoke us into unity.
Infinity Land have also published a Collector’s Edition Box Set which includes the book, two signed and stamped prints, and a selection of relics, organic mementos and image-fragments from the location of The Flowers. Well worth the extra money.
Juche is a relentless burrower with cannibalistic tendencies. It is clear Juche will go anywhere where there is sufficient food, moisture, oxygen and a favourable temperature. Juche is utterly fearless. It’s this sharp eye for description that formulates the sticky slime holding together clusters of soil particles in a satisfying aggregate form.
New Juche is a hermaphrodite writer, someone who exists beyond the strictures of gender or identity; a conscious, palpitating conduit who is as essential to artistic progress as any traditional narrative extraction the individual could come up with. Juche might be a composite of every pansophic artist who came before – strobilising myriad thoughts into a nest-like vision of degradation and supra-sensory art – but Juche might also simply be a man. Even so, the writer remains a mystery genius; a silent intellect in a world of ego-cluttered inanities. We know he must keep his skin moist with surrounding soil and can become paralysed by overexposure to light. But that is about all we know about the artist in question. And that, like myself, he might have been patched-together somewhere in the cleft bowels of Scotland. Yet this is only part of the reason why his work is vital.
The Worm is my first taste of Juche and a book of recondite information; the residue of an immersive intellectual nightmare. As an introduction, Juche’s opening gambit converges on the curious fetishisation of Nazi memorabilia and how it wearily echoes British societies own self-hatred and desire to touch oblivion. Each of Juche’s articulate reflections are accompanied by a stunning complimentary image which successfully intensifies the overall sensorial experience of the book. This alcove-reflection soon morphs into a broader analysis – namely our veneration of a face as iconic as Hitler’s (the most photographed man in the world). And even here, Juche delights in language as he expresses different interpretations of Hitler’s visage through varied lens, with each facet of his physiognomy given careful scrutiny and newly ascribed meaning. Even Hitler’s soul, birthed from the spirit of Wagner, represents something the crumbling morals of Germany’s paranoiac collective could revive and make martyr. It’s heady stuff, and par for the course.
Juche goes on to identify the Schwer-bela-stungs-körper as a cultural touchstone – an immense concrete cylinder built on an expanse of marshland located in the borough of Tempelhof in Berlin. This megalith is considered a vestige of National Socialist urban planning, protected as historically significant. The Schwer-bela-stungs-körper roughly translated means ‘heavy load-bearing body’ and was constructed by Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer between 1941 and 1942. And this hideous megastructure was designed with the sole purpose of testing the surface in preparation for a massive triumphal arch, intended to stand three times taller than the Arc de Triomphe.
In contrast to this is The Worm’s lair, improbably dubbed ‘The Flowers’ - a fifty-four-storey prefab apartment block. The book is actually at its strongest when Juche discusses his private obelisk. It feels cohesive and the writing is simply sumptuous and nakedly personal. Like nothing I’ve read before by a modern writer –
‘Because of the proximity of The Flowers to my house (it can call to me as I lie in my bedroom) and the command it exercises over my imagination and private time, the fear has given rise to an omnipresent cloud of anxiety, a butterfly caged in my chest, a cold worm wriggling in my bowels, a permanently open challenge to my ego, to my ownership and my sense of entitlement, to the health of the qualities that I possess which enable me to step whether others dare not and remain, because that is still how I measure and imagine my prowess.’
When funding ran out the building fell into disrepair and soon grew overrun with vegetation. The Flowers becomes a ruined skull in Juche’s hands. He observes the ghosts of its memory and the fresh parasites of its decay. He is drawn to it. The Flowers represents the curse and blessing of a morbid imagination propelled forward by dark curiosity.
It’s easy to see how the grey edifice of The Flowers might mirror that of the Schwerbelastungskörper; after all, it was Hitler’s central thesis to redesign the centre of Berlin as an intimidating flagship which adequately reflected the spirit of the Nazi Germany. The Flowers was almost willed manifest by Juche. A similar monolith to a fractured ideology. However, while the two buildings share structural similarities, they represent inherently different ideals. Hitler’s edifice was a cold and barren monster built from hatred, insecurity and fear. The Flowers has been given new meaning by Juche who has utilised its dark, neglected energy and immortalised it as a monster of inspiration.
The book design is also something to behold and the imagery is as arresting as the text. Juche’s photography is all part of his performative dance. And like all good shamans, Juche is a committed mediator of his culture. It’s no exaggeration to say that the cumulative impact has integrative effect on our communal cognition – Juche’s ritual of images and text could be designed to locate the cause of our community's suffering. Shamanistic performances like sakaniq and tuurnginiq involve the shaman stabbing himself to emulate that of the wounded, thereby drawing them closer. Every image, like every sentence, is designed to provoke us into unity.
Infinity Land have also published a Collector’s Edition Box Set which includes the book, two signed and stamped prints, and a selection of relics, organic mementos and image-fragments from the location of The Flowers. Well worth the extra money.
Juche is a relentless burrower with cannibalistic tendencies. It is clear Juche will go anywhere where there is sufficient food, moisture, oxygen and a favourable temperature. Juche is utterly fearless. It’s this sharp eye for description that formulates the sticky slime holding together clusters of soil particles in a satisfying aggregate form.
October 14, 2021
By now I come to any work by New Juche expecting the extraordinary and happily enough The Worm is all that I had hoped. It's an analysis of Hitler that somehow takes in androgyne Anohni and an abandoned housing complex called The Flowers, all put together here with some gorgeous photography and lavishly presented by Infinity Land Press. A book dressed up in disguise as the most sublime of art objects.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews