The Process was an art and philosophy collective formed in the early 1990s and birthed at the same time as, and with a subset of the same people from, the studio work for the

Skinny Puppy Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton ...

album '' The Process''. Early contributors included

Nivek Ogre Kevin Graham Ogilvie (born December 5, 1962), known professionally as Nivek Ogre, is a Canadian musician, performance artist and actor, best known for his work with the industrial music group Skinny Puppy, which he co-founded with cEvin Key. Sin ...

Genesis P-Orridge Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson; 22 February 1950 – 14 March 2020) was a singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions arti ...

, William Morrison, and Loki der Quaeler. The Process collective aimed to connect the international industrial music community via the nascent internet while ostensibly reviving the "deviant psychotherapy cult"

Process Church of the Final Judgement The Process Church of the Final Judgment, also known as the Process Church, was a British religious group established in 1966 and disestablished in the 1970s. Its founders were the English couple Mary Ann MacLean and Robert de Grimston, who spr ...

Logo

The Process Cross — formed by the overlapping of 4 P's - was borrowed from The Process Church of the Final Judgement (Process Church) and appears on albums by

Ministry (band) Ministry is an American industrial metal band founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1981 by producer, singer, and instrumentalist Al Jourgensen. Originally a synth-pop outfit, Ministry evolved into one of the pioneers of industrial rock and industrial ...

and the Skinny Puppy/Throbbing Gristle collaboration '' Puppy Gristle''. The Process Cross also appears in several Skinny Puppy music videos. Director William Morrison has the symbol tattooed on his forearm; musician

and Satanic Temple founder Lucien Greaves bear the mark on their biceps. In 1993 Morrison received a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers representing

Chase Bank JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase Bank or often as Chase, is an American national bank headquartered in New York City, that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the U.S. multinational banking and fina ...

, claiming the bank owned the copyright to The Process' logo. Morrison suggested the lawyers obtain a copy of a book written by

William Sims Bainbridge William Sims Bainbridge (born October 12, 1940) is an American sociologist who currently resides in Virginia. He is co-director of Cyber-Human Systems at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

in 1978, titled ''Satan's Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult'', which would definitively prove The Process Church of the Final Judgement held the copyright. Morrison did not hear back from the lawyers.

Initiating The Process

In 1992,

Rick Rubin Frederick Jay Rubin (; born March 10, 1963) is an American record producer. He is the co-founder (alongside Russell Simmons) of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. Rubin helped popula ...

invited Skinny Puppy (and their entourage) to reside at the

Shangri-La (recording studio) Shangri-La is a recording studio in Malibu, California, currently owned by record producer Rick Rubin. Originally a ranch property with a bungalow owned by actress Margo, it was leased by The Band in the 1970s and converted to a recording studio ...

in Malibu, California, while creating their first album for American Recordings. Genesis P-Orridge was enlisted to work on the project. During a brainstorming session on potential concepts for the album, P-Orridge produced copies of a magazine produced by the Process Church titled ''Love'', ''Sex'', ''Death'', and ''Fear''. Morrison recalls himself and

Ordo Templi Orientis Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.; ) is an occult Initiation, initiatory organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century. The origins of the O.T.O. can be traced back to the German-speaking occultists Carl Kellner (mystic), Carl Kellner, He ...

member Adam Rostoker (Adam Walks Between Worlds) as immediately excited by the material. Nivek Ogre was also intrigued. Although The Process Church of the Final Judgement is credited as the conceptual inspiration for The Process collective, members have cited media theorist

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

and cultural critic

Neil Postman Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers, mobile devices, and cruise control in cars, and was critical of ...

as influences, stating that the collective was looking to explore media technologies and their impact on culture.

''Thee Process IS...''

The manifesto promotes the use of

Chaos magic Chaos magic, also spelled chaos magick, is a modern tradition of magic. It initially emerged in England in the 1970s as part of the wider neo-pagan and magical subculture. Drawing heavily from the occult beliefs of artist Austin Osman Spare, ...

sigils A sigil () is a type of symbol used in magic. The term has usually referred to a pictorial signature of a deity or spirit. In modern usage, especially in the context of chaos magic, sigil refers to a symbolic representation of the practitione ...

trance Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...

, and the

cut-up technique The cut-up technique (or ''découpé'' in French) is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularized ...

to unleash powers suppressed by various manifestations of social control.

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson ...

Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley (; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the pro ...

Thelema Thelema () is a Western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician. The word '' ...

, and the 23 enigma are referenced; many of the ideas articulated are a rehash of Genesis P-Orridge's previous work with

Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, abbreviated as TOPY, was a British magical organization, fellowship and chaos magic network founded in 1981 by Genesis P-Orridge, lead member of multimedia group Psychic TV. The network, including later members of ...

Neo-pagan Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Afric ...

attitudes and

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

references also permeate the syncretic text. Transmission of The Process is described as analogous to that of the zen

koan A (; , ; ko, 화두, ; vi, công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen. Etymology The Japanese term is the Sino-Jap ...

and is described as the "idealized Hidden Instrument of Evolution". Deprogramming, the fulfillment of one's True Will, the liberation of sexuality, and the subversion/dissembling of Control (in the Burroughsian sense) are addressed in the document. Ideas borrowed from

anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...

, such as mutuality and decentralization, get play as well. The Process is self-described as a "non-organization" recognizing "thee reality ov Individuals", consciously formulated to look appear as a cult to the mainstream. The Process sees itself as "sucksessors" to the hippies and surrealists and claims to have "bases" in UK, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and America. The document is attributed to Father Malachi. Strangely, there are no overt references to Process Church of the Final Judgement. ''The Process'' on the Skinny Puppy album of the same name presents a summarized version of the doctrine. In a 1998 interview with Philip H. Farber, Nivek Ogre talks about the project, saying: :

Online presence

Information about The Process was initially communicated across

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

by its founding members, who encouraged people to upload their various media files for collaboration via anonymous

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

. Later, a mailing list was created, but without direct participation by Ogre or Genesis. The Process FTP was initially located at the address ftp.netcom.com directory pub/puppy. The group was then afforded its own server space and listproc at

USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...

, by Robert Engen, with the address process.usc.edu. In 1995, internet efforts not involving the listproc had their own domain: process.org. According to Morrison, process.org went live the day the internet came online and was accessible with the original

Mosaic (web browser) NCSA Mosaic is a discontinued web browser, one of the first to be widely available. It was instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. It was named for its support ...

. Loki der Quaeler is credited with pioneering The Process' process.org web presence. The original process.org server was a

NeXTstation NeXTstation is a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1990 until 1993. It runs the NeXTSTEP operating system. Overview The NeXTstation was released as a more affordable alternative to the NeXTcube at about ...

stored in a closet in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, BC; the location and internet connection were provided by Blacky. Several gatherings of participants took place in 1997 and 1998 at primarily East Coast locations. During the last years of the decade, community activity dwindled and the website was eventually retired. Creative spin-offs and independent projects were launched around roughly the same time frame, drawing many participants in new directions and away from the collective. In this period, a number of original members of the Process Church contacted some of the early contributors of the collective and the Process Church members were subsequently provided with their own webspace on the Process server from March 1997 until May 2001.

Since 2000

In 2000, Genesis premiered a short film entitled ''The Process is the Product''. It was prepared from multimedia material created by Process Media Labs during the early years of The Process. Several members of the original collective are prominent members of

The Satanic Temple The Satanic Temple, often abbreviated TST, is a nontheistic religious organization that is primarily based in the United States, with additional congregations in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Co-founded by Lucien Greaves, the or ...

and have cited The Process as a having greater influence on the TST vision and structure than the "self-centered" philosophy of Anton LaVey and The Church of Satan.

References

External links

Thee Process IS...A partial reassembly of the original Process websiteWelcome to the Process blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Process International artist groups and collectives Chaos magic Thelema Philosophical movements