My Next Project

 

From now until the year 2000. I'll be working on a variety of things which will collectively be known as The Serial Killer Project.

I've frequently heard other artists complain that everything's already been done. I don't think its true. We've only scratched the surface of the possible. Whole new worlds wait to be sliced open and examined under the harsh (but variable) light of art. But not this year, or this decade.

Just as a feast must begin with a new cow and not a partially-devoured one, all serious art must hack itself out of the new millennium. This millennium is spent. To be stuck in the last years of this century is to find one's self in limbo. Nothing of any consequence can be accomplished. All we can reasonably do is cower and wait.

But I am still young — 33! The crucifixion year! — and cannot wait the three years out. I must make work though I know it's doomed to be inconsequential. So I've conceived The Serial Killer Project to be a clearing of the ground, an opportunity to produce ersatz art in anticipation of the real thing. I'm keeping the bed warm till daddy gets home from the distracting millennial wars of panic confessions and incomplete repentances.

Why serial killers? Because I am not interested in alien abductions. So for me it was a choice between The Serial Killer Project and my Stories from the History of Dermatology. But the latter is doomed to obscurity, too far out of step with the cultural climate, and inconveniently research-heavy. So these projected works on the juncture of physicians and skin will have to wait.

 The Serial Killer Project will begin with the premise that the current proliferation of serial killers will continue until there are sufficient numbers for them to organize into a political force. The project will trace the development of the serial killer from lone, isolated psychopath to beleagueredÑthough vital and subversiveÑminority. Parallels will be made with the gay rights movement.

First on deck is a novel, The Chocolate Factory which will be my autobiography as Jeffrey Dahmer. It will not trace out a chronology of childhood trauma in order to posit an etiology of a pathological condition. Nor will it dwell on gory or otherwise sensational details. Instead it will proceed as a particularly touching romantic comedy, a series of dates in which no love connection could be sustained.