Authority Complex (hold me, mold me, make me, take me, use me for pleasure, be not afraid)
Authority Complex (Mold me. Hold me. Take me. Break me. Use me for your pleasure. Be not afraid.), 2025
unfired clay, wire, burlap, steel, wool, stage lights, 4-channel sound work | 195 × 47 cm
Ecstatic Trance: Artists on Rock My Religion, MaryTwo Gallery 14.11.2025–03.01.2026
A warm glow pulls the viewer into the back space, where Ashton Phillips (b 1981, US) has created a site-specific installation. Authority Complex (Mold me. Hold me. Take me. Break me. Use me for your pleasure. Be not afraid.) 2025 includes wire, clay, light, text, and sound to create a psychedelic, mystical experience where the visitor becomes enmeshed in the work’s many layers of references. This multi-media piece was germinated from the “phallic mystery cult” part of Rock My Religion and creates a speculative text and tower for those that might embody a contemporary phallic cult.
The shape of Authority Complex is inspired by a central pillar form in the Metanghashvara Shiva temple in Khajuraho, a UNESCO heritage site in Madhya Pradesh, India. Pilgrims who worship in this Hindu site pour milk and throw flowers on the central phallic form as they circumnavigate it. Their performative, ecstatic worship practice is echoed in how a visitor views Phillips’ work: one must walk around it and get close to it to view it properly, becoming enmeshed in the light projection and casting their own shadow on the texts that are printed upon the work’s clay surface. Authority Complex also echoes the myth of Cybele, the Phrygian goddess known as the great mother. Followers of Cybele would castrate themselves and engage in ecstatic worship; indeed, Cybele may be understood as one of the predecessors of celebratory trans culture today. The cracks in the surface of Phillips’ pillar find echoes in the ‘cracking’ of trans culture, and the overlapping clay references the folded skin patches of phalloplasty.
Phillips created a four-track soundtrack for the work, which plays from mini speakers embedded within its surface. The tracks include the artist reading the text imprinted on the central phallic form as well as a field recording of crocodiles, frogs, and other animals that are referenced in the text. These creatures can change genders in the wild and are also metaphors for trans culture as well as the impacts of ecological devastation and species adaptation. As the amphibian and reptilian species adapt to the Anthropocene, trans humans are struggling with political and social subjugation in his native US. Phillips has also included tracks recorded in a cathedral-like recycling center and commercial audio sources that are surgical consultations for penile enlargement and testosterone replacement therapy as well as consultations for phalloplasty and metoidioplasty. The artist was amazed at how cis men have such easy access to surgical enhancement while trans people jump through several hoops before they can obtain the medical procedures. His mystical pillar, its complex combination of text and sound, are in alignment with Graham’s investigation into religious and performative ecstasy.
- Kathy Battista (Excerpt from Ecstatic Trance exhibition text ).
I'm thinking about a series of texts (written, sonic, and visual) that pick up on some of the lines/themes in the Rock My Religion video and take off with them, like lines of flight, bringing them into a contemporary context. The phrases and themes are still emerging, but I'm already thinking about and researching:
religious practices recognizing the sacredness/evil of shapeshifting;
the phallic mystery cult described in the film and the way it resonates with trans embodiment, performativity, and erotic power;
and the poly or omnigender of various ancient deities (including the archangels in Catholic tradition).
I'd also love to include some speculative writing, video, and material pointing toward the sacredness of nonhuman lifeforms that shift genders, shape, and reproduction strategies (e.g., the charming garden snails I visit with in my studio, who live all over the surrounding hillside, and come with two sets of sex organs, so they are capable of both fertilizing and being fertilized by each other).
Like Dan, I often work with text and poetic, experimental writing as creative modalities, so this feels like a satisfying way to connect his work and legacy with my own. I was also really struck by Dan's approach to collage/montage, non-linearity, and his willingness to edge the viewer into and out of intelligibility (e.g., with simultaneous disparate written and spoken texts) - all features I also aim for in my work. Instead of working with a single-channel video, though, I'm imagining a spatialized multi-media installation that could hold a similar non-linear experience, with pockets of intelligibility/legibility among pockets of dissonance/noise/disorientation.
I will work on some sketches as the texts develop, but for now I'm thinking about text incised on material suspended in space; sound compositions including spoken text that could be projected from the material or the architecture using transducers and wire; and projected video or colored light woven into and through these elements. I really love when my installations invite the viewer into the process of composing their experience of the work for themselves (e.g., when there is no prescribed path through the content and the order and duration of the viewer's experience depends on where and when they chose to position their body in space). I also love working with projected light and activating the architecture of a space to invite the viewers' bodies to be part of the installation, both as objects that are written/projected upon and agencies that interrupt or block the transmission of light/color/content with their opacity.
-ASP, Notes on Authority Complex
If we handbuild the unfired clay over a fixed steel armature, the clay will crack as it shrinks.
Right, but what could be more interesting than a phallic totem cracking under its own authority complex?
Or, more trans than a phallus cracking out of its form, refusing to perform the stability of its assigned shape?
Yes, a giant phallic totem to worship not because it is proud, stable, and complete,
but because it is failing, revealing its constructedness, and emerging as something new.
Beautiful, but will the clay fall off during the show?
Probably not, because it will be reinforced with burlap and wool fibers underneath,
but if it does, just leave it there on the ground wherever it falls.
Like a shed skin or pieces of a cracked shell.
presented as part of
Ecstatic Trance: Artists on Rock My Religion
14.11.2025–03.01.2026
A group exhibition presented by MaryTwo Gallery, co-curated with Kathy Battista. The project marks the fourth collaboration between marytwo and Battista, and brings together both long-standing and new friendships: Kathy’s decades-long friendship with Dan Graham and Mieko Meguro Graham, alongside the more recent dialogues between marytwo, Battista, and the participating artists.
The exhibition presented new and existing works by Sarah Benslimane, Samantha Box, Ashton Phillips, and Diogo Pinto, all responding to the late Dan Graham’s seminal video essay Rock My Religion (1982–84), a paragon of cultural study that analysed rock’n’roll, religion, and rebellion. Ecstatic Trance takes this landmark work as a point of departure, revisiting its reflections on popular culture, subcultures, and communal experience through a younger generation of artists working across fluid and interdisciplinary practices.
Dan Graham’s «Rock My Religion» (1982–84) was screened at stattkino Luzern during the exhibition on the 8th of December, 6:30pm. More information here.