In The New Society for Universal Harmony, Lenore Malen uses pseudo-documentary photos, video and audio transcriptions, "testimonials," case histories, and arcane imagery to archive the functioning of her own reinvention of the utopian society established in Paris in 1793 by the followers of Franz Anton Mesmer known as La sociata de l'harmonie universelle. Malen's New Society comes out of her long-term installation project and live performances of case histories and treatments performed at the fabricated Society imagined in Athol Springs, New York. The book expands the scope of the project to include original fiction and essays by "fellow Harmonites" Jonathan Ames, Geoffrey O'Brien. Pepe Karmel, Nancy Princenthal, Irving Sandler, Susan Canning, Barbara Tannenbaum, Jim Long, Mark Thompson, and others, plus a first-person account of Malen's discovery and two-year involvement with the Society. The "Treatments" offered at the New Society and documented in the book have been adapted from Mesmer's original proscriptions; adding to the book's authority, Malen adopts personas including scientific corroborators, curious journalists, and people whose lives have been forever changed by the Society. This work is often light-hearted and humorous, but by Malen's deft and thorough adherence to the actuality of her conceit she turns serious attention to a visible shift in U.S. cultural and political society towards blind discipleship and the seemingly overwhelming need to believe and to belong. The New Society examines our own culture's yearning for the perfect cure; what the Harmonites undergo and report is darkly funny and frequently impossible gesturing at the illusive search for spiritual peace and universal harmony, a search made more desperate in the social, political, and ecological climate we live in.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Pulling a cerebral stunt in the tradition of David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology, artist Malen imagines a New Society for Universal Harmony which "seeks solutions for spiritual dislocation through symbolically mediated magnetic treatments." Headed by the enigmatic and elusive Dr. F.A. Mesmer, the New Society rekindles the 18th century ideas of the doctor's eponym, Franz Anton Mesmer, who promoted the use of magnetism for a variety of mind-body therapies. The book is based on a clever conceit, a heavily photographic pseudo-memoir of Malen's time and self-discoveries amongst the Society's lost and eternally soul-seeking "Harmonites," at once celebrating and poking gentle fun at this seemingly harmless New Age community, but ultimately the book fails to live up to its promise. While the text amusingly blends real history and whimsy-masquerading-as-history, the staged illustrative b&w photographs (e.g. a prancing nudist, hot springs bathers, people in the grip of mysterious gadgets) are hokey, the narrative is limp, and the humor often falls short of its wry ambitions. That said, it is still a curious and interesting document, thanks in part to the book's additional contributors, including Jonathan Ames, Geoffrey O'Brien, Irving Sandler, Jim Long, Barbara Tannenbaum, Pepe Karmel and Nancy Princenthal, whose fictional testimonials and pseudo-historical essays occasionally rise to the level of farce demanded by the idea behind the book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Toucing and Absurdist must read and SEE PHOTOS!!,
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This review is from: Lenore Malen: The New Society For Universal Harmony (Paperback)
I read the online Publishers Weekly review and I strongly disaagree. I would buy this book for the black-and-white photos alone. They're complicated. Touching and absurdist at the same time, they slyly refer to the history of painting and early sci-fi, and the ones taken in the purported "basement laboratory" bear an eerie resemblance to pictures from Abu Ghraib. ABSORBING AND FASCINATING
5.0 out of 5 stars
Transporting and Provocative,
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This review is from: Lenore Malen: The New Society For Universal Harmony (Paperback)
Malen's work is both a wonderful fantasy and a wry, insightful look at society. You have to admire an artist/writer who can bring together an assemblage of ambitious and intriguing photographs, an involving piece of fiction set in the present, a careful and intelligent presentation of historic events, and a collection of intelligent essays--all to create an illusional world that draws you in, invites you to linger, and challenges your perceptions.
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