In collaboration with Charles Lane, Gregory T. Kuhn, John Anderson, Yauger Williams, Steven Allen, and Fernando Mares
"Here are the memories of the ruins of their beliefs." - Jean Cocteau
After four turbulent years serving the President, Secretary-at-Large Randall M. Packer of the US Department of Art & Technology took back the Department and made it his own. With the spectre of Orf as his guide (who bears witness to deteriorating conditions of the human spirit), the Secretary-at-Large declared a season in bell and began a perilous journey tracking the descent of post-apocalyptic America. The epic narrative culminates in the depths of the Other World, where Empire runs its course.
A Season in Hell is an allegorical descent into the hidden terrors, self-imposed demons, and amorphous culture of fear in the aftermath of 9/11. In his doppelgänger role as the Secretary-at-Large of the US Department of Art & Technology, he positioned himself as an “artist-reporter,” tracking the mysterious, disturbing, and often perplexing trajectory of contemporary culture through a portrait of America as an underworld of turmoil and crisis. The work draws its influences from Arthur Rimbaud’s epic poem, A Season in Hell, Dante’s depiction of the doomed in the Inferno, and the legend of Orpheus, who transgresses the boundaries between life and death.