principia discordia collages

Special Offer:

There are less than 50 collages left, so it's discount time!

Buy 2 collages for ~~£25.00~~ £22.50 - about $44 or €34 - (includes shipping to anywhere in the world) - a 10% discount!

Buy 3 collages for ~~£37.50~~ £30.00 - about $59 or €46 - (includes shipping to anywhere in the world) - a 20% discount!

about the collages

Mixing found objects and stolen headlines, fine art drawings and photographs, police tape and musical scores, Principia Discordia is a limited series of 100 collages by Paul Watson.

Each hand-numbered collage is on 9 by 12 inches (229 x 305 mm) Bockingford Board, and comes with a letter guaranteeing authenticity.

As an online experiment, these collages are available to pre-order for £12.50 each. £12.50 is approximately $25 US or €19 EU at time of writing - the exact exchange rate will be the one determined by either PayPal or your credit/debit card issuer at time of purchase, but it'll probably be very similar. My PayPal account is a UK Verified account, just so you know I'm on the level!

Your collage will be created by me after you have pre-ordered it - you cannot choose a collage and buy it. It takes me a few days to make a collage, after which I'll post the collage to you. The collages will also be exhibited here, each bearing a note of their purchaser's name.

As a further experiment I intend to document the creation of this series on this thread in the discussion forum.

RSS Feed: Added RSS Feed containing a small (about 6KB - 100 x 75 pixels) thumbnail image of each collage as it is completed and added to this site. The RSS file will eventually contain all 100 collages, at which point it will no longer be updated (but it will be kept available for archive purposes). You are welcome to use this RSS feed to monitor this site for new Principia Discordia collages, or to display the thumbnail of the latest collage on your blog or website (if you do this, please let us know because we'd be interested). This feed may not be used for commercial purposes. If you have another idea or want to check, please feel free to contact us and ask - we'll probably say yes.

background

The collage series is named after the sacred/comedic book "The Principia Discordia" because it shares a number of characteristics with it: a collage of appropriated materials, obvious self-contradictions and unusual humour, an exaggerated, often parodying and nonsensical technique, and oblique suggestions that there is serious intent behind the work.

The Principia Discordia is a sacred text of the Discordian religion written by Greg Hill (Malaclypse The Younger) and Kerry Thornley (Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst). The Principia is quoted extensively in and shares many themes with the science fiction book The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Both books employ an exaggerated, often parodying and nonsensical literary technique, accompanied by numerous non sequiturs and passages reminiscent of koans, as a vehicle for countercultural iconoclasm.

The Principia describes the Discordian Society and its Goddess Eris, as well as the basics of the POEE denomination of Discordianism. It features typewritten and handwritten text intermixed with clipart, stamps, and seals appropriated from other sources, possibly illegally.

While the Principia is full of obvious self-contradictions and unusual humour, it contains several passages which purport to suggest that there is serious intent behind the work. Take for example a message scrawled on page 00075: "If you think the PRINCIPIA is just a ha-ha, then go read it again."

From Wikipedia.

The full text of the fifth edition of the Principia Discordia can now be found here.