Johnny Legend (truly, a legend in his own mind) once gave me the advice that if I wished to succeed in show business I should learn to "go with the flow." Which brings me to why I created Kinderwhore Reprisal. Really, the piece is a sequel of sorts to kinderwhore.com, easily the most popular work on Illumination Gallery. Did I create Kinderwhore Reprisal to cash in on the popularity of kinderwhore.com? To a degree, yes. Certainly I want to reach people with this website. Every day I check my server web statistics page to see the amount of hits different pieces are getting. That kinderwhore.com has gotten so many hits surprises me. The piece is located in the Illuminated Sketchpad section of the site, devoted to works not entirely thought out. In truth, the piece was an afterthought upon completing Courtney Love: Paean to a Lady Monster. So why is it popular? Surely, I was doing something right, at least in tackling loaded subject matter, suggesting a balance between promiscuity and empathy.
I will not get into who came up with the term "kinderwhore." I've no way of knowing whether it was Kat Bjelland or Courtney Love. Wikipedia has a decent article on the topic. I believe Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love are equally special. Kinderwhore Reprisal very much ties in to Learning to Respect Beauty, an illuminated text loop I created earlier this year in homage to Kat Bjelland. Kat Bjelland possesses the beauty of a rare yet robust tropical flower; Courtney Love is more like a delicate white rose with nasty thorns. Kinderwhore Reprisal pays homage to her. It is composed of 27 image/text still frames, which form a text loop (i.e., the 27th image/text links contextually back to the 1st). Using your mouse or trackball, click anywhere on the image/texts to make your way through the piece.