Vorticism was crushed by the horrors of World War I, which broke the defiant spirits of its adherents, making them old men before their time.

VORTIS brings that defiance back to life and art in a world caught in a stifling capitalist, technological cocoon. Vorticism is the eternal adolescent rebellion!!!

I. Vorticism

Vorticism models life and art on the physical VORTEX - the whirlpool, tornado and their manmade analogies like the turbine, the cyclotron. According to Pound: THE VORTEX IS THE POINT OF MAXIMUM ENERGY.

A physical vortex organizes the energies of the world through a whirling circular motion, forming an axis at its center, a vacuum whose force of attraction sucks the world into it and then spews it out in a continuous maelstrom.

By analogy, a person can be a vortex of experience, sucking in the world, feeling it deeply and intensely, and expressing their personal responses to its wild diversity. The vorticist is NOTHING but what they do in the world.

The vorticist IDEAL is to assimilate as many energies of the world as possible, always straining to expand the range, and then to give a total response around a deepening and strengthening personal axis, ever enriched and changed by the world WHATEVER IT SERVES UP!!!

The vorticist does not distinguish between negative and positive energy. THE VORTICIST CONVERTS ALL ENERGY INTO A TOTAL RESPONSE.

THE VORTICIST LIFE is an ARTIST'S LIFE of UNINHIBITED YET DISCIPLINED EXPRESSION. The vorticist artist channels their response to the world through a medium - sound, for example - to express their response to the world's energies with maximum, concentrated precision.

VORTICIST ART IS TIGHT AND WILD.

Vorticist art is never serene; life is too diverse and violent for that, brimming with contradictions, joys and agonies. The vorticist assimilates them all and expresses them all at once if possible or one by one if necessary.

Pound's master image of the vortex is an INVERTED ELECTRIFIED CONE with an axis going through its center, spinning furiously as it emits brilliant sparks of light.

VORTICIST ART IS REBELLIOUS.

The energies of the world are too exciting, strong and insistent ever to let us acquiesce in any position that we happen to occupy in the storm of life.

VORTICIST ART IS UNPREDICTABLE, SURPRISING AND PARADOXICAL - it must be to express life's amazingly bizarre extremes.

The Vorticists called their 'zine BLAST.

The Vorticist Manifesto declared the purpose of art to be the creation of VIOLENT STRUCTURES OF ADOLESCENT CLEARNESS BETWEEN OPPOSITES.

VORTIS takes up that challenge at the dawn of a new millennium.
 

II. Vortis Rocks

VORTIS IS A ROCK BAND. Make no mistake about that. Call our music anything you want - spin it through your own vortex. We don't care; that's our gift to you. BUT IF WE DON'T ROCK, WE DESERVE YOUR CONTEMPT.

Vortis does not exist to illustrate the theories of vorticism. We were rocking before we took on our name. Then we realized that decades before the fact, vorticism had defined the essence of rock to absolute perfection - VIOLENT STRUCTURES OF ADOLESCENT CLEARNESS.

Adolescence is that privileged and precious moment of life when you stand between the abject dependency of the child and the slave chains of adulthood - the one time in life when you're free to see clearly and have the vitality and guts to respond to what you see with full-throttle passionate energy.

And at the peak of intensity, what you see provokes REBELLION in you, the RAUCOUS ASSERTION of YOUR life, YOUR pleasure, YOUR anger, YOUR joy and YOUR contempt for the slaves, the compromisers and their masters; your CONTEMPT FOR AUTHORITY. Adolescence itself is a life of VIOLENT CLARITY.

REAL ROCK MUSIC IS THE PURE EXPRESSION OF VIOLENT CLARITY - THE SPIRIT OF ADOLESCENCE MADE REAL.

VORTIS OCCUPIES THE ADOLESCENT VORTEX.

We take in all the energies and meanings of all the forms of music in the world and we spin them through our raucous vortex to amplify their force and to express our response in SOUND.

You'll never know what we'll do next, but you can be sure that we'll pound it into you with insistent precision.

Our common commitment to uncompromising rock music makes us a vortex. A VORTIS SONG is a synthesis of the INDEPENDENT contributions of each member responding PERSONALLY through their own vortex in the common cause of ROCK.
 

III. Agitainment

Vortis is a POLITICAL rock band.

You don't have to be political to rock, but REBELLION INVITES ACTION.

Vortis stands FOR the individual's vortex and AGAINST the technological-corporate system that has turned the world into a hospice where we wait for androids, cyborgs and robots to replace us as a species. It is a dismal place where some of us are drugged by the media and consumer goods, and others starve to death in forgotten places.

VORTIS RESPONDS WITH OPPOSITION.

Our opposition is the purest dissent of all, taking EVERY position against the techno-corporate beast. 

TAKE THE SYSTEM DOWN!!!

Vortis stands WITH the right wing AGAINST THE NEW WORLD ORDER.

Vortis stands WITH the left wing AGAINST GLOBALIZATION.

Vortis stands WITH the anarchist AGAINST ALL AUTHORITY.

VORTIS GOES WHERE ITS VORTEX TAKES IT. You never know which side we'll be on, but you can be sure that we'll be FIGHTING THE POWER.

Each member of Vortis stands FOR HIMSELF.

VORTIS GIVES YOU AGITAINMENT.

We shake you up and make you think, and we don't mind if you HAVE SOME RAUCOUS FUN while we do it.