Page - 69 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

Heavy Metal Bricolage | 69www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 65–85 commitment. All other elements are subject to the current political, local, social and individual contexts in which the specific music is produced and consumed. These additional elements are also arranged in the form of bri- colage: “[Heavy metal] is, in the broad sense of the term, a bricolage, which spans a multitude of differences.”16 The field of shared knowledge includes ideas of religion and, in a broad- er sense, spirituality. Cultural conformity, here specifically Western and historically Christian, on what constitutes religious images concerns not only the iconography of specific religions but also the “paradigm” of reli- gious or spiritual aesthetics. The first is used in altering or restructuring religious iconography in transgressive bricolage. The second, the shared understanding of the religiosity of any motif not assigned to a specific religious tradition – for example the vastness of nature, the ritualism of processions or sacrifice, or the dichotomies of above and below, light and dark – can lend a bricolage a numen. Heavy metal and especially black metal are set in relation to what is called “religion” but is above all the popular cultural reception of religious codes.17 The elements available for bricolage are designated and limited by the pre-constraints of the user and their audience as mentioned, but also by the intended form of the prod- uct. The cultural context or environment may provide entitlement to some elements and not others, while the visual repertoire may lack reference points to some motifs. The selection is driven by the availability and fit of the images. The analytical frame of bricolage is especially revealing when applied to intermedia18 like CDs, which combine songs, lyrics, a booklet, the cover etc., or music videos, where chronology, framing, the song itself, the lyrics, some- times the musical performance, and even the possibility of complex narrative can be used to structure visual elements in this bricolage. Learning to read the visual language of these intermedia is another form of expertise practised by the insider. Bricolage is simultaneously the process of assembling these elements at hand coherently and a way of describing the product. The approach in this article focuses on the need to refer to the preceding motif occurrences to achieve new meanings as well as the creation of new meanings by juxtapos- 16 Weinstein 1991, 22. 17 Höpflinger 2018, 68. 18 Heesch/Kopanski 2018.