Towards a Free Revolutionary Art

[American Dream]

My kind of book!

Is a good book.

"If we think we can recapture the image of us that has resulted from colonial culture and use it for our own benefit simply by reversing its colours and qualities, we are making an error... We are not the 'opposite' of our colonial image, we are other than this image." -Rene Menil

Has some voodoo in it, too. Literally and figuratively.

[American Dream]

Imagining a Reconciliatory Relationship with the Earth

In Otobong Nkanga’s art, figures appear dismembered and limbless, indicating that they have been industrialized as tools of production and exploitation.

Devon Van Houten Maldonado


Otobong Nkanga, “In Pursuit of Bling: The Transformation” (2014) (all photos courtesy of Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam and Galerie In Situ — Fabienne Leclerc, Paris unless otherwise noted)

CHICAGO — For her first major survey in the United States, Otobong Nkanga shows her largest set of works on paper to date, revealing a practice invested in seeing the earth as a dynamic living thing. Beyond ecology or environmentalism, her work brings together mythology from her birthplace in Nigeria and a constructive critique of anthropocentricism. To Dig a Hole That Collapses Again, now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, imagines anti-monuments to the exploitation of the earth and symbolic reconciliatory actions we might take.

Confronting humanity’s irreversible impact on the natural world — climate change and species’ extinction — is inevitably fraught as a subject of art, which can hardly pretend to be a tangibly effective tool of reversal. Unlike many artists wrestling with the same ideas, Nkanga doesn’t attempt to illustrate science or to imagine any unattainable utopia, but instead focuses on the human cost of our blasé attitude toward our home.


Otobong Nkanga, “Social Consequences I — Crisis” (2009) collection of Hetty Huisman/Grietha Jurriëns

https://hyperallergic.com/445609/imagin ... the-earth/

[dada]

Ben Watson makes the case (rants) that Debord's mistake was to ignore Rock n' Roll:

The SI Bootsale:
The Betrayal of Lettriste Poetics & Proletarian Politics by the Popsicle Academy

Address to the Conference on the Situationist International Hacienda, Manchester, 28 January 1996

http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/situationist/popsicle.htm

"Because he was blind to the class conflict that flaws consumer culture - seeing only the monolith of the Spectacle - Debord missed rock'n'roll. However, it was precisely rock'n'roll that solved technical problems encountered by the Parisian avantgarde: the retreat of poetic discourse into the actuality of the speaking voice, the replacement of individualistic, bourgeois expression by collective play, a confrontation with the spectacle unmediated by class concepts of high culture."

---

If we could do a quick Freudian analysis on James Madison, or John Stuart Mill and so on, when they say a republic needs to be protected from the tyranny of the majority. "In framing [emphasis mine] a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." That sort of thing.

Isn't what they're saying is that they're scared of the majority? That tyranny is afraid of the majority.

Because how can the majority be a tyranny? It's sophistry. When Marx says "the dictatorship of the proletariat," isn't he being sarcastic? The majority can't be a dictatorship.

Like that Lenin again, when he says the "protest against the tyranny of the phrase" is done by "a united, welded organisation which is at one on questions of principle, and not by lumping together heterogeneous elements," he's taking the 'lumpen' out of the lumpenproletariat.

Maybe in that light, a critique of Rock n' Roll might be built. The spirit of nonconformity, which is subsequently commodified to serve power. Sex Pistol tee shirts, holo-Zappa (coming soon!) the Dead Beatles. Android Hendrix parakeets. Where is the nonconformity?

From the war-strategy perspective department: In what contexts is Rock n' Roll good, in what contexts is it bad?

[American Dream]

I can't talk here much as I'm kind of a mess on (legal) drugs and (official) medicine but Miguel Amorós did something on all that, too:

Rock for beginners – Miguel Amorós



Advanced industrial society began to practice a kind of laissez-faire that it called tolerance, which was more suited to its interests. It was the kind of repressive tolerance that favored the tyranny of the status quo, since it corresponded to the necessary capitalist transition from conservatism to permissiveness. Consumer society is not ascetic and regulated, but hedonist and transgressive. With unusual haste, the spectacular-market society finally adopted a lax and utilitarian morality that was more in accord with its developmental needs and was no longer scandalized by anything. It did not even respect the dead: the corpses of Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were mercilessly transformed into mythic figures. Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful poster. And the system that had absorbed rock, transcendental meditation, psychoanalysis, sex and marijuana, did not have any trouble at all putting up with the messages of disillusionment and the histrionic and self-destructive behavior of the new rockers immersed in a rude and noisy musical style. Songs like Iggy Pop’s “T.V. Eye” and Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” no longer triggered censorship. The system, up to a point, looked the other way. There is no future, meaning no revolutionary future. If there were any events that clearly revealed the true face of the concealed fascism presided over by Nixon, they were the assassination of George Jackson, one of the “Soledad Brothers”, at the hands of the prison guards at San Quentin on August 21, 1971, and the massacre of rioting prisoners at the prison in Attica, New York, ordered by governor Rockefeller a few weeks later. Bob Dylan recorded two acoustic versions of a song entitled, “George Jackson”, and released them on a single, but they were never included on an LP. Tom Paxton called attention to the events at Attica with a ballad in the finest tradition of folk music, “The Hostage”, and John Lennon himself composed a catchy little tune preaching an idealistic and outmoded pacifism for those who remained unconditionally faithful that dogma. It might have been the case that this was no time for singing, but with hundreds of militants turning to urban guerrilla warfare, it certainly was no time for upbeat pep-talks urging people to “come together, join the movement, take a stand for human rights” [“Attica State”, 1972]. Dylan’s advice from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” was more appropriate: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” And in fact, “Weathermen” was the name chosen by the largest armed organization in America during the seventies.

The higher you go, the harder you fall. Like every epochal transition, the early years of the seventies saw the most authentic rock bands reach the peak of their creative powers during the worst years of the counterrevolution, producing works that satisfied the tastes of the moderately rebellious masses that comprised their fan base, before deciding to form part of the “silent majority” of Nixon and Agnew. Many of them refused to accept the role of idol which reflected the new conformist values, so they had no other recourse than to break up (The Beatles, The Doors) or become parodies of their former greatness (the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone). The Rolling Stones, after Exile on Main Street, never stopped repeating themselves. Heroin, consumed by the ton, did not help much in this regard. Heroin elbowed acid out of circulation. There were some bands that gradually faded away, went into decline or ran out of steam (The Band, The Byrds, The Kinks, The Who), not to mention others that bequeathed to posterity a boring and pretentious “opera rock”. Finally, there were groups that radically changed their style; as in the case of the Jefferson Starship, the shameful wreckage of the crash of the Airplane. On the other hand, legitimate rock music, whose representatives include Captain Beefheart (“Electricity”), Tom Petty, Lou Reed, Pattie Smith and the New York Dolls, went into decline and gradually became depoliticized. In a destructive, nihilist and angry context, where Chaos was the most appealing goal, the very word, “hippie”, acquired connotations of senility, idiocy and impotence. Beyond certain narrow circles of resisters, rock had lost its aura and, whether it remained faithful to its former commitments or yielded to escapism, was becoming predictable and routine, ostentatious and theatrical; a decadent music performed by narcissists for the entertainment of an onanistic youth that demanded its dose of symphonic alienation, or indeed alienation of any other kind. There was a total break with the blues, a loss of the connection of rock music with its negro roots, and consequently a complete dissipation of the rock n’ roll identity. The result was a certain kind of optimistic, intellectualized music, a music that tranquilized and relaxed the listener, the kind of music that exactly suited the new order. The mass concert was revealed to be the ideal way to congregate masses of young spectators prepared to rally around any progressive stupidity. Then, noble causes took the stage (like the concert to raise funds to help the massacred population of Bangladesh, organized by the former Beatle, George Harrison), where they were transformed into so many spectacles, allowing a passive audience to exhibit its hypocrisy and its fake commitment for the modest price of a concert ticket. The technological innovations of the seventies, such as samplers, synthesizers, and drum machines, swallowed the guitar, the bass and the drum kit. “Family Affair”, by Sly and the Family Stone, was the first song to be made with these drum machines, which became very common a few years later with the onset of disco. The new rock, moreover, was not so much music as circus: it established a relation with its audience mediated by the image and glamour. The rock star [vedette] relied on hairstylists, make-up artists, costumers, canned gestures, and television, more than on his or her talent. Separation is the rule in the spectacle that is preserved in the holy communion with the image of the “idol”, whether by way of staged sensationalism [“shock”: in English in the original] or by getting high on drugs. At home, the promotional music video acquired great importance; at live performances, the show was revolutionized with all kinds of special effects, logos, light shows, fireworks, fog machines, visual projections, cranes, catwalks, platforms, choreography…. The “fan” became the perfect domesticated animal. The deafening noise of the increasingly more powerful speakers combined with the drugs, the pills and the mineral water to induce a kind of autistic frenzy in the audience, a masturbatory form of stupefaction. This self-induced masochistic frenzy became generalized with the resurgence of discotheques, only now bigger and more well-designed than their predecessors, which gave the coup de grace to live music in pubs, theaters and music halls. A repetitive and simple kind of music emerged that became enormously popular, dance music, organized by a new master of ceremonies, the DJ. Lyrics and chords were reduced to a minimum. The rhythm was simplified as much as possible and replaced the melody, which degenerated into a monotonous drone. A new audio device called the cassette tape promised to democratize the recording industry by making it accessible to any group, but it did not turn out that way because the function of pop music had changed. Now, the least important factor in pop music was creativity; now pop just filled the vacuum of a life that was subject to the imperatives of consumption. The final result was always the same: conformism. In fact, the cassette constituted just one more step towards enclosure in private life and cocooning, bringing this kind of music where vinyl could not go, especially to the automobile, the prosthesis of the modern alienated individual and the symbol of his overwhelming powerlessness. Audiences became fragmented, diversifying the markets according to the age group and the type of consumer. It was the apotheosis of the hedonism and the permissiveness of the commodity: of the “rave”, of fun, of cool poses, of hip clothing. In short, the complete epiphany of the spectacle. Television increasingly performed the function of promoting this whole pile of musical trash. Authenticity came only at the cost of marginalization. This was the power of mass society. No alternative with pretensions of integrity could escape the narrow circle in which it was inscribed, succumbing to repetition and triviality at the hands of its followers, who were transformed into urban tribes. This is what happened to heavy metal, reggae, and punk. Rock music no longer served as a bulwark against modernized barbarism: it was a dead genre, a sterile medium, a ghost, a relic, a fraud. It was the music of the other side. Rock music used to exist because there were once many other interests at play, born in the shadow of the industry of escapism. The revolution and entertainment no longer walk hand in hand, the former having lost its playful-popular dimension and the latter having lost its subversive character. To be convinced of this you need only watch the incredibly mind-numbingly silly and superficial movie, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. The failures of the revolutionary movements of the recent past can be more readily understood with reference to the regression that affected rock music, which reflected the victory of spectacular culture and the dissolution of the dangerous classes into masses of consumers. It is true that all the basic elements of this transition were already present in the sixties, but it was only in the subsequent decade that it developed exponentially. Since then, many musical styles with better or worse intentions, or with better or worse luck, have come and gone. None have broken out of their particular ghettoes, because none were able to express the universal hopes for freedom and self-realization like the rock music of the sixties; none have taught us how to unlearn so much, or to so effectively question the status quo, or spurred so much protest. Rock caused two or three generations to stray from the beaten path all over the world by serving as the vehicle for a vital rebellion that was capable of leaving an indelible mark on the culture of a whole epoch.

https://libcom.org/library/rock-beginners-miguel-amor-s

[dada]

So, when is it time for rock n' roll?

If only general strike planning and concert planning could come together.

[American Dream]

Yeah, portable amps and loud acoustic instruments come in really handy sometimes.

[dada]

"The logic of unfettered development, anticipated under capitalism only in the realm of art, turns worker-producers into authors, creative co-participants in the articulation of texts. This element of co-participation, made possible by, variously, technology and technique, determines the revolutionary status of a cultural product.

He [Benjamin] lashes out against a recent German intellectual fashion. The new objectivists, contends Benjamin, had claimed to want to destroy capitalist relations of production, but they had functioned as counter-revolutionaries because of their refusal to regard the relationship of the author to Technik politically. Benjamin's critical revolutionary art practice is not satisfied simply with using technology to produce art. The new objectivists use photographic technology to counter-revolutionary effect, through participation in the market-friendly logic of fashion and empathy. Crucial to Benjamin's rejection of new objectivist photographic practice is his refusal of its passive model of reception, a model that ensures the potential of technological culture for representing conditions of existence is converted into political paralysis. It dissuades its audiences from active critical engagement with cultural artifacts, misusing technology to elicit contemplative responses"

New objectivists eliciting contemplative responses to the market-friendly logic of fashion and empathy. Otherwise known as 'social media.'

Quote is from Esther Leslie's Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism. Lots of good stuff towards a free revolutionary art in there.

Useful contrast between the aestheticization of the battlefield, mystification of war with the critical materialist view. I think the aesthetic mystification of war goes a long way toward the creation and development of the 'post-war' fascist-bourgeoisie alliance. Because really, let's just call it what it is. Upper middle class fascism. I think we may underestimate the influence that the war aesthetic has had on the mindset that embraces this type of ideology. But call it whatever you like, you know what I'm saying.

Of course, I practice the battlefieldization of aesthetics, and the warification of mysticism. Very different color horse.

Esther says: "Benjamin alleges that the rightist intellectual warriors, despite their talk of eternity and the primeval, are, in fact, bound up in the concerns of the moment and ignore history in 'a journalistic rush to capitalize from the actual present, without having grasped the past.'"

There's that Surkov again. That fucking guy, I'm telling you. Never had that experience of 'respecting one's enemy' before. Nothing wrong with that, I know, just surprising, that's all. And you gotta know your enemy's mind inside and out, so.

[American Dream]

What I "love", in an incredibly perverse way, is art a signifier of gentrification. Not artists as shock troops of gentrification, which is another thing but the actual deployment of physical art as a marker of the reclamation of space for bobo, gentrifying forces. Artists can easily be bought it seems, at least some of them, some of the time. Still every good sex worker knows, don't give everything to your clients.

[dada]

Artists can easily be bought it seems, at least some of them, some of the time. Still every good sex worker knows, don't give everything to your clients.

I see what you did there. But don't you think that's being a bit unfair? Sex workers deserve more respect than that.

[American Dream]

It's true. We've all got the oppressor inside of us.

Artists can easily be bought it seems, at least some of them, some of the time. Still every good sex worker knows, don't give everything to your clients.

I see what you did there. But don't you think that's being a bit unfair? Sex workers deserve more respect than that.

[dada]

It's true. We've all got the oppressor inside of us.

And that's just fine, as long as it stays in there!

[American Dream]

I'm inviting the Cop in the Head out to a party, not to enforce any laws but to get to know new people, new ways of doing things. My guess is that the alternatives are so much better than working for the Man, we'll get somewhere rather quickly.

[Heaven Swan]

What I "love", in an incredibly perverse way, is art a signifier of gentrification. Not artists as shock troops of gentrification, which is another thing but the actual deployment of physical art as a marker of the reclamation of space for bobo, gentrifying forces. Artists can easily be bought it seems, at least some of them, some of the time. Still every good sex worker knows, don't give everything to your clients.

Bolding mine

So, does this mean you relish and fetishize the idea of paying for ‘sex’ with poor, down and out women with histories of incest and sexual abuse?

[American Dream]

Definitely not, it's not my cup of tea, nother in any way. We all know however, that Sex work is much broader and deeper than what you describe.

What I "love", in an incredibly perverse way, is art a signifier of gentrification. Not artists as shock troops of gentrification, which is another thing but the actual deployment of physical art as a marker of the reclamation of space for bobo, gentrifying forces. Artists can easily be bought it seems, at least some of them, some of the time. Still every good sex worker knows, don't give everything to your clients.

Bolding mine

So, does this mean you relish and fetishize the idea of paying for ‘sex’ with poor, down and out women with histories of incest and sexual abuse?

[dada]

I saw the comparison of artists to sex workers as a way of making a point about the artist, not the sex worker. The art industry. Academic conformity, find a patron or perish, and marketing uber alles.

I'm inviting the Cop in the Head out to a party, not to enforce any laws but to get to know new people, new ways of doing things.

It's dangerous out there, though. This is why I think it's a smart idea to send the retrained cop in the head to Ninja school. Then he's invisible, a shadow in the night. When the Ninja goes to a party, first he observes who is friend, and who is foe. To friends he allows himself to be seen. Foes don't see him, until it's too late.

edited to add: On my 'sex work' comments. I apologize if my comments appeared insensitive, I hadn't realized that was a discussion spilling over from another thread.