i.
All experience is mediated--by the mechanisms
of sense perception, mentation, language, etc.--& certainly all
art consists of some further mediation of experience.
ii.
However, mediation takes place by degrees. Some experiences
(smell, taste, sexual pleasure, etc.) are less mediated than others
(reading a book, looking through a telescope, listening to a record).
Some media, especially "live" arts such as dance, theater, musical
or bardic performance, are less mediated than others such as TV,
CDs, Virtual Reality. Even among the media usually called "media,"
some are more & others are less mediated, according to the intensity
of imaginative participation they demand. Print & radio demand more
of the imagination, film less, TV even less, VR the least of all--so
far.
iii.
For art, the intervention of Capital always signals a further degree
of mediation. To say that art is commodified is to say that a
mediation, or standing-in-between, has occurred, & that this
betweenness amounts to a split, & that this split amounts to
"alienation." Improv music played by friends at home is less
"alienated" than music played "live" at the Met, or music played
through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In fact, an argument
could be made that music distributed free or at cost on cassette
via mail is LESS alienated than live music played at some huge We
Are The World spectacle or Las Vegas niteclub, even though the
latter is live music played to a live audience (or at least so it
appears), while the former is recorded music consumed by distant
& even anonymous listeners.
iv.
The tendency of Hi Tech, & the tendency of Late Capitalism,
both impel the arts farther & farther into extreme forms of mediation.
Both widen the gulf between the production & consumption of art ,
with a corresponding increase in "alienation."
v.
With the disappearance of a "mainstream" & therefore of an
"avant-garde" in the arts, it has been noticed that all the more
advanced & intense art-experiences have been recuperable almost
instantly by the media, & thus are rendered into trash like all
other trash in the ghostly world of commodities. "Trash, " as
the term was redefined in, let's say, Baltimore in the 1970s, can
be good fun--as an ironic take on a sort of inadvertent folkultur
that surrounds & pervades the more unconscious regions of "popular"
sensibility--which in turn is produced in part by the Spectacle.
"Trash" was once a fresh concept, with radical potential. By now,
however, amidst the ruins of Post-Modernism, it has finally begun
to stink. Ironic frivolity finally becomes disgusting. Is it possible
now to BE SERIOUS BUT NOT SOBER? (Note: The New Sobriety is of
course simply the flipside of the New Frivolity. Chic neo-puritanism
carries the taint of Reaction, in just the same way that postmodernist philosophical irony & despair lead to Reaction. The Purge
Society is the same as the Binge Society. After the "12 steps"
of trendy renunciation in the '90s, all that remains is the 13th
step of the gallows. Irony may have become boring, but self-mutilation
was never more than an abyss. Down with frivolity--Down with
sobriety.)
Everything delicate & beautiful, from Surrealism to Break-dancing,
ends up as fodder for McDeath's ads; 15 minutes later all the magic
has been sucked out, & the art itself dead as a dried locust. The
media-wizards, who are nothing if not postmodernists, have even
begun to feed on the vitality of "Trash," like vultures regurgitating
& re-consuming the same carrion, in an obscene ecstasy of
self-referentiality. Which way to the Egress?
vi.
Real art is play, & play is one of the most immediate of all
experiences. Those who have cultivated the pleasure of play cannot
be expected to give it up simply to make a political point (as in
an "Art Strike, " or "the suppression without the realization"
of art, etc.). Art will go on, in somewhat the same sense
that breathing, eating, or fucking will go on.
vii.
Nevertheless, we are repelled by the extreme alienation
of the arts, especially in "the media," in commercial publishing
& galleries, in the recording "industry," etc. And we sometimes
worry even about the extent to which our very involvement in such
arts as writing, painting, or music implicates us in a nasty
abstraction, a removal from immediate experience. We miss the
directness of play (our original kick in doing art in the first
place); we miss smell, taste, touch, the feel of bodies in motion.
viii.
Computers, video, radio, printing presses, synthesizers, fax
machines, tape recorders, photocopiers--these things make good
toys, but terrible addictions. Finally we realize we cannot
"reach out and touch someone" who is not present in the flesh.
These media may be useful to our art--but they must not possess
us, nor must they stand between, mediate, or separate us from our
animal/animate selves. We want to control our media, not be Controlled
by them. And we should like to remember a certain psychic martial
art which stresses the realization that the body itself is the
least mediated of all media.
ix.
Therefore, as artists & "cultural workers" who have no
intention of giving up activity in our chosen media, we nevertheless
demand of ourselves an extreme awareness of immediacy , as
well as the mastery of some direct means of implementing this
awareness as play, immediately (at once) & immediately (without
mediation).
x.
Fully realizing that any art "manifesto" written today can
only stink of the same bitter irony it seeks to oppose, we nevertheless
declare without hesitation (without too much thought) the founding
of a "movement," IMMEDIATISM. We feel free to do so because we
intend to practice Immediatism in secret, in order to avoid
any contamination of mediation. Publicly we'll continue our work
in publishing, radio, printing, music, etc., but privately we will
create something else, something to be shared freely but
never consumed passively, something which can be discussed openly
but never understood by the agents of alienation, something with
no commercial potential yet valuable beyond price, something occult
yet woven completely into the fabric of our everyday lives.
xi.
Immediatism is not a movement in the sense of an aesthetic
program. It depends on situation, not style or content,
message or School. It may take the form of any kind of creative
play which can be performed by two or more people, by & for
themselves, face-to-face & together. In this sense it is like a
game, & therefore certain "rules" may apply.
xii.
All spectators must also be performers. All expenses are to be
shared, & all products which may result from the play are also to
be shared by the participants only (who may keep them or bestow
them as gifts, but should not sell them). The best games will make little or no use of obvious forms of mediation such as photography,
recording, printing, etc., but will tend toward immediate techniques
involving physical presence, direct communication, & the senses.
xiii.
An obvious matrix for Immediatism is the party. Thus a good meal
could be an Immediatist art project, especially if everyone present
cooked as well as ate. Ancient Chinese & Japanese on misty autumn
days would hold odor parties, where each guest would bring a
homemade incense or perfume. At linked-verse parties a faulty
couplet would entail the penalty of a glass of wine. Quilting bees,
tableaux vivants, exquisite corpses, rituals of conviviality
like Fourier's "Museum Orgy" (erotic costumes, poses, & skits),
live music & dance--the past can be ransacked for appropriate forms,
& imagination will supply more.
xiv.
The difference between a 19th century quilting bee, for example,
& an Immediatist quilting bee would lie in our awareness of the
practice of Immediatism as a response to the sorrows of alienation
& the "death of art."
xv.
The mail art of the '70s & the zine scene of the '80s were
attempts to go beyond the mediation of art-as-commodity, & may be
considered ancestors of Immediatism. However, they preserved the
mediated structures of postal communication & xerography, & thus
failed to overcome the isolation of the players, who remained quite
literally out of touch. We wish to take the motives & discoveries
of these earlier movements to their logical conclusion in an art
which banishes all mediation & alienation, at least to the extent
that the human condition allows.
xvi.
Moreover, Immediatism is not condemned to powerlessness in the
world, simply because it avoids the publicity of the marketplace.
"Poetic Terrorism" and "Art Sabotage" are quite logical
manifestations of Immediatism.
xvii.
Finally, we expect that the practice of Immediatism will release
within us vast storehouses of forgotten power, which will not only
transform our lives through the secret realization of unmediated
play, but will also inescapably well up & burst out & permeate
the other art we create, the more public & mediated art.
And we hope that the two will grow closer & closer, & eventually
perhaps become one.
The mandarins draw their power from the law;
the people, from the secret societies. (Chinese saying)
Last winter I read a book on the Chinese Tongs
(Primitive Revolutionaries of China: A Study of Secret Societies
in the Late Nineteenth Century, Fei-Ling Davis; Honolulu,
1971-77):--maybe the first ever written by someone who wasn't
a British Secret Service agent!--(in fact, she was a Chinese
socialist who died young--this was her only book)--& for the first
time I realized why I've always been attracted to the Tong:
not just for the romanticism, the elegant decadent chinoiserie
decor, as it were--but also for the form, the structure, the very
essence of the thing.
Some time later in an excellent interview with William Burroughs
in Homocore magazine I discovered that he too has become
fascinated with Tongs & suggests the form as a perfect mode of
organization for queers, particularly in this present era of shitheel
moralism & hysteria. I'd agree, & extend the recommendation to
all marginal groups, especially ones whose jouissance involves
illegalism (potheads, sex heretics, insurrectionists) or extreme
eccentricity (nudists, pagans, post-avant-garde artists, etc.,
etc.).
A Tong can perhaps be defined as a mutual benefit society for people
with a common interest which is illegal or dangerously marginal--hence,
the necessary secrecy. Many Chinese Tongs revolved around
smuggling & tax-evasion, or clandestine self-control of certain
trades (in opposition to State control), or insurrectionary political
or religious aims (overthrow of the Manchus for example--several
tongs collaborated with the Anarchists in the 1911 Revolution).
A common purpose of the tongs was to collect & invest membership
dues & initiation fees in insurance funds for the indigent,
unemployed, widows & orphans of deceased members, funeral expenses,
etc. In an era like ours when the poor are caught between the cancerous
Scylla of the Insurance Industry & the fast-evaporating
Charybdis of welfare & public health services, this purpose of
the Secret Society might well regain its appeal. (Masonic lodges
were organized on this basis, as were the early & illegal trade
unions & "chivalric orders" for laborers & artisans.) Another
universal purpose for such societies was of course conviviality,
especially banqueting--but even this apparently innocuous pastime
can acquire insurrectionary implications. In the various French
revolutions, for example, dining clubs frequently took on the role
of radical organizations when all other forms of public meeting
were banned.
Recently I talked about tongs with "P.M.," author of
bolo'bolo (Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series). I argued
that secret societies are once again a valid possibility for groups
seeking autonomy & individual realization. He disagreed, but not
(as I expected) because of the "elitist" connotations of secrecy.
He felt that such organizational forms work best for already-close-knit
groups with strong economic, ethnic/regional, or religious
ties--conditions which do not exist (or exist only embryonically)
in today's marginal scene. He proposed instead the establishment
of multi-purpose neighborhood centers, with expenses to be shared
by various special-interest groups & small-entrepreneurial concerns
(craftspeople, coffeehouses, performance spaces, etc.). Such large
centers would require official status (State recognition), but
would obviously become foci for all sorts of non-official
activity--black markets, temporary organization for "protest" or
insurrectionary action, uncontrolled "leisure" & unmonitored
conviviality, etc.
In response to "P.M."'s critique I have not abandoned but
rather modified my concept of what a modern Tong might be. The
intensely hierarchical structure of the traditional tong would
obviously not work, although some of the forms could be saved &
used in the same way titles & honors are used in our "free
religions" (or "weird" religions, "joke" religions,
anarcho-neo-pagan cults, etc.). Non-hierarchic organization appeals
to us, but so too does ritual, incense, the delightful bombast of
occult orders--"Tong Aesthetics" you might call it--so why
shouldn't we have our cake & eat it too?--(especially if it's
Moroccan majoun or baba au absinthe--something a
bit forbidden!). Among other things, the Tong should be a
work of art.
The strict traditional rule of secrecy also needs modification.
Nowadays anything which evades the idiot gaze of publicity is
already virtually secret. Most modern people seem unable to
believe in the reality of something they never see on television
--therefore to escape being televisualized is already to be
quasi-invisible. Moreover, that which is seen through the
mediation of the media becomes somehow unreal, & loses its power
(I won't bother to defend this thesis but simply refer the reader
to a train of thought which leads from Nietzsche to Benjamin to
Bataille to Barthes to Foucault to Baudrillard). By contrast,
perhaps that which is unseen retains its reality, its
rootedness in everyday life & therefore in the possibility of the
marvelous.
So the modern Tong cannot be elitist--but there's no reason it
can't be choosy. Many non-authoritarian organizations have
foundered on the dubious principle of open membership, which
frequently leads to a preponderance of assholes, yahoos, spoilers,
whining neurotics, & police agents. If a Tong is organized around
a special interest (especially an illegal or risky or marginal
interest) it certainly has the right to compose itself according
to the "affinity group" principle. If secrecy means (a) avoiding
publicity & (b) vetting possible members, the "secret society"
can scarcely be accused of violating anarchist principles. In fact,
such societies have a long & honorable history in the anti-authoritarian movement, from Proudhon's dream of re-animating the Holy Vehm as a kind of "People's Justice," to Bakunin's various schemes, to
Durutti's "Wanderers." We ought not to allow marxist historians
to convince us that such expedients are "primitive" & have
therefore been left behind by "History." The absoluteness of
"History" is at best a dubious proposition. We are not interested
in a return to the primitive, but in a return OF the primitive,
inasmuch as the primitive is the "repressed."
In the old days secret societies would appear in times & spaces
forbidden by the State, i.e. where & when people are kept
apart by law. In our times people are usually not kept apart
by law but by mediation & alienation (see Part 1, "Immediatism").
Secrecy therefore becomes an avoidance of mediation, while conviviality
changes from a secondary to a primary purpose of the "secret
society." Simply to meet together face-to-face is already an action
against the forces which oppress us by isolation, by loneliness,
by the trance of media.
In a society which enforces a schizoid split between Work &
Leisure, we have all experienced the trivialization of our "free
time," time which is organized neither as work nor as leisure.
("Vacation " once meant "empty" time--now it signifies time
which is organized & filled by the industry of leisure.) The
"secret" purpose of conviviality in the secret society then
becomes the self-structuring & auto-valorization of free time. Most
parties are devoted only to loud music & too much booze, not because
we enjoy them but because the Empire of Work has imbued us with
the feeling that empty time is wasted time. The idea of throwing
a party to, say, make a quilt or sing madrigals together, seems
hopelessly outdated. But the modern Tong will find it both necessary
& enjoyable to seize back free time from the commodity world &
devote it to shared creation, to play.
I know of several societies organized along these lines already,
but I'm certainly not going to blow their secrecy by discussing
them in print. There are some people who do not need fifteen
seconds on the Evening News to validate their existence. Of course,
the marginal press and radio (the only media in which this sermonette
will appear) are practically invisible anyway--certainly still
quite opaque to the gaze of Control. Nevertheless, there's the
principle of the thing: secrets should be respected. Not everyone
needs to know everything! What the 20th century lacks most--& needs
most--is tact. We wish to replace democratic epistemology
with "dada epistemology" (Feyerabend). Either you're on the bus
or you're not on the bus.
Some will call this an elitist attitude, but it is not--at
least not in the C. Wright Mills sense of the word: that is, a
small group which exercises power over non-insiders for its own
aggrandizement. Immediatism does not concern itself with
power-relations;--it desires neither to be ruled nor to rule. The
contemporary Tong therefore finds no pleasure in the degeneration
of institutions into conspiracies. It wants power for its own
purposes of mutuality. It is a free association of individuals who
have chosen each other as the subjects of the group's generosity,
its "expansiveness" (to use a sufi term). If this amounts to some
kind of "elitism," then so be it.
If Immediatism begins with groups of friends trying not just
to overcome isolation but also to enhance each other's lives, soon
it will want to take a more complex shape:--nuclei of mutually-self-chosen allies, working (playing) to occupy more & more time & space outside all mediated structure & control. Then it will want to become a horizontal network of such autonomous groups--then, a "tendency"
--then, a "movement"--& then, a kinetic web of "temporary
autonomous zones." At last it will strive to become the kernel of
a new society, giving birth to itself within the corrupt shell of
the old. For all these purposes the secret society promises to
provide a useful framework of protective clandestinity--a cloak
of invisibility that will have to be dropped only in the event of
some final showdown with the Babylon of Mediation....
Prepare for the Tong Wars!
Many monsters stand between us & the realization
of Immediatist goals. For instance our own ingrained unconscious
alienation might all too easily be mistaken for a virtue, especially
when contrasted with crypto-authoritarian pap passed off as
"community," or with various upscale versions of "leisure."
Isn't it natural to take the dandyism noir of curmudgeonly
hermits for some kind of heroic Individualism, when the only visible
contrast is Club Med commodity socialism, or the gemutlich masochism
of the Victim Cults? To be doomed & cool naturally appeals more to
noble souls than to be saved & cozy.
Immediatism means to enhance individuals by providing a matrix
of friendship, not to belittle them by sacrificing their "ownness"
to group-think, leftist self-abnegation, or New Age clone-values.
What must be overcome is not individuality per se, but rather the
addiction to bitter loneliness which characterizes consciousness
in the 20th century (which is by & large not much more than a re-run
of the 19th).
Far more dangerous than any inner monster of (what might be
called) "negative selfishness," however, is the outward, very
real & utterly objective monster of too-Late Capitalism. The marxists
(R.I.P.) had their own version of how this worked, but here we are
not concerned with abstract/dialectical analyses of labor-value or
class structure (even though these may still require analysis, &
even more so since the "death" or "disappearance" of Communism).
Instead we'd like to point out specific tactical dangers facing
any Immediatist project.
- Capitalism only supports certain kinds of groups,
the nuclear family for example, or "the people I know at my job,"
because such groups are already self-alienated & hooked into the
Work/Consume/Die structure. Other kinds of groups may be allowed,
but will lack all support from the societal structure, & thus
find themselves facing grotesque challenges & difficulties which
appear under the guise of "bad luck."
The first & most innocent-seeming obstacle to any Immediatist
project will be the "busyness" or "need to make a living" faced
by each of its associates. However there is no real innocence
here--only our profound ignorance of the ways in which Capitalism
itself is organized to prevent all genuine conviviality.
No sooner have a group of friends begun to visualize immediate
goals realizable only thru solidarity & cooperation, then suddenly
one of them will be offered a "good" job in Cincinnati or teaching
English in Taiwan--or else have to move back to California to care
for a dying parent--or else they'll lose the "good" job they
already have & be reduced to a state of misery which precludes
their very enjoyment of the group's project or goals (i.e. they'll
become "depressed" ). At the most mundane-seeming level, the
group will fail to agree on a day of the week for meetings because
everyone is "busy." But this is not mundane. It's sheer cosmic
evil. We whip ourselves into froths of indignation over "oppression"
& "unjust laws" when in fact these abstractions have little impact
on our daily lives--while that which really makes us miserable goes
unnoticed, written off to "busyness" or "distraction" or even
to the nature of reality itself ("Well, I can't live without
a job!").
Yes, perhaps it's true we can't "live" without a job--although
I hope we're grown-up enough to know the difference between
life & the accumulation of a bunch of fucking gadgets.
Still, we must constantly remind ourselves (since our culture won't
do it for us) that this monster called WORK remains the precise & exact target of our rebellious wrath, the one single most oppressive
reality we face (& we must learn also to recognize Work when
it's disguised as "leisure").
To be "too busy" for the Immediatist project is to miss the
very essence of Immediatism. To struggle to come together
every Monday night (or whatever), in the teeth of the gale of
busyness, or family, or invitations to stupid parties--that struggle
is already Immediatism itself. Succeed in actually physically
meeting face-to-face with a group which is not your spouse-&-kids,
or the "guys from my job," or your 12-Step Program--& you have
already achieved virtually everything Immediatism yearns
for. An actual project will arise almost spontaneously out of this
successful slap-in-the-face of the social norm of alienated boredom.
Outwardly, of course, the project will seem to be the group's
purpose, its motive for coming together--but in fact the opposite
is true. We're not kidding or indulging in hyperbole when we insist
that meeting face-to-face is already "the revolution."
Attain it & the creativity part comes naturally; like "the kingdom
of heaven" it will be added unto you. Of course it will be
horribly difficult--why else would we have spent the last decade
trying to construct our "bohemia in the mail," if it were easy
to have it in some quartier latin or rural commune? The
rat-bastard Capitalist scum who are telling you to "reach out and
touch someone" with a telephone or "be there!" (where? alone
in front of a goddam television??)--these lovecrafty suckers are
trying to turn you into a scrunched-up blood-drained pathetic
crippled little cog in the death-machine of the human soul (& let's
not have any theological quibbles about what we mean by "soul"!).
Fight them--by meeting with friends, not to consume or produce,
but to enjoy friendship--& you will have triumphed (at least for
a moment) over the most pernicious conspiracy in EuroAmerican
society today--the conspiracy to turn you into a living
corpse galvanized by prosthesis & the terror of scarcity--to turn
you into a spook haunting your own brain. This is not a petty
matter! This is a question of failure or triumph!
- If busyness & fissipation are the first potential failures
of Immediatism, we cannot say that its triumph should be equated
with "success." The second major threat to our project can quite
simply be described as the tragic success of the project itself.
Let's say we've overcome physical alienation & have actually met,
developed our project, & created something (a quilt, a banquet, a
play, a bit of eco-sabotage, etc.). Unless we keep it an absolute
secret--which is probably impossible & in any case would constitute
a somewhat poisonous selfishness--other people will hear of
it (other people from hell, to paraphrase the existentialists)--&
among these other people, some will be agents (conscious or
unconscious, it doesn't matter) of too-Late Capitalism. The
Spectacle--or whatever has replaced it since 1968--is above all
empty. It fuels itself by the constant Moloch-like gulping-down
of everyone's creative powers & ideas. It's more desperate for
your "radical subjectivity " than any vampire or cop for
your blood. It wants your creativity much more even than you want
it yourself. It would die unless you desired it, & you will only
desire it if it seems to offer you the very desires you dreamed,
alone in your lonely genius, disguised & sold back to you as
commodities. Ah, the metaphysical shenanigans of objects! (or words
to that effect, Marx cited by Benjamin).
Suddenly it will appear to you (as if a demon had whispered it
in your ear) that the Immediatist art you've created is so good,
so fresh, so original, so strong compared to all the crap on the
"market" --so pure--that you could water it down & sell
it, & make a living at it, so you could all knock off WORK,
buy a farm in the country, & do art together forever after. And
perhaps it's true. You could... after all, you're geniuses.
But it'd be better to fly to Hawaii & throw yourself into a live
volcano. Sure, you could have success; you could even have 15
seconds on the Evening News--or a PBS documentary made on your
life. Yes indeedy.
- But this is where the last major monster steps in, crashes
thru the living room wall, & snuffs you (if Success itself hasn't
already "spoiled" you, that is).
Because in order to succeed you must first be "seen." And if
you are seen, you will be perceived as wrong, illegal,
immoral--different. The Spectacle's main sources of creative energy
are all in prison. If you're not a nuclear family or a guided tour
of the Republican Party, then why are you meeting every Monday
evening? To do drugs? illicit sex? income tax evasion? satanism?
And of course the chances are good that your Immediatist group
is engaged in something illegal--since almost everything
enjoyable is in fact illegal. Babylon hates it when anyone actually
enjoys life, rather than merely spends money in a vain attempt to
buy the illusion of enjoyment. Dissipation, gluttony, bulimic
overconsumption--these are not only legal but mandatory. If you
don't waste yourself on the emptiness of commodities you are
obviously queer & must by definition be breaking some law.
True pleasure in this society is more dangerous than bank robbery.
At least bank robbers share Massa's respect for Massa's money. But
you, you perverts, clearly deserve to be burned at the stake --&
here come the peasants with their torches, eager to do the State's
bidding without even being asked. Now you are the monsters,
& your little gothic castle of Immediatism is engulfed in flames.
Suddenly cops are swarming out of the woodwork. Are your papers in
order? Do you have a permit to exist?
Immediatism is a picnic--but it's not easy. Immediatism
is the most natural path for free humans imaginable--& therefore
the most unnatural abomination in the eyes of Capital. Immediatism
will triumph, but only at the cost of self-organization of power,
of clandestinity, & of insurrection. Immediatism
is our delight, Immediatism is dangerous.
So far we've treated Immediatism as an aesthetic
movement rather than a political one--but if the "personal is
political" then certainly the aesthetic must be considered
even more so. "Art for art's sake" cannot really be said to exist
at all, unless it be taken to imply that art per se functions
as political power, i.e. power capable of expressing or even changing
the world rather than merely describing it.
In fact art always seeks such power, whether the artist remains
unconscious of the fact & believes in "pure" aesthetics, or
becomes so hyper-conscious of the fact as to produce nothing but
agit-prop. Consciousness in itself, as Nietzsche pointed out, plays
a less significant role in life than power. No snappier proof of
this could be imagined than the continued existence of an "Art
World" (SoHo, 57th St., etc.) which still believes in the separate
realms of political art & aesthetic art. Such failure of consciousness
allows this "world" the luxury of producing art with overt
political content (to satisfy their liberal customers) as
well as art without such content, which merely expresses the power
of the bourgeois scum & bankers who buy it for their investment
portfolios.
If art did not possess & wield this power it would not be worth
doing & nobody would do it. Literal art for art's sake would produce
nothing but impotence & nullity. Even the fin-de-sicle decadents
who invented l'art pour l'art used it politically:--as a
weapon against bourgeois values of "utility," "morality" & so
on. The idea that art can be voided of political meaning appeals
now only to those liberal cretins who wish to excuse "pornography"
or other forbidden aesthetic games on the grounds that "it's only
art" & hence can change nothing. (I hate these assholes worse than
Jesse Helms; at least he still believes that art has
power!)
Even if an art without political content can--for the moment--be
admitted to exist (altho this remains exceedingly problematic),
then the political meaning of art can still be sought in the
means of its production & consumption. The art of 57th St.
remains bourgeois no matter how radical its content may appear, as
Warhol proved by painting Che Guevara; in fact Valerie Solanis
revealed herself far more radical than Warhol--by shooting him--(&
perhaps even more radical than Che, that Rudolf Valentino of Red
Fascism).
In fact we're not terribly concerned with the content of
Immediatist art. Immediatism remains for us more game than
"movement" ; as such, the game might result in Brechtian didacticism
or Poetic Terrorism, but it might equally well leave behind no
content at all (as in a banquet), or else one with no obvious
political message (such as a quilt). The radical quality of
Immediatism expresses itself rather in its mode of production &
consumption.
That is, it is produced by a group of friends either for itself
alone or for a larger circle of friends; it is not produced
for sale, nor is it sold, nor (ideally) is it allowed to slip out
of the control of its producers in any way. If it is meant for
consumption outside the circle then it must be made in such a way
as to remain impervious to cooptation & commodification. For
example, if one of our quilts escaped us & ended up sold as "art"
to some capitalist or museum, we should consider it a disaster.
Quilts must remain in our hands or be given to those who
will appreciate them & keep them. As for our agitprop, it must
resist commodification by its very form;--we don't want our
posters sold twenty years later as "art," like Myakovsky (or
Brecht, for that matter). The best Immediatist agitprop will leave
no trace at all, except in the souls of those who are changed
by it.
Let us repeat here that participation in Immediatism does not
preclude the production/consumption of art in other ways by the
individuals making up the group. We are not ideologues, & this is
not Jonestown. This is a game, not a movement; it has rules of
play, but no laws. Immediatism would love it if everyone were an
artist, but our goal is not mass conversion. The game's pay-off
lies in its ability to escape the paradoxes & contradictions of
the commercial art world (including literature, etc.), in which
all liberatory gestures seem to end up as mere representations &
hence betrayals of themselves. We offer the chance for art which
is immediately present by virtue of the fact that it can
exist only in our presence. Some of us may still write novels or
paint pictures, either to "make a living" or to seek out ways to
redeem these forms from recuperation. But Immediatism sidesteps
both these problems. Thus it is "privileged," like all games.
But we cannot for this reason alone call it involuted,
turned in on itself, closed, hermetic, elitist, art for art's sake.
In Immediatism art is produced & consumed in a certain way, & this
modus operandi is already "political" in a very specific sense.
In order to grasp this sense, however, we must first explore
"involution" more closely.
It's become a truism to say that society no longer expresses
a consensus (whether reactionary or liberatory), but that a false
consensus is expressed for society; let's call this false
consensus "the Totality." The Totality is produced thru mediation
& alienation, which attempt to subsume or absorb all creative
energies for the Totality. Myakovsky killed himself when he
realized this; perhaps we're made of sterner stuff, perhaps not.
But for the sake of argument, let us assume that suicide is not
a "solution."
The Totality isolates individuals & renders them powerless by
offering only illusory modes of social expression, modes which seem
to promise liberation or self-fulfillment but in fact end by
producing yet more mediation & alienation. This complex can be
viewed clearly at the level of "commodity fetishism," in which the
most rebellious or avant-garde forms in art can be turned into
fodder for PBS or MTV or ads for jeans or perfume.
On a subtler level, however, the Totality can absorb & re-direct
any power whatsoever simply by re-contextualizing & re-presenting
it. For instance, the liberatory power of a painting can be
neutralized or even absorbed simply by placing it in the context
of a gallery or museum, where it will automatically become a mere
representation of liberatory power. The insurrectionary
gesture of a madman or criminal is not negated only by locking up
the perpetrator, but even more by allowing the gesture to be
represented--by a psychiatrist or by some brainless Kop-show on
channel 5 or even by a coffee-table book on Art Brut. This has been
called "Spectacular recuperation" ; however, the Totality can go
even farther than this simply by simulating that which it
formerly sought to recuperate. That is, the artist & madman are no
longer necessary even as sources of appropriation or "mechanical
reproduction," as Benjamin called it. Simulation cannot reproduce
the faint reflection of "aura" which Benjamin allowed even to
commodity-trash, its "utopian trace." Simulation cannot in fact
reproduce or produce anything except desolation & misery. But since
the Totality thrives on our misery, simulation suits its
purpose quite admirably.
All these effects can be tracked most obviously & crudely in
the area generally called "the Media" (altho we contend that
mediation has a much wider range than even the term
broad-cast could ever describe or indicate). The role of
the Media in the recent Nintendo War--in fact the Media's one-to-one
identification with that war--provides a perfect & exemplary
scenario. All over America millions of people possessed at
least enough "enlightenment" to condemn this hideous parody
of morality enforced by that murderous crack-dealing spy in the
White House. The Media however produced (i.e. simulated) the
impression that virtually no opposition to Bush's war existed or
could exist; that (to quote Bush) "there is no Peace Movement."
And in fact there was no Peace Movement--only millions
of people whose desire for peace had been negated by the
Totality, wiped out, "disappeared" like victims of Peruvian
death squads; people separated from each other by the brutal
alienation of TV, news management, infotainment & sheer disinformation;
people made to feel isolated, alienated, weird, queer, wrong,
finally non-existent; people without voices; people without
power.
This process of fragmentation has reached near-universal
completion in our society, at least in the area of social discourse.
Each person engages in a "relation of involution" with the
spectacular simulation of Media. That is, our "relation" with
Media is essentially empty & illusory, so that even when we seem
to reach out & perceive reality in Media, we are in fact merely
driven back in upon ourselves, alienated, isolated, & impotent.
America is full to overflowing with people who feel that no matter
what they say or do, no difference will be made; that no one is
listening; that there is no one to listen. This feeling is
the triumph of the Media. "They" speak, you listen--&
therefore turn in upon yourself in a spiral of loneliness, distraction,
depression, & spiritual death.
This process affects not only individuals but also such groups
as still exist outside the Consensus Matrix of nuke-family, school,
church, job, army, political party, etc. Each group of
artists or peace activists or whatever is also made to feel that
no contact with other groups is possible. Each "life-style" group
buys the simulation of rivalry & enmity with other such groups of
consumers. Each class & race is assured of its ungulfable existential
alienation from all other classes & races (as in Lifestyles of
the Rich & Famous).
The concept of "networking" began as a revolutionary strategy
to bypass & overcome the Totality by setting up horizontal connections
(unmediated by authority) among individuals & groups. In the 1980s
we discovered that networking could also be mediated & in fact had
to be mediated--by telephone, computers, the post office, etc.--&
thus was doomed to fail us in our struggle against alienation.
Communication technology may still prove to offer useful tools
in this struggle, but by now it has become clear that CommTech is
not a goal in itself. And in fact our distrust of seemingly
"democratic" tech like PCs & phones increase with every revolutionary
failure to hold control of the means of production. Frankly we do
not wish to be forced to make up our minds whether or not any new
tech will be or must be either liberatory or counter-liberatory.
"After the revolution" such questions would answer themselves in
the context of a "politics of desire." For the time being,
however, we have discovered (not invented) Immediatism as a means
of direct production & presentation of creative, liberatory & ludic
energies, carried out without recourse to mediation of any
mechanistic or alienated structures whatsoever...or at least
so we hope.
In other words, whether or not any given technology or form of
mediation can be used to overcome the Totality, we have decided to
play a game that uses no such tech & hence does not need to question
it--at least, not within the borders of the game. We reserve our
challenge, our question, for the total Totality, not for any one
"issue" with which it seeks to distract us.
And this brings us back to the "political form" of Immediatism.
Face-to-face, body-to-body, breath-to breath (literally a
conspiracy)--the game of Immediatism simply cannot be played
on any level accessible to the false Consensus. It does not represent
"everyday life"--it cannot BE other than "everyday life,"
although it positions itself for the penetration of the marvelous,"
for the illumination of the real by the wonderful. Like a secret
society, the networking it does must be slow (infinitely more slow
than the "pure speed" of CommTech, media & war), & it must be
corporeal rather than abstract, fleshless, mediated by
machine or by authority or by simulation.
In this sense we say that Immediatism is a picnic (a con-viviality)
but is not easy--that it is most natural for free spirits
but that it is dangerous. Content has nothing to do with
it. The sheer existence of Immediatism is already an insurrection.
There is a time for the theatre.--If a people's imagination
grows weak there arises in it the inclination to have its legends
presented to it on the stage: it can now endure these crude
substitutes for imagination. But for those ages to which the epic
rhapsodist belongs, the theatre and the actor disguised as a hero
is a hindrance to imagination rather than a means of giving it
wings: too close, too definite, too heavy, too little in it of
dream and bird-flight. (Nietzsche)
But of course the rhapsodist, who here appears
only one step removed from the shaman ("...dream and bird-flight")
must also be called a kind of medium or bridge standing
between "a people" and its imagination. (Note: we'll use the word
"imagination" sometimes in Wm. Blake's sense & sometimes in Gaston
Bachelard's sense without opting for either a "spiritual" or an
"aesthetic" determination, & without recourse to metaphysics.)
A bridge carries across ("translate," "metaphor") but is not
the original. And to translate is to betray. Even the rhapsodist
provides a little poison for the imagination.
Ethnography, however, allows us to assert the possibility of
societies where shamans are not specialists of the imagination,
but where everyone is a special sort of shaman. In these societies,
all members (except the psychically handicapped) act as shamans &
bards for themselves as well as for their people. For example:
certain Amerindian tribes of the Great Plains developed the most
complex of all hunter/gatherer societies quite late in their history
(perhaps partly thanks to the gun & horse, technologies adopted
from European culture). Each person acquired complete identity &
full membership in "the People" only thru the Vision Quest, &
its artistic enactment for the tribe. Thus each person became an
"epic rhapsodist" in sharing this individuality with the
collectivity.
The Pygmies, among the most "primitive" cultures, neither
produce nor consume their music, but become en masse "the
Voice of the Forest." At the other end of the scale, among complex
agricultural societies, like Bali on the verge of the 20th century,
"everyone is an artist" (& in 1980 a Javanese mystic told me,
"Everyone must be an artist!").
The goals of Immediatism lie somewhere along the trajectory
described roughly by these three points (Pygmies, Plains Indians,
Balinese), which have all been linked to the anthropological concept
of "democratic shamanism." Creative acts, themselves the outer
results of the inwardness of imagination, are not mediated
& alienated (in the sense we've been using those terms) when
they are carried out BY everyone FOR everyone--when they are
produced but not reproduced--when they are shared but not fetishized.
Of course these acts are achieved thru mediation of some sort & to
some extent, as are all acts--but they have not yet become forces
of extreme alienation between some Expert/Priest/Producer on the
one hand & some hapless "layperson" or consumer on the other.
Different media therefore exhibit different degrees of mediation--&
perhaps they can even be ranked on that basis. Here everything
depends on reciprocity, on a more-or-less equal exchange of what
may be called "quanta of imagination." In the case of the epic
rhapsodist who mediates vision for the tribe, a great deal of
work--or active dreaming--still remains to be done by the hearers.
They must participate imaginatively in the act of telling/hearing,
& must call up images from their own stores of creative power to
complete the rhapsodist's act.
In the case of Pygmy music the reciprocity becomes nearly as
complete as possible, since the entire tribe mediates vision only
& precisely for the entire tribe; while for the Balinese,
reciprocity assumes a more complex economy in which specialization
is highly articulated, in which "the artist is not a special kind
of person, but each person is a special kind of artist."
In the "ritual theater" of Voodoo & Santeria, everyone present
must participate by visualizing the loas or orishas (imaginal
archetypes), & by calling upon them (with "signature" chants &
rhythms) to manifest. Anyone present may become a "horse" or
medium for one of these santos, whose words & actions then
assume for all celebrants the aspect of the presence of the spirit
(i.e. the possessed person does not represent but presents). This
structure, which also underlies Indonesian ritual theater, may be
taken as exemplary for the creative production of "democratic
shamanism." In order to construct our scale of imagination for
all media, we may start by comparing this "voodoo theater" with
the 18th century European theater described by Nietzsche.
In the latter, nothing of the original vision (or "spirit")
is actually present. The actors merely re-present--they are
"disguised." It is not expected that any member of troupe or
audience will suddenly become possessed (or even "inspired" to
any great extent) by the playwright's images. The actors are
specialists or experts of representation, while the audience are
"laypeople" to whom various images are being transferred. The
audience is passive, too much is being done for the audience,
who are indeed locked in place in darkness & silence, immobilized
by the money they've paid for this vicarious experience.
Artaud, who realized this, attempted to revive ritual voodoo theater
(banished from Western Culture by Aristotle)--but he carried out
the attempt within the very structure (actor/audience) of
aristotelian theater; he tried to destroy or mutate it from the
inside out. He failed & went insane, setting off a whole series of
experiments which culminated in the Living Theater's assault on
the actor/audience barrier, a literal assault which tried to force
audience members to "participate" in the ritual. These experiments
produced some great theater, but all failed in their deepest purpose.
None managed to overcome the alienation Nietzsche & Artaud had
criticized.
Even so, Theater occupies a much higher place on the Imaginal
Scale than other & later media such as film. At least in theater
actors & audience are physically present in the same space together,
allowing for the creation of what Peter Brook calls the "invisible
golden chain" of attention & fellow-feeling between actors &
audience--the well-known "magic" of theater. With film, however,
this chain is broken. Now the audience sits alone in the dark with
nothing to do, while the absent actors are represented by gigantic
icons. Always the same no matter how many times it is "shown,"
made to be reproduced mechanically, devoid of all "aura," film
actually forbids its audience to "participate"--film has
no need of the audience's imagination. Of course, film does need
the audience's money, & money is a kind of concretized imaginal
residue, after all.
Eisenstein would point out that montage establishes a dialectic
tension in film which engages the viewer's mind--intellect &
imagination--& Disney might add (if he were capable of ideology)
that animation increases this effect because animation is, in
effect, completely made up of montage. Film too has its "magic."
Granted. But from the point of view of structure we have
come a long way from voodoo theater & democratic shamanism--we
have come perilously close to the commodification of the imagination,
& to the alienation of commodity-relations. We have almost resigned
our power of flight, even of dream-flight.
Books? Books as media transmit only words--no sounds, sights,
smells or feels, all of which are left up to the reader's imagination.
Fine...But there's nothing "democratic" about books. The
author/publisher produces, you consume. Books appeal to "imaginative"
people, perhaps, but all their imaginal activity really amounts to
passivity, sitting alone with a book, letting someone else tell
the story. The magic of books has something sinister about it, as
in Borges's Library. The Church's idea of a list of damnable books
probably didn't go far enough--for in a sense, all books are damned.
The eros of the text is a perversion--albeit, nevertheless,
one to which we are addicted, & in no hurry to kick.
As for radio, it is clearly a medium of absence--like the book only
more so, since books leave you alone in the light, radio alone in
the dark. The more exacerbated passivity of the "listener" is
revealed by the fact that advertisers pay for spots on radio, not
in books (or not very much). Nevertheless radio leaves a great deal
more imaginative "work" for the listener than, say, television
for the viewer. The magic of radio: one can use it to listen to
sunspot radiation, storms on Jupiter, the whizz of comets. Radio
is old-fashioned; therein lies its seductiveness. Radio preachers
say, "Put your haaands on the Radio, brothers & sisters, & feel
the heeeeaaaling power of the Word!" Voodoo Radio?
(Note: A similar analysis of recorded music might be made:
i.e., that it is alienating but not yet alienated. Records replaced
family amateur music-making. Recorded music is too ubiquitous, too
easy--that which is not present is not rare. And yet there's
a lot to be said for scratchy old 78s played over distant radio
stations late at night--a flash of illumination which seems to
spark across all the levels of mediation & achieve a paradoxical
presence.)
It's in this sense that we might perhaps give some credence to
the otherwise dubious proposition that "radio is good--television
evil!" For television occupies the bottom rung of the scale of
imagination in media. No, that's not true. "Virtual Reality" is
even lower. But TV is the medium the Situationists meant when they
referred to "the Spectacle." Television is the medium which
Immediatism most wants to overcome. Books, theater, film & radio
all retain what Benjamin called "the utopian trace" (at least
in potentia)--the last vestige of an impulse against
alienation, the last perfume of the imagination. TV however
began by erasing even that trace. No wonder the first
broadcasters of video were the Nazis. TV is to the imagination what
virus is to the DNA. The end. Beyond TV there lies only the
infra-media realm of no-space/no-time, the instantaneity & ecstasis
of CommTech, pure speed, the downloading of consciousness into the
machine, into the program--in other words, hell.
Does this mean that Immediatism wants to "abolish television"?
No, certainly not--for Immediatism wants to be a game, not a
political movement, & certainly not a revolution with the power to
abolish any medium. The goals of Immediatism must be positive, not
negative. We feel no calling to eliminate any "means of production"
(or even re-production) which might after all some day fall into
the hands of "a people."
We have analyzed media by asking how much imagination is involved
in each, & how much reciprocity, solely in order to implement for
ourselves the most effective means of solving the problem outlined
by Nietzsche & felt so painfully by Artaud, the problem of
alienation. For this task we need a rough hierarchy of media, a
means of measuring their potential for our uses. Roughly, then,
the more imagination is liberated & shared, the more useful the
medium.
Perhaps we can no longer call up spirits to possess us, or
visit their realms as the shamans did. Perhaps no such spirits
exist, or perhaps we are too "civilized" to recognize them. Or
perhaps not. The creative imagination, however, remains for us a
reality--& one which we must explore, even in the vain hope of our
salvation.
Every culture (or anyway every major
urban/agricultural culture) cherishes two myths which apparently
contradict each other: the myth of Degeneration & the myth of
Progress. Rene Guenon & the neo-traditionalists like to pretend
that no ancient culture ever believed in Progress, but of course
they all did.
One version of the myth of Degeneration in Indo-European culture
centers around the image of metals: gold, silver, bronze, iron.
But what of the myth wherein Kronos & the Titans are destroyed to
make way for Zeus & the Olympians?--a story which parallels that
of Tiamat & Marduk, or Leviathan & Jah. In these "Progress" myths,
an earlier chthonic chaotic earthbound (or watery) "feminine"
pantheon is replaced (overthrown) by a later spiritualized orderly
heavenly "male" pantheon. Is this not a step forward in
Time? And have not Buddhism, Christianity, & Islam all claimed to
be better than paganism?
In truth of course both myths--Degeneration as well as Progress--serve
the purpose of Control & the Society of Control. Both admit
that before the present state of affairs something else existed,
a different form of the Social. In both cases we appear to be seeing
a "race-memory" vision of the Paleolithic, the great long unchanging
pre-history of the human. In one case that era is seen as a nastily
brutish vast disorder; the 18th century did not discover
this viewpoint, but found it already expressed in Classical &
Christian culture. In the other case, the primordial is viewed as
precious, innocent, happier, & easier than the present, more numinous
than the present--but irrevocably vanished, impossible to
recover except through death.
Thus for all loyal & enthusiastic devotees of Order, Order
presents itself as immeasurably more perfect than any original
Chaos; while for the disaffected potential enemies of Order, Order
presents itself as cruel & oppressive ("iron") but utterly &
fatally unavoidable--in fact, omnipotent.
In neither case will the mythopoets of Order admit that "Chaos"
or "the Golden Age" could still exist in the present, or that
they do exist in the present, here & now in fact--but
repressed by the illusory totality of the Society of Order. We
however believe that "the paleolithic" (which is neither more
nor less a myth than "chaos" or "golden age") does exist even
now as a kind of unconscious within the social. We also believe
that as the Industrial Age comes to an end, & with it the last of
the Neolithic "agricultural revolution," & with it the decay of
the last religions of Order, that this "repressed material" will
once again be uncovered. What else could we mean when we speak of
"psychic nomadism" or "the disappearance of the Social"? The
end of the Modern does not mean a return TO the Paleolithic,
but a return OF the Paleolithic.
Post-classical (or post-academic) anthropology has prepared us for
this return of the repressed, for only very recently have we come
to understand & sympathize with hunter/gatherer societies. The
caves of Lascaux were rediscovered precisely when they needed to
be rediscovered, for no ancient Roman nor medieval Christian nor
18th century rationalist could have ever have found them beautiful
or significant. In these caves (symbols of an archaeology of
consciousness) we found the artists who created them; we discovered
them as ancestors, & also as ourselves, alive & present.
Paul Goodman once defined anarchism as "neolithic conservatism."
Witty, but no longer accurate. Anarchism (or Ontological Anarchism,
at least) no longer sympathizes with peasant agriculturalists, but
with the non-authoritarian social structures & pre-surplus-value
economics of the hunter/gatherers. Moreover we cannot describe this
sympathy as "conservative." A better term would be "radical,"
since we have found our roots in the Old Stone Age, a kind of
eternal present. We do not wish to return to a material
technology of the past (we have no desire to bomb ourselves back
to the Stone Age), but rather for the return of a psychic
technology which we forgot we possessed.
The fact that we find Lascaux beautiful means that Babylon has
at last begun to fall. Anarchism is probably more a symptom than
a cause of this melting away. Despite our utopian imaginations we
do not know what to expect. But we, at least, are prepared for
the drift into the unknown. For us it is an adventure, not
the End of the World. We have welcomed the return of Chaos, for
along with the danger comes--at last--a chance to create.
What's so funny about Art?
Was Art laughed to death by dada? Or perhaps this sardonicide
took place even earlier, with the first performance of Ubu
Roi? Or with Baudelaire's sarcastic phantom-of-the-opera
laughter, which so disturbed his good bourgeois friends?
What's funny about Art (though it's more funny-peculiar than
funny-ha-ha) is the sight of the corpse that refuses to lie down,
this zombie jamboree, this charnel puppetshow with all the strings
attached to Capital (bloated Diego Rivera-style plutocrat), this
moribund simulacrum jerking frenetically around, pretending to be
the one single most truly alive thing in the universe.
In the face of an irony like this, a doubleness so extreme it
amounts to an impassable abyss, any healing power of
laughter-in-art can only be rendered suspect, the illusory property
of a self-appointed elite or pseudo-avant-garde. To have a genuine
avant-garde, Art must be going somewhere, and this has long
since ceased to be the case. We mentioned Rivera; surely no more
genuinely funny political artist has painted in our century--but
in aid of what? Trotskyism! The deadest dead-end of twentieth-century
politics! No healing power here--only the hollow sound of
powerless mockery, echoing over the abyss.
To heal, one first destroys--and political art which fails to
destroy the target of its laughter ends by strengthening the very
forces it sought to attack. "What doesn't kill me makes me
stronger," sneers the porcine figure in its shiny top hat (mocking
Nietzsche, or course, poor Nietzsche, who tried to laugh the whole
nineteenth century to death, but ended up a living corpse, whose
sister tied strings to his limbs to make him dance for fascists).
There's nothing particularly mysterious or metaphysical about
the process. Circumstance, poverty, once forced Rivera to accept
a commission to come to the USA and paint a mural--for
Rockefeller!--the very archetypal Wall Street porker himself! Rivera made his
work a blatant piece of Commie agitprop--and then Rockefeller had
it obliterated. As if this weren't funny enough, the real
joke is that Rockefeller could have savored victory even more
sweetly by not destroying the work, but by paying for it
and displaying it, turning it into Art, that toothless parasite of
the interior decorator, that joke.
The dream of Romanticism: that the reality-world of bourgeois
values could somehow be persuaded to consume, to take into itself,
an art which at first seemed like all other art (books to read,
paintings to hang on the wall, etc.), but which would secretly
infect that reality with something else, which would change
the way it saw itself, overturn it, replace it with the revolutionary
values of art.
This was also the dream surrealism dreamed. Even dada, despite
its outward show of cynicism, still dared to hope. From Romanticism
to Situationism, from Blake to 1968, the dream of each succeeding
yesterday became the parlor decor of every tomorrow--bought,
chewed, reproduced, sold, consigned to museums, libraries,
universities, and other mausolea, forgotten, lost, resurrected,
turned into nostalgia-craze, reproduced, sold, etc., etc., ad
nauseum.
In order to understand how thoroughly Cruikshank or Daumier or
Grandville or Rivera or Tzara or Duchamp destroyed the
bourgeois worldview of their time, one must bury oneself in a
blizzard of historical references and hallucinate--for in
fact the destruction-by-laughter was a theoretical success but an
actual flop--the dead weight of illusion failed to budge even an
inch in the gales of laughter, the attack of laughter. It
wasn't bourgeois society which collapsed after all, it was art.
In the light of the trick which has been played on us, it
appears to us as if the contemporary artist were faced with two
choices (since suicide is not a solution): one, to go on
launching attack after attack, movement after movement, in the
hope that one day (soon) "the thing" will have grown so
weak, so empty, that it will evaporate and leave us suddenly
alone in the field; or, two, to begin right now immediately
to live as if the battle were already won, as if today the
artist were no longer a special kind of person, but each person a
special sort of artist. (This is what the Situationists called
"the suppression and realization of art" ).
Both of these options are so "impossible" that to act on
either of them would be a joke. We wouldn't have to make "funny"
art because just making art would be funny enough to bust a gut.
But at least it would be our joke. (Who can say for certain
that we would fail? "I love not knowing the future." --Nietzsche)
In order to begin to play this game, however, we shall
probably have to set certain rules for ourselves:
- There are no issues. There is no such thing as sexism,
fascism, speciesism, looksism, or any other "franchise issue"
which can be separated out from the social complex and treated with
"discourse" as a "problem." There exists only the totality
which subsumes all these illusory "issues" into the complete
falsity of its discourse, thus rendering all opinions, pro
and con, into mere thought-commodities to be bought and sold. And
this totality is itself an illusion, an evil nightmare from
which we are trying (through art, or humor, or by any other means)
to awaken.
- As much as possible whatever we do must be done outside the
psychic/economic structure set up by the totality as the
permissible space for the game of art. How, you ask, are we to make
a living without galleries, agents, museums, commercial publishing,
the NEA, and other welfare agencies of the arts? Oh well, one need
not ask for the improbable. But one must indeed demand the
"impossible"--or else why the fuck is one an artist?! It's not
enough to occupy a special holy catbird seat called Art from which
to mock at the stupidity and injustice of the "square" world.
Art is part of the problem. The Art World has its head up its ass,
and it has become necessary to disengage--or else live in a landscape
full of shit.
- Of course one must go on "making a living" somehow--but
the essential thing is to make a life. Whatever we do, whichever
option we choose (perhaps all of them), or however badly we
compromise, we should pray never to mistake art for life: Art is
brief, Life is long. We should try to be prepared to drift, to
nomadize, to slip out of all nets, to never settle down, to live
through many arts, to make our lives better than our art, to make
art our boast rather than our excuse.
- The healing laugh (as opposed to the poisonous and corrosive
laugh) can only arise from an art which is serious--serious,
but not sober. Pointless morbidity, cynical nihilism, trendy
postmodern frivolity, whining/bitching/moaning (the liberal cult
of the "victim"), exhaustion, Baudrillardian ironic hyperconformity--none
of these options is serious enough, and at the same time
none is intoxicated enough to suit our purposes, much less
elicit our laughter.
The categories of naive art, art brut, and
insane or eccentric art, which shade into various & further categories
of neo-primitive or urban-primitive art--all these ways of
categorizing & labelling art remain senseless:--that is,
not only ultimately useless but also essentially unsensual,
unconnected to body & desire. What really characterizes all these
art forms? Not their marginality in relation to a mainstream of
art/discourse...for heaven's sake, what mainstream?!
what discourse?! If we were to say that there's a
"post-modernist" discourse currently going on, then the concept
"margin" no longer holds any meaning. Post-post-modernism, however,
will not even admit the existence of any discourse of
any sort. Art has fallen silent. There are no more categories,
much less maps of "center" & "margin." We are free of all
that shit, right?
Wrong. Because one category survives: Capital. Too-Late
Capitalism. The Spectacle, the Simulation, Babylon, whatever you
want to call it. All art can be positioned or labelled in
relation to this "discourse." And it is precisely &
only in relation to this "metaphysical" commodity-spectacle
that "outsider" art can be seen as marginal. If this spectacle
can be considered as a para-medium (in all its sinuous complexity),
then "outsider" art must be called im-mediate. It does
not pass thru the paramedium of the spectacle. It is meant
only for the artist & the artist's "immediate entourage" (friends,
family, neighbors, tribe); & it participates only in a "gift"
economy of positive reciprocity. Only this non-category of
"immediatism" can therefore approach an adequate understanding
& defense of the bodily aspects of "outsider" art, its
connection to the senses & to desire, & its avoidance or even
ignorance of the mediation/alienation inherent in spectacular
recuperation & re-production. Mind you, this has nothing to do with
the content of any outsider genre, nor for that matter does
it concern the form or the intention of the work,
nor the naivete or knowingness of the artist or recipients of the
art. Its "immediatism" lies solely in its means of imaginal
production. It communicates or is "given" from person to
person, "breast-to-breast" as the sufis say, without passing thru
the distortion-mechanism of the spectacular paramedium.
When Yugoslavian or Haitian or NYC-graffiti art was "discovered"
& commodified, the results failed to satisfy on several
points:--(1) In terms of the pseudo-discourse of the "Art World,"
all so-called "naivete" is doomed to remain quaint, even campy,
& decidedly marginal--even when it commands high prices (for a year
or two). The forced entrance of outsider art into the commodity
spectacle is a humiliation. (2) Recuperation as commodity
engages the artist in "negative reciprocity"--i.e., where first
the artist "received inspiration" as a free gift, and then "made
a donation" directly to other people, who might or might not "give
back" their understanding, or mystification, or a turkey & a keg
of beer (positive reciprocity), the artist now first creates for
money & receives money, while any aspects of "gift" exchange
recede into secondary levels of meaning & finally begin to fade
(negative reciprocity). Finally we have tourist art, & the
condescending amusement, & then the condescending boredom, of those
who will no longer pay for the "inauthentic." (3) Or else the
Art World vampirizes the energy of the outsider, sucks everything
out & then passes on the corpse to the advertising world or the
world of "popular" entertainment. By this re-production
the art finally loses its "aura" & shrivels & dies. True, the
"utopian trace" may remain, but in essence the art has been
betrayed.
The unfairness of such terms as "insane" or
"neo-primitive" art lies in the fact that this art is not produced
only by the mad or innocent, but by all those who evade the alienation
of the paramedium. Its true appeal lies in the intense aura it
acquires thru immediate imaginal presence, not only in its
"visionary" style or content, but most importantly by its mere
present-ness (i.e., it is "here" and it is a "gift"). In this
sense it is more, not less, noble than "mainstream " art of the
post-modern era--which is precisely the art of an absence rather
than a presence.
The only fair way (or "beauty way," as the Hopi say)
to treat "outsider" art would seem to be to keep it "secret"--to
refuse to define it--to pass it on as a secret, person-to-person,
breast-to-breast--rather than pass it thru the paramedium
(slick journals, quarterlies, galleries, museums, coffee-table
books, MTV, etc.). Or even better:--to become "mad" & "innocent"
ourselves--for so Babylon will label us when we neither worship
nor criticize it anymore--when we have forgotten it (but
not "forgiven" it!), & remembered our own prophetic selves, our
bodies, our "true will."
i.
Any number can play but the number must be
pre-determined. Six to twenty-five seems about right.
ii.
The basic structure is a banquet or picnic. Each player must
bring a dish or bottle, etc., of sufficient quantity that everyone
gets at least a serving. Dishes can be prepared or finished on the
spot, but nothing should be bought ready-made (except wine & beer,
although these could ideally be home-made). The more elaborate the
dishes the better. Attempt to be memorable . The menu need
not be left to surprise (although this is an option)--some groups
may want to coordinate the banquets so as to avoid duplications or
clashes. Perhaps the banquet could have a theme & each player could
be responsible for a given course (appetizer, soup, fish, vegetables,
meat, salad, dessert, ices, cheeses, etc.). Suggested themes:
Fourier's Gastrosophy--Surrealism--Native American--Black & Red
(all food black or red in honor of anarchy)--etc.
iii.
The banquet should be carried out with a certain degree of
formality: toasts, for example. Maybe "dress for dinner" in some
way? (Imagine for example that the banquet theme were "Surrealism
"; the concept "dress for dinner" takes on a certain meaning).
Live music at the banquet would be fine, providing some of the
players were content to perform for the others as their "gift,"
& eat later. (Recorded music is not appropriate.)
iv.
The main purpose of the potlatch is of course gift-giving.
Every player should arrive with one or more gifts & leave with one
or more different gifts. This could be accomplished in a
number of ways: (a) Each player brings one gift & passes it to the
person seated next to them at table (or some similar arrangement);
(b) Everyone brings a gift for every other guest. The choice
may depend on the number of players, with (a) better for larger
groups & (b) for smaller gatherings. If the choice is (b), you may
want to decide beforehand whether the gifts should be the same or
different. For example, if I am playing with five other people, do
I b ring (say) five hand-painted neckties, or five totally different
gifts? And will the gifts be given specifically to certain individuals
(in which case they might be crafted to suit the recipient's
personality), or will they be distributed by lot?
v.
The gifts must be made by the players, not ready-made.
This is vital. Pre-manufactured elements can go into the making of
the gifts, but each gift must be an individual work of art in its
own right. If for instance I bring five hand painted neckties, I
must paint each one myself, either with the same or with different
designs, although I may be allowed to buy ready-made ties to work
on.
vi.
Gifts need not be physical objects. One player's gift might be
live music during dinner, another's might be a performance.
However, it should be recalled that in the Amerindian potlatches
the gifts were supposed to be superb & even ruinous for the givers.
In my opinion physical objects are best, & they should be as
good as possible--not necessarily costly to make, but really
impressive. Traditional potlatches involved prestige-winning.
Players should feel a competitive spirit of giving, a determination
to make gifts of real splendor or value. Groups may wish to set
rules beforehand a bout this--some may wish to insist on physical
objects, in which case music or performance would simply become
extra acts of generosity, but hors de potlatch, so to
speak.
vii.
Our potlatch is non-traditional, however, in that theoretically
all players win--everyone gives & receives equally. There's
no denying however that a dull or stingy player will lose prestige,
while an imaginative &/or generous player will gain "face." In
a really successful potlatch each player will be equally generous,
so that all players will be equally pleased. The uncertainty of
outcome adds a zest of randomness to the event.
viii.
The host, who supplies the place, will of course be put to extra
trouble & expense, so that an ideal potlatch would be part of a
series in which each player takes a turn as host. In this case
another competition for prestige would transpire in the course of
the series:--who will provide the most memorable hospitality?
Some groups may want to set rules limiting the host's duties, while
others may wish to leave hosts free to knock themselves out; however,
in the latter case, there should really be a complete series of
events, so that no one need feel cheated, or superior, in relation
to the other players. But in some areas & for some groups the entire
series may simply not be feasible. In New York for example not
everyone has enough room to host even a small party. In this case
the hosts will inevitably win some extra prestige. And why not?
ix.
Gifts should not be "useful." They should appeal to the
senses. Some groups may prefer works of art, others might like
home-made preserves & relishes, or gold frankincense & myrrh, or
even sexual acts. Some ground rules should be agreed on. No mediation
should be involved in the gift--no videotapes, tape recordings,
printed material, etc. All gifts should be present at the potlatch
"ceremony"--i.e. no tickets to other events, no promises, no
postponements. Remember that the purpose of the game, as well as
its most basic rule, is to avoid all mediation & even representation--to
be "present," to give "presence."
The problem is not that too much has been
revealed, but that every revelation finds its sponsor, its CEO,
its monthly slick, its clone Judases & replacement people.
You can't get sick from too much knowledge--but we can
suffer from the virtualization of knowledge, its alienation from
us & its replacement by a weird dull changeling or simulacrum--the
same "data," yes, but now dead--like supermarket vegetables; no "aura."
Our malaise (January 1, 1992) arises from this: we hear not
the language but the echo, or rather the reproduction ad infinitum
of the language, its reflection upon a reflection-series of itself,
even more self-referential & corrupt. The vertiginous perspectives
of this VR datascape nauseate us because they contain no hidden
spaces, no privileged opacities.
Infinite access to knowledge that simply fails to interact with
the body or with the imagination--in fact the manichaean ideal of
fleshless soulless thought--modern media/politics as pure gnostic
mentation, the anaesthetic ruminations of Archons & Aeons, suicide
of the Elect...
The organic is secretive--it secretes secrecy like sap. The inorganic
is a demonic democracy--everything equal, but equally valueless.
No gifts, only commodities. The Manichaeans invented usury. Knowledge
can act as a kind of poison, as Nietzsche pointed out.
Within the organic ("Nature," "everyday life") is embedded a
kind of silence which is not just dumbness, an opacity which is
not mere ignorance--a secrecy which is also an affirmation--a tact
which knows how to act, how to change things, how to breathe into
them.
Not a "cloud of unknowing"--not "mysticism"--we have no
desire to deliver ourselves up again to that obscurantist sad excuse
for fascism--nevertheless we might invoke a sort of taoist sense
of "suchness-of-things"--"a flower does not talk," & it's
certainly not the genitals which endow us with logos. (On second
thought, perhaps this is not quite true; after all, myth offers us
the archetype of Priapus, a talking penis.) An occultist would ask
how to "work" this silence--but we'd rather ask how to play
it, like musicians, or like the playful boy of Heraclitus.
A bad mood in which every day is the same. When are a few lumps
going to appear in this smooth time? Hard to believe in the return
of Carnival, of Saturnalia. Perhaps time has stopped here in the
Pleroma, here in the Gnostic dreamworld where our bodies are rotting
but our "minds" are downloaded into eternity. We know so much--how
can we not know the answer to this most vexing of questions?
Because the answer (as in Odilon Redon's "Harpocrates") isn't
answered in the language of reproduction but in that of gesture,
touch, odor, the hunt. Finally virtu is impassable--eating
& drinking is eating & drinking--the lazy yokel plows a crooked
furrow. The Wonderful World of Knowledge has turned into some kind
of PBS Special from Hell. I demand real mud in my stream, real
watercress. Why, the natives are not only sullen, they're
taciturn--downright incommunicative. Right, gringo, we're tired of
your steenking surveys, tests & questionnaires. There are some
things bureaucrats were not meant to know--& so there are some
things which even artists should keep secret. This is not
self-censorship nor self-ignorance. It is cosmic tact. It is our
homage to the organic, its uneven flow, its backcurrents & eddies,
its swamps & hideouts. If art is "work" then it will become
knowledge & eventually lose its redemptive power & even its taste.
But if art is "play" then it will both preserve secrets & tell
secrets which will remain secrets. Secrets are for sharing, like
all of Nature's secretions.
Is knowledge evil? We're no mirror-image Manichees
here--we're counting on dialectics to break a few bricks. Some
knowledge is dadata, some is commodata. Some knowledge is wisdom--some
simply an excuse for doing nothing, desiring nothing. Mere
academic knowledge, for example, or the knowingness of the nihilist
post-mods, shades off into realms of the UnDead--& the UnBorn. Some
knowledge breathes--some knowledge suffocates. What we know & how
we know it must have a basis in the flesh--the whole flesh, not
just a brain in a jar of formaldehyde. The knowledge we want is
neither utilitarian nor "pure" but celebratory. Anything else is
a totentanz of data-ghosts, the "beckoning fair ones" of the
media, the Cargo Cult of too-Late Capitalist epistemology.
If I could escape this bad mood of course I'd do so, & take
you with me. What we need is a plan. Jail break? tunnel? a gun
carved of soap, a sharpened spoon, a file in a cake? a new religion?
Let me be your wandering bishop. We'll play with the silence
& make it ours. Soon as Spring comes. A rock in the stream,
bifurcating its turbulence. Visualize it: mossy, wet, viridescent
as rainy jadefaded copper struck by lightning. A great toad like
a living emerald, like Mayday. The strength of the bios,
like the strength of the bow or lyre, lies in the bending
back.
To speak too much & not be heard--that's
sickening enough. But to acquire listeners--that could be
worse. Listeners think that to listen suffices--as if their true
desire were to hear with someone else's ears, see thru someone
else's eyes, feel with someone else's skin...
The text (or the broadcast) which will change reality:--Rimbaud
dreamed of that, & then gave up in disgust. But he entertained too
subtle an idea about magic. The crude truth is perhaps that texts
can only change reality when they inspire readers to see &
act, rather than merely see. Scripture once did this--but
Scripture has become an idol. To see thru its eyes would be to
possess (in the Voodoo sense) a statue--or a corpse.
Seeing, & the literature of seeing, is too easy. Enlightenment
is easy. "It's easy to be a sufi," a Persian shaykh once told
me. "What's difficult is to be human." Political enlightenment
is even easier than spiritual enlightenment--neither one changes
the world, or even the self. Sufism & Situationism--or shamanism
& anarchy--the theories I've played with--are just that: theories,
visions, ways of seeing. Significantly, the "practice" of sufism
consists in the repetition of words (dhikr). This action itself is
a text, & nothing but a text. And the "praxis" of anarcho-situationism
amounts to the same: a text, a slogan on a wall. A moment of
enlightenment. Well, it's not totally valueless--but afterwards
what will be different?
We might like to purge our radio of anything which lacks at
least the chance of precipitating that difference. Just as
there exist books which have inspired earthshaking crimes, we would
like to broadcast texts which cause hearers to seize (or at least
make a grab for) the happiness God denies us. Exhortations to hijack
reality. But even more we would like to purge our lives of everything
which obstructs or delays us from setting out--not to sell guns &
slaves in Abyssinia--not to be either robbers or cops--not to
escape the world or to rule it--but to open ourselves to
difference.
I share with the most reactionary moralists the presumption
that art can really affect reality in this way, & I despise the
liberals who say all art should be permitted because--after all--it's
only art. Thus I've taken to the practice of those categories of
writing & radio most hated by conservatives--pornography & agitprop--in
the hope of stirring up trouble for my readers/hearers & myself.
But I accuse myself of ineffectualism , even futility. Not enough
has changed. Perhaps nothing has changed.
Enlightenment is all we have, & even that we've had to rip from
the grasp of corrupt gurus & bumbling suicidal intellectuals. As
for our art--what have we accomplished, other than to spill our
blood for the ghostworld of fashionable ideas & images?
Writing has taken us to the very edge beyond which writing may
be impossible. Any texts which could survive the plunge over this
edge--into whatever abyss or Abyssinia lies beyond--would have to
be virtually self-created, like the miraculous hidden-treasure
Dakini-scrolls of Tibet or the tadpole-script spirit-texts of
Taoism--& absolutely incandescent, like the last screamed messages
of a witch or heretic burning at the stake (to paraphrase Artaud).
I can sense these texts trembling just beyond the veil.
What if the mood should strike us to renounce both the mere
objectivity of art & the mere subjectivity of theory? to risk the
abyss? What if no one followed? So much the better, perhaps--we
might find our equals amongst the Hyperboreans. What if we went
mad? Well--that's the risk. What if we were bored? Ah...
Already some time ago we placed all our bets on the irruption of
the marvelous into everyday life--won a few, then lost heavily.
Sufism was indeed much much easier. Pawn everything then, down to
the last miserable scrawl? double our stakes? cheat?
It's as if there were angels in the next room beyond thick
walls--arguing? fucking? One can't make out a single word.
Can we retrain ourselves at this late date to become Finders
of hidden treasure? And by what technique, seeing that it is
precisely technique which has betrayed us? Derangement of the
senses, insurrection, piety, poetry? Knowing how is a cheap
mountebank's trick. But knowing what might be like divine
self-knowledge--it might create ex nihilo.
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Finally, however, it will become necessary to leave this city which
hovers immobile on the edge of a sterile twilight, like Hamelin
after all the children were lured away. Perhaps other cities exist,
occupying the same space & time, but... different. And perhaps
there exist jungles where mere enlightenment is outshadowed by the
black light of jaguars. I have no idea--& I'm terrified.
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philosophos
Thought Crime
The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension