Imagine your nearest airport being bombed. Imagine bridges and roads around you being destroyed. Imagine power plants, electricity, hospitals, government buildings being destroyed and sewers that stop functioning. Imagine no water coming from the tap. Imagine no food or medicine or outside humanitarian help being allowed into your country. Imagine a rain of bombs falling over houses, churches and stores so that ten, twenty, fifty civilians are killed every day.
Imagine an army kidnapping half of your government and taking them out of the country. Imagine the same army every night firing sound bombs above your roof so your windows are blown open, nobody can sleep and your kids getting stomach pains from pure stress. Imagine having to pass through military checkpoints every day to get to your job. Imagine being refused to travel outside your country. Imagine a concrete wall, eight meters high, being built around and inside your city. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and being told that you have five minutes to leave your house because it's going to be demolished by the army's bulldozers. Imagine international sanctions because you voted for the "wrong" political party.
This is what everyday life looks like in Lebanon and Palestine right now. This is just some of the ways that the Palestinian and Lebanese people are being collectively punished by the military supreme Israel. The latest weeks we have heard Israeli officials claim that what they are going to do is to "bomb Lebanon 20 years back" and to "make sure that no one in Gaza can sleep". And this goes on right now, right before our eyes.
What would happen if let's say Iran or Sweden or Russia invaded or occupied your country? What would the UN, USA or EU say and do? What is it that makes Arab lives – Palestinian and Lebanese – less valuable in the eyes of the world than your life and our lives? Why aren't we doing anything? The Israeli occupation of Palestine and the attacks on civilians in Lebanon are serious and obvious crimes against international law and human rights.
Our thoughts are with our brothers and sisters in Palestine and Lebanon.
Peace in the Middle East! Justice for Palestine and Lebanon!
The (international) Noise Conspiracy
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
www.palestinemonitor.org
www.electronicintifada.net/lebanon
www.electronicintifada.net
www.palsolidarity.org
www.dci-pal.org
www.stopthewall.org
www.humanitarianinfo.org
www.hrw.org
www.zmag.org
Saturday 9 October 2010
.12. Ready steady go! - The celebration of passion and resistance
Assuming control over creativity and productivity:
Words and images, which surround us constantly - more now than ever - are the language of power. We are totally inundated with commercials and propaganda, everywhere. It's not manipulation, nor a conspiracy. It's the expression of a paradigm which has cast its web over the globe - formulating divisions of labour, using and shaping 'culture', ensuring its evolution, and thus contradicting itself through exploitation and alienation. The paradigm is ours, as is the language, and the imagery which represents it. Alienation is for everyone now, because it is now more than it ever was. It is total. Some won't recognise it, and others revel in it, but all of us feel it. It's easy to be attuned to it in the working class or as a student - it feels like total futility. One is more attuned to alienation when one can't afford to fool and distract themselves with bourgeois luxury, or in the converse, when, through education, one is purchasing boredom and functionalist thoughts in hopes of empowering their life. Will it? Only in so much as you can transcend it - only in its negation. The purpose of being a student now is to redefine that role. In a sense, to use creative and productive energy in opposition to the social forces that seek to harness it for a benefit alienated from yourself. The same applies to broader society. There is a practical manner in which we can combat total alienation - using its means against itself. That is using the means of creativity and productivity against the social paradigm that guides them. As for creative power, we can start with language and images. Every word, image, phrase or scene has a contrasting counterpart which can alter its meaning entirely and critique it. Dada knew it and accordingly was a fantastic reflection and critique of society. Drink from the toilet. Warhol knew it when he painted Monroe's lips a hundred times. The Situationalists articulated it and lived it (and not only in Paris 1968). The word 'propaganda' condescends the concept we're referring to, although to a degree that's what it is. To use this word in its condescending sense is to fail to recognise that everything is or can be propaganda. A more appropriate concept is that of 'satire'. We can stifle the alienation of our creative power through critique, humiliation, insult and self-criticism. Its object should be larger than its subject however: to redefine and reorganise the social control over creative and productive forces in opposition to alienation. After the critique of creative power we are left with the practical side of our social life production. The DIY festival is a powerful example of the assumption of productive organisation on the part of the political community. Insurrection is its broader social counterpart. The former redefines productive energy in its own terms, taking massive organisation into its own hands (even if its goal is only a forum for boring music), while the latter is popular resistance and refusal of the control over creative and productive power. What's next? Is the DIY festival followed by the creation of our own airlines, and is insurrection followed by revolution? If alienation stifles and co-opts creative and productive energy for its own benefit, then satire, self-reliance and resistance redefine them in rejection of alienation.
Much more can be said on these matter. Go ahead.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
Words and images, which surround us constantly - more now than ever - are the language of power. We are totally inundated with commercials and propaganda, everywhere. It's not manipulation, nor a conspiracy. It's the expression of a paradigm which has cast its web over the globe - formulating divisions of labour, using and shaping 'culture', ensuring its evolution, and thus contradicting itself through exploitation and alienation. The paradigm is ours, as is the language, and the imagery which represents it. Alienation is for everyone now, because it is now more than it ever was. It is total. Some won't recognise it, and others revel in it, but all of us feel it. It's easy to be attuned to it in the working class or as a student - it feels like total futility. One is more attuned to alienation when one can't afford to fool and distract themselves with bourgeois luxury, or in the converse, when, through education, one is purchasing boredom and functionalist thoughts in hopes of empowering their life. Will it? Only in so much as you can transcend it - only in its negation. The purpose of being a student now is to redefine that role. In a sense, to use creative and productive energy in opposition to the social forces that seek to harness it for a benefit alienated from yourself. The same applies to broader society. There is a practical manner in which we can combat total alienation - using its means against itself. That is using the means of creativity and productivity against the social paradigm that guides them. As for creative power, we can start with language and images. Every word, image, phrase or scene has a contrasting counterpart which can alter its meaning entirely and critique it. Dada knew it and accordingly was a fantastic reflection and critique of society. Drink from the toilet. Warhol knew it when he painted Monroe's lips a hundred times. The Situationalists articulated it and lived it (and not only in Paris 1968). The word 'propaganda' condescends the concept we're referring to, although to a degree that's what it is. To use this word in its condescending sense is to fail to recognise that everything is or can be propaganda. A more appropriate concept is that of 'satire'. We can stifle the alienation of our creative power through critique, humiliation, insult and self-criticism. Its object should be larger than its subject however: to redefine and reorganise the social control over creative and productive forces in opposition to alienation. After the critique of creative power we are left with the practical side of our social life production. The DIY festival is a powerful example of the assumption of productive organisation on the part of the political community. Insurrection is its broader social counterpart. The former redefines productive energy in its own terms, taking massive organisation into its own hands (even if its goal is only a forum for boring music), while the latter is popular resistance and refusal of the control over creative and productive power. What's next? Is the DIY festival followed by the creation of our own airlines, and is insurrection followed by revolution? If alienation stifles and co-opts creative and productive energy for its own benefit, then satire, self-reliance and resistance redefine them in rejection of alienation.
Much more can be said on these matter. Go ahead.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
.11. Enslavement blues - We are all cultural prostitutes
The perception of time:
The timeline, hours chopped into minutes into seconds into the measurements on living. Life is lived on the basis of time consumed. The standardisation of time in the 19th century was well in tune with the industrialisation's maximum usage of labour power, the need to increase profit. We learn to accept the fact that days are nothing but blocks of time to be consumed. The schematics of living is nurtured from the institutionalised learning facilities also known as schools, also known as breeding grounds for future slaves.
The perception of the room:
The working place, the living place, the consumption place, the enjoyment place; all life reduced to cubicles determining the role you have to play in order to live. Our economical/cultural settings of building spae has not only been reduced to the mere storage of commodities (home) but also to the production of life (theme parks and movie theatres), the accumulation of capital (work) and the consumption of the same capital (malls and chainstores and so on). Living has been reduced to the economy of space.
The perception of self:
Having life reduced to the time/space setting of consumer capitalism means that you are, no matter how hard you try, a part of the commodity abundance that circulates around us and as long as we are living in a system where this is the "law", this relationship will never change. We are paying to live in a system that is based on the usage of humans, we get used to the realisation that the objects that we produce take on more meaning than the producers, we get used to feeling alienated and used. We get survival sickness.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
The timeline, hours chopped into minutes into seconds into the measurements on living. Life is lived on the basis of time consumed. The standardisation of time in the 19th century was well in tune with the industrialisation's maximum usage of labour power, the need to increase profit. We learn to accept the fact that days are nothing but blocks of time to be consumed. The schematics of living is nurtured from the institutionalised learning facilities also known as schools, also known as breeding grounds for future slaves.
The perception of the room:
The working place, the living place, the consumption place, the enjoyment place; all life reduced to cubicles determining the role you have to play in order to live. Our economical/cultural settings of building spae has not only been reduced to the mere storage of commodities (home) but also to the production of life (theme parks and movie theatres), the accumulation of capital (work) and the consumption of the same capital (malls and chainstores and so on). Living has been reduced to the economy of space.
The perception of self:
Having life reduced to the time/space setting of consumer capitalism means that you are, no matter how hard you try, a part of the commodity abundance that circulates around us and as long as we are living in a system where this is the "law", this relationship will never change. We are paying to live in a system that is based on the usage of humans, we get used to the realisation that the objects that we produce take on more meaning than the producers, we get used to feeling alienated and used. We get survival sickness.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
.10. Will it ever be quiet? - The joyous sounds of progress or ...
Do you remember when it was quiet down here? Do you remember when it was quiet anywhere??? Before the industrialisation, before the factories, before the planes and before the trains and cars and busses. Before The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and punkrock, before MTV, before commercials, before headaches and tinnitus, before inner city fumes and pollution, before the sounds of computers and cash registers.
Noise - silence, relationship in a sinking ship, drags us under and turns us deaf from the roaring of the marketplace. But in secret and in effect there might be a few daring forces using the apparatus available to produce counter sounds, to make so much noise that one day there will be at least a moment of relief. Guided by the mechanism produced during thousands of years and oppression, constructed by the suffering of a million men and women, we must overthrow the relationship between the abuse of noise and the creation of noise and thank the industrialisation for making us amplify our manifestos and enables us to sing and scream and dance.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
Noise - silence, relationship in a sinking ship, drags us under and turns us deaf from the roaring of the marketplace. But in secret and in effect there might be a few daring forces using the apparatus available to produce counter sounds, to make so much noise that one day there will be at least a moment of relief. Guided by the mechanism produced during thousands of years and oppression, constructed by the suffering of a million men and women, we must overthrow the relationship between the abuse of noise and the creation of noise and thank the industrialisation for making us amplify our manifestos and enables us to sing and scream and dance.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
.9. Do I have to spell it out - Smash the neo-liberal agenda
organist//n.the player of an organ.
organize//v. tr.(also-ise) 1 a give an orderly structure to, systemize. b bring the affairs of (another person or oneself) into order; make arrangements for (a person). 2 a arrange for or initiate (a scheme etc.). b provide; take responsibility for (organize a wildcatstrike). 3 (often. absol.) a enroll (new members) in a trade union, political group etc. b form (a trade union or other political group). 4 a enable (a group or oneself) to offer resistance against the oppressive discourse of capitalist leadership (the man). b provide a theoretical foundation to understand the fascism-generating structures of the widely differentiated labourmarket (scapegoating so called immigrants would not be as much an issue of ethnicity, but one of class). 5 a promote a less instrumental use of traditional learning facilities (schools, libraries etc.). b encourage learning beyond mere survival. 6 smash the neo-liberal dream. 7 a support the overtaking of the workplace, thus enabling people to build their own communities and fly their own airplanes (see the AAA for space exploration). b give confidence (to a person or group of persons) to realise that heroism can and will be achieved by all. 8 a confirm the suspicion that people are more than a professional title. b encourage the change of (old, boring, forced etc.) identities (see #6). 9 a give meaning to the old abbreviations (CNT, SAC, IWW etc.).b when the time is right, remove the meaning from above mentioned abbreviations (showing that further divisions are most unwanted). 10 a take it into one's own hands. b do i have to spell it out?
orgy//n.(pl.-ies) 1 a wild drunken festivity at which indiscriminate sexual activity takes place. 2 excessive indulgence in an activity. 3 (usu. inpl.)Gk. & Rom. Hist. secret rites used in the worship of esp. Bacchus, celebrated with dancing, drunkenness, singing etc.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
organize//v. tr.(also-ise) 1 a give an orderly structure to, systemize. b bring the affairs of (another person or oneself) into order; make arrangements for (a person). 2 a arrange for or initiate (a scheme etc.). b provide; take responsibility for (organize a wildcatstrike). 3 (often. absol.) a enroll (new members) in a trade union, political group etc. b form (a trade union or other political group). 4 a enable (a group or oneself) to offer resistance against the oppressive discourse of capitalist leadership (the man). b provide a theoretical foundation to understand the fascism-generating structures of the widely differentiated labourmarket (scapegoating so called immigrants would not be as much an issue of ethnicity, but one of class). 5 a promote a less instrumental use of traditional learning facilities (schools, libraries etc.). b encourage learning beyond mere survival. 6 smash the neo-liberal dream. 7 a support the overtaking of the workplace, thus enabling people to build their own communities and fly their own airplanes (see the AAA for space exploration). b give confidence (to a person or group of persons) to realise that heroism can and will be achieved by all. 8 a confirm the suspicion that people are more than a professional title. b encourage the change of (old, boring, forced etc.) identities (see #6). 9 a give meaning to the old abbreviations (CNT, SAC, IWW etc.).b when the time is right, remove the meaning from above mentioned abbreviations (showing that further divisions are most unwanted). 10 a take it into one's own hands. b do i have to spell it out?
orgy//n.(pl.-ies) 1 a wild drunken festivity at which indiscriminate sexual activity takes place. 2 excessive indulgence in an activity. 3 (usu. inpl.)Gk. & Rom. Hist. secret rites used in the worship of esp. Bacchus, celebrated with dancing, drunkenness, singing etc.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
.8. Only lovers left alive - True romance
excerpts from a diary found in the year 2009
...for the first time in my life I can taste the true excitement. With sweat running down my back and a smile on my face, it is difficult to even type this out. It isn't an accident or even strange that it is happening, it had been in the works for ages, but it finally seemed like now is the time. For too long we accepted high rising concrete buildings and pollution and inner city traffic, experts, doctors, bosses and politicians fucking us up. Somehow along the way we got used to never feeling fulfilled or happy, we got used to taking drugs to cure our depression and to cure our alienation. We got used to working 8 hours a day producing commodities, and becoming commodities and buying commodities. We got used to spending our lives in a sedated state, of never living, just surviving. But today all that is changing, the little secret that we all shared was being revealed to the world. Now i am almost running, my legs can't stop and i am too exhilarated to slow down. On the corner beneath the streetlight I meet up with a comrade, she is smiling, not hiding the passion that she feels. We hug and exchange a few short phrases. She met some other people on the way over that confirmed that it is finally happening. There are no cops on the streets just people, young and beautiful and alive walking in groups or alone, down to the square. There are no leaders, no unions, or parties behind it. Most people don't really know what is going on but they could feel the air was different, breathable, alive. You see, the universal idea of resistance and rebellion that had been lurking under modern ways of production had suddenly sprung to life, no one even needed to say it out loud. Suddenly people stopped working, they stopped listening to the bosses and the self acclaimed leaders, people started to deconstruct the oppression that had been over them for years, for their entire lives. It is a beautiful occurence, the city is filled with colours and flags and people saying hello to each other and kissing passionately with strangers. Music is coming from buildings all over and people are dancing on every rooftop, in every alleyway. The old conservative forces will try to prevent it for a short whilebut their attempts will be futile, most of their attacks will end in humiliation. There will be a couple of days of fighting but everyday more and more people will throw off their uniforms and join in with the ranks of celebratiing, passionate, revolutionaries that are taking over the city. Things are being built at a faster rate than the old culture is being dismantled, and after a few days the city will totally change character, the only cars you will ever see used only for driving food or other necessities. About two weeks after the first signs of insurrection something will happen, the old and ugly will gather in a park down by the harbour where they will kill themselves with Easyways sleeping pills. They do it because it is clear to them that we will never let the world go back to what it was and that will be too much for some to deal with. Now it belongs to us, the passionate, the young, the loving. Now it is up to us. Now there are only lovers left alive. As i rush to the square with my friends and many others that I will from now on call comrade or lover or sister, I cry openly. This is nothing short of everything that we could have ever dreamed of. This is the beginning and now it is up to us. Now begins the creation of our history, this is our time, away from the production line, this is a time like never before; this is revolution...
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
...for the first time in my life I can taste the true excitement. With sweat running down my back and a smile on my face, it is difficult to even type this out. It isn't an accident or even strange that it is happening, it had been in the works for ages, but it finally seemed like now is the time. For too long we accepted high rising concrete buildings and pollution and inner city traffic, experts, doctors, bosses and politicians fucking us up. Somehow along the way we got used to never feeling fulfilled or happy, we got used to taking drugs to cure our depression and to cure our alienation. We got used to working 8 hours a day producing commodities, and becoming commodities and buying commodities. We got used to spending our lives in a sedated state, of never living, just surviving. But today all that is changing, the little secret that we all shared was being revealed to the world. Now i am almost running, my legs can't stop and i am too exhilarated to slow down. On the corner beneath the streetlight I meet up with a comrade, she is smiling, not hiding the passion that she feels. We hug and exchange a few short phrases. She met some other people on the way over that confirmed that it is finally happening. There are no cops on the streets just people, young and beautiful and alive walking in groups or alone, down to the square. There are no leaders, no unions, or parties behind it. Most people don't really know what is going on but they could feel the air was different, breathable, alive. You see, the universal idea of resistance and rebellion that had been lurking under modern ways of production had suddenly sprung to life, no one even needed to say it out loud. Suddenly people stopped working, they stopped listening to the bosses and the self acclaimed leaders, people started to deconstruct the oppression that had been over them for years, for their entire lives. It is a beautiful occurence, the city is filled with colours and flags and people saying hello to each other and kissing passionately with strangers. Music is coming from buildings all over and people are dancing on every rooftop, in every alleyway. The old conservative forces will try to prevent it for a short whilebut their attempts will be futile, most of their attacks will end in humiliation. There will be a couple of days of fighting but everyday more and more people will throw off their uniforms and join in with the ranks of celebratiing, passionate, revolutionaries that are taking over the city. Things are being built at a faster rate than the old culture is being dismantled, and after a few days the city will totally change character, the only cars you will ever see used only for driving food or other necessities. About two weeks after the first signs of insurrection something will happen, the old and ugly will gather in a park down by the harbour where they will kill themselves with Easyways sleeping pills. They do it because it is clear to them that we will never let the world go back to what it was and that will be too much for some to deal with. Now it belongs to us, the passionate, the young, the loving. Now it is up to us. Now there are only lovers left alive. As i rush to the square with my friends and many others that I will from now on call comrade or lover or sister, I cry openly. This is nothing short of everything that we could have ever dreamed of. This is the beginning and now it is up to us. Now begins the creation of our history, this is our time, away from the production line, this is a time like never before; this is revolution...
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
.7. Intermission - A time to contemplate
Summation of the Black Mask sub-committee of Creative Noise and Activity's Finding with regards to the Imposition of Limiting Hierarchies, Norms, Standards, and Structures upon the Cultural Expression of groups and individuals through the reduction of the Creative Process to an Economic Formula and the Marginalisation of individuals wishing to pursue their creative potential regardless of the economic, political, or social implications of doing so:
The Album that you are now holding in your hands right now [taken from the liner notes of The (International Noise Conspiracy) Survival Sickness] has nothing to do with creativity. "Creativity" as we would like to define it is a process, an engagement, the meeting place of the mind and spirit. Most importantly, it is something experienced. What you have right now is a dull reflection of that process, nothing more than the waste products of someone else's experience. While hopefully you will enjoy listening to the music, find some of the ideas interesting and stimulating, and appreciate our product, don't allow yourself to to believe that you can be involved in the proess when you press PLAY or see the band live. The Creative Process is present tense, this album is past tense, and the stage is a funeral parlor where things long deceased are displayed for public approval.
For too long people have bought into the discourse surrounding creativity. In a world where economic influences and 'moral' imperatives prevail, creativity has been objectfied so that it can be rationalised and consumerised. The focus is on the things produced and the social and economic value of them. Products have to be consumed, profits have to be made, and the social structure shouldn't be disturbed. Vast art, music, and publishing industries, in cahoots with their bedfellows in marketing, advertising and mass media define and direct creativity, all the determining its 'value'. Radios, TVs, Top 40 countdowns, Critics, Bestseller Lists, and magazines at the grocery store check out counters tell us what to listen to, what to read, whta movies to see, where to eat, who is funny, and what colours will be 'IN' for the next fashion season. We sit idly by as most modes for 'creative expression' are funneled through corporate boardrooms.
Not only is the creative process bastardised into a sculpted edifice of consumerism, with pre-ordained direction handed down from the front offices in the guise of a cultural elite, but the standards imposed serve to undermine creativity in its purest form at all levels. This can be seen in the construction of distinctions, roles, structures, and hierarchies that serve to confine the potential of the creative process while limiting possible interaction with it. The creative 'haves' and 'have nots' become necessary components within this system, with a privileged few allowed to be involved. But even those acknowledged as as creative are nothing more than cultural whores, selling their wares IF they play by the rules. And for everyone else "REALITY" is the weapon that is used to beat down all interest in being creative. People are constantly urged by all around them to be productive, to 'make a living', and relegate the creative aspects of their lives, their dreams, to pastime activities done in their spare time. There's no money in that and artists, poets, musicians, and writers are all fools with no grounding in the real world. We are either not good enough or it is not practical enough. The question that should be asked is why anyone would want grounding in a 'real world' that is obsessed with competition and profit, limited in vision, destructive in it's nature, and where everyone's standard fare is alienation and suppression of potential?
One of the aims of this product is to urge people to engage in their own creative processes and NEVER be satisfied recapitulating reproductions of someone else's. Unfettered creativity is one of the most powerful manifestations of subversion possible, for it offers us all a taste of freedom.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
The Album that you are now holding in your hands right now [taken from the liner notes of The (International Noise Conspiracy) Survival Sickness] has nothing to do with creativity. "Creativity" as we would like to define it is a process, an engagement, the meeting place of the mind and spirit. Most importantly, it is something experienced. What you have right now is a dull reflection of that process, nothing more than the waste products of someone else's experience. While hopefully you will enjoy listening to the music, find some of the ideas interesting and stimulating, and appreciate our product, don't allow yourself to to believe that you can be involved in the proess when you press PLAY or see the band live. The Creative Process is present tense, this album is past tense, and the stage is a funeral parlor where things long deceased are displayed for public approval.
For too long people have bought into the discourse surrounding creativity. In a world where economic influences and 'moral' imperatives prevail, creativity has been objectfied so that it can be rationalised and consumerised. The focus is on the things produced and the social and economic value of them. Products have to be consumed, profits have to be made, and the social structure shouldn't be disturbed. Vast art, music, and publishing industries, in cahoots with their bedfellows in marketing, advertising and mass media define and direct creativity, all the determining its 'value'. Radios, TVs, Top 40 countdowns, Critics, Bestseller Lists, and magazines at the grocery store check out counters tell us what to listen to, what to read, whta movies to see, where to eat, who is funny, and what colours will be 'IN' for the next fashion season. We sit idly by as most modes for 'creative expression' are funneled through corporate boardrooms.
Not only is the creative process bastardised into a sculpted edifice of consumerism, with pre-ordained direction handed down from the front offices in the guise of a cultural elite, but the standards imposed serve to undermine creativity in its purest form at all levels. This can be seen in the construction of distinctions, roles, structures, and hierarchies that serve to confine the potential of the creative process while limiting possible interaction with it. The creative 'haves' and 'have nots' become necessary components within this system, with a privileged few allowed to be involved. But even those acknowledged as as creative are nothing more than cultural whores, selling their wares IF they play by the rules. And for everyone else "REALITY" is the weapon that is used to beat down all interest in being creative. People are constantly urged by all around them to be productive, to 'make a living', and relegate the creative aspects of their lives, their dreams, to pastime activities done in their spare time. There's no money in that and artists, poets, musicians, and writers are all fools with no grounding in the real world. We are either not good enough or it is not practical enough. The question that should be asked is why anyone would want grounding in a 'real world' that is obsessed with competition and profit, limited in vision, destructive in it's nature, and where everyone's standard fare is alienation and suppression of potential?
One of the aims of this product is to urge people to engage in their own creative processes and NEVER be satisfied recapitulating reproductions of someone else's. Unfettered creativity is one of the most powerful manifestations of subversion possible, for it offers us all a taste of freedom.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
.6. Impostor costume - The collective changing of identity
The face that you see staring back at you from the mirror every morning is not really you. Everything about that person that you look at has been designed by someone, something, and responds to things outside of your immediate control. What is your name but someone else's name being reused, your life but someone else's recapitulated? You live where you live cause others have lived there before you. Your looks are someone else's fashion, your creeds the dusty regurgitation of stale ideas that have bored people for generations. When someone hands you a list of possibilities to choose your life from, a list that is based upon WHO you are, there can be no unique, interesting outcome.
The fact that we all have our OWN names, numbers addresses and personalities is exactly what excludes us from being individuals. People become the sum product of their experiences and with each passing moment this accumulation further solidifies the image of 'self' that everyone has. People become roles that they are then forced to play out by the circumstances they are woven into and by their personal understanding of the self as being one with this image; an image which assumes the mantle of identity.
The reality of people's lives is indivisible from the momentum of their identities and all of our thoughts and actions are influenced by this. We live lives that are self-perpetuating reproductions of themselves which get set adrift and are quickly lost in the same endless convoluted ocean of other reproductions that reality is drowning in. Release from the confines of being THAT individual, being 'who you are' is integral to realising the true potential of what one can be.
'What you want to be/do' has to replace 'What you are' as the definition of identity so that the past will no longer be blinders keeping us running in the same direction. The general state of confusion, frustration and alienationthat most people live in is both the direct product of and the very cause of the contradictions between 'the self' as it is and 'the self' as we would like it to be.
When we talk about the changing of identities we talk about finding freedom by breaking from other people's conceptions as well as our self-conceptions of what we can do. Burning the effigies of ourselves is the only to destroy the predetermination that undermines this discourse of our lives and our involvement in the world.
-The Black Mask Sub-Committee of Violence and passion
The fact that we all have our OWN names, numbers addresses and personalities is exactly what excludes us from being individuals. People become the sum product of their experiences and with each passing moment this accumulation further solidifies the image of 'self' that everyone has. People become roles that they are then forced to play out by the circumstances they are woven into and by their personal understanding of the self as being one with this image; an image which assumes the mantle of identity.
The reality of people's lives is indivisible from the momentum of their identities and all of our thoughts and actions are influenced by this. We live lives that are self-perpetuating reproductions of themselves which get set adrift and are quickly lost in the same endless convoluted ocean of other reproductions that reality is drowning in. Release from the confines of being THAT individual, being 'who you are' is integral to realising the true potential of what one can be.
'What you want to be/do' has to replace 'What you are' as the definition of identity so that the past will no longer be blinders keeping us running in the same direction. The general state of confusion, frustration and alienationthat most people live in is both the direct product of and the very cause of the contradictions between 'the self' as it is and 'the self' as we would like it to be.
When we talk about the changing of identities we talk about finding freedom by breaking from other people's conceptions as well as our self-conceptions of what we can do. Burning the effigies of ourselves is the only to destroy the predetermination that undermines this discourse of our lives and our involvement in the world.
-The Black Mask Sub-Committee of Violence and passion
.5. The reproduction of death - selling of the biggest commodity
1.
The dominant commodity within contemporary modes of (re)production is the working body, sold to the managers if capital in order to survive. It gets set with an installment plan on slow suicide, with the thankful duty of supplying the planetry work machine with the desire it depends on.
-The Black Mask sub-committee of Violence and passion.
2.
In order, however, to use the human body as a desiring machine in this particular fashion, as wear and tear, there is a need to reproduce it, to make sure that it is fit to produce and well off to consume. The reproduction of capital thus comes to comprise the reproduction of the body. THERE ARE SEVERAL TACTICS TO MAKE SURE THAT THE RECUPERATION AS WELL AS THE EXPANSION OF THE ABILITIES OF THE BODY IS SET. One example could be the radical expansion of the tertiary sector, which is this perspective not only is an expression of the expansion of the field of the commodity, but as well serves to expose new surfaces of the body to biopolitical power. And this power is productive. The subjects that it produces comes to know more and moe about the "good life". This, no doubt, is a good consumer. But the notion of "qualititive time" , born within capitalism, comes to be a sight of resistance when it becomes obvious that its potential is greater than a capital logic could allow. It comes as no surprise that "life", the subjectivity inscribed in the body via biopolitical power, has become the key sight of resistance for the working body since the beginning of the last century.3.
Strategies have to be developed to embrace these new subjects. There has to be rewards, making sure that there is a promise of better times, after retirement, on the vacations or in the next life all depending on the faith that you have. making sure that we enjoy our pre-packaged guided outbursts into Disneyland or world cup soccer. All potential creators of further new subjects.4.
ALIENATION, BOREDOM, DESPAIR, CULTURE, MONEY, CONSUMPTION, RECUPERATION, REIFICATION, DEATH, WAGE SLAVERY, SANITY, PRODUCTION, SACRIFICE, SUFFERING, POWER, SIMULATION, REPRESENTATION, SCHIZOPHRENIA AND SO ON.5.
We have to consume, we have to make the economy flow. So in order for us to do that there has to be, apart from the basic necessities, desires to nourished, needs to be invented.But the latest inventions of the capital reign and company's latest advertising campaigns creates desires that capitalism might not be able to satisfy.The perpetual question is; will it expand or will it crack?-The Black Mask sub-committee of Violence and passion.
.4. Survival Sickness - My heart still hurts from last night
Survival has become the paradigm of economical circumstances, we spend our lives fitting in to the scheme of production/consumption. Thinking that the freedom to choose between items or rulers is a choice, spending our time reduced to nothing.
The economists, neo-liberals, media the other peddlers in human misery promise salvation through more reification. They make us believe that is natural or the best for us all, which is as likely as saying that Durruti was not an anarchist, that we have to live like this cause there are no alternatives, that we have to be satisfied with survival, that we have to get used to just think of ourselves to get by, that we can not change the world we live in.
Economy has replaced god as the new theology. we are bing forced to live petty lives, thinking that the freedom to indulge in the rat race is the only action that we can make, cause we have all been reduced to numbers, but i we work hard enough we can become objects. Rally me up to this non-decision making, my mind is up for the taking.
"Survival is life reduced to bare essentials, to life's abstract form, to the minimum of activity required to ensure men's participation in production and consumption."
It is a sad state when we are being dragged into an existence that we have nothing to benefit from, into a life that we have no desire to live, but that we have no ability to avoid in this day and age. People have never been more poor and still we keep hearing about how the economy, this abstract entity, is doing better than ever, and while the rich are building summer houses they are also building ghettos for the rest of us. Change can never come with this system, we can not reform capitalism no matter what these cretins keep telling us.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
The economists, neo-liberals, media the other peddlers in human misery promise salvation through more reification. They make us believe that is natural or the best for us all, which is as likely as saying that Durruti was not an anarchist, that we have to live like this cause there are no alternatives, that we have to be satisfied with survival, that we have to get used to just think of ourselves to get by, that we can not change the world we live in.
Economy has replaced god as the new theology. we are bing forced to live petty lives, thinking that the freedom to indulge in the rat race is the only action that we can make, cause we have all been reduced to numbers, but i we work hard enough we can become objects. Rally me up to this non-decision making, my mind is up for the taking.
"Survival is life reduced to bare essentials, to life's abstract form, to the minimum of activity required to ensure men's participation in production and consumption."
It is a sad state when we are being dragged into an existence that we have nothing to benefit from, into a life that we have no desire to live, but that we have no ability to avoid in this day and age. People have never been more poor and still we keep hearing about how the economy, this abstract entity, is doing better than ever, and while the rich are building summer houses they are also building ghettos for the rest of us. Change can never come with this system, we can not reform capitalism no matter what these cretins keep telling us.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
.3. Smash it up - The creative urge to destroy bourgeois culture
This is a Start!!
Cover the bathroom with pictures of my friends.
Write letters to people you haven't seen in ages and invite them all to stay at your place.
Redecorate the street sign so that all traffic will end up in the water.
Steal a map of the city and try your hardest not to follow it.
Borrow someone's heart for just an hour.
Play soccer with 3 goals and no referee.
Cross out words like truth, oppresion and boredom in every dictionary.
Change your identity with someone for a week or two.
Rob a bank and burn the money. Money sucks!
Organise a wildcatstrike at your job or at your school.
Drop everything and go to that one place in the world that you have always wanted to go regardless of bullshit considerations and excuses.
Steal books and distribute them to strangers.
Go to art museums and sneak your own work into displays.
Play acoustic versions of Angry Samoan's songs at posh cafes.
Run for every public election in your town and stress the qualifications that you don't have.
Give library cards to all of your friends as a gift.
Get all of your friends to go into burger king, order water and take as many seats as possible for as long as possible, do this everyday right before lunch time.
Change the time on all clocks that you encounter, at people's houses, in public places, etc.
Alter all the street signs your town area with names of places in the world which are currently in a state of war, scene of atrocity, or subject to violent oppression.
Stuff the suggestions box at your nearest video store demanding that all of the Debord films should be available for rental.
Recommend that Henry Miller be required reading in all high schools.
Write 'this will be your death' on every peice of money that passes through your hands.
Spend more time naked.
Call every crappy rado station and demand that they play more G. G. Allin.
If you are in a band, never play the same place twice until you have played everywhere once.
On any first date, make it the mission of the to get you both arrested for something embarassing and stupid, don't let your date in on this plan.
If you see people chasing pigeons, chase and pretend to kick them.
Laugh a lot more.
If you have something stupid to say, make sure that it gets said. Loud.
Celebrate every holiday from all countries and cultures.
Bathe in public fountains, particurly ones in front of commercial or municipal buildings.
Falsify invitations to art exhibitions and pass out to homeless people.
Reinvent and make up new and exciting games.
Drift.
Squat a church, everyone should have their own cathedral.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
Cover the bathroom with pictures of my friends.
Write letters to people you haven't seen in ages and invite them all to stay at your place.
Redecorate the street sign so that all traffic will end up in the water.
Steal a map of the city and try your hardest not to follow it.
Borrow someone's heart for just an hour.
Play soccer with 3 goals and no referee.
Cross out words like truth, oppresion and boredom in every dictionary.
Change your identity with someone for a week or two.
Rob a bank and burn the money. Money sucks!
Organise a wildcatstrike at your job or at your school.
Drop everything and go to that one place in the world that you have always wanted to go regardless of bullshit considerations and excuses.
Steal books and distribute them to strangers.
Go to art museums and sneak your own work into displays.
Play acoustic versions of Angry Samoan's songs at posh cafes.
Run for every public election in your town and stress the qualifications that you don't have.
Give library cards to all of your friends as a gift.
Get all of your friends to go into burger king, order water and take as many seats as possible for as long as possible, do this everyday right before lunch time.
Change the time on all clocks that you encounter, at people's houses, in public places, etc.
Alter all the street signs your town area with names of places in the world which are currently in a state of war, scene of atrocity, or subject to violent oppression.
Stuff the suggestions box at your nearest video store demanding that all of the Debord films should be available for rental.
Recommend that Henry Miller be required reading in all high schools.
Write 'this will be your death' on every peice of money that passes through your hands.
Spend more time naked.
Call every crappy rado station and demand that they play more G. G. Allin.
If you are in a band, never play the same place twice until you have played everywhere once.
On any first date, make it the mission of the to get you both arrested for something embarassing and stupid, don't let your date in on this plan.
If you see people chasing pigeons, chase and pretend to kick them.
Laugh a lot more.
If you have something stupid to say, make sure that it gets said. Loud.
Celebrate every holiday from all countries and cultures.
Bathe in public fountains, particurly ones in front of commercial or municipal buildings.
Falsify invitations to art exhibitions and pass out to homeless people.
Reinvent and make up new and exciting games.
Drift.
Squat a church, everyone should have their own cathedral.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion
.2. The Subversive sound - Poetry and action fused together
Dear listener/consumer,
So what is the subversive sound? That is the first question that we have to ask ourselves. Is there even such a thing? The parameters of the modern ways of production force us to guide creativity into certain areas where it is safe and where the capital can co-opt it in a secure way. So therefore there will never be talk about any sort of music that in itself can be subversive or revolutionary. The idea of such a sound under present conditions is laughable. Music is nothing but an abstraction of old and dull idea of bourgeois self-realisation, the self made success of the creative artist, thus leaving the rest to choke in the dust, settled to consume "creativity" in a boring package. Artists become nostalgia items repeating the same boring phrases over and over again, and the consumers become consumers of boredomand alienation. The taste for change gets satisfied in a change of taste. Instead of selling revolution we sell ideas of rebellion packaged in nice wrapping coated with rhetoric of the self styled leader. Instead of quality we settle for quantity, we get force fed the same songs over and over again. We get taught to believe that the emotions expressed in songs can be relived again and again by the artist and the audience, not realising that when the song is written it is already dead, it is already a bleak and hollow representation of the process that made the peice appear in the first place. We settle for second rate emotions and for the copy instead of the original outburst of life.
The self acclaimed artistic avant-garde is also guilty in every way possible, even though they believe that they are not as fully co-opted by capital accumulation thay all know that they are in the forefront of playing the creative genius, they are by definition the upholders of class. In a world of experts and leaders they are striving the hardest to be recognised as truest dealers of boredom with their self appointed suffering and bogus creativity. They are the bourgeois bastion of self realisation at the cost of everyone else.
Even though the safeguards of the industry tries to gain access to the most radical ideas to be able to sell it back to us in a non threatening and profitable way, or put them in the museum, there are still ideas that transcend this trend.
The only aspect of creativity that can be even the slightest bit dangerous will be ideas behind the music, the passion that drives us forward, never the music/art in itself. There has to be a new kind of art aimed at itself, an art directed to the negation of art. Marx said that when we are free we will all be artists and that is the essence of the subversive sound, everything to everyone. A passionate creation of living, this will be the new art, a sound more powerful than any rock act can ever produce and poetry that will make Lautreamont, Shakespeare and Fourier seem like nothing, and violence that will be more beautiful than any fireworks exhibition or parade of Russian soldiers. A new form of expression where the material is everywhere and the standards are nowhere. The collective effort to find new ways of communication has to be put on top of our list, so that we can all live and create in ways unheard of by the boring people.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
So what is the subversive sound? That is the first question that we have to ask ourselves. Is there even such a thing? The parameters of the modern ways of production force us to guide creativity into certain areas where it is safe and where the capital can co-opt it in a secure way. So therefore there will never be talk about any sort of music that in itself can be subversive or revolutionary. The idea of such a sound under present conditions is laughable. Music is nothing but an abstraction of old and dull idea of bourgeois self-realisation, the self made success of the creative artist, thus leaving the rest to choke in the dust, settled to consume "creativity" in a boring package. Artists become nostalgia items repeating the same boring phrases over and over again, and the consumers become consumers of boredomand alienation. The taste for change gets satisfied in a change of taste. Instead of selling revolution we sell ideas of rebellion packaged in nice wrapping coated with rhetoric of the self styled leader. Instead of quality we settle for quantity, we get force fed the same songs over and over again. We get taught to believe that the emotions expressed in songs can be relived again and again by the artist and the audience, not realising that when the song is written it is already dead, it is already a bleak and hollow representation of the process that made the peice appear in the first place. We settle for second rate emotions and for the copy instead of the original outburst of life.
The self acclaimed artistic avant-garde is also guilty in every way possible, even though they believe that they are not as fully co-opted by capital accumulation thay all know that they are in the forefront of playing the creative genius, they are by definition the upholders of class. In a world of experts and leaders they are striving the hardest to be recognised as truest dealers of boredom with their self appointed suffering and bogus creativity. They are the bourgeois bastion of self realisation at the cost of everyone else.
Even though the safeguards of the industry tries to gain access to the most radical ideas to be able to sell it back to us in a non threatening and profitable way, or put them in the museum, there are still ideas that transcend this trend.
The only aspect of creativity that can be even the slightest bit dangerous will be ideas behind the music, the passion that drives us forward, never the music/art in itself. There has to be a new kind of art aimed at itself, an art directed to the negation of art. Marx said that when we are free we will all be artists and that is the essence of the subversive sound, everything to everyone. A passionate creation of living, this will be the new art, a sound more powerful than any rock act can ever produce and poetry that will make Lautreamont, Shakespeare and Fourier seem like nothing, and violence that will be more beautiful than any fireworks exhibition or parade of Russian soldiers. A new form of expression where the material is everywhere and the standards are nowhere. The collective effort to find new ways of communication has to be put on top of our list, so that we can all live and create in ways unheard of by the boring people.
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
.1. I wanna know about U - Communication of knowledge and ideas
Questionnaire
Your name:
How do you determine age:
a) with some reference to how long you have been alive,
b) with reference to what you have done,
c) with reference to what you will do,
d) age has no meaning to you.
You live where you live because:
a) it is where you where born and raised,
b) it is where your source of economic support determines that you need to live,
c) you are interested and stimulated by your environment and those around you,
d) it is a place where your social, political and moral values are most in line with accepted norms.
You would define your sexuality accordingly:
a) something natural/ given by god,
b) something constructed by social/ economical/ cultural conditions,
c) something that has always been under attack by the conservative forces of self-proclaimed leaders.
While listening to music I partake in the following ritual:
a) I dance and sing along,
b) I use it as a background setting,
c) I lay down on the floor trying to analyse it,
d) I don't listen to music.
Searching for salvation, you seek:
a) Abolition of hierarchies,
b) personal freedom,
c) liberation by divine forces,
d) you are pleased with your situation.
In a time where every decision is made by experts and bosses and leaders and rockstars and where we, from day one, were taught not to question, not to ask, end up knowing what we need to know and not what we ought to know. In the demain of leader mentality we get taught that there is always someone who knows better, looks better and creates better than we do, making sure that we will always followers, that we will always be sheep. If we never ask why there will never be any sort of change at all cause imbedded in our culture is a sort of vis-a-vis understanding that ignoranec is bliss. But the fact that we remain ignorant is also the same trajectory that allows production and consumption to be the almighty gods of modern culture. There is a need to ask ourselves why in every possible way, to analyse the power structures and cultural settings of our lives, to take apart the machinery of capitalism into the smallest parts, to come to a conclusion abot why we look the way we look and why we listen to the music we listen to. The truth is not out there and therefore we have to question everything so that we can create and learn and live.
I wanna know about you...
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
Your name:
How do you determine age:
a) with some reference to how long you have been alive,
b) with reference to what you have done,
c) with reference to what you will do,
d) age has no meaning to you.
You live where you live because:
a) it is where you where born and raised,
b) it is where your source of economic support determines that you need to live,
c) you are interested and stimulated by your environment and those around you,
d) it is a place where your social, political and moral values are most in line with accepted norms.
You would define your sexuality accordingly:
a) something natural/ given by god,
b) something constructed by social/ economical/ cultural conditions,
c) something that has always been under attack by the conservative forces of self-proclaimed leaders.
While listening to music I partake in the following ritual:
a) I dance and sing along,
b) I use it as a background setting,
c) I lay down on the floor trying to analyse it,
d) I don't listen to music.
Searching for salvation, you seek:
a) Abolition of hierarchies,
b) personal freedom,
c) liberation by divine forces,
d) you are pleased with your situation.
In a time where every decision is made by experts and bosses and leaders and rockstars and where we, from day one, were taught not to question, not to ask, end up knowing what we need to know and not what we ought to know. In the demain of leader mentality we get taught that there is always someone who knows better, looks better and creates better than we do, making sure that we will always followers, that we will always be sheep. If we never ask why there will never be any sort of change at all cause imbedded in our culture is a sort of vis-a-vis understanding that ignoranec is bliss. But the fact that we remain ignorant is also the same trajectory that allows production and consumption to be the almighty gods of modern culture. There is a need to ask ourselves why in every possible way, to analyse the power structures and cultural settings of our lives, to take apart the machinery of capitalism into the smallest parts, to come to a conclusion abot why we look the way we look and why we listen to the music we listen to. The truth is not out there and therefore we have to question everything so that we can create and learn and live.
I wanna know about you...
-The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and passion.
The (International) Noise Conspiracy Primers
What follows is not my own work.. back in 2006 I stumbled across t(i)nc, a (largely disappointing) post-refused project of Dennis Lyxzen.. the political treatises of the band however are definitely worthy of note and reproduction, so here goes.
(1-12 are from the liner notes to Survival Sickness and 'Imagine' is from the band's website)
Is Mussolini the new Che?
I came across this on a recent trip to New York.. Not entirely sure what to make of it.
Introductory Ramblings
I set this page up to force me back into the habit of writing regularly, something I seem to have neglected since my time at university. Hopefully before too long this will be full of ideas, and scribbles and other such nonsense that has found its way from my brain to the paper.
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