A couple of my favorites from the "Getting Close to Nothing" video 'zine from 1994. Thanks to whoever put these clips online. Oh, the memories of a misspent youth...
Huggy Bear - "Single Bullets"
Blood Sausage - "Fuck You and Your Underground"
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Steven Kurtz (Critical Art Ensemble) federal charges dropped!
from The Buffalo News:
UB art professor Steven Kurtz cleared of federal charges
Use of bacteria in work led to terrorism probe
By Michael Beebe and Dan Herbeck - News Staff Reporters
Updated: 04/22/08 9:08 AM
For the first time in four years, since his wife died of heart failure in their Allentown home, setting off a government investigation into whether he was a terrorist because of the bacteria he kept for his artwork, Steven J. Kurtz is finally free of federal charges.
Kurtz, 49, the University at Buffalo art professor and co-founder of the Critical Art Ensemble, saw a federal judge dismiss the government charges Monday as “insufficient on its face.”
Full story here.
UB art professor Steven Kurtz cleared of federal charges
Use of bacteria in work led to terrorism probe
By Michael Beebe and Dan Herbeck - News Staff Reporters
Updated: 04/22/08 9:08 AM
For the first time in four years, since his wife died of heart failure in their Allentown home, setting off a government investigation into whether he was a terrorist because of the bacteria he kept for his artwork, Steven J. Kurtz is finally free of federal charges.
Kurtz, 49, the University at Buffalo art professor and co-founder of the Critical Art Ensemble, saw a federal judge dismiss the government charges Monday as “insufficient on its face.”
Full story here.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
"the world's most important 6-sec drum loop"
Recent viewing, found on YouTube...
"This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the 'Amen Break,' a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip."
"This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the 'Amen Break,' a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip."
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Can Noise Hippies Defeat the Empire of Capital?
I’m pleased to notice that “Last Refuge for the Senses, or Noise Hippies Against All War” will be playing as part of the PDX Film Fest (showing 10PM, Friday, April 27 at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd in Portland, Oregon). I saw this program of experimental films a couple of weeks back in Eugene, and was quite impressed, despite the showing there only being attended by a lackluster audience of dozen or so film dweebs.
I’ll have to admit that not all of the shorts on the program were to my taste, but there were some real highlights. “Black and White Trypps Number Three”—the opening film—translates audience footage from a Lightning Bolt show into some sort of cosmic-psych-love-be-in. “Echoes of Bats and Men” by Jo Derry is the least experimental, and most polemical, of the films, but somehow manages to be cute without being cutesy, and pointed without being contrived. The short features a potted history of Rhode Island as sung a skunk, followed by a return of the bats to the collapsed urban environment. The final film, “Third Annual Roggabogga” by Forcefield, is really dream-machine stuff, almost like using your television for what it’s good for—watching the static in-between channels. Some swirling reds make an appearance as it the film proceeds, and the drone-and-blip soundtrack adds to the effect. Good stuff for all those “cosmonauts of inner space,” as Trocchi would have put it. I could describe all the other films, but you should just check this out for yourself.
A few words from Ben Russell, the program curator:
“A new breed of noise/psychedelia has sprung up as the only rational response to an increasingly alienating form of global capitalism. Like the American psychedelic cinema of the 60’s and 70’s, this crop of contemporary 16mm films enunciates an emotional response to an overwhelming historical moment (now). Their use of analog technologies, of live soundtracks and camera-less processes is indicative of a DIY approach that has its political roots in resistance and its aesthetic roots in a gentler past. Geography has conspired to create a micro-movement, for these are all works from the same community - Providence, RI. The strength of these films lies in their denial of total escapism, in their collective decision to create a communal experience that can move beyond the screen and into the world outside. This is the cinema of deliverance, the theater of psychic hearts and radical love – bleeding your eyes and ears clean of the sorrow of the everyday, swelling your body full with hope for the possibilities of today.”
The sentiments generally seem nice, but noise and psych stuff as “the only rational response to an increasingly alienating form of global capitalism” is, to put it kindly, either one of the most naïve things I’ve ever read, or one of the most deeply cynical. Of course, this statement is tempered by Russell’s rejection of “total escapism” and his celebration of the communal, but it still comes off as the sort of ridiculous blanket assertion made by someone who has recently discovered the manifesto form. Are we to urge those in the Parisian banlieues, in Oaxaca, or in any number of places where power has recently been contested, to start being “rational” in their responses, centralizing the power of Super-8 films, pedal noise, subcultural gatherings and hipster accoutrements? One more effort, noise hippies, to become revolutionaries…
On the other hand, of course, the “revolutionaries” need to make one more effort themselves, if they are to become relevant, genuinely subversive and perhaps even fun. I’m pretty sick of dour, guilt-tripping efforts to save the world. It would be cool to have the noise hippies, united mutants and assorted freaks around. Even at their most silly, they at least pose the question of everyday life in a somewhat tangible manner, despite all the cultural mediation that goes on. As Russell hoped for, I took a certain sense of possibility from the films in this program.
A final note: the PDX Film Fest addresses the intersections of culture, radicalism and repression in at least two other films within their schedule. Both deal with the ongoing case of Steven Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble, which you can read about here. “Strange Culture” is a 75-minute video about Kurtz’s case that shows at 8PM at the same venue, directly before “Last Refuge of the Senses” on Friday, April 27. On Wednesday the 25th, the festival’s opening night, “Steve Kurtz Waiting,” a 15-minute short, plays as part of the “Charged in the Name of Terror” documentary program (starts 7PM, also at the Hollywood.) Kurtz, Robert Ferrell and possibly others continue to face charges of “mail fraud” and “wire fraud” brought by the Justice Department and carrying sentences of up to twenty years. The whole prosecution is a blatant attack on artistic expression that poses difficult questions, and engages with the world. Yet another reason why we can’t just take “refuge,” but need to fight.
A few words from Ben Russell, the program curator:
“A new breed of noise/psychedelia has sprung up as the only rational response to an increasingly alienating form of global capitalism. Like the American psychedelic cinema of the 60’s and 70’s, this crop of contemporary 16mm films enunciates an emotional response to an overwhelming historical moment (now). Their use of analog technologies, of live soundtracks and camera-less processes is indicative of a DIY approach that has its political roots in resistance and its aesthetic roots in a gentler past. Geography has conspired to create a micro-movement, for these are all works from the same community - Providence, RI. The strength of these films lies in their denial of total escapism, in their collective decision to create a communal experience that can move beyond the screen and into the world outside. This is the cinema of deliverance, the theater of psychic hearts and radical love – bleeding your eyes and ears clean of the sorrow of the everyday, swelling your body full with hope for the possibilities of today.”
The sentiments generally seem nice, but noise and psych stuff as “the only rational response to an increasingly alienating form of global capitalism” is, to put it kindly, either one of the most naïve things I’ve ever read, or one of the most deeply cynical. Of course, this statement is tempered by Russell’s rejection of “total escapism” and his celebration of the communal, but it still comes off as the sort of ridiculous blanket assertion made by someone who has recently discovered the manifesto form. Are we to urge those in the Parisian banlieues, in Oaxaca, or in any number of places where power has recently been contested, to start being “rational” in their responses, centralizing the power of Super-8 films, pedal noise, subcultural gatherings and hipster accoutrements? One more effort, noise hippies, to become revolutionaries…
On the other hand, of course, the “revolutionaries” need to make one more effort themselves, if they are to become relevant, genuinely subversive and perhaps even fun. I’m pretty sick of dour, guilt-tripping efforts to save the world. It would be cool to have the noise hippies, united mutants and assorted freaks around. Even at their most silly, they at least pose the question of everyday life in a somewhat tangible manner, despite all the cultural mediation that goes on. As Russell hoped for, I took a certain sense of possibility from the films in this program.
A final note: the PDX Film Fest addresses the intersections of culture, radicalism and repression in at least two other films within their schedule. Both deal with the ongoing case of Steven Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble, which you can read about here. “Strange Culture” is a 75-minute video about Kurtz’s case that shows at 8PM at the same venue, directly before “Last Refuge of the Senses” on Friday, April 27. On Wednesday the 25th, the festival’s opening night, “Steve Kurtz Waiting,” a 15-minute short, plays as part of the “Charged in the Name of Terror” documentary program (starts 7PM, also at the Hollywood.) Kurtz, Robert Ferrell and possibly others continue to face charges of “mail fraud” and “wire fraud” brought by the Justice Department and carrying sentences of up to twenty years. The whole prosecution is a blatant attack on artistic expression that poses difficult questions, and engages with the world. Yet another reason why we can’t just take “refuge,” but need to fight.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Punishment Park
On the recommendation of housemates plus David Carr, who reviews the film in the latest Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, I finally watched “Punishment Park” tonight. This is one seriously underrated flick!Released in 1971, this mock documentary by British director Peter Watkins perfectly captures the whole bad trip of post-Kent- and Jackson State dissent in the US as experienced in the heads of many participants, and sometimes with their bodies. Although the scenario is fictitious – alleged and real dissenters have been rounded up, tried in military tribunals and offered either lengthy sentences or a three-day run through the no-win “Punishment Park” in the high desert, without food and water while pursued by government swine – the picture of the social, political and mental climate of these times strikes me as accurate. Everything has been reduced to momentary evasion, to ridiculous attempts at survival, to perhaps vigorous mouthing off in protest or even violence more desperate than strategic, but there seems to be no real solution to the massive power of those with the guns and in command. At least one person before the tribunal, of course, gets offered amnesty if she agrees to sever all ties to vaguely-defined “subversion” (and honorably and perhaps stupidly doesn’t go with the choice.) For the rest, whether they tend towards pacifism or militant bloodshed, and whatever the degree of their illusions, it’s punishment. They even become functional for the system as “counter-insurgency” training material. The scenario makes for gripping and uneasy watching. Plot spoiler: people die.
Given that the times don’t seem all that groovy at this very moment – and that we’re again dealing with the question of rollback and repression – the DVD reissue of this movie, which was under-rated when not reviled upon initial release, couldn’t have come at a better time.
One last note: after watching this movie, I checked online and read a few reviews. The ideological racketeers at the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) utterly miss the point of the movie. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising - they evidently leave their Trotskyite blinkers on even when viewing films. The moron responsible for the WSWS review, Clare Hurley, states, “the [movie’s] structure is unduly repetitive.” Yet it is precisely by repetition – by case after rigged case, by non-communication after non-communication, with all the torture that accrues in such situations (as there is no question of Truth, simply of truth-power, and the powerless are identifiable precisely by their “incoherence”) – that the movie resonates with the viewer. Hurley concludes that the movie displays “no real understanding of the actual driving forces behind the government’s resort to police-state measures.” Presumably these “actual driving forces” can be derived from crude Marxism’s base / superstructure differentiations and a concomitant reduction of the social to political/economic “progress.” In fact, the movie shows a better understanding than its imbecile reviewer, who fails to understand the constant interweaving of the “subjective” and the “objective” in our world. This is not to say that the movie doesn’t have problems – Carr’s review for Anarchy: AJODA is un-blinkered and points to some of these – but that it at least poses the fundamental question. It doesn’t ask us how to play the power/punishment/politics game, but broaches the topic of how to get it out of our lives once and for all. Wretched times call for unfailingly creative thinking; “Punishment Park” may still provoke some.
Some New Radical Publications
At a time when radical presses seem to be in the decline due to market pressure and the whole inter-web thingy, it's encouraging to see some great journals continuing and even new print projects springing up. Here are some journals I've been leafing through recently.
Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (AJODA hereafter) has brought out a pretty strong new issue with #63. While I read one of the featured articles, Wolfi Landstreicher's "A Balanced Account of the World" a while ago when it was released in pamphlet form, I presume that the changes to the text in the new version are insignificant, and that this remains as a strong critique of the scientific worldview. Some of the other articles in the "Spawn of Anthropology" feature are informative, but I remain hesitant about the current anthropology-craze amongst anarchists (in fact, a review elsewhere in the issue seems to display similar reservations.) Wolfi's column "The Egoist Encyclopedia" has a lot of attitude this time around (e.g. "How do I say this nicely?...fuck it, I don't.") while Liana Doctrines' new column "Choosing Relations" contains a necessarily overbroad introduction to topics which I presume will be grappled with in interesting ways in future issues. AJODA is still one of the very best radical publications in North America. Support.
A Murder of Crows has brought out a second issue, with lots of interesting writing and a shiny cover this time around. I'll have to admit to still having to finish my reading of this new issue - it's packed! - but the articles on repression (centering around the eco-sabotage cases in the Pacific Northwest) are all engaging and offer up a challenge to radicals to go beyond the liberalism of many efforts opposing state campaigns. The article dissing "animal liberation" is bound to ruffle some feathers (pardon the metaphor!) while an article on technology and "progress" adopts a class perspective so often lacking in debates on this subject. There are also critical articles on anti-high speed train struggles in Italy, the Six Nations land occupations in "Canada," and insurrection in Bangladesh. The journal remains influenced by insurrectionary anarchism, but also - as is spelled out in a brief article - takes a non-ideological position open to other perspectives. I really hope that it won't be another year until the next issue!
Green Anarchy hits issue 24 with its latest, a 100-page (civilization-crushing) monster. Expect the usual about getting rid of the whole stinking mess, with some interesting diversions into critiques of the Situationist International (some absurd, some pretty cool) as well as Elisée Reclus. The article "Overcoming the Spectacle of the Usual Counter-summit Banality" (what a title!) gives an interesting German perspective on campaigns against the upcoming G8 summit there. It provides some information I didn't know beforehand, plus it is seriously cranky in tone, in the absolute best way possible. Worth the purchase for this article alone.
The first thing to say about Principia Dialectica #2 is that it looks beautiful. Probably the best design of any radical journal I've ever seen. While I still don't fully "get" this journal's contention that class struggle necessarily keeps the system alive - although of course many class struggles certainly pose only partial demands and hence operate at the level of production for surplus value - there is a lot of worthwhile material in the publication. The Moishe Postone text gives a fairly concise version of his analysis, useful for those who have not ploughed through his Time, Labor and Social Domination yet. Alice McEwan's article "The Rotting Fruits of Revolution: William Morris Meets the Constructivists in the Work of David Mabb" is suburb, and has encouraged me to look further into its subject. Also, Len Bracken's lengthy article on modern China is fascinating, and is another highlight of the issue. Other than the discussion of nuclear power, which is chilling but also exactly the sort of stuff that belongs in a radical publication, the rest of the content is kinda hit-or-miss. However, even the articles I've mentioned make picking up a copy more than worth the cover price. I look forward to seeing this one developing - the publishers certainly have high ambitions, and even with the bits I'm not so sure of, at least they're serious about pushing the envelope.
The first three of these journals are distributed by Tarantula Distribution - expect listings to go up on the website soon - while we hope to get copies of Principia Dialectica in soon as well. But don't feel shy about ordering directly from the publishers or even - gasp! - taking out subscriptions.
PS - Honorable mention to Rolling Thunder, whose latest issue is in my possession but whose covers I haven't even had a chance to open yet.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
White Punks on Bordiga
"Is there a tradition of protest music that has culminated in punk rock?
Can this protest music protest against the music industry and music as a spectacular commodity?
What are the different ideas emerging from music today, and how can we assess them in the class struggle?"
Can this protest music protest against the music industry and music as a spectacular commodity?
What are the different ideas emerging from music today, and how can we assess them in the class struggle?"
Uncarved.org - who are somehow getting mentioned twice in one day here - have a copy of "White Punks on Bordiga" archived on their site. If you haven't already read this, it's worth checking out - an anti-state communist perspective on punk, marketing and what could constitute a truly radical perspective on music and culture.
Although the article is a dozen years old by now, and despite the article's constant references to the UK "scene," I still can't think of a better starting point for discussions on punk (especially anarcho-punk.)
I'm currently trying to locate copies of Communist Headache, the 'zine from which this article originated. Perhaps I'll be able to make more content from these 'zines available here. Until then, if you search around Uncarved, you'll find a few more articles by this author (who also did the interesting Autoxicity journal.)
The Riveting Escapades of Magnifying Glass Wielding Obsessive
This comic sums up a lot of my feelings about the "underground," then and now. (Click on the panel to see the whole thing...)
The comic was published in Gneurosis issue #2, which was released in the early-/mid- '90s. I got a copy from uncarved.org recently - they may still have a few if you're interested. The issue also contains a pretty great cartoon about Death in June...
Anyone know what happened to the cartoonists and their "Runciter Corporation"?
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