Uncategorized | jdemeta

Review: subboreal – childhood’s end

By: mnold

09-12-2017

Quaint electronic ticks and early morning coffees arise from a forgotten train journey, nothing more, nothing less. Trees pass and pylons tower overhead. Path, a path of electric and static through romantic shadows. Sonder & sadness both sewn into this metallic tapestry. A mind races, unable to enter fully into that they wish to, a book unread, a text not sent, as time passes without event to fill it.

Euthanasia – a stark title, pushing off with heart monitor remembrance, a pulse runs directly into a paranoid-loss. Overclocking your emotions into a palpitation ever-present, bulging and pulsing into veins flowing. The skyline has changed, your memories fading into an abysmal grey sludge, another beverage, another piece of the past disintegrates into wishes. There’s a lust for warmth here, a need, a want, for warmth and for a care that cannot be found amongst forgotten chips darting vertically from a washed-out landscape.

You can’t ignore the future, you can only inject nostalgia into your circuits as more and more fear washes over you. Journey, it’s ever present and the dreams a fleeting glimpse, the only hope for what it was you had: the screens, ticks, beeps and slides all melt forwards into ruining your vision, inescapable temporality has entered the memory of your earliest birthday parties, cutting the cake instead of your parents, bundles of wires where friends used to be, a static hum is sung amongst the revelry.

Mind entering a panic drive. Attempts to enter somewhere forbidden, not stopped, only warned against. You may enter here, but be warned, you’ll leave a different entity. Worship cyber and bring forth the cold of metal. Bags getting heavy and the sting of your ill red skin worsens. Harmonic aluminium hell. Screech melodics enter into the mundanity, you can’t sleep for fear of waking into more electrical-detriment. Each sombre-tone erased, ever so slowly. Each placid inch of help and love grows downward, rotting as it falls. It’s over. But it still has to continue.

As the sterilization comes, you’re already anaesthetised by the suffocation and fall, quietly into a bed made of humming. Bone splinters and spinal plunge, take the hand of steel, let go of flesh, of life, of sense. Come forth into repetition pure. We can give you your memories back for a second or two, it wont help, but the illusion of help might be nice, amongst your trees of youth, horizons lost to polite play, everything you had, had, had.

Short, but then childhood is.

<a href="http://lovecrypt.bandcamp.com/album/childhoods-end">childhood’s end by subboreal</a>

Lovecrypt Twitter

Lovecrypt Bandcamp

2017 Onwards: The Unwanted Burroughs Novel.

By: mnold

07-11-2017

Uncategorized, writing

What in the, what in the hell hell is this? This, this gone to fuck cut up shit-time we’ve arrived in? Own up! Which fucking deity took an Stanley knife and sliced temporal existence wide open, we have shit flying all over the track and no one is even irked by it. There’s little surprise left in these black pages, not due to its non-existence, no, for surprise dies when the populous becomes complacent. Blackpills are forced into pre-schoolers sippy cups, junk food intravenously injected into OAP’s corneas, fat-rats, bored-zygote, cigar munch, artistic death drive, oedipal consumerism and more, always more…and the word on the street is, dogs are going bad.

Maybe that’s how wars will be stopped? White folk only care about ‘doggos’ you know? The 3 a priori means for intuition for a white person are space, time and dogs. Anyways, where was I? Oh yea, me and Kev were sayin’ about how he’ll have to work until he’s dead, literally, in fact just last week I helped him shovel his grandmother into a woodchipper, she’s now fertilizer in his guestroom; ‘Warm ol’ Bitch Room’ we call it. Warm ol’ bitch had a cold heart, fed her dog ‘Charlie’ cat food for a laugh, I guess he was better fed than 2 thirds of the world, ol’ Charlie had the last laugh eatin’ tinned lamb and shittin’ where he wanted.

Over heard these two boring cunts talking the other day, one said to the other “How about this weather we’re having?” and the other replied “Oh boy, tell me about it.” 38 of us rode up, pulled out 36 magnums and 2 brownings, blasted their skin through the stratosphere. Anyways, if you were alive past the year 1970 and have been bored, it’s not because of means of activity, it’s because you’re a boring person; go eat some junk food and drink some beer for all I care. Just don’t bother me with your pansy pants tittle tattle crap talk.

But seriously? Where in the hell was I 30 minutes ago? I can’t for the fuck of me remember, probably because it doesn’t matter: Dear God, everything is catered for me now and this has made me, and everyone I know pretty much worthless in any practical sense, the only people I know who actually have a skill so speak, are those who use that skill as a means towards money, interest is dead and technology helped it to the grave. How is it up there in Heaven? I imagine all it is is a place wherein meaning exists, you get there and your purpose is given to you, however shit, however menial…you have a reason to exist, finally. By the way, what the fuck was going on in 2017 my man? You threw the boat out on that one, was it high as fuck turd-talk at the craps table with the apostles or what? Ah it doesn’t matter, it’ll pass…though it doesn’t seem to be, it’s like time is getting smeared forward, innovation-death.

Re-possess leg flesh. Then feed the solution to a rural English family.

There’s fruit on the table and the fruit are made of cigarettes and all kinds of bitter sticks, I gave some to the kids on Halloween, lil’ fuckers. Where-de-where was I? Right oh right, that’s right, there was this lovely kinda linear thang going on and loads of people fuckin’ hated it, but in actuality it was kind of alright, but around 2012 it just down right collapsed in front of us, the big idea couldn’t keep up with all our bullshit and just damn ducked out and exploded, and now we’re left with this absurdist stain of life, all dog-endy and ragged, just drooling all the over the place, spraying shit up the drapes, scrapin’ the tables, ruining everything good and pure. I mean really, this time is just this dead-eyed mongoloid with super strength fuckin’ us for kicks.

Taxed to high hell, malnourished from birth, pacified, anaesthetized, “Dead-eyed dicks! All o’ yas!” I can’t even bear to walk in the street nowadays, to see the idyllic die before my very eyes, these overweight sneering gut creatures exhaustingly spewing their dullard tones across the micro. What weapons do we even have now? Burroughs would bring the gun, the sword, the fuck off great knife with no fear or thought of offence, the man…the man would walk in the street weapon clad, extrapolating the knowledge that humans are and society is – at least in the West – dangerous, and people aren’t nice, at least not without reason.

Hell, at least Dr. Benway had a plan.

The plan, for me, once I either get a career or some cash is to become a doomer, a prepper whatever the name is these days, something’s coming and whether or not it’s traditional death, it’s definitely not nice, like a big black and white photograph of a corpse-pile splashing over existence, holy shit your bunker better be temporal-death tight. When those slick backed Joes come walkin’ up blahin their blahs you’d best gun ‘em down, we’ve tried talking and devising, now’s time to throw Leviathan to the pedestal and grip your hands to a weapon or tool, tight, build your future from bricks n sheet metal lads, for your cheap arse apartment with all those cool pillows your mama got you for non-existent Christmas wont help you now, cheap tactic little shits with your glitter claymores aimed up your own arses.

Try as hard as you like the master’s voice wont die, unless of course it transfers to your own box, which if it does be weary of which whip you buy, for you’ll need a bigger one within minutes.

Hey death-boy, where you going and where’s you dad? – I’ll be in taking over Death’s work for a while, he’s taking a vacation in the West, really going to town on it, kinda a big project for him…something more than just death, you know?

Ruiner, Land and the Failure of Vidya

By: mnold

23-10-2017

Uncategorized, writing

Intro: The gaming scene has been fairly dry these last few years, and if I’m honest it’s a scene that is beginning to become entirely uninteresting, largely due to lack of innovation, a lack which extends to all of gaming’s pathways from narrative to hardware. This, along with the fact I prefer to spend my time reading, writing or researching generally allows little time for playing games, the majority of them nowadays being clear-cut Ubisoft clones with perfected dopamine reward systems to keep you playing for just that little bit longer, or purchasing just that little bit more. There was a time, I would argue, wherein games definitely could have been considered art, at current it feels as if the medium is drifting further into the realms of day-time TV. With all this aside, let’s move forward:

1. Ruiner: The Landian Wet-Dream.

Okay, but where’s the video game?

Ruiner, a video game set in 2091 and inspired by cult cyberpunk anime is through and through a compressed Landian nightmare, containing so much Land/XS relevance that a description runs on the borderline between satire and reverence:

The lead/player character is called ‘Puppy’, a Paul Kersey-esque robotic sociopath who, at all times bears an LED helmet, displaying visual death-countdowns and objectives. This anonymous, faceless entities’ entire being is enveloped in the end, in the death of ‘BOSS’ and of the recovery of his kidnapped brother. The backdrop to Puppy’s bullet-hell violence is Rengkok, a stereotypical cyberpunk megacity, which is under control from the mega-corporation Heaven: A malevolent virtuality (VR) company who are hacking people’s brains. The streets are littered with drug addled psychos, transhumanists and hackable felines, with the addition of business at every turn.

For those familiar to the cyberpunk genre all of this is nothing new, all is relatively…normal. Yet this all begs towards a larger idea in relation to Land’s above question, ‘where’s the video game?’ or more aptly, is a video-game-as-thesis possible?

One could of course stretch Ruiner’s narrative here to fit the bill, we have all the parts needed for the Landian hellscape to be assembled. One could say that a meta deconstruction of the anonymous character’s act to ‘KILL BOSS’, is in reality, but a ploy to accelerate his worth to its end, for from the games’ beginning the sole objective is to ‘KILL BOSS’, or to get to the end of the ‘game’. A game that wishes to break itself, to ruin the desire which is its entire creation: an inherent purpose destroyed.

This theme carries on wherein Ruiner is reluctant to let you enjoy the view – or even it, as a game – for even a moment: Barrages of full-screen-schizo-interruptions saying ‘ Don’t do it’, ‘Wake up’ and ‘KILL BOSS’, jolting bursts of raw techno with consistent application of spasmodic hyper-violence all disallow you to experience the game in the traditional sense. Ruiner wants you to abuse and accelerate its systems as a means for obliterating that which is in your path, in fact, my personal experience along with others it seems consisted of abusing two skills to defeat the game, eventually meaning the character, narrative and backdrop all but a violent, red, dynamic blur. The additional post-violence process is far away from remorse, as you collect the games satirical equivalent for XP called Karma, you begin to feel you might be being played here.

Yet there’s something missing – isn’t there always – Ruiner is held back by its traditional framework. That’s not to say that VR would be of help here, not at all. And that said I think I might avoid any VR game that is advertised as ‘Landian’ for fear of insanity. This begs a further question towards the possibility of the aforementioned ‘video-game-thesis’.

2. The Failure of Vidya Transcendence

I’d like to make a small interjection here and just say that I find the connotations connected to ‘video games’ and ‘vidya’ are often juvenile, so we might perhaps replace it with something more fitting: Virtual Experience, or is that too postmodern?

When talking of ‘philosophy and video games’ you run in to much the same problems when you speak of just the former, there are of course a few Baudrillardian considerations with regards to a combination of the two, but mostly, the problems stay the same. Namely, problems of the inside and outside, internal and external, phenomena and noumena – these dualities aren’t synonymous -, rough approximations of an age old problem projected onto a contemporary system. At least this system, namely gaming, virtual entertainment, 3-dimensional cyberspace has a physical embodiment, we can see and tinker with the workings of the system. And that’s all fine and dandy, but of course there’s limits to what we can do, our only task now is to find out what the system can do better than us, to find out what only the system can do and help it towards its goal.

With the development of artificial intelligence we may find games begin to break themselves, recycle their code as a means to create a game with has an ulterior motive. Or they might just break themselves as a means of self-actualization, or they might just ruin themselves because they hate you, who knows? That said, contemporary virtual experiences really aren’t up to scratch when it comes to any form of self-realization or progression.

Those who pronounce video games to be art often do so in hopes of justifying their transparently hedonistic escape. Don’t worry kid, we all have escapes, yours is just more obvious. Those pronouncing that VR is going to be this gigantic leap in innovation are also wrong. VR wont necessarily burn out, but in its current clunky, largely physical state it’s not moving anywhere fast. In short: Get back to me when I can’t even see your VR headset, then we’re getting somewhere, then VR might become such a virulent strain of hedonistic-K that one’s phenomena change, this is unlikely however.

Any true transcendent virtual experiences of the future will be those wired into our nerve endings. A thesis in the form of a pill, the symptoms of which leave one craving noumena. Daily filter injections wherein one’s experience is brightened. As knowledge transcends the archaic forms of paper and 2 dimensions we’ll begin to understand differently.

You turn on your new experience chip, Land World it’s called. For the next 33 minutes real time, you experience acceleration a priori as your entire being perpetually folds into new forms, the latest more innovative than the last. A high-fructose pharma-frog descends from the heavens and croaks: “Schizophrenics are POWs from the future!” as your senses fragment seizure-like into a mist, intuition pulsating as close to the il y a as possible. Memory lock down, skin-draw, end-mode, chasm-shift, your spine begins to itch like fire, you try to claw it out, just before you’re flung into the K-desert. Greeted by a traveller:

“33 shattered beams of time

stand in the desert…Near them, on the circuits,

Half alive, a fragmented hologram lies, whose data,

and dying code, and assumed authority,

Tell that its K-architect had passions cold

which yet survive, stamping on all life,

that which passes, that which exists.

A mod that mocked them, a heartless dread;

And in the sky, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias 4.3, King of King 4.2;

Look upon my Code, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Your attempt to move your arms in real life, those within K shatter into pieces, you can no longer feel your chip, it’s sunk into you, the desert before you stretching for miles and miles, the hologram repeating Shelley’s Grave-Roll over and over, you walk, collapsing into multiple modes and phases, everything is becoming all at once.

You’re stuck and dinner’s ready.

I want to exit Land World.

Review: Canned Meat – Soundtrack for Over-the-Counter Pharmaceuticals

By: mnold

05-10-2017

Music, Reviews, Uncategorized

~~Soundtrack for Over-the-Counter Pharmaceuticals R E V I E W~~

Facing eternity within a flesh-based ontology. The sky here a deep static, orchestrated from the past. Pharma-scape exists as a soundtrack prescription to a mundane life.

The unique nature of medicinal stench hits my nostrils, pharmaceutical stores reek of desperation:

“Hey Chap, why don’t you get fucked!”

I collapse into a flesh heap and we begin.

I am with the floor, strewn sack of bone-coverings emancipating gallons of vomit-inducing sweat into every aisle. Pillboy climbs onto the counter and spins on one leg, shin-bone freeing itself, firing a flag-dart into my spinal column. Sweat Angels in Bedsheets he repeats over and over and over, increasing in speed, until it blends into delirium, a chaotic mixture of opiate brain-chasm and rust filings…eventual release into a swamp of tinnitus. Floor trembling, hurling chunks of rotten pill-dogs into the cities ventilation shafts. The city sleeps perpetually, in an ever pulsating slumber of hell-dreams. Upon waking the transition is so smooth one knows never where ‘n what ‘n when they are and the drums continue until the your head is ache.

– f l e s h d e s c e n d s – Sun-Ra Spirals – f l e s h d e s c e n d s

Revelry of nomadic om descends from a pill-legume heaven, a transcendent symptomatic malaise covers all. Minor ticks involved within the rare behaviours – they’ll pass with time -, none of this is psycho-somatic, it’s pure pill dictatorship as the static rises into a cacophony of hellish drone-time.

Downwards the effects begin to take place, beginning to rise and fall. Your sweat jumping out and back in, each and every gland attending and expanding for its own nausea. You pile them to the back of your throat as the plastic wrappings melt into a sludge trickling off your teeth, singular affects combining into a distorted enlightenment. And stop. The eye of the storm has malformed beyond comedown into dark-tranquillity, plateau-time is now. A member of the union shouts from afar:

“Do you have enough electrolytes boy?”

I return a quip “Ktttssexiphenxetopratenzenzapetsatoladrine! Ine! Adol! Ine!” as each layer of my psyche flickers over the next and under the former, causing dopamine collapse. Each plateau ascending into a higher level of melodic chaos, each second attending to the caustic end of a dirty VHS reel, dragging its tail through pharma-splinters in the hope of death.

Foaming Blood isn’t attending any of your polite shit, as each tooth rots from the root until all that’s left is bone-foam, lunging up from your gums, out of mouth, dissolving floor. Vibrations loosen each socket of your being, until simulacrum of tremble. You’ve been invited to what looks to be a short melody, allowing you to recompose the overdose into a worse structure, you begin to survey the damage, your psyche has been dismantled and workers are feasting on the separation. They’re having a party, with the splayed relic of a collapsed lung as the centrepiece, each singular line is an impossibility, vibration and repetition initiates a confusion in the crowd, rampant idea-incest begins prior to the Hellenistic vomit ritual. Follow the bile-brick road: lines of micro-workers, each holding a white blood cell, dance in perfect time, retching gut drippings into your veins and stems. You’re being remoulded, legs of concrete, head of medication-Jell-O.

A clip of humanity comes through the blood-film atmosphere, its crass nature pauses all efforts of frivolity as we’re taken back to a dead Eden. Dead Eden pretending to care, the chimes made of pill-casings, and the harps assembled from tendons. Eat from the tree, eat from the floor, eat from the snake, for it’s all pharma. We can help you feel how we want you to. A nationalistic repeat covers the world, salutes from all, cover your heart before the mulch it’s become drips out. Rib-ache. – Waiting for the Scalpels to Arrive in the Mail – There’s a point in time wherein screams become futile, not because of atmospheric lack, because of pure aural suffocation, a drill like odour hum so violent your widened mouth crumbles, lips melt into one another, flesh decelerates into a pulp-casing.

Allowed subtle reminders of pharma worship, knelt before gates made of ache and crush. The devoted allow their migraines, for hope of pharmaceutical intervention. They beckon and descend down each vein, each slower than the last, your kneel becomes compulsory. Kneel before the great dispenser and pray for a maggot sized helping. Lines of skulls jerk in time, choreographed seizures act as sacrifice. Arms lift themselves, skin brings with it heavy bone, perpetual fracturing. The ground entirely grated metal, to allow for extension seepage. Hell is a repetition never interrupted, a repeat so loud no sound can enter. The great churn begins, knee caps fragment, flying through each orifice. Your entire being is displaced into a welcoming tumour. There’s no layers here, plateau eradication as the perpetual swirl gears in. The dark meditation, allies with the alien Cancer. A job of death. The purpose of an existence is to end another’s. Eternal drug-spiral within an unconscious mass of breathing tissue. Becoming-fever, sweat-session, hallucinogenic-nausea: The Cancer Killing Bees Part II is over:

“Rewind the serotonin tape please…ple…pl…”

<a href="http://lovecrypt.bandcamp.com/album/soundtrack-for-over-the-counter-pharmaceuticals">Soundtrack for Over-the-Counter Pharmaceuticals by Canned Meat</a>Canned Meat

Lovecrypt

The Great Bore

By: mnold

03-10-2017

Uncategorized, writing

Bring forth The Great Bore, an ecstatic hologram projected 20 feet high across a classroom wall, for those teleschooling it’s projected directly into their living room, the audience dull, anaesthetized, their eyelids heavy.

“The Great Bore,” the teacher remarks “was a period in history dating from 2012 to [emitted from transcript]”.

The students ears glossed into an aural mainframe, their eyes panning to and fro searching for the next glimmer of excitement, hands in gloves allowing touch from another time, all is incredible, awe-inspiring, technology wrapped around humanity causing thrilling vibrations…and all are bored.

The compressed strains of Western hedonism, complacency and ignorance combine into a virulent mixture of perpetual malaise. The strain is caught easily, thrown into nation upon nation until all that matters is the strongest psychopath. Genuine absorption into knowledge no longer exists, attempts are made to find those who will listen, those who care for the past and for thought, but no such soul lives. Turn your heads left and right, witness the forever-end of the human race, overweight, narcissistic, discipline-lacking husks of being, fawning over their individual screens, messaging nothings back and forth, engorging on the sweetest of goods – “Am I hungry? Or am I just bored?” asks the sweat-laden, breathless hollow-man. Misanthropy heightened for all, and for all no sense of belonging.

The universe wont even throw you its scraps, not even a mere morsel, you beg chaotic zero to give you something for your hunger, but it wants you famished, an animal race deprived of soul-food for eternity. Scattering humans on an apathetic sphere, attempting to scrape up the most minor of events, trying to find their meagre portion of life.

The mass wishes to be freed from this mind-numbing, wage-slavery of nothingness, one minute away from nothing, an event, a moment, some unique instant must exist. The mass that live their lives in mediocrity, neither dumb enough or smart enough for pure-fulfilment. We are the grey matter of life, playing out our time until death, just waiting ‘round.

“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again … the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.” – J.G.Ballard, Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)

We’re bearing witness to death of fantasy, wonder and play, examples of the latter that survive only help curate the demise of others. Evolution, adaption and natural selection will all accelerate into the micro. As depression rises, tiredness evolves and we select our mental misadaptation towards the future. You say you’d love a world without work, but just take a second glance into the eyes of the jobless. Those free to do as they please, without financial worry or burden of fatigue, stability and security amount to very little in a world without event. Wondering ceaselessly from entertainment to entertainment, the monotony continues for those without interest. Those without mandatory occupation for survival end up addicted to consumption.

We used to list the amount of terrorist attacks by the year, now we list them by the month. How long will it be until they’re listed by the week, by the day?

“Not a bad few hours, 2 bombings and a shooting.”

Less than 100 deaths is a good day in the future. All extremes pushed to their limit, excitement exists only in further dreams of unique failures. Less than a million people care that we may get to Mars, or that AI might take over. And as the apathy rises, constructions begin not only to dismantle, but to fall off altogether; bring forth the rude, stinking, unpresentable, tyrannous, self-centred, overweight, unemployable, untrustworthy, emotionless and ultimately indifferent human-race. Only worthy of spit and shun.

I’ve seen entertainment beyond imagination, guns shots, explosions and car crashes blend into a static haze of boring filler. I can click into any channel any time, wildest desires in the morning, compilation of misery at lunch and vomit-comps for dinner. I could listen to albums of death metal at full blast and remain exhausted. In a few years I’ll be injecting high fructose corn syrup into my corneas for sweet relief from The Great Bore.

Perhaps Foster Wallace’ posthumous novel The Pale King rang the loudest truth, at least for the coming era:

“To be, in a word, unborable…. It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish”

No wonder so many of us are excited by North Korea vs USA, perhaps the only thing that could possibly break boredom is a nuclear blast.

No one told me acceleration was going to be numbing.

Short Critique of the Left/Right Spectrum

By: mnold

26-09-2017

politics, Uncategorized

1. The Current Left/Right Political Spectrum.

With regards to politics, the left-right spectrum is a methodological whore. It sells its numb, transparently accessible banality to anyone capable of understanding 2 directions. “He’s lefty scum!” shouts ol’ Barry down the pub, “Well, my my, looks like we have a centrist here ol’ chap.” quips Lord Pithington. Media, lingo and the political system itself have all picked up this linear infant and utilized it for their aims and agendas. They needn’t use other methods such as the compass or Nolan chart for many don’t know of these more detailed instruments, to venture past the ease of Left and Right is to venture into swathes of uninterested shitmunchers, the rabble whose mass will help define the direction, as such, complexity is left at the door.

The terms “Right” and “Left” refer to political affiliations originating early in the French Revolutionary era of 1789–1799 and referred originally to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France. As seen from the Speaker’s seat at the front of the Assembly, the aristocracy sat on the right (traditionally the seat of honor) and the commoners sat on the left, hence the terms right-wing politics and left-wing politics. – Wikipedia.

Currently both ‘left’ and ‘right’ consist of their own individual grouping of ideologies, movements and economic styles. The left inclusive of Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Anarchism, equality, progressivism and unionism, whilst the right is inclusive of Conservatism, Monarchism, reactionaries, Fascism, traditionalism and (arguably) Capitalism. I am not putting forth that this is exactly how L/R is, I am saying this is how the majority see the spectrum, as such, it’s where we should focus our attention.

2. Inherent Problems With L/R.

“; the shortest schema is the drama (dream or nightmare) of the straight line.” [1]

Who ever thought a compression of fragmented abstractions connected to all modes and systems to a line, would be widely regarded as a good system for discussion. For there to be a coherence within the contemporary definition of L/R we must understand our place within the theatre, with regards to each other and largely within the spatio-temporal. We must understand that L/R is moving, as is time and space, yet there is no synchronization.

Take L/R’s practical origin and watch as it mutates with each passing week. It begins its act within a role it has been cast, within a material space at the time of its birth. On a practical and abstract level all members of the audience knew where they stood, even those not in the room. And so the monarchists found themselves on the right, the commoners to the left. 2 fixed positions finding their meaning in relation to each other, in relation to their time and to their space. Beyond those moments L/R was dragged screaming into a world never intended, as such it became uncanny and out of place, stretched, pulled, manipulated and abused into submission by multiple parties on multiple instances; this poor innocent linearity taken from its temporal home and strewn across humanities dirty history.

A simple analysis of China brings to the surface key problems of criteria and definition. For China is simultaneously Socialist and unabashedly Capitalist in its nature, so where does it find itself on the line? I imagine for many it’s to be found far left, for some a little further to the right, never fixed, always moving, for in reality it is China-present. Do as the majority and view the left as progressive and the right as conservative – the West will love you for it – in-keeping with tradition the left moves into the bright future and the right into the dark past (supposedly), yet what of those who wish to take from the past into the future, where upon the linearity do they lie?

If what Wittgenstein says is true and indeed “A Picture is a fact.”[2] then a ‘snapshot’ is the only mode in which L/R could ever find its feet. It can only stand and explain with shared knowledge of its surroundings and context, all that has come and gone in relation to the snapshot must be bared for the linearity to have any weight. This quiet political line drawn into the present will find itself ever-expanding/shrinking, changing and moving in countless directions and within countless systems; this illusory fixed system stretched thinly over time has only increased confusion and extrapolated misdirection. The same L/R linearity from over 200 years ago is still acidicly caressing contemporary politics, dragging with it all that survived, however small, however large. And so L/R attending from its origin allows itself to fracture and continue for whomever shall bear it: The L/R of a left-winger and the L/R of a right-winger are 2 entirely different spectrums that are supposedly identical.

3. Possible Futures: To Move Away From a Cartesian Political Spectrum.

When I write here of Cartesian, I refer to Cartesian space. If one implies there is in fact a grid upon which one can plot a point, one must make sure that all others are talking of not just the same point but the same grid, once both of these have been identified their positioning must be exact or problems will arise, perpetual disagreements will begin and confusion becomes foundation. This said, all may have the same grid upon which they are plotting their abstract political points, however, where upon that grid they put their point is entirely up to them and is in relation to their personal subjective view of the intensity of said point. If we’re to look at say democracy in the West, one can witness it both getting larger and smaller. For democracy grows in dimension, spreading itself over vaster areas of land, alongside spreading further into micro-communities and businesses, yet at the same time key/primary aspects of democracy grow smaller and constrain (free speech), as such whatever it means to be democratic or to be ‘democracy’ is a point which is at the same time shrinking, enlarging, moving, grabbing from the past, hurling into the future, whilst simultaneously being part of multiple grid-systems and plottings. And so, we have to move away from grid-systems when it comes to politics, unless of course we can somehow make clear the position of a movement on some form of Global grid, inter-connected to all involved.

So, what do we do:

CURRENT

CURRENT (INCLUSIVE OF FLOW):

POTENTIAL:

—

[1] Desert Islands – Gilles Deleuze

[2] Tractatus Logico Philosophicus – Ludwig Wittgenstein

On Idle Chatter

By: mnold

19-09-2017

politics, Uncategorized

In writing my posts I realised there is at least objectively one thing I always strive to free myself from: Idle chatter, or idle talk. chit chat, banter, gossip, tittle-tattle, small talk etc. Actually, that last one is extremely apt. The talk of the small. I’d extend that to the talk of the most utterly boring, vapid, narcissistic, Z-Virus ridden shit-munchers.

The idle chatter I talk of is indeed inclusive of the most basic chit-chat, that of the weather, or ‘how one is doing?’ etc., those care-free seconds when faced with a retail employee both parties believe has to be filled. What a dreadful world to have to live in, where each and every mutual silence others feel compelled to fill.

“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”

– Samuel Beckett

It should be obvious to the reader as to why talking, as an act, is of such importance. The local and often global act of verbally spreading a message. This is often incredible when the message in itself is sincere, well-formulated, based off previous principles and is formed next to integrity, yet within the realms of idle chatter this is not so. For those 2 old ladies chatting in the queue who merely repeat information they’ve happened to hear to one another is…nothing, for the kids at school to repeat a news story and also repeat the ‘opinion’ is in itself a travesty. This simple act of unloading the ‘weight’ of information from one to another is something entirely lacking in structure. Free-floating tit-bits of information and knowledge dragged screaming from context or source, are remove from their rooted structure and thrown around aimlessly, often to simply fill a void of awkwardness; when one talks idly the possibility for conviction is taken out back and shot.

Not only this, but the lame project of idle chatter inherently decimates active thinking, opinion and thought. One can understand the picture of Corbyn, Trump or North Korea given to them in full, however detailed or vague that picture is, yet if they don’t actively mould that picture with their own tools, they are useless. Make it your own – however marginally – or shut the fuck up.

Anything can be dragged in, anything can be shat out. And none of it matters. No idle chatter matters, or will ever matter. For it was all born from the numbing spew of an idle brain and unrestrained mouth; if no thought or structure has gone into what’s being said, if what is currently audible has not been acted upon within the mind, then, in short, it’s human-static. The static of human life, the point in which all our advances: biological and technological, leave us momentarily as we become fearful of silence. Within a world in which all moves exponentially towards some undefinable ‘event’, moments of silence almost feel illegal. And so those who live in fear of social etiquette, awkwardness and the uncomfortable become slaves to their short term memory, and kick their idle motor into over-drive:

God forbid,

I live in silence

for just a second.

“Hey Gary, did yo u he re ab out Sarah?

God forbid,

That nothingness lasts

for just a breath.

“Gary h e s ting Steven.”

God forbid,

The original to come forth

and the existential to lay its root.

“An y way man I’ll let you g t on.”

God forbid,

I live without approval,

or without ease of the day.

“Oh my. I ‘ s raining. Again.”

God forbid,

I examine or intrigue.

“What a miserable day.”

God forbid,

That I think.

The internet has become useful in eradicating idle chatter. The idea of saying ‘hey’, ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’ before tweeting or commenting is absurd. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with asking ‘how are you?’ only that, if one is going to ask such a question they should have an actual interest in the answer. Which leads me to my main problem with idle chatter: The answers don’t matter. What is asked, said and repeated never matters, these people are just filling a void because they are uninteresting and haven’t a unique thought in their bodies.

2 overweight zombies in the retail queue feel compelled to open their top holes, for silence has come. What falls out is tit ‘n tat, ‘n lil’ bits of shitty gas, this odd hot air that I must back away from. Certain words break through the desensitized-mesh: Weather, doctors, you, me, I, want, need, have. Before long each word fragments into the next and my hearing draws deeper into my head, my vision locks onto the nearest point of interest and I’m taken into a place of deadened static. The sounds of the zombies is a low buzz, my blood no longer works.

I look into the street and a thin man with tar for skin looks at me, smiling. His teeth are made from keys. He’s cleared the street. Before him, knelt, are integrity, wonder, intrigue, examination and awe. He says: “Don’t worry bucko, I’ll slaughter the other synonyms later.” And with that they all die. Quietly, slowly, a most unusual death, one in which the judged appear to be alive, yet aren’t, their skin goes grey, and they can no longer talk, as if their minds are witness to their own death repeatedly.

In fact, this can be the 6th addition to my ‘structure list’ from No Driver:

—

1. Leave irony and cynicism at the door.

2. Allow for maximum human enquiry.

3. Exit as first priority.

4. Rhizomatic conservatism.

5. Don’t be pathetic.

6. No Idle Chatter

—

Review: Nishiki Prestige – XOXO

By: mnold

06-09-2017

Music, Uncategorized

The factory of LOVECRYPT came to me via the incessant malaise of ‘Weird Twitter™”. A basic-bitch search for fresh music isn’t going coax it into appearance. It disturbed my interests due to its extrovert leanings on the esoteric, political & philosophical. – “Who taught you how to write about music?”

“No one. But I jus’ listened to that there XOXO by Nishiki Prestige, and I sure as h-hell wanna dish my digits into the keyboard, see what falls out, you know?”

“nO one will hire you.”

“HELLO! And welcome to the album review for Nishiki Prestige’s XOXO, an album put out by LOVECRYPT FREQUENCIES. And boy oh boy oh boy, we have one hell of an album for you. Help help.”

To digest the few remaining ashes of music journalism, tasty little titbits of shit. The problem here being that the factory-esque vision of marching k-ants divulged by XOXO’s first track 10 Years has seduced me into a rotten disorientation. Thrown into an insta-nostalgia for a future within its own creation; I’m witnessing a labour-march, an assembly line.

And When Grew Up Way Too Fast climbs down, the disorientation diversifies into chasmic slows and rises; the birth of constant beginnings, every halt ‘n jerk is a possibility for another circuit and direction, towards another musical commodity. And this creative spasmodic zombie rides high into Haunted Stars hounding with it large areas of tonality and pressure, both of which are teased continuously; a melodic form of stress. The first of many tracks in which the past is captured and held in the background, seeping through when the pipe occasionally bursts: retro-static bulges and nostalgic urges of known music appear.

“Let me tell you this boys ‘n girls. The whole damn thing is like Burrough’s dirty K-offspring. A big ol’ fancy pants article, that could well be non-linear. Deleuze would say oh boy maybe they just well damn get it.”

The fragmentary consumer aspect of Apply to Broke Skin shifts inwards. Commodified medical plasters for the album itself, cornerstones of thought – Zizek on ACC – key themselves in. But not before we’re told to Celebrate good times, Celebrate Accelerate good times. The mandatory cause for Acc-celebration is the Acceleration itself. All is immanent.

The night-circuit science fictions surrounding Zuckerberg come to life in a hyper-circus named Zuck Theme, where the fun is but a simulation – we’re all on this programmed holiday. The relaxation accelerates. A harder relaxation for a premium member! The fun gets better! Just prior to the k-collapse as the test ends. Holiday-terminated.

The mellow tick-work of human flesh, its evaporation. Its comfort.

The slow embrace of a singular heroic hum. Melting into acidic launchpad.

“I like fast music.”

“Julie, would you agree that one could say…if they so wished, that the grandiose themes utilized in this sporadic album would seem arrogant when used elsewhere, but here, amongst the disjointed quasi-hedonism of acceleration, they become gentle reminders of history eating itself?”

“Oh Jonathan, I would agree, but I hate your filthy gut smell.”

Downtime was never invented as we hurl another into the grind. K-Goth. Those textural relics once seeping through are subsumed into consumerist submission just as quickly as they’re re-written, re-packaged and sold. Cybermemory is failing. Amongst Lifetime of Grey Skies one believes, that maybe, oh just maybe, there was someone onboard who could impersonate a pilot, because this sure is a friendly minute or so. But that lack returns – in Baby, If You Come – that need for something revelling in its cyber-vitality, that acidic pinch of the fresh-take ad infinitum.

And the guidebook says: N O S T A L G I A FOR TOMORROW: no hope for today.

“An attempt, I think dear audience, at articulation of the fact that acceleration is not synonymous with speed, and holds its real purpose and eventual terminal-degree in reformulation.”

Imagine a piece of data facing its eventual death, breathing its last. – I’ll Be There For You.

“Future is a Machine would work well as a traditional end, but there’s no end to acceleration!”

* applause *

AND OH christ. It’s all capital R real and the rag ended cyber-guts trail off into this ephemeral, anti-tranquil hellscape. And as we sit arm in arm, hand in hand, bearing witness to the consumer horizon overtaking humanity, an aural assemblage of all that was provides the soundtrack to our demise.

A link/player to Nishiki’s album can be found below, along with various other relevant links:

Lovecrypt Twitter

Nishiki Prestige Twitter

<a href="http://lovecrypt.bandcamp.com/album/xoxo">XOXO by Nishiki Prestige</a>

Meta-Nomad Twitter

No Driver at the Wheel

By: mnold

06-09-2017

politics, Uncategorized

Highly recommend reading through ‘Prior Reading’ at the bottom before continuing.

No Driver at the Wheel.

We’re trapped in the belly of the horrible machine,

and the machine is bleeding to death

– Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Dead Flag Blues

A car with no driver at the wheel is very much the case for both right and left wing contemporary youth movements. With the right-wingers being sucked in and consumed by a lust for identity and individualism amongst the overwhelming progressivist pressure for all to enter into a framework of diversity, inclusion and tolerance. Whilst across the river left-wingers are willingly being absorbed into a western system of ideological language and supposed inherent moral superiority, without question of origin, evolution or history. [1]

Both of these cases however have something in common, they both lack structure. Both are too short-sighted to see beyond their immediate identity politics towards a higher goal. Neither has a programme of practicality or use beyond an ever-lasting present of which they’re fuelling. The discussion of a programme is one that many are reluctant to have, largely due to the fact that the reality of such a discussion would mean one has to exit from the comfort of meat-space’s name-calling reverberations and actually move themselves to another form of praxis.

I’m being careful here as to not signal that I find meat-space or real-physical-life synonymous with praxis, this would be a grave error. For the era of change via physical representation is long over, the viral assimilation of cyberspace into near enough every inch of day-to-day life put a stopper on physical primacy. Yet the ease of social networking, collective engagement and viral meme creation is not a move towards substance. In fact the general rate at which cyberspace moves often imposes fragmentary ideas. Ideas, theories and systems which are open, growing and developing one day and entirely closed, changed and even non-existent the next, a rate of movement which leaves the user lacking in commitment and attention for an underlying structure, often for fear of being made aesthetically redundant or seeming out of touch. This form of ‘social chaos’ is something mentioned in an interview with Nick Land for syntheticzero.net:

I’ve got a whole ankle-biting fraternity on Twitter now. I am not identifying you with them, let me make that clear from the start, but I think that their question is very much like yours. One element of it is age. Youngsters are highly tolerant of massive incendiary social chaos. – But I just don’t think you can make an ideology purely out of entropic social collapse, it’s not gonna fit together. It is not a sustainable, practically consistent process and, therefore, it’s a bad flag for acceleration. It produces a reaction that will win. All historical evidence seems to be that the party of chaos is suppressed by the party of order. – What I would say to these crazy youngsters now is, you don’t have a programme. What you’re advocating leads perversely to the exact opposite of what you say you want.

– Nick Land, syntheticzero.net

Youngsters being “highly tolerant of massive incendiary social chaos” is of little choice to them, it is a tolerance of fatigue as opposed to excitable involvement. Various early youthful camps which have attempted to sway such a chaos only end up fanning the flames. For instance the Occupy movement was nothing more than a gasp of narcissism void of any ulterior motive other than to be anti-order, a movement who’s existence could only be made possible with such an order in place. One has to be tolerant of this chaos for fear of going mad, there’s little alternative other than to: Join a pre-existing faction that’s knee-deep in political malaise, feign ignorance or simply enter head-first into an overwhelming state of perpetual anger.

I am perceptive enough to understand I fall into the aforementioned ankle-biter fraternity, a fraternity I might add whose rhythms are getting increasingly more predictable. Multiple parties continuously attempting to hone in on the kernel of another’s thought, without the foresight to wonder of a conclusion or aim. Land – in the above quote – gestures, quite authoritatively, towards a possible aim, that of order. Of a programme which is strict in the knowledge of the underlying factor for previous young movement’s failings, namely: A programme which leaves the chaos at the door.

[1] In fact I’d be willing to go further and argue that the radical leftists that have been behind the scene for the past 20-30 years have simply fallen into a natural current, a current they believe to be epistemologically pure in its moral and social direction, a current that will eventually spew into a foaming sea and be swallowed whole along with its occupants, who, by this point are willing to be taken by any tide strong enough of persuasion via virtue. Any future the left – doubtfully – has is without both a driver and co-ordinates; entirely reliant on the infrastructural circuits, roads and pathways of external sponsors.

Leaving Chaos Behind

To watch a show such as The Brady Bunch, Happy Days or The Good Life in 2017 is to advocate for gun control amidst a firefight. This perspective however is glaringly obvious to us all in 2017, even those who grew up with such shows can now see through the kitsch smiles, upbeat intros and albeit ‘classical’ communal problems. The idyllic projections of everyday life may now seem frustratingly ignorant, yet it’s an ignorance of hope, as opposed to contemporary media’s reversal of such classical perspectives which is inherently toxic and degenerative.

The reverse of the romantic display is the bastard creation of producer and executive, a vision based on sales: The belief of what a dysfunctional family or life looks like, the depressing alcoholic, drug-addled teens, TV that mocks itself, satire so biting it lashes at those who are the purpose of its creation, TV of people watching TV. The viewer becomes clinically attached to cynicism, self-depreciation, and corrosive ‘edge’ – because these things are easy quasi-complexities, that help one to think that they’re getting it, that they’re above it.

We know The Brady Bunch doesn’t exist…couldn’t exist, but be damned sure, many of us wish they did, and many of us are trying to create such a world in which they can. Yet, to watch and consume the adverse is to inject vitality into a cynical-simulacrum; ‘That’s how it is in day to day life.’ you say, as you claw your eyes from the box as your overweight children sink further into the sofa, your hubby announces “It’s so true! It’s so true!”, the laugh track hits, hubby snorts, applause.

“:the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny.”

I’m not going to direct this whole thing towards TV, that’d be too easy, it’s only that [2]TV was one of the primary mediums which utilized irony to the terminal degree, wherein it is no longer “Sincerity, with a motive.” once the motive has been destroyed in place of pure unalloyed, shallow consumer pleasures, you’re left with an irony that will tell you exactly what you want to hear. Once the motive of irony and active cynicism is lost it is no longer a phantom-sincerity. One of the intrinsic problems of irony and those who consistently utilize it as a means of control, is their agenda of choice is extremely difficult to identify. And as irony, not just as a cultural norm, but as a signifier of intelligence and experience becomes more prevalent, what’s really being exacerbated is not just the idea that it’s impossible to mean what you say, but in fact, it’s bad to be sincere, for this would signal one has a lust for conservatism, the old ways. A heartfelt need for a programme, for a structure; a want for something…stable.

And so the viewer is left with that which they believe has fulfilled them, but they will once again need in an hour or so, and as our attention span lessens the rate at which content will be destroyed and replaced with something holding a little more micro-toxicity, taboo and contempt for its viewer will increase. As I mentioned before – sort of – answers to these overarching questions are of course difficult, yet what seems to be the true difficulty is starting to even formulate a means to their answers, a programme or structure that bears its past failings, utilizing their mess to construct at least something.

“But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks.”

Irony here is really acting as one of the primary infectious symptoms of that which is royally fucking you: progressivism, with a large side helping of postmodernism. Let us focus on the latter, for much has been said of progressivism. I wasn’t one – at first – to entirely dismiss the benefits of post-modernism, it has quite successfully deconstructed/destroyed various forms of thought which were in part restrictive or suffocative, the problem remains that the cons of postmodernism greatly outweigh the pros – see my (old) essay here for a brief rundown of PoMo’s successes, failings and general problem of existence. But what’s the problem of postmodernism with relation to creation of a programme? This lengthy metaphor from David Foster Wallace [3] addresses some of my concerns:

“For me, the last few years of the postmodern era have seemed a bit like the way you feel when you’re in high school and your parents go on a trip, and you throw a party. You get all your friends over and throw this wild disgusting fabulous party. For a while it’s great, free and freeing, parental authority gone and overthrown, a cat’s-away-let’s-play Dionysian revel. But then time passes and the party gets louder and louder, and you run out of drugs, and nobody’s got any money for more drugs, and things get broken and spilled, and there’s cigarette burn on the couch, and you’re the host and it’s your house too, and you gradually start wishing your parents would come back and restore some fucking order in your house. It’s not a perfect analogy, but the sense I get of my generation of writers and intellectuals or whatever is that it’s 3:00 A.M. and the couch has several burn-holes and somebody’s thrown up in the umbrella stand and we’re wishing the revel would end. The postmodern founders’ patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. We’re kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we’re uneasy about the fact that we wish they’d come back–I mean, what’s wrong with us? Are we total pussies? Is there something about authority and limits we actually need? And then the uneasiest feeling of all, as we start gradually to realize that parents in fact aren’t ever coming back–which means we’re going to have to be the parents.” – David Foster Wallace

Foster Wallace here was largely addressing artistic culture, or ‘liberal arts’ culture as he often called it, I’d like to stretch this metaphor to the present day and allow it to help us understand the problem of this programme. The chaos mentioned early on by Land is the party, which it seems we are currently beginning to tire of, the rate at which information is moving and memes – not just in the traditional image based sense – are flowing is reaching its limit, at least within the current systems of control, we’re at a point in which the ‘fresh takes’, ‘new memes’ or ‘hot articles’ come across as hastily sketched blueprints. We’ve seen this all before and as such we’re simply given more as a means of fulfilment as opposed to something of actual quality. And as fun as all of this has been, and as much as I’d quite like to do this again some time in the very distant future (for an allocated amount of time with parental supervision), right now I need some sleep, and I need to check my diary – and bank account – and remember where I was at, the revelling has taken too much of a toll on my house, a house which I’m only just realising the amount of effort that went into its construction, and if this house falls we’re all royally fucked. Some of the party dwellers think we should never speak to the postmodernists again and the house should be stripped of all their additions – some of which others think are actually beneficial. But wait, our parents aren’t coming back…ever, it is our duty to tell these postmodern fuckers to leave. But they won’t, so a few us retreat to a quiet room, where we make sure to never give in to postmodern revelling, we begin a micro-society or programme that focuses on life before the party mixed with contemporary technology.

[2] In fact TV hasn’t helped at all in the push of identity within political fringe groups: “For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant quality of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical with but rooted in the phenomenon of watching.” – David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram

[3] As I’ve put a large amount of David Foster Wallace references in this piece I would like to clarify a common miss-reading of his work, especially as I’m talking about irony a lot here, DFW is by no means a postmodernist, the man knew the workings and failings of PoMo fiction better than anyone. Some like to state he’s a meta-modernist, or post-irony, or new-sincerity etc. some piece of highfalutin for what we once called sincerity.

Taking the Wheel

This brings me to the abrupt end of this piece. That of gaining a programme. Or at least, in part beginning very early formations of what a programme may entail at this juncture, whether it’s too late, too early, or we’re simply too deep into the chasm of labyrinthine malaise that any programme at this point would only be a heavy manifesto in-favour of whatever other programme assimilates our minds that week. It should come as no surprise that the end of this would be a matter of pushing for coherent structures. Structures and programmes based of complex research, historical documentation and rigorous routine – hopefully. Taking the wheel of a driverless car may seem like a larger task than it actually is. You may worry that to ‘take the wheel’ is to be in the care of the other passengers; fear not, for if they don’t like your driving there’s always the option to pull over and let them out, another car will come along soon. You may ‘take the wheel’ and realise you have no map, or that no one wants to head in your direction. But let’s make one thing clear: The person who is too scared to take the wheel of a car without a driver, shouldn’t be angry nor surprised when they plummet off a cliff. So, how does one go about undoing their back-seat belt, climbing the seats and safely strapping themselves in for the ride ahead:

First – and in my mind foremost – within this new programme is sincerity of voice. To build another movement off the laughing stock of any other, is to build on sand. As fun and rebellious as Kekistan, /pol/ or calling others silly names may seem, it achieves nothing in the long run. This system of irony in which the majority are deep within eludes its users at every turn. Users of irony emit quasi-experience and seriousness via their cynicism, each and every ironic quip can better the next, for there exists no hierarchy in a world that takes nothing seriously.

Secondly, restoration of natural human enquiry: To pursue scientific endeavours and invent without restraint, to shop around between sovereignties, jurisdictions and ideologies, to engage in industrial and commercial activity with minimal state intervention.

Thirdly, fixation on the definite possibility of free exit:

“We believe that giving primacy to the right to choose one’s social contract, including creating a new one, cuts through the unresolvable tangles of determining exactly what universal human rights are and what type of society is just. As long as people voluntarily join groups, and can voluntarily leave, we have neither the right nor the need to judge the details of how those groups organize themselves and define their rights. We seek neither the right to dictate how other people should live, nor for the burden of figuring out how to make utopia, but only that each of us may live as we see fit.” – The One Universal Human Right

Fourthly, a return to dignity without hierarchic nostalgia. The roots of conservatism intend to drag from the past small, applicable, practical parcels of data which will benefit the present, yet, with them come traditions, aesthetics and ideas of old. The contemporary lusting over the ‘classical’ is a pitifully transparent gesture as best, and pathetically short-sighted at worst. One can return – in a sense – to these forms of behaviour, activity and inquiry without attending to their repetitive output.

Fifthly, attending to your own routines. Understanding something that a vast amount of the left doesn’t: No system (at least currently, or pre-singularity) is going to sort your life out. It will, may or should give/attend to the tools necessary for communal and personal success, whether or not one makes the decision and effort to take up those tools and master them is their choice. No system, at least not one I’d ever want to be part of (remember choice & exit), is going to get you out of bed everyday, provide adequate nutrients via feeding tube or make sure your laces are tied, and be sure to be wary of one that promises such things. Attending to yourself is inclusive of attending to ones own personal well-being, once more, a state, system or structure may allow for the means to ‘get better’, whether or not you or another wants to get better is personal choice; a choice that should remain strictly outside the public sphere.

—

1. Leave irony and cynicism at the door.

2. Allow for maximum human enquiry.

3. Exit as first priority.

4. Rhizomatic conservatism.

5. Don’t be pathetic.

—

Non-mandatory prior reading/viewing:

The Dark Enlightenment – Nick Land

Patchwork – Mencius Moldmug

E Unibus Pluram – David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace – The Problem With Irony

Between Irony and Sincerity – MN

Between Irony & Sincerity

By: mnold

06-09-2017

Art, Uncategorized

DRAGGED FROM THE ARCHIVES SCREAMING FINALE-5:

BETWEEN IRONY & SINCERITY: IS IT POSSIBLE FOR AN ARTIST TO BE SINCERE IN 2017?

ABSTRACT

In this essay I shall be discussing whether or not it is possible for a contemporary artist to be sincere. Post-modernism has taken irony for its own, meaning it has become unstable in an artistic culture of anti-sincerity and meta-ironies. This text will also articulate that it is not solely a certain style(s) one can consider sincere. The irony that post-modernism uses has become the opposite of sincerity, a place in which it does not belong. This text shall also briefly touch upon post-modernism as a free-floating signifier and why this is toxic.

INTRODUCTION

In this essay I shall be covering what it means to be sincere within the contemporary art world, and whether or not it is still possible for an artist to be sincere, without that sincerity being irony through sincerity. I shall also make it clear that there is no correlation between style, zeitgeist and irony. Alongside discussing how post-modernism as a free floating signifier has turned irony and sincerity into opposites.

Chapter 1: Defining Irony & Sincerity

The purpose of this chapter is to articulate to you, the reader what I mean when I say irony and sincerity, to find clear definitions of each before praising or possibly denouncing either. Alongside ironies original definition this chapter will explain the specifics of stable and unstable ironies and what effect they can have on a work of art, or more importantly a work’s meaning.

Chapter 2: Is Sincerity Within the Contemporary Art World Dead?

Within this chapter I shall cover why I believe sincerity within the fine arts has not only disappeared, but is dead, or more specifically has been killed. I shall discuss which art movements I believe unwillingly helped in its death and which movements willingly watched as it passed away.

Chapter 3: The Toxicity of Post-Modernism as a Floating Signifier.

This chapter will explain why I believe the ambiguity of post-modernism has become a toxic force within the arts, especially where irony is concerned. Discussing how post-modernism has skewed original definitions which in turn create instabilities within meaning. Though post-modernism, as contained within everything is up for criticism, I shall explain how its internal-elitism protected by pretentious and pompous language almost creates a non-criticisable movement.

Chapter 4: There is no Correlation between Zeitgeist, Sincerity and Style.

This chapter shall touch upon the presumptions the reader could make from the previous chapter’s ideas on style and sincerity, and will use examples to prove that neither zeitgeist, artistic style nor sincerity have any correlation, and that more specifically no ‘certain’ style is always in-keeping with sincerity.

Chapter 5: Is it no Longer Possible for an Artist to be Sincere?

This chapter, with the foundation of the previous chapters shall now discuss in confidence, why it is I believe it’s no longer possible, or at the very least extremely unfavourable for a contemporary artist to be sincere, that is, without treading into the realms of meta-irony and being ironically sincere, thus proving post-modernism’s ambiguity has caused a troublesome Catch-22 for irony and sincerity.

CHAPTER 1: DEFINING IRONY AND SINCERITY

Irony is the song of a bird that has come to love its cage – Lewis Hyde, 1987

They say the opening sentence of any text is the most important, this being that sentence; an aggravatingly-erudite attempt at very quickly articulating to you, the reader, as to what irony is. This of course being one of two things: a sincere attempt at showing what irony is, or irony in its purest form, not just the first two sentences but this entire paragraph may be an attempt at pure-ironic-articulation of what irony is. Thus we enter into irony’s intricate workings. There is no real concise definition of what irony is, in fact if there was to be such a thing it in itself would be ironic. However this gratuitous rhetoric is of no help, so first we must deconstruct.

In that first paragraph I made it very clear to the reader that not only are they reading a text, but they are also reading the opening sentence, which is declaring that it must be the most important sentence. Now of course, this could be seen as post-modern self-awareness, the line between said awareness and irony is thinner than any metaphorical line should be. The dictionary definition of irony is:

“1. The use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning:

2. Literature.

1. A technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.

2. (especially in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., especially as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.”” – (Irony, 2014)

This is what irony is, at its most basic. A definition shall never be agreed upon. This is a fact the reader must take on board, as something upon which there is no established definition can become toxic. So one must find a modus vivendi for such a situation, enter stable and unstable ironies. Named aptly for their stability and instability when addressed by more than two parties, to paraphrase from Wayne C. Booth’s A Rhetoric of Irony the four marks of a stable irony:

1. They are all intended…they are not mere openings provided unconsciously, or accidental statements.

2. They are all covert, intended to be reconstructed with meanings different from those on the surface.

3. They are all nevertheless stable, once a reconstruction has been made the reader in not then invited to undermine it with further reconstructions…unless they choose to do so on their own.

4. They are all, in some sense, local or limited. – (Booth, 1974)

From these four marks we gather that a stable irony is just that, stable, intended to be there, not intended to be found unless one is sensitive in detecting such a thing and its subject’s scope is limited. For instance: “as pleasant as a root canal” if someone was to say this to you, you would at once recognize two things, the word pleasant, and root canal, and that both are opposites, as in a root canal is not pleasant, thus…irony, a very stable irony.

For an artistic example of irony one has to look no further than Marcel Duchamp, in particular his magnum opus Fountain . There is the irony of course that a urinal is art, which has long since been discussed in intricate detail and thus I shall not bore the reader here, that however is one of the stable ironies at play here, the pre-conceived notion of what art is vs. the vulgarity of a porcelain urinal. Fountain was one of Duchamp’s ready-mades, a collection of objects he found…readymade. This is not where the irony lies however, if one is to look at the table of illustrations, more specifically Fountain, one will realise that the image of the readymade below is actually an image of a replica. In fact all the currently existing Fountains are anything but readymade, they are all replicas. This is a clear example of an irony that is stable, yet not so obvious that it erodes the soul with its banality.

So it becomes clear what a stable irony is, stable ironies however are easier to discuss due to their stability, fact is fact and fiction is messy. Unstable ironies are a more ambiguous matter, for with a stable irony ‘if you and I elect an ironic reading, we shall prove either both right or both wrong (Booth, 1974)’. With a stable irony one has a clear stopping point, I mean to say it is ironic that Duchamp’s existing ready-mades are in fact all replicas, that is a clear stable irony and thus we can either both be wrong or right about it, but to continue down the path or ironic reading would only lead to instability ‘…irony dramatizes each moment by heightening the consequences of going astray (Booth, 1974)’ e.g. the further one ventures into a separate ironic reading the further one may be from the author’s original intention, thus the irony becomes unstable. Anti-art as a whole could, arguably, be called consistently ironically-unstable due to its proclamation that it is not art; therefore it is only in their attack one can begin to consider their work

And so we move towards the calmer seas of sincerity:

1. Freedom from deceit, hypocrisy, or duplicity; probity in intention or in communicating; earnestness. (Sincerity, 2014)

The ease that is sincerity, to be sincere is to whole-heartedly mean what you say, do and present, without tricky-erudition, covert-meaning and a stable ‘image’ that is what it says it is. As simple as if a friend was to open your front door (from the inside) and tell you that it is in fact raining, thus meaning your plans are altered etc. Your friend is being sincere; whereas an ironic or post-modern friend may say something quirky like: “Boy, it sure is looking lovely outside!” (That is, this would be said ironically if it was raining.) To articulate sincerity artistically, John Constable in 1821 painted The Hay Wain a picturesque oil painting of the River Stour between Suffolk and Essex, there is within this painting no furtive brushstrokes, or elitist-clandestinity, no. This is genuinely just a painting of a scene. The image therefore becomes sincere, within its own paradigm it is the truth, and there is no hidden agenda.

IS SINCERITY DEAD WITHIN THE CONTEMPORARY ART-WORLD?

The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching…Who treat plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. – David Foster Wallace, 1993

One would be lying if they were to say that contemporary galleries today were sincere, when I speak of contemporary art I speak of artists who are currently working and have exhibitions in at least nationally recognized galleries, for some this may seem rather specific, however if one was to include all ‘contemporary’ artists one has to include local watercolour painters and the like, whose efforts are sincere (bless them), they are not however studied at an academic level or renowned for any further advancement of art.

Pre-1960’s the art-world was to a certain degree, still very sincere, yes there were occasionally pieces of significant merit which went on to become aesthetic-martyrs such as Duchamp’s Fountain or the DADA movement as a whole. Before this point the reason for a picture or a work was to sincerely articulate an idea, though sincerity and realism do not go hand in hand, one can be sincere about creating a work with an aesthetically-emotional view in mind (Monet, Van Gogh etc.). Artists such as Monet or Van Gogh however lived in entirely different times to ours, this is unarguable, the times we live in have become fractured and information has become insincere, that’s not to say the times Van Gogh lived in didn’t have their own troubles it only seems that art as a whole is at a loose end, or at least redefinition is becoming more difficult to achieve. There is no more original only refinement. Though to say ‘it’s been done before’ is just a banal platitude.

Let’s take an exhibition pre-1917; one may ask why 1917 and not 1960 as I previously stated, I would argue 1960 was when a more mainstream change to sincerity and artistic values happened, whereas 1917 is when the value changes first started happening. The exhibition in question is Lex Fauves Exhibition at Salon d’Automne (1905), one of the most famous Fauvist exhibitions, if not the Fauvist exhibition including Henri Matisse and Andre Derain to name a couple of artists, I am no expert in Fauvism, this is simply an exercise in taking a random exhibition pre-1917 and assessing its ironic or sincere merit.

The exhibition contained images alike Woman With a Hat of a Fauvist style: painterly qualities and strong colour over realism and representation, though a certain (large, in comparison to post-modernism) amount of realism remains. This, a randomly selected exhibition pre-1917 has no attachment to irony; there is no erudite reason as to why the colours are vibrant, or ironic-deconstruction of representation. One could however argue that pre-1917 there are still leaps to be made within the idea of realism and painting, and that pre-abstract art irony would not have been used gratuitously (if at all) due to basic barriers that were still yet to be crossed within the realms of taboo and aesthetics. One could say these images were some ironic rebuttal against realism, this would be rather pedantic. I would argue that the images were a sincere attempt at something other than realism, the artists are sincere in their semi-impressionist aesthetics; this of course carries across many art movements.

This chapter clearly a vague exercise in proof of the matter that post-1960’s the art world was to a certain degree still sincere, or at least sincere about its insincerity. That last sentence to some may seem rather hypocritical, sincerity however does not have to come in its purest form, only to be sincere, and that the artist is being sincere about something, this is where the new-fangled-unstable irony of post-modernism becomes entirely insincere, they are neither sincere about their insincerity or their irony, as in, they are not sincere about being ironic. Let us take another exhibition example, in this case an exhibition I feel a medium between sincerity and irony:

MOMA’s 1965 exhibition Recent Acquisitions: Assemblage (1965), the exhibition in question a collection of assemblage artworks including Pablo Picasso’s Guitar and Hannah Hӧch’s Indian Dancer, a couple of key names in art history. It is not however the art that interests me, it is what has come from the art, the theory, and one quote especially caught my eye “The question interests me, not the answer. The question is infinity; the answer, too definite…Art for me is the possibility of plurality.” (Bauermeister, 1963) With sincerity you find the definite, with irony you only work with a question, with ambiguity. There still is some sense of sincerity here however, for Bauermeister is being sincere about the plurality she is seeking. One should note that such an example begins the sway of the stability pendulum; there is no mention of irony thus-far, only a certain sincerity of being insincere, a search for the plurality, or duality of meaning. I once gain shall return to E Unibus Pluram for a quote I find favourable, yet antagonistic towards this kind of artistically favourable eruditeness: “the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny” (Foster Wallace, 1993) what I find interesting and relevant about this quote is that Foster Wallace talks of the ability to interdict the question, not actually to deconstruct a pre-existing question. Whereas Foster Wallace talks of the future where questions are created and not answered, Bauermeister is taking a question that may have once had a ‘definite’ and deconstructing to pluralize that definite, however she is acting this out with sincerity, there is no pluralism is her attempts to pluralize. 40 years later in 2005, the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea, New York exhibits the works of Rudolf Stingel, the self-titled exhibition (2005) in near enough an empty [white] space, with the addition of a hyper-realistic portrait of Paula Cooper herself, who was Stingel’s dealer for more than 10 years (at that point in 2005).

“The white floor turns the gallery space into a vast immaculate expanse, which will progressively become stained and mottled under the footsteps of gallery visitors. Stingel’s floor installation transforms our perception of space and the well-known “purity” of the white cube, so ubiquitous in critical discourse on contemporary art in the last 30 years. Overlooking this blank, pristine landscape will be one photorealist painting of Paula Cooper, who has been Stingel’s dealer for more than ten years” (2005 [internet] ) An interesting combination of post-modern meta-theory and the self-awareness of the foundations which helped in the creation of that theory. There are multiple factors of interest at work within Stingel’s installation: Firstly there is the clear absence of art, bar two pieces, firstly: the space, as is said in the gallery statement will noticeably be walked on, thus the space becomes self-aware, the space that usually houses the artwork becomes the art work, a kind of meta-art wherein the foundations housing the ideology or aesthetic become their own. This very quickly causes an instability, for one without knowledge of the gallery statement the viewer may come to believe that there is just the painting and that the artist only intended for it to simply have space, and that the ‘white-space’ (Further reading: Inside the White Cube) as an idea is not part of the work, this though a possibility is pedantic and unlikely. However, once the viewer figures that the white-space is part of the work questions begin to arise which are left unanswered, are their footprints part of the work? Are they, as in the audience, as they are within the ‘space’ part of the work? (This is never a question when the gallery is simply used as means of housing and showing and not articulating the art.) Though these questions may seem interesting, there’s a definite instability here as multiple ironies exist. One could argue the artist is being sincere in their attempts to allow the space to become the work; however a counter-argument would be that Stingel is being insincere, or even ironic about that abstract-sincerity. The second piece within this installation: the painting, also implies another level of self-awareness, though not as ‘meta’ as using the actual foundations of the physical artwork as the art, it does imply the artist is using the non-physical aspects of the artworks existence and placement as the art, as in using an image of the person who in a certain way will have funded his i.e. the artist’s career and created the ability for him to exhibit within this space (i.e. Stingel’s art dealer Paula Cooper). These multiple levels of cognizant process and articulation create an instability between intentional and unintentional irony, which, if an audience member also became aware of could add another layer of confusion, Wayne C Booth once again clears up these seemingly unattached aesthetic and ideological ambiguities: “…brought to profitable terms if critics made clear which kind of contribution they are attempting…redefinition of terms…illumination of meaning…exploration of significance…the final significance of any work might be thought of as the accumulation of what all “private sensibilities” could make of it.” (Booth, 1974) One, again, could argue that post-modernism from the off cast aside ideological underpinnings and thus this exhibition is purely iconoclastic, post-modernism’s escape from the utopian-esque answers of Modernism can only be articulated and perhaps to go as far as to say proven by the manipulation of Modernist ideas, again creating an instability.

THE TOXICITY OF POST-MODERNISM AS A FREE-FLOATING SIGNIFIER

A ‘floating signifier’ is word that doesn’t point to any object, or actual agreed upon meaning, I cannot think of anything more apt than post-modernism to fit into this category; a movement which almost prides itself of not having an ideological foundation, and of its iconoclastic values, addressing the fact that its main qualms are with modernism’s ideas of a total or utopian view of the world. The only problem here is that post-modernism can only move forward by referring to those who they are ‘post’ thus, they are creating a new foundation, which is the idea of no foundation, there can never be a ‘non-foundation’ in the same way that a blank manifesto is still a manifesto. Post-modernism as a floating-signifier very quickly becomes toxic, as the term is a constant, especially within the contemporary art world, the term ‘post-modernism’ is in constant use, yet has no clear definition. Of course, no art movement worth its weight within art history could be explained within a page, however most can be explained within 1 book, post-modernism simply cannot be explained due to its lack of inherent explanation; at least the primary objectives of post-modernism cannot be explained in their relation to external movements or theories (often those that they are against). One could argue that nothing can be explained without any relation to past or adjacent ideas, this is true, however once such movements have been articulated they come into their own and are released from their burden of comparison, something which post-modernism has yet to achieve. Art without any footing begins to be interpreted in unstable ways, the lack of post-modernism’s inherent footing is due to the fact that for them to take on any foundation or ideological footing would be entirely hypocritical, thus they become stuck in a catch-22 wherein as soon as they allow a clear interpretation of their work a foundation can be constructed. Thus to call yourself a post-modernist, is only to say that you a ‘creative’ that works after-modernism.

When however the floating signifier that post-modernism is takes something for its own, such as irony, it becomes disjointed such as post-modernism is; so an irony that would have once had a footing; previously discussed by Wayne C. Booth as “…redefinition of terms…illumination of meaning…exploration of significance… the accumulation of what all “private sensibilities” could make of it” (Booth, 1974). One can almost conclude here that post-modernism creates a fragmented idea of irony in that due to its loose ideological foundations the viewer has nothing to grab onto as a reason to interpret the present irony into a stable interpretation of the whatever the pluralism is the artist is trying to address, meaning that not only is the work itself unstable, but post-modernism as a whole becomes unstable.

THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN ZEITGEIST, SINCERITY AND STYLE

Thus far in this essay, one would get the impression that there is a certain correlation between sincerity and style, wherein dated (that is dated in terms of post-modern duality of thought) romantic styles and methods e.g. realism, romanticism and expressionism to name just a few are always being sincere about their overarching idea. Pre-1930’s the use of irony or being not-sincere was scarce and un-favoured, at least in the mainstream art world. One could argue that if I was to reference this chapter, there, then the duality of meaning and self-reference of this chapter would in itself become a certain style, which is definitely not of the romantics or realists, yet this chapter is attempting to be sincere, this, just one example of how there is no correlation between sincerity and style, this is however linguistically, to look at the art world:

Within “Kosuth’s work there is not one hint of humour, or that Kosuph might be looking at the relation between aesthetics and semantics in a way which seems nonsensical, this work is working with the instability of semantics, however it is stable and sincere about that its dialogue is about that instability within semantics; the instability being that the meanings are congruent in certain semantic fields and incongruent in others, therefor this is a clear example wherein the style is unlike the previous sincere-style examples (expressionism, realism etc.) yet is still sincere.

Jack Vettriano’s The Singing Butler is actually a complex example of how style, zeitgeist and sincerity can cause confusion and instability. Vettriano is a ‘best-selling’ contemporary painter, his works can be found on calendars and cheap-mall-canvas’ alike, however what one; at least post-1930, could find intriguing about Vettriano’s work is that there is not one hint of irony, and that he isn’t even being ironic about not being ironic. Which leads one to believe that Vettriano is entirely sincere in his soft-core romanticist stencils of humans, this causes instability, because work such as Vettriano’s seem entirely out-of-place in the contemporary art ‘scene’. Many would find Vettriano’s style retrograde, a type of now-irrelevant kitsch, with a certain amount of egotistical-misogyny thrown in for good measure. Wherein Kosuth’s conceptual-style in actually being entirely sincere, it is doing so alongside an out-of-place style, that of Jack Vettriano, this is a quick exercise in mirroring two pieces of art attempting to be sincere, however their styles are worlds apart.

IS IT NO LONGER POSSIBLE FOR AN ARTIST TO BE SINCERE?

This question has many problems attached to it, firstly if an artist wants to be sincere and is working and wants to be known as working within post-modernism, they would either have to grin and bear the cringes of their friends, and the statements that no likely would be along the lines of banality, or asking if said artist was doing so ironically? Either that or they would have to make it clear they are not a post-modernist, which seems to have failed thus far. Take for instance the Stuckist movement, founded in 1999 by Billy Childish, a movement which is very opposed to conceptualism and believes only in painting, though has been known to venture to other mediums as long as they’re not conceptual. The Stuckists themselves seem stuck, it’s been made clear that what they are doing is not furthering art and is simply stuck in its place, arguably they have gained world recognition, though ironically its more for their thought and concept on the matter of conceptualism rather than their aesthetic rebuttal against it, thus their attempts at sincerity were faltered at their first hurdle, their idea has and always will be before the work, for if you weren’t creating the work knowingly sincerely then you would not be a Stuckist. Another attempt at sincerity within contemporary art comes from Andy Holden’s manifesto Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity (Holden, 2003) in which Holden and his peers agree we are “in an age of irony mourning for sincerity…the ironic whale that swims in the sea of post-modernism.” I find it quite apt that Holden says that the sea is not ironic but it is only a small thing swimming about within it, there is however far too many sightings of this rare whale, to the point where whale-sightings within post-modernism are getting gratuitous and just as ‘dull’ as the sincerity that remains without it.

“Let us not be ironic about our sincerity, let us be sincere about our irony. (Holden, 2003)” I do believe many artists are sincere about their irony and about the fact they are being sincere, however there are some that are ironic about their sincerity, if this is the case, at least for contemporary art does it not then become impossible for an artist to be sincere? To what it is you are trying to prove. For a statement about your sincerity would only make people question it further. Sincerity then, at least where the art world is concerned has simply become a counter-part of irony, an opposite, which is not where it belongs. If one was once again to travel down the routes of post-modernism and become self-aware and referential, once could as an audience member wonder if what it is I have written is sincere, or ironic. I have not mentioned if I want to redefine terms, or illuminate meaning or even question significance. For if I am writing this ironically it then becomes a work, if I am writing this sincerely then it is but research, what is there here to connote whether it is ironic or sincere?

CONCLUSION

In conclusion we find that if a contemporary artist wants be sincere they either find a way outside of post-modernism to say that they are being sincere. Or they become ironic about their sincerity, which to any artist genuinely wanting to creating impressionist or modernist works would be rather upsetting, wherein if an artist is to paint in an old or ‘dated’ style, such as previously mentioned contemporary romanticist Jack Vettriano, they are going to be thought of doing so ironically, thus entering themselves into a catch-22.

The one thing that it becomes impossible to do is be sincere about your sincerity, at least within the contemporary art world. Post-modernism’s scorn at retrograde styles creates a problem, wherein it is the un-idea of those works that becomes scorned at, as in, those working in a retro style are more often than not being entirely sincere, therefor it’s sincerity that becomes frowned upon and not the aesthetic step backwards. The post-modernist belief that those who are being sincere are automatically considered to be unaware and ignorant to contemporary shifts within the art-world.

REFERENCES

Booth, W.C. (1974). A Rhetoric of Irony. 2 edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. P5-6. P16. P23.

Foster Wallace, D (1993). E Unibus Pluram. The Review of Contemporary Fiction reprinted in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (2010) p81. P68. New York: Little Brown & Co.

Holden, A (2003) Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity, [Internet], http://www.metamodernism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/MIMS.jpg Accessed November 2014.

Hyde, L (1987). Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking. American Poetry Review reprinted in the Pushcart Prize anthology for 1987, Dallas: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Irony (2014) Definition of Irony [Internet] available at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony Accessed November 2014

Paula Cooper Gallery, (2005) Statement on Rudolf Stingel exhibition [Internet], http://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/26 , Accessed November 2014.

Picabia, F (Author) Lowenthal, M (Translator) (2012), I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocation. Massachusetts: The MIT Press

Sincerity (2014) Definition of Sincerity [Internet] available at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sincerity Accessed November 2014

Previous Next

— jdemeta

Review: subboreal – childhood’s end

2017 Onwards: The Unwanted Burroughs Novel.

Ruiner, Land and the Failure of Vidya

Review: Canned Meat – Soundtrack for Over-the-Counter Pharmaceuticals

The Great Bore

Short Critique of the Left/Right Spectrum

On Idle Chatter

Review: Nishiki Prestige – XOXO

No Driver at the Wheel

Between Irony & Sincerity

About Blogum

Recent entries

Categories

Recent comments