[spectre] [joy division] She's lost control again?
Lachlan Brown
lachlan@london.com
Wed, 28 Aug 2002 18:55:11 +0000
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2002 23:27:56 +0000
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de
Subject: [spectre] [joy division] She's lost control again
> Well, lets ask Anthony Wilson... .
>
> Lachlan wrote:
>
> > I recognised the discourse of contemporary digital culture in Europe in
> > the aesthetics of North West English take on existentialism (it lasted a few
> > months in 1978 [The Fall, Joy Division etc.]) an aesthetic flirtation with
> >nihilism/fascism.
> >
> > 'The human character contains both a light and a dark side, good and bad,
> > individually manifested. Deeply rooted is a dark-sided
> > element: Violence.' - Violence Festival. http://somewhere-in-darkest-europe.com
> >
> >
> > "White on black, White on white, Echoed voices bouncing off the buildings around..."
> > This is my place for all things Joy Division. "This is the way, step inside." Use the
> > menu bar to begin your exploration into the light and into the darkness of inexpressible
> > love and hate.
> >
> > A 'Joy Division' website.
>
> > >I think the lines you are quoting from the Joy Division
> > > song, is Atrocity Exhibition on the Closer album (1980,
> > > not 1978).
> > > AVs
>
> I think I know a little more about Joy Division than you do AvS at but lets ask
> Tony Wilson. He'll recall the emergence of disturbing fascist tendencies
> in subculture in the late 70s as he put the Sex Pistols on BBC-TV.
> He also anticipated Manchester's post-punk nihilism.
>
> Tony, among many others, helped channel these 'techno-fascist' tendencies
> from Existential Angst to -- 'It's alright to Dance, Ian.' -- the Joys of English
> Socialism, dedicated to the entirely problematic life as well as the work of Marx
> but applied to the realities of the world that neither Marx nor Engels knew.
> The imperfect and imperfectable work. It's all in the striving.
>
> African Dub Reggae via Jamaica had a part to play too as I recall.
>
> Got white people dancing.
>
> Someone should make a film about it, heh.
>
> Lachlan
>
> ---
>
> Hi Tony,
>
> I expect Industrial Revolution 2 is still networking? Some great opportunities
> for European content developers in the North West of England with the recent
> business development grant for broadband content development and delivery, and
> these funds tie in nicely to the Ministry of Culture's 'delivering culture online'
> programme. I expect this is due in part to entrepreneurial work carried out
> in Liverpool and Manchester in 2001 with 'Industrial Revolution 2'! As well as
> the unseen work of many others in North West England. No immediate results,
> but there never are and the work eventually emerges into a culture that the work
> seems always to have already shaped.
>
> The reason I am writing is that I am 'intervening' (some call it 'marketing'
> some call it cultural politics) in a European digital arts
> list called SPECTRE - 'there is a spectre haunting europe etc. etc.'
> http://post.openoffice.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre - which includes
> around 700 arts curators, artists and techno-hacker-lurkers (the worrying ones)
> who have some influence in the present direction of digital culture, art
> and cultural politics. They are networked to many other arts, tactical media, and
> industry lists.
>
> I am disturbed by some of the naive 'technofascist' tendencies in the digital
> arts and media culture, which were also visible inthe internet industry early on:
> anxieties over 'social inclusion' naive racism including negative representations
> of Blacks and so on, and I must say I am not the only one troubled by this.
>
> The culture appears to be approaching a condition of existential angst in which
> artists and curators appear to be going to the lyrics of Joy Division songs for their
> inspiration.
>
> They don't seem to be familiar with the Joy Division message.
>
> There's even a conference planned dedicated to the ubiquity of violence
> based on a binary distinction in the human character 'light/dark' 'good/bad'
> which seems to be a part of a debate presently being carried out among radicals
> internationally about the direction of art and politics in Europe and possibly elsewhere.
>
> I mean, we've been here before haven't we?. I well recall the apparent 'impass of being'
> in existentialism especially in Cheshire (where the skies are often drab and cheerless
> but sometimes the clouds unfold magnificently) some decades back.
>
> I mean, citing Camus and Satre, isn't there a pathway through Existential angst to
> a heightened (if impossible to acheive) sense of social engagement that was embodied
> in the dance Ian Curtis introduced to the world? I am presently listening to 'She's Lost
> Control Again' (second John Peel session, of course).
>
> Some call Ian's dance 'robotic', and this parallels a drift from interconnectivity and
> social intercourse to a focus on the formal 'robotic' and mathmatical 'AI' aspects
> of digital culture, but wasn't Ian's dance passionate? An ecstasy of innovation?
> Didn't it break through existential angst and the repressive techno to speak of love?
>
> If you think your own existence is surplus to creation, what are you to think of the
> existence, the rights and the happiness of others? This was Ian's dance and Ian's
> protest right? At least that was my reading of it in Erics in 1978.
>
> I mean, I suppose my very long winded question is: it's alright for the European
> techno-lurkers to dance isn't it? Stepping-up rather than 'stepping out' through
> violence to themselves or to others. Break beat rather than Breakdown?
>
> I mean, it gets hot, but its a dry heat isn't it?
>
>
> Lachlan
> in
> Toronto
>
> > >
> > > >I recognised the discourse of contemporary digital culture in Europe in
> > > >the aesthetics of North West English take on existentialism (it lasted a few
> > > >months in 1978 but the response through the experience lasted a
> > > lot longer) [Fall, Joy Division etc.] an aesthetic flirtation with nihilism/fascism.
> > >
> > > >think the lines you are quoting from the Joy Division
> > > song, is Atrocity Exhibition on the Closer album (1980,
> > > not 1978).
> > > -AvS
> > >
> > >
> > > Lachlan Brown
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > T(416) 826 6937
> > > VM (416) 822 1123
> > >
> > > summary:
> > > Violence Online Festival is a New Media art project
> > > realized with cooperation between
> > > NewMediaArtprojectNetwork and CESTA, an international arts
> > > organization in Tábor and host to the VioLENS festival
> > > (August 22-26, 2002). The Violence Online Festival is
> > > curated, organized and created in Flash by
> > > Agricola de Cologne, curator and media artist operating
> > > from Cologne/Germany. Both festivals complement each
> > > other: VioLENS in Tábor, a festival focused interdisciplinary
> > > and international artistic collaborations,
> > > and Violence Online, a festival focused
> > > on digital and New Media art. Both have in
> > > common the goal to reflect the phenomenon known as
> > > violence.
> > > ***********************************
> > >
> > > introduction:
> > > The human character contains both a light and a dark side, good and bad,
> > > individually manifested. Deeply rooted is a dark-sided
> > > element: Violence.
> > > In happy surroundings, it becomes hardly visible and in
> > > less happy surroundings - either of a physical, psychological,
> > > environmental, ideological, economic or political nature -
> > > nearly automatically a kind of survival
> > > strategy with all the known consequences we see
> > > manifested in conflicts on a small or large scale.
> > > Violence is present anywhere, hidden or sleeping,
> > > hesitating, waiting or in action, starting from simple
> > > mobbing via verbalor physical attacks, the bandwidth has no end.
>
>
> try: newordernl@boxnetwork.net
> > >
> --
>
Lachlan Brown
T(416) 826 6937
VM (416) 822 1123
--
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