Symbols and Signs

Via. Rebel News

How can we decrease the commodification of these empty signifiers? We can continue to build spaces, both virtual and material, that can be utilized by people who share common goals. We can continue to evolve as people and avoid over-identification with easy to replicate symbols of identity. Our interests and digital footprint aren’t who we are. We mustn’t let the map of our identities — personal or social — become the territory. But the border skirmishes on that map are never ending.

 

This is far from easy. Products themselves have become secondary, as symbols have overtaken the things they symbolized. Fight Club parodied this tendency as the “Ikea nesting impulse.” This is a challenge of modern life, but it’s hardly a singular observation. Guy Debord’sSociety of The Spectacle, now a standard text amongst neo-Marxists and counterculturists alike, deals with this matter in nearly aphoristic style,

The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life brought into the definition of all human realization the obvious degradation of being into having. The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing, from which all actual “having” must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function. At the same time all individual reality has become social reality directly dependent on social power and shaped by it. It is allowed to appear only to the extent that it is not.

We live in a culture where appearances count for a lot more than reality, and so it is little surprise that we may have a hard time actually making this distinction. We are what we seem. When Ludwig Feuerbach wrote the introduction to the 2nd edition of his The Essence of Christianity, he was speaking to Hegel and Marx’s world, the rapidly industrializing 19th century. But he may as well have been speaking of the present,

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence … illusion only is sacred, truth profane.

Symbols of success matters more than the things they represent. The symbol becomes the value, rather than the thing signified. The sports car, the expensive watch, the designer suit are all, from a utilitarian perspective, equally or even less valuable than items half their cost. Though luxury items such as these are said to cost more because of increased craftsmanship – which may well be true – the customer is still buying them because they are symbols of wealth and success. To have either of these on their own is not enough; the symbols are of greater value. We are performing wealth at one another. Though this seems harmless enough in itself, a common indulgence of the upper class, it is the same mis-match of value (weighing the symbol over what is represented) that characterizes the ennui of our lives. Nihilist Arby’s quite simply wouldn’t make sense as a joke if we didn’t grasp this on an implicit level.

  Read Full Article for Glorious Revolutions series.  

All It Takes Is The Right Story. Mythos Media

A Group of One's Own: Full Circle

Much of this comes from rough drafts that inspired a piece in The Immanence of Myth. This is an important post re: the intent and future of this site so please read on...

Art is a medium of personal and cultural revolution. 

How do myths of progress and individuality effect our perspective of art and creativity? Though we regarded it from a macro- level in PrettySuicide Machine, I would like to turn our attention back to the micro- level: specifically the myths that we have of artistic progress, which we can then fold back into some of the larger issues of progress within Western, which is to say, industrialized and capitalist, culture. It is impossible that the myths that structure the place of art within the world should not similarly structure our views of value and commodity, or perhaps it could be flipped around and remain the same.

    Let's consider: it is a common conception that breakthroughs in science, philosophy and the arts have all come about through critical analysis of an established corpus of previous works, and that the process is a gradual one. This is a myth cemented in the natural methodology of teaching art history, or history in general: we assume a gradual progress from one point to the next through time, carrying up to the present day. Perhaps the rate of progress accelerates or slows down, whether through the convergence or divergence of trade routes, the friction and choke points of information of culture in the formation of cities, or the growth of an arts culture in a certain location, (not unlike a bacterial culture) and so on. But we imagine that we can safely assume that this Hegelian myth of gradual synthesis is a sound one. “In all ways we have Progressed, and this progression is towards some end,” so says the teleological myth. Let's proceed with it, but also consider the possibility that, like all myths, it is also misleading.

    It also follows that wherever we have a prevailing myth of “the artist,” rather than a tradition of artisans and skilled tradesman that attempt to do nothing beyond furthering and perfecting traditional methods, the real breakthroughs occur in the hands of rare individuals who change the playing field in varying degrees. Through figures such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, or Ornette Coleman, blues and jazz were transformed into bebop and free jazz. They all had varying experience in the traditions that came before, but all of their contributions are measured in the uniqueness of their own voice, and how the addition of that voice forever changed the tune afterward. An artist is often somewhere between a medium and a curator, picking which elements in the screaming cacophony around us to focus on, to enlarge or elaborate upon, or to rail against. What was Hunter Thompson's mode? What's yours? The emphasis on the role of artist in this process, which really involves everyone engaged within a particular social domain, is clearly something valued in Western culture, even if it is also feared by the conservative elements of that culture. (If a conservative perspective is one that seeks to be backwards facing, emphasizing and idealizing the importance of tradition rather than revolution.)

    We simply don't find the same emphasis on an artist as a unique individual, at least as the rule, in traditional tribal cultures of South America, or in many Asian cultures before Western values began to take hold. (Through it does crop up in various forms of guru worship, which is probably a variation on a similar theme.)

Human Demonology: Your Creative Impulse

Life emerges from arrangements of matter and chemistry through a process that can't be traced from the properties of the physical component parts it inhabits. A similar phenomenon is the kind of artist who changes culture and how a society sees itself. This artist emerges from a complex of education, organization, rule enforcement and millions of points of sensory input. What is thrown at an individual for the sake of socialization is a set of base materials that may to some extent be woven into the body of this artist's work, but the living quality of expression arises as a new state that could not be calculated or predicted as a combination of this input. This impulse for creation and mutating the consciousness of humanity is like another layer of the chaos that expresses itself in the property that animates and mutates matter. This is a force so unstoppable that every jurisdictional, organizational and mode of indoctrination and application of force is ultimately put in place to keep it at bay. Alpha humans of every age in positions that can decide the fate of nations, whether they got there through action or accident, have a compulsive need to have things arranged as they want them and to envelop humanity in cryogenic deep freeze when they succeed in imposing their ideal.

With a certain density of human population on a planet, only so much freedom is possible. In fact, most people in recorded history have lived under terrible oppression. It is a part of modern western mythology that growing freedom is destiny, but it is taken  or scammed away so easily, that one might wonder if human tendency is in the opposite direction. Most things can be controlled in society and in a majority of individuals with little directive energy once set in motion, but the creative impulse can't ever be completely eradicated, and it doesn't take a huge endeavour to upset the whole arrangement. If this impulse is channelled less through culture and custom it comes out in twisted forms, commonly the SNAFU principle.

The Underworld of the Periphery: Countercultures of the Future

Those that just don't fit, the underclass or outcast, those of the periphery, the counter-culture -- these are popular topics around here, and for good reason,

"Peripheries are often border zones where peoples or things are thrown into unexpected contact, hybrid spaces yielding new possibilities for social and cultural organization."

Think of the musical genres, poetic innovations, and linguistic creoles of the Caribbean; or think of the social “margins” or the “queer periphery,” where disenfranchisement and stigmatization give rise to relatively free experimentation in social practices and cultural life. Though centers may seem more advanced or more privileged than peripheries, decisive change and innovation often begin at the fringes. Yet the very tendency toward difference and transformation out on the margins often meets with a violent reimposition of norms from the center: Soviet tanks rolling into Prague, or the Janjaweed and Sudanese military sweeping through Darfur, or the police descending on Stonewall.

There must be a place where this power may, to borrow from these spatial metaphors, centralize, without fearing this kind of backlash from those who would be the center, after all it is often the demigod who descends to the underworld that doesn't want the keys to the kingdom. "You can have it!" they cry, but the dispossessed nevertheless seek solace in the company of other lone wolves, were-wolves, or beings of both worlds.

This site is such a place, even this post (or the links in it) doorways to ideas that might germinate, and as always, help you "find the others."

The countercultures of the future are already being born and are parts of the future’s new markets. 

It can therefore be an advantage to know what to expect from them. They stand up against greed and religion, burst the boundaries of biology, and expand the idea of anarconomy still further. We bring a translated excerpt from the new book Modkultur – fra undergrund til bundlinje (Counterculture – from underground to bottom line).

Present-day countercultures differ from those of the past in one important way. In the past, if you were part of a counterculture, you were in all the way, and it was unthinkable that you could also be part of another counterculture. In the England of the 1960s, you could be mod or rocker, but not both. The hippie culture from the late 1960s involved a strong identity – one which didn’t immediately combine well with other countercultures like e.g. the equally colourful gay culture. This is not how it is today. The number of countercultures has grown immensely, but it isn’t unusual to be part of several and to form your identity from an unique blend of the countercultures and subcultures you choose to be part of. Many young people are situals – individuals that like social chameleons change surface identity according to the situation they are in. One and the same person can easily be goth, trekkie and vegan, and still also be part of the live-action role-playing circuit.
Many things suggest that future countercultures will be even more complex in a future where the entire world is connected via a ubiquitous network of wireless internet and virtual worlds. The critical mass of individuals needed to make a counterculture viable and vibrant does not have to be limited to any particular physical location, but can be spread all over the world.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Orpheus and the Underworld

A long piece today from newtopiamagazine on the various incarnations of Orpheus through history:

For generations historians believed that western civilization began in ancient Greece. Today historians have the evidence to support the testimony of the ancient Greeks themselves, that other cultures, especially the ancient Egyptian, gave Greece important inspiration and key ideas about religion. But thanks to the works of Plato and Aristotle, the comedies of Aristophanes and the tragedies of Aeschylus in many ways we can still view ancient Greece as the flashpoint where the inferno of the western world began. We can also look to Greece for the earliest known significant counterculture in western history.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

The Internet and Counterculture (Acidexia Intro)

As all the chatter about the “2012 end of the world” dissolves back into the white noise from whence it came, we are still presented a unique vantage point. We can look at once backward and forward on cultural trends, cresting and falling so quickly that in mere decades we can see patterns emerging that may have taken hundreds of years to arise before the advent of digital communication.

Of course, there’s no way a thorough investigation of any trend is going to happen here in the length of an introduction, within the time it takes me to sip my way through a mocha. But that is telling of these times as well. As Palahniuk observed through the mouthpiece of Tyler Durden in his seminal book Fight Club, we are all “single serving size friends, here.” (And is it also a sign of counter cultural mentality that a reference to a book and movie just a decade out of the gates might be considered hackneyed or out of date?) Our observations must also be single serving size, crammed into a 140 character tweet, or a 350 word blog post.

The Cult of Personality: Charlie Sheen, Layne Staley, Tiger Blood In Our Veins

The past day I've been on a jag about reality art. Well, I've been on about it for a lot longer than that, but I've been tracking down a particular pattern the past few days. So check it out.

Maybe it began from working on Clark the past few months. The levels of fiction within reality within fiction with that project are getting downright absurd, to the point that I don't think I could coherently explain it. (Which is alright, since I haven't coherently explained anything since 95 when that kid gave me this tab of paper and asked me if I wanted to "take a ride." No clue how I would fit on a piece of paper that small but...)

Here's the second episode of Clark. There were 8 in season one so if you like it, watch the other ones before we revamp them in surround sound and work Jabba the hut into the background of every scene so we can say it was "DIGITALLY REMASTERED." Cause so far it wasn't "mastered" at all. (As Kool Keith sagely said, "I get real raw. Change arrangements on your face.")



But maybe it was also watching I'm Still Here. Maybe it was the realization I've had for years that there are layers within layers when it comes to persona, especially when it is embodied in media, and those that know how to dance between the layers are the real enigmas, manifesting the trickster archetype of our times. We think of Andy Kaufman. We think of Hunter S Thompson, or maybe Crispin Glover. Ego, in its classical rather than common sense, is more or less unchanging. The "feeling" of being me, the eye that perceives me, seems more or less the same now as it did back in 95. Persona, though? That's as mutable as the contexts we are immersed in. And media, like myth, adds halls of mirrors.

There are many other versions of these tragicomedies that are less self-apparent than Kauffman or Hunter. For instance, there was the seemingly sudden explosion of "grunge" music into the mainstream, an explosion which carried all of these misfit outsider artists into the limelight, so they could dance like puppets on David Letterman.  (Who has either been gaffed by almost every single trickster I mentioned above - for example - or who has secretly orchestrated quite a few reality-art pieces. I'm guessing the latter, either way it's the gap-toothed douchebag act that he pulls off so well whenever a guest does something unexpected that makes it work. "David Letterman, meet Clark!")

Grunge "Fashion"

It's not like they wore flannel originally to be stylish. It was cold, they were broke as fuck, and junk is expensive. The things that made grunge "cool" was how raw and outsider it was, though of course as usual the moment it became marketable, the end was nigh. It was surreal for me, even back in the 90s when I was a wee lad, I felt some kind of unease, an inkling of the surreal, seeing a heroin-infused, already nearly skeletal Layne Staley openly singing one of his suicide notes on MTV award shows and late night broadcast television. Kurt Cobain was the same story, and I'm not sure how different the core myth is from Janice, or Hendrix, or Morrison, or... So my thing is, when these guys are playing through networks of corporate shills, does no one listen to lyrics? Of course not, they know what they're into. I'm not saying that anyone could have gone out there and said, "So uh. Hey Layne...all this talk about blowing your brains out and shooting heroin, I guess you're not feeling so good, huh?" Or if they did, that it'd create his "come to Jesus moment." Like, "Wow! I guess you're right. I've been pretty depressed, huh? And you're all feeding off of it!"

No. No one is going to say that. And in a culture where we are spending billions on a war on drugs with one hand, with the other, we're shilling Junkhead which gets about as explicit as you possibly can. (Remember the days when Jim Morrison caused a stir by saying "higher" on the Ed Sullivan show? Me either.)

I mean, I'm all for legalizing many drugs for a variety of reasons, I'm just saying that our cultural hypocrocy is palapable. Always look to the bottom line. Who does the war on drugs benefit? And who does the idolization of outsider-drug-culture-rock-star myth benefit?

The so-called "majors" saw an opportunity to market to disaffected youth through the voices of some other disaffected youth, and fuck the body count. Which is the least of the issue in regard to corporate interest, as we've discussed on this blog many times before. I'm certainly not trying to moralize. It is only inevitable that some talented and some truly insane or tragically scarred individuals would try to play hopscotch into the public mind. For some of us, it might be our only ticket to a brief moment of "living the dream" before we've got to pay the toll. As I've said before, in the end the mob will only be satisfied to see your bloody sacrifice. But first, for a time, you can be King For A Day. You know the deal: today, virgins and feasts. All the kids can project their angst and suffering on you. Tomorrow, the volcano will have you, and they can grow up and get to work.
(Shortly after writing this, Alice In Chains bassist Mike Starr died.)



There's a train-wreck in effect right now that brings this to light. Yeah, you've probably heard about it.

Charlie Sheen's brilliantly insane rants on national TV are making Tom Cruise's couch hopping seem like light calisthenics, and Mel Gibson just seems like a bellicose retard by comparison. I normally could give a damn about pop or mainstream culture, and the tabloids are clearly bastions of high-order thinking, but I can't take my eyes off this particular train wreck, though it's not quite like rubbernecking at an accident.

No, it's simply because it is making me laugh so hard that I'm crying. Maybe I'm just a cruel hearted asshole, but the lines this guy is dropping are almost as good as the ones he's been snorting up his nose.

I always thought Charlie Sheen was a no-talent hack riding the coattails of his father, who is by all rights an incredibly talented - and multifaceted - actor. I honestly never gave him much thought. Now I'm beginning to wonder if he just missed his calling: he's been trying to do mainstream sit com schlock when he should be doing Gonzomentary improv. Finally he is heeding that creative calling, to be the jester-lunatic- now that he's got the platform to leverage. And watch us sacrifice him on the altar when his time comes. (Not that he's not sticking his own head on the block and screaming "DO IT!" Joaquin Phoenix or River Phoenix? We'll see...)

Vote with your money

The most powerful vote you get in this society is with your $: don't look for "deals", look at sustaining the business models you stand behind.

Though in a less black and white sense you can also vote for one business over another who are equally "conscientious", but where you prefer the methodology or even aesthetic of one over another. My point is we should think less just about the immediate personal benefit (this costs less here) and more about the systems we are sustaining and starving.

An example that comes to mind... there was this awesome cafe with a mini free library, essentially, hookahs-- an awesome place to hang out in what was otherwise a cultural wasteland. But it died because people would buy one coffee & stay 8 hours, whereas at starbucks people buy & leave, buy & leave. Everything about the business, from architecture on out, is constructed to re-enforce this model. You can say the biz model of #1 was flawed, but put the emphasis on the consumers consciousness of their participation in a system, and the resposibility becomes ours.

In other words, if we live in a corporate cultural wasteland, it's only because we have collectively chosen for it to be so, albeit in a passive, seemingly unintentional way. It is the aggregate of seemingly tiny choices that often determines the large-scale changes. The purpose of marketing is ultimately to fulfill consumer need- biz acts to make all elements of the process homogenized & easily reproducable because then it is easier to predict & strategize-- but that only works when human behavior is predictable. This makes cultural homogenization a benefit from a corporate standpoint-- and this ties into a sub-topic of the marketing takeover of the counterculture but that we will return to on another day...

All of this is toppled if individuals are unique, unpredictable & think for themselves. So those traits are poison from the standpoint of big biz sustainability. But for the sustainability of humanity, & the planet--- see where I'm going?

I'm disinterested in showy protest that accomplishes nothing. real change is accomplished through the cumulative, day-to-day actions of everyone.

This is a topic that comes up in the presently fragmented notes and essays I'm currently calling The Immanence of Myth (PDF).

A quote from a relevant section on the topic:

All products and their associated myths, (people in advertising speak fairly openly about developing the “story” of the brand, which is the brand's myth), have to find a home within the lives and thoughts of the market. If people demand organic products, companies will meet that demand. Though the proliferation of Yoga, organic food, specialty food products, high quality imports, and the like are being supplied to an increasing degree by the “evil empire,” it is also a sign that consumers have much more power in their hands than they realize. In fact, within the market framework, they have all the power. They just don't realize it, and often don't seem to have the willpower or where-with-all to wield it.67

(FN 67 Along with that power, of course, comes a responsibility that most consumers are unwilling to take on. For instance, though it is perhaps easy to complain about the quality of Hollywood movies today, if people stopped going to see them, Hollywood would very quickly work to develop a new formula. If people recognize that, good or bad, within a capitalist society your dollar is possibly an even stronger form of “voting power” than what is exercised in the voting booth. How many “green” Americans complain about Wallmart and then go there the next day?)

Instead, many people live as shills to various corporate myths because they quietly choose to. If your life revolves around how the shoes you wear define you as a person, or which line of body spray is most likely to get you laid, you’ve turned yourself into a patsy. The only way out of this cycle for the consumer is to
take control of their choices. The only way out for the myth-maker is to create, and forget about trying to be original.

culture de tragédie (preview)

Inspired by the alternative beauty pageant "Miss Catwalk Tragedy" this 134 page, full color 8.5" x 11" collection features some of the country's top alternative photographers and a few promising newcomers.

Features:

• Lithium Picnic


• Kyle Cassidy


• Jeff Cohn


• Scott Church


• S. Jenx


• And many others! (See full credit list on the purchase page.)

Look for an interview on Alterati.com with photographer S. Jenx about this collection in coming weeks, covering what inspired him to curate this collection, his own photographic process, and knowing us, probably a lot more.

Inside Scoop On The Outside Culture

Last year, I and the editorial team ran over 500 articles on Alterati on topics as far reaching as sexuality and culture, underground art, event reports, black metal, ... teletubbies. A year of digging off the beaten path, and I must say, the best job I've had to date. 

I just wanted to highlight some of the ones I wrote that I thought might be most entertaining, since it is quite likely you missed at least some of them. (Unless, of course, if you're one of the people who signed up to the RSS feed and read religiously.) 

Sex/Culture/Etc.

A Crime Against Self: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=495 

Excuse Me, Who Are You? Perfect Blue Review: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1489 

Deep Puddle Dynamics: Alex Grey's CoSM: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=118 

Redefining The Real: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1206 

Hacking At The Roots: (tales from the forest) http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=830 

Wake Up Neo: There Is No Counterculture, You Twit: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=25

The Dark Side Of A Culture: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1761 

Why I Pay For Showtime: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1550

Interviews:

Drawing Outside The Lines: Interview With David Mack: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1295 

Alchemical Wedding: Interview with David Aronson: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=803 

Keys To Success: Interview with Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1629 

Broken Saint: Interview with Brooke Burgess of Broken Saints: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=99 

Sex & Fashion: Interview with Jeff Cohn: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=81 

First Fridays (art scene):

First Fridays: Phoenix: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=226 

First Fridays: The Ghosts of the Ellen Powell Tiberino Museum: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=438 

First Fridays: Say Something: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1330 

Post-Genre Blues (music):

Post-Genre Blues: Back To The Folk http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1338 

Post-Genre Blues: The Death Of A Scene: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=957 

Post-Genre Blues: The Fragile Army: http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=799 

Post-Genre Blues: Fusion http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=603 

Because the video linking process changed, unfortunately many of the old embedded videos no longer work (you have to hunt through altertube for them.) 

I'd like to fix that at some point, updating the code in the articles, but I seriously doubt I'll have the time... I still occasionally run articles on Alterati but I've kind of moved on, at least for the time being, to other endeavors when it comes to the bulk of my time and energy. Wes has taken the helm. Nevertheless, there is a lot of content hiding in Alterati from the past year.