fig. 1. ‘Possible worlds’ by antyphayes, 2022 (right click for larger version of collage).
POSSIBLE WORLDS (Epilogue Written Amid the Ruins)
He was a young man, here to cut up a National Geographic,
to come to another destination, maybe the double life of avant-garde earth stations, and shopping
anywhere, any time.
“How can it be solved?”
Now, because this world, this world of electronic satellite communications
is a poor river,
a closed-loop of the monstrous, monotonous, across which
we move incessantly, cheeks with thorny sticks and charged with promise,
at least in part, the world’s greatest
you is crushed for industrial use,
what a way to go,
an ode to a stalk of the urban proletariat.
Born of Kings and Stars.
I made ‘Possible worlds’ in 2022. But my obsession with the image is longer lived, snaking all the way back to a day in the early 1980s when I found the National Geographic from which I stole the base image in a sleepy second hand bookstore in Hurstville, Sydney.
The image is from 1969. It represents the then stunning view of automation and what-not coming in the near future. I recall being somewhat fascinated and disappointed that the 1970s and 80s I grew up in bore only a passing resemblance to such images of a happy, technological future.
Jump forward a few decades and all that remains of that issue is the much cut-up and cut-out remnants. Indeed, this base image, which I had rescued from the bin and stuck together (it was originally a two page spread), was itself showing its age–or at least its wear. The left side is the result of my immaculate archiving.
The base image has been subtly altered. The poem, screed, etc., that accompanies it is composed of choice words and phrases taken from the abundant results of industrial cultural production. It is featured in a recent zine of poems I published in 2022: sexpoem. I will make a pdf available of this in a few days. But in the meantime, check out this review of said zine by Gerald Keaney.
The last two lines, “an ode to a stalk of the urban proletariat. Born of Kings and Stars” is as much about me as it is about you. We all find ourselves the unfortunate denizens of a proletarian age, in which capital, capitalism, the commodity-spectacle, what have you, has either made us over into the proles it needs to produce and consume , or–once ruined or rendered superfluous to capital’s needs–so much human material carelessly thrown onto the scrapheap. Perhaps a more sane future will realize the melancholic truth of this era: it is a proletarian age in which even stupid capitalists are reduced to mere appendages of powers they barely understand.
Perhaps one day we will build a suitably pathetic Statue For A Proletarian Age–not in commemoration, but only to recall the living nightmare that briefly and disastrously took hold before the dawn of a truly human society.
A world that still remains to be built.
This has been another Collage Tuesday post on Wednesday…
fig. 1. Who are the enemies of poetry? All those who use poetry as an end in-itself, not as a means for life and liberation. Which is to say all those who fetishize the poem over poetry itself. Graphic detourned from Frank Hampson’s Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, Rogue Planet, April 1956.
I wrote the following essay for the collection Suddenly Curving Space Time: Australian Experimental Poetry 1995-2015 (Brisbane: non-Euclidean Press, 2016). In the essay I perhaps too briefly and bluntly attempted to outline the radical trajectory of avant-garde and experimental art in the 20th century against what now passes for “avant-garde” and “experimental” in the cynical art markets and cafeterias. If I were to write it today, I would be more forgiving of the original surrealists. Whereas I agree with Guy Debord’s critique of the surrealists, notably that André Breton in effect fetishized the irrationality of unconscious desire as the true font of all human creativity, I would argue that nonetheless the surrealists struggled—and Breton in particular—to distinguish the ongoing surrealist experimental inquiry into new forms of consciousness and everyday practices against its domestication as so many art objects readily commodifiable (particularly of the painterly styles that are now synonymous with ‘surrealism’). I hope to return to the question of this tension among the surrealists—between a properly surrealist practice and its reduction to art-objects—in a future essay.
The thrust of this essay is its call for a new revolutionary practice beyond merely the umpteenth iteration of so-called radical art—or the nth generation of boring political radicalism and reactionary Marxism for that matter. A pox on the artists and the wannabe politicians.
From the essay:
In 1957 when the situationists kicked off their experiments in living and ‘unitary urbanism’ they saw themselves as starting from the bases the surrealists had already staked out in 1924. Today we need to start again from the bases that the situationists established in 1968; and the surrealists in 1924; and the Dadas in 1916; and etc. However such bases are merely points of departure not closed projects to be emulated repetitively or ironically. In today’s world in which the look of surrealism has triumphed throughout popular culture, the original surrealists desire for a new way of living beyond the mundanity and horrors of capitalism seems more pertinent. As the situationists argued against their surrealist forebears, what is implicit is in need of being made explicit. It is not enough to limit our experiments to art alone. To the extent that our appropriations remain purely artistic—as poems, paintings, and even more process based conceptual works—is the extent to which we will be defeated and recuperated. The surrealists never tired of explaining: there is no poetry for the enemies of poetry. And poetry for the surrealists, beyond their paintings and poems, was synonymous with the playful creation and recreation of life itself.
Anthony Hayes Canberra, April 2021
To experiment with the creation of everyday life
Today in the worlds of artistic production and consumption the adjectives “experimental” and even “avant-garde” are used most often to describe works that are perceived to be formally different to more “mainstream” or conventional artistic modes of production (see Gerald Keaney’s introduction for more details with regard to written poetry). However such a formal definition of “experimental” often masks the historical roots of the terms use among the artistic avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century. For instance, both the terms “experimental” and “avant-garde” were deliberately used in order to evoke an association with the communist and anarchist political avant-gardes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and their experiments in new forms of social life. The present use of “experimental” often bears little resemblance to its avant-garde origins, having become a “floating signifier” of sorts (to use a phrase derived from semiotic theory). This is not necessarily a bad thing; however, it is worth considering why such a de-contextualisation took place and whether or not we should attempt to infuse once more contemporary artistic practices with the “experimental” utopianism from which it so obviously descends.
In the early 20th century, some artists in Europe and then elsewhere in the world styled themselves “experimental” and “avant-garde”. At the time such declarations were not merely in relation to the formal experiments in the arts—such as the various experiments with poetic and novelistic form (e.g. Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Mallarmé, Joyce) and in painting and other plastic arts (e.g. Cezanne, Picasso, de Chirico, Giacometti). In addition to their startling formal playfulness, these artistic experimenters pictured themselves in the avant-garde of a social upheaval they saw all around—the rapid transformation and creation of a global society via the spread of capitalism and in particular the forces which opposed it. In 1917 the poet Apollinaire would call this the ‘New Spirit’.
The first self-professed avant-gardists, the Futurists, declared their art in keeping with the terrific technical development evinced by Industrial society, and to be in advance of the lagging culture of their day. However, their avant-garde ended in the decidedly archaic celebration of fascist brutality (though the Russian Futurists fared better, caught up in the brief cultural efflorescence in the wake of the Russian Revolutions of 1917). It was left to other contemporaries, notably German Expressionists, Russian Futurists, and various Dadas and surrealists, to draw out the potentially explosive and progressive nature of such artistic experimentation. The surrealists in particular declared themselves “determined to make a revolution” in order to break apart all the fetters of the mind, “even if it must be by material hammers!” (in their Declaration of 27 January 1925). However, the surrealists fell prey to the confusion of their times, in particular the enervating results of the Russian Revolution and the effective burial of the international working class movement by Stalinism. Capped off by the fascist counter-revolution of the 1920s and 30s, the brutal destruction of the Spanish Revolution by Franco, Hitler and Stalin, and the hitherto undreamt-of destruction of the Second World War, the new world fashioned on the backs of the industrial proletariat proved itself more resilient to the often solely artistic criticism of art made by these avant-gardists.
The post-1945 world saw the previously controversial styles of the surrealists and Dadas welcomed into the corrosive worlds of the art market and academic dissection, two processes that further stripped the formal achievements of the avant-gardes from their association and attachment to the revolutionary criticism of capitalism. In the 1950s and 60s artists and revolutionists associated with the Situationist International (1957-72) called such processes “recuperation”, pointing to the way then contemporary experiments in artistic form divorced from broader social and political criticism tended to dissipate precisely the social applications of such experimental creation and criticism. Against this “recuperation” the situationists proposed to realise the “revolution of everyday life” that the surrealists had originally proclaimed in the 1920s, but had dissipated in largely artistic ventures and misbegotten fidelities to Stalinism, Trotskyism and the irrationalist mysticism that many surrealists were never able to completely shake off.
The situationists argued that avant-garde artists should focus on the possibilities at hand in contemporary society. Capitalist industrialism and the increasing mechanisation and automation of production had ushered in a material abundance that immediately raised the possibility of a more leisurely and creative existence for all. However, the capitalist and bureaucratic classes East and West enforced a universe of work and militarism as the corollary of this new mass market of commodities (even while many of their ideologues pondered the coming future of automation and leisure). The situationists argued that under such conditions radical artists should focus on two tasks. Firstly, the elaboration of an experimental practice directed toward demonstrating the creative possibilities of contemporary technical and cultural potentialities beyond their capitalist use; and thus, secondly, the development and dissemination of a revolutionary critique of contemporary society which drew upon both the modern artistic and political-philosophical avant-garde movements. Accordingly, it was not enough to ponder the possibilities of automation and leisure, because without a decisive break with capitalist society such processes would be used to enforce new forms of work, unemployment and more marketing opportunities (as we future dwellers know only to well).
In keeping with the idea of the potentialities already present within the capitalist social order the situationists proposed “détournement” as their central method. Derived from the French verb signifying “diversion” and “hijacking”, the situationists argued that the most advanced artists had already used “détournement”—notably the collage and “automatic” techniques pioneered by Cubists, Dadas and surrealists. What they proposed, particularly in the face of the repetitive nature of formal artistic experimentation in the post-war period, was that détournement should be made the key method of the artistic and political avant-gardes. Thus, they later argued that Marx’s early conception of “revolutionary practical, critical activity” could be détourned from the mutilated version that traded under the name of “Marxism”. However, détournement is not simply “appropriation” or “reappropriation”, as some later day postmodernists would like to imagine. For instance, the situationists return to Marx was made alongside of their attempt to understand the nature of the contemporary capitalist spectacle. The situationists used the term “commodity-spectacle” to describe the then new mass consumer markets in commodities that were both the logical development of, and divergent elaboration of the capitalism Marx criticised.
As the 19th century pioneer of détournement, Isidore Ducasse (aka the Comte de Lautréamont), had argued, the creative plagiarism that lies at the heart of all human endeavours cannot be reduced to the mere copying or facile rearrangement of previously fashioned components. Rather, détournement proposed to improve on the original, adapting ideas and repurposing them for current needs.
Ideas improve. The meaning of words plays a role in that improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It closely grasps an author’s sentence, uses his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one.—Isidore Ducasse, Poesies, 1870
The situationist conceived of “détournement” as both the most significant discovery of the artistic avant-gardes of the 19th and 20th centuries, and a sort of “ultima thule” beyond which solely artistic practices could not proceed. What they meant was that most attempts to revolutionise artistic expression (even those that ended in a Dada like anti-art) had effectively exhausted the formal innovation of the arts. Certainly, one could continue with different contents, chiselling away at the already discovered new forms (collage, automatic poetry, the use of found objects, abstraction, etcetera, etcetera). But all that would be achieved would be the elaboration of so many works of art, liable to be sold in the markets for art, or not as the case may be. Instead—and here the situationists clearly drew upon the original sense of “experimental” and “avant-garde” amongst the Dadas, surrealists etc.—experimentation must move away from the impasse of formal experiments and aim at the transformation of everyday life itself. The situationists initially attempted to experiment with the design and use of cities (under the name of ‘unitary urbanism’—see here, and here). Ultimately, they moved beyond this and took aim at the organisation of capitalism itself, helping to usher in the last great revolutionary experiments of the 1970s amidst the festive occupations movement in France in May 1968.
In 1957 when the situationists kicked off their experiments in living and ‘unitary urbanism’ they saw themselves as starting from the bases the surrealists had already staked out in 1924. Today we need to start again from the bases that the situationists established in 1968; and the surrealists in 1924; and the Dadas in 1916; and etc. However, such bases are merely points of departure not closed projects to be emulated repetitively or ironically. In today’s world in which the look of surrealism has triumphed throughout popular culture, the original surrealists desire for a new way of living beyond the mundanity and horrors of capitalism seems more pertinent. As the situationists argued against their surrealist forebears, what is implicit is in need of being made explicit. It is not enough to limit our experiments to art alone. To the extent that our appropriations remain purely artistic—as poems, paintings, and even more process based conceptual works—is the extent to which we will be defeated and recuperated. The surrealists never tired of explaining: there is no poetry for the enemies of poetry. And poetry for the surrealists, beyond their paintings and poems, was synonymous with the playful creation and recreation of life itself.
In order to make poetry dangerous again we must turn our experiments once more to the vast canvas of everyday life.
Below is the veritable psychic blast from the past–from 1997, in Canberra, when Gerald Keaney and I toyed around on the edges of surrealism, situationist inspiration and telekentic art. At the time our main enemies were the organised left and the miserable art ghetto that imagined itself avant-garde. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose...
And so the leaflet “Telekinetic Art Manifesto” was written and distributed. I presume that the telephone number at the bottom of the “leaflet” is no longer functioning.
As Gerald points out below, we are far more skeptical of the possibilities of telekinesis these days. Nonetheless, our sometime Hegelian ramblings still inspire: “It is because possibility is inexorable that rebellion is inevitable. There is no such thing as the sublime, only the possibility of liberation.” All else is BOREDOM.
This manifesto was written by Anthony Hayes and myself in 1997 under the Bureau Of Revolutionary Experimental Disinterested Oneiric Materialism (B.O.R.E.D.O.M) banner. It was in Canberra. The manifesto interrelates institutional art, (DIY) surrealism, and telekinesis along historic avant-garde lines, i.e. along the lines of the generalisation of creativity via the abolition of capitalism. These days I am much more skeptical about telekinesis, though I wouldn’t deny it is possible. Indeed, here telekinesis stands in as an evocative image of possibility. Belmez and Ted Serios provide illustrations, chosen by me October 2016. – Gerald Keaney
Dated 13 March 1997(?) – this is the date on the recovered file [Ant’s Note].
***
Bureau Of Revolutionary Experimental Disinterested Oneiric Materialism
(B.O.R.E.D.O.M – a division Of Ern Malley Press – who brought you the Revolutionary Poetry Reading in O week.)
The investigation of cultural phenomena is inadequate. You can become interested in, for example, strange unsolved mysteries or spaghetti westerns. But it is not enough to label such things as ‘discoveries’ among our cultural refuse, to be later transformed into aesthetic pre-occupations. Such things are what empires are built on – radioactive empires of decommissioned waste. They provide up and coming artists with marks at art school. They give commercially viable artists selling points. They leave the rest of us with elusive spectacles.
What might strange unsolved mysteries say? Could haunted houses be explained as galleries where subliminally or otherwise, new performances were being enacted, performances so eerie, so frightening, so exciting because they reveal what people are capable of? The faces which appeared on the tiles of a Spanish house in Cordoba in 1972, with an accompanying sound track of muttering voices, was detected and recorded by sensitive microphones – this could be telekinetic art. The same genre championed most brilliantly by Ted Serios, with his telekinetic manipulation of unexposed polaroid slides in controlled experiments and demonstrations. These were monitored repeatedly by groups of hundreds of US scientists in the 50’s and 60’s. Every teenager joins a punk band and has an attendant poltergeist.
Possibility both precedes and follows what is called art. Art is one moment in the inexorable imposition of possibility. It is because possibility is inexorable that rebellion is inevitable. There is no such thing as the sublime, only the possibility of liberation. The sublime is the unity of the life and death instinct in an instant of aesthetic beauty. The time has come to trash the aesthetic.
What could be left? The possibility of human liberation. Rebellious ideas can take some of their most powerful forms from what we are forced to categorise as philosophy and art. And whether such art explores the hopes for the future, whether it bewails the present in the face of such hopes, it is now the receptacle of the highest ambitions of those doomed to drudgery repression, inhibition, boredom, police batons and TV game shows. Only these hopes are explicitly or not so explicitly denied by many artists.
These artists are not just workers in the system – their ability to continue the system, to erase hope, makes them more akin to cops and strike-breakers. Ideally their ‘happenings’ should be picketed, until their natural allies – the police – take the demonstrating anti-poets away. They cling now to their sublime, their holy grails, their lies. They incite boredom, division, diversion. They are the bureaucrats of the imagination, channelling it with their forms – forms they have filled out meticulously, ticking all the right boxes, making sure their form is neat and ironed, their own signature and date of birth at the bottom.
The form is an ordinance which gives permission for a deferment in the payment of potential. A continuing laughable deferment. How parsimonious they are! Everything must go in its place with as much precision as possible. They consider themselves technicians, but really they are more like executives and capitalists. Possibility today can take only one form – that of the elimination of the system where the income of the wealthiest 285 individuals in the world is equal to the combined incomes of the poorest two and a half billion people.
Capitalism leaves no time for living, it is forced to cut education, arts, funding for science, libraries. Its circulation of knowledge is severely impeded by secrecy, copyright and patents. It throws the potential of most people on the scrap heap. And yet the majority of artists simply want to add their commodity to this grisly spectacle. Instead of trying to defer potential into oblivion, join BOREDOM. Our ‘happenings’ are picket lines where education can be saved. We want to channel these situations so that they suit our fondest whims. We care neither for their beauty or their sublime. We are interested rather in inciting riots and strikes. At the same time we investigate the real potentials of the mind; associative, pyschokinetic, onieric and imaginative.
We thus claim the mantle of revolutionary surrealism.
BOREDOM
Ph: 249 2755
sf & critical theory join forces to destroy the present
the sinister science 