Mark Fisher - DIY Conference

I'm going to make a star - to barian everyone at incubator so we probably well organized festival and thanks to everyone for coming to listen today and I hope some of you or most of you were climber Reynolds talk which just happened because in response to that talk basically scrapped what was planning to do and going to at least initially and be developing a sort of series of responses to what to what Simon said and that's partly because of that makes that will make the talk more specific to this sort of DIY thing which I think is is a crucial theme at the moment and the issues that Simon raised in his talk I'm about a politics of DIY and the recuperation of DIY I think crucial at every level at the moment crucial every level and especially in terms of politics and culture and the relationship between the two and relation you know and I think the lot of struggles were engaged in at the moment are you know over precisely the relationship between politics and culture um I mean as I think was clear from Simon's talk that the concept of DIY is one around which as well an attitude of that dialectical ambivalence I think is really required in terms of this concept and especially for me because you know I filmed it not for the only reason but the prime reason that I'm here talking to you today is not because I booked out not because Elektra University's not because I write in and magazines and newspapers and the reason I was able to do all those things at all was because of having a blog in the first place and and you know being able to develop a form of writing which certainly would not have would not in the first instance have been come out as a book it's no way any academic press for the published debt and and certainly wouldn't be acceptable in in British journalism in a moment which is but you know the British media culture is except you know reached a point of truly you know excruciating middlebrow kind of mediocrity but hang on a minute okay so it's just some extent then or to a large extent I own my position as a cultural figure to the DIY coach DIY digital culture but I couldn't just do it myself as it were the reason I was able to develop the kind of writing that I did and wasn't from some internal resources that I happened to have bestowed upon me it was because of a cultural inheritance you know which at which you know I was old enough to have benefited from and that cultural inheritance consists of you know things like um public service television of the 1970 to 1982 in Britain and more it more unlikely in retrospect source of this cultural inheritance it wasn't unlikely at the time but now seems unlikely was the anime new New Musical Express New Musical Express in the seventeen eight-teen I mean it was you know a source of major kind of intellectual ferment it was in the news be an enemy when I first saw the names um Audrey are and David are and it wasn't through the formal education system at all I mean no you know I hated school and didn't do particularly well at school and what drew me in to and to intellectual currents was reading you know that the referred glamour I think that theory acquired from being in the enemy and I put then a contiguous of popular culture and hi Jerry at this particular moment and you know it's really I see myself actually the continuation of this culture in conditions that are massively inhospitable towards towards that culture actually now and read us for in a sense that's what my book capitalist realism was about it was about aniridia and a lot of my work is about and what I plan to do today and what I still may do a little bit of I was reading some hot off the press bits my new book goes of my life and and I really goes to my life in caplets realism are two sides of the same project I think which is a project of revealing the inherent negativity of the moment in which we live and as I was just saying to people before we talked simon was worried after his talk that it was too depressing you know I said to him to talk the talk isn't depressing the reality of depressing you know the the be and this is and you know this is something that I know I sort of struggled with to to realize actually and and faced a lot of hostility with its own loved a lot of very intense debates on blogs that went on were really about this question can one make negative judgment about the present moment or is it or is any kind of critical judgment being exercised about culture somehow inherently oppressive I would say certainly one can make negative judgments about the present moment and the to foot pursuit is dialectical loop to its you know to to its full extent the reason why culture is so bad is there's not enough negativity the motor of and the motor of culture with negativity in dissatisfaction you know like the and if we look back in the 1977 order the punk period the Punk period was full of people who thought they lived in a worse as time ever now this is stranger temporal chauvinism or fines with people today often well a day they want to say no no things are really good why you know what I think part of that is defensiveness about the full extent of how bad things are you know can't become pretty face it actually and speaking personally at that the only reason I was able to cope with them monstrous kind of a kind of monstrous imposition of neoliberal culture was treating as a kind of blip and you know that I thought that the culture that the cultural in a specific content objects I mean a cultural infrastructure the cultural infrastructure I grew up with and therefore taken for granted one thought that would persist and continue forever and that'd be kind of what Dennis Potter the great sort of a TV writer in Britain called it the occupying powers of neoliberalism and they'd taken over you know public service television in Britain you know we all convinced ourselves this was just a temporary thing and things will get better in fact you know things got a hell of a lot worse and and you know if you probably heard that analogy of a frog that gradually is boiled to death by the fact that the temperature goes up at least only slightly and until the point where it's dead and I think this is that this is the situation with with culture were gradually neoliberalism ie the domination of you know massive corporate interests wasn't less for neoliberalism is a code for learning that what corporate interests wanted to do was massively lower expectations about what you could expect from culture well they wanted to do is reduce culture to entertainment again what they wanted to do was have industry moguls just you know as an unbelievable situation has occurred now as now I think with people like Simon Cowell you know acquiring a strange luster you know someone who's eaten Liam brazenly has no cultural acumen whatsoever who's you know all the recommends in is a capacity to you know keep bit keep betting on people's capacity to buy rubbish you know this is you know that and you know something that you couldn't imagine a figure like that you know the lever conservativism required one of their figure like this could become a sort of you know central to popular culture again I think this is a measure of how bad things have got actually and that was the introduction to the introduction you see we're not going to were supposed to be doing but okay was you know one of the things I was really interested in monomers Simon's distinction between the two types of DIY like you know they're kind of cool dimension of DIY to do with it music and culture etc and the more depressing mundane type of DIY you know to do with maintaining your own domestic space and I think really in lots of ways that opposition is of that shift is really one which is emblematic of a general cultural shift and I think you know Simon absolutely right in what he was saying about that this what was radical interesting etc about DIY in the period of punk but as Simon also Illustrated di was nothing new up to Punk you know it's been really the motor engine of popular culture up to that point what was interesting about it and was not just that people were doing stuff you know you know people can do stuff in a been doing stuff throughout history or whatever well what mattered was that the competition for public space and an assignment was just at the end of this talk the concept of public is crucial here and I've also argued a long side of concept of public space and following on from Simon's remarks about the real scarcity now is the scarcity of attention was also crucial is public time public time and where we where we share things together and and you know that is increasingly difficult to acquire that kind of public time and actually to refer to an example that refer to another dimension of the example I just mentioned why is why are things like The X Factor Britain's Got Talent popular because they offer a sort of degraded version of public time and you know this is something to be celebrated actually though you know what people even even a sturdy and ideological blitz of neoliberalism with its emphasis on individualism people still want public time and adult be prepared to put themselves through excruciating me bad karaoke competitions in order to enjoy that public time actually and so that share from remembered when Simon started talking about M DIY has an you know home improvement for whatever I was reminded about heard something probably helped me as a track by M is by either black flag or Henry Rollins called family man where you know it's a kind of spoken word thing where Rollins just lays into the family man we've got is all his nails sorted out in his garage and all of that I think that that antipathy towards interior et domesticity etc and was really crucial actually to kid it to the free son of a post-punk but not more than that so that everything had led up to post-punk post-punk was the swan song of what I call popular modernism in los you know that we'd something at which had develops in a post-war period and and you know it wasn't quite a swan song because I think a lot of the things that Simon eyes remain enthusiastic about in the nineties like you know UK dance music it's you know some sense inherited demand sort of popular modernism but in a part of what I be saying was the really since that start the 21st century brought roughly speaking I think more like a decade ago from now that popular model in the popular modernism has been all but extirpated from culture from mainstream culture and you know I think one thing to also remark upon at this point also in Russells to what Simon said is that you know it's not as if the mainstream has died in you know in fact a to a 30 day x-factor example again we see the mainstream as kind of bigger than ever was in lots of ways and because I mean part of the reason for that is and we don't compete for it anymore we've given up on it you know we in a way you know one way of seeing this DIY cultural dimension of it is it successfully hiders off into spaces where we could gain not not the have melancholy perspective of the new audience underground that Simon talked about but a sufficient audience underground and that allowed really you know when we when we removed ourselves from the Met from the so-called mainstream by the mainstream I'd mean the heart of sort of popular culture and also of parliamentary politics um when we when we moved ourselves from that it's not as if the right wing and thought okay okay well they've left that alone now will will which will will also leave that alone the right wing we're rubbing their hands with glee when we did that trust me and a Fineman are referred to a Joey Dean's work and I think and probably it's Jody more than anybody else who woke me up from this kind of slumber about this kind of thing but you know as judge Jody points out well I think one of the most forceful points is what we call post politics you know it's just the end of our politics the end of the left-wing the on the right wing you know the right wing particularly us we can see the right wing is vociferous ly active in this period that the right wing and also another thing is at the Jody also points out is that we buy on its own terms the promises of a kind of participate ory culture we think things should be open we shouldn't impose stuff on people the right doesn't think that at all the right things okay we've got all these channels available we will impose our agenda on people and that's what they've done they've taken over parliamentary politics and installed rifle capitis realism I bet you know simply to beliefs as an alternative to capitalism and you know specifically an alternative to neoliberal capitalism and they've completely taken over mainstream media with small that's very small increasingly tiny island and where that isn't the case anymore you know when I think it's interesting that the concept of marginality actually and because you know when you when i know spoken to a number of sort of post-punk musicians that were and if they didn't want to be an if they don't want to be top of the independent charts you know they didn't want to be in a tradition of marginality of and you know just talk to Mark CEO of the pop group and he said but we wanted to be the Beatles you know Joy Division wanted to be the Beatles they didn't want to be in a special space they wanted to compete that's part of what made them great they had those ambitions I think sort of behind Simon's talk and something you talked about elsewhere and that's something I agree with is this what's behind DIY is a lowering of a lowering of ambition as well as expectation you know we'll just release stuff hand around without to our own set of sort of like minds because we don't think that we can take on the mainstream culture and what does that end it so that means that as we were retreated from the battlefield and you know I really want to retain this term of war that we basically you know the old leftist slogan that's only called class war when we fight back and that you know the class war has been fought and very successfully on every front by the ruling class over over the last 30 years they've paid themselves more they'd expropriate more money out of us you know and and and and we call it post politics that's great okay and but so you know this pie of how they were able to do that then is by this process of what I call psychic privatization psychic privatization which went alongside the privatization of public goods etc so you know everyone is instead of being competing for public space on public time everyone is retreated into a private space you know we're it not services that is major in British TV they know what it's like here so many programs about doing up your own house and one of the most pernicious finishes of these programs is the sting location location location which is on channel 4 and actually that's gotten itself significant channel 4 in the early days of the the network that's where I first saw Tarkovsky films that's where they would I have our long debates with philosophers on there now is Tory's you know talking about well you've got your four hundred and fifty thousand pounds and are you going to spend it you know to buy a townhouse in London or a mansion up in you know up in Yorkshire as if you know as if this is normal as if most people can can afford this and I'll come back to property maybe in a minute because I think you know that if you what I would do it now that I can want to look for one explanation for cultural conservativism the decline of innovation for you know each simply the property price is the major form of social control in the UK and as able I come to sort of Europe I'm basically as a negative John the Baptist figure I know to say I know that you know that this is creeping trend in many European countries towards neoliberal ization and you know don't let it carry off its what is is a message I mean that's I mean in a part of what I'm saying is using UK as an example UK which was you know a wellspring of culture from working-class creativity without any shadow of a doubt you know in a period of popular modernism and now a dead husk you know dead husk full of busy and a raft people trying to pay exorbitant rent and mortgages you know just I mean you know the fact that it's just last week in the UK and it in a bit piece of legislation that went through almost unnoticed you know spotting was a more punitive legislation about squatting and you know what the one of the major enablers of the punk and post-punk scenes in the UK in the US and elsewhere was it was simply that people could live in an urban environment now the urban environment as a concentration or force I think as a continent which would bring things together in a way that I think the Internet is a dispersal force largely actually not entirely but I mean I think Simon's right about in a way you need the synergy between the concentration or elements of the internet that's why it was interesting things like and you know the Arab Spring or whatever it was not because it broke from the normal conditions of cyberspace which are disposal which temporal and spatial dispersal to bring about the kind of temporal and spatial convergence of concentration actually and but yes I mean as property price I think that genius genius form of social control really because it simply means that people have so little free time and so little time most most of the time of people in London is that as that city of capitalist dystopia you know and no one was fooled by the twenty twelve Catholic carnival I hate because you know that was over London at a miserable City you know a extremely miserable City and I'm really running off I mean it's really interesting BM the the opening ceremony I mean I mean I did think it was interesting I don't how many people watch that you know as an example of kind of Anglo delirium or whatever it's quite interesting but if you look at if you look at a musical examples there you know it's heavily weighted on music but almost none of the musical examples were recent I mean I think dizzy you ask all the light at the lightest you know and and if you had the misfortune to see the the closing ceremony the the excrement or pitch of the closing ceremony that's what Britain's really like mediocre shoddy and kind of really poor you know and but so I guess that my message up from this is that you know you can't just did do it yourself actually but the conditions I mean I sort of slightly country to what Simon said I do think there is there is something inherently kind of progressive about the notion of DIY but only is something which is an aspiration the aspirations that everyone should be able to produce for themselves and we clean not in the conditions where people can do that and you know the the false kind of recuperation of DIY ideas by and by corporate capital and it is evidence of how strong those ideas are that they know people concepts like self-reliance assets are not intrinsically bad of course and but they are bad in conditions such as we live in now where people plainly do not have the conditions for self-reliance for themselves and you know one of the great sort of genius moves of neoliberalism is really to capture the desire for freedom and democracy that people had developed you know in in the 60s in particular to capture those desires and literally sell them back to them in it's almost neoliberalism was almost like a genie in a fairy tale where it did exactly what people said but given exactly what people said they wanted but what people have found out that's not quite what you wanted now the people wanted more freedom okay multi more flexibility okay have precarity instead you know they wanted not to have a bureaucratic state running everything okay we'll pull away the benefits from you then you know and this is this is how neoliberal as an operating but it doesn't mean I think the steps sometimes taken by nostalgic Leninist so then to say all we really need then is to go back to the old centralized state model and you know that there's a there's a reason that class there wasn't only the organized powers of capital that led to the disintegration of the kind of state socialism I mean this is something that you know I michael hearten and Antonio Negri I think argue really well but it's not just that I mean it's not just them who've come out that that they it's the whole Italian autonomous tradition that they're coming from which which argue at this point I think is absolutely right that as people deal want to live under those conditions people didn't want to live under the conditions of state and state bureaucracies state bureaucracies and and you know that and the problem is that the right managed to and I mean literally capture those desires whereas the last was less one-footed by it less is left in a state of kind of mandatory doubt has it were this is a kind of the mode that the left point into where it for well okay the Stalinism is really oppressive and it's kind of forcing its ideas on people or we were you know what so what we need instead of that then is to be in a state of kind of chin rubbing doubt and its really good to not know what we you know what we really think about things well I think simply that opened up the space for the right who has no doubt and no doubts at all that what I and I have no compunction about telling us about how good they are for us how else have they robbed the how acid this this isn't the biggest swindle in a history of the planet of the you know that this this this kind of great robbery of a bank bailouts it's an astonishing swindle but it's based on the premise of premise of a very successfully I thought disseminate ideological message but you know which people are good for us you know we should be grateful that people are rich you know because we all benefit from that whereas we're in our corner go and I don't know if we're doing that good in the maybe you should maybe we should speak more carefully about what we're saying at all you know like necess these are not good conditions for winning a war you know I mean I think partly what I'm saying here is that there's a politician aesthetics crossover the conditions for aesthetics are maybe wealth the conditions for good aesthetics may well be negative capabilities as keeps called them all doubts misgivings questioning conditions for winning a political war are conviction and strategy the right know that and that's why over is less and I and you know of we need a certain amount of you know if you know I'm not I'm not talking about you know I'm putting people in GU rags you know using people anything like that I'm talking about is resilient a conviction and resolution you know I'm simple point that you know we've been even you know Sam s injustice and these us better than this conditions of total Barbara's a moon which we now live you know in which in which the rich can cream are far more my thinkin that I could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes or people still starving at a you know on a semi ourselves plannin an obvious point to make well never has the obvious nosov it should translate into the obvious nosov convictions as well and I think that that's the problem is but it doesn't say much Oh God alright okay sorry I'm going off the point that was off the point they're never - okay um so I mean okay so I mean all of this is extremely lies I think in the context of the UK which you know I mentioned of course because I know about it also because I think it the UK has been over borrowed for your neoliberalism and yeah and you know new labor is the model for the kind of service capitulation of socialist parties to to capitalism really and now in a UK the whole concept of the big society which you may have heard about the big society being this shows up I mean okay these reasons I hope folks is how bad the right-wing are now okay well made the right-wing strong in the 80s where they were used to fighting trade unions and used to fighting their left and that's why you know the day without battle-hardened this bunch of flabby Etonians that we've got running and Britain at the moment hopeless they've got no clue at all they don't they're not they're not yet they're not used to fighting anything but sort of stays this week we're so feeling sorry for Cameron like Cameron's now like they're kind of the janitor for the ruling class haven't like clean you don't do what last year we had to apologize for that whole effort for Murdoch and you know and and the Metropolitan Police and and you know on the whole political classes if you can get lazy Sonia overall corrupt this and this week is now have to apologize once again for the police because of the hills for thing you know that and it's the despite this I mean a thing as two stories going on here in other words one is okay we we have been weakened and a side Imus you know that successful campaign of against really I think two key leftist principles values of solidarity and security I think those of these are effectively eroded and destroyed and by neoliberal project but neoliberal project itself in a serious trouble and the ruling class and serious problems of legitimacy and that's the other side of what has happened and the DIY culture is that I kind of cover up that was engaged in about the Hillsborough disaster in the 80s would not be possible actually because of things like Twitter the internet cetera that the level of informational leakage is much greater and really that no powered the logistics of power depend upon us you know being able to do things behind closed doors but but increasingly unable to do things behind closed doors and that's one of the kind of dialectical dimensions of this this kind of destruction of the kind of aura of a kind of a mainstream and political and entertainment culture I think and so I mean that being just a way of explaining how such as shitty concepts as big society could be floated by Tories in the UK by the world in class in other words the big society than a player it's difficult to work to remember that this now this is how a sort of poorly thought through the concept of big society is a play on the idea of big state okay not a big state which is really which is bad we all know that big states are terrible but a big society well it was a big society is where everybody participates and does things is a great and there's a couple of comedians who did a great satire on this where they they they they sort of went into the role of them being members of the ruling coalition in the UK at the moment and they go and knock on people's doors and saying what were you doing tonight and I says well you know well just come back from marking it up so I feed the kids and fun to bed and all that okay you know we doing after that how about some time working with your community right you know how about I'm emptying some bins and stuff I mean this is absurd model where you're asking people already overworked to to do more you know and and you know quite clearly that the concepts the big society then was another example and trying to push on the already extreme kind of neoliberal privatization a step further or people would you know work or communities and and it'll voluntary groups ie all of these things which you know we thought we've sort of done better than in the 20th century like a voluntary groups okay fine but they space really stood in for a kind of impersonal system of care that was provided by them you know social democracy really then turned out that there's something good about that personality actually and but you know care without community is you know and with going to nationalize systems that that's that's a good achievement and I'm going and it's climbing that the Runanga versus an advance to return to conditions of nineteenth-century philanthropy no distances no simply not true now which isn't to say and at the step we it's a mistake to make then it is to then think oh well social democracy was this gleaming Zenith which nothing and you know or there's the best we can hope for you know things might not been that great under social democracy but you know they're much better than they are now and well that's true in lots of some ways but that doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with that I mean one of the things to learn if you study the rise of neoliberalism was how it made a political impossible clinically impossible become the only possible model of realism you know that and the current issue of the London Review of Books is a great story about the privatization of electricity in the UK saying and perhaps Britain's the enemy country stupid enough to privatize electricity and but that part of the argument there is that the architect of the of the concept of privatization and his you know his when he was coming up this idea that all nationalize industry should be privatized it was a blood uh Turley crazed utterly crazed this could never happen yet within a decade it had happened you know in a country that at that time in I remember that UK was like at that time this seemed to be dominated by you know and that well not dominated by that that we falling into the kind of neoliberal and retrospective picture but we're you know the workers movement was a major component of social power at that time and so you know how did they know they planned for something that seemed impossible and far beyond the reaches of the current possibility then list a big lesson about political possibility is in a relative to the current situation and you know if you can see beyond the current situation and think beyond it you can you can the impossible becomes the inevitable and in and in a part of what I'm sort of suggesting then as as and this relate to that but if you've read the piece that I wrote for and gonzo circus on time Wars and struggle over time and attention I mean part of the problem with the sort of culture the digital culture that Simon was describing earlier was that it puts it in a permanent state of reactive type reactivity but I mean that's the other side of what we call activity is actually reactivity actually the concept which captures this is from Robert Fowler into passivity inter-facility is that is it's really the dominant mode of kind of social media so they can't be used for other things but that is I think the typical form of how how social media operates and that's why that's why that's why corporations love it you know join in the debate you know upload your content here to us you know and that they like it because it's what for for many reasons one of which you know one of which is you know that you're generating value said on simply I mean why won't we all up in arms with us for this Facebook thing why are we demanding our money back but what we know what we have created know that they put it infrastructure in but we've create the content which makes it valuable how can then you know Mark Zuckerberg sort of what walk off with sort of billions of dollars as was up our work and why aren't we angry about it is your lay but I made him that money and okay then but I mean so that so I mean in what you find with something like what we find with sweater and another case of massive dialectical ambivalence for me I'm always just about to leave Twitter but then you get figures like the Olympic closing ceremony which is only tolerable if you if you can share it with other people on Twitter you know but and I think that is the value of Twitter either one of the one of the values of Twitter those ears those counter media and you know part of what I was saying earlier one of that the and I think that's an important point the mainstream hasn't gone away that the point is that the no wait assignment saying that the opposition to and within the mainstream for the disappeared and has been disabled in lots of ways by digital DIY culture um but the mainstream the mainstream may be quantitatively weakened in certain ways but it's still culturally hegemonic and that's why if you look at what's on Twitter it isn't things that I've been generated horizontally by Twitter itself most of most of the content is - which is generated in relation to the mainstream media but I think that's quicker that on the other side of it is part of value of it as I indicated before the counter media as an immediate kind of inner - only web coping with being inside this utterly and named kind of neoliberal code for many ways and and does produce I mean so along you know because of Twitter and the Olympics closing ceremony you know you did have a sense of something was worth sharing ie contempt for what was going on in front of you rather than something which were been invited to share which was you know the the wonderful full illustration of the contradictions of capitalism Jessie J things not about the price tag while standing on a gold rolls-royce so there I won't talk the whole time so you can have some some footage participation but um okay so I mean I think what's striking in a UK example this year and is you know what extent of a conservativism in the UK now the massive 2012 has been a massive carnival of reaction you know the Royal Jubilee and then the many Olympics dividend pick so embezzling I'll talk about in a minute and but you know and with no do it with no disruption or very minimal disruption in the mainstream culture and that's partly because it's a vicious pre-emptive policing you know there's at the story in a guardian of the week about someone who was dressed as a zombie sitting in Starbucks and the day of the the do some of the Jubilee celebrations it was preemptively arrested because they may well have been they might be planning to take part in an anti Dewberry demonstration where all these Anika scrutiny UK who is fly you down it gets groups in the UK they can whenever T you see demonstration a very active they're smashing windows where were they when it were they when it came to this utterly depressing reactionary barbarous spectacle of celebration of monarchy an empire where were they then to disrupt that well maybe didn't want to be arrested well okay well why did why don't why do what and why did I risk and being arrested when at demonstrations by trade unions etc it's almost as if though I John provocateurs but they're by the state isn't it and anyway but that's and and I don't fully think that but it but the point is the point is not the point is that they might as well be you know a just understand this actually if they think there's some inherent kind of value in smashing up windows and stuff when they do all the time I mean you know why do they only do it when there's big demonstrations by some trade unions are set I don't really understand that ever strategy but they don't have strategy because it's forget it okay but I mean the same as either I think the part of the problem we've got and the last is that the domination of kind of anarchism and neo anarchism in in a thinking we see does the Occupy movement and we're um you know I think this is a finish Asst horizontal ISM in a way where you know this is kind of implicit not so implicit ideology behind as you know it yesterday no one should be above anybody else you know and that's and and also that mainstream media is decadent it's not worth bothering with we don't struggle with mains we don't bother struggling with and also that parliamentary politics local government all of those things they're decadent superseded etc and and kind of is also the Beadnell argument somehow these things are boring whereas you know and somehow there's that so-called direct action is it's kind of a much more interesting but yeah it's surely like I can have a casting of anything much more boring than eight hour and age how are kind of General Assembly really like surely like you know if you actually read the accounts of like you know struggles of like I've been ken livingstone to take over the great London council all of that that's exciting you know sitting around you know doing jazz hands right how's that seems to me the worst of all worlds and lots of ways it's not really getting any political you know I think well let's contrast that with you know what the right does the right I love the right the right does is you know quite boring you know organizational work you know and boring work in sports work to manipulate people you know it's not that exciting to do it but it's really effective you know the dominant force on the planet is PR public relations and you know this is what fundamentally shapes the you know people's experience with the life of life and and especially working-class I mean a working-class of probably most unbidden about it because they're both inside that PR world more fully than the middle class or a degree of skepticism and cynicism about it which doesn't make them into out of course and but also fully outside it as well and but you know and I think taking seriously that the role of PR and of how do we constitute and how do we constitute a counter force to PR and that means and that means taking in direct action seriously well the right is good at indirect action what is her Gehman ii you know what is it to control and ideology a reality system is in direct action its control of media its contributor control of people's you know perceptions effects etc this is what the right has beat as hands down in take not only in doing it but in taking that seriously as something as a terrain which we which we shall be fighting over really and and yes if this carnival a reaction and i think you know for me there's a 2012 echo 1977 you know in that 77 was a year you know both of punk and of the jubilee and as a clearly am clearly some antagonist antagonistically antagonistically productive relationship between those two things and that was what was kind of most one of them depressing aspects of 2012 was where was the where was gay antagonism and where's the visible antagonism no a lot there's a lot of sort of diffuse grumbling about it but but the point is that the level of indirect action which is partly a symbolic or cultural space where was this registered how was how is the you know the massively right-wing kind of anti-democratic and barbarian monarchism how is that forced to register any kind of counter discourse no not at all not at all that the static spectacle of the BBC as a supine kind of monarchist lickspittles you know going on for days as well not even doing it very well with any kind of bother to find out stuff anyways loads but the you know and that's a kind of the shadow really of 22 as 2012 Amin and also since we had a music festival what I mean what is striking to me is the complete failure of music to engage with with with culture know where since there is just a diffuse antagonism you know in in the culture and if you might hate you know used to that antagonism being filtered through music it's shocking how little music has responded or intensified this current situation it's not there's nothing there's always something you know well well you have everything happens at some level but if it was about you know as time was talking about there's thresholds of kind of continent that the exact phrase that specials have relevance in a way and it's about it is about you know thresholds of relevance that it needed to the impact on a hegemonic perception of the world and there was not there has been none of that from music for some time and you know the what's what's striking about the most exciting developments in youth culture most exciting things with the youth culture in the UK in the last few years and nothing to do music oh and they were the student militancy at the end of 2010 and the the English riots last year now I'm not going to be in a position of I'd only put this position sounding it uncritically celebrating the riots the riots were sublime in a proper Kantian sense and uh did you know objects of both terror and wonder I know that people had people have broken out of you know the people at some extent broken out of this prison of into passivity where nothing would ever happen anymore you know in a spectacular way whether you know suddenly the whole sense of what reality was could be warped it felt like you're not watching a film but you're inside a film suddenly we never know when as riots were going on and you know and once again I must emphasize I'm not simply celebrating a situation where you know families are being burnt out their houses and stuff like that that's not that the point of this but a point lizard you know that face with the sublime and apparition of those riots from nowhere is music in relation to this is nowhere you know music has really faded out and maybe that's part of it maybe that's why maybe if the music is not I mean you know that the old sort of the Dorian type argument against kind of engaged political music was that you know again all marquees or whatever these people will be there as a form of control-d sublimation that than that you know antagonism that would elsewhere beat and you know directly forced against their sort of ruling classes was instead expressed through culture maybe here's an argument for this actually I mean but part of the issue with the English riots and why just not on a moral but on a political level why one shouldn't celebrate them as it's a kind of interesting case of I mean a point up to the point where and after the point where those lives had happened last year they're the ruling class and in Britain within which all trouble so in serious serious problems because of what was happening with the whole news international scandal and I think we're and really that the riots initially intensified that but by the end of the week is a massive all Terrien backlash we had you know Oxford historians on televisions being able to say that the problem the problems of British society of black culture and and he meant specifically black music as well even and you know that showed you how much the conditions had changed that he was on the BBC and able to say that by the end of the week and but you know so it's only a prompt an authoritarian backlash I think but it was also not and you know it wasn't clearly whilst it was negatively political isn't it was social political and aesthetic conditions which led to those which led to those riots I think what we're talking about something I call aesthetic poverty as well as actual poverty and oh there's a now a lot of the things a lot of the right-wingers would say oh these riots weren't caused by em these riots weren't caused by poverty they've got mobile science they've got blackberries look but blackberry simply isn't as likely a mobile phone is for community of capitalism is like a laser was for an industrial worker it's not a fun entertainment object it's a means by which you're plugged into the the late capitalist matrix is how it sells you stuff is how it keeps you hooked in but for that very reason it's also like it's got these dialectical possibilities and that was another funny interesting tactic kind of organizational infrastructure all dimensions of the riot was the fact that instead of being used to maintain people in states of kind of narcissistic into passivity instead of that then you know right the BlackBerry was used as a form of organization and one couldn't help but be struck well I could never be struck by a person every for by the the the wider this was almost by wreck reversal of what had happened in people remember that film from that 1979 the Warriors and this I'd witness is a very interesting film I think partly cuz a period of which it happened I at the very threshold of the the coming of neoliberalism that star the Warriors if you remember is that there's all of the gangs in New York a cult called together and it's put to them a proposition if we all join up and then will take over the city but of course randomly and arbitrarily it seems a shot is fired at a departed that person making a speech it then scatters back into the standard kind of Hobbesian territoriality and war of all against all it's almost as if t the UK riot so that sorry should say the english words go down hammond scottish and most people get annoyed and the the neither the english flights almost the opposite of that where you know the there's the beginning of development like classic consciousness through black bee messenger instead of flying each other will fight a common enemy and and you know and i think that in a way that this is how I'm probably draw things to a conclusion is that and at is by thinking about the possibilities of latent endless form of organization not yet realized in in the riots but clearly dare to be mobilized that little bit just after those riots had happened and there's an event at the Tate Modern where the black audio foam collectives appeared and they made an astonishing film if you've not seen it try and seek it out is actually very difficult to get hold of their stuff which is another story about the decline of popular modernism because they if any one exemplified I was then you know but black audio film collect has made a film in 1986 called hands with songs which was about and the hands with riots and and part of what made that film powerful was its experimental form it wasn't a finger-wagging kind of a pedagogic type film as a film that used experimental sound montage etc to make it's poignant and but you know just suggests there was an event at the Tate Modern what is this is shown and the members of the collective there to discuss it and Jonna come for the director of the film said we'll look you know of the current riots or then the common riots look you've got a situation we've got these kids who can organize and within three days when the British state to its knees you know imagine what it will be like if you know if they got properly organized now there's a real power man um but you know I think we really have to I think that it's been plenty on Simon's talk and something that I really want to take hold of and sort of end on today is the idea okay what is what is a problem actually with this massive proliferation as of culture that's kind of unfiltered culture and and the question from the back about curatorship like it was important in this respect and what is the problem it is massive proliferation of culture is is really it to do the question of authority actually and that what a lot of curatorship a dad's authority and authority is not a word that the less like to use at all because I think we've been successfully suckered here into again into a position of self defeat and we're you know we're quite authority with all Thorat arianism and you know for 'ti really is authority or forit Arianism is the abuse of authority and it's effectively opposed not by being anti authority but by a properly constituted model of what authority is and you know that i think someone of the pernicious that dimensions was kind of how Neil and Neil and a kiss I wasn't ilysm is it pretends we can just dispense with the question of authority altogether because we just get rid of that when in fact and we haven't whilst an outside eye on the left side there's lots of hand-wringing about authority and the right once again there's this full occupation of authority that means that we don't have a democratic or collective model what authority could be and that makes things really difficult if you're a teacher like I am if you're working with young people and you know what if I'm not to blame my authority at all then surely I should just say you know hey vana your value your views is out of his mind I just sit down you know and that is not only that's best not that's not only is that a bonus obviously failing failing the young and you know it's also you know it's it's just it it's plainly false on something that no one really and it really believes in the father we believe in equality doesn't mean that we build mean that we believe that you know people have equal skills knowledge is etc and part of you know part of overcoming inequality is how do we transmit the skills and knowledge that we pull and so and I think I mean this is the question about know this question there's a very excellent discussion in the tape and take modern about the about you know that responds to that and like audio some collective film and respect or authority was raised our again and in a way that with we need to really was we need to reengage from positions of also hunting with the young in lots of ways and positions of authority not positions of what authoritarianism you know and that that is and we need to be hood transmit the skills and knowledge is weak to them but of clearly of course this is anyone who's done teaching realize that this is not a one-way process you always learn something from those who are teaching and but at the same time I think it's important that we undertake responsibility for the positions of authority which we now occupy anyway the point is that we have in this position to Authority and being the erotic about it and and disavowing it it's failing everybody including those who were supposed to be you know teaching and assisting and so I'll end on that I think don't I'm doing for time okay you

Channel: de Selby

Views: 34,890

Keywords: mark fisher, capitalism, socialism, leftism, marxism, capitalist realism, critical theory

Id: tJlhwNMuo6E

Length: 55min 1sec (3301 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2017