"to be free is nothing;to become free is very heaven"FICHT (1762-1814)
"Failure is nobler than success.Self immolation for a cause is the thing,not the validity of the cause itself,not some intrinsic property of it...These are the symptoms of the Romantic attitude.Hence the worship of the artist whether in sound,or word,or colour is the highest manifestation of the over active spirit and the popular image of the artist in the garret,wild eyed,solitary,mocked at,but independent,free,spiritually superior to his Philistine tormentors.
This attitude has darker side too;worship not merely of the painter or the composer or the poet,but that of a more sinister artist whose materials are humanity-the destroyer of old societies and the Creator of new ones,no matter at what human cost;the superman leader who tortures and destroys in order to build new foundations-Napoleon on his most revolutionary aspect.
It is this embodiment of the Romantic ideal that took more and more hysterical forms and in its extreme ended in violent irrationalism and Fascism.
Yet this same outlook bred respect for individuality,for creative impulse, for the unique, the independent,for freedom to act in the light of personal, undictated beliefs and impulses and principles,for the understated emotional needs,for the the value of private life,for individual conscience,for human rights. The positive and the negative.. ISIAH BERLIN...
Monday, 4 October 2010
Saturday, 2 October 2010
TOUCHED BY FIRE
Popular culture, in the guise of the media,is now hosted into a notion of history which offers our gaze a place of safety populated by people just like ourselves,yet at the same time untouched by the reality of the past.Like Heritage Culture,this contrived vision,entwined with the problem of perspective that a way of life that as come down to us,with all its disturbances and distinctions,is linked to a place and a time,an object, a building which allows us a sense of pleasure, a homesickness for better times linked into the past.A remembrance of the past which is manufactured for our gaze in the studios of the corporate media institutions.Popular history, in the guise of serious investigation and Heritage Culture are the results of an increasingly conformist society seeking out a release from a normalizing sensation and delving into a sentimentality, a regretfulness for better times in a better place somewhere in the past. The future is lived in the ever present whilst reality becomes a horror show. The past is not reconnected with its disappeared shadow.
We, the passive observer,are fed information and sensation filtered through a dominate system which entraps our attention in order to offload the commonality which yesterday as become.
It is also a propaganda technique which subtly appeals to the emotions.In propaganda as in advertising the important consideration is not whether information accurately describes a objective situation but whether it sounds true.History like art ,now,represents part of the mass production of commodities in ever increasing abundance which demands a mass market to absorb them.History and Art are now dominated by appearance.
"in the period of primative accumulation,capitalism subordinated being to having,the ME value of commodity's to their exchange value,as a commodity's capacity to confer prestige-the illusion of prosperity and well being."when economic necessity yields to the necessity for limitless economic development"writes Guy Debord"satisfaction of basic and generally human needs gives way to an uninterrupted fabrication of pseudo needs.Propaganda of commodities serves a double function.Its up holding of consumption turns alienation itself into a commodity..
CHRISTOPHER LASCH.
This is a victory of conservative centralisation over the examination of a more mysterious procedure....the very act of creativity itself,the act concerning the process of creation,rather than its effects,on motives rather than consequences;and as a corollary of this "on quality of the vision" on the state of mind or the soul,of the acting agent-accurate correspondence of the given,the emphasis on the activity and the moment,those actions that cannot be reduced to static segments.
These are the sentiments of the Romantic movement,which gave rise to to Modernity.As the sensiblities interact,where does one begin and end,where does the end close?History is not dead,it is simply redefining itself in the methodological reflections of the Great Leap Backwards.
We, the passive observer,are fed information and sensation filtered through a dominate system which entraps our attention in order to offload the commonality which yesterday as become.
It is also a propaganda technique which subtly appeals to the emotions.In propaganda as in advertising the important consideration is not whether information accurately describes a objective situation but whether it sounds true.History like art ,now,represents part of the mass production of commodities in ever increasing abundance which demands a mass market to absorb them.History and Art are now dominated by appearance.
"in the period of primative accumulation,capitalism subordinated being to having,the ME value of commodity's to their exchange value,as a commodity's capacity to confer prestige-the illusion of prosperity and well being."when economic necessity yields to the necessity for limitless economic development"writes Guy Debord"satisfaction of basic and generally human needs gives way to an uninterrupted fabrication of pseudo needs.Propaganda of commodities serves a double function.Its up holding of consumption turns alienation itself into a commodity..
CHRISTOPHER LASCH.
This is a victory of conservative centralisation over the examination of a more mysterious procedure....the very act of creativity itself,the act concerning the process of creation,rather than its effects,on motives rather than consequences;and as a corollary of this "on quality of the vision" on the state of mind or the soul,of the acting agent-accurate correspondence of the given,the emphasis on the activity and the moment,those actions that cannot be reduced to static segments.
These are the sentiments of the Romantic movement,which gave rise to to Modernity.As the sensiblities interact,where does one begin and end,where does the end close?History is not dead,it is simply redefining itself in the methodological reflections of the Great Leap Backwards.
touched by Fire
PEOPLE ARE THEIR MEMORIES,THEY ARE ACCUMULATED EXPERIENCES AND THIER DISCRIPTIONS OF THEMSELVES IN THE WORLD.THE ANGLO SAXONS DEFINED HUMAN BEINGS AS THE VOICE HEARERS.IF YOU DEPRIVE SOMEONE OF THEIR VOICE,YOU DEPRIVE THEM OF THEIR HUMANITY.
There are individuals within the administration of the Cultural Industries who ask very big things for themselves,not of themselves. This attitude is not only confined to the Cultural Industries. The spread of the bureaucratic society and its entrance into language of the everyday has opened the way parallel oppositions,notably democratic individualism versus corporatism;the citizen versus the subject.
We are entering,or re-entering the mindset of the darker side within us and within society;the battle of language versus propaganda and the consciousness versus the unconsciousness.This is what is implied by the expression the "The Great Leap Backwards". It doesn't only apply to an historical time map of the 1930s,it also concerns itself with our leap into the unconscious beloved of the subject:"who existing as a function in any one of the tens of thousands of corporations-public and private-is relieved of personal,disinterested responsibility for his society"
Permanent human patterns have to exist and in the end battle against the temporary.We are reminded of what Tocqueville observed when writing about America attempting to escape the intangling influence of the past "they imagined their whole destiny is in their own hands"
Social conditions Tocqueville wrote severed the tie that formally united one generation to another. "the roof of time is every instant broken and the track of generations effaced.Those who went before are soon forgotten:of those who who will come after,no one has any idea:the interest of man is confined to those in close proximity to himself"
There are individuals within the administration of the Cultural Industries who ask very big things for themselves,not of themselves. This attitude is not only confined to the Cultural Industries. The spread of the bureaucratic society and its entrance into language of the everyday has opened the way parallel oppositions,notably democratic individualism versus corporatism;the citizen versus the subject.
We are entering,or re-entering the mindset of the darker side within us and within society;the battle of language versus propaganda and the consciousness versus the unconsciousness.This is what is implied by the expression the "The Great Leap Backwards". It doesn't only apply to an historical time map of the 1930s,it also concerns itself with our leap into the unconscious beloved of the subject:"who existing as a function in any one of the tens of thousands of corporations-public and private-is relieved of personal,disinterested responsibility for his society"
Permanent human patterns have to exist and in the end battle against the temporary.We are reminded of what Tocqueville observed when writing about America attempting to escape the intangling influence of the past "they imagined their whole destiny is in their own hands"
Social conditions Tocqueville wrote severed the tie that formally united one generation to another. "the roof of time is every instant broken and the track of generations effaced.Those who went before are soon forgotten:of those who who will come after,no one has any idea:the interest of man is confined to those in close proximity to himself"
Monday, 27 September 2010
CATS CRADLE 3
Before moving onto the history of alternative theatre I want to continue outlining my thoughts re the "cultural industries"There will be some odd references like "the big other"hope you mind folks,but I will leave this to one side for now,its slightly difficult concept to outline so for now,if you don't mind I'm going to move onto my ideas about re culture.
I'm suggesting that it is in the twin sites of domination and authoritarianism which is the foundation of the core of the cultural industries.My own generalisation is that the cultural industries are rotten at the core.Its a system embraced by a conservative mindset and the values of the corporate state.Its liberal exterior hiding behind a controlling interior, its a dangerous set of systems geared towards monitoring difference in order to set targets and ever more impossible quotas.Administrators define the agenda for creativity and in so doing have created an aura of mass ornamentation. We have come to an age where by the application form is judged higher than the process of creativity.We have entered the age of "The Great Leap Backwards" a term of reference first highlighted by John Ralston in his book "THE UNCONSCIOUS CIVILIZATION"
The authoritarianism secreted within the Post Modern Condition will be come more visible as this introduction unfolds.Irrationanalism is all part of the on going debate re the actions which govern the state of corporate identity and control,its almost akin to a mystical anarchism,we the citizen invest the corporate state with a personality which defies reality.We have allowed administration to acquire a monopoly over all manifestations of our cultural life we are looking down the barrel of a very nasty weapon,because the administration of culture relates to a concept of creative exclusion.
TIME AND SPACE ARE NECESSARY FORMS OF THOUGHT...Kant
When analysing the rise and decline of cultural movements and radical politics during the 60s,70s,80s through to the cultural hegemony of the Cultural Industries of the 90s and the new century one must be aware of the dangers inherent of revisiting the recent past,more so when we are exploring the problematic of radical politics and radical cultural engagement.There is a danger that ones own "personal"memory becomes problematic.The journalist Melissa Benn writing about Susan Brawnmiller the American feminist suggested:
"Amnesia and caricature, distortion and forgetting are the greatest dangers facing
the history of any radical social movement"
Memory is selective,restrictive and contaminated.When we explore our memory we give ourselves no peace,we are our own memories and in reality we create our own myths.Our experience will never entirely be absorbed by theory and outside observation,but it is a wide open to abuse and obliteration by others who view aspects of the recent past with envy,distrust, and personal ambition by walking over other peoples histories.. I aim to give back the history and the voice to all those groups and individuals whose idealism,creativity,courage,hard work and humanity have been conveniently air-brushed out of reality(history).Eventhier ghots and shadows are nit allowed to contaminate the superficially created inclusiveness and individualism of todays corporative empiness.
I'm suggesting that it is in the twin sites of domination and authoritarianism which is the foundation of the core of the cultural industries.My own generalisation is that the cultural industries are rotten at the core.Its a system embraced by a conservative mindset and the values of the corporate state.Its liberal exterior hiding behind a controlling interior, its a dangerous set of systems geared towards monitoring difference in order to set targets and ever more impossible quotas.Administrators define the agenda for creativity and in so doing have created an aura of mass ornamentation. We have come to an age where by the application form is judged higher than the process of creativity.We have entered the age of "The Great Leap Backwards" a term of reference first highlighted by John Ralston in his book "THE UNCONSCIOUS CIVILIZATION"
The authoritarianism secreted within the Post Modern Condition will be come more visible as this introduction unfolds.Irrationanalism is all part of the on going debate re the actions which govern the state of corporate identity and control,its almost akin to a mystical anarchism,we the citizen invest the corporate state with a personality which defies reality.We have allowed administration to acquire a monopoly over all manifestations of our cultural life we are looking down the barrel of a very nasty weapon,because the administration of culture relates to a concept of creative exclusion.
TIME AND SPACE ARE NECESSARY FORMS OF THOUGHT...Kant
When analysing the rise and decline of cultural movements and radical politics during the 60s,70s,80s through to the cultural hegemony of the Cultural Industries of the 90s and the new century one must be aware of the dangers inherent of revisiting the recent past,more so when we are exploring the problematic of radical politics and radical cultural engagement.There is a danger that ones own "personal"memory becomes problematic.The journalist Melissa Benn writing about Susan Brawnmiller the American feminist suggested:
"Amnesia and caricature, distortion and forgetting are the greatest dangers facing
the history of any radical social movement"
Memory is selective,restrictive and contaminated.When we explore our memory we give ourselves no peace,we are our own memories and in reality we create our own myths.Our experience will never entirely be absorbed by theory and outside observation,but it is a wide open to abuse and obliteration by others who view aspects of the recent past with envy,distrust, and personal ambition by walking over other peoples histories.. I aim to give back the history and the voice to all those groups and individuals whose idealism,creativity,courage,hard work and humanity have been conveniently air-brushed out of reality(history).Eventhier ghots and shadows are nit allowed to contaminate the superficially created inclusiveness and individualism of todays corporative empiness.
Friday, 24 September 2010
TOUCHED BY FIRE 2
CONTINUED:
I intend to pose many questions without coming to any conclusions,this is a journey of ideas and experimentation,rather like Oval House was,in many respects I want to experiment with conclusions once held dear to me but now seem out dated in so far as they were events only remembered by me at a moment in my own personal,creative suicide(more about this latter).This is an introduction without a map.Its going to be a scatter gun set of opinions and remembered arguments with a good does of dream scape added to raise anger and frustration.Some said to me the other day"we don't seem to do anger no more",it seems a valid observation to me.This reality,this strange frightened world gives the appearance of being out of sync with its own shadows.Anger is reduced to frustration and then violence, there is no room for that space in between,that small space where its safe to express feelings with out appearing unusual
One of the overriding philosophies which drove Oval House to challenge the boundaries of our "elders" was tied up in the belief of the right fail,the right to make mistakes and not have to worry about the impact of the big other,that sense of dominating super ego for ever telling us what we cant or can achieve ,we offerd a place of safty in which the" other" was respected and creativty was was seen as site for challange. We gave leadership simply by being who we where and being there.We were concerned with our status infact we sort to undermine our status in order to give others a sense of being.
My first quistion "Why is that all inclusive theories of economic inevitability
have distracted us from the shift of legitimacy to specialist
and interest groups"
What Oval House never foresaw was the arrival of the non invovled specialist who was hovering just out of sight,waiting in the shadows.People who would arrive and trample on memory and other peoples achievments.We had become distracted by our own sense of direction,but for me the directon was leading to a place without a home ,and for a lot of indivduals the fight to change society had become to much of a bitter night.We exhausted our dreams.
Now is the time to return.The suicide went on to long,the silence of memory contaminates the present.A fight back to reclaim past acheivments and memories begins with a quote from Horkeimer "our consequent incarceration in the "iron cage"
of bureacratic rationalization and technical domination"
It is with this quote in mind,this one isolated little gem that ignites my sense of injustice.I allowed myself to trample on my achievements,that was my action to undo the past,but I do have a responsibility to all those folk who mad Oval House into a dynamic challange against"anything"which came to mind.
Oval was a youth club in a community,we never ever forgot that.
I intend to pose many questions without coming to any conclusions,this is a journey of ideas and experimentation,rather like Oval House was,in many respects I want to experiment with conclusions once held dear to me but now seem out dated in so far as they were events only remembered by me at a moment in my own personal,creative suicide(more about this latter).This is an introduction without a map.Its going to be a scatter gun set of opinions and remembered arguments with a good does of dream scape added to raise anger and frustration.Some said to me the other day"we don't seem to do anger no more",it seems a valid observation to me.This reality,this strange frightened world gives the appearance of being out of sync with its own shadows.Anger is reduced to frustration and then violence, there is no room for that space in between,that small space where its safe to express feelings with out appearing unusual
One of the overriding philosophies which drove Oval House to challenge the boundaries of our "elders" was tied up in the belief of the right fail,the right to make mistakes and not have to worry about the impact of the big other,that sense of dominating super ego for ever telling us what we cant or can achieve ,we offerd a place of safty in which the" other" was respected and creativty was was seen as site for challange. We gave leadership simply by being who we where and being there.We were concerned with our status infact we sort to undermine our status in order to give others a sense of being.
My first quistion "Why is that all inclusive theories of economic inevitability
have distracted us from the shift of legitimacy to specialist
and interest groups"
What Oval House never foresaw was the arrival of the non invovled specialist who was hovering just out of sight,waiting in the shadows.People who would arrive and trample on memory and other peoples achievments.We had become distracted by our own sense of direction,but for me the directon was leading to a place without a home ,and for a lot of indivduals the fight to change society had become to much of a bitter night.We exhausted our dreams.
Now is the time to return.The suicide went on to long,the silence of memory contaminates the present.A fight back to reclaim past acheivments and memories begins with a quote from Horkeimer "our consequent incarceration in the "iron cage"
of bureacratic rationalization and technical domination"
It is with this quote in mind,this one isolated little gem that ignites my sense of injustice.I allowed myself to trample on my achievements,that was my action to undo the past,but I do have a responsibility to all those folk who mad Oval House into a dynamic challange against"anything"which came to mind.
Oval was a youth club in a community,we never ever forgot that.
TOUCHED BY FIRE 1
IMAGINATION AND MEMORY ARE ONE AND THE SAME THING...Thomas Hobbes
HE WHO DOES NOT KNOW HISTORY IS DESTINED TO REMAIN A CHILD...Cicero
Welcome to this introduction,which is part of many introductions,and which forms the basis of a Cats Cradle research project embracing,history political theory,scatter gun ideas ,venom,personal experience,and part of a history of a youth club turned creative arts centre,community centre,and educational centre plus much else.Its agenda is unravel what happened during a critical political and cultural period which affected the destiny of cultural,community politics in England during the 70s,80s,and early90s.Its a history hardly spoken about because most of the people involved in the evolution of of this wild and exciting project still maintain a sense of moral honesty in so far as they refuse to trample over peoples experience,creativity and memories.This fist introduction will critically analysis the growth of authoritarianism within today's corporate Post Modern/Cultural Industry Society.
HE WHO DOES NOT KNOW HISTORY IS DESTINED TO REMAIN A CHILD...Cicero
Welcome to this introduction,which is part of many introductions,and which forms the basis of a Cats Cradle research project embracing,history political theory,scatter gun ideas ,venom,personal experience,and part of a history of a youth club turned creative arts centre,community centre,and educational centre plus much else.Its agenda is unravel what happened during a critical political and cultural period which affected the destiny of cultural,community politics in England during the 70s,80s,and early90s.Its a history hardly spoken about because most of the people involved in the evolution of of this wild and exciting project still maintain a sense of moral honesty in so far as they refuse to trample over peoples experience,creativity and memories.This fist introduction will critically analysis the growth of authoritarianism within today's corporate Post Modern/Cultural Industry Society.
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
coming down very fast!!
I can feel the old horror making its return,depression will never give up.Like Iv said before "it knows how to wait".Its not worth the space trying to explain this sense of bewilderment,anxiety and tiredness. My eyes feel tired and painful I'm frightened of sleep because it wont be a sleep the mind will hang heavy in the dream scape of another reality. i was hoping to explore an idea which floats around and nags at my consciousness its a sort of personal challenge/almost an attack on the recent past. Nostalgia is the new radical ideology,the problem is people who use their life experience as the experience of reality are only indulging in a conservative return to a past lived in the narrow confines of nostalgic sentimentality.We look back on our recent past as if there really was going to be a social revolution,some people even believe there was a revolution.Well there was some kind of revolution it is called market forces.
People who where there at any given time look back on their experiences as if they were the most important experiences ever to grace the history of experiences.Nostalgia works on our sense of something lost holding out the possibility of a return to then.The "then" is that place logged in our minds which tell us that "then" can be regained.What happened in the past happen in our minds,our memories are us.But memory is contaminated,it plays games with what we were to all we are now.We may have been at some event in the past,but how we remember that event is about how "we want to remember"that event.My observation is different from your observation.The present is the site of painful reflection.The past is romanticised to keep at bay the power of nostalgic returns.It up to poets to explore the desires inherent in nostalgic reflections.the past is not a place of social change, unless real social change takes place.The sadness of our returns is they are instant and conservative. We are in the age of instant history without truth.my past was better than your past and my depression is darkening my mind the solitary prison is beckoning.....
People who where there at any given time look back on their experiences as if they were the most important experiences ever to grace the history of experiences.Nostalgia works on our sense of something lost holding out the possibility of a return to then.The "then" is that place logged in our minds which tell us that "then" can be regained.What happened in the past happen in our minds,our memories are us.But memory is contaminated,it plays games with what we were to all we are now.We may have been at some event in the past,but how we remember that event is about how "we want to remember"that event.My observation is different from your observation.The present is the site of painful reflection.The past is romanticised to keep at bay the power of nostalgic returns.It up to poets to explore the desires inherent in nostalgic reflections.the past is not a place of social change, unless real social change takes place.The sadness of our returns is they are instant and conservative. We are in the age of instant history without truth.my past was better than your past and my depression is darkening my mind the solitary prison is beckoning.....
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