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Title: The Radio Sermonettes
Author: Hakim Bey
Date: 1992
Language: en
Topics: immediatism
Source: Retrieved on 14th May 2021 from https://hermetic.com/bey/radio-sermonettes/index

Hakim Bey

The Radio Sermonettes

Immediatism

All experience is mediated—by the mechanisms of sense perception,

mentation, language, etc.—& certainly all art consists of some further

mediation of experience.

However, mediation takes place by degrees. Some experiences (smell,

taste, sexual pleasure, etc.) are less mediated than others (reading a

book, looking through a telescope, listening to a record). Some media,

especially “live” arts such as dance, theater, musical or bardic

performance, are less mediated than others such as TV, CDs, Virtual

Reality. Even among the media usually called “media,” some are more &

others are less mediated, according to the intensity of imaginative

participation they demand. Print & radio demand more of the imagination,

film less, TV even less, VR the least of all—so far.

For art, the intervention of Capital always signals a further degree

of mediation. To say that art is commodified is to say that a mediation,

or standing-in-between, has occurred, & that this betweenness amounts to

a split, & that this split amounts to “alienation.” Improv music played

by friends at home is less “alienated” than music played “live” at the

Met, or music played through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In

fact, an argument could be made that music distributed free or at cost

on cassette via mail is LESS alienated than live music played at some

huge We Are The World spectacle or Las Vegas niteclub, even though the

latter is live music played to a live audience (or at least so it

appears), while the former is recorded music consumed by distant & even

anonymous listeners.

The tendency of Hi Tech, & the tendency of Late Capitalism, both impel

the arts farther & farther into extreme forms of mediation. Both widen

the gulf between the production & consumption of art , with a

corresponding increase in “alienation.”

With the disappearance of a “mainstream” & therefore of an

“avant-garde” in the arts, it has been noticed that all the more

advanced & intense art-experiences have been recuperable almost

instantly by the media, & thus are rendered into trash like all other

trash in the ghostly world of commodities. “Trash, ” as the term was

redefined in, let’s say, Baltimore in the 1970s, can be good fun—as an

ironic take on a sort of inadvertent folkultur that surrounds & pervades

the more unconscious regions of “popular” sensibility—which in turn is

produced in part by the Spectacle. “Trash” was once a fresh concept,

with radical potential. By now, however, amidst the ruins of

Post-Modernism, it has finally begun to stink. Ironic frivolity finally

becomes disgusting. Is it possible now to BE SERIOUS BUT NOT SOBER?

(Note: The New Sobriety is or course simply the flipside of the New

Frivolity. Chic neo-puritanism carries the taint of Reaction, in just

the same way that postmodernist philosophical irony & despair lead to

Reaction. The Purge Society is the same as the Binge Society. After the

“12 steps” of trendy renunciation in the ‘ 90s, all that remains is the

13^(th) step of the gallows. Irony may have become boring, but

self-mutilation was never more than an abyss. Down with frivolity—Down

with sobriety.)

Everything delicate & beautiful, from Surrealism to Break-dancing, ends

up as fodder for McDeath’s ads; 15 minutes later all the magic has been

sucked out, & the art itself dead as a dried locust. The media-wizards,

who are nothing if not postmodernists, have even begun to feed on the

vitality of “Trash,” like vultures regurgitating & re-consuming the same

carrion, in an obscene ecstasy of self-referentiality. Which way to the

Egress?

Real art is play, & play is one of the most immediate of all

experiences. Those who have cultivated the pleasure of play cannot be

expected to give it up simply to make a political point (as in an “Art

Strike, ” or “the suppression without the realization” of art, etc.).

Art will go on, in somewhat the same sense that breathing, eating, or

fucking will go on.

Nevertheless, we are repelled by the extreme alienation of the arts,

especially in “the media,” in commercial publishing & galleries, in the

recording “industry,” etc. And we sometimes worry even about the extent

to which our very involvement in such arts as writing, painting, or

music implicates us in a nasty abstraction, a removal from immediate

experience. We miss the directness of play (our original kick in doing

art in the first place); we miss smell, taste, touch, the feel of bodies

in motion.

Computers, video, radio, printing presses, synthesizers, fax machines,

tape recorders, photocopiers—these things make good toys, but terrible

addictions. Finally we realize we cannot “ reach out and touch someone”

who is not present in the flesh. These media may be useful to our

art—but they must not possess us, nor must they stand between, mediate,

or separate us from our animal/animate selves. We want to control our

media, not be Controlled by them. And we should like to remember a

certain psychic martial art which stresses the realization that the body

itself is the least mediated of all media.

Therefore, as artists & “cultural workers” who have no intention of

giving up activity in our chosen media, we nevertheless demand of

ourselves an extreme awareness of immediacy , as well as the mastery of

some direct means of implementing this awareness as play, immediately

(at once) & immediately (without mediation).

Fully realizing that any art “manifesto” written today can only stink

of the same bitter irony it seeks to oppose, we nevertheless declare

without hesitation (without too much thought) the founding of a

“movement,” IMMEDIATISM. We feel free to do so because we intend to

practice Immediatism in secret, in order to avoid any contamination of

mediation. Publicly we’ll continue our work in publishing, radio,

printing, music, etc., but privately we will create something else,

something to be shared freely but never consumed passively, something

which can be discussed openly but never understood by the agents of

alienation, something with no commercial potential yet valuable beyond

price, something occult yet woven completely into the fabric of our

everyday lives.

Immediatism is not a movement in the sense of an aesthetic program. It

depends on situation, not style or content, message or School. It may

take the form of any kind of creative play which can be performed by two

or more people, by & for themselves, face-to-face & together. In this

sense it is like a game, & therefore certain “rules ” may apply.

All spectators must also be performers. All expenses are to be shared,

& all products which may result from the play are also to be shared by

the participants only (who may keep them or bestow them as gifts, but

should not sell them). The best games will make little or no use of

obvious forms of mediation such as photography, recording, printing,

etc., but will tend toward immediate techniques involving physical

presence, direct communication, & the senses.

An obvious matrix for Immediatism is the party. Thus a good meal could

be an Immediatist art project, especially if everyone present cooked as

well as ate. Ancient Chinese & Japanese on misty autumn days would hold

odor parties, where each guest would bring a homemade incense or

perfume. At linked-verse parties a faulty couplet would entail the

penalty of a glass of wine. Quilting bees, tableaux vivants, exquisite

corpses, rituals of conviviality like Fourier’s “Museum Orgy” (erotic

costumes, poses, & skits), live music & dance—the past can be ransacked

for appropriate forms, & imagination will supply more.

The difference between a 19^(th) century quilting bee, for example, &

an Immediatist quilting bee would lie in our awareness of the practice

of Immediatism as a response to the sorrows of alienation & the “ death

of art.”

The mail art of the ‘70s & the zine scene of the ‘80s were attempts to

go beyond the mediation of art-as-commodity, & may be considered

ancestors of Immediatism. However, they preserved the mediated

structures of postal communication & xerography, & thus failed to

overcome the isolation of the players, who remained quite literally out

of touch. We wish to take the motives & discoveries of these earlier

movements to their logical conclusion in an art which banishes all

mediation & alienation, at least to the extent that the human condition

allows.

Moreover, Immediatism is not condemned to powerlessness in the world,

simply because it avoids the publicity of the marketplace. “Poetic

Terrorism” and “Art Sabotage” are quite logical manifestations of

Immediatism.

Finally, we expect that the practice of Immediatism will release

within us vast storehouses of forgotten power, which will not only

transform our lives through the secret realization of unmediated play,

but will also inescapably well up & burst out & permeate the other art

we create, the more public & mediated art.

And we hope that the two will grow closer & closer, & eventually perhaps

become one.

The Tong

The mandarins draw their power from the law; the people, from the secret

societies. (Chinese saying)

Last winter I read a book on the Chinese Tongs (Primitive

Revolutionaries of China: A Study of Secret Societies in the Late

Nineteenth Century, Fei-Ling Davis; Honolulu, 1971–77):— maybe the first

ever written by someone who wasn’t a British Secret Service agent!—(in

fact, she was a Chinese socialist who died young—this was her only

book)—& for the first time I realized why I’ve always been attracted to

the Tong: not just for the romanticism, the elegant decadent chinoiserie

decor, as it were—but also for the form, the structure, the very essence

of the thing.

Some time later in an excellent interview with William Burroughs in

Homocore magazine I discovered that he too has become fascinated with

Tongs & suggests the form as a perfect mode of organization for queers,

particularly in this present era of shitheel moralism & hysteria. I’d

agree, & extend the recommendation to all marginal groups, especially

ones whose jouissance involves illegalism (potheads, sex heretics,

insurrectionists) or extreme eccentricity (nudists, pagans,

post-avant-garde artists, etc., etc.).

A Tong can perhaps be defined as a mutual benefit society for people

with a common interest which is illegal or dangerously marginal—hence,

the necessary secrecy. Many Chinese Tongs revolved around smuggling &

tax-evasion, or clandestine self-control of certain trades (in

opposition to State control), or insurrectionary political or religious

aims (overthrow of the Manchus for example—several tongs collaborated

with the Anarchists in the 1911 Revolution).

A common purpose of the tongs was to collect & invest membership dues &

initiation fees in insurance funds for the indigent, unemployed, widows

& orphans of deceased members, funeral expenses, etc. In an era like

ours when the poor are caught between the cancerous Scylla of the

Insurance Industry & the fast-evaporating Charybdis of welfare & public

health services, this purpose of the Secret Society might well regain

its appeal. (Masonic lodges were organized on this basis, as were the

early & illegal trade unions & “chivalric orders” for laborers &

artisans.) Another universal purpose for such societies was of course

conviviality, especially banqueting—but even this apparently innocuous

pastime can acquire insurrectionary implications. In the various French

revolutions, for example, dining clubs frequently took on the role of

radical organizations when all other forms of public meeting were

banned.

Recently I talked about tongs with “P.M.,” author of bolo’bolo

(Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series). I argued that secret societies are

once again a valid possibility for groups seeking autonomy & individual

realization. He disagreed, but not (as I expected) because of the

“elitist” connotations of secrecy. He felt that such organizational

forms work best for already-close-knit groups with strong economic,

ethnic/regional, or religious ties—conditions which do not exist (or

exist only embryonically) in today’s marginal scene. He proposed instead

the establishment of multi-purpose neighborhood centers, with expenses

to be shared by various special-interest groups & small-entrepreneurial

concerns (craftspeople, coffeehouses, performance spaces, etc.). Such

large centers would require official status (State recognition), but

would obviously become foci for all sorts of non-official activity—black

markets, temporary organization for “protest” or insurrectionary action,

uncontrolled “leisure” & unmonitored conviviality, etc.

In response to “P.M.”’s critique I have not abandoned but rather

modified my concept of what a modern Tong might be. The intensely

hierarchical structure of the traditional tong would obviously not work,

although some of the forms could be saved & used in the same way titles

& honors are used in our “free religions” (or “weird” religions, “joke”

religions, anarcho-neo-pagan cults, etc.). Non-hierarchic organization

appeals to us, but so too does ritual, incense, the delightful bombast

of occult orders—“Tong Aesthetics” you might call it—so why shouldn’t we

have our cake & eat it too?—(especially if it’s Moroccan majoun or baba

au absinthe—something a bit forbidden!). Among other things, the Tong

should be a work of art.

The strict traditional rule of secrecy also needs modification. Nowadays

anything which evades the idiot gaze of publicity is already virtually

secret. Most modern people seem unable to believe in the reality of

something they never see on television —therefore to escape being

televisualized is already to be quasi-invisible. Moreover, that which is

seen through the mediation of the media becomes somehow unreal, & loses

its power (I won’t bother to defend this thesis but simply refer the

reader to a train of thought which leads from Nietzsche to Benjamin to

Bataille to Barthes to Foucault to Baudrillard). By contrast, perhaps

that which is unseen retains its reality, its rootedness in everyday

life & therefore in the possibility of the marvelous.

So the modern Tong cannot be elitist—but there’s no reason it can’t be

choosy. Many non-authoritarian organizations have foundered on the

dubious principle of open membership, which frequently leads to a

preponderance of assholes, yahoos, spoilers, whining neurotics, & police

agents. If a Tong is organized around a special interest (especially an

illegal or risky or marginal interest) it certainly has the right to

compose itself according to the “affinity group” principle. If secrecy

means (a) avoiding publicity & (b) vetting possible members, the “secret

society” can scarcely be accused of violating anarchist principles. In

fact, such societies have a long & honorable history in the

anti-authoritarian movement, from Proudhon’s dream of re-animating the

Holy Vehm as a kind of “People’s Justice,” to Bakunin’s various schemes,

to Durutti’s “Wanderers.” We ought not to allow marxist historians to

convince us that such expedients are “primitive” & have therefore been

left behind by “History.” The absoluteness of “History” is at best a

dubious proposition. We are not interested in a return to the primitive,

but in a return OF the primitive, inasmuch as the primitive is the

“repressed.”

In the old days secret societies would appear in times & spaces

forbidden by the State, i.e. where & when people are kept apart by law.

In our times people are usually not kept apart by law but by mediation &

alienation (see Part 1, “Immediatism”). Secrecy therefore becomes an

avoidance of mediation, while conviviality changes from a secondary to a

primary purpose of the “secret society.” Simply to meet together

face-to-face is already an action against the forces which oppress us by

isolation, by loneliness, by the trance of media.

In a society which enforces a schizoid split between Work & Leisure, we

have all experienced the trivialization of our “free time,” time which

is organized neither as work nor as leisure. (“Vacation” once meant

“empty” time—now it signifies time which is organized & filled by the

industry of leisure.) The “secret” purpose of conviviality in the secret

society then becomes the self-structuring & auto-valorization of free

time. Most parties are devoted only to loud music & too much booze, not

because we enjoy them but because t he Empire of Work has imbued us with

the feeling that empty time is wasted time. The idea of throwing a party

to, say, make a quilt or sing madrigals together, seems hopelessly

outdated. But the modern Tong will find it both necessary & enjoyable to

seize back free time from the commodity world & devote it to shared

creation, to play.

I know of several societies organized along these lines already, but I’m

certainly not going to blow their secrecy by discussing them in print.

There are some people who do not need fifteen seconds on the Evening

News to validate their existence. Of course, the marginal press and

radio (the only media in which this sermonette will appear) are

practically invisible anyway—certainly still quite opaque to the gaze of

Control. Nevertheless, there’s the principle of the thing: secrets

should be respected. Not everyone needs to know everything! What the

20^(th) century lacks most—& needs most—is tact. We wish to replace

democratic epistemology with “dada epistemology” (Feyerabend). Either

you’re on the bus or you’re not on the bus.

Some will call this an elitist attitude, but it is not—at least not in

the C. Wright Mills sense of the word: that is, a small group which

exercises power over non-insiders for its own aggrandizement.

Immediatism does not concern itself with power-relations;—it desires

neither to be ruled nor to rule. The contemporary Tong therefore finds

no pleasure in the degeneration of institutions into conspiracies. It

wants power for its own purposes of mutuality. It is a free association

of individuals who have chosen each other as the subjects of the group’s

generosity, its “expansiveness” (to use a sufi term). If this amounts to

some kind of “elitism,” then so be it.

If Immediatism begins with groups of friends trying not just to overcome

isolation but also to enhance each other’s lives, soon it will want to

take a more complex shape:—nuclei of mutually-self-chosen allies,

working (playing) to occupy more & more time & space outside all

mediated structure & control. Then it will want to become a horizontal

network of such autonomous groups—then, a “tendency”—then, a

“movement”—& then, a kinetic web of “temporary autonomous zones.” At

last it will strive to become the kernel of a new society, giving birth

to itself within the corrupt shell of the old. For all these purposes

the secret society promises to provide a useful framework of protective

clandestinity—a cloak of invisibility that will have to be dropped only

in the event of some final showdown with the Babylon of Mediation….

Prepare for the Tong Wars!

Immediatism vs Capitalism

Many monsters stand between us & the realization of Immediatist goals.

For instance our own ingrained unconscious alienation might all too

easily be mistaken for a virtue, especially when contrasted with

crypto-authoritarian pap passed off as “community,” or with various

upscale versions of “leisure.” Isn’t it natural to take the dandyism

noir of curmudgeonly hermits for some kind of heroic Individualism, when

the only visible contrast is Club Med commodity socialism, or the

gemutlich masochism of the Victim Cults? To be doomed & cool naturally

appeals more to noble souls than to be saved & cozy.

Immediatism means to enhance individuals by providing a matrix of

friendship, not to belittle them by sacrificing their “ownness” to

group-think, leftist self-abnegation, or New Age clone-values. What must

be overcome is not individuality per se, but rather the addiction to

bitter loneliness which characterizes consciousness in the 20^(th)

century (which is by & large not much more than a re-run of the

19^(th)).

Far more dangerous than any inner monster of (what might be called)

“negative selfishness,” however, is the outward, very real & utterly

objective monster of too-Late Capitalism. The marxists (R.I.P.) had

their own version of how this worked, but here we are not concerned with

abstract/dialectical analyses of labor-value or class structure (even

though these may still require analysis, & even more so since the

“death” or “disappearance” of Communism). Instead we’d like to point out

specific tactical dangers facing any Immediatist project.

Capitalism only supports certain kinds of groups, the nuclear family

for example, or “the people I know at my job,” because such groups are

already self-alienated & hooked into the Work/Consume/Die structure.

Other kinds of groups may be allowed, but will lack all support from the

societal structure, & thus find themselves facing grotesque challenges &

difficulties which appear under the guise of “ bad luck.”

The first & most innocent-seeming obstacle to any Immediatist project

will be the “busyness” or “need to make a living” faced by each of its

associates. However there is no real innocence here—only our profound

ignorance of the ways in which Capitalism itself is organized to prevent

all genuine conviviality.

No sooner have a group of friends begun to visualize immediate goals

realizable only thru solidarity & cooperation, then suddenly one of them

will be offered a “good” job in Cincinnati or teaching English in

Taiwan—or else have to move back to California to care for a dying

parent—or else they’ll lose the “good” job they already have & be

reduced to a state of misery which precludes their very enjoyment of the

group’s project or goals (i.e. they’ll become “depressed” ). At the most

mundane-seeming level, the group will fail to agree on a day of the week

for meetings because everyone is “busy.” But this is not mundane. It’s

sheer cosmic evil. We whip ourselves into froths of indignation over

“oppression” & “unjust laws” when in fact these abstractions have little

impact on our daily lives—while that which really makes us miserable

goes unnoticed, written off to “busyness” or “distraction” or even to

the nature of reality itself (“Well, I can’t live without a job!”).

Yes, perhaps it’s true we can’t “live” without a job—although I hope

we’re grown-up enough to know the difference between life & the

accumulation of a bunch of fucking gadgets. Still, we must constantly

remind ourselves (since our culture won’t do it for us) that this

monster called WORK remains the precise & exact target of our rebellious

wrath, the one single most oppressive reality we face (& we must learn

also to recognize Work when it’s disguised as “leisure”).

To be “too busy” for the Immediatist project is to miss the very essence

of Immediatism. To struggle to come together every Monday night (or

whatever), in the teeth of the gale of busyness, or family, or

invitations to stupid parties—that struggle is already Immediatism

itself. Succeed in actually physically meeting face-to-face with a group

which is not your spouse-&-kids, or the “guys from my job,” or your

12-Step Program—& you have already achieved virtually everything

Immediatism yearns for. An actual project will arise almost

spontaneously out of this successful slap-in-the-face of the social norm

of alienated boredom. Outwardly, of course, the project will seem to be

the group’s purpose, its motive for coming together—but in fact the

opposite is true. We’re not kidding or indulging in hyperbole when we

insist that meeting face-to-face is already “the revolution.” Attain it

& the creativity part comes naturally; like “the kingdom of heaven” it

will be added unto you. Of course it will be horribly difficult—why else

would we have spent the last decade trying to construct our “bohemia in

the mail,” if it were easy to have it in some quartier latin or rural

commune? The rat-bastard Capitalist scum who are telling you to “reach

out and touch someone” with a telephone or “be there!” (where? alone in

front of a goddam television??)—these lovecrafty suckers are trying to

turn you into a scrunched-up blood-drained pathetic crippled little cog

in the death-machine of the human soul (& let’s not have any theological

quibbles about what we mean by “soul”!). Fight them—by meeting with

friends, not to consume or produce, but to enjoy friendship— & you will

have triumphed (at least for a moment) over the most pernicious

conspiracy in EuroAmerican society today—the conspiracy to turn you into

a living corpse galvanized by prosthesis & the terror of scarcity— to

turn you into a spook haunting your own brain. This is not a petty

matter! This is a question of failure or triumph!

If busyness & dissipation are the first potential failures of

Immediatism, we cannot say that its triumph should be equated with

“success.” The second major threat to our project can quite simply be

described as the tragic success of the project itself. Let’s say we’ve

overcome physical alienation & have actually met, developed our project,

& created something (a quilt, a banquet, a play, a bit of eco-sabotage,

etc.). Unless we keep it an absolute secret—which is probably impossible

& in any case would constitute a somewhat poisonous selfishness—other

people will hear of it (other people from hell, to paraphrase the

existentialists)—& among these other people, some will be agents

(conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter) of too-Late Capitalism.

The Spectacle—or whatever has replaced it since 1968—is above all empty.

It fuels itself by the constant Moloch-like gulping-down of everyone’s

creative powers & ideas. It’s more desperate for your “radical

subjectivity ” than any vampire or cop for your blood. It wants your

creativity much more even than you want it yourself. It would die unless

you desired it, & you will only desire it if it seems to offer you the

very desires you dreamed, alone in your lonely genius, disguised & sold

back to you as commodities. Ah, the metaphysical shenanigans of objects!

(or words to that effect, Marx cited by Benjamin).

Suddenly it will appear to you (as if a demon had whispered it in your

ear) that the Immediatist art you’ve created is so good, so fresh, so

original, so strong compared to all the crap on the “market”—so

pure—that you could water it down & sell it, & make a living at it, so

you could all knock off WORK, buy a farm in the country, & do art

together forever after. And perhaps it’s true. You could… after all,

you’re geniuses. But it’d be better to fly to Hawaii & throw yourself

into a live volcano. Sure, you could have success; you could even have

15 seconds on the Evening News— or a PBS documentary made on your life.

Yes indeedy.

But this is where the last major monster steps in, crashes thru the

living room wall, & snuffs you (if Success itself hasn’t already

“spoiled” you, that is).

Because in order to succeed you must first be “seen.” And if you are

seen, you will be perceived as wrong, illegal, immoral—different. The

Spectacle’ s main sources of creative energy are all in prison. If

you’re not a nuclear family or a guided tour of the Republican Party,

then why are you meeting every Monday evening? To do drugs? illicit sex?

income tax evasion? satanism?

And of course the chances are good that your Immediatist group is

engaged in something illegal— since almost everything enjoyable is in

fact illegal. Babylon hates it when anyone actually enjoys life, rather

than merely spends money in a vain attempt to buy the illusion of

enjoyment. Dissipation, gluttony, bulimic overconsumption— these are not

only legal but mandatory. If you don’t waste yourself on the emptiness

of commodities you are obviously queer & must by definition be breaking

some law. True pleasure in this society is more dangerous than bank

robbery. At least bank robbers share Massa’s respect for Massa’s money.

But you, you perverts, clearly deserve to be burned at the stake—& here

come the peasants with their torches, eager to do the State’s bidding

without even being asked. Now you are the monsters, & your little gothic

castle of Immediatism is engulfed in flames. Suddenly cops are swarming

out of the woodwork. Are your papers in order? Do you have a permit to

exist?

Immediatism is a picnic—but it’s not easy. Immediatism is the most

natural path for free humans imaginable—& therefore the most unnatural

abomination in the eyes of Capital. Immediatism will triumph, but only

at the cost of self-organization of power, of clandestinity, & of

insurrection. Immediatism is our delight, Immediatism is dangerous.

Involution

So far we’ve treated Immediatism as an aesthetic movement rather than a

political one—but if the “personal is political” then certainly the

aesthetic must be considered even more so. “Art for art’s sake” cannot

really be said to exist at all, unless it be taken to imply that art per

se functions as political power, i.e. power capable of expressing or

even changing the world rather than merely describing it.

In fact art always seeks such power, whether the artist remains

unconscious of the fact & believes in “pure” aesthetics, or becomes so

hyper-conscious of the fact as to produce nothing but agit-prop.

Consciousness in itself, as Nietzsche pointed out, plays a less

significant role in life than power. No snappier proof of this could be

imagined than the continued existence of an “Art World” (SoHo, 57^(th)

St., etc.) which still believes in the separate realms of political art

& aesthetic art. Such failure of consciousness allows this “world” the

luxury of producing art with overt political content (to satisfy their

liberal customers) as well as art without such content, which merely

expresses the power of the bourgeois scum & bankers who buy it for their

investment portfolios.

If art did not possess & wield this power it would not be worth doing &

nobody would do it. Literal art for art’s sake would produce nothing but

impotence & nullity. Even the fin-de-sicle decadents who invented l‘art

pour l’art used it politically:—as a weapon against bourgeois values of

“utility,” “morality” & so on. The idea that art can be voided of

political meaning appeals now only to those liberal cretins who wish to

excuse “pornography” or other forbidden aesthetic games on the grounds

that “it’s only art” & hence can change nothing. (I hate these assholes

worse than Jesse Helms; at least he still believes that art has power!)

Even if an art without political content can—for the moment—be admitted

to exist (altho this remains exceedingly problematic), then the

political meaning of art can still be sought in the means of its

production & consumption. The art of 57^(th) St. remains bourgeois no

matter how radical its content may appear, as Warhol proved by painting

Che Guevara; in fact Valerie Solanis revealed herself far more radical

than Warhol— by shooting him—(& perhaps even more radical than Che, that

Rudolph Valentino of Red Fascism).

In fact we’re not terribly concerned with the content of Immediatist

art. Immediatism remains for us more game than “movement” ; as such, the

game might result in Brechtian didacticism or Poetic Terrorism, but it

might equally well leave behind no content at all (as in a banquet), or

else one with no obvious political message (such as a quilt). The

radical quality of Immediatism expresses itself rather in its mode of

production & consumption.

That is, it is produced by a group of friends either for itself alone or

for a larger circle of friends; it is not produced for sale, nor is it

sold, nor (ideally) is it allowed to slip out of the control of its

producers in any way. If it is meant for consumption outside the circle

then it must be made in such a way as to remain impervious to coöptation

& commodification. For example, if one of our quilts escaped us & ended

up sold as “art” to some capitalist or museum, we should consider it a

disaster. Quilts must remain in our hands or be given to those who will

appreciate them & keep them. As for our agitprop, it must resist

commodification by its very form;—we don’t want our posters sold twenty

years later as “art,” like Mayakovsky (or Brecht, for that matter). The

best Immediatist agitprop will leave no trace at all, except in the

souls of those who are changed by it.

Let us repeat here that participation in Immediatism does not preclude

the production/consumption of art in other ways by the individuals

making up the group. We are not ideologues, & this is not Jonestown.

This is a game, not a movement; it has rules of play, but no laws.

Immediatism would love it if everyone were an artist, but our goal is

not mass conversion. The game’s pay-off lies in its ability to escape

the paradoxes & contradictions of the commercial art world (including

literature, etc.), in which all liberatory gestures seem to end up as

mere representations & hence betrayals of themselves. We offer the

chance for art which is immediately present by virtue of the fact that

it can exist only in our presence. Some of us may still write novels or

paint pictures, either to “make a living” or to seek out ways to redeem

these forms from recuperation. But Immediatism sidesteps both these

problems. Thus it is “privileged,” like all games.

But we cannot for this reason alone call it involuted, turned in on

itself, closed, hermetic, elitist, art for art’s sake. In Immediatism

art is produced & consumed in a certain way, & this modus operandi is

already “political” in a very specific sense. In order to grasp this

sense, however, we must first explore “involution” more closely.

It’s become a truism to say that society no longer expresses a consensus

(whether reactionary or liberatory), but that a false consensus is

expressed for society; let’s call this false consensus “ the Totality.”

The Totality is produced thru mediation & alienation, which attempt to

subsume or absorb all creative energies for the Totality. Mayakovsky

killed himself when he realized this; perhaps we’re made of sterner

stuff, perhaps not. But for the sake of argument, let us assume that

suicide is not a “solution.”

The Totality isolates individuals & renders them powerless by offering

only illusory modes of social expression, modes which seem to promise

liberation or self-fulfillment but in fact end by producing yet more

mediation & alienation. This complex can be viewed clearly at the level

of “commodity fetishism,” in which the most rebellious or avant-garde

forms in art can be turned into fodder for PBS or MTV or ads for jeans

or perfume.

On a subtler level, however, the Totality can absorb & re-direct any

power whatsoever simply by re-contextualizing & re-presenting it. For

instance, the liberatory power of a painting can be neutralized or even

absorbed simply by placing it in the context of a gallery or museum,

where it will automatically become a mere representation of liberatory

power. The insurrectionary gesture of a madman or criminal is not

negated only by locking up the perpetrator, but even more by allowing

the gesture to be represented—by a psychiatrist or by some brainless

Kop-show on channel 5 or even by a coffee-table book on Art Brut. This

has been called “Spectacular recuperation”; however, the Totality can go

even farther than this simply by simulating that which it formerly

sought to recuperate. That is, the artist & madman are no longer

necessary even as sources of appropriation or “mechanical reproduction,”

as Benjamin called it. Simulation cannot reproduce the faint reflection

of “aura” which Benjamin allowed even to commodity-trash, its “utopian

trace.” Simulation cannot in fact reproduce or produce anything except

desolation & misery. But since the Totality thrives on our misery,

simulation suits its purpose quite admirably.

All these effects can be tracked most obviously & crudely in the area

generally called “the Media” (altho we contend that mediation has a much

wider range than even the term broad-cast could ever describe or

indicate). The role of the Media in the recent Nintendo War—in fact the

Media’s one-to-one identification with that war—provides a perfect &

exemplary scenario. All over America millions of people possessed at

least enough “enlightenment” to condemn this hideous parody of morality

enforced by that murderous crack-dealing spy in the White House. The

Media however produced (i.e. simulated) the impression that virtually no

opposition to Bush’s war existed or could exist ; that (to quote Bush)

“there is no Peace Movement.” And in fact there was no Peace

Movement—only millions of people whose desire for peace had been negated

by the Totality, wiped out, “disappeared ” like victims of Peruvian

death squads; people separated from each other by the brutal alienation

of TV, news management, infotainment & sheer disinformation; people made

to feel isolated, alienated, weird, queer, wrong, finally no n-existent;

people without voices; people without power.

This process of fragmentation has reached near-universal completion in

our society, at least in the area of social discourse. Each person

engages in a “relation of involution” with the spectacular simulation of

Media. That is, our “relation” with Media is essentially empty &

illusory, so that even when we seem to reach out & perceive reality in

Media, we are in fact merely driven back in upon ourselves, alienated,

isolated, & impotent. America is full to overflowing with people who

feel that no matter what they say or do, no difference will be made;

that no one is listening; that there is no one to listen. This feeling

is the triumph of the Media. “They” speak, you listen—& therefore turn

in upon yourself in a spiral of loneliness, distraction, depression, &

spiritual death.

This process affects not only individuals but also such groups as still

exist outside the Consensus Matrix of nuke-family, school, church, job,

army, political party, etc. Each group of artists or peace activists or

whatever is also made to feel that no contact with other groups is

possible. Each “life-style” group buys the simulation of rivalry &

enmity with other such groups of consumers. Each class & race is assured

of its ungulfable existential alienation from all other classes & races

(as in Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous).

The concept of “networking” began as a revolutionary strategy to bypass

& overcome the Totality by setting up horizontal connections (unmediated

by authority) among individuals & groups. In the 1980s we discovered

that networking could also be mediated & in fact had to be mediated—by

telephone, computers, the post office, etc.—& thus was doomed to fail us

in our struggle against alienation. Communication technology may still

prove to offer useful tools in this struggle, but by now it has become

clear that CommTech is not a goal in itself. And in fact our distrust of

seemingly “democratic” tech like PCs & phones increase with every

revolutionary failure to hold control of the means of production.

Frankly we do not wish to be forced to make up our minds whether or not

any new tech will be or must be either liberatory or counter-liberatory.

“After the revolution” such questions would answer themselves in the

context of a “politics of desire.” For the time being, however, we have

discovered (not invented) Immediatism as a means of direct production &

presentation of creative, liberatory & ludic energies, carried out

without recourse to mediation of any mechanistic or alienated structures

whatsoever…or at least so we hope.

In other words, whether or not any given technology or form of mediation

can be used to overcome the Totality, we have decided to play a game

that uses no such tech & hence does not need to question it—at least,

not within the borders of the game. We reserve our challenge, our

question, for the total Totality, not for any one “issue” with which it

seeks to distract us.

And this brings us back to the “political form” of Immediatism.

Face-to-face, body-to-body, breath-to breath (literally a

conspiracy)—the game of Immediatism simply cannot be played on any level

accessible to the false Consensus. It does not represent “everyday

life”—it cannot BE other than “everyday life,” although it positions

itself for the penetration of the marvelous,” for the illumination of

the real by the wonderful. Like a secret society, the networking it does

must be slow (infinitely more slow than the “pure speed” of CommTech,

media & war), & it must be corporeal rather than abstract, fleshless,

mediated by machine or by authority or by simulation.

In this sense we say that Immediatism is a picnic (a con-viviality) but

is not easy—that it is most natural for free spirits but that it is

dangerous. Content has nothing to do with it. The sheer existence of

Immediatism is already an insurrection.

Imagination

There is a time for the theatre.—If a people’s imagination grows weak

there arises in it the inclination to have its legends presented to it

on the stage: it can now endure these crude substitutes for imagination.

But for those ages to which the epic rhapsodist belongs, the theatre and

the actor disguised as a hero is a hindrance to imagination rather than

a means of giving it wings: too close, too definite, too heavy, too

little in it of dream and bird-flight. (Nietzsche)

But of course the rhapsodist, who here appears only one step removed

from the shaman (“…dream and bird-flight”) must also be called a kind of

medium or bridge standing between “a people” and its imagination. (Note:

we’ll use the word “imagination” sometimes in Wm. Blake’s sense &

sometimes in Gaston Bachelard’s sense without opting for either a

“spiritual” or an “aesthetic” determination, & without recourse to

metaphysics.) A bridge carries across (“translate,” “metaphor” ) but is

not the original. And to translate is to betray. Even the rhapsodist

provides a little poison for the imagination.

Ethnography, however, allows us to assert the possibility of societies

where shamans are not specialists of the imagination, but where everyone

is a special sort of shaman. In these societies, all members (except the

psychically handicapped) act as shamans & bards for themselves as well

as for their people. For example: certain Amerindian tribes of the Great

Plains developed the most complex of all hunter/gatherer societies quite

late in their history (perhaps partly thanks to the gun & horse,

technologies adopted from European culture). Each person acquired

complete identity & full membership in “the People” only thru the Vision

Quest, & its artistic enactment for the tribe. Thus each person became

an “epic rhapsodist” in sharing this individuality with the

collectivity.

The Pygmies, among the most “primitive” cultures, neither produce nor

consume their music, but become en masse “the Voice of the Forest.” At

the other end of the scale, among complex agricultural societies, like

Bali on the verge of the 20^(th) century, “everyone is an artist” (& in

1980 a Javanese mystic told me, “Everyone must be an artist!”).

The goals of Immediatism lie somewhere along the trajectory described

roughly by these three points (Pygmies, Plains Indians, Balinese), which

have all been linked to the anthropological concept of “democratic

shamanism.” Creative acts, themselves the outer results of the

inwardness of imagination, are not mediated & alienated (in the sense

we’ve been using those terms) when they are carried out BY everyone FOR

everyone— when they are produced but not reproduced—when they are shared

but not fetishized. Of course these acts are achieved thru mediation of

some sort & to some extent, as are all acts—but they have not yet become

forces of extreme alienation between some Expert/Priest/Producer on the

one hand & some hapless “layperson” or consumer on the other.

Different media therefore exhibit different degrees of mediation—&

perhaps they can even be ranked on that basis. Here everything depends

on reciprocity, on a more-or-less equal exchange of what may be called “

quanta of imagination.” In the case of the epic rhapsodist who mediates

vision for the tribe, a great deal of work—or active dreaming—still

remains to be done by the hearers. They must participate imaginatively

in the act of telling/hearing, & must call up images from their own

stores of creative power to complete the rhapsodist’s act.

In the case of Pygmy music the reciprocity becomes nearly as complete as

possible, since the entire tribe mediates vision only & precisely for

the entire tribe;— while for the Balinese, reciprocity assumes a more

complex economy in which specialization is highly articulated, in which

“the artist is not a special kind of person, but each person is a

special kind of artist.”

In the “ritual theater” of Voodoo & Santeria, everyone present must

participate by visualizing the loas or orishas (imaginal archetypes), &

by calling upon them (with “signature” chants & rhythms) to manifest.

Anyone present may become a “horse” or medium for one of these santos,

whose words & actions then assume for all celebrants the aspect of the

presence of the spirit (i.e. the possessed person does not represent but

presents). This structure, which also underlies Indonesian ritual

theater, may be taken as exemplary for the creative production of

“democratic shamanism.” In order to construct our scale of imagination

for all media, we may start by comparing this “voodoo theater” with the

18^(th) century European theater described by Nietzsche.

In the latter, nothing of the original vision (or “spirit”) is actually

present. The actors merely re-present—they are “disguised.” It is not

expected that any member of troupe or audience will suddenly become

possessed (or even “inspired” to any great extent) by the playwright’s

images. The actors are specialists or experts of representation, while

the audience are “laypeople” to whom various images are being

transferred. The audience is passive, too much is being done for the

audience, who are indeed locked in place in darkness & silence,

immobilized by the money they’ve paid for this vicarious experience.

Artaud, who realized this, attempted to revive ritual voodoo theater

(banished from Western Culture by Aristotle)—but he carried out the

attempt within the very structure (actor/audience) of aristotelian

theater; he tried to destroy or mutate it from the inside out. He failed

& went insane, setting off a whole series of experiments which

culminated in the Living Theater’ s assault on the actor/audience

barrier, a literal assault which tried to force audience members to

“participate” in the ritual. These experiments produced some great

theater, but all failed in their deepest purpose. None managed to

overcome the alienation Nietzsche & Artaud had criticized.

Even so, Theater occupies a much higher place on the Imaginal Scale than

other & later media such as film. At least in theater actors & audience

are physically present in the same space together, allowing for the

creation of what Peter Brook calls the “invisible golden chain” of

attention & fellow-feeling between actors & audience—the well-known

“magic” of theater. With film, however, this chain is broken. Now the

audience sits alone in the dark with nothing to do, while the absent

actors are represented by gigantic icons. Always the same no matter how

many times it is “shown,” made to be reproduced mechanically, devoid of

all “aura,” film actually forbids its audience to “participate”—film has

no need of the audience’s imagination. Of course, film does need the

audience’s money, & money is a kind of concretized imaginal residue,

after all.

Eisenstein would point out that montage establishes a dialectic tension

in film which engages the viewer’s mind—intellect & imagination—& Disney

might add (if he were capable of ideology) that animation increases this

effect because animation is, in effect, completely made up of montage.

Film too has its “magic.” Granted. But from the point of view of

structure we have come a long way from voodoo theater & democratic

shamanism—we have come perilously close to the commodification of the

imagination, & to the alienation of commodity-relations. We have almost

resigned our power of flight, even of dream-flight.

Books? Books as media transmit only words—no sounds, sights, smells or

feels, all of which are left up to the reader’s imagination. Fine…But

there’s nothing “democratic” about books. The author/publisher produces,

you consume. Books appeal to “imaginative” people, perhaps, but all

their imaginal activity really amounts to passivity, sitting alone with

a book, letting someone else tell the story. The magic of books has

something sinister about it, as in Borges’s Library. The Church’s idea

of a list of damnable books probably didn’t go far enough—for in a

sense, all books are damned. The eros of the text is a

perversion—albeit, nevertheless, one to which we are addicted, & in no

hurry to kick.

As for radio, it is clearly a medium of absence—like the book only more

so, since books leave you alone in the light, radio alone in the dark.

The more exacerbated passivity of the “listener” is revealed by the fact

that advertisers pay for spots on radio, not in books (or not very

much). Nevertheless radio leaves a great deal more imaginative “work”

for the listener than, say, television for the viewer. The magic of

radio: one can use it to listen to sunspot radiation, storms on Jupiter,

the whizz of comets. Radio is old-fashioned; therein lies its

seductiveness. Radio preachers say, “Put your haaands on the Radio,

brothers & sisters, & feel the heeeeaaaling power of the Word!” Voodoo

Radio?

(Note: A similar analysis of recorded music might be made: i.e., that it

is alienating but not yet alienated. Records replaced family amateur

music-making. Recorded music is too ubiquitous, too easy—that which is

not present is not rare. And yet there’s a lot to be said for scratchy

old 78s played over distant radio stations late at night—a flash of

illumination which seems to spark across all the levels of mediation &

achieve a paradoxical presence.)

It’s in this sense that we might perhaps give some credence to the

otherwise dubious proposition that “radio is good—television evil!” For

television occupies the bottom rung of the scale of imagination in

media. No, that’s not true. “Virtual Reality” is even lower. But TV is

the medium the Situationists meant when they referred to “the Spectacle.

” Television is the medium which Immediatism most wants to overcome.

Books, theater, film & radio all retain what Benjamin called “the

utopian trace” (at least in potentia)—the last vestige of an impulse

against alienation, the last perfume of the imagination. TV however

began by erasing even that trace. No wonder the first broadcasters of

video were the Nazis. TV is to the imagination what virus is to the DNA.

The end. Beyond TV there lies only the infra-media realm of

no-space/no-time, the instantaneity & ecstasis of CommTech, pure speed,

the downloading of consciousness into the machine, into the program—in

other words, hell.

Does this mean that Immediatism wants to “abolish television”? No,

certainly not—for Immediatism wants to be a game, not a political

movement, & certainly not a revolution with the power to abolish any

medium. The goals of Immediatism must be positive, not negative. We feel

no calling to eliminate any “means of production ” (or even

re-production) which might after all some day fall into the hands of “a

people.”

We have analyzed media by asking how much imagination is involved in

each, & how much reciprocity, solely in order to implement for ourselves

the most effective means of solving the problem outlined by Nietzsche &

felt so painfully by Artaud, the problem of alienation. For this task we

need a rough hierarchy of media, a means of measuring their potential

for our uses. Roughly, then, the more imagination is liberated & shared,

the more useful the medium.

Perhaps we can no longer call up spirits to possess us, or visit their

realms as the shamans did. Perhaps no such spirits exist, or perhaps we

are too “civilized” to recognize them. Or perhaps not. The creative

imagination, however, remains for us a reality—& one which we must

explore, even in the vain hope of our salvation.

Lascaux

Every culture (or anyway every major urban/agricultural culture)

cherishes two myths which apparently contradict each other: the myth of

Degeneration & the myth of Progress. Rene Guenon & the

neo-traditionalists like to pretend that no ancient culture ever

believed in Progress, but of course they all did.

One version of the myth of Degeneration in Indo-European culture centers

around the image of metals: gold, silver, bronze, iron. But what of the

myth wherein Kronos & the Titans are destroyed to make way for Zeus &

the Olympians?—a story which parallels that of Tiamat & Marduk, or

Leviathan & Jah. In these “Progress” myths, an earlier chthonic chaotic

earthbound (or watery) “feminine” pantheon is replaced (overthrown) by a

later spiritualized orderly heavenly “male” pantheon. Is this not a step

forward in Time? And have not Buddhism, Christianity, & Islam all

claimed to be better than paganism?

In truth of course both myths—Degeneration as well as Progress—serve the

purpose of Control & the Society of Control. Both admit that before the

present state of affairs something else existed, a different form of the

Social. In both cases we appear to be seeing a “race-memory” vision of

the Paleolithic, the great long unchanging pre-history of the human. In

one case that era is seen as a nastily brutish vast disorder; the

18^(th) century did not discover this viewpoint, but found it already

expressed in Classical & Christian culture. In the other case, the

primordial is viewed as precious, innocent, happier, & easier than the

present, more numinous than the present—but irrevocably vanished,

impossible to recover except through death.

Thus for all loyal & enthusiastic devotees of Order, Order presents

itself as immeasurably more perfect than any original Chaos; while for

the disaffected potential enemies of Order, Order presents itself as

cruel & oppressive (“iron”) but utterly & fatally unavoidable—in fact,

omnipotent.

In neither case will the mythopoets of Order admit that “Chaos” or “the

Golden Age” could still exist in the present, or that they do exist in

the present, here & now in fact—but repressed by the illusory totality

of the Society of Order. We however believe that “the paleolithic”

(which is neither more nor less a myth than “chaos” or “golden age”)

does exist even now as a kind of unconscious within the social. We also

believe that as the Industrial Age comes to an end, & with it the last

of the Neolithic “agricultural revolution,” & with it the decay of the

last religions of Order, that this “repressed material” will once again

be uncovered. What else could we mean when we speak of “psychic

nomadism” or “the disappearance of the Social”?

The end of the Modern does not mean a return TO the Paleolithic, but a

return OF the Paleolithic.

Post-classical (or post-academic) anthropology has prepared us for this

return of the repressed, for only very recently have we come to

understand & sympathize with hunter/gatherer societies. The caves of

Lascaux were rediscovered precisely when they needed to be rediscovered,

for no ancient Roman nor medieval Christian nor 18^(th) century

rationalist could have ever have found them beautiful or significant. In

these caves (symbols of an archaeology of consciousness) we found the

artists who created them; we discovered them as ancestors, & also as

ourselves, alive & present.

Paul Goodman once defined anarchism as “neolithic conservatism.” Witty,

but no longer accurate. Anarchism (or Ontological Anarchism, at least)

no longer sympathizes with peasant agriculturalists, but with the

non-authoritarian social structures & pre-surplus-value economics of the

hunter/gatherers. Moreover we cannot describe this sympathy as

“conservative.” A better term would be “radical,” since we have found

our roots in the Old Stone Age, a kind of eternal present. We do not

wish to return to a material technology of the past (we have no desire

to bomb ourselves back to the Stone Age), but rather for the return of a

psychic technology which we forgot we possessed.

The fact that we find Lascaux beautiful means that Babylon has at last

begun to fall. Anarchism is probably more a symptom than a cause of this

melting away. Despite our utopian imaginations we do not know what to

expect. But we, at least, are prepared for the drift into the unknown.

For us it is an adventure, not the End of the World. We have welcomed

the return of Chaos, for along with the danger comes—at last—a chance to

create.

Vernissage

What’s so funny about Art?

Was Art laughed to death by dada? Or perhaps this sardonicide took place

even earlier, with the first performance of Ubu Roi? Or with

Baudelaire’s sarcastic phantom-of-the-opera laughter, which so disturbed

his good bourgeois friends?

What’s funny about Art (though it’s more funny-peculiar than

funny-ha-ha) is the sight of the corpse that refuses to lie down, this

zombie jamboree, this charnel puppetshow with all the strings attached

to Capital (bloated Diego Rivera-style plutocrat), this moribund

simulacrum jerking frenetically around, pretending to be the one single

most truly alive thing in the universe.

In the face of an irony like this, a doubleness so extreme it amounts to

an impassable abyss, any healing power of laughter-in-art can only be

rendered suspect, the illusory property of a self-appointed elite or

pseudo-avant-garde. To have a genuine avant-garde, Art must be going

somewhere, and this has long since ceased to be the case. We mentioned

Rivera; surely no more genuinely funny political artist has painted in

our century—but in aid of what? Trotskyism! The deadest dead-end of

twentieth-century politics! No healing power here—only the hollow sound

of powerless mockery, echoing over the abyss.

To heal, one first destroys—and political art which fails to destroy the

target of its laughter ends by strengthening the very forces it sought

to attack. “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” sneers the porcine

figure in its shiny top hat (mocking Nietzsche, or course, poor

Nietzsche, who tried to laugh the whole nineteenth century to death, but

ended up a living corpse, whose sister tied strings to his limbs to make

him dance for fascists).

There’s nothing particularly mysterious or metaphysical about the

process. Circumstance, poverty, once forced Rivera to accept a

commission to come to the USA and paint a mural—for Rockefeller!—the

very archetypal Wall Street porker himself! Rivera made his work a

blatant piece of Commie agitprop—and then Rockefeller had it

obliterated. As if this weren’t funny enough, the real joke is that

Rockefeller could have savored victory even more sweetly by not

destroying the work, but by paying for it and displaying it, turning it

into Art, that toothless parasite of the interior decorator, that joke.

The dream of Romanticism : that the reality-world of bourgeois values

could somehow be persuaded to consume, to take into itself, an art which

at first seemed like all other art (books to read, paintings to hang on

the wall, etc.), but which would secretly infect that reality with

something else, which would change the way it saw itself, overturn it,

replace it with the revolutionary values of art.

This was also the dream surrealism dreamed. Even dada, despite its

outward show of cynicism, still dared to hope. From Romanticism to

Situationism, from Blake to 1968, the dream of each succeeding yesterday

became the parlor decor of every tomorrow—bought, chewed, reproduced,

sold, consigned to museums, libraries, universities, and other mausolea,

forgotten, lost, resurrected, turned into nostalgia-craze, reproduced,

sold, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

In order to understand how thoroughly Cruikshank or Daumier or

Grandville or Rivera or Tzara or Duchamp destroyed the bourgeois

worldview of their time, one must bury oneself in a blizzard of

historical references and hallucinate—for in fact the

destruction-by-laughter was a theoretical success but an actual flop—the

dead weight of illusion failed to budge even an inch in the gales of

laughter, the attack of laughter. It wasn’t bourgeois society which

collapsed after all, it was art.

In the light of the trick which has been played on us, it appears to us

as if the contemporary artist were faced with two choices (since suicide

is not a solution): one, to go on launching attack after attack,

movement after movement, in the hope that one day (soon) “the thing”

will have grown so weak, so empty, that it will evaporate and leave us

suddenly alone in the field; or, two, to begin right now immediately to

live as if the battle were already won, as if today the artist were no

longer a special kind of person, but each person a special sort of

artist. (This is what the Situationists called “the suppression and

realization of art” ).

Both of these options are so “impossible” that to act on either of them

would be a joke. We wouldn’t have to make “funny” art because just

making art would be funny enough to bust a gut. But at least it would be

our joke. (Who can say for certain that we would fail? “I love not

knowing the future.”—Nietzsche) In order to begin to play this game,

however, we shall probably have to set certain rules for ourselves:

There are no issues. There is no such thing as sexism, fascism,

speciesism, looksism, or any other “franchise issue” which can be

separated out from the social complex and treated with “discourse” as a

“problem.” There exists only the totality which subsumes all these

illusory “issues” into the complete falsity of its discourse, thus

rendering all opinions, pro and con, into mere thought-commodities to be

bought and sold. And this totality is itself an illusion, an evil

nightmare from which we are trying (through art, or humor, or by any

other means) to awaken.

As much as possible whatever we do must be done outside the

psychic/economic structure set up by the totality as the permissible

space for the game of art. How, you ask, are we to make a living without

galleries, agents, museums, commercial publishing, the NEA, and other

welfare agencies of the arts? Oh well, one need not ask for the

improbable. But one must indeed demand the “impossible”—or else why the

fuck is one an artist?! It’s not enough to occupy a special holy catbird

seat called Art from which to mock at the stupidity and injustice of the

“square” world. Art is part of the problem. The Art World has its head

up its ass, and it has become necessary to disengage—or else live in a

landscape full of shit.

Of course one must go on “making a living” somehow—but the essential

thing is to make a life. Whatever we do, whichever option we choose

(perhaps all of them), or however badly we compromise, we should pray

never to mistake art for life: Art is brief, Life is long. We should try

to be prepared to drift, to nomadize, to slip out of all nets, to never

settle down, to live through many arts, to make our lives better than

our art, to make art our boast rather than our excuse.

The healing laugh (as opposed to the poisonous and corrosive laugh)

can only arise from an art which is serious—serious, but not sober.

Pointless morbidity, cynical nihilism, trendy postmodern frivolity,

whining/bitching/moaning (the liberal cult of the “victim”), exhaustion,

Baudrillardian ironic hyperconformity—none of these options is serious

enough, and at the same time none is intoxicated enough to suit our

purposes, much less elicit our laughter.

“Raw Vision”

The categories of naive art, art brut, and insane or eccentric art,

which shade into various & further categories of neo-primitive or

urban-primitive art— all these ways of categorizing & labelling art

remain senseless:—that is, not only ultimately useless but also

essentially unsensual, unconnected to body & desire. What really

characterizes all these art forms? Not their marginality in relation to

a mainstream of art/discourse…for heaven’s sake, what mainstream?! what

discourse?! If we were to say that there’s a “post-modernist” discourse

currently going on, then the concept “margin” no longer holds any

meaning. Post-post-modernism, however, will not even admit the existence

of any discourse of any sort. Art has fallen silent. There are no more

categories, much less maps of “center” & “margin. ” We are free of all

that shit, right?

Wrong. Because one category survives: Capital. Too-Late Capitalism. The

Spectacle, the Simulation, Babylon, whatever you want to call it. All

art can be positioned or labelled in relation to this “discourse.” And

it is precisely & only in relation to this “metaphysical”

commodity-spectacle that “outsider” art can be seen as marginal. If this

spectacle can be considered as a para-medium (in all its sinuous

complexity), then “outsider” art must be called im-mediate. It does not

pass thru the paramedium of the spectacle. It is meant only for the

artist & the artist’s “immediate entourage” (friends, family, neighbors,

tribe); & it participates only in a “gift” economy of positive

reciprocity. Only this non-category of “immediatism” can therefore

approach an adequate understanding & defense of the bodily aspects of

“outsider” art, its connection to the senses & to desire, & its

avoidance or even ignorance of the mediation/alienation inherent in

spectacular recuperation & re-production. Mind you, this has nothing to

do with the content of any outsider genre, nor for that matter does it

concern the form or the intention of the work, nor the naiveté or

knowingness of the artist or recipients of the art. Its “immediatism”

lies solely in its means of imaginal production. It communicates or is

“given” from person to person, “breast-to-breast” as the sufis say,

without passing thru the distortion-mechanism of the spectacular

paramedium.

When Yugoslavian or Haitian or NYC-graffiti art was “discovered” &

commodified, the results failed to satisfy on several points:—(1) In

terms of the pseudo-discourse of the “Art World, ” all so-called

“naiveté” is doomed to remain quaint, even campy, & decidedly

marginal—even when it commands high prices (for a year or two). The

forced entrance of outsider art into the commodity spectacle is a

humiliation. (2) Recuperation as commodity engages the artist in

“negative reciprocity”—i.e., where first the artist “received

inspiration” as a free gift, and then “made a donation” directly to

other people, who might or might not “give back” their understanding, or

mystification, or a turkey & a keg of beer (positive reciprocity), the

artist now first creates for money & receives money, while any aspects

of “gift” exchange recede into secondary levels of meaning & finally

begin to fade (negative reciprocity). Finally we have tourist art, & the

condescending amusement, & then the condescending boredom, of those who

will no longer pay for the “inauthentic.” (3) Or else the Art World

vampirizes the energy of the outsider, sucks everything out & then

passes on the corpse to the advertising world or the world of “popular”

entertainment. By this re-production the art finally loses its “aura” &

shrivels & dies. True, the “utopian trace” may remain, but in essence

the art has been betrayed.

The unfairness of such terms as “insane” or “neo-primitive” art lies in

the fact that this art is not produced only by the mad or innocent, but

by all those who evade the alienation of the paramedium. Its true appeal

lies in the intense aura it acquires thru immediate imaginal presence,

not only in its “visionary” style or content, but most importantly by

its mere present-ness (i.e., it is “here” and it is a “gift”). In this

sense it is more, not less, noble than “mainstream ” art of the

post-modern era—which is precisely the art of an absence rather than a

presence.

The only fair way (or “beauty way,” as the Hopi say) to treat “outsider”

art would seem to be to keep it “secret”—to refuse to define it—to pass

it on as a secret, person-to-person, breast-to-breast—rather than pass

it thru the paramedium (slick journals, quarterlies, galleries, museums,

coffee-table books, MTV, etc.). Or even better:—to become “mad” &

“innocent” ourselves—for so Babylon will label us when we neither

worship nor criticize it anymore—when we have forgotten it (but not

“forgiven” it!), & remembered our own prophetic selves, our bodies, our

“true will.”

An Immediatist Potlatch

Any number can play but the number must be pre-determined. Six to

twenty-five seems about right.

The basic structure is a banquet or picnic. Each player must bring a

dish or bottle, etc., of sufficient quantity that everyone gets at least

a serving. Dishes can be prepared or finished on the spot, but nothing

should be bought ready-made (except wine & beer, although these could

ideally be home-made). The more elaborate the dishes the better. Attempt

to be memorable. The menu need not be left to surprise (although this is

an option)— some groups may want to coordinate the banquets so as to

avoid duplications or clashes. Perhaps the banquet could have a theme &

each player could be responsible for a given course (appetizer, soup,

fish, vegetables, meat, salad, dessert, ices, cheeses, etc.). Suggested

themes: Fourier’s Gastrosophy—Surrealism—Native American—Black & Red

(all food black or red in honor of anarchy)—etc.

The banquet should be carried out with a certain degree of formality:

toasts, for example. Maybe “dress for dinner” in some way? (Imagine for

example that the banquet theme were “Surrealism ”; the concept “dress

for dinner” takes on a certain meaning). Live music at the banquet would

be fine, providing some of the players were content to perform for the

others as their “gift,” & eat later. (Recorded music is not

appropriate.)

The main purpose of the potlatch is of course gift-giving. Every

player should arrive with one or more gifts & leave with one or more

different gifts. This could be accomplished in a number of ways: (a)

Each player brings one gift & passes it to the person seated next to

them at table (or some similar arrangement); (b) Everyone brings a gift

for every other guest. The choice may depend on the number of players,

with (a) better for larger groups & (b) for smaller gatherings. If the

choice is (b), you may want to decide beforehand whether the gifts

should be the same or different. For example, if I am playing with five

other people, do I b ring (say) five hand-painted neckties, or five

totally different gifts? And will the gifts be given specifically to

certain individuals (in which case they might be crafted to suit the

recipient’s personality), or will they be distributed by lot?

The gifts must be made by the players, not ready-made. This is vital.

Pre-manufactured elements can go into the making of the gifts, but each

gift must be an individual work of art in its own right. If for instance

I bring five hand painted neckties, I must paint each one myself, either

with the same or with different designs, although I may be allowed to

buy ready-made ties to work on.

Gifts need not be physical objects. One player’s gift might be live

music during dinner, another’s might be a performance. However, it

should be recalled that in the Amerindian potlatches the gifts were

supposed to be superb & even ruinous for the givers. In my opinion

physical objects are best, & they should be as good as possible—not

necessarily costly to make, but really impressive. Traditional

potlatches involved prestige-winning. Players should feel a competitive

spirit of giving, a determination to make gifts of real splendor or

value. Groups may wish to set rules beforehand about this—some may wish

to insist on physical objects, in which case music or performance would

simply become extra acts of generosity, but hors de potlatch, so to

speak.

Our potlatch is non-traditional, however, in that theoretically all

players win—everyone gives & receives equally. There’s no denying

however that a dull or stingy player will lose prestige, while an

imaginative &/or generous player will gain “face.” In a really

successful potlatch each player will be equally generous, so that all

players will be equally pleased. The uncertainty of outcome adds a zest

of randomness to the event.

The host, who supplies the place, will of course be put to extra

trouble & expense, so that an ideal potlatch would be part of a series

in which each player takes a turn as host. In this case another

competition for prestige would transpire in the course of the

series:—who will provide the most memorable hospitality? Some groups may

want to set rules limiting the host’s duties, while others may wish to

leave hosts free to knock themselves out; however, in the latter case,

there should really be a complete series of events, so that no one need

feel cheated, or superior, in relation to the other players. But in some

areas & for some groups the entire series may simply not be feasible. In

New York for example not everyone has enough room to host even a small

party. In this case the hosts will inevitably win some extra prestige.

And why not?

Gifts should not be “useful.” They should appeal to the senses. Some

groups may prefer works of art, others might like home-made preserves &

relishes, or gold frankincense & myrrh, or even sexual acts. Some ground

rules should be agreed on. No mediation should be involved in the

gift—no videotapes, tape recordings, printed material, etc. All gifts

should be present at the potlatch “ceremony”— i.e. no tickets to other

events, no promises, no postponements. Remember that the purpose of the

game, as well as its most basic rule, is to avoid all mediation & even

representation—to be “present,” to give “presents.”

Silence

The problem is not that too much has been revealed, but that every

revelation finds its sponsor, its CEO, its monthly slick, its clone

Judases & replacement people.

You can’t get sick from too much knowledge—but we can suffer from the

virtualization of knowledge, its alienation from us & its replacement by

a weird dull changeling or simulacrum—the same “data,” yes, but now

dead—like supermarket vegetables; no “aura.”

Our malaise (January 1, 1992) arises from this: we hear not the language

but the echo, or rat her the reproduction ad infinitum of the language,

its reflection upon a reflection-series of itself, even more

self-referential & corrupt. The vertiginous perspectives of this VR

datascape nauseate us because they contain no hidden spaces, no

privileged opacities.

Infinite access to knowledge that simply fails to interact with the body

or with the imagination—in fact the manichean ideal of fleshless

soulless thought— modern media/politics as pure gnostic mentation, the

anaesthetic ruminations of Archons & Aeons, suicide of the Elect…

The organic is secretive—it secretes secrecy like sap. The inorganic is

a demonic democracy—everything equal, but equally valueless. No gifts,

only commodities. The Manichaeans invented usury. Knowledge can act as a

kind of poison, as Nietzsche pointed out.

Within the organic (“Nature,” “everyday life”) is embedded a kind of

silence which is not just dumbness, an opacity which is not mere

ignorance—a secrecy which is also an affirmation— a tact which knows how

to act, how to change things, how to breathe into them.

Not a “cloud of unknowing”—not “mysticism”—we have no desire to deliver

ourselves up again to that obscurantist sad excuse for

fascism—nevertheless we might invoke a sort of taoist sense of

“suchness-of-things”—”a flower does not talk,” & it’s certainly not the

genitals which endow us with logos. (On second thought, perhaps this is

not quite true; after all, myth offers us the archetype of Priapus, a

talking penis.) An occultist would ask how to “work” this silence—but

we’d rather ask how to play it, like musicians, or like the playful boy

of Heraclitus.

A bad mood in which every day is the same. When are a few lumps going to

appear in this smooth time? Hard to believe in the return of Carnival,

of Saturnalia. Perhaps time has stopped here in the Pleroma, here in the

Gnostic dreamworld where our bodies are rotting but our “minds” are

downloaded into eternity. We know so much—how can we not know the answer

to this most vexing of questions?

Because the answer (as in Odilon Redon’s “Harpocrates”) isn’t answered

in the language of reproduction but in that of gesture, touch, odor, the

hunt. Finally virtu is impassable—eating & drinking is eating &

drinking—the lazy yokel plows a crooked furrow. The Wonderful World of

Knowledge has turned into some kind of PBS Special from Hell. I demand

real mud in my stream, real watercress. Why, the natives are not only

sullen, they’re taciturn—downright incommunicative. Right, gringo, we’re

tired of your steenking surveys, tests & questionnaires. There are some

things bureaucrats were not meant to know— & so there are some things

which even artists should keep secret. This is not self-censorship nor

self-ignorance. It is cosmic tact. It is our homage to the organic, its

uneven flow, its backcurrents & eddies, its swamps & hideouts. If art is

“work” then it will become knowledge & eventually lose its redemptive

power & even its taste. But if art is “play” then it will both preserve

secrets & tell secrets which will remain secrets. Secrets are for

sharing, like all of Nature’s secretions.

Is knowledge evil? We’re no mirror-image Manichees here—we’re counting

on dialectics to break a few bricks. Some knowledge is dadata, some is

commodata. Some knowledge is wisdom—some simply an excuse for doing

nothing, desiring nothing. Mere academic knowledge, for example, or the

knowingness of the nihilist post-mods, shades off into realms of the

UnDead—& the UnBorn. Some knowledge breathes—some knowledge suffocates.

What we know & how we know it must have a basis in the flesh—the whole

flesh, not just a brain in a jar of formaldehyde. The knowledge we want

is neither utilitarian nor “pure” but celebratory. Anything else is a

totentanz of data-ghosts, the “beckoning fair ones” of the media, the

Cargo Cult of too-Late Capitalist epistemology.

If I could escape this bad mood of course I’d do so, & take you with me.

What we need is a plan. Jail break? tunnel? a gun carved of soap, a

sharpened spoon, a file in a cake? a new religion?

Let me be your wandering bishop. We’ll play with the silence & make it

ours. Soon as Spring comes. A rock in the stream, bifurcating its

turbulence. Visualize it: mossy, wet, viridescent as rainy jade-faded

copper struck by lightning. A great toad like a living emerald, like

Mayday. The strength of the bios, like the strength of the bow or lyre,

lies in the bending back.

Critique of the Listener

To speak too much & not be heard—that’s sickening enough. But to acquire

listeners—that could be worse. Listeners think that to listen

suffices—as if their true desire were to hear with someone else’s ears,

see thru someone else’s eyes, feel with someone else’s skin…

The text (or the broadcast) which will change reality:— Rimbaud dreamed

of that, & then gave up in disgust. But he entertained too subtle an

idea about magic. The crude truth is perhaps that texts can only change

reality when they inspire readers to see & act, rather than merely see.

Scripture once did this—but Scripture has become an idol. To see thru

its eyes would be to possess (in the Voodoo sense) a statue—or a corpse.

Seeing, & the literature of seeing, is too easy. Enlightenment is easy.

“It’s easy to be a sufi,” a Persian shaykh once told me. “What’s

difficult is to be human.” Political enlightenment is even easier than

spiritual enlightenment—neither one changes the world, or even the self.

Sufism & Situationism—or shamanism & anarchy—the theories I’ve played

with— are just that: theories, visions, ways of seeing. Significantly,

the “practice” of sufism consists in the repetition of words (dhikr).

This action itself is a text, & nothing but a text. And the “praxis” of

anarcho-situationism amounts to the same: a text, a slogan on a wall. A

moment of enlightenment. Well, it’s not totally valueless—but afterwards

what will be different?

We might like to purge our radio of anything which lacks at least the

chance of precipitating that difference. Just as there exist books which

have inspired earthshaking crimes, we would like to broadcast texts

which cause hearers to seize (or at least make a grab for) the happiness

God denies us. Exhortations to hijack reality. But even more we would

like to purge our lives of everything which obstructs or delays us from

setting out—not to sell guns & slaves in Abyssinia—not to be either

robbers or cops—not to escape the world or to rule it—but to open

ourselves to difference.

I share with the most reactionary moralists the presumption that art can

really affect reality in this way, & I despise the liberals who say all

art should be permitted because—after all—it’s only art. Thus I’ve taken

to the practice of those categories of writing & radio most hated by

conservatives—pornography & agitprop—in the hope of stirring up trouble

for my readers/hearers & myself. But I accuse myself of ineffectualism,

even futility. Not enough has changed. Perhaps nothing has changed.

Enlightenment is all we have, & even that we’ve had to rip from the

grasp of corrupt gurus & bumbling suicidal intellectuals. As for our

art—what have we accomplished, other than to spill our blood for the

ghostworld of fashionable ideas & images?

Writing has taken us to the very edge beyond which writing may be

impossible. Any texts which could survive the plunge over this edge—into

whatever abyss or Abyssinia lies beyond—would have to be virtually

self-created, like the miraculous hidden-treasure Dakini-scrolls of

Tibet or the tadpole-script spirit-texts of Taoism—& absolutely

incandescent, like the last screamed messages of a witch or heretic

burning at the stake (to paraphrase Artaud).

I can sense these texts trembling just beyond the veil.

What if the mood should strike us to renounce both the mere objectivity

of art & the mere subjectivity of theory? to risk the abyss? What if no

one followed? So much the better, perhaps— we might find our equals

amongst the Hyperboreans. What if we went mad? Well—that’s the risk.

What if we were bored? Ah…

Already some time ago we placed all our bets on the irruption of the

marvelous into everyday life—won a few, then lost heavily. Sufism was

indeed much much easier. Pawn everything then, down to the last

miserable scrawl? double our stakes? cheat?

It’s as if there were angels in the next room beyond thick

walls—arguing? fucking? One can’t make out a single word.

Can we retrain ourselves at this late date to become Finders of hidden

treasure? And by what technique, seeing that it is precisely technique

which has betrayed us? Derangement of the senses, insurrection, piety,

poetry? Knowing how is a cheap mountebank’s trick. But knowing what

might be like divine self-knowledge—it might create ex nihilo.

Finally, however, it will become necessary to leave this city which

hovers immobile on the edge of a sterile twilight, like Hamelin after

all the children were lured away. Perhaps other cities exist, occupying

the same space & time, but… different. And perhaps there exist jungles

where mere enlightenment is outshadowed by the black light of jaguars. I

have no idea—& I’m terrified.