On a recent episode of 'New Tricks', the Battersea Power Station featured prominently. This sparked two trains of thought for me. Firstly, and in line with this blog's interest in dead-tech, etc., I was curious to follow up the current status/use of this building. Not surprisingly there are many websites devoted to it, which, in part, outline the many proposals for its future; these include a massive redevelopment which would see the building housing restaraunts, cinemas, shops, etc., !
Secondly, in the show, the character Brian remarked that in mid-20th century Britain, the Battersea Power Station represented a "quasi-religious monument to electricity and power", and how appropriate then that its' art-deco exterior was designed by the architect of Liverpool Cathedral, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott . These comments reminded me of a paper written about the "sacred" importance of the science and technology "megaprojects" undertaken by mid-20th century totalitarian regimes (characterised, most recently, by Michael Burleigh as political religions). Such movements sort to bring about their 'mission' of creating 'heaven on earth', indeed, the very remodelling of humanity itself, through, among other things, the implementation of massive social engineering, building, and modernisation projects. Viewing people as "clay" to be reworked as necessary, death on a massive scale was inevitable.
My fellow contributors, I know that this track and its clip are long lost gems we have endeavoured to track down, ever since they were featured on Rage sometime in the wee small hours, back in the 1980s. Of course the song predates the time in which we saw the clip, but I haven't experienced such a perfect symbiosis of sound and vision on youtube since watching Fad Gadget's "Collapsing New People". The unpolished clip matches the raw sound, and reminds us of how Devo were before the inevitable blandness set in. The way the song begins, with those ugly, experimental industrial sounds, replete with imagery of Devo in their disturbing Dr Who style "auton" masks, simply marvellous stuff....
I haven't laid eyes on Nick Kent's book since around 1995, but after spending some time compulsively turning the pages in the Ariel Bookstore that hot summer day, I'm unable to ignore [what seems like] the anecdotal evidence for later theoretical concerns. One of the things I find particularly remarkable is how forthright Iggy Pop was in agreeing to pen a foreword for this book. I applaud his honesty, for Kent marshals considerable evidence for the indictment of Iggy as one of the most dissolute, intemperate figures in the annals of rock history. Indeed, Kent confirms and builds on some of Iggy's assertions from I Need More concerning a sexual fixation on underage girls, replete with apocalyptic imagery of him passed out among industrial ruins, with a semi-naked pre-pubescent girl lying next to him. Other examples abound, but the general picture is clear.
It might become clearer though if read alongside Danny Sugerman's memoirs, Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess. One of the most lucid and insightful passages in this book is when Sugerman offers a general evaluation of the transgressive behaviour of figures he was personally associated with, such as Iggy and Jim Morrison. He concludes that there was something calculated about their actions, inasfar as the obvious non-reciprocity was designed to destroy the sense of personal justice of those subject to it, thus controlling them. Upon returning home to discover an unconscious Iggy on the floor, with a trail of vomit, faeces and blood strewn down the hallway, Sugerman chose to adopt the managerial technique of instilling a sense of symmetry. Seizing Iggy by the ankles, he then proceeded to clean up the mess, using Iggy's long hair as a mop.
Reading The Dark Stuff and Wonderland Avenue in combination conveys a vivid sense of how such excesses define themselves against the sequenced interpolation of everyday encounters, which Giddens has fittingly described in terms of "seriality". The resort to primordialism draws its appeal from the possibility of transcending the negotiation of tact required by social interaction. Garfinkel was able to make comparable points with his experiments designed to breach trust. What this proves is the unfeasibility of the avant-garde's experimental approach to the world eventually destroying the Law; transgression is only meaningful insofar as a limit exists. On this basis I would modify some gender criticism of transgression, as it is not so much that protest masculinity is driven to return to a state of undifferentiation, to nothingness, at the most extreme end of the continuum. I think Nietzsche was closer to the heart of the matter when he noted that the problem was not the heights attained, but the fall. The discovery is not that there is nothing on the other side to "break on through to", but rather that its effects are inscribed within larger mechanisms of power. The self evolves in its complexity, and may revel in this reward, but this is a Faustian bargain, subject to continual renegotiation. Sooner or later then, seriality reappears to remind us that the retraction of symbolic boundaries constitutes a form of order.
If this holds, then it can hardly be coincidental that towards the end of his life, Morrison had adopted a more sombre, sociologically realist mode of songwriting. Indeed, "L.A. Woman" is one of the best things he ever wrote, with its ethnographic snapshots of everyday scenes (as opposed to an earlier "weird scenes inside the goldmine), "cops in cars/topless bars/never seen a woman so alone". True, glimpses of the old persona remain, with "The Changeling" and "L'America", but overall the album is his most diverse lyrically.
We know that Morrison claimed he would have studied more sociology if he had lived a different life, but whether this would have meant reading Deleuze's thesis of the "control society", Foucault and Lacan, that have influenced this posting, along with the aforementioned select sociological stablemates, no one can say for sure. In any case, Kent and Sugerman provide much grist for the theoretical mill, spurring the realisation that creativity can be a form of normativity. As I've commented on this blog before, it is only a failure to understand this that can fuel convictions of an inevitable Ballardian society leading us all on a merry dance towards the apocalypse. At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking that such theorists make for strange bedfellows with neoconservative cultural critics, but this impression may soon fade. My advice would be to articulate ideas of aesthetic revolt to permanent revolution, and consider how complementary they are. Then watch the documentary Arguing the World and draw conclusions as to how and why so many of the interviewees "broke on through" to the other side of the political spectrum.
I thought a rejoinder was required to my earlier posting on Thailand ("The Transformation of Thailand into a Post-Oedipal Playground of Transsexaul Kitsch"), which foregrounded the protaganist of Michel Houellebecq's novel Platform with respect to Orientalism, rather than to the more often cited H.P. Lovecraft, where humanity is perpetually victimised by primordial forces they can neither control nor understand (I figure Louis Ferdinand Celine must be awaiting comparison in this context). What I failed to do was cite any work by Thai academics that could contextualise how representative of their country were the informal economies of sex tourism etc, that are fetishsized in Platform, and indeed, in Internet culture more generally. According to the study I've cited, they are apparently very important, with decisive ramifications for the viability of Thai democracy, given the extensive corruption involved in the industry.
I also thought it incumbent on me to reproduce Lingis' reply to Peter Jackson's critical review of his work. Lingis offers one of the most unscholarly, ineffectual responses to a critic that I've ever read. Clearly he, like any academic, is obligated to answer the specific charges, but he merely evades this responsibility, choosing instead to engage in wordplay, and vaguely alluding to a literary character. Everyone knows that Lingis is a showman to some extent, lecturing from within a coffin, or turning off the lights in the lecture theatre, adorning himself in glowing bodypaints and what not, holding to the maxim, "the unlived life is not worth examining". But his response reads as a surprisingly timid, and perhaps even dishonest, missed opportunity to foreground his own investment in the topic at hand.
This is a pity, because I would have liked to have seen more from him about liminal experience in relation to other theoretical work, such as Foucault's heterotopias, or perhaps more fittingly Agamben's "states of exception" or "zones of indistinction", where the borderline between economics and politics, reproduction and production is dissolving. What else are the biopolitics of sex tourism if not this? And what about the question of how fitting it may be that such zones are inhabited by liminal figures such as kathoey? On these grounds, some qualification of Bakhtin's carnival is also required, as it is not the social order of the host society that temporarily reverses its power relations, it is rather, in the case of the western sex tourist, a reversal they can experience by travelling to such refuges from feminism and identity politics more generally, "king for a day, fool for a lifetime". Guilt is assuaged by travelling as far away as possible from familiar ties, and Houellebecq adds the interesting, and disturbing twist, complementary to the "desiring machine" reference of my earlier posting: this desire assumes a serial form, inasmuch as it views Asia as a gigantic factory producing an overabundance of life, an interchangeability of bodies and faces, where "they all [sic] look the same". It is indistinction on this level, which is [spuriously] contrasted with notions of western individualism, that Houellebecq draws upon to rationalise the actions of his protagonist: after innumerable encounters he is unable to distinguish anything other than the fact that he was there, thus freeing him from any haunting by the faces of the sexual partners left behind.
In these terms, the point of arrival is also a paradoxical point of departure; re-enchantment is tied to a terminal identity. As Platform makes clear, few settle in such zones to begin a new life, but simply to concede the end of their lives. So perhaps biopolitics does eventually reconnect with the pessimistic, organic entropy tropes found in Lovecraft's work afterall....
I have chosen a couple of youtube clips that may (in)directly speak to some of the concerns raised in this posting.
Alphonso Lingis' Response to Peter Jackson's 'Spurning Alphonso Lingis' Thai "Lust": The Perils of a Philosopher at Large' Alphonso Lingis
I really reveled in the wicked pleasure of reading, as much, I think, as Peter Jackson of writing, the portrait of Alphonso Lingis - this individual neither of us has met. Any academic like us gets off on letting out all the stops sometimes. This Alphonso Lingis is 'ignoran[t] of the power relations in East-West erotic contact.' He 'rule[s] out the possibility of loving erotic relationships between Caucasians and Thais.' He is unable 'to tell the difference between a kathoey and a Thai woman.' He takes Thailand to be a 'matriarchal Garden of Eden.' He takes 'transvestites [as] representative of Thai males,' and 'assume[s] that all Thai men are potentially kathoey.' He is afflicted with 'blindness to non-Western cultural patterns.' He 'imperiously' 'fail[s] to see or acknowledge the local different rules of the erotic.' He embodies 'an uncritiqued Orientialism,' and 'an uncritiqued imperialist view of Asian masculinities as inferior forms beside Western expressions of manhood.' Makes one think of Fritz Shrobenius, in Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence. But in the end Alphonso Lingis is 'just another angst-ridden coloniser feeling guilty about his power rather than a liberator.' Peter Jackson lets us down there. Ouologuem's portrait of Shrobenius is both more malicious and more liberatingly side-splitting. I do sincerely apologize to Peter Jackson for having somehow dropped the appropriate footnote for the two sentences he indeed is the origin of. Al Lingis
Gambling, prostitution, drugs, arms trading, oil smuggling, and trafficking in people - these six illegal businesses are large and getting larger. They distort the economy and victimize people. They are increasingly linked together through networks of protection and organized crime. They help to fund Thailand's corrosive 'money politics' and to sustain corruption in the police. In this sequel to Corruption and Democracy in Thailand, the authors argue that control of the illegal economy, especially through reform of the police, is vital for the development of a modern economy and functioning democracy.
"There we were in this plain white vehicle truckin’ northbound on the I-69 with oversized Starbucks cups in our hands (unfortunately, without those there would be absolutely no coffee in Indiana, a very sad fact it seems), whizzing past corn fields and Rest Areas and strange taxonomies of roadkill that accumulated every few hundred yards or so on the highway’s shoulders (I’m convinced Indiana has more roadkill than any other state in the U.S. – after forcing Wes to open his eyes while driving we spotted three mangled little corpses blur past us in a single second followed immediately by a broken down Oldsmobile, the perfect exclamation point to all that ended up there and would never make it across the road), squirrels, raccoons, mice, gophers, rabbits, cats, drivers (who knows what else) … the road to Flint was already a stroll through a long cemetery.
"When Wes, Nihal, and I headed up there a few weeks ago I couldn’t wait to pick up on that geography of urban ruins that weaves so many of my interests together about architecture, global economies, lost histories, indigenous culture, systemic poverty, the road trip, contexts of abandonment, informal communities, urban salvagers, and so on.
"As you know, Wes has been paying close attention to Flint over the last couple of years, he says he’s photographed literally thousands of abandoned houses there, some that have just remained boarded up for years, others that have been tagged with For Sale signs from hustlers trying to collect money on structures they don’t even own. Still, some homes are being moved into by neighbors looking to upgrade next door just as the occupants have left the property. There are owners who are defiant, scared, territorial, proud, some who want to keep their homes and those who pray for demolition, and in many ways Flint is just another shade of New Orleans caught in between states of devastation and piddly renewal. Though instead of having been flooded, it’s all dried up instead."
"Though it looks like something out of Perdido Street Station, it's really a skyscraping extension to the Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica, 'a vertical cemetery established in Santos in Brazil in 1983.'
"This futuristic, insectile extension 'will create another 25,000 niches, set inside a 108-metre-high tower block that will complete the complex.'It will be circled by birds, looming alien on the horizon.
"The vertical cemetery is particularly widespread in Brazil and is also beginning to be used in other places: the Panteón Memorial Towers complex, which consists of 13 towers in a vaguely deconstructivist style, has recently been presented at Bogotá in Colombia and sparked debate concerning changes in funeral rituals related to the social changes that have taken place over the last 30 years. In the South Korean pavilion at the last Venice Architecture Biennale, the project The Last House by architect Chanjoong Kim (founder of System Lab) addressed the same notion, bringing it into line with more contemporary architectural styles and approaches and drawing on a zoomorphic language that echoed systems of vascular circulation. Architecture appears swift to take the opportunity to address a new area where death creates a market, on the borderline between consumerism and entertainment."
Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo O. C. de Ostos once proposed “a gigantic presence of a hanging funeral structure” that will hover above the war torn streets of Baghdad, floating unceasingly “from bright explosive mornings to airless night hours,” and lush with growth from an endless supply of dead Iraqis.
“Day by day, nearly hourly, it updates its assimilating heavy stocks, a statistic of a hundred thousand Iraqi corpses or maybe twenty five thousand.”
"The Hanging Cemetery is a speculative project of architecture. Since its sketchy inception dating back to the summer of 2004 to today. We intend to explore what architecture could generate when faced with extreme cultural and political scenarious like the current crises in the Middle East. As with the rest of our work, the focus of the project is less in the form of a final object than as a script that it inserts into the city.
"The main driving force was to consistently explore through an inventive design proposal the ambiguities that surround our current lives, not only as social producers of space but also as global spectators."
Please no citation or reproduction of any original writings or images appearing on this blog without the permission of its authors.
"Defects of empirical knowledge have less to do with the ways we go wrong in philosophy than defects of character do; such as the simple inability to shut up; determination to be thought deep; hunger for power; fear, especially the fear of an indifferent universe" (David Stove The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies 1991: 188)
