Anti-capitalist art is more than welcome in capitalist realism. Mark Fisher points this out and uses example of evil corporations being a common villain in movies and TV. I mean, they actually called the Evil Corp in Mr Robot, E-for-Evil Corp. There's no concern on the part of capitalists because they don't need to defend corporations anymore.
Not only that, but doing so can actually be advantageous to the capitalist system. The narratives and conflicts depicted in mainstream corporate art are always extremely simplistic. They present a dualistic narrative of good vs evil, in which both of theses roles are clearly defined and easily distinguishable. In the world of mass-produced corporate art, evil is completely transparent. In the real world, the problem is nowhere near that simple, and this works in their favor. Corporations are great at presenting themselves as "socially responsible". They're great at presenting themselves as crucial to the economy (they're "job creators", they're "too big to fail", etc.). The corporations that we see in real world don't resemble the over-the-top caricature of an "evil corporation" that is often presented in pop culture and the mass media. This puts some conceptual distance, so to speak, between the real world corporations that we confront in our everyday lives and the stereotypical "evil corporation" trope that we see in pop culture. As long as Hollywood and Wall Street and Silicon Valley are not actively plotting some sort of apocalyptic Orwellian zombie-AI global takeover of the planet, everything is pretty chill and the plebs should stop complaining so much.
@@naniyotaka if you think about it, the more we learn about it, the more we wrestle with the contradictions, the more they need to use mythology to help us worth through those feelings and invalidation so that they can provide us a psychological distancing mechanism causing us to be slave today Paine rather to the fear of uncertainty behind learning and collaboration. Because they don’t mind that we know or are angry, they just want us angry and alone
As an artist I'm constantly conflicted with needing to make art that has "market value" and can be sold to someone to financially support myself, and just making art for art's sake because I want to make something that I like, and to express myself through the power of creativity.
How can you be conflicted? Do you (can you, can anyone infact...? ) make art outside of capitalism? Just because you don't manage to sell something doesn't mean it isn't a commodity.
@@bexispace being a poor starving artist doesn't make art or an artist more 'authentic', even the concept of that is a cliché and a commodity (the starving artist is a good sell, a good sob story, easily marketable, even if the reality still is the artist is literally suffering, the real suffering is actually invisible except to the artist). Failing, or refusing to sell artwork also doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a commodity either. There's lot's of hidden ways we're all still thinking capitalistically, even if we think we are anti-capitalist, just like Nietzsche suggested that there are lots of hidden ways Westerners are all still thinking like Christians despite being secular. I can only see any real art as process now, mainly invisible to anyone but the artist themselves as they enact it, and the resulting works just artifacts to say it happened, and that's only if the artwork wasn't actually created as a product/commodity or way to further brand the artist in the first place. AND... even then I'm not sure. That's why I'm trying to study D&G, Zizek, Lacan, Fisher, to try and create something worth creating and not artworks that turn out to be no better than advertising at the end of the day.
Have you read Mercuse? I find his take on anti-art more interesting. He talks about art as it relates to production. Not only is art an escape from the alienation of capitalist labor, it's a way out of the trap of the spectacle. But the forms of art create a frame that shapes the message (similar the Benjamin's media is the message). Thus anti art is necessary to challenge capital. Ultimately production itself must become a work of art. @plasticpills
An edit and two years later........... we're still misspelling his name. Not to mention 33 people clicked thumbs up without any of them helping with, well, you know.
Just like everything in our Bourgeoisie Coercive society, art is a spectacle . Let's not forget that all systems can be anachronisms. They can die, they are not destined to survive everything. Capitalism Realism will surely collapse, and it might be done with a Paint brush.
It was happening in Chile on the cultural level.. It was like a fertilizer that grew and provided momentum for the socialist movement.. Reaction /fascism then crushes that spirit that was cultivated, an empowered people become dehumanized & traumatized. Its a sad story
Great video, and I think memes do have a subversive function, but I do think we need to have at least an ounce of hesitation in throwing our hopes for revolutionary art on a cultural form that is so fundamentally coopted by the systems of social media. We can't forget that the goal of social media is maximum engagement, and creating content, be it leftist memes or otherwise will always inevitably lead back to engagement. If memes can act as one element of a revolutionary art, I think it would be valuable to also consider some sort of art that actively promotes a break with this content/engagement engine.(What that form is, I'm not yet sure.)
While i do agree with your comment, I don’t think we can leave out the sheer multifaceted-ness of social media in relation to capital and self-expression. While the system of control that is social media regulates and profits off of it, the hyperrealized atomization of social media also acts as a medium by which people can express themselves outside of the direct whims of capital, as what’s being traded as the commodity (when talking about memes) isn’t the meme itself, rather the data harvested from that online interaction. Also I’m not sure if I expressed my idea correctly or not through the comment above, I’m relatively new 2 all of this and am writing it at 3am so pls don’t judge lmao
I thought something similar, the pandemic has become something of a theoretical ground zero, and with the Bernie/Corbyn defeats, the online left is gonna have to find something to do. No money for now, but I'd appreciate shares because my social media game suuuuucks.
I love this. We also must not forget that Internet Memes allow us to make anx thought infinitely more abstract giving us direct access to pure ideology
@@PlasticPills Speaking for myself here, but this video seemed to cover this topic in greater depth than some (though certainly, not all) of your others. The pacing and direction was excellent. It felt neither too long nor too short. Although I've really enjoyed basically all your content so far, some of your videos felt like they could have been expounded upon further; either through added material (i.e., extended cut(s)) or follow-up videos (speaking of: any more Lacan stuff coming down the pike?). Idea Channel had this same problem. This is a good problem to have because it means that the ideas you present, and how you present them, are so interesting that you could explore them a myriad of ways. In any event, better to "leave 'em hungry for more" than eager to leave, eh?
Wowowowow great video, I’m writing my postgrad English dissertation on this sort of thing and this has reinvigorated me and convinced me that it’s actually worth talking about
@@PlasticPills well I'm currently struggling to define what it is exactly, but I plan on comparing Dadaism to meme culture and how consumerism turns everything into a spectacle/marketing campaign
come here from zero books - this is great!! thank you for making this. please talk about art more, we (i) need more anticapitalist chat about art everywhere but especially on youtube. also, are you familiar with brad troemel?
With the introduction of NFT's there is now a way for them to directly commodify and circumvent the democratic and public status of internet memes and art, but as long as the images that are sold as NFTs still exist online its not a huge issue imo.
true. Also glad to see another leftie, coopting moldbugs "cathedral" for progressive means :D You already mentioned Vaporwave, you might be interested in the multiplayer art game "Occupy white walls" and Glitchart in General. Another thing i'm highly interested in at the moment is street poetry such as by the austrian viennese poet Helmut Seethaler using the ephemeral qualities of material to your advantage. It is already happening. The problem is visibility.
I did not know Moldbug used the term, but it gives me more incentive to overwrite the term. Would you mind linking to some of these references? Thanks for your addition
@@PlasticPills As far as i know and the way you used it, moldbugs "cathedral" is one of the most popular alt right terms (Here is the reactionary Channel "The Distributist" explaining it among other things: ruclips.net/video/p6LUjUbikkk/видео.html). Before you drop it though: A term in itself is neither good or bad. I think the cathedral is more catchy than similar concepts like hegemony or superstructure. It also captures how some of of originally revolutionary leftwing cultural practise got coopted by the mainstream system to maintain itself (similar to Jesus ideals of social justice through god have been coopted as a front for the feudal system, even though it contradicts its mechanism in rhetoric). One just needs to strip it from the rightwing nonsense Moldbug & Co attach to it (Maybe an idea for a new video? Got a bloc entry on it, but its in german, dont know if you understand?). I understand the concerns, but i think the online left is too easy to dismiss valuable and modern vocabulary as descriptive tools, which is one of the reasons why we continue to loose in my opinion, which can also be used as a bridge to turn right wingers. If one does post bolshevik dank memes, one can make use of a useful intellectual concept that originated on the other side. To understand modern rightwing language also enable us to dismantle them more efficiently, because most right wing goons just parrot the terms without understanding, what works logically and what doesnt (you did well there in the video). Just pick whats useful and dump the rest (we did the same with other rightwing intellectuals and artists in the past). Occupy White Walls is a game can be dowloaded for free on Steam. Here is the forum: www.oww.ist/. The idea is an online gallery of sorts, a small project build on the second life engine as it seems, but it certainly has the flair of what you imply in the video. You can exhibit paintings everyone knows as well as relatively unknown artists from social media. The fun thing is how they included them completely nonhierarchical und your gallery assistent sorts only according to your taste. When i started i thought every painting sits in a museum somewhere, but thats not the case. In Theory others can visit your gallery but the servers tend to crash :S In the same spirit Glitchart or "AESTHETICS" is something you best just search for on pinterest, deviantart or instagram. There is no centralized authority, just a lot of people (including myself) having fun with cool glitcheffects and satirizing 21. Century obsession with nostalgia and consumerism. Street Poetry you can also find in the internet in spades, but most of it is just feel good mindfulness stuff at the moment. Helmut Seethaler is a more political voice but he also publishes mostly in German. He has social media accounts and a website: www.zettelpoet.at/ . His prime motivation is, because fewer and fewer people are reading, he brings literature out, where the people are. I did one trip on my own, wanted to start more frequently this year but corona lockdown makes it hard at the moment. I could send you one of my own sets if you are interested in the idea? But if you one to do your own thing, the thought is easy: Write or type/print very short poems, aphorism, pictograms on paper, cut them and (using tape or similar methods) distribute them in public spaces (underground stations, Parks, Malls, inner cities etc.)
I feel like the almost immediate collapse of NFTs into a joke and then a burst bubble kind of indicates how impossible it is to commodify memes, which gives credence to your conclusions there.
Hm, well I think it is worthwhile to engage in memery, to some extent. However, I think there is some truth to the phrase, "the medium is the message." Are memes a medium that engage people deeply enough to effect real, lasting change in their values, beliefs, and lifestyles? I would propose it would be more fruitful to learn from past experiences where there were steps made toward greater justice, equality, and freedom. I think we'll find that high art, street art, and meme-ing will all fall short of what it actually takes to subvert the empire (however stimulating they may be).
To answer your question, I really do believe that memes nowadays (and especially presently due to the whole covid situation with people deprived of entertainment) really can greatly influence beliefs. Perhaps memes won't succeed at totally 180-ing someone's political beliefs - although that isn't impossible either - but their pervasive canalization of, say, anti-capitalist ideology is legitimately influential and I feel as though many access new information and ideas through memes. I personally have been introduced to many new concepts through memes
@Revelation 13:4 yeah, since I wrote that I am coming to agree with you and the other poster more and more. I think people carry around a bunch of preexisting conditions that can make us more or less vulnerable to different species of ideological parasitism. However, memes have a way of "boiling the frog" in that they normalize and even subtly implant narrative seeds in the imagination. By the way, your name is on point.
@@youngpilgrim5 I think the two things about memes that make them very effective is 1. their viral nature which makes it easy for memes that have their origin in a specific political camp to make their way somewhere else, the right has obviously used this but I know personally I've intentionally posted vaguely leftist memes on servers that try to ban that. and 2. their lack of structure and how they're often about mocking something means that you can easily mock capitalist institutions.
THERE WAS A NOVEL BY QUIM MUN SOE A CATALONIAN NOVELIST NAMED "GASOLINE"... THIS NOVEL MAIN CHARACTER IS A PAINTER AND... WE CAN FEEL THE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS THAT PAINTER SUFFER WHILE HE WAS DRAWING FOR A COMMERCIAL SHOW...
Cool video once again! Maybe it's interesting to consdier that punk was a left radical cultural udnerground with lots of imagery going along with it to subvert. of course it was coopted by the mainstream after the grunge wave opened up doors for commercial bands doing the same trick as the early bands in the 90s, but for a long time punk has succesfully created a space for subversive politics and was quite succesful at cdoing so
Would be really interesting to see a part 2 of this video with a focus on the role of NFTs Is the move from memes towards NFTs another loss for the left? What was purely public and plentiful gets twisted into a scarce and ownable commodity... Or is it an opportunity for the common man to gain from and infiltrate what was once an elite and exclusive community? Now everyone and anyone can profit from the commodifaction of art instead of just a select few... A possible analogy: If memes are the new online form of street art and murals, are NFTs the cutting-out and selling of these online murals?
NFTs separate ownership from the art. The art is public and anyone with an internet connection can view any NFT (i.e., it serves a similar function as murals or other public art). The difference, however, is that the artist can be compensated for production of the art, both at the time of production (minting) and through ongoing royalties paid to the artist upon the sale and transfer of the art to other buyers. The art at all times remains "public and plentiful." This can be tested by going to any NFT marketplace and viewing any NFT. They're all there.
Do the memes have any referent? (Thinking of Baudrillard In the Shadow of the Silent Majority here). I fail to see that memes will do anything past the point of consumption in the subject - other then give the subject material to make another sign (meme). Are you claiming the memes (the morphing of the political and aesthetic) can pierce the spectacle?
I would enjoy art more today if it wasn’t all so much repetition of what is trendy at the moment. Memery…maybe. ‘Easy way out’ is more likely, when it comes to using one’s skill and time. The number of individual websites and accounts on online art forums is enormous and consists mainly of imagery that looks as though it was made with the goal of saying “See! I can do that too!” or, more often, “I really have nothing unique to show so here is yet another version of what you’ve been looking at for a few years now, but, significantly, it was made by me, me, me, ME!”
Thankfully, everybody seems to know what art is (I don’t). However, as a reminder, we are talking about its corpse here, since a) it was stabbed for the first time, being put on display to the public as a spectacle (for a small fee) thus becoming a private profanity for everyone and thus loosing its undisclosed but purposeful practical meaning and b) when Beuys put the final nail in its coffin declaring everyone and thus nobody an artist (which the public happily internalized). We won’t wake up art with our moral judgements about the vultures who treat it as a commodity, which btw. it always has been (although ancient people believed in its magical powers). Art should be left alone to art education, nothing more and nothing less and the occasional contemplation. True art never served as a call to action but, at its best, opened a glimpse of the real of the world. Creativity will matter most in creating a bearable future.
I’ve long thought that leftist art within a capitalist system often fails because it neglects the fact that the creation of art is first and foremost an aesthetic practice-it’s value is not derived just from its message or the way it’s message is delivered but also from the beauty of the work. Without beauty (conceptual or physical) a work has no aesthetic value and art without aesthetic value rightly gets ignored and forgotten. Also I think that public architecture is an excellent medium for public art, however the left also often ignores beauty considerations in architecture and so it produces the opposite of its intended effect.
Mies van der Rohe created beautiful buildings, of bronze coated iron, travertine sheets, plate glass, and open spaces. The basic scheme was replicated in horrendous was with cheap materials and a disregard for proportion and overall aesthetic. This uglification wasn’t the fault of great architects of the 20th century, it was a fault of real estate investment firms cutting costs and creating eye sores.
I’ve noticed the online left today, a year following the upload of this video, also rejects Postmodernism. It is presupposed by their language and imagery that postmodernism must contain some intrinsic rejection to modernist thought, which I cannot locate within it myself. I currently view it more as a post-structuralist super-modernism, a modernism that is also attempting to resist it’s constraints within society, and of course, capitalism. It is a liberated modernism. Am I incorrect?
I did kinda net art which has been online since 95 but it got remade in flash this millenia which means it won't be accessible after december when they finally kill the plug-in so maybe you could give it a peruse before then at sign69dotcom - it's very random and infinite etc...
The tragic career of basquiat, the inhuman way in which he was chewed up and spit out by the art racket, should be a cautionary tale for all artists. An artist should have the courage to constantly question their own motives for participating in the racket. An artist should do whatever is necessary to maintain purity. Once an artist falls short of this goal and becomes polluted, they lose their power and are sucked into oblivion. The millions of dollars paid for basquiat's paintings 30 some years after his death, does his decomposed corpse benefit from it? You, yeah you, artist, ask yourself some tough questions....
I think posting falls under adornos definition of ‘psuedoactivity’ I think you may want to look into that. He talks in it in his essay on hobbies and camping as I recall. Look it up nice video
you know why people say "the left can't meme"? Because as soon as the shown memes vanished, I've already forgotten about them. The left can't meme because they are forgettable, they don't condense an idea, they just blabber about. They aren't memes.... Oh and the left tends to talk down to people as if they are dumb, which is another problem.
I have been enjoying most of your videos but as someone passionate about the arts this one struck a sour note with me. I feel that leftist memes are generally one-liners based on moral arguments and encourage a very binary way of thinking. This language is heavily embedded in the language of PR, individuality that the decommodification of art sets itself against... maybe you could say most social media actions simulate action for reaction and this is a byproduct of capitalism where we are the product. I guess we could talk about deterritorialization but I feel like I have observed that the forms of consciousness and nuance that other mediums of art are able to communicate are way more valuable to the imagination of alternate futures and the organization of more meaningful communities even if they are eventually co-opted by capitalism. The temporary nature of a cultural phenomenon doesn't delegitimize the world or consciousness it creates. Ultimately I see more nuanced conversation and expression drowned out by Leftist Twitter which seems like it would result in its own capitalist serving dystopian society.
Watch Foreigners out! Schlingensief's Container by Christoph Schlingensief this is probably one of the most subversive works of art ever made, and if you are not aware of this then your opinion may be swayed.
You say near the end of your video, that you don't quite know what acid Communism is or means. I however think that you do know. For instance, under the influence of LSD people tend to be more imaginative , optimistic, more intuitive, more creative, more experimental, more audacious . probably more honest and or , Absurd etc . Hence acid Communism (one would expect) would be a revolutionary Art Workers or Cultural Workers co - operative and collective process imbued with the very same qualities as derived from LSD in general . it's quite an intriguing concept but I suspect a praxis more relevant to those more privileged and more affluent among Cadre who are thus not purely proletarian in their circumstances.
Do you watch a RUclips vlogger called Bald and Bankrupt? He travels the former Soviet Union. Over and over people bemoan the fall of Communism. They complain that their countries under new regimes were looted. I have a fear that our own failing empire will bring nothing more than loss and regret. I'm for making the world better, fairer, but I fear real upheaval. I hope we act but with some self-restraint. People rarely do.
Have you ever seen where Picasso lived? Nice view for someone that thinks we're all equal, him and the pope pontificating from there their views on hills overlooking the masses. Please tell me your visions of how I can be free, oh wait I have to pay rent. But you were saying communism.
"The Left can't meme." "The Left already lost at politics." I think the Left-Right-dichotomy is very unhelpfful here. Yeah, the Left has lost at politics, but it's not like "the Right" has won. A European Identitarian will critique Neo-Liberalism just as much as any American socialist youtuber. And when the internet-right makes fun of Leftists that can't meme, then by "Leftists" they look at Progressives - the kind of Progressives who couldn't tell you the difference between what Socialism and Communism means and how they are different. If you find racist intellectuals among the Right and observe that their anti-globalist logic is incopatible with Leninist goals, then this shouldn't promt a convoluted anti-bourgeoisie rhetoric that draws academic concepts to find a bridge between them. That's merely a linguistic exercise that helps preserving the idea of "The Right" as logical opponent of the Left. It looks like "the Left" and "the Right" are fractions that police each respective attempts at violence against the status quo. One is painting a scare crow if one pretends that the so called Right would disagree with Marxists theory of alienation. Of course, this is a picture that sells well to the self-identifying Leftist.
Something about all this aspiration for avant-garde disruption, raising class consciousness, and making art with explicit political messages seems super hollow to me. It could be seen as disruptive only in the sense of the predominate social logic: the system already thrives on of disruption. Whether it comes from the tech industry or from wojak memes, I don't think it matters in the end. The world would love endless aesthetic resistance and shitposting to own the boomers, if only for the reason you mention: all of this earns platforms money, creates a new stream of social capital, etc. In Jameson's terms, despite the moral veneer, it's doesn't rise above the level of pastiche. I'm doubtful about his course correction, though, in the gamble on a crack in the veneer appearing, somehow, that can point us to new futures. His indebtedness to the dialectic presents more trouble than solution (which is the point, isn't it). Something like Ranciere's positions on the inefficacy political art in The Emancipated Spectator seems to capture something much more prescient about the aesthetic situation and what we should (or shouldnt) do about it
doesn't it seem almost perverse to outright state that we *should* do this? one of the most enticing things about the lefty memes is that they don't come from this altruistic leftist struggle, but from sincere, naive, sharing of experience, text, and theory. but i dunno, i might be wrong, but i have this feeling that once something is named, it can die; or maybe, it can shift, it's the shift that makes me optimistic. also, does this count as accel praxis or something? accel memes for blackpilled teens or some shit? good video.
Your definition of the left as „collective liberation politics“ is too vague to be meaningful. For example why couldn’t right wing Christians claim that it’s production is „collective liberation“? In fact Republican pundits often employ collective liberation narratives. The question with Diego Rivera, for example was liberation from capitalism specifically. I would argue that visual art, namely painting and drawing is a poor vehicle for raising class consciousness or in the case of Guernica, it did a poor job of raising awareness of imperialism. In that case Franco became a member of the UN in 1955. Art in a broader sense that can raise consciousness is film, video, literature, documentaries, history. But even here it is a certain type of art. William Blake‘s poem Jerusalem became an national anthem while he himself protested war, British imperialism, industrialism, and child labor. Anyone who thinks that art is the Primary vehicle for political change is delusional. It can stir sentiment and unite people, but the deeper awareness is provided didactically not aesthetically.
![Twenty One Pilots - “The Line” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E2Rj2gQAyPA/mqdefault.jpg)
5:46 State of Art
6:55 Anti-Commercial Art
12:51 Leftist Memes
Engels: it's been over 200 years, what taking them so long?
Marx: they're making memes Engels, they're making the memes
Anti-capitalist art is more than welcome in capitalist realism. Mark Fisher points this out and uses example of evil corporations being a common villain in movies and TV. I mean, they actually called the Evil Corp in Mr Robot, E-for-Evil Corp. There's no concern on the part of capitalists because they don't need to defend corporations anymore.
Not only that, but doing so can actually be advantageous to the capitalist system. The narratives and conflicts depicted in mainstream corporate art are always extremely simplistic. They present a dualistic narrative of good vs evil, in which both of theses roles are clearly defined and easily distinguishable. In the world of mass-produced corporate art, evil is completely transparent. In the real world, the problem is nowhere near that simple, and this works in their favor. Corporations are great at presenting themselves as "socially responsible". They're great at presenting themselves as crucial to the economy (they're "job creators", they're "too big to fail", etc.). The corporations that we see in real world don't resemble the over-the-top caricature of an "evil corporation" that is often presented in pop culture and the mass media. This puts some conceptual distance, so to speak, between the real world corporations that we confront in our everyday lives and the stereotypical "evil corporation" trope that we see in pop culture. As long as Hollywood and Wall Street and Silicon Valley are not actively plotting some sort of apocalyptic Orwellian zombie-AI global takeover of the planet, everything is pretty chill and the plebs should stop complaining so much.
@@n.trushaev5132 Actually, Mr Robot’s depiction of corporations is more nuanced than you see in other TV shows and movies.
@@naniyotakaYeah, it's actually a really well made critique of capitalism. I love this show, even though it makes me depressed when I watch it
@@naniyotaka if you think about it, the more we learn about it, the more we wrestle with the contradictions, the more they need to use mythology to help us worth through those feelings and invalidation so that they can provide us a psychological distancing mechanism causing us to be slave today Paine rather to the fear of uncertainty behind learning and collaboration. Because they don’t mind that we know or are angry, they just want us angry and alone
As an artist I'm constantly conflicted with needing to make art that has "market value" and can be sold to someone to financially support myself, and just making art for art's sake because I want to make something that I like, and to express myself through the power of creativity.
Never sell out. Art should never be a business first. Just express your true self and if someone will support you then lucky you.
I personally don't grapple with this because I'm broke af!
How can you be conflicted? Do you (can you, can anyone infact...? ) make art outside of capitalism? Just because you don't manage to sell something doesn't mean it isn't a commodity.
@@bexispace being a poor starving artist doesn't make art or an artist more 'authentic', even the concept of that is a cliché and a commodity (the starving artist is a good sell, a good sob story, easily marketable, even if the reality still is the artist is literally suffering, the real suffering is actually invisible except to the artist). Failing, or refusing to sell artwork also doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a commodity either. There's lot's of hidden ways we're all still thinking capitalistically, even if we think we are anti-capitalist, just like Nietzsche suggested that there are lots of hidden ways Westerners are all still thinking like Christians despite being secular. I can only see any real art as process now, mainly invisible to anyone but the artist themselves as they enact it, and the resulting works just artifacts to say it happened, and that's only if the artwork wasn't actually created as a product/commodity or way to further brand the artist in the first place. AND... even then I'm not sure. That's why I'm trying to study D&G, Zizek, Lacan, Fisher, to try and create something worth creating and not artworks that turn out to be no better than advertising at the end of the day.
@@Xanaduum, it's hard to get out of the mindset of, "does this have commercial value", when you need to try to recover the cost of making something.
seize the memes of production !
*Hello*
Yo
@@Somefool669 hi.
We are not alone, we are never alone! :)
Have you read Mercuse? I find his take on anti-art more interesting. He talks about art as it relates to production. Not only is art an escape from the alienation of capitalist labor, it's a way out of the trap of the spectacle. But the forms of art create a frame that shapes the message (similar the Benjamin's media is the message). Thus anti art is necessary to challenge capital. Ultimately production itself must become a work of art. @plasticpills
An edit and two years later........... we're still misspelling his name. Not to mention 33 people clicked thumbs up without any of them helping with, well, you know.
Just like everything in our Bourgeoisie Coercive society, art is a spectacle . Let's not forget that all systems can be anachronisms. They can die, they are not destined to survive everything. Capitalism Realism will surely collapse, and it might be done with a Paint brush.
pseud
It was happening in Chile on the cultural level.. It was like a fertilizer that grew and provided momentum for the socialist movement..
Reaction /fascism then crushes that spirit that was cultivated, an empowered people become dehumanized & traumatized. Its a sad story
@@distortiontildeafness indeed.
I need to seize the memes of production
But on a serious note- learn to make and or communicate deep thoughts in a single image, or meme
the book is great on that count
@@theorywavenights8117 oh duh!! you're right lol
@@WastingtimeInc how dare you
Great video, and I think memes do have a subversive function, but I do think we need to have at least an ounce of hesitation in throwing our hopes for revolutionary art on a cultural form that is so fundamentally coopted by the systems of social media. We can't forget that the goal of social media is maximum engagement, and creating content, be it leftist memes or otherwise will always inevitably lead back to engagement. If memes can act as one element of a revolutionary art, I think it would be valuable to also consider some sort of art that actively promotes a break with this content/engagement engine.(What that form is, I'm not yet sure.)
While i do agree with your comment, I don’t think we can leave out the sheer multifaceted-ness of social media in relation to capital and self-expression. While the system of control that is social media regulates and profits off of it, the hyperrealized atomization of social media also acts as a medium by which people can express themselves outside of the direct whims of capital, as what’s being traded as the commodity (when talking about memes) isn’t the meme itself, rather the data harvested from that online interaction.
Also I’m not sure if I expressed my idea correctly or not through the comment above, I’m relatively new 2 all of this and am writing it at 3am so pls don’t judge lmao
This is an awesome video and channel! Happily subbed and am looking forward to more! Not sure how you do not have more subs than you do!
This becomes increasingly relevant as current pandemic continues...thank you, @PlasticPills!
Where can one support your work financially?
I thought something similar, the pandemic has become something of a theoretical ground zero, and with the Bernie/Corbyn defeats, the online left is gonna have to find something to do. No money for now, but I'd appreciate shares because my social media game suuuuucks.
I love this.
We also must not forget that Internet Memes allow us to make anx thought infinitely more abstract giving us direct access to pure ideology
Great stuff, one of your best videos I think.
TY, editing definitely took the longest, but any reason that this one sticks out?
@@PlasticPills Speaking for myself here, but this video seemed to cover this topic in greater depth than some (though certainly, not all) of your others. The pacing and direction was excellent. It felt neither too long nor too short. Although I've really enjoyed basically all your content so far, some of your videos felt like they could have been expounded upon further; either through added material (i.e., extended cut(s)) or follow-up videos (speaking of: any more Lacan stuff coming down the pike?). Idea Channel had this same problem. This is a good problem to have because it means that the ideas you present, and how you present them, are so interesting that you could explore them a myriad of ways. In any event, better to "leave 'em hungry for more" than eager to leave, eh?
Wowowowow great video, I’m writing my postgrad English dissertation on this sort of thing and this has reinvigorated me and convinced me that it’s actually worth talking about
Sick, what on?
@@PlasticPills well I'm currently struggling to define what it is exactly, but I plan on comparing Dadaism to meme culture and how consumerism turns everything into a spectacle/marketing campaign
@@BobsiPringlez would love to have a read of that once it's finished
Christy Taylor Fab! Maybe I can work out a way of getting it out there when it’s done, I still have a lot to do at the minute though
@@BobsiPringlez hey did you ever finish this? I'm currently writing my undergrad philosophy diss on something similar
come here from zero books - this is great!! thank you for making this. please talk about art more, we (i) need more anticapitalist chat about art everywhere but especially on youtube. also, are you familiar with brad troemel?
Man, I lost the live premiere, oh well. Great content as always
With the introduction of NFT's there is now a way for them to directly commodify and circumvent the democratic and public status of internet memes and art, but as long as the images that are sold as NFTs still exist online its not a huge issue imo.
One of the best videos I've watched in a kong time.
The end, with that zoom out of premiere pro and music peak, was fire!
That Adorno quote at 13:05 is from "Culture Industry Reconsidered" (couldn't find it anywhere in the Dialectic of Enlightenment)
ah, me neither and thats why! Have you got it in german?
true. Also glad to see another leftie, coopting moldbugs "cathedral" for progressive means :D You already mentioned Vaporwave, you might be interested in the multiplayer art game "Occupy white walls" and Glitchart in General. Another thing i'm highly interested in at the moment is street poetry such as by the austrian viennese poet Helmut Seethaler using the ephemeral qualities of material to your advantage. It is already happening. The problem is visibility.
I did not know Moldbug used the term, but it gives me more incentive to overwrite the term. Would you mind linking to some of these references? Thanks for your addition
@@PlasticPills As far as i know and the way you used it, moldbugs "cathedral" is one of the most popular alt right terms (Here is the reactionary Channel "The Distributist" explaining it among other things: ruclips.net/video/p6LUjUbikkk/видео.html). Before you drop it though: A term in itself is neither good or bad. I think the cathedral is more catchy than similar concepts like hegemony or superstructure. It also captures how some of of originally revolutionary leftwing cultural practise got coopted by the mainstream system to maintain itself (similar to Jesus ideals of social justice through god have been coopted as a front for the feudal system, even though it contradicts its mechanism in rhetoric). One just needs to strip it from the rightwing nonsense Moldbug & Co attach to it (Maybe an idea for a new video? Got a bloc entry on it, but its in german, dont know if you understand?). I understand the concerns, but i think the online left is too easy to dismiss valuable and modern vocabulary as descriptive tools, which is one of the reasons why we continue to loose in my opinion, which can also be used as a bridge to turn right wingers. If one does post bolshevik dank memes, one can make use of a useful intellectual concept that originated on the other side. To understand modern rightwing language also enable us to dismantle them more efficiently, because most right wing goons just parrot the terms without understanding, what works logically and what doesnt (you did well there in the video). Just pick whats useful and dump the rest (we did the same with other rightwing intellectuals and artists in the past).
Occupy White Walls is a game can be dowloaded for free on Steam. Here is the forum: www.oww.ist/. The idea is an online gallery of sorts, a small project build on the second life engine as it seems, but it certainly has the flair of what you imply in the video. You can exhibit paintings everyone knows as well as relatively unknown artists from social media. The fun thing is how they included them completely nonhierarchical und your gallery assistent sorts only according to your taste. When i started i thought every painting sits in a museum somewhere, but thats not the case. In Theory others can visit your gallery but the servers tend to crash :S
In the same spirit Glitchart or "AESTHETICS" is something you best just search for on pinterest, deviantart or instagram. There is no centralized authority, just a lot of people (including myself) having fun with cool glitcheffects and satirizing 21. Century obsession with nostalgia and consumerism.
Street Poetry you can also find in the internet in spades, but most of it is just feel good mindfulness stuff at the moment. Helmut Seethaler is a more political voice but he also publishes mostly in German. He has social media accounts and a website: www.zettelpoet.at/ . His prime motivation is, because fewer and fewer people are reading, he brings literature out, where the people are. I did one trip on my own, wanted to start more frequently this year but corona lockdown makes it hard at the moment. I could send you one of my own sets if you are interested in the idea? But if you one to do your own thing, the thought is easy: Write or type/print very short poems, aphorism, pictograms on paper, cut them and (using tape or similar methods) distribute them in public spaces (underground stations, Parks, Malls, inner cities etc.)
Not that you need an explanation of vaporwave but this one ends on a fun late-stage capitalism take: subversas.com/what-is-vaporwave/
@@radicalreaderasmr45 Great article. 100% agree. Thanks!
I feel like the almost immediate collapse of NFTs into a joke and then a burst bubble kind of indicates how impossible it is to commodify memes, which gives credence to your conclusions there.
Hm, well I think it is worthwhile to engage in memery, to some extent. However, I think there is some truth to the phrase, "the medium is the message." Are memes a medium that engage people deeply enough to effect real, lasting change in their values, beliefs, and lifestyles?
I would propose it would be more fruitful to learn from past experiences where there were steps made toward greater justice, equality, and freedom. I think we'll find that high art, street art, and meme-ing will all fall short of what it actually takes to subvert the empire (however stimulating they may be).
To answer your question, I really do believe that memes nowadays (and especially presently due to the whole covid situation with people deprived of entertainment) really can greatly influence beliefs. Perhaps memes won't succeed at totally 180-ing someone's political beliefs - although that isn't impossible either - but their pervasive canalization of, say, anti-capitalist ideology is legitimately influential and I feel as though many access new information and ideas through memes. I personally have been introduced to many new concepts through memes
@Revelation 13:4 yeah, since I wrote that I am coming to agree with you and the other poster more and more. I think people carry around a bunch of preexisting conditions that can make us more or less vulnerable to different species of ideological parasitism. However, memes have a way of "boiling the frog" in that they normalize and even subtly implant narrative seeds in the imagination. By the way, your name is on point.
@@youngpilgrim5 I think the two things about memes that make them very effective is 1. their viral nature which makes it easy for memes that have their origin in a specific political camp to make their way somewhere else, the right has obviously used this but I know personally I've intentionally posted vaguely leftist memes on servers that try to ban that. and 2. their lack of structure and how they're often about mocking something means that you can easily mock capitalist institutions.
Nice! Been meaning to read Mike’s book. Didn’t realize it came out yet.
THERE WAS A NOVEL BY QUIM MUN SOE A CATALONIAN NOVELIST NAMED "GASOLINE"... THIS NOVEL MAIN CHARACTER IS A PAINTER AND... WE CAN FEEL THE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS THAT PAINTER SUFFER WHILE HE WAS DRAWING FOR A COMMERCIAL SHOW...
Lovely video, both visually and narratively.
Thank you for your content!
Your work is fucking incredible. I already told you on Twitter, but you need to hear it twicey.
Loved this one 🙏🙏
14:34
NFT's changed that, yup, the system always finds an waym there is no escape.
Well unless the people behind NFTs manage to get states to enforce their claimed ownership I don't think that's going to work.
@@hedgehog3180 i hope so
"Stop putting a dollar (pound) sign in front of everything"...said Bill Hicks during one of his stand up gigs.
Great video!
As always, great video!
Cool video once again! Maybe it's interesting to consdier that punk was a left radical cultural udnerground with lots of imagery going along with it to subvert. of course it was coopted by the mainstream after the grunge wave opened up doors for commercial bands doing the same trick as the early bands in the 90s, but for a long time punk has succesfully created a space for subversive politics and was quite succesful at cdoing so
Would be really interesting to see a part 2 of this video with a focus on the role of NFTs
Is the move from memes towards NFTs another loss for the left? What was purely public and plentiful gets twisted into a scarce and ownable commodity...
Or is it an opportunity for the common man to gain from and infiltrate what was once an elite and exclusive community? Now everyone and anyone can profit from the commodifaction of art instead of just a select few...
A possible analogy: If memes are the new online form of street art and murals, are NFTs the cutting-out and selling of these online murals?
NFTs separate ownership from the art. The art is public and anyone with an internet connection can view any NFT (i.e., it serves a similar function as murals or other public art). The difference, however, is that the artist can be compensated for production of the art, both at the time of production (minting) and through ongoing royalties paid to the artist upon the sale and transfer of the art to other buyers. The art at all times remains "public and plentiful." This can be tested by going to any NFT marketplace and viewing any NFT. They're all there.
Gernika ended up not at the UN but back to Madrid via NY MoMA. What was your point?
Very interesting video, I'm interested in how does this affect literature specifically
Art's subversive character is lost once its turned into a fast-food meal. What to do? The revolution will not be televised!
This may be well supported by Affect theory, or even a minor history of the "Affective turn"
Do the memes have any referent? (Thinking of Baudrillard In the Shadow of the Silent Majority here). I fail to see that memes will do anything past the point of consumption in the subject - other then give the subject material to make another sign (meme). Are you claiming the memes (the morphing of the political and aesthetic) can pierce the spectacle?
Great stuff as usual.
What book are the Jameson quotes from?
Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism... I think..
Yea, just keep an eye out for the giant neon letters! 😀
I would enjoy art more today if it wasn’t all so much repetition of what is trendy at the moment. Memery…maybe. ‘Easy way out’ is more likely, when it comes to using one’s skill and time. The number of individual websites and accounts on online art forums is enormous and consists mainly of imagery that looks as though it was made with the goal of saying “See! I can do that too!” or, more often, “I really have nothing unique to show so here is yet another version of what you’ve been looking at for a few years now, but, significantly, it was made by me, me, me, ME!”
great ending
Thankfully, everybody seems to know what art is (I don’t). However, as a reminder, we are talking about its corpse here, since a) it was stabbed for the first time, being put on display to the public as a spectacle (for a small fee) thus becoming a private profanity for everyone and thus loosing its undisclosed but purposeful practical meaning and b) when Beuys put the final nail in its coffin declaring everyone and thus nobody an artist (which the public happily internalized). We won’t wake up art with our moral judgements about the vultures who treat it as a commodity, which btw. it always has been (although ancient people believed in its magical powers). Art should be left alone to art education, nothing more and nothing less and the occasional contemplation. True art never served as a call to action but, at its best, opened a glimpse of the real of the world. Creativity will matter most in creating a bearable future.
I’ve long thought that leftist art within a capitalist system often fails because it neglects the fact that the creation of art is first and foremost an aesthetic practice-it’s value is not derived just from its message or the way it’s message is delivered but also from the beauty of the work. Without beauty (conceptual or physical) a work has no aesthetic value and art without aesthetic value rightly gets ignored and forgotten. Also I think that public architecture is an excellent medium for public art, however the left also often ignores beauty considerations in architecture and so it produces the opposite of its intended effect.
Mies van der Rohe created beautiful buildings, of bronze coated iron, travertine sheets, plate glass, and open spaces.
The basic scheme was replicated in horrendous was with cheap materials and a disregard for proportion and overall aesthetic.
This uglification wasn’t the fault of great architects of the 20th century, it was a fault of real estate investment firms cutting costs and creating eye sores.
incredibly interesting video!! :0
Hope you still keep the podcast. Loving the content with the rest of the chaps! Really enjoyed the video as always. 👍
They'll be glad to see this. We can't get together when the quarantine's on but we'll have a stored one to put out next week.
I’ve noticed the online left today, a year following the upload of this video, also rejects Postmodernism. It is presupposed by their language and imagery that postmodernism must contain some intrinsic rejection to modernist thought, which I cannot locate within it myself. I currently view it more as a post-structuralist super-modernism, a modernism that is also attempting to resist it’s constraints within society, and of course, capitalism. It is a liberated modernism. Am I incorrect?
It’s too bad it took me so long til I watched this one. Such a cool one.
Thoughts on nfts in the art world?
what's the piece at 7:07 i love it
The flower artist at 0:49 recently filed for bankruptcy
RUclips showed me a Wakanda Forever x Lexus ad in the middle of this. 😢
What’s the song between 6:57 and 12:47?
Actually, I would like to know all songs used. So if any of you know them, please let me know. :)
Went to buy Jameson’s book... it’s been in my Kindle library since 2019 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️😳
I did kinda net art which has been online since 95 but it got remade in flash this millenia which means it won't be accessible after december when they finally kill the plug-in so maybe you could give it a peruse before then at sign69dotcom - it's very random and infinite etc...
The tragic career of basquiat, the inhuman way in which he was chewed up and spit out by the art racket, should be a cautionary tale for all artists. An artist should have the courage to constantly question their own motives for participating in the racket. An artist should do whatever is necessary to maintain purity. Once an artist falls short of this goal and becomes polluted, they lose their power and are sucked into oblivion. The millions of dollars paid for basquiat's paintings 30 some years after his death, does his decomposed corpse benefit from it? You, yeah you, artist, ask yourself some tough questions....
Frog says we must seize the memes of production !!!
It was so fucking great!
Seize the memes of production!
🍎I'm in.
memes are now being sold btw through NFTs
I can't "like" this video knowing that you dont think that RUclips videos and memes are not art. But I do like the video.
Hey, I'd like to reference this video in my dissertation, could you let me know the presenters name?
it is my belief that furry art is as absurd as memery and is another forefront of political and social art.
Picasso was commissioned by Tavistock.
Source ? Links ?
@@AL_THOMAS_777 Daniel Estulin.
Ha, tried to finf free version of this Mike Watsons book.. and guess what, there is 9,99£ version only...
Brilliant! I need to find some examples of animal liberation art.
anything that is "anti" just reinforces the thing that is denounced.
Dope asf
seize the memes of production!!
I think posting falls under adornos definition of ‘psuedoactivity’ I think you may want to look into that. He talks in it in his essay on hobbies and camping as I recall. Look it up nice video
Has the ring of Paulo Freire’s ‘sloganeering’ as well. Worse than useless; energy sapping.
you know why people say "the left can't meme"?
Because as soon as the shown memes vanished, I've already forgotten about them.
The left can't meme because they are forgettable, they don't condense an idea, they just blabber about.
They aren't memes.... Oh and the left tends to talk down to people as if they are dumb, which is another problem.
I have been enjoying most of your videos but as someone passionate about the arts this one struck a sour note with me. I feel that leftist memes are generally one-liners based on moral arguments and encourage a very binary way of thinking. This language is heavily embedded in the language of PR, individuality that the decommodification of art sets itself against... maybe you could say most social media actions simulate action for reaction and this is a byproduct of capitalism where we are the product. I guess we could talk about deterritorialization but I feel like I have observed that the forms of consciousness and nuance that other mediums of art are able to communicate are way more valuable to the imagination of alternate futures and the organization of more meaningful communities even if they are eventually co-opted by capitalism. The temporary nature of a cultural phenomenon doesn't delegitimize the world or consciousness it creates. Ultimately I see more nuanced conversation and expression drowned out by Leftist Twitter which seems like it would result in its own capitalist serving dystopian society.
i've been memeing online against this bullshit world for 25 years
Watch Foreigners out! Schlingensief's Container by Christoph Schlingensief
this is probably one of the most subversive works of art ever made, and if you are not aware of this then your opinion may be swayed.
also David Hammons Bliz-aard ball sale
tehching hsieh's entire art career
and Jeremey Dellers's battle of orgreave
Just wait memes sold with NFT for the cooption.
You say near the end of your video, that you don't quite know what acid Communism is or means.
I however think that you do know. For instance, under the influence of LSD people tend to be more imaginative , optimistic, more intuitive, more creative, more experimental, more audacious . probably more honest and or , Absurd etc . Hence acid Communism (one would expect) would be a revolutionary Art Workers or Cultural Workers co - operative and collective process imbued with the very same qualities as derived from LSD in general . it's quite an intriguing concept but I suspect a praxis more relevant to those more privileged and more affluent among Cadre who are thus not purely proletarian in their circumstances.
🔥🔥🔥
Maybe Zurich will become the capitol of Switzerland after the communist revolution; for now it’s Bern.
I wonder if anyone's done a video on anti-socialist art?
Do you believe in white privilege? I am just curios as to why you noted the exhibition viewers were "mostly white", what was the relevancy?
i was going to comment but i'm being keylogged
Do you watch a RUclips vlogger called Bald and Bankrupt? He travels the former Soviet Union. Over and over people bemoan the fall of Communism. They complain that their countries under new regimes were looted. I have a fear that our own failing empire will bring nothing more than loss and regret. I'm for making the world better, fairer, but I fear real upheaval. I hope we act but with some self-restraint. People rarely do.
and then NFT's came into the picture
Art, in its relation to ideas, has similarities with various religious practices. Its commodification thus becomes blasphemous.
Someone should copy banksy
Have you ever seen where Picasso lived? Nice view for someone that thinks we're all equal, him and the pope pontificating from there their views on hills overlooking the masses. Please tell me your visions of how I can be free, oh wait I have to pay rent. But you were saying communism.
Under communism you will not have to pay rent. Cause nobody is meant to own any property under communism.
@@evano5635 O Evan
Didn't the dadaists say:"shitty times deserve shitty art".
14:33 say hello to nfts
"The Left can't meme." "The Left already lost at politics." I think the Left-Right-dichotomy is very unhelpfful here. Yeah, the Left has lost at politics, but it's not like "the Right" has won. A European Identitarian will critique Neo-Liberalism just as much as any American socialist youtuber. And when the internet-right makes fun of Leftists that can't meme, then by "Leftists" they look at Progressives - the kind of Progressives who couldn't tell you the difference between what Socialism and Communism means and how they are different. If you find racist intellectuals among the Right and observe that their anti-globalist logic is incopatible with Leninist goals, then this shouldn't promt a convoluted anti-bourgeoisie rhetoric that draws academic concepts to find a bridge between them. That's merely a linguistic exercise that helps preserving the idea of "The Right" as logical opponent of the Left. It looks like "the Left" and "the Right" are fractions that police each respective attempts at violence against the status quo.
One is painting a scare crow if one pretends that the so called Right would disagree with Marxists theory of alienation. Of course, this is a picture that sells well to the self-identifying Leftist.
Something about all this aspiration for avant-garde disruption, raising class consciousness, and making art with explicit political messages seems super hollow to me. It could be seen as disruptive only in the sense of the predominate social logic: the system already thrives on of disruption. Whether it comes from the tech industry or from wojak memes, I don't think it matters in the end. The world would love endless aesthetic resistance and shitposting to own the boomers, if only for the reason you mention: all of this earns platforms money, creates a new stream of social capital, etc. In Jameson's terms, despite the moral veneer, it's doesn't rise above the level of pastiche. I'm doubtful about his course correction, though, in the gamble on a crack in the veneer appearing, somehow, that can point us to new futures. His indebtedness to the dialectic presents more trouble than solution (which is the point, isn't it). Something like Ranciere's positions on the inefficacy political art in The Emancipated Spectator seems to capture something much more prescient about the aesthetic situation and what we should (or shouldnt) do about it
What a comment :)
18:15 minute mark lol
fuckin nft memes now tho
Bern is the capital of Switzerland not Zürich.
doesn't it seem almost perverse to outright state that we *should* do this? one of the most enticing things about the lefty memes is that they don't come from this altruistic leftist struggle, but from sincere, naive, sharing of experience, text, and theory.
but i dunno, i might be wrong, but i have this feeling that once something is named, it can die; or maybe, it can shift, it's the shift that makes me optimistic.
also, does this count as accel praxis or something? accel memes for blackpilled teens or some shit?
good video.
Things were better when Astrology was the official science.
Left wing and the right wing are both mimetic images of the center. You cannot escape centrism as it is your mother
Your definition of the left as „collective liberation politics“ is too vague to be meaningful. For example why couldn’t right wing Christians claim that it’s production is „collective liberation“? In fact Republican pundits often employ collective liberation narratives.
The question with Diego Rivera, for example was liberation from capitalism specifically.
I would argue that visual art, namely painting and drawing is a poor vehicle for raising class consciousness or in the case of Guernica, it did a poor job of raising awareness of imperialism. In that case Franco became a member of the UN in 1955.
Art in a broader sense that can raise consciousness is film, video, literature, documentaries, history.
But even here it is a certain type of art. William Blake‘s poem Jerusalem became an national anthem while he himself protested war, British imperialism, industrialism, and child labor.
Anyone who thinks that art is the Primary vehicle for political change is delusional. It can stir sentiment and unite people, but the deeper awareness is provided didactically not aesthetically.
Why i despise rich people. They ruined art for me. 😂