From: petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly)
Subject: Re: Industrial Culture (Or, why I'm being such an ARSEHOLE))
Date: 15 Oct 92 09:20:30 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corp.

In article <1992Oct14.165218.1187@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> pbancrof@nyx.cs.du.edu wrote:
> 
> 
> Ok - my bluff has been called.
> 
> Several people, honest people, bloody rude assholes they may be but
> hoest, genuine people have e-mailed me about why do I feel a need
> to be so harsh and so pretentious all the time.  No, I _don't_ take
> industrial culture quite that seriously but sometimes with current
> trends in society over the last 20 years you have to wonder what this
> world's heading to with it's driving emphasis on industrialism and
> imperialistic corporate takeover.  "Mainstream" politicians defending the
> free-market system our dehumanizing industrial dilemmas are based on
> ignore the fact that with increased corporate size, increasing foreign
> markets, and blatant discriminatory government aid to corporations (i.e.
> control has transferred from the apathetic people to the corporate
> special interest groups).  Our economic lifestyle has turned from
> active market participation to passive corporate dictation.   No, nobody
> is _forced_ to buy brand X or believe in platform Y but because we are
> passive, we are so easily seduced, because coprorations have gotten better
> at seduction.

How is this different from the steel, oil, and banking giants of the turn
of the century.  In fact, it may have been worse, then, before the monopoly
laws were put into place.


> 
> From a "cultural" basis, then, what has happened?  First we have the
> well-intentioned "cyberpunks".
 ^^^^^^ ha ha, funny.  Bringing down the system is well intentioned.
Making everyone poor, with poor medical care, and little food is well
intentioned.  (yeah, I know, not everyone is like that).

  Some of their stuff is ok but it still
> presents a fictional, futuristic view of the universe.  It does not
> deal with the here and now.  (although, if anyone could point me to
> and good cyberpunk _non_fiction, I'd be grateful.)  Next we have the
> thrashers, ravers, hip-hoppers, fashion fanatics etc (which Mondo is
> so full of it makes me wanna puke) who just want to take drugs and
> masturbate while everything around them burns.  That's why the hippy
> movement failed: too many well-intentioned protesters got into drugs
> and escapement and "diggin' the scene."  The punk movement was a total
> joke: although it taught the value of shocking ppl. it started out as
> a total, escapist, commercial scene (as in, gee we're cool, let's thrash
> around and get McLaren to sell more clothes...) and got violent and worse.
> The only sincere punk group that _understood_ our times was Throbbing
> Gristle and they of course started industrial.  (Most people hated them
> however even in the inner Punk circle)
> 
> So you wanna talk _real_ industrial culture?  True industrial art must
> reflect and take these facts into consideration:
>         1). That the most beautiful sculptural/engineering works of the
> last
>             20 years have been war machines capable of immense destruction;

Facts, hmmm.  This sounds more like opinion to me.

> 
>         2). That sexuality has been reduced to entirely commercial terms;
>             its entire conceptualization has been moulded in the service
>             and mandate of profit;

Even more opinion...

> 
>         3). That our media has been seized by coproations wishing
>             to anesthetize our thoughts through censorship;

And the corporations buckle down to a market of people who want only to
hear what they want to hear.  You, as an observer of the media, can control
what you see.  It's just that most of the public only wants to see a narrow
subset of what there is to be seen.  Dont go blaming corporations for this one,
blame the educational system for not making learning and knowledge to be
something to be sought after.

> 
>         4). That politics is no longer of the people: opinions are merely
>             academic and encouraged by our educational system to stay that
>             way (action is discouraged; passive ingestion is encouraged or
>             whatever).

I would argue that our eductational system has been lax in encouraging
anything, including learning, curiosity, creativity, etc.

And was politics ever of the people?  

> 
> 
> Thus for industrial art to be successful it must equate beauty with
> totalitarian menace, corporate domination with sexual bondage, media
> information with drugs.  It also must explore and promote anarchic media
> and political acts under the premise that anything done to subvert the
> seductive agencies of the corporate class (televison, government, military,
> etc..) will promote individual will and thought.  Finally, it must
> integrate
> the above display in ways that are startling, unnerving, shocking: both as
> a response against media anesthetization and censorship and as a
> realization
> that all other artistic and influencing techniques have been co-opted (e.g.
> stolen) by corporations.  We must unleash the unspeakable on society as a
> small antidote for their quite common everyday experiences.  If a group
> does one of these things well without subverting any others (like changing
> or limiting their style to "sell out" to big-biz pop labels, like, oh
> _I_ don't know, who could it beeeeeee...... MINISTRYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
> NIIIIIIINNNNNNNNEE INNNNNNNCCCCCCCHHHHHHH NNNNNAAAIIIILLLS??????????????,
> then I start taking them seriously as a real "industrial" artist.

However, I find industrial artists who just try to shock, or be wierd, or
cater to the industrial culture to be boring.  Most of them don't even know
what they stand for, or what they are trying to say.  They are just trying
to make noise.  


> 
> Enough said, please post if you have intelligent comments/corrections.
> 
> Thanks
> -oh just P*H*I*L tonite

petesk@microsoft.com
Amazing how one can live in a corporate culture and still keep
one's humanity.
Newsgroups: alt.industrial,alt.cyberpunk