On 28/10/2009, "Michael Szpakowski" <[email protected]> wrote:
><"Our civilisation is fucked! What are we gonna > do?" > >Well if it is reducible to that, why didn't they just say that? They're only human. >And if that is all they meant, why are we worrying about *art* and not *doing* >something? We're only human. >I live for art but if I *am* in a boat going over a cataract I don't paint a >picture of it. You're only human. >The prolix style & ridiculously self-regarding and overheated tone came from >the manifesto, not Edward's clinical dissection of it. He's only human. > I say clinical dissection, because although it's undoubtedly true that Edward > can *write* whereas these folk can't, I agree what matters is the ideas and, > far from a Canute moment, Edward assists us greatly here too although he > admittedly draws back from the obvious conclusion, which is that there is no > separation to be made between the tone of the manifesto & its content.. He's only human. >The truth is the bombast is not accidental, but integral. It arises out of a >fundamental poverty of thought. The rotten style is a function of the >intellectual void at the heart of the whole enterprise. It's only human. >Civilisation bad? OK. Let's see them give up the internet, polio, smallpox and >TB vaccines, printing, film, anaesthetics, amplification, antibiotics, map >making, mathematics, musical instruments, a world governed by some attempt at >rationality and not ghosts, devils and malign Gods. They're only human. >Fuck it -let's give up the written word, which after all is an attribute of >civilisation. Let's return to a lifespan of 25-35 for most people, carried for >the most part in a desperate attempt at subsistence... They're only human. >Why not go even go further back in the search for a chimerical purity, the >one that relieves us of the responsibility of actually *doing* anything that >might change anything, and give up cooking food. It would be only human. >Artistically the, quite random, privileging of "stories" could come straight >out of one of those expensive screenwriting courses which both contribute to >and in turn chart the market led corruption of the art of film... It's only human. >Just to be slightly more polemical, too, on the question of localism. You're only human. >To spell it out - who are the current most high profile proponents of the idea >of artistic localism in this country? - the bloody BNP, with their, in >fairiness unrequited, love affair with English folk music. Of course I'm not >accusing the manifesto authors of being soft on Nazism, just of a failure to >read history, to be even a tiny bit politically literate, to look and to think. They're only human. >I think you're right on your central point though, Bob -the manifesto does >essentially boil down to those two phrases, which is why it's a recipe for >utter political passivity with a couple of quite randomly subjective and >unthought out artistic afterthoughts bolted on. That would be only human. Regards, The One True Human. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
