Art Without Humans

Those DJs lost. Serato is everywhere, and it happened with less resistance than one might have expected. Maybe it’s because many DJs are interested in exploring new technology; maybe it’s because they aren’t organized as a labor force.

Reality T.V. and the Flexible Future

After every long day at the office I go home to face my addiction: watching other  people work. Whether I’m gritting my teeth as elderly miners crawl through a tunnel to chip out coal, or cracking up as drag queens scurry to complete missions assigned by RuPaul (catch-phrase: “You better work!”), there’s nothing I’d rather [...]

‘The Dark Knight’ is No Capitalist…

… he’s something much worse. Using the French Revolution for inspiration, the Nolans have restaged the bourgeois revolution, but in reverse. They want you to stand with the monarchists. By now, you already know: the new Batman movie is fascist propaganda, a clear swipe against the Occupy movement, and the occasion for the worst rampage [...]

Tronti on Generational Conflict

Those of us who had lived through the struggles of the factory workers in the early 60s looked on the student protests with sympathetic detachment. We had not predicted a clash of generations, though in the factories we had met the new layer of workers—especially young migrants from the South—who were active and creative, always [...]

Race War or Murdering Your Parents: A Left Debate

What are the liabilities of a lazy, violence-fetishizing generational warfare position, which ignores actual conditions on the ground in favor of rhetorical bombast? In case it isn’t clear: It’s so easy to mistake cleavages in the working class as substantive capitalist antagonisms that you can jump right to race war in one easy step! After all, [...]

Occupy Beyoncé

Crack down on raves, but let people listen to DJs in places where there are dress codes, the bathrooms are monitored and the drink costs are in the double digits. Annihilate wildstyle graffiti from trains, but let a few art speculators round out their painting collections with works by a handful of artists. Push go-go off H Street so gimmicky bars and indistinguishable indie bands can soak up some of the strip’s remaining gritty authenticity. Hanging on — occupying — in the face of this is its own political statement.

You Might Stop the Party But You Can’t Stop the Future

The acid house explosion provided an inspirational moment for the London underground, participants in which were taking squats and throwing parties amid the sensorial atmosphere enhanced by new technologies, music, and drugs. Under a novel soundtrack and mindscape, these were adventurous times in which a bizarre range of disused government and industrial buildings were occupied. [...]