Craig Brozefsky on 16 Apr 2001 14:27:18 -0000


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Re: <nettime> Is Mark Dery an Absolute Idiot? Read this and find out....


"Paul D. Miller" <anansi1@mail.earthlink.net> writes:

some context:

I must admit that my first reaction to this post was quite negative,
mostly because the combination of the subject line, it's failure to
back up that subject line, and the "my art does this" aspect of it
combine to make Paul look like the "Absolute Idiot".  However, it
stuck in my throat and I had to reread it several times.  I'll admit
that I even trash talked it with several aquaintences offline, who'll
all be receiving copies of this response.  The perceived
self-promotion part I chalk up to the interview format, since Paul was
afterall being asked what his opinion and his perspective were, and
what project he was working on.  But I still think the whole Mark Dery
as Idiot schtick was a lame-ass move.  There are simply too many other
rich topics here to waste time on idiots, and it only makes it look
like Paul's another "low level cultural beaurocrat" taking pot shots
at a co-worker.

I hope that other readers were able to get over their initial
reaction.  The only reason I did is because I wanted to flame the fuck
out of Paul for it, and figured I had better understand the thing as
well as possible before opening fire.  In the end I found it one of
the more useful posts in a long time, at least as far as my own
thoughts go.  One might say that it's a similiar annoyance that drove
me to read this post fully, as Paul says drives his dj'ing.

some content:

> of everyday life in an industrial context. It ended badly - he
> committed suicide. I'm more concerned with praxis - how to foster a
> milieu where dialog about culture becomes a way to move into the
> pictures we describe with words, text, sounds - you name it.

One of my first attractions to hiphop was thru it's ability to do just
that.  To exist in our culture, to comment upon it, to comment upon
itself, and to be relevant both as critique and as praxis.  I'm
reminded of Common's "I used to love h.e.r." in particular, but it's a
thread that goes quite a ways back in hiphop.  I'm not enough of an
expert on the genre to give a detailed historic rendering of the
trend, however, as someone who just loves to listen to it, it's a very
noticeable trait.

That said, I can't really deal with any of the media surrounding
hiphop, the magazines, the video shows, the websites, even after
filtering out the obvious trash, because they seem so stale in
comparison to their supposed subject matter.  It seems that the
institutionalization of hipop thru our normal mediums for the
distribution of culture is doomed to fail.

Not just the business, but also the model of the mediums, are
responsible.  The authorial voice of the magazine editor, the
artificial monopoly of the copyright holder, the domination of
distribution by mass-marketing entertainment giants, the star system,
the naming and defining of sub-genres and variations, the definition
of target markets for magazines and records, interaction between
content and the audience as booty to sell to advertisers, all of these
contribute.  I hope you consider the effects of the editor's voice,
and other structural issues of forumalating a magazine and it's
market, heavily if you intend to embody any of these dynamic powers in
21C.  I myself have severe doubts about any magazines ability to be
worth the paper it's printed on.  Use recyclable paper and inks
please.

BTW, I lied, my first attraction to hiphop was the beat and the groove
of smooth MCs.  "I grew up on booty-shake, we did not know no better."

> I think that youth culture reflexively understands this. Part of my
> goal was to bypass the notion of the "critic" as an "authority" who
> controls narrative, and to create a new role that's alot more
> concurrent with web culture: you become the cultural producer and
> content provider at the same time.

My re-introduction to hiphop in the last few years has been guided by
others.  It's very difficult, and expensive, IMO, to find good hiphop,
or for that matter be introduced into any new musical direction.  The
cost of CDs is horrendous, the magazines are worthless as reviewers,
and the websites of the same magazines (and other purely on-line
efforts) are so unusable that one doesn't know where to turn.  The
institutional critics and authorities are of no use.

Enter the new role you talk about.  Perhaps it's a misreading of what
you meant by "content provider", but the role of critic and
distributor in the age of P2P networks and the web have been conflated
at the network level, as well as the theoretical, and production
levels.  The P2P networks to varying degrees distribute the task of
storage, indexing and searching, as well as distribution, and
critique.  They threaten the institutions of cultural discourse and
production (news, entertainment and academic) on so many levels.

There is a digital infrastructure for this new role, for a new way of
being in a culture.  Then again, it's not entirely new is it, just
that the means of social production seem to have caught up.

> >what I find challenging is the basic sense of mental inertia that
> >carries our culture along. People really don't think about the
> >absolute wonders that surround us and make this life liveable and
> >our way of thinking sustainable. Dj'ing for me, like science
> >fiction, points us to a place where everything doesn't have to be
> >the same. The same track? The same beat? Day after day, night after
> >night... it would be like some kind of living death if that were to
> >happen in dj culture - and, yeah, that's how alot of the culture
> >works.

The constant re-production, re-sequencing, re-mixing, and re-recording
of tracks makes hiphop extremely ill-fitted for the conventional CD
format, the LP.  However, the same factors fit well into vinyl.  Three
versions of a song to a side, one original, one instrumental and one
remix, radio-play edited version, or vocals only.  It's distributed
for re-combination.

Hiphop LPs however are sold almost entirely by the star system.  Few
and far between are the LPs that are solid all the way thru, and the
pricing of CDs is such that it's expensive to take a risk on someone
new, so a set of artists who can be properly publicized and market
must be maintained.  With mp3s and the various p2p networks there is
no need to risk 17 bux on a possible dud, you can swap only the good
tracks and get exposed to new artists easily.

But that's just more blather about digital infrastructure.

> spread. When people are faced with conditions where "conservatives"
> control the zone, they have to innovate to get their message
> out.... innovation leads to constant elevation. And that's not
> "Social Darwinism" it's more like a cooperative model of how
> information spreads in the hothouse environment of net-culture where
> "newness" is celebrated with how many people check in on the
> information. And if stuff like "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" or
> the "I love You" virus are any indication, this kind of "social
> engineering" as hackers call it can happen with an ease far and
> above almost any "word of mouth" situation in human history. I just
> happy to be around to see if it can change even more.

A similiar struggle to innovate in the face of conservatives in
control of the zone drives alot of Free Software as well.  One thing
the Open Source message leaves out is the importance of this struggle.
The ability of anyone to modify and change the software is important
not just from an industrial efficiency standpoint, but also because it
supports this powerfully dynamic form of distributed cultural
production.

-- 
Craig Brozefsky                             <craig@red-bean.com>
                                 http://www.read-bean.com/~craig 
In the rich man's house there is nowhere to spit but in his face
					             -- Diogenes

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