I'm writing this in the future relative to this talk. The main thing that strikes me is that music is very short compared with Beethoven or the 24 verse song about how beautiful is the valley in the place why I live. Who is doing long stuff?
I would argue the rapidity of social and cultural change in the late 19th century through the end of the 20th was the exception to the rule and that we’re back in a period of slow change (which to many of us might feel like comparative stasis or backward-looking and so _feels_ like “the end of the future”) that has been the norm over the centuries.
things go slower at the narrower parts of an eclipse and as we move closer to the wider parts there is a speeding up, like a whipping of time. its cerebral, because of time patterns that are imposed on us. not a lot of people know that you know
You know he is trolling when he refers to "value theory" (pronouncing it "walue") as a "valuable insight" (pronouncing it correctly) in a single sentence.
I don’t agree with him on the loss of futuristic art. Maybe 2014 was a slow down, but these past few years have had serious innovators that have toyed with Fisher’s idea of synthetic culture to cultivate a sort of alien futurism through the reconstruction of archaic sounds with newer technology in current approaches to post-club,(dark) plugg, and epic collage. (Artist-examples being Sophie, .cutspace, Fitness, Deffic1le, etc.). Of course his assessments are accurate regarding popular culture, but those lines of flight still exist and are still being pioneered.
One of the sure signs of our times is to see it as extraordinary peculiar. How did music in 1656 sound different from 1670? Another sure sign of our time is to make anything more important than it is - especially in culture and subculture.
The music Industry has been exposed to be nothing more than a permeant political class and unelected globalist oligarchies (not all) in order to shape a consumer and constituent base. Pop culture is dead.
If we put as much effort and time into creating immortality, and other futuristic things as much as we do hollywood, movies, sports, ect... We could have been in the future by now...
Everything about this guy strikes me as him realizing that the world isn't like it was when he was a bright-eyed college student reading Derrida and Deleuze, larping as a revolutionary. Utterly worthless
The idea of our music/media as a distinct marker for years & decades started around 1930 with radio becoming commonplace. It is not an inherent human trait. In fact, this 80-100 year span where culture & history link up in a harmonious feedback cycle is the exception. We should feel lucky that we were able to have that experience. Pre 1930, transmission was in person only. Post 2030, media is too fragmented, where anyone with a computer has their own studio & distribution network. Gatekeeping TV/radio/record companies were rightly seen to be exploitative, but the fact that they released a finite inventory of content per year meant that a few lucky generations can hear a particular song and become magically transported to another time.
Banda jugoSALONSKIH terorista praxsisovaca....koja bijeda od jata FAH IDIOTA.....a seljo salonski Žižek je prvak te konzervativne struje komunizma za tovljene svinje....a za to im trebaju RADNICI....ha ha ha koja bijeda....radnika više nema....
Really interesting lecture. I often think when watching old Top Of The Pops repeats how totally different 1985 is to say 1979 yet between 2000 and 2006 there wasn't much difference musically or stylistically. I think the effect of the Cold War is another factor in explaining why our arts and culture in the west at that time had such a fantastic forward momentum. The collapse of the Soviet Union had a huge effect on Western music and culture as I believe that from the 1950s to at least the 1980s during the cold war there was a lot of funding put into the arts, and a lot of space created for the arts, as there was a desire to show authoritarian societies (especially younger people in those societies) the freedoms enjoyed by younger generations in the west. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and as the grip of Neoliberalism and monetrism really tightened on western countries this desire seemed to wane.
Here it is not far from the idea that the existence of the Soviet Union ensured liberal democracy, scientific and technological progress and cultural development of capitalist countries in competition with it
Where is the empirical data to support all this? Did he do scientifically rigorous psychological interviews and surveys to back up his claims? Otherwise he sounds like a lot of middle-aged and older people who have, for centuries, thought that things were better in the past (especially music) and perhaps regret that their lives didn't quite work out how they dreamed when they were younger.
lol People not from his generation literally act like they were other generations and decades So it is NOT only his generation thinking it, you Einstein
What Generation are you ? And did you grow up with everything you have favorited ? Or are you one of them too criticising whilst being exactly one of those ALL up OTHERS A$$ ? Because That woud make you either Unaware, a Hypocrit, or straight up a sniveling little weasel
It is scientifically proven that variation and complexity of music in the last 3 Decades is decreasing . Look for an article in "The Nature" and a study of The Journal of music research . And btw really Ad hominem argumentation , you are broken bro. Live long and prosper .
While the story of his premature death is sad (he clearly had much intelligent and sensitive cultural commentary to make), I'd say there were grounds for a robust pushback to a lot of what he says. How much of his position is that of a once teenage pop fan who was able to engage with high theory (the encounter of the working class student and middle class high culture lecturers he refers to) now finding himself stranded amidst technological and political change? Change is part of life. A perception of the future being cancelled is a very middle age phenomenon which brings in its wake the disempowering assumption that because old patterns of creativity may be drying up, new ones can't eventually emerge. This ultimately leads back to the cultural pessimism of a Theodor Adorno, a closing off of new potential. Fisher's comments on the harmful effects of neo-liberalism on the British arts scene and London specifically are spot-on (property prices and the end of social housing, stringent rules for unemployment benefit etc) - but creativity can re-group and re-configure (shared housing on the outskirts of London or out of London entirely; portfolio work which might involve commercial contracts for "industry" as well as one's own work). Cyberspace can be an immersive trap - or an opportunity. One need only think of professionals and amateurs collaborating on musical projects from their homes in the grim, early days of the pandemic. It pains me to say this but I thnk a lot of Fisher's sadness is symptomatic of the loss of the centrality of English pop on the world stage - but everything has its day, why not try moving outside your comfort zone and investigate what might be going on further afield? And the belief that music or culture generally must always register a radical break with the past is an avant-garde myth which should be put to bed. Mourning this may, unfortunately, be one symptom of a misplaced cultural exceptionalism.
These constantly regurgitated ideas/themes are especially present in the video game scene. The recent massive growth in the industry despite minimal actual innovation especially exemplifies this process; nobody is changing the font, but rather simply choosing one in a manner that encourages complacent, familiar consumption
lol Aesthetics ripping off 80's 90's Generation and sounds mixed with garbage mumblerap ? ARE YOU having a laugh or are you having a laugh ? Do you id iots actually not know where $hit comes from ?
The aesthetics and some sounds are literally other generations $hit and the rest is GARBAGE lol it would do NOTHING '' If you sent any Black Kray mixtape back to 1994 it would fuck their worlds up '' *LMFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO*
"Yearning for the future in conditions where the future can't be delivered." Finally someone who could articulate what I've been feeling for a long time. A better world cannot happen within the current political and economic framework. I just discovered Mark Fisher and was not surprised to find out he is dead. Anyone with the ability to articulate the truth of the situation and awaken the (oppressed) consciousness of the masses is a threat to capitalism. I don't for a second believe he committed suicide.
"there is no judgement in art that can fully fill the gap between art and its outside. is there a dream of political art that seeks to enter this gap (not to bridge it, but enter this gap) beyond art and beyond politics? this is my conclusion. judgements in art dream, they are carried by dream, they carry a dream themselves. for one lingers, feels pleasure, without recognizing or knowing anything or one traverses the old and the new in the many aspects without stopping at any single aspect. or one contemplates a judgement as a judgement without activating its function and without realizing what the judgement says. the dream comes to an end and it proves impossible to recognize oneself in the dreamer. thus one shoot." The End
I was 15 when thsi man died and blissfully unaware of how important amd accurate his decsriptions of an impending sense of melancholic existential dread that seems to settle in everyday life. As time has gone on it seems people have only become more accepting of commodification of all apsects of life, climate change has become ironically openly accepted but this has also seemed to come with a back ended embrace that we will simply have to live with its condequences. Like capitalist realism a sense of fatility in the societal psyche has put us collectively in a trance we need to desperately snap out of. Rip Mark Fisher and I hope people use his works to peoductive ends and look for solutions to a world with a quickly fading if not already departed future.
I literal thought i was the only person who though that the 2000s and since era had no distinct culture, fashion or music at all. Its like a period that was supposed to deliver something new but instead just delivered bland recycled art and degenerate mediocrities . Its almost as if ppl just ran out of ideas, or maybe im getting old 😂
Society will heal on the day Fisher's lectures feel antiquated and dated. In the meantime, all of his arguments and points here have only accelerated into a multi-generational state where no one young remembers the future anymore.
I think the 21st century is just getting started. Time has flattened because the 20th century is now a pallete of sounds and attitudes to rummage through and the real future is the strange spaces of the internet- Plankton AI covers of Bohemian Rhapsody, Simpsonswave (again, two 20th century properties retrofitted), Death Grips, Jpegmafia, etc. Recordinf technology enabled the entire world to hear the rest of the world's sounds...we were able to hear, in a short amount of time, thousands of years of development in music quickly. It was like a bottle of wine that has beem drunk. The job now is to refill the bottle.
Its sad to see people agree with this perspective, it feels like you have a perspective and are seeking something to confirm your bias and not looking further. Media has been turned into a machine now more than ever, the fact that you are looking to pop music for innovation is your fault, not the lack of creativeness. People now have so many chooses of music, both from fracturing of traditional genres (heavy metal to - death metal/goth metal/rep metal/dark metal/Viking metal etc etc) but also brand new genres (riddim, drum and bass, dubstep, happy hardcore, hardstyle, trance, trap etc) resulting in pop being a specific genre of music, with a certain aesthetic- with the larger innovation occurring in other genres. the only media examples used in this whole lecture were two artists who were throwback artists/songs - Amy Winehouse was purposefully a throwback, as was the artic monkeys. Funny how there was no mention of Groillaz, Knife party, Nero, Calvin Harris, duke Dumont heck even Linkin Park) Capitalism has turned creative endeavors into a machine to make as much money as possible, money has consolidated and made creativity a 2nd thought to mass media production. But the creative people are still out there - creating amazing new genres of music, pushing the boundary of film and television, or any type of media. We are producing more media now than ever, the machine can still create amazing pieces of art and storytelling (The spider verse comes to mind) - but the machine is not the creative solution. It also hasn't killed progress or creativity, it has just moved it to other areas.
The spiderverse is an awful example as it perpetuates the idea that under capitalism nothing truly new can exist. The Spiderverse is part of Marvel's massive extended universe and again a cartoon of that caliber couldn't exist without attaching itself to a well established IP.
Man you sound completely clueless lol. '' but also brand new genres (riddim, drum and bass, dubstep, happy hardcore, hardstyle, trance, trap etc) '' BRAND NEW ? ARE YOU LITERALLY STOOOOOOOOPID ?
'' People now have so many chooses of music, both from fracturing of traditional genres (heavy metal to - death metal/goth metal/rep metal/dark metal/Viking metal etc etc '' People have been listening to that FOR DECADES ! ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
