I cannot thank you enough for posting this lecture. We need Mark now more than ever. Never before have I been so saddened by the death of a stranger than I have in the case of Mark Fisher. Let us ensure that he lives on in our thoughts and actions.
I've only just become aware of him alas the live version is over which is shit cos I love how he manages to maintain his critical focus over pop now then. Microscopes and telescopes have stabilising structures to help us see critically other scales. I heard he hated comments. fair play. I'm 5 wine in.
I wish the person recording and organising these brilliant lectures had a better judgement as to when to stop his process of talking and thinking. He wasn't done with his elaboration on the subject at the end when he was asked to stop and it was an important moment.
Even though I deeply respect Fisher, I think he atributed too many of the evils or limitations of humans to capitalism, and that was a mistake based on oversimplification. As an artist, I can confirm that looking for inspiration in the old to create something new is not just normal, but inevitable. Fisher himself did this, as his work is clearly influenced by Baudriliard, Zizek, Lacan, and even Marx, so it also constitutes a permutation of already existing work. It is not a characteristic inherent to capitalism, but just how creativity works. Even in a world with no past culture, ideas have to come from somewhere, as it is imposible to generate them from thin air. Primitive cave paintings are the perfect example for this: inspiration couldn't be taken from previous culture, so it was taken from reality, and therefore often depicted animals. More examples that, in my opinion, can counter Fisher's point are found in history: Way before the rise of modern capitalism, classic greek and roman aesthetics make two comebacks, those being the reinassance and neoclasicism. Sometimes, people of a certain era find new significance and relevance on older trends, and it can happen for a variety of reasons. Sure, sometimes capitalists try to exploit the nostalgic feelings of older generations, but that's just one posible reason between many others. A recent example is the renewed interst on the cyberpunk genre: for some time it was regarded as a relic from the 80s, but the advancements on AI, virtual reality, and more gibsonian conceptions of cyberspace such as VR chat or facebook's metaverse making it into reality, it could be argued that it is even more relevant now than in the 80s, and discarding it as an old and already tired concept is, as I see it, a short sighted waste. The new will always be build upon the old, and the old might come back to relevance for good reasons, not just because capitalism allegedly stagnates culture. It is really sad that Mark is no longer with us, because I would have loved to discuss this with him.
