We live in a media culture that consists of factually dubious rolling 24 hour news, political soundbites and celebratie slip ups placed higher in the headlines than the usual brown people starving or getting blown up or somethink. You can't help feeling the cold hand of cynism clasping your testicals looking at this cavalcade of indigestibly mismashed facts.
I am bewildred by this world at the alien lifeforms that crawl or fly across its surface. I think most people are as confused as I am. Are their any disernably grand narratives for us in the pampered smug kufar west to hold on to anymore, o I am sure their must be. Today always thinks its the end of history till tomorrow. I suppose the idea of enviromentalism, bringing democracy to the axis of evil and other horrifically anti-american areas and maybe most of all technical progress. Progress is something that all the folks have hooked on to. These days products have sequels like films. Now we need to get the Ipad 2 or whatever, they even have spin offs the ipod and then the ipod nano. While this is happening films are becoming brands or "franchises". Everything is fracturing and merging and spreading faster and faster, faster, faster. In design form no longer follows function everything will soon be a minimilistic tablet. We will soon have our everything machine and our everything machine 2 and our everything machine nano and a cheap knock of version the almost everything machine but not quite which will be pretty much as good but won't look as slick. I have fallen of my argument horse, give me a second to climb back on...
Righto. What I was going to agrue is that the above video is the ultimate expression of my generation. The banner we can lift as we triumphantly march to our laptops.
Our culture is not deconstructing or criticising the world. Its not offering an ideology. Its paranoid and mistrustful, and who can blame it with the politicians diddling their expenses and pedos just waiting in the shadows to diddle our children. Its is filled to the brim with media buzz and needless nonsence. How can you spin a philosophy out of that. There are too many things talking to me. Adverts are constantly flashing me on television or slinking up the sides of my laptop screen, emails bark at me and facebook nips at my heels. I have been distracted to complacency. Here is a fun video to break up the text
What can we do, what can we make in this aggressivly confortable world? Well we make work out of what we have been given.
Out of the screaming hollowness of the american media we have been sent Charlie Sheen a sevearly overpaid hilariously hyperbolic ego with a brain fried with substance abuse. Truly a beauty to behold! A golden prophet we all must turn our ears too. A man who is in some sort of crises, who has lost his children but never his party spirit. How should we celebrate this modern messanic figure, this cult legend. Well how do we celebrate all things, brithdays, countries, our gods by song of course. And what a song, what a song! Such a powerfull positive message arn't we all "on a quest".Don't we all want to be "winning" like Charlie Sheen obviously is. We are rich enough in our countries to party and whats not to love about that. I too want to be" a total frickin rockstar from Mars". I know I am a born winner, I won the lucky dip of fate. I thank the lucky stars I was born in this time in this place. That was my absolute victory and why shouldn't I celebrate this just like the illuminarie Charlie Sheen?
Faced with the hyper induced systems that invisible cut through the air in a gust of zeros and ones. The sound bites, the videos of monkeys using a frog as a fleshtube (is that the right phrase, I haven't boned up on sex toys. Maybe next semister I'll get round to that, O waits its fleshlight as a play on words of flashlight because it kind of looks like one. How could I forget that? ) and imaginary banking transactions, artists have to be as instant as everything else to remain relevant. Well I am saying that but you know the same themes will always be floating around, death, sexuality, truth, naked people, ect. ect. I need to stop sabotaging my arguments before I make them. I know I really do, people want to read concise and interesting posts they simple don't have the time or the paticince to sit through some sort of rambling, self contradictory mess. Exactly, people don't have time for long art, they need bullitin art. It can have the ancient and forever themes but the struggle is with valid and approiate forms.
The cultural turn over, the speed culture is eating itself has in my view increased exponentially thanks to the increases in the instanousness of technology. Ok I have only done very cursory reasearch into this but the speed in which art has developed I feel is very much tied to technology. It kind of seems like a no brainer. The faster people can exchange ideas the faster new ideas will be formed. The less time we spend hunting or farming food the more time we can spend on our pointless dalliences. I also think that photography freed art perhaps most so painting from the tyranni of depiction and led the way toward conceptualism and the swamp of ideas art students now have to wade through. However technology has reached a fever pitch the deluage of image, ideas, chit chat, news is something which don't have time to reflect on because it changes before we can. Its like when you are a passenger in a fast moving car or train and you are trying to examine each tree you whizz past it. Everything is becoming a snapshot. We need to make an artform that is as instant as everything else, this form is the remix. The remix dosn't contian cultral refrences, it is these refrences mixed up it is a creative whirlpool in the deluge of culture. It is instant because as soon as the news or event its is comprised of becomes the past the remix also becomes pointless and is replaced by the next fad. It is a passing amusment but in manipulating a least a very small bit of the media storm thats raining down on us we can feel we have an inkling of control over the mass of voices rather than just going in the chourus. That is the reason this ridiculously catchy song is the art work of our time.
To look at the video itself its primary function is to amuse. Its amoral, the closest it comes to political content is confirming at a military dictators morals are "weak" and this sandwiched between confirming that chicken wings and tinky winkys bag are awsome. The footage is sourced from the 24 hour non news culture and is presented on the worlds most dynamic video collection youtube. It has vaugly anti estabalisment undertones due to charlie sheens views on lifestyle. But most importantly its incredibally catchy and its really funny and that is the most important thing. In this world you can either stand up and weep or sit down and laugh and sitting down is more confortable and makes it easier to work on your laptop.
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