Don't wriggle, you'll only make it better!

[imomus]

Postmodernism has us all tied up in a big ole shibari knot. The more we struggle the tighter it gets. Better relax and let it pleasure you, then hope it'll untie you when it's done and has no more appetite.

Every time you see that some old style is 'back on the catwalks', every time some series comes back from TV heaven, every time you read that your favourite artist has opted to use vintage gear on his new album, know that Uncle Pomo has just thrown another rope around your naked body. Don't wriggle, unless you actually want to excite him more.

I've re-appropriated the old hippy zen / Oasis slogan 'Be here now!' to describe what I think of as the best attitude to postmodernism. Wake up, smell the coffee, set your watch, be here now! Not because I think postmodernism is great (although it's certainly given me a hell of a lot of fun over the years) but because that's the best way to get on to the next thing. There will certainly be a 'next thing' some day, and postmodernism will be 'the last thing'.

It's actually impossible for anyone culturally active now to be doing anything other than postmodernism. The Taliban were a postmodern version of Islam, not (as often depicted) a contemporary group who were, somehow, also living in the Middle Ages. The Stuckists are a group of postmodern figurative painters who hate mainstream postmodernist art, but whose reaction against it also falls within postmodernism. Oasis and Matmos are both postmodernist pop groups. One is not 'more' postmodernist than the other. Postmodernism is the name of the cultural period we're all in.



But I see people's attempts to 'transcend' or 'deny' this as a form of bad faith. And I think postmodernism will not be superceded by denials and reactions against its core values, but by a complete embracing of them. That's why I like pop records like Cher's 'Believe'. By embracing postmodern production, by showing that there's no contradiction between the human voice and an electronic harmoniser, between technology and emotion, between contrivance and sincerity, or confection and belief, or the engineer and the humanist, 'Believe' brings the end of postmodernism closer because it brings closer the day in which to be postmodern will be as natural as breathing. Postmodernism will disappear by becoming so accepted that it's invisible and omnipresent. Whereas all reactions against postmodernism (Stuckism, rockism, fundamentalism) only serve to make postmodernism more visible, more important, something distinct from us, ahead of us, rather than written all through us.

Personally, I think Japan will be the country which first embraces whatever comes after postmodernism, because Japan is the society currently most at ease with postmodernism. They also know a thing or two about the fun you can have with ropes.

Comments

[ratz.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. People get so angry at me when I counter their countless bickering about postmodernism with exactly what you said... "Postmodernism is the name of the cultural period we're all in." The more boring architecture students in my program all deny any affiliation to postmodernism. They think I'm crazy for using postmodernist language to describe what's happening in a postmodern age. To which, I just blink and say, "Okay, then."

[(Anonymous)]

I don't particularly like Cher and I don't particularly like "Believe". Even if I accepted your argument about postmodernism (which I do in parts), it wouldn't make me like "Believe". But I'm interested that you like it because it illustrates a point about the supposed authenticity of the voice vs the supposed inauthenticity of technology. It just doesn't follow for me that illustrating the right theory could be any criterion of a good work. We've all seen movies or read novels that illustrate worthy causes and yet are as dull as ditchwater. Don't you make any distinction between visceral appreciation of art and the cultural theory of art (or is that too unpostmodern for you?).

Shot By Both Sides

[(Anonymous)]

As a post-modern form can pop ever extricate itself from this knot. It's the ultimate doublethink. A being here "in the nowness of now" attitude could be the solution but involves leaving irony and pastiche behind. Where would you be without this dichotomy ? Does this once again take us to the tired cliche of "authenticity" which has no ambivalence yet is, as you say a po-mo trait ? In producing "fake folk" can you ever make something that avoids the self-conscious ? Your earlier works ( Voyager, Timelord ) have less of this ironic quality. I guess the emotions ( to use a loaded word ) in the earlier songs are more "genuine".

Is this what the critics mean by "timeless", that is music that never sounds dated because it is outside of the current memes or perhaps is more "classical" in that it is not trying to be cutting edge (I know that has been a topic of late). John Peel used to evaluate bands on being able to hear their influences. In the case of the Smiths he could not trace them and that yardstick is apt in this regard when the cross-fertilisation of influences creates something new but the ingredients are undetectable. So po-mo perhaps is an indication of the decline in creativity in pop. Meme-splicing can produce new things but when it is knowing and ambivalent perhaps it is hollow and just a gesture that becomes dated because of the affectation.

I feel that with all this questioning of post-modernism, you want to move away from irony and the values of pastiche and the plastic. I'd like to challenge you to write a song that is stripped down to core Momus values. I'd be interested to hear a song that is not troubled by being melodic, normative or ironic and throws away the latest plug-in trickery, not as a form of luddism but because I sometimes think that it is more challenging to write within the limitations of conformity. Can you produce something in the vacuum of timelessness ? I believe you have, but that is in the past, so what about now ? Have you written any post "Otto" works on you return to Berlin ? Please don't get me wrong I think your current work is great but I think that you are searching for something that is outside of the path you have been treading and is evident in the subject of many of your LJ postings. Re-evaluation and re-invention don't necessarily have to be revisionist.

Richard G

Re: Shot By Both Sides

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, Richard, I should repeat that I think postmodernism is just the name of the cultural era we're in. It's neither good nor bad. Everything I've ever done, the stuff you like as well as the stuff you don't, falls under the umbrella of the postmodern, and none of those songs is any 'more postmodern' than any others.

A being here "in the nowness of now" attitude could be the solution but involves leaving irony and pastiche behind.

The thing about irony and pastiche is that they're more complex than they're often given credit for being. 'This year's irony is next year's sincerity.' A word I used last year with invisible quote marks around it, I may use this year without quote marks. A feeling I claimed to feel last year in a theatrical, posturing and ironic way might become, this year, a real feeling that can make me cry real tears. Rather than being a sterile binary, the vector between irony and sincerity can be an unpredictable walk into ambiguity. The places in between irony and sincerity are rich in artistic opportunity. It's a place of fuzzy logic, of role playing, of mixed feelings and changing beliefs.

Irony has been given a bad press. People think it's a joke shop. In fact it's more like a mysterious forest or a masked ball.

then one morning i woke up and i thought oedipus oedipus oedipus oedipus

[wenchboy.livejournal.com]

Si on fait l'art maintenant, on est post-modern. That someone would try to separate himself from it is baffling. People get so involved with classifying and defining themselves and their work that they forget the point is to make the art. Also, defining yourself as not being post-modern is so painfully self-aware that it would have to be post-modern. People cry out for the old conformity to avoid conforming to post-modernism. I feel naïve wishing that people would stop focusing on what art is to society and just creating art. If I look at a pile of Beuys lard and feel my mind expand a little, then who cares if it's pomo or a peice of fat. Likewise if I see Rodin and feel in tune with human nature and history, then I win. Period.

Re: Shot By Both Sides

[(Anonymous)]

Nick, I like all of your stuff from all of your eras, whether post-modern, ironic or whatever quote mark or term is applied. Please don't misunderstand my post, as it was not an negative evaluation. Surely, there are enough people aggressively questioning your work at the moment. (I will always champion everything you do because you are always striving for something special).

I was actually making a kind of distinction between "ironic" and "sincere" as that I think is the crux of the post-modern thing which we are stuck in good or bad. I am interested in you stripping away all of the techniques you have recently employed more as a kind of an experiment in contrariness. I understand the fine line that you walk between the binaries of irony and sincerity which is perhaps a critical Momus theme and this clearly enriches your work.

Thanks for explaining that you operate a kind of floating modus operandi as it never occurred to me. I love irony and am very suspicious of sincerity but sometimes it's nice to appreciate something with the ambivalence less prominent. On "Otto" I really like your song "Cockle Picker" precisely because of the unsentimental "emotion" it invokes. I guess it has been a sad week so melancholy, another Momus trademark which has been somewhat absent is a better description for the ingredient I think I was trying to articulate (it too can work on many levels ). Anyway, thanks for another great post.

Richard G

[bob-denver.livejournal.com]

Many musicians and listeners have already transparently embraced postmodernism in the manner you've described - most electronic music seems to exemplify the naturalness (or at least primary preference) of using technology. However, something like Cher's "Believe" makes this embrace a gimmick - the effect becomes the song and is afterwards filed into the long list of production tricks that have an obvious timestamp (R.I.P. vocal timestretching '95)

Take something like brickwall mastering (http://www.loudnessrace.net/) - a technique that spans across almost all recorded musical genres. As an effect that has drained the dynamics out of pop music, even mediated the structure and progression of songs, it remains largely invisible to those not familiar with the recording process. And although this concept in nothing new to recording music, you can literally see just how far we've gone with it if you open a pop song from 1975 and a pop song from 2004 in an audio editor. Meanwhile, the only people even noticing this are fringe audiophiles and production engineers!

I really believe the technologies that arrive without the bombast of a fad or gimmick are the ones with the greatest overall impact... which is why I also think the upheaval of postmodernism will come so quietly that no one will ever know it happened. Maybe it already did :)

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

Well, you have to take it easy on the architects. In a very pre-postmodern way, postmodernism to them tends to mean a well-defined category of artefacts revelling in pastiche. Most of them haven't really read Charles Jencks (or Rorty, for that matter).

[(Anonymous)]

You lot are too intellectual and not practical enough. Why don't you get yourselves a wife and some children with nappies to change and mouths to feed - you'll soon find out what reality is like and wean yourself off this purposeless philosophy (masturbation is not a purpose).

Re: Shot By Both Sides

[(Anonymous)]

Richard G makes the musical challenge to the God of Heckling,
“I'd like to challenge you to write a song that is stripped down to core Momus values. not troubled by being melodic, normative or ironic and throws away the latest plug-in trickery, not as a form of luddism but because I sometimes think that it is more challenging to write within the limitations of conformity. Can you produce something in the vacuum of timelessness ?”

Done. Oscar Tennis Champion, Track 14 Lovely Tree. No daylight between the ironic and sincere in that one.
tb

What's up in Japan...

[(Anonymous)]

If Japan is still ahead of the West, we have an era of "absolutely nothing" waiting for us. The End of Cool. The Fracturing of Culture to a Point where Nothing is Left but Dreck in the Middle! Can't wait!

I would like to start a discussion somewhere about Japan's accidental, vapid, content-less Postmodernism vs. the West's self-aware, ironic, intentionally-McLuhan-esque Postmodernism.

Intention is everything: manslaughter is not murder one. I saw a girl wearing a "Rush [Limbaugh] is Right" trucker hat in Harajuku. This was clearly accidental, but I could imagine someone doing the same Postmodern trick in the Lower East Side totally intentionally. How can you have irony when you don't have content to start with?

marxy

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

My hat hurts.

Happy Hallowe'en/Samhain, everyone.

W

[hugo-barine.livejournal.com]

Philosophically, postmodernism really just has us cornered, and you're right in saying that we have to embrace it in order to get past it. I think, if anything, it will be extremely heatlhy to see where our aesthetics lead to after we realize and accept that everything including legitimacy, God, reality, signifiers, the Gulf War and Baudrillard's paycheck is ultimately uncertain. Maybe, we can finally drop all these pesky "isms."

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

I started writing a reply last night, but was flattened by sleep and a dream in which I was at an autumnal acid folk festival. An event at which Devendra was entirely absent, but there was an interminable variety of medieval wind instruments. Now, morning fresh...

Japan is the society currently most at ease with postmodernism

I was very struck by this statement. I wonder whether this is one of the reasons that I enjoy being in Japan as I also don't at times. If attempts to counter postmodernism only make it more apparent and visible, then I think that it may well be less visible in Japan. They're not seeing what there is to counter. At the same time, though, I've never been too convinced that postmodernism in its Western reading can be found there. I don't think these statements necessarily contradict each other.

I'm prone to looking at Japan as a historian foremost, since that's what I am. If some future archaeological team digs through the Tokyo ground, they will encounter plenty of evidence: buildings by certain architects, clothes by certain designers, CDs by certain musicians and so on. According to the tick list, these artefacts will suggest that postmodernism was alive and well in Heisei-era Japan. Of course, this list will be a reductive travesty, but that's out of our hands. What these objects won't record are the relationships between themselves and the city's inhabitants. Just as specialists once ascribed a ritual or religious significance to all those site finds that didn't have an obvious practical use, these archaeologists will be confronted with all manner of flotsam, the significance of which has slipped from memory. What do you reckon they did with this? Postmodernism, most likely.

As you say, postmodernism is just the name of the cultural era we're in, but I'm very wary of translating that directly into the Japanese context. Yes, you, me and many other people are going to encounter Japan with that in mind, but personally I found that it sort of evaporated in me over time. That was the relief and maybe also the horror.

More words have been written about the Meiji period than I care to recall, but the question posited is how and why (and of course whether) Japan managed to become such a success story in such little time. It seemed to commentators that Japan had passed directly from feudalism into industrial capitalism, an event that also caused some confusion among the country's young and eager Marxists. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Japan was actually bypassing postmodernism. Yes, we can find its trappings, but possibly not the routines.

Marxy, you write above about the trucker hat dilemma. Accidental? Probably. Your distinction between "Japan's accidental, vapid, content-less Postmodernism vs. the West's self-aware, ironic, intentionally-McLuhan-esque Postmodernism" is a good one, but what I'd like to suggest here is that maybe it's not postmodernism at all, but something else sublimating in the offing, One, of the many, distinctions between Japan (and more importantly East Asia) and the West is that the foundations of philosophical discourse are quite different. All those pesky Confucians of various hues, for example. They weren't up to nothing for two and a half thousand years.

I'm not saying that discussing postmodernism in Japan is a contemporary Orientalist conceit, but I do wonder whether its application might obscure more than it reveals about Japan, East Asia and possibly elsewhere.

Re: Japan as Postmodern

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not saying that discussing postmodernism in Japan is a contemporary Orientalist conceit, but I do wonder whether its application might obscure more than it reveals about Japan, East Asia and possibly elsewhere.

Very well said.

We give Japan way too much credit if we just explain their exceptional case as mere "postmodern" and call it a day.

I wrote more on the subject earlier at my blog (http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy).

marxy

Re: Japan as Postmodern

[thesadtropics.livejournal.com]

I think that these responses have largely tried to situate postmodernism within national cultures; that's really problematic. To say that Japan is the society most accepting of the postmodern condition seems to me dangerously close to the idea that England is more modern than India-- I mean, it falls into the trap of teleology. If Matmos isn't more postmodern than Oasis, then how can Japan be more postmodern than the United States? If individuals are all equally postmodern, then why is a Japanese individual more postmodern than an American individual? (The argument that Japan and the United States are equally postmodern and that Japan simply accepts this more than the United States can of course be made. However: I think the idea that Japan will 'embrace' what comes after postmodernism faster than any other country precludes this argument. In this argument embracing one's own postmodernism and being postmodern are treated as essentially equal.)

Postmodernism is an aesthetic, but most importantly it is an aesthetic which draws significantly from (among other things) global media and human movement. I don't think it's right to point to Japan as some enclosed, hermetic, sealed national culture which can be pointed to and called 'Japanese culture.' It denies Japan's involvement in the movement of global capital and of migration. It's also very presumptuous; it takes Japan as its unchanging subject.

Not to be picky but I also think that the critique of Japanese postmodernism as contentless is a little ridiculous, with the added consideration that this debate is being played out in English. I do not want to assume anything of its participants, but I will quote Barthes: "The murmuring mass of an unknown language constitutes a delicious protection, envelops the foreigner in an auditory film which halts at his ears all the alienations of the mother tongue: the regional and social origins of whoever is speaking, his degree of culture, of intelligence, of taste, the image by which he constitutes himself as a person and which he asks you to recognize." The idea of 'real content' seems to me to rest on some fetishized notion of cultural authenticity, something beyond the pale of postmodernism. Does Japanese fashion have politics? Sure. But the politics being dealt with are not the religious right, the anti-gay lobby, or Elizabeth Dole and the drinking age; I think that the forces being negotiated with are far more insidious than that, and so resistance is far more insidious than some New Yorker walking around with an red ribbon on his lapel.

Also, Nick, you end your comments with an exhortation to accept one's own condition as being postmodern-- could you elaborate on why the end of postmodernism would be welcome? If I understand the argument right, it's that once postmodernism becomes our air and water, it cannot be struggled against; and thus, struggle is diminished and pleasure is increased. I may have misunderstood what you said but-- how is this a desirable condition?

Stuckists are not Postmodern

[(Anonymous)]

Stuckists are not Postmodern. First let's take a look at what Postmodern is. A good overview is on this site:
http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html

Here are some excerpts:

"Postmodern art (and thought) favors... fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures)... and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.

"But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense."

Stuckism - and its launch of Remodernism - is about a meaningful holistic engagement with self and others. Enough said?

Best
Charles Thomson
Co-founder, The Stuckists

www.stuckism.com

[(Anonymous)]

Oh Ratz, you're so special - fucking bitch.

You're not Holden.
You're not Hamlet.
You're a RAT!

unless

[matt-leclair.livejournal.com]

Masturbation is not a purpose, unless it is, and then it is postmodern. And if you can purposefully masturbate without a trace of irony, then you've attained perfect postmodern irony. And if your purpose for masturbating was to achieve perfect postmodern irony, well... then you can give thanks that you aren't someone who has allowed marriage and parenthood to make you so bitter and cynical that you've forgotten the sheer joy of thinking things for the fun of thinking them.