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The (International) Noise Conspiracy
Survival Sickness -> Inner Notes
INFORMATION THAT MIGHT BE IMPORTANT FOR THE CONSUMPTION OF THIS RECORD
Music is limiting in it's output, we only have a certain amount of time to try and reproduce the ideas that we want the listener to take part of. The lyrics all have to fit into the limits of the song, thus making them objects to issues like rhythm, rhyme & lenght, making it very hard to get across complex ideas, thus making the words one-dimensional & hollow of sorts. So, instead of abiding to common practice of adaptation, we are giving you a more full spectrum of the ideas behind the song, once again still limited to the layout of the record but at least a bit more detailed than the lyrics of the songs.
Communication of knowledge & ideas
Questionnaire
In a time where every decision is made by experts & bosses & leaders & rockstars and where we, from day one,
were taught not to question, not to ask, end up knowing what we need to know and not what we ought to know. In the domain
of leader mentality we get taught that there is always someone who knows better, looks better & creates better than we
do, making sure that we will always be followers, that we will always be sheep. If we never ask why, there will never be
any sort of change at all cos imbedded in our culture is a sort of vis-à-vis understanding that ignorance is bliss.
But the fact that we remain ignorant is also the same trajectory that allows production & consumption to be the
almighty gods of modern culture. There is a need to ask ourselves why in every possible way, to analyse the power
structures & cultural settings of our lives, to take apart the machinary of capitalism into the smallest parts, to
come to a conclusion about why we look the way we look and why we listen to the music that we listen to. The truth is not
out there and therefore we have to question everything so that we can create & learn & live.
I wanna know about you...
Poetry & action fused together
Dear listener.
So whay is the subversive sound? That is the first question that we have ask ourselves. Is there even such a thing? The parameters of the modern ways of production force us to guide creativity into certain areas where it is safe and where the capital can co-opt it in a secure way. So therefore there will never be talk about any sort of music that in itself can be subversive or revolutionary. The idea of such a sound under present conditions is laughable. Music is nothing but an abstraction of an old & dull idea of bourgeois self-realization, the self-made success of creative artist, thus leaving the rest to choke in the dust, settled to consume "creativity" in a boring package. Artists become nostalgia items repeating the same boring phrases over & over again, and the consumers become consumers of boredom & alienation. The taste for change gets satisfied in a change of taste. Instead of selling revolution we sell ideas of rebellion packaged in nice wrapping coated with rhetoric of self-styled leader. Instead of quality we settle for quantity, we get force fed the same songs over & over again. We get taught to believe that the emotions expressed in songs can be relived again & again by the artist & the audience, not realizing that when the song is written it is already dead, it is a bleak & hollow representation of the process that made the piece appear in the first place. We settle for second rate emotions and for the copy instead of the original outburst of life.
The self-acclaimed artistic avant-garde is also guilty in every way possible, even though they believe that they are not as fully co-opted by capital accumulation they all know that they are in the forefront of playing the role of the creative genius, they are by definition the upholders of class. In a world of experts & leaders they are striving the hardest to be recognized as truest dealers of boredom with their self-appointed suffering & bogus creativity. They are the bourgeois bastion of self-realization at the cost of everyone else. Even though the safeguards of the industry tries to gain access to the most radical ideas to be able to sell it back to us in a non threatening & profitable way, or put them in the museum, there are still ideas that transcend this trend.
The only aspect of creativity that can be even the slightest bit dangerous will be ideas behind the music, the passion that drives us forward, never the music/art in itself. There has to be a new kind of art aimed at itself, an art directed to the negation of art. Marx said that when we are free we will all be artists and that is the essence of the subversive sound, everything to everyone. A passionate creation of living, this will be the new art, a sound more powerful than any rock act can ever produce and poetry that will make Lautrémont, Shakespeare & Fourier seem like nothing, and violence that will be more beautiful than any fireworks exhibition or parade of Russian soldiers. A new form of expression where the material is everywhere and the standards are nowhere. The collective effort to find new ways of communication has to be put on top of our list, so that we can all live & create in ways unheard of by the boring people.
- The Black Mask Sub-committee of Violence and Passion.
The creative urge to destroy bourgeois culture
This is a start:
My heart still hurts from last night
My heart still hurts from last night
Survival has become the paradigm of economical circumstances, we spend our lives fitting in to the scheme of production/consumption. Thinking that the freedom to choose between items or rulers is a choice, spending our time reduced to nothing. The economists, neo-liberals, media and the other peddlers in human misery promise salvation through more reification. They make us believe that this system is natural or the best for us all, which is as likely as saying that Durruti was not an anarchist, that we have to be satisfied with survival, that we have to get used to just think of ourselves to get by, that we can not change the world we live in. Economy has replaced god as the new theology.
We are being forced to live petty lives, thinking that the freedom to indulge in the rat race is the only action that we can make, cos we have all been reduced to numbers, but if we work hard enough we can become objects. Rally me up in this non-decision making, my mind is up for the taking. "Survival is life reduced to bare essentials, to life's abstract form, to the minimum of activity required to ensure men's participation in production & consumption.
It is a sad state when we are being dragged into an existence that we have nothing to benefit from, into a life that we have no desire to live, but that we have no ability to avoid in this day & age. People have never been more poor and still we keep hearing about how the economy, this abstract entity is doing better than ever, and while the rich are building summer houses they are also building ghettos for the rest of us. Change can never come with this system, we can not reform capitalism no matter what these cretins keep telling us.
Selling of the biggest commodity
The production of the worker
The collective changing of identity
Who are you???
The face that you see staring back at you from the mirror every morning is not really you. Everything about that person
that you look at has been designed by someone, something, and responds to things outside of your immediate control. What
is your name but someone else's name being reused, your life but someone else's recapitulated? You live where you live cos
others have lived there before you. Your looks are someone else's fashion, your creeds the dusty regurgitation of stale
ideas that have bored people for generations. When someone hands you a list of possibilities to choose your life from, a
list that is based upon WHO you are, there can be no unique, interesting or original outcome. The fact that we all have
our OWN names, numbers, addresses & personalities is exactly what excludes us from being individuals. People become
the sum product of their experiences and with each passing moment this accumulation further solidifies the image of
'self' that everyone has. People become roles that they are then forced to play out by the circumstances that they
are woven into and by their personal understanding of their self as being one with this image, an image which assumes the
mantle of identity.
The reality of people's lives is indivisible from the momentum of their identies and all of our thoughts & actions are influenced by this. We live lives that are self-perpetuating reproductions of themselves which get set adrift and are quickly lost in the same endless convoluted ocean of other reproduction that reality is drowning in. Release from the confines of being THAT individual, being 'who you are' is integral to realizing the true potential of what one can be. 'What you want to be/do' has to replace 'what you are' as the definition of identity so that the past will no longer be blinders keeping us running in the same direction. The general state of confusion, frustration & alienation that most people live in is both the direct product of and the very cause of the contradictions between 'the self' as it is and 'the self' as we would like it to be.
When we talk about the changing of identities we talk about finding freedom by breaking from other people's conceptions as well as our self-conceptions of what we can do. Burning the effigies of ourselves is the only way to destroy the predetermination that undermines this discourse of our lives and our involvement in the world.
Summation of the Black Mask sub-committee of Creative Noise & Activity's Finding with regards to the Imposition of Limiting Hierarchies, Norms, Standards & Structures upon the Cultural Expression of groups & individuals through the reduction of the Creative Process to an Economic Formula and the Marginalization of individuals wishing to pursue their creative potential regardless of the economic, political, or social implications of doing so:
The Album that you are holding in your hands right now has nothing to do with creativity. "Creativity" as we would like to define it is a process, an engagement, the meeting place of the mind & the spirit. Most importantly, it is something experienced. What you have right now is a dull reflection of that process, nothing more than the waste products of someone else's experience. While hopefully you will enjoy listening to the music, find some of the ideas interesting & stimulating, & appreciate our product, don't allow yourself to believe that you can be involved in the process when you press PLAY or see the band live. The Creative Process is present tense, this album is past tense, and the stage is a funeral parlor where things long deceased are displayed for public approval.
For too long people have bought into the discourse surrounding creativity. In a world where economic influences & 'moral' imperatives prevail, creativity has been objectified so that it can be rationalized & consumerized. The focus is on the things produced and the social & economic value of them. Products have to be consumed, profits have to be made & the social structure shouldn't be disturbed. Vast art, music, & publishing industries, in cahoots with their bedfellows in marketing, advertising & mass media define & direct creativity, all the while determining its 'value'. Radios, T.V.'s, Top 40 countdowns, Critics, Bestseller Lists & Magazines at the grocery store check out counters tell us what to listen to, what to read, what movies to see, where to eat, who is funny & what color will be 'IN' for the next fashion season. We sit idly by as most modes for 'creative expression' are funneled through corporate boardrooms.
Not only is the creative process bastardized into a sculpted edifice of cunsumerism, with pre-ordained direction handed down from the front offices in the guise of a cultural elite, but the standards imposed serve to undermine creativity in its purest form at all levels. This can be seen in the construction of distinctions, roles, structures & hierachies that serve to confine the potential of the creative process while limiting possible interaction with it. The creative 'haves' and 'haves nots' become necessary components within this system, with a priviledged few allowed to be involved. But even those acknowledged as creative are nothing more than cultural whores, selling their wares IF they play the rules. And for everyone else, 'REALITY' is the weapon that is used to beat down all interest in being creative. People are constantly urged by all around them to be productive, to make a living & relegate the creative aspects of their lives, their dreams, to pastime activities done in their spare time. There's no money in that and artists, poets, musicians & writers are all fools with no grounding in the real world. We are either not good enough or it is not practical enough. The question that should be asked is why anyone would want grounding in a 'real world' that is obsessed with competition & profit, limited in vision, destructive in it's nature & where everyone's standard fare is alienation & suppression of potential?
One of the aims of this product is to urge people to engage in their own creative process and NEVER be satisfied recapitulating reproduction of someone else's. Unfettered creativity is one of the most powerfull manifestations of subversion possible for it offers us all a taste of freedom.
Excerpts from diary found the year 2009
... for the first time in my life I can taste the true excitement. With sweat running down my back and a smile on my
face, it is difficult to even type this out. It isn't an accident or even strange that it is happen, it had been in the
works for ages, but it finally seemed like now is the time. For too long we accepted high rising concrete buildings and
pollution and inner city traffic, experts, doctors, bosses and politicians fucking us up. Somehow along the way we got
used to never feeling fullfilled or happy, we got used to taking drugs to cure our depression and to cure our alienation.
We got used to wok 8 hours a day producing commodities, and becoming commodities and buying commodities. We got used to
spending our lives in a sedated state, or never living, just surviving. But today all of that is changing, the little
secret that we all shared was being revealed to the world. Now I am almost running, my legs can't stop and I am to
exhilarated to slow down. On the corner beneath the streetlight I meet up with my comrade, she is smilling, not hiding the
passion that she feels. We hug and exchange a few short phrases. She met some other people on the way over, that confirmed
that it is finally happening. There are no cops on the streets, just people, young and beautiful and alive walking in
groups or alone, down to the square. There are no leaders, no unions or parties behind it. Most people don't really know
what is going on but they could feel the air was different, breathable, alive. You see, the universal idea of resistance
and rebellion that had been lurking under modern ways of production had suddenly sprung to life, no one even needed to say
it out loud. Suddenly people stoped working, they stopped listening to the bosses and the self-acclaimed leaders, people
started to deconstruct the opression that had been over them for years, for their entire lives. It is a beautiful
occurence, the city is filled with colors and flags and people saying Hello! to each other and kissing passionately with
strangers. Music is coming from buildings all over and people are dancing on every rooftop, in every alleyway. The old and
conservative forces will try to prevent it for a short while but their attempts will be futile, most of their attacks end
in hummiliation. There will be a couple of days of fighting but everyday more and more people will throw off their
uniforms and join in with the ranks of celebrating, passionate revolutionaries that are taking over the city. Things are
being built at a faster rate than the old culture is being dismantled, and after a few days the city will totally change
character, the only cars you will ever see used only for driving food or other necessities. About two weeks after the
first signs of insurrection something will happen, the old and ugly will gather in a park down by the harbor where they
will kill themselves with Easyways sleeping pills. They do it because it is clear to them that we will never let the world
go back to what it was and that will be too much for some to deal with. Now it belongs to us, the passionate, the young,
the loving. Now it is up to us. Now there are only lovers left alive. As I rush to the square wih my friends and many
others that I will from now on call comrade or lover or sister, I cry openly. This is nothing short of everything that
we have ever dreamed of. This is the beginning and now it was up to us. Now begins the creation of our history. This
is our time, away from the production line, this is a time like never before; this is revolution...
organist / / n. the player of an organ .
organize / / v. tr. (also -ise) 1 a give an ordely structure to, systematize.
b bring the affairs of (another person or oneself) into order; make arrangements for (a person).
2 a arrange for or initiate (a scheme, etc.). b provide; take responsability for
(organize a wildcatstrike). 3 (often absol.) a enroll (new members) in a trade
union, political group, etc. b form (a trade union or other political group). 4 a
enable (a group or oneself) to offer resistance against the oppressive discourse of capitalist leadership (the
man). b prov- ide a theorical foundation to understand the fascim-generating structures of the widely
differentiated labourmarket (scapegoating so called immigrants would not be as much an issue of ethnicity, but one of
class). 5 a promote a less instrumental use of the traditional learning facilities (schools,
libraries, etc.). b encourage learning beyond mere survival. 6 smash the neo-liberal
dream. 7 a support the overtaking of the workplace, thus enabling people to build their own communities
and fly their own airplanes (see the AAA for space exploration). b give confidence (to a
person or group of persons) to realize that heroism can and will be achieved by all. 8 a confirm the
suspicion that people are more than a professional title. b encourage the change of (old, boring,
forced, etc.) identities (see #6). 9 a give meaning to the old abbreviations
(CNT, SAC, IWW, etc.). b when the time is right, remove the meaning from above mentioned abbreviations
(showing that further divisions are most unwanted). 10 a take it into one's own hands. b
do I have to spell it out?
orgy / / n. (pl -ies) 1 a wild drunken festivity at which indisciminate sexual
activity takes place. 2 excessive indulgence in an activity. 3 (usu. in pl.) Gk.
& Rom. Hist. secret rites used in the worship of esp. Bacchus, celebrated with dancing, drunkenness,
singing, etc.
The joyous sounds of progress or...
The ringing of revolution
Do you remember when it was quiet down here? Do you remember when it was quiet enywhere??? Before the industrialization, before the factories, before the planes & trains & cars & busses. Before The Beatles, The Rolling Stones & punkrock, before MTV, before commercials, before headaches & tinnitus, before inner city fumes & pollution, before the sounds of computers & cash register.
Noise - silence, relatioship in a sinking ship, drags us under and turns us deaf from the roaring of the marketplace. But in secret & in effect there might be a few daring forces using the apparatus available to produce counter sounds, to make so much noise that one day there will be at least a moment of relief. Guided by the mechanism produced during thousands of years of slavery & oppression, constructed by the suffering of million men & women, we must overthrow the relationship between the abuse of noise and the creation of noise and thank the industrialization for making us amplify our manifestos and enables us to sing & scream & dance.
We are all cultural prostitutes
Another day in the life of...
The perception of time:
The timeline, hours choped into minutes into seconds into the very measurement on living. Life si lived on the basis of
time consumed. The standardization of time in the 19th century was well in tune with the industrialization's maximum usage
of labor power, the need to increase the profit. We learn to accept the fact that days are nothing but blocks of time to
be consumed. The schemaics of living is nurtured from the institutionalized learning facilities also know as schools, also
known as breeding ground for future slaves.
The perception of the room:
The working place, the living place, the consumption place, the enjoyment place; all life reduced to cubicles
determining the role you have to play in order to live. Our economical/cultural settings of building space has not only
been reduced to the mere storage of commodities (home) but also to the production of life (theme parks & movie
theaters), the accumulation of capital (work) & the consumption of the same capital (malls, chainstores & so on).
Living has been reduced to the economy of space.
The perception of self:
Having life reduced to the time/space setting of consumer capitalism means that you are, no matter how hard you try no
to be, a part of the commodity abundance that circulates around us and as long as we are living in a system where this is
the "law", this relationship will never change. We are paying to live in a system that is based on the usage of humans, we
get used to the realization that the objects that we produce take on more meaning than the producers, we get used to
feeling alienated & used. We get survival sickness.
I woke up in love this morning
I woke up in love this morning
Shut the blinds tight & get sucked into the conventional drudgery of nightmare infested Coma-Land. Non-living
infects our nerves, every fiber screaming out for liberation from this sleepy state. We spend our lives seperated by the
objects we want to become & the subjects that we are being turned into, seperating dreaming from living, and turning
life into an existence of living dead. Check the clock for what activity you are supposed to participate in: working,
eating, reproducing, consuming & Sleeping. Enter resistance: Didn't take your sleeping pills last night & I
won't take them again tonight, I'm going to stay up with light on, I'm going to stay up all night. Didn't take your
sleeping pills last night, I won't fall to coma again, I had enough of your nightmares, I'm going to stay up with my
friends. I woke up in love this morning, I fell asleep with you on my mind.
The celebration of passion & resistance
Assuring control over creativity and productivity:
Words & images, which surround us constantly - more now than ever - are the language of power. We are totally inundated with commercials & propaganda, everywhere. It's not manipulation, nor a conspiracy. It's the expression of a paradigm which has cast its web over the globe - formulating divisions of labor, using & shaping 'culture', ensuring its evolution, and thus contradicting itself through exploitation & alienation. This paradigm is ours, as is the language & the imagery which represents it. Alienation is for everyone now, because it is now more than it ever was. It is total. Some won't recognize it & other revel in it, but all of us feel it. It's easy to be attuned to it in the working class or as a student - it feels like total futility. One is more attuned to alienation when one can't afford to fool & distract themselves with bourgeois luxury, or on the converse, when, through education, one is purchasing boredom & functionalist thought in hopes of empowering their life. Will it? Only so much as you can transcend it - only in its negation. The purpose of becoming a student now is to redefine that role. In a sense, to use creative & productive energy in opposition to the social forces that seek to harness it for a benefit alienated from yourself. The same applies to broader society. There is a practical manner in which we can combat total alienation - using its means against itself. That is using the means of creativity & productivity against the social paradigm that guides them. As for creative power, we can start with language & images. Every word, image, phrases or scene has a contrasting counterpart which can alter its meaning entirely & critique it. Dada knew it and accordingly was a fantastic reflection & critique of society. Drink from the toilet. Warhol knew it when he painted Monroe's lips a hundred times. Situationists articulated it & lived it (and not only in Paris 1968). The word 'propaganda' condescends the concept we're referring to, although to a degree that's what it is. To use this word in it's condescending sense is to fail to realize that everything is or can be propaganda. A more appropriate concept is that of 'satire'. We can stiffle the alienation of our creative power through critique, humiliation, insult & self-critisism. Its object should be larger than its subject however: to redefine & reorganize the social control over creative & productive forces in opposition to alienation. After the critique of creative power we are left with the practical side of our social life production. The D.I.Y. festival is a powerful example of the assumption of productive organization on the part of the political community. Insurrection is its broader social counterpart. The former redefines productive energy in its own terms, taking massive organization into its own hands (even if its goal is only a forum for boring people), while the latter is popular resistance & refusal of the control over creative & productive power. What's next? Is the D.I.Y. festival followed by the creation of ouw own airlines, and is insurrection followed by revolution? If alienation stifles & co-opts creative & productive energy for its own benfit, then satire, self-reliance & resistance redefine them in rejection of alienation.
Much more can be said on these matters. Go ahead.
The (International) Noise Conspiracy.