ROBOTIC and SYNTHETIC PERFORMANCE: Steps Toward a Culture of Liberation a Manifesto of the OmniCircus
XXIII. NEW GENRES
We've pointed out that the assumptions beneath genres are more powerful than the subject matter itself. If a genre is reactionary, a progressive story is undercut by the assumptions of the genre. Anti-genres are not inherently progressive because they use the same underlying assumptions as the genre. Ergo, create new genres. What are the basic processes in the creation of our new language?
"It is not the function of art to wallow in dirt for dirt's sake, never its task to paint men only in states of decay, to draw cretins as the symbol of motherhood, to picture hunchbacked idiots as representatives of manly strength...Art must be the handmaiden of sublimity and beauty and thus promote whatever is natural and healthy. If art does not do this, then any money spent on it is squandered." -Adolf Hitler, September 11, 1935, Nuremberg, Germany
It should be said at the outset that the new, progressive genres of art subjects are not inherently uplifting or ennobling. Too many "leftist" artists want to skip the stage of making a militant slave culture born out of the dark skull of the behemoth. We won't have the luxury of fighting our battles with fully formed personalities - first we must move from passive to active slave, from Jesus to Spartacus. Only then may we deign to suggest a vision of what the future may be like. It is the new-world warrior who has the right to prescribe solutions. The dreamer can only predict. In the late 20th century, in the advanced capitalist countries, the working class has been inoculated against socialist ideology by the successful equation of socialism and Stalinism that was the goal of bourgeois and Zhdanovist culture for half a century. Blatantly leftist culture leaves workers cold, because the task of sorting out contradictory ideologies and histories is too complex and self-conscious to be appropriate for art... Art which reflects, amplifies, and restores experience can succeed where pure ideology now fails, in connecting to the class that knows its own suffering with certainty and precious little else. Indeed our very suffering is not available to us until we awaken to our slavery. Then and only then do we look for an analysis of how chains are made, and how they can be broken.
Anti-genres contain the seeds of new genres, and they are often linked in the same work. Monstrous individualism creates the impetus for showing the underlying motives of the monster - putting the forces that create loathsome behavior on the table, making them available material for the artist. Similarly, sexist and racist forms of degradation are inexorably revealed during ruthless re-examinations of soap operas and westerns. But it is still necessary to create a new language and new ideologies to replace the epoch of bourgeois individualism and nationalism.
Shakespeare made a noble work out of Othello's conflicts, his anguish over his perceived need to murder his wife for her infidelities; today most cultures are beginning to doubt and deny his 'right' to indulge in that option. Therefore there will be a need for new masterpieces that unflinchingly deal with the terror against women as a social, not just a family and psychological, drama.
Likewise, the wars and oppressions of the modern age have created subject matter that even the deepest minds are loathe to attempt. The great sculptor Henry Moore was asked to judge a competition for a Holocaust Memorial. He decided none of the entries were up to the subject. "Only a modern-day Michelangelo" was capable of dealing with such profound suffering, in Moore's opinion. We can't help wishing that Henry Moore had tackled the job himself = he would have been an appropriate choice, as his SHELTER DRAWINGS and FALLEN WARRIOR attest - but there will be others to take on these subjects! Genocide, lynchings, homelessness, the extermination camps for the human spirit known as ghettos - these are new subjects, new genres, for progressive artists. The alienation of the morning bus ride to work contains within it gigantic forces capable of profound treatment. And Picasso's GUERNICA stands as a monument to the capacity of human genius (and courage) to encompass the most horrific of subjects in an inspiring and empowering way.
There is also a need for a new eroticism in art. Religion exists partly to contain the euphoric powers inherent in our own bodies, maintaining the slave classes' addiction to alcohol and narcotics. Sexual freedom joins the list of human rights that are our sacred inheritance, (along with freedom from religion). Some modern robot artists are finding creative ways to integrate sexual themes and technology. The Centre for Metahuman Exploration has made a robotic exo-skeletal arm that allows the fondling of nude models under remote control.
"You can't write a great book about a flea," quothe Melville, "though many have tried." Profound art demands profound subjects, and our age has provided more than its share. They are available to all, free of charge, if only we can develop an appropriate language to explore them with, and the courage to do battle with our own darkest epoch.
The ultimate new subject is Uprising itself. Transforming our "traumatic bonding" into revolutionary rage is the goal of modern progressive culture. Future masterpieces will glow with the luminous light of burning tires, and they will live and breath, move and speak with the robotically re-animated voices of the disappeared!
The very first world language is now being created - it started in the realm of music, as did the original languages in pre history. People all over the planet speak to each other using this new language, a language created by the first world-identified class, the industrial working class. Right now we call this language "rock"; music, a homage to the primeval tools that were made of rock. Just as dawn age tools became the space program, our Eolithic "rock" music will become an epic musical-drama of great sophistication. It will be capable of forms of expression that surpass anything in classical culture. To accomplish this we'll need more than just our powerful new synthesizers and computers. We need a new method of expression, one that goes beyond surface naturalism. We need a language more real than 'realism' to tell the story of our modern age. We need a rebirth of surrealism in its empowered, socially aware form, combined with new technologies that allow the exploration and initiation of deeper levels of the human experience and human consciousness.
