There is more in the world then masters and slaves, there is also the world. #ॐ
20170414
Roe Hero is my favorite artist from Kemi. He’s been rolling with the K-History and K.B.F crews often performing with Small C. Recently he opened a new youtube channel. K-History and K.B.F videos offer rare views to the city of Kemi. In 2013 I was explained that they are trying to keep Karen culture alive by performing frequently in cities across north and sharing tunes online. Roe had also made backtracks for Karen artists abroad.
Roe and friends are operating as a part of a large hip-hop movement originating from the refugees camps at the Thailand-Burma border. Searches for “Karen hip-hop” reveal a vast networks of artists representing Karen culture and performing in aesthetically similar videos in different locations around the world. The sounds and styles on the videos are unique. K-Culture hip-hop is a mix of gangster-rap/trap tricks and autotune synth pop.
Man finds a Wikipedia article written about him. It says that he is a fictional character. #ॐ
20170323
Float like an artists, sting like an institution. #ॐ
The SOW: Blacksmith ed1 metadata .cvs asks for intensive work but I’ll try to have it ready by tonight. Witness evidences of labor online.
Shot video at the Helsinki mounted police crowd control training session in the morning. Inhaled training mace spray and horse manure. Horses marched through smoke and flags were waved. A gun was shot at random. The sun was low and the officers backlit. The event looked like a buddhistic ritual. I was offered the opportunity to join their training sessions with the defence forces. Unfortunately the session will take place on the same day as our Kontula Electronic gig. Morning with the horses and evening with techno. Art, spring, stress.
Dance lessons were fun and intensive. Learned some Pilates movements but hurt my wrist (The pain comes from poorly executed kettlebell lifts and unergonomic phone handling). Mr. Pilates believed that modern work and lifestyles have weakend our bodies and to fix us into shape he develloped the practice of Contrology (know today as Pilates).
During the process of disemboweling charismatic authorities as political organizers – A mass of physical authorities telling us how to live in our bodies has a emerged.
Wonder if there is some sort of Anarcolates out there which would aspire break our bodies? Movement is always relational (to body parts, others and spaces) which makes autonomy as a body impossible. Anarcolatic exercises would attempt to replace current relations with new codependencies. Such new codependencies should be toxic and work to free us from the temporality (history) of the body. Perhaps technology could be used to mutate us! A dancer providing and controlling the oxygen flow of an other with a pump serves as an simplified illustration.
20170309
Can I Get An Amen? (2004) & Bassline Baseline (2005) by Nate Harrison (Note: Bassline Bassline circumvents youtube copyright protection algorithms by randomly gate-chopping samples!). Both pieces are fuelled with technological optimism (which in 2004-5 was already nostalgia). Contemporary discussion concerning cultural appropriation are distant and sampling is presented as a expression of an pancultural youth movement which seeks to discredit capitalism, corporate record labels and mainstream artists (The dismay mainstream artist felt over sampling is well captured in this delightful extract from 1988).
Jon Leidecker’s (aka. Wobbly) podcast series VARIATIONS #1-7 (2009-2012) investigates the history sampling in more detail. In all VARIATIONS is a great introduction to 20th century avantgarde music. He begins the series by illustrating how musical notation and sampling are related. These technologies have enabled artists to extract tunes and forms from localized cultural contexts and to distribute them globally, make remixes, to store tunes/forms indefinitely and to re-listen to tunes/forms without social context. Musical notations is as intrusive as sampling!
Leidecker argues that recorded music gave artists, who didn’t have training in notation the opportunity to document and share their culture. He presents jazz as an artform which developed largely through recordings. Early jazz musicians developed new styles to play old instruments and these styles were shared globally through 78RPM recording (Musical notation struggles to capture the style instruments can be played). Recorded music and samplers returned power to oral cultures and traditions. Charismatic performers who were overshadowed by literary traditions could re-emerge and seek out global audiences.
He presents sampling and remixing as fundamental human rights. As methods for organizing like-minded people. I think he argues that the best way to fight cultural stagnation and alienation (under capitalistic conditions) is to embrace sampling full heartedly. Corporate record labels and centralized regimes will always find ways to appropriate subcultures and minorities – The only way we can overturn such developments is by sampling, sharing and remixing. By using technology to disrupt. The sampler is like nuclear energy – We are all affected by it and it continues to define the world according to its logic (as discussed earlier).
I think many contemporary discussions concerning cultural appropriation are steered by a negative reaction to the technology of the sampler. It’s a convenient adversary. It is technology which is designed to extracts cultural signs away from their native context and to remix samples according to a fixed logic (wester time signatures and scales). But when we are discussing cultural appropriation, it is important to understand the difference between the global impact of the technology of the sampler and individual artists who use samplers. Herbie Hancock believes that samplers are tools which allow users to choose if they are used for good or bad. There is nothing intrinsically bad about technology or appropriation for that matter. Copying successful techniques from other could be considered is a human right and we can’t turn back the clock.
The arrival of samplers have changed our cultural ecology and artists who use them for remixes are trying to adapt to the change. Naïve users get blamed for what our sinister technology enables. It is the sampler in its self which subjugates and quantifies cultural signs accross classes and continents. Everyone touched by its logic has been tainted. #ॐ
We cannot stop sampling as a technological approach to culture – But we can use samplers to connect to each other. Acceleration is the best route for action. We should confront each others and not allow fear to hinder our efforts. Gianni Motti’s HIGGS, looking for the anti-Motti (2005) is a cynical artwork. He should have run together with someone, so that they would have collided and exploded into previously unseen particles.
Samplers are not against local cultures. They are against the world. In the wrong hands samplers are paving way for a granular future, where we cease to form relations to other cultures and only form relations to technology! As Topi discovered, people who use Tinder are actually in relationship with the application and the casual human encounter they engage in are irrelevant for the application developer and the emerging Tinder-culture. Sampler technologies are here: Embrace the possibilities they offer.
I hope the SOW: Blacksmith will manage to build bridges between new and old professions and classes. Designers make techno on their free time… By using samples extracted from the sounds of work of the craftsperson, they can alling their (rhythmically moving) bodies to the the reality of the labor force. We are in this together.
20170125
Don’t hope – Make #ॐ
“Open to all, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the participatory performance will be live-streamed continuously for four years, or the duration of the presidency.”: http://hewillnotdivide.us
Finnish food culture is post-human as we mainly consume processed substance to maintain work efficiency. Food is a means to an end. This is usefull in our preparations for the post-apocalyptic future as processed food are more sustainable then handcrafted cuisines! When food is produced in large batches it’s difficult control it’s taste but it is way more energy efficient to produce. Force-feeding industrially produced canned shit like maksalaatikko for kids in schools and workers in public institutions for the past 70 years has changed us into post-cousine beasts. The dystopian view of human survivors eating dog food in nuclear fallout shelters is our reality. We’ve been eating military rations since 50ties.
The meat products we’ve grown accustomed to contain very little meat and will be easily replaced with proteins from plants or insects. Popular frozen-pizza brands have already replaced cheese into compressed wheat products. No one can tell the difference. Finn’s are well suited for life on a space-stations, orbiting earth while we wait for the dust to settle. Advanced cuisine-cultures will have a harder time adapting to upcoming droughts and other struggles which will make fresh foods into a rarity. An enjoyable taste in food is a luxury we cannot afford.